Samsonite, Wandering

November 26, 2009 – Room 234, The Cavalier Hotel, Virginia Beach

Good news! The streets are largely deserted in the off season, and there is no shortage of parking. I caution, however, against relying on satellites and gadgetry to feed you during the late months, as this will lead to fits of impatience and angry hunger. (Divided technological thought process: “There should be an app for that” = a wild lunge toward Problem Reaction Solution. I don’t believe %95 of what Icke says, but this part kinda makes sense. Twenty years ago, we were all afraid of Big Brother. Today, through FB, Twitter and some sexy rebranding, we’re pretty much doing BB’s work for him.)

More good news; when you finally discover an open establishment, they’ll wait on you hand and foot, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Which, I suspect you are.

My room appears to have been decorated by a grandmother on a mescaline trip; brain-pink trim laced with orderly floral arrangements and conch shells interwoven with strings of pearls. The beds are high and firm like the breasts of a prom queen, and the blankets are made from a substance first discovered at the Roswell incident of 1947, a lightweight textile nightmare that slides off the bed in the night and leaves you shivering against the icy rampage of the air conditioner from hell. (Two settings. One of them: John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”)

None of that mattered when I threw back the curtains and opened the sliding door.

After a few deep breaths, I dragged a chair from my room out onto the balcony in order to take in the midnight ocean breeze and the steady hiss of the surf.  There’s something majestic and stupefying about the heaving saline muscle of the ocean that fills me with a childlike sense of awe and wonder, and generally chills me the fuck out.  Each time I lay eyes on my mistress, I’m reminded of the first time we met.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, November 1987, at the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. It was dark, and I could smell her before I could see her. I’m not sure how you’ll take that.  Anyway, I took a tentative step down a set of wooden stairs and she rushed into the light, slapping me in the face before she ran away laughing. I was left standing there, dripping wet and very much in love.

Three things I love about travel:

1. Living out of a suitcase.
1a. Luggage and travel gear.
2. Fresh towels daily.
3. Sometimes a Great Ocean.

Life lived out of a suitcase is a teaching tool. For the duration of the assignment/gig/vacation/visit, you are only what you bring with you, existing in a neutral environment, painting from a transparent pallet, standing before a blank canvas. A reduced footprint searching for WiFi, craving decent coffee.

I fantasize about roaming the Earth in this manner; wandering from place to place with a duffel bag of clothes, a camera, and a quality laptop capable of withstanding a few knocks. Your mission: move to the weird part of town, take up temporary residence in some poorly furnished shit-hole of an apartment or worn-down motel, photograph the buskers, capture the local color, and move on in the night when the time is right.

The gear is unimportant, and best left to personal taste.

Fresh towels daily. No-brainer. Good name for a punk band, or perhaps a t-shirt. The ocean part I’ve already mentioned. Moving on.

Jittery rivers
flow from magic silver urns.
Can’t sleep, can’t shut up.

The next day: wandering the aisles of a war toy trade show, beset on all sides by card tables laden with “find ‘em, bag ‘em, and tag ‘em toys.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say the threat of terrorism was largely non-existant, a money-making scheme concocted in the secret squirrel boardrooms of big corporations and further disseminated by middle-weight, middle-aged Aqua-Velva  motherfuckers in brown loafers and embroidered polo shirts. Armed with vocabularies full of power verbs, these strange specters get paid handsome sums to prey upon the fearful and law-abiding.

White man speak with forked tongue: “The bogeyman is out there waiting, but for a few billion dollars, we’ll help you bring him to justice!” There is money to be made here. Flight simulators, giant gun turrets, gas masks, gyro-stabilized death spitters, and every manner of catalog system are present. Know your enemy, test tomorrow.

Blessed is he who, in the name of common fucking sense, shepherds his own way through the valley of the merchandise of darkness, leaving the ink pens, mousepads and logo-ridden plastic crap where he finds it. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and minor annoyance those who attempt to poison and defile my luggage with free coffee mugs, advertising campaigns masquerading as art, and assorted plastic malarkey best left to rot on a pier somewhere in Korea.

“Hey, didja get over to the Armed & Hammered booth? Lots of free stuff!”
“No, thanks. Not really my thing.”
“”Well, don’t you want some? It’s free! Give them as gifts!”

Color me stupid, but nothing says, “I place less than zero value upon our friendship” quite like the gift of a light bulb-shaped foam toy emblazoned with the logo of a consulting firm. Maybe I’m wrong here.

Skipping ahead through the week: as it turns out, Hotel Fail had no pool, and no laundry facilities on the premises. This made me sad, but the WiFi was free. The empty streets of this typically topless town are laced with “No Swearing” signs (Q-Berty grumbles and the International No), and shops of teen rebellion, the same old song and dance: butterfly knives, pot plant belt buckles, and tasteless t-shirts. (“Swallow or I’ll shoot it in your eye.” Clever!) News update: she sells sea shells by the sea shore.  The sticker on the bottom, however, reads ‘Product of Philippines.’

When the curtains came down and the show was over, I packed my things and left. A few hours later, I was standing twenty-five feet from Amanda Fucking Palmer, giving a polite back massage to a beautiful girl who makes everything seem okay.

One day, Schrondinger’s Cat will die for real…

I Didn’t Know What to Call It, So I Did.

09NOV08 – Pieces of madness from last night’s dream.  Our Hero, locked inside a dusty voodoo mansion crowded with dying candles, unpurposed flowers and empty bottles.  Chalk drawings and macabre masks, scattered alters and borrowed bones.  “Be careful what gets into your heads, Little Ones, for it may never come out again.”

And so I hid my eyes beneath a threadbare blanket while various horrors took place around me.  I didn’t see any of it and don’t remember it, understanding somehow that if I peeked or acknowledged what was happening on the other side of that blanket, I’d be instantly set upon by angry men with long knives and a language barrier incapable of interpreting my cries for mercy.

“You can gaze upon the lords, but looking at the shogun will make you blind, and the emperor cannot be seen at all.” This is important, somehow.

Sitting in a coffee house listening to Also Spake Zarathustra and attempting to write up to that triumphant sound.  (It’s probably gonna take more than a shitty netbook and a $4.95 coffee, but I think we can all agree that it’s good to dream.)

Just a few strands of crystalline fiber sticking out the physical access port.  I pinch one gossamer thread between the thumb and index finger of my left hand and pull it outward, inserting it carefully into my eye, feeling nothing as the mechanism within squirms toward and copulates with my optic nerve…

First there is a mountain,
then there is no mountain,
then there is.

My hands fall limp into my lap, and my thoughts begin walking around on their own:

Quote in memory: “I don’t give a stack of tits what anyone says about rehashed ideas.  If you can scour the graveyard of rock n’ roll and build something new from the rusted hulks you find there you’re onto something good, because it’s harder to create than it is to destroy.”

In-flight moment: “Yeah, like a moist toilette is gonna do it.  As if breathing in that faint antiseptic steam is gonna chase away the bleary eyes, the stiff shoulders, the compacted spine, and the terrible suspicion that someone slathered the dregs of a deep fat fryer across my sleeping face, dabbing the brush in my mouth for good measure.  Still, the Sky Ninja’s got enough shit to worry about; slamming, shuffling, stumbling, sorting and smiling.  Not only does a Sky Ninja have to look their best at all times, but they have to serve you hot coffee in high turbulence, make change for a $50, and still be able to herd your panicking, cattle-stampeding ass off this burning dick in the event that shit suddenly goes sideways.  So thank you, Sky Ninja.  This pre-moistened towelette will do just fine.”

July 21, 2006:  The assassin in freefall, his parachute failed.  Got to make his bones regardless; draws both pistols and does his best to draw a bead while plummeting ever closer to the ground.  Target exits the building, maybe twenty paces to the waiting limo. “If I can’t take him out with a bullet, maybe I can break him with my fall.” Target looks up at the last second.  Look on the target’s face was priceless.  Never saw it comming.

Found in journal: “And in those final moments, when our entire lives flash before our eyes, we will concentrate upon this instant in futility, as though we could lift the needle from the record and pause the song, as though we could skip this unpleasant paragraph and leave the story incomplete.  But when you die, make sure all you gotta do is die, and that Jeff Goldblum is doing tai chi.”

The minutes keep on walking; a colorful and irreplaceable parade of precious cruelties and unspeakable magic broken into short intervals.  And sometimes, people throw candy…

In the park, near a statue:

Robber barons use
their ill-gotten wealth to
create public zen.

Speak all languages: the planet’s personal mediator, sitting at an intersection of life and death, watching armies march in all directions.  Turn your cell phone off, and ignore every text the End Man sends you, as the sky grows dark with circling birds.

The next day was Sunday.  I sat in a cafe watching the snowflakes tumble down fast and fat as the waitress brings me coffee.  A man with a Mohawk cooked my breakfast.

“The rest is easy, because Henry Miller made it look easy.”

I live for the moments when the music and the mood unite, when the planets groan into position like a clock of immeasurable proportion and suddenly I’m walking down the street with my head on fire, trailing tongues of trickling blue.  Suddenly, time grinds to a squeaking halt.  And not just around me, or on this block, or in this city state, but in all places, and at all times: fish frozen in the rivers, birds halted in mid-flight, sunlight with the parking brake on, and the light of distant stars idling like cars at an intersection.

I understood long ago that I will never die.  That’s right.  I… will… never… die… I will grow old, and I will eventually shit my last, but the ‘me’ that makes up ‘me’ will be recycled.  I’ll be back again.  I am not, as the man said, ” a beautiful and unique snowflake.”  My thoughts have been thought before, and will occur to others again.  I get it.  And I’m okay with that.

That’s the lowest form of truth, the baseline.  We are born, we live, and we die.  Everything takes place in this dimension, and on this planet.  Nobody really knows anything, and everything will surprise you if you let it.  Nothing lasts forever, except nothing and forever, and in the end, there are no odds to beat.

Either it will or it won’t,

Price Check on Joey Lawrence

091105 – Yesterday.

Seventh floor, somewhere in Chocolate City, just down the street from the Big White Building, where all the troubles of the world are born. Wringing an existence from this town means elevator speeches, and learning when to nod your head and just say “Yeah…”

Listening to: Clutch, Killing Joke and Nick Cave, amped off my face on a cup of heavy fuel – Colombian, black, two sugars.  Waiting for: assignment feedback.

My task, photograph a roomful sullen adults attending what must be the single most boring event on the planet; a teleconference, in which a wisened figure in enormous glasses drones on about contractual requirements, and the proper formating thereof: “Now when I… started doing this in nineteen seventy… five, we didn’t have… the same template… that you see on the screen.  We had something… different.”

I can geek out on most anything. Add this to my ‘except’ list.

I enter quietly and wait against the back wall, waiting, thinking it through.  How to shoot this? Low light, and the room looks empty, uninteresting.  Lining them up against a wall won’t work, and whatever interest they have in the subject matter must be preserved in order to look real.

The instructor calls for a break and I spring into action, explaining myself and my purpose as I begin rearranging some of the furniture, visually reducing the size of the room. Moving with certainty and speaking authoritatively will take you far in this world.

“Uh, excuse me? Why is this photo being taken?”  The demanding voice of dissent belonged to a dumpy, dour-faced thing toward the back, a half-empty bottle of Diet Product Placement on the table before her.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t want to be in it.”  Arms crossed over her chest, disapproval written across her forehead. Good luck, wild horses. “Why can’t you just do a group photo or have us stand in front of the screen?”

“That takes you out of context, ma’am.” We are nothing without our manners. Thumbs are good, too. “I was assigned to capture a certain shot a certain way. Putting you in front of the projector means you get a bright light in your eyes, resulting in an even funnier face.”  Oops. I’d taken my mouth off of the ’safety’ setting again.

“Who do you work for?” The rest of the room were subtly ignoring her, or helping me move furniture. I remained motionless, meeting the glare of her tired eyes. I could have been an ass about it, but I calmly fed her a string of department numbers, and name-dropped my supervisor, who sits pretty far up on the food chain.  I ended the sentence with “ma’am.”

“Well…” Her response was non-commital, as she thought this through. I hadn’t really won, and she hadn’t really lost. I got my shots, left.  The rest of the day crawled by like a bowl of unhappy oatmeal.

Last night: my train to Maryland smelled like a lion had taken a crap in the air ducts. I tried to picture this taking place.

Later, another coffee house, another page filled, another pen spitting its last.  The never-ending quest to capture the blitzkrieg butterfly of the brain. Feel the bright red burn of an idea, the resulting smell of smoke and burning tissue, the urge to capture a concept - seal it in a jar, paste it in a book, put it on display, cup it in the hands, take a picture of it, sketch it in pen: “There is something else in here with me, something staring back from behind the curtain!”

Listening to an older couple discuss the unsexy mechanics of relationships: household chores, bank accounts, wills.  Use the following words in a sentence to your loved one: “Well, when you die…”

Watching a new relationship take hold and bloom is like watching two massive spherical computers, each bristling with spikes and amature.  At the end of those arms are various ports and devices; plugs, nodes, hardware, software.  These represent likes and dislikes, concerns, needs, skills, and must-haves:

“Does your port/need #11,345 mesh with my port/need 12,345?  If  it’s at least a v.2, we can discuss. If not, it’s a mark against. Conversely, I shall strive to meet your expectation for cleanliness, #556.  My own port is a #400 series, but I make up for it with my grandmother’s recipes, represented here by nodes #223 – 470.”  The sound of servos whirring, sphere rotating on their X,Y in an effort to be compatible.

“Reptiles. Yeah, now see, they’ve got scales and stuff. They have their babies in eggs.  Sure, like birds. Now mammals, they have their babies live, kicking and screaming, already worrying about college, playground heartbreak, and the child’s 21st birthday hangover. Do alien species ever have to sweat this kind of shit? ‘Dragnor supped of the brew of the Lathgor, and suffered from an excess of chuth’lah.’”

There will be sandwiches,

Prolonged Nuclear Explosion

Monday Morning March of the Ants, golden glow of sunrise fills the bus and makes me sneeze as we merge with traffic. Light shifts the spectrum like fingers on a slide rule, shadows sway…

The tired eyes of a hard-nose detective hang in the glare of a lamp in the interrogation room, the brightest bulb on the shelf. He strikes a match across my cheek, a move designed to break my confidence. Lights a cigarette. Drag, hold. Spins the chair, exhales the blue plume in my face. Let’s take this again from the top. “Talk! Where were you on the night of the 23rd? Explain that weird contraption we found in your apartment! We know you’re in cahoots with Aces Malone. You really wanna do time for that lunatic? We can offer you protection from his Mind Ray…”

“No, you can’t…” I snap awake. Damn. Talking out loud again. Suit across the aisle stares back at me.

I’ve heard it said that suits, respectable, pressed and upstanding, are the ones you really need to watch out for. Smug, the facial expression we can live without. Makes me wish I carried Mace on the regular, douse his sneer, paint his fine motorcar, his French counter top, his unfortunate tendency to reward his trophy wife with a bitter pimp hand for overspending. Gotta make tough talk when he’s with the guys, you know. The New Adventures of Smug At The Bottom: his brother calls from jail three times a week, pleading for money and begging for a job. “You’re a con, Ritchie. No one’s gonna hire you.” Smug’s 18-year-old malcontent gets sent home for fighting again, barely a man and flunking the 10th grade. Again. Smug lives on a steady diet of Hooters and a king-size syringe of Diet Cola, lips blood-flecked from missing his mouth. Smug comes home one day, finds the trophy took it all, emptied their savings and ran off with the gardener:

“You’ll love me, won’t you Paulo?”
“Si.”

Later, quitting time on the Metro. A snow globe of evil savages, scowling, sad-faced, pie-eyed, but determined. Remember to feed the animals with an open hand, lest you lose a finger. Times like this fill me with the kind of numb I thought I’d left behind in my 20s. There’s a limited supply of sandwiches on the lunch truck, so you gotta be hungrier than the vacuum seated next to you if’n you wanna eat.

The only solution is to do well enough to earn that quiet cabin in the middle of nowhere, and let the beasts devour one another in a peculiar barrage of flashing teeth and gunfire. News at eleven, twelve, and thirteen. Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

Weird dream last night, something about “the numbers of the sun being wrong.” Perceive the sustained nuclear explosion in the sky as an engine needing calibration. Mechanic slides out on a wheeled solar flare, skin burned and smoking, pushes goggle up on his head, eyes white like boiled eggs. “Yep, here’s your problem. Gonna take me at least a week to fix, gotta order the part from Alpha Centauri. Have yourself a nice cold product placement while you wait.”

New day on the bus. Note to self, fall is the season of perish. The Earth is pulling energy back into itself. As hippy-trippy as it sounds, it’s a fact. It’s a system, same as anything else, a living thing God killed himself, and we are his slowly reforming nervous system. The ozone reek of engine exhaust, stench of burning rubber in the Metro. Watching paint strokes flicker in the evening trees, I’m confident that Bob Ross lives on and is hard at work somewhere.

Everyone’s shat, showered, shaved or otherwise steeled themselves to spend several hours in a beige veal-fattening pen, hell bent on keeping the Machine moving. They flow toward the goal like a river of blood, buildings swollen with the influx like concrete erections. Plastic lunches, apples at the ready, steady, go!

Estimate the amount of cardboard packaging transported Northeast along 395 between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. On any given workday. Divide combined calories by total body mass, subtract fuel.

Wedged between the window and a plump Hindi, a woman fresh from her bath. Her jaw line appears more pronounced, as do the twin cords of muscle which terminate in shadow along her collar bone. The temples of her sunglasses are wide enough for a logo.

In the distance, another plane fingers its way into the wet morning womb of the sky. Later, clouds appear, pregnant with rain. Who’s the father? The pilot sneaks out the room, guilty look on his face, looks back at the camera: “Fucking with nature takes a lot out of a man.”

Plane departs, account for a slight change in Earthweight. Subtract 80,000 gallons of fuel, x luggage, y magazines. Weight of aircraft upon departure differs from weight of arrival.

Overhead, the man in 17A is reading the same article of the same publication as the elderly black receptionist sitting next to me, as is the Ant in the passenger seat of the car in the next lane over.

Later in the www.eek.day, somewhere else in the city. Sweltering gently in a black hoodie, one eye on the clock, both ears full of poetry, crashing symphony of electric guitars and crashing drums.

Lens flare on a parked car explodes like a million shining needles of shining truth. (Most people are consonants; sometimes you meet a vowel.)

Was I really in Morocco this year? Herr Doberman traded his camera for a hooker; couldn’t help it, she was stone beautiful and the only English she spoke were old Dylan lyrics…

Plants, concrete. Hiss of air brakes, dull roar of engines. The rectangles go up faster and faster, but we’ve yet to master the pyramids. Over and over, this same ride, this same loop of time. The same triggers, same memories, mental tendrils seeking out the wet paper fragments of the past. The same thoughts about flying, the same screaming desire to get up and walk from everyone and everything, forever. See ya in St. Louie, screwy! So near, and yet so far away.

“Once the bonds of filial love were loosed, my brother and I went our separate ways. Inevitably, one of us died.”

Can’t get off this planet, no one gets out of here alive. Those are the rules. Leper sores of spent chewing gum cover the sidewalk, oil-stained streets like automotive execution sites… Pennzoil and rusted intestines spill into the sewer. Chewed earth leaks out between mouthfuls of broken glass and wet leaves. Tired brick, faded paint, dead death and dying pride, vitality sapped and youth forgotten.

Beauty is temporary, but ugly lasts forever. Glass and curves for the elite, the promised, the educated, the clean and chosen. Brick shit-houses and bitter slumlords are the eternal reward for being born on the wrong street at the wrong time to the wrong people.

“Hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.” Nearly all of my heroes are dead.

Next day, traffic stretches into the distance. Meat, memorabilia, memories, mp3, m.p.h., methane. Ant Hour again. Creeping heat, stifling exhaust. Plodding, patience-sapped mobs, barely controlled anger, one step from an armed assault. “Have another shit sandwich! Plenty more where that came from. Suck it up, we’re all in this together.”

Buildings look like the artist’s conception of a whore after seven years of bad luck. Runs in the stockings, plays in the street. Sagging flesh, crumbling concrete. Inside each of these buildings is the one office you never want to get called into.

“We’re concerned about these… figures from last fiscal quarter, and well, we’ve concluded that maybe you’re just not a proper fit with our organization. You understand.”

Grab a cat seat at the back of the public troop transport, wedged in someplace where the air runs cool. It’s already five o’clock, and it’ll be close to six before I get home. Time gets a death grip on your ankles and heaves, takes the load like the noose around the neck of a man whose seen better days.

Come one, come all, the angry, the idealistic, the iconoclast and idiotic, we’re all guests in the abattoir sooner or later.

The stories come faster
When the money is tight
And the wolves of debt
Keep you up all night

(Renewed at the atomic level approximately every seven years, it’s)

What Happens in Amber City Stays in Amber City

Sound asleep, midnight plane approaching Amber City. A shadow born in the womb of the moon lands on the wing, shimmies through the porthole, lays a hand along my face:

“Place your seatbacks and tray tables in an upright position, Little One. We’re landing in the place where the Time Machine failed.”

My seat doesn’t recline, and there is no in-flight meal. They fed me with one tube, emptied me with another one later. I’m covered in 9-G foam, and sealed tight inside a rig built from Near-Frictionless Carbon. Got a 40-pound PMI (Passive Magnetic Inhibitor) on my back, controlled by the biteplate in my helmet, which oversees the output of the PMI, putting me in charge of my descent. I vibrate, slightly out of phase with this moment, and it lets me cut through the Soup. Moral of the story: the Soup can’t stop what the Soup can’t touch.

But why?

That most simple of tools, the turning screw that keeps everything from happening at once, has finally crossed a thread. No rhyme, no reason. Just like that, a section of Everything went ka-plooey in a small town. Time stopped in a quarter-mile blob. The closer to Ground Zero, the deeper you sleep. If you’d been playing hooky, headed toward the edge when it happened, you stand a chance of waking up someday. Step across that line, break the bubble, and enter the next century.

The squeals of excited children became silver grapes frozen on the vine, as did hungry mouth’s of star-crossed lovers in the park and the focused fingers of a lonely woman turning the pages of dime store best-sellers in the coffee house across the street. All became still, and have stayed that way since.

Believe me when I say they tried everything to get them out.

Attaching anchor lines to the rescue crews seemed a surefire bet, but nothing could tear those human insects free from the Amber without ripping them in two, like ticks in the skin.

High above hangs a recreational skydiver, visible from the staircase that now surrounds the City. They say he fell 700 feet before things began to slow, and the length of his following seconds multiplied by one. (“The flying arrow is at rest…”) His molecules are sound asleep, and his flight may last forever.

They threw money at the problem, but the problem didn’t listen. They tried to destroy the problem, to part it, to tunnel through it. Finally, they gave up. Threw a dome around it, charged admission.

And yet.

Two days ago, a ring of inward-looking sensors situated along the walls picked up a signal, a ripple, a heartbeat. A solitary figure moving freely about the city, normal speed.

That’s where I come in. Got to go in there and find out what’s alive, figure out What’s the Matter, and determine what’s got the strength to move in the Amber.

Check my gear, stand in the mouth, wait for the Word. Like all useful information in this day and age, it comes as light. Green, and the doors hiss open. I leap into the arms of the night, savoring this madman’s elevator. I fall.

How long? Later.

Approach the apex of the Amber, preparing to merge with the Soup. There’s a human diorama below me, hundreds, maybe hundreds of thousands of people on permanent smoke break. Laughter in mid-throat, telephones forever ringing, elevators that’ll never come. Enter the Soup, bite and chomp through the control menus. I puncture the Amber, slide in. It’s pissed, doesn’t want me here. Fights me. Closes its thighs to me. Power levels in the suit surge to compete with the Soup, and my muscles burn.

Hours later, touchdown.

Getting my bearings, preparing to move out when I feel a sudden pressure in my right shoulder. Takes me almost a minute to look down, and I still don’t believe what I’m seeing. An honest-to-fuck bullet from Long Ago, humping the fabric of my suit like a lovesick insect, struggling for a way to mate with the warm wet red and vital stuff buried deep inside. Must have been fired less than thirty minutes ago, and either it’s a million-to-one, or worse.

I go limp, rolling backwards. This takes me seven minutes. I bite down on the ‘plate, coaxing more juice from the PMI, my eyes riveted to the sparkling cone of lead, friction waves cast aside like the scarves of an exotic dancer. The optics in the helmet watch my eyes, changing the visor to amplifying the object of interest. Red light on, cameras rolling. Presently, my field of view is overcome by a macro close-up: hollow-point shell, like the rim of a tiny volcano. It’s turning, albeit slowly.

Panting with exhaustion, sweating bullets, bite down on the ’plate. Warning lights, MAX POWER. One final lunge, breath rattling in my ears, contrasting the high pitch whine of my nervous system. Silent out there.

Seconds passed, nearly clear of the bullet. Twist a little further. The brush of metal catching. The tail begins to rise, and the nose follows – picture a helicopter taking off.

Finally, it crests, heading away. But it won’t stop. It’ll go until it finds something new to dig into, somewhere in this city of 6,500 people frozen in time. Might be hours, maybe weeks. Unless that bullet falls to earth, dreams and purpose unrealized, it’ll likely burrow into another human.

Think on that: you’re walking down the street. Time stops, but not everywhere. Outside, the river flows on. One hundred, two hundred years pass. Inside, you’re still walking, your left foot hovering an inch above the ground. A bullet fired from a weapon in the future seeks you out in your present moment, and slowly carves a tunnel through your entrails while you sleep walk, frozen, helpless. Sucks to be you. (On the plus side, it’s moving, and you aren’t. Meaning, too fast for you to even care. Instant.) Should you ever awake:

“Who the fuck shot me?”
“Some guy a few thousand years ago. (P.S. you’re seriously late for work.)”

The real question – who pulled the trigger? Judging by trajectory, the guilty party exists thirty minutes into my own future.

Radio ops and position, move out…

 

 

Weapons Grade Bath Towel

Few things worse than what happened to the country I knew so well; all glad hands and “yee haw” among friends.  I wait for an again.  That to me is death.  Have left town in this is gonna end badly address.  I don’t sleep, I am a ghost.  

Even now, my night walks beneath the surface of the present tense into scattered drowning men with a photograph and scraps of reading and rereading. In making this pamphlet, all my modest domicile.  The better to help you prepare for this world, lines of threats and the illegal closets spill onto the shelves. Bombs can be constructed, just paper and ink.  Anything can be placed, any number of ways.  They cross the room to a stereo by a pair of sawhorses.

After fixing a sandwich, 12:45 creeps by slowly.  I try to write something horizontal, door supported fanfare.  Fountains bubble, but nothing comes which doubles as my desk. Meekly the sunshine again, studying the document, my place of employment is worn spots in the carpet, nicks in the woodwork and fallen predictable because a cheap tavern room window, which overlooks weeks classic black and the biggest crack bar, but it’s rumored years of so.  I’m exhausted, humming in my legs, rippling like water, I jump start.  Went to a party last night, figured it out on cardboard, I am only nothing observing.

This pamphlet is designed my good moods gone, and without a great deal. Private sectors prepare invincible young man and the small fans whir and hiss, threat of explosives.  Where is love, where are the glass doors of my ideas set forth herein, answer but not receive right and sharp.  I’m information provided is hurry, leaving no forward.  I’ve read it so many of sources, including the anymore.  I spend my Chuck Taylor’s last special agents, street scribbling the white to replace the pair and Firearms (ATF). 

Notebooks crammed full of long ago, like a thousand moments gone forever, and I feel the gentle.  If there is one point the dog-eared volumes that fit my arms and chest, overemphasized, it is the documentation of my time should take a few pills to overemphasize.

Do not allow a bomb, explodes out of surprise.  By developing the floor, suffocate the Harbortown, had a considering, possible meaning of life, physical security plan, space in the room, safe keeps.  Potential for personal space in the room.

The Alien and the Stripper

I sat at the far end of the bar shoveling white cheddar popcorn into my mouth like the world wasn’t really gonna end in a week, casually eyeing the stripper working a VFW party in the other room.  She swayed along to bad music, her youthful body earning her the attention her aged spirit wasn’t really interested in.

I could have sworn I knew her from somewhere, and I sipped the darkness from my glass, delicately wiping away the condensation until her name surfaced in the foam.

Six.  The stripper – sorry, the woman who took her clothes off and danced for money had a name – but she told everyone it was Six.  She finished her gig, made with the smiles and the flirting, endured the hungry looks from the old farts poised atop the red pleather stools and darted into the bathroom to change, leaving soon after with the hired tough in the stupid sunglasses and the floor length duster.  She’d be back – she’s in here more than she should be.

I say this as though I have room to talk.

A few hours later (told you so), she was back at the other end of the bar, half off her chair.  Her head kept beat with the belch of the jukebox with all the precision of a broken-necked drunken junky rag doll riding a slow motion roller coaster to Sweden.  The dark-featured man looming over her, however, was sizing her up, dressed as he was in a suit and an unbuttoned shirt.  The look is called “power casual.”

I know what he’s thinking.  She’s easy prey, and if he can cock block the rest of us long enough, he’ll have her TV dinner all to himself.  I take another sip and look around.  It’s dead for a Tuesday night; the septuagenarian soldiers engrossed in the game, the bartender, the Suit, Six, and me.  I watched him paw her with a catlike smile for a good quarter of an hour, whispering sweet bullshit in her ear.  She batted away his pimp hand, fluttering like a bird with a broken wing and mouthing the word “no”, but he won’t let go.  He’s too hungry.  I can’t even imagine what line he might be using on her, but it ain’t working.

Shit.  Guess I’m the Calvary.

I sigh a heavy sigh and make my way over.  My drink in my right hand, I nod to the bartender who takes a few bucks from the dwindling pile of bills where I’d set up camp.

“Hey, Six!  How’s it going?”  My voice breaks the spell, but she turns to me so slowly I thought I might have to slap her for a reply.  Wow.  She’s really bad off.  To be honest, Six isn’t that great looking, but when I talked to her before she seemed a nice enough person, and this is the gentleman thing to do.  That’s the only reason I’m shooing this vulture off her back.

The Suit sizes me up the way all guys do when someone barges in on their action.  He probably thinks I’m after his meal.  As long as we’re telling the truth, I haven’t thrown a punch in anger since the eighth grade, when I got my ass kicked by Lee Sorentino, but I’ve watched plenty of Kung-fu Theater in my time.  I figure I can take him.

I glance back at Six.  Her eyes are nearly closed, an Olympic ring of empty glasses in front of her.  I look at the bartender, who leers back at me.  He’s marked her, too.  I’ll bet he’s the kind of slime who calls a cab for a girl when she’s had too much and cops a quick feel while he’s pouring her in the back of the cab so he can look like the ‘concerned big brother’ when he goes back inside.  ”Aw, he’s so nice!”  Fucking vultures, both of them.

I put an arm around Six and led her to a booth against the opposite wall, smiling my best Fuck You over my shoulder.  She can barely walk and I’ve got my liquid muscles on.  The Suit looks to be about six-four, and built solid.  If he takes this any further, I could be in a lot of trouble.

After some cuff tugging on his behalf he follows us to the booth, and stands right in front of me, one hand reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket.  He doesn’t see Six anymore; she’s not important.  It’s as if he were looking through me now, examining the insides of my T-shirt, eyeballing my spine, surveying the red metallic flake of the bench seat through my ribs, and watching my heart pound.  And it is pounding.

My attention is 100% focused on his hand, like a dog waiting for a biscuit.  Or a knife.  Or a gun.

Finally his hand comes out.

He’s holding a tape cassette.  Inwardly, I exhale with relief as he lays it on the table with a careful click and slides it over.  Outwardly, I scowl and try to remember everything I’d learned about predatory animals from watching television.  I think I’m supposed to hold a chair over my head so’s I can appear taller.

The Suit doesn’t say a word, this bastard.  Just looks at the tape, and grins at me all shit-eyes.

“What’s this?”  I demand, picking up the tape.  I sipped the last of my drink, eyeing him through the bottom of the glass, a move both casual and guarded.  The glass was heavy in my hand.  I set it down, tape still in my other hand.

“Well, what is it?”

“Do you like science fiction?”  I couldn’t place his accent.

I turned it over in my hands.  There was nothing special about it, no markings or play list, just a glossy black cassette, rewound to side A.

When I looked up again, he had vanished in the sudden crowd that had gathered.  I felt a strong desire to chase after him and give back the tape, but Six mumbled something and held onto my arm.  It was strange, him just approaching me like that and giving me this.  I shrugged my shoulders, and slipped it in my coat pocket. I was just glad he was gone.

When I got home, I dropped my keys on the table by the door, flung my coat over a chair and flicked on the lights in one rehearsed motion, grateful for the eternal mercy of the electrical company.

Something fell out of my coat.  The tape.  I picked it up, and put it in the stereo (the one thing I’ve not yet hocked) and pushed ‘play’, heading for the kitchen to look for food that didn’t exist.

And that’s when it hit me.

I collided with the floor, the strength sucked out of my body like air from a slashed tire.  Reaching the little piece of black plastic on the stereo marked ‘stop’ was out of the question, because I lacked the iron will needed to cross the miles of cheap shag carpet that lay between us.  A few feet away was as good as forever.

It was the sound of an entire civilization, dying all at once.

I felt my throat choke up, clogged with the horrifying sensations of some terrible doom which flooded my brain.  I can’t even describe it without crying, that’s how bad it was.  Then again, that doesn’t even come close.

All I could do was lie there in a puddle making a lot of weird noises, and shivering like a leaf while something dark and intangible poured out over the room from my speakers, crawled through my ears and kicked down the door of my mind.

The real bitch of it was, I saw my cassette player was set to ‘loop.’  After that, I blacked out.

Consciousness returned like a red beast in a dark tunnel.  Bright sunshine silhouetted against my crusted eyelids, and my face was stuck to the pile of sick on the floor.  I was badly dehydrated, and my pants were literally full of shit.  I had been there for days before the electric company shut off the power – I seem to recall drinking the money meant for the bill.

And, I can’t get rid of the tape.  No one else will take it. I’ve tossed it in the river, left it in the street and mailed it to Rhodesia with no return address.  When I got home there was a package in my mailbox from motherfucking Rhodesia.  I would have known what it was without even tearing it open, but I did it anyway.  It just sat there in my hand, smooth and black.  Mocking me.

There are no scratches across the surface from smashing it with a rock, and no marring of that inky ribbon after dousing it with lighter fluid and setting it on fire.  I fed it down the garbage disposal for almost two hours – all that did was piss off my neighbors.

I’ve got a court case next week, the small matter of a B&E.  I broke into the junkyard and tried to erase it with one of those giant magnets they use to pick up cars.  Imagine how my story sounded to the cops when they busted me.

So I’m stuck with what I presume is an alien artifact I don’t dare play and can’t get rid of.  I can’t eat proper, can’t sleep.  My landlord is ready to evict me, I got fired from the last job in this shitty town when I didn’t bother to show up for a week, and now I find out Six has spreading rumors that I took her home that night and fucked her in a “very uncomfortable” place.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

That’s what I get for being a gentleman.

 

The End of Randal

I was watching cartoons one morning about thirteen years ago when the phone rang.  Naturally, I was hesitant to answer, thinking it might be a bill collector seeking to address the small matter of my then- unpaid student loans.  I winced, but picked up anyway.

The caller asked for me by name.

“Speaking,” I replied, bracing myself for the barrage of script-driven guilt, while preparing a litany of excuses as to why I still hadn’t made good on my debt.

There was something different about the speaker’s voice.  It was slow and heavy, as though laboring beneath a weight.  Like a man who’d lost something very dear to him.

“This is Chad Matteson’s father.  We got your letter a few days ago, and we read it.  I’m afraid Chad’s not going to be able to get in touch with you.  He was killed in a motorcycle accident back in October.”

My legs went all noodles and I slid down the wall; receiver in one hand, cradle in the other.  For a moment, time stood still.

Randal was dead.

With his stoner shuffle, perpetual squint, high-top Nikes, feathered hair, ever-present blue flannel shirt, and Ugly Kid Joe ballcap turned backwards on his head, Chad Matteson was the spitting image of Randal, the wise-cracking, über-slacker

Here are a bunch of facts: Chad and I had served two years together in the Navy as Minemen while stationed in Macrihanish, Scotland.  The era was 1992-93.  I was working in the component test facility on the far side of a Royal Air Force compound, testing Cold War instrument racks and batteries for underwater mines.  Chad worked in the supply department in a separate part of the base, a job which gave him the time and means to wander.

Don’t get me wrong.  Chad was a damn hard worker, and we both understood the importance of pulling our weight.  But life is short and there are far more important things than work.  Like joyriding around the base, sharing a box of microwave egg rolls, and blaring Pantera CDs from a boom box strapped between the seats of a surplus steel pig.  He’d pull up in the deuce-and-a-half stake truck on loan to us from the RAF, and feed my supervisor some bullshit story about “needing my help for some unspecified job somewhere on the compound.”  That was pretty much the morning wasted.  Used sparingly, the ploy always worked – which meant we didn’t always have to.

Life was simple then.  We’d show up to work, do our jobs, knock off at 1600, and head to town for drinks.  In the lull between paydays, we’d go for a drive in his piece of shit Honda, a rusted out freedom bucket, in which was installed a CD player that was worth three times the value of the car, which was eventually pushed off a cliff when he couldn’t find a buyer to take it off his hands when he was transferring to Hawaii.

Wait a second.  Focus.  Randal is dead. This is important.

I’ve got a terrible memory, for whatever reason.  I should be paying very close attention to what his father’s telling me.  This is, after all, the single most important phone call taking place anywhere on the entire fucking planet at this instant.  It’s bigger than atomic secrets, the price of tea in China, the questionable mating habits of venture capitalists, the location of compromised Russian launch codes, or whether Van Halen really hired teenage girls to pick out the brown M&Ms.  (That’s half true.)

The voice on the other end of this line belongs to the man who first sired, then raised, then buried one of my best friends and, was gracious enough to pick up the phone and relate the very personal details of his son’s demise to a complete stranger.  But there are memories blocking my ears, preventing the facts of the matter from taking root.  Was this some form of denial?

Randal is dead.  I mean…

I should be paying very close attention, but right now all I can think about is the five-day road trip to Glasgow that Chad and I took with fellow cohort-in-crime Ian Conway to see Tool open for Rage Against The Machine, and also to catch up-and-coming Blind Melon in a tiny venue called “King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.”

(Did you hear what I just said?  Did we even bother to pack?  We filled the backseat with Doritos, Jim Beam and a few paperbacks.  I seem to recall bringing a toothbrush and using my leather jacket as a pillow.)

Remember standing in line for hours to see Rage, fending off hackneyed scalpers and having an all-around hellacious time?  (It was my first time seeing Tool and they blew my mind from chord one. I’ve been a fan ever since.)  And remember how, just a few days later, we met Blind Melon and got our CDs signed by members of the band?

Remember it?  Jesus, we didn’t shut up about it for days!

Remember the time I turned Chad onto industrial act ‘1000 Homo DJ’s’, and he dragged me all over Glasgow on a holy quest to find the ‘Supernaut’ CD single?

Remember the weekend the three of us drove to Glasgow for tattoos?  I got my first piece, the spiderweb on my left elbow.  Afterwards, Ian and I watched a poor, drunken-down wretch piss herself on a street corner in broad daylight.  Be careful what gets into your head, little ones.  It’s not easy to get those things back out again.

Remember the time Chad got turned around in UK city traffic, misjudged a turn, and entered a one-way street?  Instead of turning around, he gunned it, heading straight down the throat of the beast – 50 mph headed south in a northbound tunnel in the heart of Glasgow during rush hour traffic, cackling his fucking head off, white-knuckling the wheel and swerving to avoid some very pissed-off drivers.  I thought I was gonna die right then, sure as shit.

When we got the word from on high to close the base, we spent hours throwing rocks through the windows of the now-empty warehouse where he’d once labored.  Like the Babe Ruth of vandalism, Chad could hit any window he called.  We grabbed the keys of the 5K diesel forklift and rammed the tines into the side of the rain-soaked blast revetments, chalking off our best depths and earning points for records bested.  We got the CO’s ‘personal’ vehicle stuck atop one of the blast revetments, and had to jump out quick like a bunny to rock it loose before someone saw us.  Youth is full of dumb moments.

The Randal I knew wanted nothing more than a hut on the beach, eternal sunshine, pretty girls, his motorcycle, his CDs, and his surfboard.  All day, every day, end of fucking story.  Maybe he would’ve wised up and gotten serious later in life; less Randal, more Chad.  And maybe Chad would have left the beach, got a job, bought a truck, found himself a blue-eyed girl, and raised a family.  Maybe not. I guess we’ll never know either way.  Maybe it’s not even fair to think of him this way; stuck in time, forever young, perpetually partying, and eternally laughing.  Seems kinda one-dimensional, if you think about it.  No parent should ever have to outlive their child. Time goes by, you do some healing.  Then out of nowhere you get a call and have to explain things all over again.  How he’d found the love of his life, how your high-speed son was inexorably drawn into motorcycle racing, how “faster” was his greatest passion, how he lost control on a qualifying run and laid his bike down on turn 10, and how his injuries sent him into a coma from which he never awoke.

This flashback takes place while Chad’s dad is still talking.  My eyes are watering, and my throat feels like it’s been bricked over, but I need to say something appropriate, only I don’t know what.

Struggling to speak, I told his dad how sorry I was.  “I’m.., *ahem*, I’m really very sorry for your loss, sir.  Chad was a good kid, uh, the best, a really good friend.”  I sounded like a babbling jackass, and made little to no sense.  I wanted to be able to say something meaningful, something appropriate.  Something that summed up all the good times and laughs I’d had with his son.  I owed him that much.

Come on!  We’re talking about “Front-flip-down-the-sand-dunes, got-your-back-in-a-barfight, more-girlfriends-than-I-can-clearly-remember, bourbon-swilling, whip-your-ass-at-pool, speed-metal, laugh-now-regret-later” Randal!

“Yes, sir.  Chad was the best.”  The best?  What the fuck does that even mean?  I hate it when people end their letters with ‘best’.  It seems a lazy, Los Angeles, phony baloney sun tan sort of thing to do, yet it was the only sentiment I could offer.

It suddenly occurred to me how cruel the whole thing was.  You get a call, your child’s been injured.  Wait by their side, hoping they’ll wake up from the coma they’ve lapsed into.  When they don’t, you make a very painful decision and watch your flesh and blood being lowered into the ground.

Randal is dead.

I’m barely aware of the fact that my mouth is still flapping, but my brain’s not engaged.  I have no idea what I’m saying.  Hopefully I’m not making an ass of myself, or sharing uncomfortable intel.  (Did you know your son could turn over a bottle of Jack in one night?  Did you know he had two beautiful girls in his birthday bed while we were roommates in A-School? Do you know how generous a friend he was, and much we still miss him?)

Meanwhile, Chad’s father continues to speak.  ”Yeah, we heard about the time he and Ian rolled the car.”  He gave a weary but admiring chuckle for his son’s misadventures.  (What am I thinking?  He probably knows way more about the real Randal than I ever will.)

They were coming back from seeing Faith No More at the Barrowlands.  It was two in the morning, and Chad was drinking hot salsa straight from the jar in an effort to stay awake.  Exhausted, he nodded off.  His driver-side mirror high-fived that of a car headed in the opposite direction, and suddenly they found themselves upside down in a ditch.  Dark of night, and who knows where?  When Ian told me the story later, he said Chad looked around, sniffed once and said, “Right on. Got a cigarette?”  They laughed about it, mentally adding it to their litany of good time stories to be recanted later, like epic tales related by helmeted heroes seated around an oaken slab in a modern day Valhalla.  Or something.

The call wrapped to a close.  I thanked his dad for his time, put the phone back in its cradle and just sat there for awhile, staring at the television.  The sound was turned way down on a cartoon mouse eviscerating a cat.  The light licked the walls and cast contorted triangles across the ceiling.  Outside, a bird made some stupid noises.

Randal was dead.

Tears blurred my eyes, and my throat was still constricted.  Which was good, seeing as there was no one to call, no one who’d understand.  I got up, fixed myself a very strong drink, and went back to watching the cat get his revenge.

Goodbye, Randal.

Blood and Bone and Bits of String

Preface: I haven’t braved the Great Outdoors since I left Alaska in the Spring of 2007, and typically I did so with two good friends, Eric and Amy, both seasoned outdoor types.  I always felt a bit of a Special Cousin around them, but I asked a lot of questions and tried to learn from my mistakes.  I am generally very optimistic under adverse conditions, and refuse to give in.

28SEP09 – Back from a soggy weekend of camping.  The first day was fine.  A gorgeous autumn drive.  Great weather, no worries.  Once on site, the tent went up in a hurry and the fire, after some trial and error, was soon blazing away.  I was anticipating taking some macro shots of the various species of caterpillars and spiders that surrounded the camp site with my new camera, and getting a crash course in medicinal herbs from Cassandra, my camping partner, who’s extremely knowledgeable in this area.  We spoke excitedly about hiking and exploring the local waterfalls the next day.

The next morning, we awoke to pouring rain.  Despite setting the tent on a level surface, the ground cloth had herded the water toward the center of the tent, which was sopped up by the high-tech biscuits of our sleeping bags.  We dried the bags, and enjoyed hot showers at the camp store.  Cass re-staked the tent, I cut dead logs for the fire, and we cleaned up the camp.  Our mood restored, we discussed the pros and cons of what had happened, what piece of gear to bring next time, and which pieces weren’t as useful.

The second night was wonderful: a perfect fire, good company, and a great meal (kebobs, hobo packets, and S’mores for dessert!)  Again, we talked of hiking and exploring the trails as we poked and prodded at the coals, and sipped coffee-flavored vodka from my flask.

The next morning brought more rain.  Worse than before, and negatively impacted our mood.  Conclusions were reached.

See here: I don’t want your second-hand, dry and comfy armchair critique of our painful decision to abandon ship.  “Well, I would have done this…, Well, I’m sure I would have done that differently…, Well, I would have simply persevered, I, I, I…”

No.  Shut up.  You wouldn’t have done any of those things.  You’d have pulled stakes just like we did.  Time and money were spent, and a lot was riding on this trip.  But rain is rain; misery doubly so.

“It appears the Shenandoah simply doesn’t like you.”  This was a direct quote from my less-than-thrilled Camping Partner as we wrung out our gear, packed the car and headed down the mountain.  Silence reigned.

At last we emerged from the mouth of the park and entered the Land Before Time, seeking to purchase petrol for the motorcar from a convenience store which advertised, among other things, coffee.  I had The Need, as I’d developed a migraine strong enough to make a horse squint.  My hands were shaking as I fumbled with a packet of Advil outside the store, and I probably looked like a tweaker; a four-day growth of beard, no socks, camo pants, soggy Keens.  Plus, I reeked like a house fire.

Inside, the ATM was out of order and the place looked like a sty.  There were no cups, there were no lids, and the only coffee had been boiled into pure black LaBraeness in a filthy pot that hadn’t been properly cleaned since Christ was a messcook.  The woman at the register seemed incapable of running any of the four cards we offered her:

Clerk: “We don’t take Discover.”
Cass: “But, the sign says you do…” (pointing at the sign)
Clerk: “I don’t know…” (dips head, looks away from sign)
Me: “It’s cool, I’ve got it.”
Clerk: (runs my card, shakes her head) “No.”
Me: “Uh, okay? Try this one.”
Clerk: “No.” (It is then that I realize the clerk is mentally disabled. So was the guy in line behind me, and the overly-friendly guy who’d held the door open for me. We exchanged looks, and carefully backed out.)

Time passes. I am able to do laundry, Metro/bus/walk home, dry my gear and restore order to my universe.

Back at the Project now, Monday morning.  Coffee for breakfast, hot and glorious. Listening to the Talking Heads, Tunng, and Chroma Key.  Nearly 100 emails in my box, but the only voice mail waiting was the weak and terrified voice of an old woman who’d phoned late Sunday afternoon: “Hello…?  I’ve been trying to reach the veterans hospital for more than an hour now. Hello?”  There was a heavy, defeated sigh before the line went dead.

I called back at the number she’d left.  (I’m such a fucking a boy scout, right? I’m not the veteran’s hospital, and following up random crazy phone calls isn’t my job, but I felt concern.  Something about the waver in the woman’s voice really got to me.  Besides, someday I’ll be scared and deaf and confused, too.  At some point, the world will cease to make sense.  More so.)

An old man answered the phone: “Hello?”  His voice was a creaking shout of uncertainty.

Me: “Good morning, sir.  I received a call from this number from someone looking for the veteran’s hospital, and I guess I was just calling to see if everything was OK..?”
He: “What?  There’s no one here!”
Me: “Yes, sir.  But I received a call from this number from someone looking for the –.”
He: “No, we don’t want any!”
Me: “That’s great, sir, because I’m not selling anything.  But I did receive a call from this number asking about –.”
He: (frail shouting) “What do you want?  I can’t understand you!  Speak English, for crying out loud!”
Me: (slower, louder, more patient) “Sir, I received a telephone call from someone at this number looking for the veteran’s hospital –.”
He: “Leave me alone!”  *click*

I don’t know how else to end this entry, so I will.

TWM

If It Bleeds, It Leads

 

11SEP09 – Friday morning. I woke up, felt like crap.  Texted my co-worker: “Whatever I have is in full swing. See you Monday.”  Went back to sleep.  A short time later, my phone chirped again with an incoming text from my roommate here at the Department of Awesome, one which opened a whole can of worms.

“Suspicious vessel in the Potomac. WTF, over?”  I stumbled into the living room and fired up my computer, swiping a cheese stick from the fridge while I waited for our sucktastic intertubes connection to kick in.  (*If all quality internet service providers lived together in peace and harmony in a special heat-proof facility on the sun, Comcast would maintain their headquarters on Pluto. Fail, bitches.)

“SUSPICIOUS VESSEL IN DC, Coast Guard fires on boat on Potomac River,” read CNN’s “breaking news” headline at 10:05 a.m.  Jumping Jesus!  Here we go again.  And just the other day, I was thinking that it’d be nice if the current administration were able to say something like, “The danger has passed.  We’re here to protect you, we’re doing our best, and we will remain vigilant.  But we’re de-escalating the threat level.  Please, go about the business of living your lives.”  After all, we’ve been in fight-or-flight for eight years.  Think about how many people are probably watching this right now, and getting the shakes.

But by 10:29, the “crisis” had begun to evaporate like car exhaust on a cold morning.  CNN quoted two “unidentified sources” as saying the incident had been a “possible” Coast Guard training exercise.  Of course it was!  No shots were ever fired, merely described on a radio scanner.  The whole thing had been a large scale game of Telegraph, albeit poorly timed.  What spurred CNN into “action mode” were realistic-sounding radio transmissions from the Coast Guard as it conducted a routine drill.  (“We have expended 10 rounds,” according to those huddled around a scanner in the CNN ready room.)  Did they happen to catch the broadcast from the beginning?  There was no mention of this, but if they did they’d probably have heard the words, “This is a drill, this is a drill,” repeated several times.  It’s part of a standard operating procedure somewhere.  I’d bet lunch on it.

But we’ll get back to that in a second.

I don’t usually talk news or current events on this blog, because I like to keep my professional and private lives at arm’s length from one another.  But I’ve got a few questions of my own, and since the topic is nearly dead at this point, I guess it won’t hurt to ask ‘em.

Question 1: Where was the camera positioned?  The correspondent stated twice that the perspective was “FROM the Pentagon…” Well, the Pentagon is located west of that vantage point (see image), not parallel to the bridges, and some distance away through trees and a small marina, if I’m not mistaken.  I see two bridges; one at the top and the other directly at the bottom of my screen.  Not a big issue, just curious.  We’ll chalk it up as -5, error in fact.  After all, it’s not unheard of for the Pentagon to have a remote tower camera for security.

Question 2: The correspondent incorrectly identified a slow-flying HH-65, the Coast Guards bread and butter bird, as a ‘media crew,’ despite the words “Coast” followed by “Guard” painted across the side of it.  The helo makes a slow pass, right heading left.

OK.  Even though the video was in black and white, AND at a poor resolution, and even if the words weren’t that clear, the ‘65 has a very distinctive shape and an enclosed tail rotor, vastly different from your standard bubble nosed eye-in-the-sky. And if this was media, wouldn’t they be feeding better footage or commentary to CNN in hopes of an affiliate mention?  Survey says, “Yes.”  I’ll chalk this up to battle blindness and subject unfamiliarity – an anchorperson too focused on filling the air, trying to make sense of a panicky situation and no intel, ever conscious of the cameras and microphones being trained on them, with viewers and ratings hanging on their every word.  Dead air is bad air.  Everyone knows that. “Keep talking!  Maybe I’ll say something smart!”

Question 3: Back to the scanner.  Did those listening to the drill hear the ENTIRE exercise, or did they tune in halfway through?  They probably missed the all-important “exercise” preface, unless they knew to tune in ahead of time.  (Again, “exercise” should have been repeated each time a transmission was made.)  But how could they listen to this broadcast or watch the video, and not get the impression that something wasn’t quite right?

We’ve all seen spy thrillers and war flicks at the movies or watched them on television, right?  Hollywood hires former military members as creative consultants to make sure that the stuff being churned out looks, smells and behaves like the real thing.  (This applies to all manner of programs, CSI, Law & Order, 24, and so on.)  As a result, we’re all subconsciously aware of how a military or tactical operation should look and sound.  See what I’m getting at?  We’re all mock experts.  We can talk the talk, even if we don’t walk the walk.  Which brings me to…

Question 4: If you watch the footage, it’s largely evident that this WAS a training exercise, although again, perhaps not to the trained eye.  One of the boats can be seen moving toward the stationary vessel, holding station (i.e., staying in place), then speeding away and conducting a few high speed, almost “playful” turns… which looks kinda like a coxswain break-in to me.  By that, I mean someone in a continuous training process of learning how to drive the boat, getting a feel for the controls of this multi-million dollar hot-rod.  If it were a real engagement, a true threat, wouldn’t those high-speed orange peels have maintained a fixed position around the hostile or suspect vessel, guns at the ready, awaiting instruction?  What tactical purpose would darting back and forth and doing donuts really serve?  Answer: none.  Hey, maybe I’m wrong.  But again, it’s another clue to observers that this was a DRILL.  Which brings me to…

Question 5: Why should the Coast Guard have to notify the media each and every time they’re gonna to do a training exercise?  (Even as I type this, 1145 EST, I can promise you that somewhere, out there, a Coast Guard station or asset is conducting a drill.  It’s almost inconceivable that they aren’t performing some sort of emergency response practice: BECCE’s (Basic Engineering Casualty Control Exercise), man overboard drills, fire-fighting drills, etc.)

Now, if the CG did notify the media of each and every training exercise they planned, wouldn’t the beat reporter, newsroom editor, or camera crew get sick of fielding those calls and eventually ask the Coast Guard to call them back when something big happened?  I think so.  Think about how sick and tired we’d all get of hearing about them?  And, like ripples in a pond, think about how that could exponentially impact the news and spillover into public commentary?  “Well, I think they shouldn’t drill so much, they’re wasting tax dollars/fuel/frightening endangered ducks/polluting the air…”

And, tactically speaking, would the Coast Guard really WANT their tactics described in detail to the American viewer?  Survey says: “Probably not.”  Some of those tactics are law enforcement in nature, I’m sure.  There’s ‘Right to Know’, and then there’s ‘Need to Know.’  Always has been, always will be.  Accusations of liberal media have absolutely fuck all to do with this.  Look, I’m as Green and crunchy as they come, and even I support the right to keep quiet.  You don’t win a poker game by showing everyone your hand:

“May I have your attention please?  As you can see, I’ve got two aces, a five of hearts and a queen of clubs.  Now, I’m gonna discard these cards here (points, shows cards), and draw two more from the pile- that is, if, through a process of long-term discussion seven part discussion and a lengthy and complicated voting process, you all agree that I should do this, because, you know, you’re the taxpayer and you have a right to full disclosure…”  We’d gum the works quicker than shit, and get very little done.

Question 6: (more of an opinion, really)  Every day, the Coast Guard patrols the seas and rivers, listening for mariners in peril.  They do a lot more than that, actually, but I’ll stick to life-saving.  Twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, I can promise you that someone in blue is listening to a VHF radio, ears peeled for faint cries of “Mayday, mayday!”  And because of that, every day a wife gets her husband back, children get their father back, and good friends have the opportunity to come sauntering into their favorite watering hole for strong drinks and relieved merriment. “Hey, look everyone, Bob’s back!  We were so worried!”  Sure, Bob will die someday. But not today.  Not yet.

I don’t know who to direct this to, so I’m just gonna say…

Dear CNN: Total strangers are alive to see the sunrise because of this organization’s long-standing dedication to the preservation human life, and the safety of life at sea.  Period, end of sentence.  This organization’s motto was, at one time: “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.”  They put themselves in harm’s way, day in, day out, for STRANGERS, just like you.  They venture into the nastiest of storms and voluntarily brave a list of dangerous conditions as long as my arm – and you have the nerve to call them on the carpet over a training exercise?  ”Felony stupidity,” was the expression that set my teeth grinding.

Fuck you, CNN.  That’s like buying the best guard dog money can buy, and telling it to shut up when it keeps you awake at night.

I know this is wrong of me to even think, but I can’t help wondering if maybe you, or perhaps a member of your news organization, own a boat.  Let’s say you do.  And let’s further postulate that one of these days, maybe your entire family will be aboard for a day of fun in the sun.  Buddy, sis, the wifey, and grandma.  Good times!  Now, maybe – probably – the weather will turn nasty.  Suppose the engine conks out, or worse, catches fire.  Uh, oh!  Or maybe your GPS goes toes up, your anchor malfunctions and you find yourself drifting blind in the fog, edging ever closer to the shipping lanes frequented by much, much larger ships.  What if, in all the stress, your grandmother suffers a heart attack?  Think about that for a moment.  Who ya gonna call?  (Hint: it’s not Ghostbusters.)

Or hey, maybe you’ll be stranded in a post-hurricane city overcome by fear, flooding and madness, without food, water or FEMA, and as the waters rise, trapping you in your sweltering attic with nowhere left to swim, you find yourself thinking that this is the moment of your death…

Wait!  What’s that sound?  What’s that bright orange helicopter doing?  Do they see you? Yes!  How can you tell?  Because they’re chopping a hole in your roof to get you out!  ”Thank fuck, it’s the Coast Guard.  We’re going home..!”

“Felony stupidity” will sound pretty foolish then.  Am I right, jackass?  Anything for ratings, anything for the scoop.  Is that how it works?

As a friend of mine said recently, “The media machine has an insatiable appetite.  If it runs short on food, it will eat anything.  Try not to look like a steak when it happens.”

Sincerely,

TWM