Dark and Stormy Night

The holocaust happened,
but not like how you think it happened.

Yesterday, children becoming memories happened,
but not quite like how you were told it happened.

A plane touching a building in Manhattan happened,
but not quite for the reason you think it happened.

An astronaut stepping on the moon happened,
but not quite in the way everyone remembers it happened.

An invasion of a country happened,
but not quite like the soldiers describe it happened.

Someone breaking bread and drinking wine happened,
but not quite how you were taught it happened.

A writer writing a lie happened,
but not for the purpose you think it happened.

Alas, there you are, my white boy from the black alcazar. You’ve grown more than a few hands taller since I saw you last! Why, you ask, do I measure your height as if you were a horse? To my equal in foolishness, it’s our common language and measure, and once you tried to put a saddle on me!

So now I see you with a furrowed brow and Vulcan’s furnace in your eyes. Your ruddy cheeks betray a trip to the countryside to take in the night aire.

Me? I haven’t told a joke in a long time, though I think you’re about to tell a story. And why do you hold me this peculiar way? There’s a word for this method. Tender I suppose. Our reunion is sweet, but something tastes like loam.

One favor lad - send that lout of a digger away. His tongue knows no certain key.

Inspired by Hamlet, Act V, Scene I by William Shake-A-Spear.

AA meetings are the greatest fun. Where else can a group of strangers, often with little or no relation in the greater world outside, come together and just dish about their problems, gripes and experiences like they were talking to a brother or sister? There is something inside yourself that is distinct with borders, territories, angry and happy regions, that once you expose for others to see, well, it becomes supremely liberating to let that part of you free. You don’t talk to your boss or your coworkers like you talk to your friends at AA. Hell, you don’t even talk to your parents like you do your AA friends, which is sad I suppose. You just slice a vein and let it bleed out into the air how you are earthquake retrofitting the foundations of your sobriety.

Still, I’ll confess something to you that I wouldn’t dare tell anyone in AA. I’m not an alcoholic. Truth be written, yes I did binge drink in college like the majority of students. I have the distinct memory of sitting in a bathtub drunk (I must have still been drunk because I shared that bathroom with three other guys and the tub was pretty disgusting) after eight or nine Long Islands and asking myself if I needed to continue to drink that night. I wasn’t so sure of the answer, so I stopped drinking because I became terrified at the thought of doing anything that I was incapable of putting down right there and leaving behind me. I’m not willing to give up my freedom like that. I still drink wine and an occasional beer or two, but I don’t get plastered like I used to.

I started going to AA meetings because my older brother has a lifelong commitment to the pleasures and benefits of the drink. I wanted to get him some help after he lost his job, and couldn’t think of any wiser place to start than to listen to people who share the same affliction. Many of the meetings are open to the public and welcome family and friends. Check with your local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous to see which meetings in your area are open and which are closed. I started attending them in July. Everyone goes around the table giving testimonials about their plight. For example, here is an exchange witnessed at a recent AA meeting:

Alcoholic #2: Is it anyone’s birthday this month?

Alcoholic #1: I’m Steve, I’m an alcoholic, and I’ve been sober since September 13, 2001.

Alcoholics #2-#6: (Clapping) Wonderful! All right!

Fake Alcoholic #1: (Clapping) Great going!

Alcoholic #1: Thanks everyone. I just wanted to say I know I owe a good part of where I am today to my brother who was lost in the attack on the Pentagon on September 11th. Living through the loss of my brother, having to clean myself up for the benefit of my family and his family and the funeral, well . . . it gave the strength to start taking some responsibility for what I was doing to myself and everyone around me. He’s the reason I joined the army and served, and I know he is happy to know that I took the occasion of his death to clean myself up and start following the directions.

(Momentary silence indicating someone else should start. Silence starts becoming uncomfortable.)

Fake Alcoholic #1: I’m J.J. and I’m an alcoholic.

Alcoholics #1-#6: Hi J.J.!

Fake Alcoholic #1: I’ve been sober ten years this September.

Alcoholics #1-#6: (Clapping) That’s great! Wonderful!

Fake Alcoholic #1: My story may not be as poignant as Steve’s, which Steve . . . I want you to know we are really happy and here for you. (I am very sincere about this…)

(Steve nods from under his baseball cap at me.)

Fake Alcoholic #1: You know, I didn’t have any DUI’s, trouble with the law, or trouble with family. I was making good grades, attending classes, living life without the negative effects people often associate with drinking. I chalk it all up to being young and sort of feeling invincible at that time. When I stopped drinking, it was because I was having blackouts — discreet episodes of lost time usually at night that I would have no memory of, yet my friends said to me I was walking, talking, being my usual self at these times. I had no memory of it at all. Worst of all is when women I didn’t know would often come up to me and tell me how mind-blowing their night had been and we should get together the coming weekend. I didn’t have a clue who these women were! I’ve always been faithful, and my girlfriend at the time was attending another university back east. I started to feel I had lost control even though you wouldn’t think I was if you had met me ten years ago. I had sort of an epiphany that I had a problem. (I am not so sincere about this…)

(The men nod in understanding. More silence indicating someone else should start.)

Alcoholic #2: J.J. thank you for your insightful words. Anne, will you please read out the steps like we do near the start of every meeting?

Alcoholic #3: Oh sure . . .

(The door creeks open as if pushed by a strong breeze. In walks Plum Blossom , and my blood is sucked out of my heart. At once I lose the sheen of anonymity I have learned to enjoy here. Something beautiful from the outside has invaded the sanctuary. I feel I want to flee. She looks at me, I look at her, and all the recovering addicts sing in unison.)

Alcoholics #1-#6: Hi Umeko!

Fake Alcoholic #1: Hi Plum Blossom?

An old man!
Brush jumps in-
Ink blackens tip.

Inspired by Basho and written from the perspective of a frog who just jumped into a pond.

Old pond
a frog jumps in
the sound of water.

I just finished A Man Without a Country by Vonnegut, a Christmas gift from someone who is finely tuned to dropped hints.

It’s a waif of a book at one hundred and fifty pages. Seriously, it could be read inside an hour, but I advise against this. Vonnegut’s sardonic wit should be read carefully to absorb its full effect. There are some laugh-out-loud passages here, twelve short essays the curmudgeon has written over the past few years.

He hits topics as various as what it was like to drive a Saab before they become yuppie mobiles, sure-fire jokes to tell at a funeral for a humanist, and his assessment of the intelligence of our national leaders. As for the latter, let’s just say he assesses the IQ of our commander-in-chief not much higher than his height (the president’s, not the author’s) expressed in inches, measured, of course, while in his bare feet.

Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

Each essay is perfect for that ten minutes before bedtime. Kurt will tuck you in and sing you a lullaby. Problem is you’re liable to have nightmares. Vonnegut is a pessimist who has entered grumpy geezerdom. He claims to have in his company such thinkers and creators as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and Hungarian obstetrician and medical saint Ignaz Semmelweis, men who in their latter years succumbed to a great pessimism regarding the human condition. These are men that Vonnegut believes gave up on humanity, and at his ripe age, he is announcing he’s going that way too. Is this really what Vonnegut is choosing for a swan song?

Yes, Vonnegut has seen humanity do some of its worst. In a shelter he rode out the bombing of Dresden during WW II. Just that experience (good companion reading is Slaughterhouse Five) might be reason enough to place your bet on another horse other than humanity.

He’s sorry for the shit that being handed down to future generations by his peers, and it’s honest sorrow folks. It’s hard to break through the bleakness to dig out true nuggets of brilliance here. What shines more is the way Vonnegut says it, not necessarily what he is saying, even though I find myself agreeing with just about everything. They are all laments we’ve read before: our addiction to fossil fuels, war millionaires metamorphisizing into beautiful little war billionaires with silky wings, the invalidity of recent elections, and so on.

Where Vonnegut hits the mark is when he cheers up, either in his celebration of the virtues of what he calls “freshwater middle America”, the heart of the country that brought us Abe Lincoln, poet Carl Sandburg and socialist Eugene V. Debbs, or his description of visiting the postal convenience center near the UN building in New York to send a manuscript to his typist. Yeah, can you believe it, actually mailing something?

I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. She doesn’t know it. My wife knows it. I am not about to do anything about it. She is so nice. All I have ever seen of her is from the waist up because she is always behind the counter. But every day she will do something with herself above her waist to cheer us up . . . This is all so exciting and so generous of her, just to cheer us up, people from all over the world.

Here, Vonnegut seems to pop out of the prose. Ironically, this is taken from an essay called We are here to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. It is when he is farting around that he is most accessible. Be warned by the pessimist in him, but love the old fart for cheering some of us up.

I simply write in my Moleskine: “Subject shows antagonism toward observation.”

“Are you a fucking psychiatrist?” Grace asks me.

I choose not to respond.

Grace has none of that Christmas spirit. Amazing Grace - she is unable to invest herself in anything.

I review a previous note written the other day, a direct quote: “No fucking way I’m going to allow myself to be vulnerable for either a man, a holiday, a religion or a child.”

“What has gotten in you? All you do is write in that fucking notebook.” Grace screams and throws my notebook to the faux marble floor. A mother and daughter look up at us from their plates of sweet and sour pork and friend rice, bulging shopping bags securely cached away under their table. The aromas of Panda Express invite me to taste exotic delights.

“Hey, remember you’re in costume. You don’t want to lose your job.”

Grace is an elf who has no Christmas spirit. When she told me about her new job three weeks ago, it was hard for me to envision her in a green felt costume including a Robin Hood hat (that’s what she calls it) and pointy shoes with little bells jingling at the tips.

All the better for me to kick your ass with she said. I answered she couldn’t sneak up on me now to do the kicking. When it comes to Grace, I know it’s usually best to flee.

“I’ve got two weeks to go. I can hold it down for that long.”

I consider discussing anecdotal evidence to the contrary. What had she done to be fired from a volunteer position at a suicide prevention hotline? How do you even get fired from volunteer work? What about that job at The Gap, or the one at the old folks home? Grace knows what I’m thinking.

“Don’t even think about bringing up those.”

She stands up, picks up my Moleskine off the floor, and starts walking off in the direction of Mervyns. She looks like one of Robin’s merry thieves as she weaves around window shoppers and cliques of teenagers in baggy pants and nose piercings. I follow Grace through the mall, taking mental notes of the locations of various stores, people I need to find gifts for, inspirations of all sorts that I can use over the next twelve shopping days of Christmas.

In Mervyns I buy a pair of flannel pajamas as a gift for a lady who lives in the old folks home Grace used to work in. They are half price and today there is no sales tax.

“Not my style,” Grace says.

“Not for you. For Mrs. Dawes - you remember her?”

Some guy looks as if he is going to deck Grace when she reminds him that he is up next at the customer service counter. The man is coughing up an air sac and looks to be in some stupor as if he had overindulged in either egg nog or Nyquil before braving the crowds. I get ready to throw myself in-between the two, when he turns and throws his bathrobe on the counter, mumbling some kind of sinister incantation under his raspy breath.

“Asshole,” Grace says as he waddles toward the exit.

After I buy the PJs and Grace buys some tube socks, we walk over to Linens n’ Things to buy some down pillows as a gift for Grace’s sister. Grace has two pillows in her arms when a little girl walks up to us looking like she has misplaced her mom. Grace is an elf who despises kids.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

“Why are you shopping? You’re from the North Pole?” She ignores me and points up to Grace.

“I remember you . . . Tiffany right? You want the Panda Bear?”

Grace puts down the pillows and sits down on a bed made up to be a display. I notice her elf voice is an octave higher than her normal voice.

“You’re right Tiffany. You are a smart girl. Normally, we elves make everything we need in our workshops at the North Pole, but this year we had a problem.”

Tiny Tiffany’s eyes grow as wide as hard-boiled eggs. I stand back clutching my Moleskine tight to my side.

“Well, all of Santa’s geese got the bird flu. It was much worse than when you get the sniffles. It was real bad. We wanted to save the goose that lays the golden egg so you know what we had to do?”

“What?”

Tiffany was starting to tear up. I notice a woman walking with purpose and intention toward us down a gauntlet of chrome espresso machines at full salute.

“Special doctor elves came and gave them all shots so they got better, but their feathers weren’t as fluffy because they weren’t feeling good most of the time. I’m taking these up to the North Pole to give to my elf friends because the geese down here don’t have the flu.”

The woman takes little Tiffany by the hand, shoots a look of bewilderment and anger our way, and stomps off toward the linen department. I sit at the foot of a bed, open up my Moleskine, and transcribe the events of the last few minutes, that which you read here.

“Still writing in that fucking notebook? Are you going to turn this into some other story of yours?”

I can’t stop now, the action is involuntary, and she throws a down pillow at me. It’s these flashes of brilliance, glimpses of her true self (I have resolved to believe this), that make me love Grace even more. I have to record them, review them, convince myself that the occasional torment she offers me is worth enduring.

“What did you think I was going to say?” Grace asks.

I continue to write.

Just look through the upside-down owl I asked him.

Bored mother rambled that he was twelve. She touched upon the death of his father on Hill 875 - you know what the guys in the thick of it call ‘Nam.

Look into the light son.

Rods and Cones, Rods and Cones, Rods and Cones . . .

There’s a crowd dancing on that retina but not a cloud in this boy’s sky - I mean eye.

Look at the chart . . . yes, through the owl.

A . . . E . . . O . . .

How about the numbers on the third line down?

1944 . . . 1968 . . . 1976 . . .

So it goes.

Inspired by the character Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.

Fantastic elegy on the state of modern poetry. Is post-structuralism ’s finger on the trigger of the nail gun - the one driving the nails into the coffin?

Three Invitations to a Far Reading by Joan Houlihan

Also, a tribute to the human spirit. We thirst to find a pattern, any pattern, where there appears to be none.

Great Quote:

In all three books discussed here, the typographical cleverness (one-word lines, word endings fraught with a too-obvious double/triple meaning), the jolting imagery and the self-conscious jokiness fail to compensate for the lack of an authentic attempt to reach for, and connect to, an emotional center, a universal and human matter, and that—emotional revelation in all its complexity—is what’s so dreadfully absent.

January 1, 2006 - Happy New Year

Yeah, I know. I’ve only now just seen Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I’m not the biggest HP fan, having only read Chamber of Secrets. It was a passable who-dunnit, but I just haven’t had the desire to invest time into the more weighty tomes that followed. I’ve seen most of the films though.

Watching this one, I was struck by the apparent parallels between current political events and the events in the film.

For example, the Quidditch World Cup is attacked by hooded sorcerers who terrorize the countryside with fireballs and a glowing skull suspended in the sky above. The newspaper of the magical world, The Daily Prophet, reports the tragedy as an incidence of terror.

Harry in action in Tora Bora

Later it is leaked that owls (consider them wizardly e-mails) are being intercepted by the Ministry of Magic’s equivalent to the National Security Agency. One wonders if warrants were written prior to these owls being intercepted. Does the ACLU have a department of magic?

Finally, did you see that spikey Iron Maiden-like thing Karkaroff, the sorcerer accused of being a death-eater, was restrained in during his hearing?* What does magic world’s equivalent of the Geneva Conventions have to say about these methods? Is Azkaban the equivalent of Camp Gitmo?

This fourth book in the series was published prior to the much trumpeted War on Terror, proving that Rowling is either very prescient or she stole Dick Cheney’s crystal ball.

*It’s come to my attention that Rowling wrote this scene quite differently from how it appeared in the film. Apparently the terrorist was only in irons.

January 1, 2006 - Happy New Year

Hello. My name is ghost of majestic. You may know me from my appearances in Tommy, You’ll Poke Your Eye Out with that Thing! and Our Friends at the National Security Agency.

This is my first step out into the blogosphere without a tether, or even a spacesuit for that matter. Honestly, I’m not certain what words I want to put up here. Well, I’m a writer (yes, one of them), so this just seems to be a natural progression in the evolution of my work - to share it with you in a web log.

Ever so often, I’ll post something old (from my extensive files) and something new from my just as extensive though plaque-clogged grey matter. Please read and comment. Provide critique if you have something constructive to share.

I’ll be reading you soon, as I hope soon you will reading me. I love attention.