Sunday, July 24, 2005

Belief

our trip is nigh and the changes afoot beggar my understanding of them.  we stayed up past midnight to finish assembling the crib; there are toys and clothes and boxes of diapers and wipes and all manner of babycare materials most everywhere.  The thing that’s blowing my mind is that, with all the critical supplies that we suddenly absolutely must have, most everything has shown up thanks to our amazing friends and relatives, the wonderful generous supportive people whom we are so lucky to have surrounding us in this life of ours.  They’ve really come through and made this sudden shift into parental overdrive as smooth and seamless as it could be.  We are truly blessed to have such great people standing with us and cheering us on; it makes the whole process that much more fulfilling because we are doing it in a community that is gathering around us even as we move forward.  This phenomonon fills me with such joy and gratitude that I’m having trouble expressing it.  The best I can do is to share this little essay I wrote a few weeks ago, in response to the NPR call for essays about belief.  Here are a few things I belive in.  I hope you enjoy them for a few days because I don’t expect to post much from Korea.  Be back soon, with our baby.  He’s very excited to meet all you fine folks out there.  And so am I.

I believe in the power of the spirit, because it has moved me in ways I would not have believed myself capable of being moved. It has lifted me from low places; it has enlightened my darkness and calmed my anxiety. It has come upon me unbidden on some occasions, and in response to my pleas on others; it has brought me solace and communion; it has shown me that that which I saw as overwhelming was truly trivial, and that which I sometimes fail entirely to notice is vast and all-encompassing. It creates capacity beyond capability, and impels us to incessant advancement. I have felt it ebb and flow within me.  I know from my own experience that the human spirit exists.

I believe in pain, and in happiness. I have felt both. They both take many forms, and can shift infuriatingly, one into the other. When I hear people speak of unbearable joy, or of pain so deep that it shatters the soul, I can believe them even if I do not feel it myself. I can hear it in their voices - voices that come from a place where experience exceeds the ability of the flesh to contain it. I may not feel what they feel, but I can believe that they feel it.

And I believe in love. It isn’t everywhere; it masquerades, and other things masquerade as it. It, too, has innumerable aspects and modes of expression. Hate is hate is hate, but love is unique each time it is felt. It creates strength out of weakness, and weakness out of strength; it binds and soothes; it wrenches and aches. It can bring all other things into a new perspective, rendering them more important than ever, or utterly irrelevant. It is the overarching power that, if attained, potentiates the rest of the universe.

Thus, the human spirit struggles and strives; and pain and happiness furnish the chambers of our lives - the frescoes and filigree that render our experience bearable or excruciating… but it is love that pushes us toward our highest calling and supports us as we reach for it. The spirit is as resilient as sinew, and pain and joy are as yielding and responsive as our skin and tongue and flesh - but love is all-encompassing, like our vision; it is the force that brings us to these others and encourages us to broaden our view of our essential potential. I have felt it in myself; I have felt it from others. It is beyond any one person; it is, by definition, super-personal. It is the greatest power available to us. Anyway, I believe it is. And I believe that’s all I’ll say about it for now.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Rover

like the thing from The Prisoner
but mellow and into hanging out

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Forwarded from Email: GOD’S SURVEY

We all get surveyed too damn much, and I’m as responsible as most anyone since I oversee more than 100 evaluation protocols for our various funded programs.  I see good ones and bad ones, useful ones and superfluous ones.  Well, this one puts the “super” in superfluous.  Hit the “expand” button for God’s Own Survey. It’s a great opportunity to voice your opinion on the state of divinity today.  (Mine had too many walnuts, but was otherwise tasty.  Your score may differ.)

Privileged Communication

Here’s a change-up: a bit of wonkosity.  With all the deep personal issues I’m sure to be getting into shortly, sharing all my innermost feelings and thoughts, I thought I’d just divulge a few ideas about confidentiality.  This is encouraged by my having watched Woodward and Bernstein on a TiVo’d Daily Show last night, and by an editorial in Time Magazine in which Joe Klein disagrees with his editor-in-chief for releasing Matt Cooper’s emails and notes pertaining to his sources for the Plame-out. 

This subject is one that resonates with me because I get to hear confidential information fairly regularly - stuff the rest of the world doesn’t care about at all (ooh!  big doings at the Alliance for Welfare Cooperation!  alert the media!) but that are, for the players involved, matters of the utmost importance.  Also, as a lawyer, I have some ethical obligations regarding confidentiality that, technically, bridge my professional and personal lives.  Also, I can’t keep my flipping mouth shut most of the time, so I have to be careful that I’m not sharing secrets out of school.  So that’s my background.

I got this notion from a radio interview I heard on NPR when I was in Florida, so I can’t take credit for it - nor can I assign blame very efficiently because I don’t remember who was being interviewed.  But no matter, I’ll take the heat if there is any, because I think the analysis is absolutely correct.  It goes like this:

The issue seems to be that some reporters got some sensitive information from highly placed sources under promises of confidentiality.  That communication represented a breach of national security, and possibly a violation of federal law, on the part of those imparting the information.  One reporter has now been incarcerated regarding her refusal to divulge her source for this information, another has been hauled before a grand jury for interrogation after a last-minute reprieve from jail leveraged his cooperation in breaching the confidentiality he’d promised his source.  We now have journalists - protected in more than 30 states by “shield” laws that allow them to honor source confidentiality, but not so protected in federal jurisdictions - anxiously looking over their shoulders and wondering if their own sources will still trust them enough to share news that the rest of us need to hear, and whether, upon publishing such news from confidential sources, they will face jail time for honoring their committment to keep quiet, or professional purgatory for succumbing to dire threats against their liberty. 

We count on these reporters to shed light on the murky darkness of back-corridor politics and shady dealmaking.  Their concern is a legitimate one - Judith Miller is in the same detention facility as Zacarias Moussaoui.  We’re equating her actions with those of a probable terrorist.  Meanwhile, who’s going to share a secret with Matt Cooper now?  These are difficult circumstances under which to ask a free press to thrive. 

Yet I agree with the detention and with the position of compelling divulgance of sources (if “divulgance” is even a word).  I don’t think Miller has the right to withhold this information, and the press is going to have to figure out a way to deal with some reasonable limitations on source confidentiality. 

Permit me to explain:

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Circles from Circles

Okay, I took a day off and you’d better get used to it.  I’ve had a big week or so, and I have lots and lots of stuff stored up to share, but there’s no time for that now.  No time for the fabulous dinner party at Mitch and Catharine’s place ("Soylent green is people.... and we’re the people of Soylent Green"); no time for the interesting characters on the 38; no time for the wonderful birthday party at Ralph’s place or the delightful supper we had with Dave and Kim and the munchkins.  No time, even, for the blogger meetup at Q for ribs, tater tots, tentacles and big Robot Chicken giggles.  What is there time for?  The Circle, baby.... the Circle of Life. 

Monday I went with Kel to Hills of Eternity in Colma, to attend the memorial ceremony for my beloved Aunt Jean.  Technically, she was the wife of my first cousin once removed; actually, she was the avatar of style for the west coast branch of my tightly-knit and deeply connected family.  She never gave in to the cancers and lung diseases and other debilitating illnesses she’d fought for a year and more.  Regardless, even without giving in, she was overtaken by them last week, and yesterday we bade her farewell, with sorrow at her loss and joy at the blessing of having known her. 

I’ve been to a few funerals before, though not many, but this one had one aspect that will really stick with me: we were standing at the gravesite and her casket had been laid to rest at the bottom of the grave.  Then the rabbi told us a koan about a ship leaving the harbor to cheers and celebrations, and a ship arriving at the same time with no ceremony or recognition; he asked us to ask ourselves why we should be cheering for a ship that faces uncertain fates, for which the future is an unwritten letter - when we can congratulate the vessel that has safely and successfully returned to a home port, evading perils, outlasting threats.  The cheers should be for those that negotiate the course and come back wiser, greater, more loved than when they first left.  And that is why we were celebrating Jean, whose journey was an inspiration to us all.

The rabbi then taught us a tradition: our community takes it as a solemn responsibility to perform burials ourselves - to participate personally in this act of return.  The dirt from the grave was piled high behind him, with two shovels stuck in it.  He told us to step up, if we wished, and empty some dirt into the grave - but to distinguish this act from ordinary, garden-variety shovellings by turning the blade of the shovel upsidedown.  It would make us think and concentrate on the act we were undertaking - a holy act.  No less holy than turning the ground for new crops, or digging them up for the supper table… but differently holy.  I’ve heard so many times, in movies and on television: the sound of dirt hitting that subterranean wooden surface.... but this time, in person, it felt really different, down in my bones.  And even with all the shovelling I’ve ever done - and I have done some shovelling - this was one heavy spade of soil.  But Jean was an amazing woman, and I know that it didn’t bury her - it just gave her spirit fertile ground in which to grow.

But here’s the wild thing: we stopped off at home after the memorial service, on our way to a family lunch at Uncle Jim’s house, and found a message waiting for us on our answering machine.  We checked it.  It was our social worker, letting us know: “Your little guy is ready to travel." We have two weeks from yesterday to get to Korea and pick him up.  This was supposed to happen in OCTOBER, people.  We’re now frantically painting the crib and arranging for flights and making lists of people who have to be contacted and things that have to be obtained and dealt with and postponed.... My head is spinning.  I’m going to have a baby boy very soon - five months old and medically diagnosed as “cute and alert.” What a trip.  In so many freaking ways.

SO.  So I’ve got to do a lot of things around the house, and I’ve got to do them fast.  After that, I’ll have nothing but time.  And by “after that” I mean sometime around 2020 - the year, not the ocular prescription.  So here’s my deal: I’ll keep posting when I can, but it may not be the daily deal I’ve done so far.  Anyway, I disavow in advance any guilt for missing the quotidian post thing.  There’s too much going on.  It’s been a big week or so.... but if I thought that was intense, I have no idea what’s in store.  I just know it’s going to be one hell of a lot of fun.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Florida Wrap-up: Love for Sale; the Congregaytion; Just Call Me Doctor

Random bits from the Funshine state:

Mom and I went to the Seminole Casinos Resort, a big white temple of gambling with a very nicely designed outdoor mall area where we did some mid-morning browsing.  We wandered into a classy expensive shoe store (all the stores seemed classy and expensive) where mom was trying on some footwear for a wedding she’ll be attending soon.  The staff, two well-groomed young women, had given us a cheerful “hello” when we walked in, and then left us, thankfully, alone.  After a few minutes of mom looking at the shoes and me making occasional semi-helpful comments and trying to entertain myself, one of the staff sort of did a double take and asked mom, “Is that your son?” Mom grinned and confirmed the fact.  “Wow, you look fantastic!,” she continued.  “I thought he was your....” and with that she sort of fluttered her hands before her face and giggled a little.  Maybe it’s not the first time I’d been taken for a hired loveboy, but it’s the first time anyone told me about it.  I was flattered, in a cheap, sleazy way. 

Later on, mom and I attended Friday night services at a synagogue she had never visited before up in Ft Lauderdale, where her friend was assuming the rabbi’s pulpit on a permanent full-time basis for the first time.  This was a rabbi she’d known out in Riverside CA, where mom had been the temple president when this guy had been hired there.  It hadn’t been a very good fit though - the city is pretty conservative and the rabbi is an outspoken gay man.  Now, however, he was taking over at Congregation Etz Chaim, whose mission is “to provide a nurturing environment for Gay and Lesbian Jews, inclusive of Bi-sexual, Transgender, and Heterosexuals in South Florida, ‘Jews of the Rainbow.’” Honestly, I’m taking this right off their bulletin.  I knew the rabbi was a cool guy, yet for no good reason I faced the prospect of davening with this congregation with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.  Would I be “outed” as a straight boy? How would the service reflect the orientation?  Was there going to be dancing?  Line dancing?

As these questions did the electric slide in my mind on our drive up to the unassuming mini-mall where the congregation had temporary rented quarters (but quite nice for a mini-mall, really), I saw an answering revellation in the sky: an actual rainbow, arching gorgeously in a perfect hemisphere, shimmering against the darkening eastern skies with the last rays of the setting sun.  But as I looked at it, I saw it had been joined by another rainbow outside of it, a complete double rainbow.  And here’s the thing about the double rainbow, that maybe you already knew: the interior rainbow and exterior rainbow reflect each other’s colors.  They don’t both have the same colors in the same order, red on top and purple on the bottom - the red bands are adjacent in the middle, and the colors appear in opposite order so violet stripes border the whole confection below and above.  It seemed a poetic demonstration of the concordance of opposites, in which things diametrically opposed to each other complement each other and support each other.  Harmony is created by resonant dissimilarity.  By the time we arrived at the synagogue I was reconciled to the possibility of being the only straight man there - because by being there as myself, distinct from those who welcomed me so warmly, I complemented them and they complemented me.  It felt right, and I was grateful to the heavens for clarifying the situation so sublimely for me. 

Services were beautiful.  I hadn’t been to friday services in a long time, and sort of sang my heart out to the old tropes still hardwired into my larynx.  Afterwards, as the services concluded and we all began to mill around and get ready for the little oneg, or snacky-service with cookies and wine, I was approached by a very handsome man who’d been sitting in front of us with his extremely beautiful partner.  Really, these guys stood out as unusually well-formed men.  One of them (the “butch” one, not the pretty one) wanted to know if I could read and write hebrew so I could help him with his hebrew name - because, he told me, he’d noticed that I sang beautifully.  I was deeply flattered even as I admitted that I knew, essentially, no hebrew at all.  I thanked him warmly, though.  His boyfriend did not seem very pleased at all with our conversation, though, and kept giving me sullen looks under his eyelashes like I was trying to steal his date.  The upshot seems to be, in South Florida I am more than usually likely to be taken for some sort of gigolo.  I’ll take it as a compliment.  Just so long as I don’t have to take it in my upshot. 

Also at the oneg, I saw a man with his young (10- or 12-year-old) daughter.  She was dressed in white silk and had somehow managed to spill purple grape juice all over herself.  He was fretting as one could imagine a fastidious dad might over the fate of the silk blouse, with words like “dry cleaning” and “never get it out” tumbling from his mouth repeatedly.  I stepped up and told the girl, “you know, that’s consecrated grape juice.  We said a blessing over it.  You know what that means?  You are wearing a mitzvah.  You are clothed in a blessing.  You’re very lucky.” Her face broke into a broad smile; her dad looked at me and took a deep breath, and when he exhaled he just said “okay,” and stopped kvetching.  It was a sweet moment, capping off a beautiful, joyous, and very spiritually fulfilling evening. 

And since I don’t expect to get around to sharing this later, I’ll just mention that the major street near my mom’s condo had several doctors’ offices along it.  These included the offices of Dr. David Bitchatchi, and the offices of Dr. Harry Pepe.  I’m sorry, these are just funny names.  I can say so because I have a funny name.  But really, these guys have me beat.  I imagine David pronounces his name “Biotch-itchy”, which just sounds like he isn’t attentive to matters of personal feminine freshness; I have already thought of too many hairy peepee jokes to pick one to repeat here, so consider yourself lucky.  On the other hand, near my office here in SF there is a dentist named Leslie Plack.  It’s all I have to offer in response.  I guess I’m at a floss for words.  Obviously I should stop writing this immed

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

ghlorida ghotos

How do you spell “fish”?  Ghoti: “gh” as in “tough,” “o” as in “women”, and “ti” as in “nation.” Did GB Shaw make this up, or was it me?  A more thought-provoking question might be, why have you never seen Shaw and myself photographed together? 

What (as our british friends may say) a load of (as our indo-slavic friends might say) bollocks ("fish").  But it does raise the stimulating subject of my vacation photographs, which are sadly fish-free but full of wildlife nonetheless.  The ones I’m sharing today - the last ones I’ll force upon you, actually - are probably the least aesthetically interesting, and several of them are pretty small compared to the others I’ve posted because I was shooting small images and then zooming in tightly on the interesting bits of them.  So, sorry for the lack of “Mutual of Omaha"-type graphic close-ups.  However, these were fun photos to take, because they all represent instances in which I encountered, in real human life, some attribute of the enduring non-human habitation of the fascinating state of ghloroda. 

An Ibis, strolling the grounds outside the visitor center at the mangrove preserve:

Also at the visitor center, this lizard was about five inches (4.2 hectares) long.  As I focused on him, he flared his little red flange.  Flange flare!  Flange flare!  And you saw it here first!  (Those who have seen this before, just shut up about it.  You want to make a big deal, flare your own goddamn flange.)

The following photos were taken during our tour of the everglades on an airboat.  Our particular airboat was about 40 feet (9.7 angstrom) long, seated five across comfortably, had a windshield and roof, and was a double-hull built of aircraft-grade aluminum, powered by two caddy eldorado engines that got the propellors moving quite efficiently when we were in “go-fast” mode.  The tourguide was a picturesque deep-bayou/trailerpark version of Wilford Brimley, who brought us to some beautiful areas and pointed out some very interesting wildlife.  For example, these purple gallinules don’t swim, but live on the water by running around on the lily pads.  They’re beautiful little birds and quite spry. 

Another fascinating aspect of the ecosystem we were exploring on our tour was how very clean the water was.  For a place that looks pretty swampy, you can see in this photo that plants that grow up out of the water, or droop down into it, are easily visible above and below the surface.  It’s so clean, you can almost smell the gator.  This guy was about ten feet long.  For the record, the measurement is from the base of the ears to get me the hell away from this freaking dinosaur.

A little further down the “trail” we stopped to toss bread into the water (Wilford did, anyway, and we were captives on his boat), attracting more gallinules and a fellow he referred to as “Old Battleship” - a fifteen-foot gator whose back is scarred from many serious fights with, if you can believe it, much larger gators.  We were told, as Wilford literally leaned over the side of the boat to give the gator a noogie, causing it to gape wide its fearsome jaws, that gators are blind directly in front of them - so he could safely expose himself in that small range of proximity and not get his arms chewed off.  Keep that in mind next time you want to expose yourself to a gator.  He also mentioned that OB was fully capable of climbing into our boat at any time.  Then we hightailed it out of there, twin props roaring and lilypads nodding in our wide wake. 

So that’s it for Florida Photos.  No clue what’s left for tomorrow.  Your guess is as good as mine.  For now, I’d better make my own tracks to the office.... which, ironically, is blind until you’re right in front of it.

Tunnel Vision

I am of two minds about posting this poem.  I rather like it, of course, since I think I’m such a freaking genius and everything - but recent events have led me to think of it in new ways: the purgatory of the tunnels, the dove and all it symbolizes.... my conclusion, as you can see, is to let the damn thing fly.  I’ve concluded that it means something positive, though exactly what that is, I’m not yet sure.  I may be wrong.  Regardless, here it is.

Food’s not allowed
down in the tunnels -
keep the rats hungry
and the seat cushions clean.
We pass through the tunnels
like so many rivers,
insensate of each others’ goals
in cold pursuit each of our own.
The lighting and the air, unearthly:
feeble pentagrams of shadow;
concrete benches, stained with waiting
for the rubber-wheeled trains
that charge below on suicide rails,
delivering bipedal cargo
through sunless tunnels of starvation
(food is forbidden in the tunnels)
till we disgorge ourselves, and take
the escalators up and out -
emerging from deep underground
into a labyrinth made of turnstiles,
only then to find fresh air.

So: I’m standing in the tunnels,
watching trains burst forth from wormholes
barely wide enough to hold them -
roaring light and hemorrhaging
the gales of stale tunnel air -
and as I wait, and watch the time pass
till the train I need arrives
to spirit me to destinations
I no longer have in mind,
I cannot help but see - that pigeon:

flying frantic buried circuits
back and forth between the tubes
the pale greyness of her wings
a travesty of flightful freedom.
Back and forth I see her searching
for a glimpse of nature’s realm;
the trains eject her from the caves
to which her frightened flying sends her
searching for the way outside -
sent again among the landings
by a speeding wall of metal.
Just another soulless pigeon
desperate for the great escape,
or even just a scrap of crust -
some sustenence to keep her going
in her panicked quest for daylight.

Since food’s forbidden in the tunnels,
I can’t see how she survives:
but that’s a question I can leave
behind me as I board my train -
my exit strategy in motion;
flapping wings a faint applause
behind me as the doors slide shut. 
I leave her in the tunnel
flying in her sunken dungeon,
with a prayer she finds daylight:
that somehow she exceeds the ceilings
that have trapped her underground.
Though food’s forbidden in the tunnels
I leave behind a little hope
that hope might take a meager meal.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Phlorida Fotos - part II: Landscapes

oooookay… looks like fiction isn’t where it’s at for the chucklehut these days, judging by the thundering lack of comments for yesterday’s conclusion to my little teaser of a story.  No, that’s okay.  I’ll sit in the dark.  I can stand to do so, because I did spend a good bit of time recently down in the Sunshine State - Funny Slorida.  In fact, just to prove it to ya, here’s a few photos of the lay of the land in what Sigmund Freud might have called, “America’s Cigar.”

The main thing that I had to adjust to in Florida is the water.  It’s ubiquitous, and appears in so many forms.  Of course, there’s the ocean on all sides - 770 miles of coastline.  But then there’s Okeechobee, the enormous lake that punctuates the peninsula; there’s the intracoastal waterway that improbably splits expensive real estate from the real rest of the state; there’s rivers and bays and estuaries and boat canals and other canals all hither and yon; there’s goddamn lakes everywhere... and there’s puddles that never seem to dry because of the daily rain, and there’s the amazing towering cumulus clouds from which that rain pours forth, and the freaked-out hybrids of land and water that are the mangrove swamps and the everglades.... and this says nothing about the humidity that makes being outside sort of like being in that part of a car wash that sprays you with a fine mist of heated liquid, except in Florida, as things turn out, it’s not simonizing solution.  Which just means you still have to take a shower and do your own self-buffing. 

Anyway, here are a few photos of the landscape in florida.  Hope you enjoy them.  If not, don’t tell me.  I’m feeling a bit fragile.  As if you’d know anything about that, you beast. 

Let’s start with the ocean, just off Hollywood Beach.  It was too hot for most anyone to be outside, so I was able to get a few nice shots without the distracting influence of hotties and beachstuds.  I don’t know, I found it refreshing. 

Next thing was a visit to the mangrove swamps.  I can’t believe that anyone ever actually traversed these places - they’re mostly water, sort of methany and sulfurous-smelling, full of weird little crabs and biting critters and all sorts of things I wouldn’t want to deal with on a one-to-one basis.  Luckily, they built some cool boardwalks for us so we could wander around without getting our feet wet.  Here, then, is a bit of the swamp shore, one boardwalk, and a view of the interior of the roof of the gazebo at the end of the path:

Never let it be said that I’d pass up a nice hunk of rusted metal, either.  Maybe it’s not nature at her most natural, but this sort of thing always put me in mind of the natural forces at work on all of humankind’s creations.  I shot this right outside Las Vegas - the cuban restaurant one, not the goodfellas one.  It didn’t come out the way I expected it to, but I like it anyway.

Finally, we took an airboat ride through the everglades.  All I can say is, Gentle Ben must have been one damn tough bear because that is not “friendly” country.  Beautiful, yes; friendly, no.  Our airboat was substantial and the tour was entertaining; I’ll share a few shots of wildlife later on.  In the meantime, here’s what we saw of the land itself:

This last one was what they call a “trail.” Really, it’s a ditch dug by the Army Corps of Engineers when they tried to drain what is, in reality, a huge river.  The water is very clean, and apart from the spiders that’ll rot your limbs off, the explosive-diarrhea-inducing apples, the flesh-rending sawgrass and the occasional whachucallem alligator, it was all very idyllic.  From inside the boat it was, anyway.  Speaking of which, this ride is over.  See you tomorrow for something more wordacious.  Sorry, dude.  That’s my style.  Don’t forget to grab a souvenier skeeterbite on your way out, and gratuities are gladly accepted.  Just stuff’em in my waistband when I’m not looking.

Underpass - part II

The last post, from friday of last week, was the first part of this little tale, such as it is.  Here’s the rest of it.  Hope it was worth the wait.  Have a great monday.

Jorge pushed the door closed behind him and took a deep breath of wet air washed clean as the night itself; he glanced briefly up and down the road to confirm the lack of traffic, and then crossed over to the other side.  “Hello?” he queried querelously.  “Quien paso?”

The car was dry and dusty, so he knew it had beaten them to the underpass; it was no more roadworthy then theirs - a misbegotten Hornet, once green, now growing slow deep continents of rust.  The tires looked to be inflated, but quite bald, and though it rested low on its rear shocks it did not appear to be occupied (to his disappointment) by any fair maidens, or (to his relief) by any escaped murderers.  He walked slowly around the car twice before he fully embraced his opinion - it was abandoned.  He crossed the interstate again and returned to the Vega to confer with Luis.

“It’s abandoned.”

“Okay.  American car?”

“Yes.  So what, though?”

“Maybe we could use their tires.  Or their battery.”

“Hey, that’s smart thinking.  The tires are no good, but we could check under the hood I guess.  I bet I could get it open.  Come along, let’s see what we can find.  Take a little treasure hunt, eh?”

The men laughed dusty laughs as they stepped together into the night to explore the Hornet.  Jorge still carried his tire iron, and grabbed his knapsack too.  He left the water behind.  There was plenty of it falling from the sky anyway.

Luis was still cautious as he approached the defunct vehicle across the way, calling out a hollow salutation.  Jorge knew no such restraint and, with a well-aimed swing of the tire-iron, smashed in the passenger window.  Luis jumped at the unexpected noise, tried to glare at Jorge, but his discountenanced countenance was hidden by the murk of night.  And anyway, Jorge was already opening the door and slipping into the car, brushing broken glass off the seat and unlocking the driver’s door for his compadre.  Luis hopped in and closed the door quickly.  “Did you have to do that?  Was there no other way?,” he demanded as he groped blindly for the hood release.

“Yes there was another way, but it is less convenient,” Jorge replied, sucking a finger where he’d sliced it on the blizzard of glass he’d created.  “We’re in, anyway.  I didn’t hear the owner complaining.  How’s that hood coming?”

“Got it.” Luis pulled the latch and the hood clunked a little, reluctantly releasing.  They both got out and walked around to the front, felt for the latch and hoisted the bonnet.  “Magnifico,” Luis muttered.  “I can’t see a thing.  Hey, did you bring your… your stuff?”

“Yeah,” Jorge replied.  “How about I work on the trunk while you see if you can tell what we have up here?  Just use one finger, in case the battery is live - don’t get shocked, okay?  I don’t want to finish this drive alone.  It’s lonely enough out here as it is.”

“Sure.” Luis began delicately poking around in the engine compartment while Jorge took his knapsack to the trunk of the slumping car, where he pulled out a leather pouch of fine files and picks. 

“No one likes that I carry this stuff, till they need it,” he mumbled cheerfully as he began to work by feel on the trunk lock.  “But everybody needs a lock opened up sometime or another.  I’m no criminal, I’m a public servant.  And now maybe we find a spare tire, or jumper cables.  Trunks, they’re full of treasure....” And with a quiet click, the lock released; the trunk lid lifted a fraction of an inch and a dim gleam shone through the crack.  “Mira, watch out!,” Jorge called forward.  “You’ve got a live battery there!  The trunk light is working!”

Luis gave a small cheer.  “Let me give you a hand, then; we’ll see what we’ve got.” He had overcome his qualms about breaking into and entering the moribund vehicle and eagerly trotted around to help raise the recalcitrant trunk lid.  It creaked painfully as they hoisted it.

For a while they both gazed down, hands above their heads, dirty fingers resting on the upraised bottom of the boot bonnet.  Jorge’s cut finger began to drip a little blood but neither of them noticed.  The weak yellow light illuminated their faces, now shiny with sudden sweat and opaque with confusion.  After a few minutes of silence, unbroken even by the sound of breathing, surrounded only by the night and the crash of the heavy cloudburst, their eyes unwavering from their find, Luis finally whispered to Jorge, “Compadre, do you think that is real money?”

“I think so, amigo,” Jorge slowly replied, fixated on the bulging sacks that filled the trunk.  “And this is one hell of a lot of cocaine.” Then, for a few more minutes, they stood, staring down, saying nothing.  On the highway, no traffic approached.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Underpass

Here’s a fragment I’ve been thinking about for, oh, it seems like years now… I finally wrote it up in Florida, so it counts as vacation writing.  I mean, in case you were keeping track. 

The sky was very black; the moon was new and heavy clouds masked the stars.  They were far out on I-5, deep in the heart of the central valley, far from any town worth the name, far even from the occasional motel where they’d never stay anyway.  The old Vega staggered along, forward into the night, headlights unfocused and wan, engine complaining and occasionally cutting out.  The real problem, though, was the radiator.  They were only able to make 75 or 100 miles at a shot before the temperature rose too high and steam began to seep from the edges of the hood and in through the cracked plastic dashboard, at which point they had to pull over for an hour or two to cool off.  Luckily, it was a chilly night and the engine returned to a safe temperature fairly reliably; they also had a few jugs of antifreeze and plenty of water, so once they were cool enough to pop the radiator cap they could pour in some automotive lemonade and keep the damn thing from blowing up for another hundred miles or so.

It was tedious and stressful, driving like this, but they needed to get south and this was the only way they were able to do it.  The harvest would be starting soon in Coachella, and Luis wanted to see his new daughter, too.  She had a hearty cry, he’d heard it on the phone, and his girlfriend said Ynez was a very pretty baby; Luis was a family man and it hurt him to have been away for her birth.  He hadn’t seen any of his four children born, and each time it had felt to him like a betrayal.  Jorge felt no such familial pull; he was a loner and liked his freedom, but he was hungry and he loved money so he was, in his way, equally motivated to coddle the old rustbucket down to the southland.  But motivation was beside the point when the sour steam began to crawl around their faces again about thirty miles north of Buttonwillow.  It was the middle of nowhere, and time to stop again. 

Both men could feel that a serious downpour was imminent - the clouds had been lowering pregnantly for hours, and the air of the typically arid valley had been growing increasingly moist.  As the car glided to a shuddering stop, fat drops of rain finally begain to splash heavily on the dusty windshield.  With a grind of the starter they coaxed the tired old car a few hundred yards further down the double ribbon of concrete to an underpass where a country road, undistinguished by any name, hove itself up and over the interstate.  They crept to a second stop under this slender shelter just as the heavens really opened up and months of drought were gullywashed away.  The plains soaked it up thirstily and then began to pool, black water in black puddles on a black night.  They shut off the headlights - their only source of illumination, and listened to the storm. 

As minutes passed, other traffic did not.  It had been some time since they’d been passed by any vehicle, and no one now came up from behind them nor the opposite way on the northbound lanes across the median strip of oleander and garbage and bare dirt turning fast to mud.  It was easy to forget, after a while, that the rest of the world even existed. 

Sudden lightning disabused them of this fantasy.  A single bright flash was followed by several more, a sudden crescendo in the storm.  These flashes first implied, and then confirmed, a matter which surprised them both: they were not alone.  Off the opposite shoulder, across four empty lanes and that grimy median, was another car - parked, as theirs was, as if it had been left there to recuperate or die.  The lightning’s momentary illuminations did not give their night-accomodated eyes a chance to pick up any more details than that, but it was clear that they had company.

Jorge and Luis debate briefly what to do with this information.  They were pretty sure the others weren’t locals, or at least not rich ones - no one but migrants and poor folk drove a car that required this kind of shelter.  Maybe they were illegals, or criminals hiding out.  Maybe they were very hungry, or desparate, or dangerous.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.  On the other hand, maybe they had lots of food to share, or useful information on washed-out crops or where to find work.  Maybe they had more engine coolant, or needed water.  Maybe, said Jorge, they were pretty, and eager for virile company.  His smile was barely visible in the darkness of the stalled Vega.  Whatever the facts turned out to be, it seemed that the potential positives outweighted the possible negatives.  Who knew how long they’d be stuck there?  They decided one of them would cross the highway and see what he could see.  The other would stay behind in case they found they had a maniac for a neighbor. 

Jorge volunteered for the mission, still hoping to rescue some senioritas in distress and arousal.  Luis stayed back to watch for a muzzle flash, as if he’d be able to do anything about it if he saw one.  And so Jorge creaked open his passenger door and stepped out into the night, letting the old Vega fill suddenly with cool air, the crashing sound of rain, and tangible darkness.  He carried a bottle of water and a tire iron, in case either was needed, and, partly, for protection. 

oh well this one’s too long to put it all in a single post.  I’ll finish what I’ve got on monday.  Have a good weekend and don’t overheat. 

it ain’t heavy, it’s my governmentium

I don’t often post whole articles I found on the internet or that someone forwarded to me… but I did enjoy this when a friend sent it over, and it’s coming up with sufficiently low google numbers that it appears not to have been overflogged already.  Therefore, I am pleased to entertain you with the following, for which I claim responsibility only for further promulgation - and a special shout-out to my G-8 homies up in the ‘Eagles; y’all pound a 40 for me and don’t give up the bling:

Governmentium

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium.”

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass.” When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium - an element which radiates just as much energy as the Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Tomorrow I’ll give you a bit of a story with the writing of which I had a bit more personal involvement.  Meantime, keep your bozons trimmed and burning.

Super Soaker

Morida: here’s another tidbit from my vacation in Florida, and one of the few site-specific things I wrote there.  Tomorrow I’ll start in on some fiction, but meantime these are some words about a storm that cleansed and galvanized me.  Maybe South Florida is used to this kind of weather but it was new for me and I was glad to witness it.  So here it is for you, if you care to endure it.  If not, well, dry up.

Mom had put on a disk of classic brazilian dance funk for us and I was just settling in with my notebook when the humidity, up in the 90s all day long, finally hit 100 and the heavens poured down.  “There’s some real Florida rain for you,” mom said, and I peered out the sliding door to see the surface of the nearby lake matted with fat droplets.  I tried to write from inside on the couch for a few more minutes but couldn’t keep my eyes off the weather.  It was pointless to deny: I had to step out to the balcony and experience the storm. 

The balcony is about six by six, so I pulled the woven deck chair and footstool away from the edge to get a dry vantage.  Water filled the sky, falling heavily, sraight down.  Green berries on a nearby tree each gathered rain in crystal globes that seemed to hang impossibly long before dropping off and immediately re-forming. A narrow lawn stretched before me, bordered with a dense hibiscus hedge, against which a lone muscovy took sodden shelter.  Beyond the hedge, a concrete path cut across the fairway of the 18th hole of a beautifully-maintained golf course, the macadam track shimmering silver in the downpour, water streaming off it like an arroyo in flashflood; next to it, a small sand trap soaked up rain till it puddled in long snakes of water.  Occasionally, magpies flitted from shelter to new boughs in different trees, or peeked into the open end of a metal beam atop a nearby high-tension utility pole; another bird must have already taken shelter there because each time they merely peered in and then flew back away, seeking protection from the cloudburst elsewhere. 

Heavy curtains of rain obscured the large, densely-leaved trees on the other side of the waterhazard pond; palms drooped against the weather, already limplooking from all the wet stuff they’d endured over the prior fortnight of rain.  As lightning began to make shockingly close strikes, slithering quickly up to the clouds to illuminate the overcast landscape, a few rogue golfers began to scoot their electric carts quickly along the nearly-submerged asphalt strand back to the clubhouse, enormous umbrellas with cheerful white-and-blue stripes unfurled and stuck out the side, the carts kicking up fantails as they cornered in ungainly haste like overfed chickens on speed.  The thunder, nearly instantaneously accompanying the lightning strikes, exploded as if it were ordnance, a booming crack that felt inordinately close and then trailed off into rolling growls and roars that roamed the wide flat landscape. 

After several dozen flashes and blasts of stormy electricity and deafening sound, the view of the distant trees began to resolve a little.  Individual raindrops filled the air, rather than a vision of barely-aerated water.  The sky began to lighten - very slightly, but steadily.  A covey of pidgeons burst, cooing, from some unseen roost to another; a gallinule strutted into the bunker and started poking around for something edible that might have been washed up out of the sand.... A green heron flew up from the lakeshore reeds, curving gracefully under the low golfcart bridge, and finally the muscovy by the hibiscus raised its head, shook itself out briefly, and slowly waddled out into the grass, tottering on wide feet, nosing around for supper.  The storm was spent.  I went back inside and watched the news. 

This is a highly reduced panoramic photo of my mom’s view, from where I saw the storm rage.  And since there’s no good time or way to say it, the raging of storms is as appropriate a segue as any to take a moment to express my deep sympathy, condolences, and solidarity with those who have today been victimized by bombings in london.  May we all only be hearing the thunder when we hear thunder, and may the rain that washes down on us cleanse and revive us.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Vacation Regurgitation

Hey, it’s fig season!  Delicious figgy treats are waiting for you at finer produce markets in my neighborhood!  So do yourself a favor, visit my ‘hood and get a basket of succulent black figs!  Great with marscapone, or broiled and tossed in a warm spinich salad, or straight out of the carton!  Fresh figs are delicious!  Eat some before they’re gone for another year! 

Okay okay, I promised you Florida, so here’s some Florida. I call today’s series of photos, “Facades, Signs and Icons.” See if you can tell why.  The winner gets a juicy fig.  However, “juicy fig” is a euphemism.  Are you sure you still want to play? 

On Friday we visited Miami and the South-of-South-Beach district, where diets wither in the heat and the art deco facades gleam with the glamorous spirit of, oh, I don’t know, Scarface or something.  Anyway, I liked this one, and I thought it took a nice photo too.

Here’s another simple, yet elegant, building, just hunkered down on the side of the road as if it belonged there.  Come to think of it, it did. 

Here’s a “transitional photo” of the transitional nature of the neighborhood: this beautiful building used to be a synagogue, and is now the South Florida Jewish Museum - a modest collection in a beautifully detailed edifice, liberally decorated with the famous hebrew “fighting stars” or shirikinahuras.  oy, that was a reach, but it was worth it. 

Here’s where you get the transitional nature of the last photo - I’m moving from facades to signs. This one is inside the Jewish Museum, which is a really gorgeous space liberally punctuated with stained glass.  Many of these gleaming chromatic oculi bear the name of the devout congregationalist who ponied up the bux for its installation.  In this case, the pony was ridden by this guy.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Also cool: pomegranates.  Whatever else you want to say about him, that Lansky dude had taste.

This sign hung in the bar downstairs from the restaurant where I dined with Lynne Girlyshoes, as delightful a dinner companion as one could ever wish to meet, together with her husband “the RLA” and a saq-o-mangoes that puts most other produce to shame (with the slim exception of fresh figs) - thanks, guys, for a great evening and some really, really good fruit.  Anyway, the cryptic message pictured here could mean that you’re supposed to perform an unmentionable act on your physician, but actually the bar was off a boat dock where folk were feeding bait to thrashing tarpin, and the bartender got nailed in the elbow by an impatient pelican.  Wonderful birds, the pelicans.  I’ll be damned.  (Extra credit to those who know this poem.  “Extra credit” is also a euphemism.)

This sign can be found in a part of Hollywood (FL) known as “Liberia,” because it was founded by James Monroe or Zachary Taylor or something like that.  Anyway, they were out of beer at the food sore.  That’s a pity because it was a very warm day, as evidenced by the scorchmarks on the storefront - or should I say, “sorefront.” Well, at least it looks like they still have some wine to steal, though it probably isn’t being properly chilled.

Also a pity was the fact that the South’s most unusual store seems to have gone under.  All that is left are these ghastly visages.  She has hair color that switches from canary feathers to black needle bangs.  He looks like someone just pulled his finger, and the joke’s on them.  Or on us.  Or anyway, they’re closed, so let’s move on.

Finally, here is a photo of a quarter my mom got as change from some quotidian transaction.  If anyone knows the story behind this, I’d love to hear it.  This paint job is too detailed for any home hobbiest; it looks more like a postage stamp than milled coinage.  But hey, Florida is a tropical paradise, and everything is soaked with color - even the goddamn change in your pocket.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  I will go back to words tomorrow, but rest assured, there are more photos to share.  You’ve just got to soften me up a little and I’ll give with the goods, as Mr. Lansky might have said from the Century Hotel while hosing down the Food Sore for a quarter or two.  Have a tropical day - but not a depression, if you can help it.  More on those later.

Monday, July 04, 2005

burnin’ down the house

Hey guess what: I’m back from Florida.  Oh, did I give it away?  I had a wonderful time full of good things to see and eat, some tropical weather and some damn fine relaxation, and I’ll bore each and every one of you to tears with all that soon enough.  But for now, I promised a story about setting fire to things, and in honor of National Explosives Day and my recent visit with my mom, whose home I did not destroy at any point in the distant or recent past, I’ll share this little tale:

I was a pretty good kid.  Apart from that one time I ran away from home in the second grade, I was very reliable.  I made my own bed, did my own laundry, prepared my own lunches for school, and did as I was told even when it rankled.  I paid attention in class and I never – ever – cut.  But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a kid anyway. 

Turns out I was, like so many of my peers and cohorts, a bit of a pyro.  Blue tip matches were my good buddies, and that space out behind the study - the four feet of bare dirt hidden from sight between the back of the garage and the wooden plank fence at the property line - was a perfect place for me to make my little firepits of bark and twigs and grass.  I never hurt myself, or anything or anybody else; I didn’t destroy toys or household items – I did it because I liked the purity of the flame, not its destructive capacities.  Also, I was askeered of thick columns of black smoke drawing unwanted attention to my behavior.  I had a rep, after all, as a good kid, and I knew my folks wouldn’t have approved of this little hobby. 

I was fortunate, or not, then, to live across the street from some dangerously creative incipient scientists.  Steve was my best friend, and just about my age, but his big brothers Keith and Kevin had a whole different scene going.  They were (are) all exceptionally bright and inventive guys, but K&K had four or five years on me and a scientific curiosity that led their dad to build and equip a backyard lab for them so well-stocked and puissant that, when they all finally vacated the house for good, a haz-mat team had to come in to clean the place out.  Good stuff. 

One thing K&K knew was how to blow stuff up.  They sure talked a good game, anyway, and they did know a little something about the saltpeter.  I could get the saltpeter at any drugstore, they taught me; it makes you pee if you eat it.  But don’t.  Instead, mix it 1 to 1 with sugar and see what happens when you drop in a match. 

Well, what happens, it turns out, is caramel flambé, a sticky smoky conflagration that emits gallons of smoke and burns more furiously than a whole box of matches going off at once.  I loved it.  We soaked strings in a sugar-saltpeter solution and once they dried they turned into fuses wherewith to set off ever larger piles of powdery white crystals into ever more intoxicating eruptions of heat and light and billowing smoke.  It was delightful. 

For the record, we didn’t heat and compound the ingredients – that was too dangerous.  We just mixed them together and they burned well enough.  But it came to pass that “well enough” wasn’t good enough.  I wanted more.  More power, more flames.  More pyrotechnic potential.  And so Kevin, or perhaps it was Keith, told us how to make the black powder: you just keep using that same saltpeter, but you mix it in equal parts with sulfur and charcoal powder.  Now, that stuff really goes off. 

I won’t lead you through my whole tale of discovery here but we pulverized a lot of charcoal and god knows where we got the sulfur but we got it somehow; we mixed up a lot of black powder and built a fair number of black powder-burning platforms.  At this point we were generating enough heat and power to require the use of an old tripod grill to keep the flames from spreading, or the residue from ruining my driveway or patio.  We’d have big ol’ fireballs erupting from that rusty metal censer.  I was starting to feel dangerously competent for a 12-year-old boy playing with explosives. 

Steve and I began to experiment with containment devices.  If we put the black powder in a tightly rolled ball of foil, for example, it would burn even more spectacularly.  We weren’t stupid enough to try building a pipe bomb or any such thing, but we continued to explore new and exciting ways to make the flames shoot higher and with ever more fury.  We were well along on this path when we realized that we only had about a third of a plastic jar of saltpeter left; this meant that we could actually fill the jar up completely if we used equal parts of carbon and sulfur, resulting in a tidy ten-ounce ramekin of combustibles ready for blast-off. 

So we built our little powderkeg, punched a ¼ inch hole in the metal cap and screwed it back on, finally running a sugarpeter fuse up into it.  Then we got a little nervous – though, in retrospect, not quite nervous enough.  We figured this would be the biggest flamepot we’d ever orchestrated, so we decided to try to keep it on the DL, as neither of us were remotely cool enough to say: rather than igniting this particular pyrotechnical experiment out on my brick patio where we usually immolated stuff, we snuck the old rusty charcoal kettle grill into the garage and closed the door to keep the great event a secret. 

The garage was a wood-frame and stucco building standing apart from my house and rising to a peaked roof about twenty feet above a concrete floor, with some bare wooden beams and planks at ceiling level but no actual ceiling to speak of – just the plywood sheets of the underroof overhead and wooden shingles nailed down above that. 

You can see where this story is going, I’ll bet.  It’s going to have me light the fuse that hung limply out of the ragged punchhole in the white metal lid of the translucent brown plastic saltpeter jar, all filled up with stinky dense black powder, sitting in the center of the grill in the center of that dark garage like a punchline waiting to be uttered for the first time.  The cherry smoldered up the fuse, creeping along across the lid and into the insertion point.  It slipped into the stoma and, for a moment, I thought our experiment was a failure, that the powder hadn’t ignited. 

My fears were proven nigh-tragically unfounded, however, as with a sputter the powder caught and flames burst up out of the hole, orange and furious.  They leapt a foot, 18 inches – and then the fire really got going.  The interior of the plastic jar became a flaming maelstrom, a veritable firkin of purgatory.  The flames shot out four feet tall.  Then six feet.  And still growing.  White-orange flame reached far overhead, spraying like a garden hose.  The jar was starting to melt, but not fast enough; a solid fist of fire began to approach the dry and unprotected roof. 

Something had to be done immediately or the whole garage would go up.  My mind fixated on the precious talmud and the library of other hebraica that my dad kept in the study that was attached to the garage, behind which I’d once hidden to light my little firepits.  I couldn’t let it all burn down.  My dad and god would gang up to kill me.  Action had to be taken.  Disaster had to be averted. 

We used, I think, a shovel to knock the combustion chamber to its side.  Though this pointed the flame at the still-closed garage door, the impact had fatally disturbed the now-molten plastic.  The whole thing quickly dissolved in a mess of bubbling smoke and light, then swiftly and spectacularly burned itself out.  No buildings were destroyed.  The talmud was safe.  And since that fateful afternoon, I’ve never set another fire.  That last one seems to have served me pretty well.  But the next time, I won’t be satisfied unless I get me some fifteen-foot flames again.  I mean, if there is a next time.  Till then, I think I’ll just leave the saltpeter to those who need it for purposes more aligned with dousing things than setting them ablaze.