Twenty Five Years On The Road,
Meeting Fred Tarr

Poetry being what it is and everyone's nerves all messed up....a good long story is just the ticket sometimes to calm down the souls on this night journey we are all on...in full daylight. How did I meet Fred Tarr? How did that happen? I know if I'd never come to Beirut, I'd never have met Fred Tarr...that much is a FACT. I could tell the yarn about brother John who found himself out on a salt flat in his rig a few years ago, his dentures on the dash. The cops sailing in and him there not knowing how he'd arrived to such a place, all coked and cracked out. They took him away and wouldn't let him grab his teeth. So he is toothless now and regrets only that fact about his lost weekend in a Peterbilt. But that isn't the story I want to tell. I want to tell the story of the orange jumpsuit. It is an old tale and one I've told so often that to do it differently is not only impossible but unwise. I'll try anyway because yesterday I saw the Cedars for the first time, the Cedars of the bible or the "Ardess's" as they are called around here and I'll have to ask my new pal Nicholas about those trees. 6,000 years old (someone told me but I don't believe it) and there we were at the bottom of those massive trunks wondering how we made it through a quarter of a century this week, together....married.

Where to begin? Does one begin the story of laying in a bed next to the Sacred Heart church where I photographed Ginsberg a year later (in the church that is, not the bed as Kent J. would agree, Alan and I had nothing in common to share in a bed). Does one relate that the person in the other room was the assistant District Attorney who later married a woman whose husband murdered a man for her sake and went to jail where he belonged in the first place for being such a Kung Fu freak? I guess that is a good tangent for a tale such as this and really, all good stories can start anywhere (Kate Braverman and I agreed on that one and we were the only two to understand how an earring placed on a table can start with a story about a visit to an old hermit interested in THA Bible and THA weather we were all about to inherit as a payment for our fine human deeds on this planet...we two knew that an earring is as good a place to start as any but the rest of the 'workshoppers' just sat dumbfounded and eerily adjacent to the table...and later the reading by the young Buddhist of the Cantos and my stupid question there which caused all the writers to jump up and leap into the cheese trays at the gathering...bear with me now, bear with me).

Point A (the magistrate's office at 5 p.m.) to Point B (the Ardess's of Biblical Lore) is a long journey with so many eddies. The first chapter of it though is found between pages 14 and 29 roughly (if you are reading the first edition) on a highway east of the Chirachauhas, north of Agua Prieta and south of the mineral mines. I was doing about 80 in a 55 mph zone. About right I'd say to make the 13 miles between two places a bit less painful. It was nearly dusk and the car was yellow, a Maverick to be specific. Everyone remembers that car although it was an average vehicle. I guess because it had a tendency to fly.

The redneck sharif sauntered up to my window with his usual shit-eating grin. Oh, he and I had met so many times before and would meet still another few times after. But this day would be our day, our real contact point. I just sat there grinding my teeth. How many times had this asshole stopped me? Five? Six? Oh, I'm sure he was counting. He issued the violation slip and slowly walked back to his car. I could see him in the rear view mirror and I must have waited for him to make that last, long look in my direction. Oh, he was an animal as men tend to be...as the men in Tripoli were yesterday as they stared at my daughter traipse by and I warned them with my caustic looks back. All the same, wherever you go...looking at things in the wrong ways.

I was wearing that famous outfit, my wedding dress only I didn't actually know it that day. A trim black skirt with a slit in the back, four inch wooden heels (as that was the style in 1980) and the most beautiful pink shell sweater. Someone once told me that back then, my legs were to die for but I couldn't see then what that old drunk was talking about....still a chubby little tomboy up at the reservoir (in my mind and still am really) taking fish off the hooks. I looked like a very hot secretary hahaha and ready for a ride.

As he turned to look, he hoped that I'd hint for him to return (the patrolman's fantasy it seems), I tore that ticket right in half and let it fall like flower petals outside the driver's side window. Two pink pieces of paper tumbling into the weeds but I had signed them and admitted my guilt. A very important crime in Arizona, littering. Almost a felony when you are dressed to kill but usually, not a crime which requires a sweet young thing in a pink shell sweater 'be arrested and handcuffed' for...no, it isn't that sort of thing.

He came stomping back to the side of the car, "I am going to have to arrest you for dumping rubbish on the highway." Have to? I mean have to?

No, not me. I'd never been in trouble unless you count that time my friends and I robbed three houses but I was only seven when that happened and we did get a fine Japanese flag and a real crystal ball out of the deal. I was a good girl. Good grades and everything good except for that thing in those rooms near the Sacred Heart Church within earshot of the DA from Syracuse. Where the hell is Syracuse Fred Tarr? Where the hell is Africa? Although I didn't know that my thoughts were like that then, I do now. And then some.

So I grabbed the keys and began turning them in the ignition. Fight or flight and I picked flight. The sharif though meant to arrest me and reached in to remove the keys from their place. So I bit his hand. Simple enough, logical too. Sunk my teeth right on into his awful and not very tasty flesh. I'm pretty sure that isn't what he had in mind for my mouth. He was hoping for something more tender from his famous little cohort in the black skirt behind the wheel of a yellow Maverick. There were so many that had hopes like that back then and I still don't understand why...I'm just an average person, less than average height and sometimes more than average weight with exactly one blind eye, can't see a thing on my left.

I still don't understand how cops know how to open a car door with one hand while their other hand is holding keys and being bitten but they do. They must have drills in police college like that where they learn to do all sorts of things with one hand. All sorts of things with their billy clubs and authorities with a shit eating grin.

...to be continued, it is a very LONG tale and we need to get to the Cedars. It's an awfully steep climb up those barren mountains, an awfully steep climb....and this is difficult reading. Don't even attempt to understand it until the end. And even then, 30-70% will walk away scratching their heads. Why this and why now? Why not. Afterall, it took me twenty five years to get to the Cedars of Lebanon:

http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/cedars.htm