"The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth."
17.5.06
A Bright Movie*
The saris go by me from the embassies.
-The Woman at the Washington Zoo
by Randall Jarrell
Whilst gadding about and on the way back
this long story started to end as it should
in the middle. Stopped on a corner,
saw the same one-legged old man there
sitting on the curb. In a country like this
no one has a sign: Will Work For Food
because that would be just too
crowded. It used to be that he'd stand
on that one leg to collect alms for himself
but now times are tough he has to wait
to be called over. Not like the guy
in the wheelchair on the East Side who gets
out onto the macadam between twelve
chaotic lanes, God Only Knows How
(probably dropped off by a taxi, must be).
Not like the kid up by the Phoenicia
whose hands were burnt clean off
who smiles and earns so much for that smile.
His job is easy. But a one legged man
has a different problem in a bad economy.
Standing on one leg for hours isn't what you'd call
easy. You don't do it for nothing.
So I stopped and called him over,
I'd passed him by at least five times in three months
to avoid pissing off the guy in the rear view mirror.
This time though I called him over to hand him a fiver.
Five times one thousand equals roughly five thousand.
It was good and I noticed the girl behind me
doing the same, dragging coins out of the purse
that must have been in her lap. It felt good.
I knew that if I hadn't stopped she wouldn't have either.
I lost her near the airport tunnel. You know
how it is in the subterranean tunnel that
goes right under the Hariri International tarmac.
I was just about to enter when I saw everyone
coming out the other way, HCE. Turn around.
Lucky today it seems because once you get in
that tunnel and there is an accident, you
are in there. Full of exhaust and exhaustion,
pushing and shoving until two lanes turn into four.
You smoke three cigarettes that you didn't need.
You get tired of listening to the Eagles sing
about Winslow Arizona ONE MORE TIME.
You get out and head back up the wrong way
on an exit ramp but that's okay, in Lebanon
everyone knows what you're doing. They
would do the same. Like yesterday's fender
bender in the Ouzai. Not paying attention
and wham! Right into the back of a taxi.
The driver gets out and he's mad. I'm ready
to fight it, to say he is a taxi driver and I'm
ready to do that when a thirty kg kid squeezes
between me and the city bus.
"What are you doing there kid? Move away,
you are going to get hit." He was just trying
to help. In Lebanon the kids settle disasters
too, they've seen so much and damn if they
don't have the audacity to tell you how to
handle a fender bender. The boy did what I
told him to do and seemed rather pleased
that I'd thought enough of him to tell him
to get out from between me and the bus.
The taxi driver is there at my window.
I just ask him, instead of fighting it all,
"What do you want from me? Is twenty
bucks okay?" Sure is. I know once I drive
away he would have settled for ten and he
knows too, he could have asked for thirty.
A deal is a deal though and we drive away
pleased. Some poor man leans in my window
and says, "Hamdu'la sah'lahme" which to me
sounds an awful lot like Thanks for the salami.
But it means, Thank God you weren't hurt.
I agree and he reminds me, "Haram, he is
a taxi driver." Means that twenty bucks is like
thirty customers and worth a bit of bent chrome.
I left the scene of the accident feeling pretty good.
Today as I avoided the tunnel wondering
about the bodies that might have been there,
the ones I could have seen had I had the time
for the Eagles and three more cancer sticks,
I cruised through the old airport road that starts
right by Fadallah's Mobil station, a station
that gives everything to orphans
(reminded myself to go there next time to buy gas) .
I enjoyed the following like popcorn at the show:
carcasses of sheeps and goats and cows
still bleeding into the gutters plastic balls
in net bags voluptuous Shia girls some
covered and some not taxis stopping every
few meters letting out little old men and haggard
old women muffler shops and bread stores until
finally I saw what it was I was after. A sign that read:
The School of Opulent Knowledge, a little run down
but all the same, extravagantly fufilling.
**This poem suffered under a horrible name. This weekend while in South Lebanon I watched the movie Syriana with old what's his name...from Ocean's Seven....and boy! What a bunch of plotless bullshit. And the parts about Beirut...so out of context. Since the movie takes place now...post 9/11 and in the Era of so-called "Oil Wars" how is it that in Beirut the stage is set with Freedom Fighters on buildings with machine guns? Now...back in the early to mid eighties there were a few of those but mid to late 90's? Nope. But that is the point of propaganda......to make you confused. Never was there a more beautiful depiction of confusion. But the great part is the hero (in the end) just goes home like Bilbo Baggins with some kind of 'knowledge' ring...we are supposed to believe and that knowledge is that there is no POINT to these things that people do in the Middle East to each other. It's just sort of a crazy game played by oil tycoons.
ZIONISM mentioned in the plot? Oh sure...I guess you could call it that "protocols of zion" type of thing and they flash on some old newsreel of the Rockafellers.....right in the beginning. And that's it. Nary a mention of the single most IMPORTANT cause of the crisis in the MIDDLE EAST.
A type of racism and bigotry and all out HATRED of a large number of people called:
ZIONISM. There you have it. And yes...see the movie. It is worth a scratch on the head and perhaps one in the crotch. (You know Arab men are always scratching their crotches and thank the Lord this is never portrayed in movies...God only knows what devastation that might provoke in the 'civilized' nations...you know the ones...like American that support Zionism and Christian Zionism to the tune of several billions of dollars yearly).
11.5.06
What About Mars?
No more problems says the package
the cure came in, no more
warning labels and the price tag
no longer legible. It began
with flashy children and fast cars
then people started talking
about the leftover stuff
after the move out,
wondered what would happen
to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.
Where to put Mars now?
Whose house next?
No more problems says the package
the cure came in, no more
warning labels and the price tag
no longer legible. It began
with flashy children and fast cars
then people started talking
about the leftover stuff
after the move out,
wondered what would happen
to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.
Where to put Mars now?
Whose house next?
9.5.06
Promises promises promises. Yes...Francie's story is not over. She was the Maid of Honor (and I mean honor) at my famous wedding. There were few witnesses that day. Before that point is achieved however we must venture some into the tales of the Lebanese community of Douglas and the flash point that became so many other things involving the court system, the Civil War in Lebanon (and just WHO came up with that misnomer! a Civil war...what kind of war is that!) and on and on like that. Just like the old days when you'd wait for the end of the story and Paul Harvey wouldn't give it to you. One of my favorite Paul Harvey's is the one about the guy who disables a nuclear disaster...a young man. Who, at The End Of The Story turns out to be?
Jimmy Carter.
It is that kind of story but the story is Neverending...so it seems. And the wait is truly long. I usually tell it so fast that the important tangents are missed and I do not want to skip a beat this time. Not a single one. Francie, where are you? You were there that day 25 years ago...yes. You were there.
Jimmy Carter.
It is that kind of story but the story is Neverending...so it seems. And the wait is truly long. I usually tell it so fast that the important tangents are missed and I do not want to skip a beat this time. Not a single one. Francie, where are you? You were there that day 25 years ago...yes. You were there.
6.5.06
Damn Fine Poetry Blog...very no nonsense and low key Midwestern.....yet, yet....absolutely unusual. Go here:
http://atticofficewritings.blogspot.com/
http://atticofficewritings.blogspot.com/
5.5.06
Backgammon in Byblos, The Baalbek Valley
More virtual tourism by Radical Ann.
It is only TOO bad she doesn't want to come back here. I keep asking and asking and asking...
...there ain't no war here. Come on over! That's just a lot of talk...er...well...I think it is anyway.
It is only TOO bad she doesn't want to come back here. I keep asking and asking and asking...
...there ain't no war here. Come on over! That's just a lot of talk...er...well...I think it is anyway.
4.5.06
The juice man
A juicer in the southern Lebanese City of Sidon...or Saida as we call it...a beautiful woman.
Image stolen from Radical Ann.
Because I can.
I'm her biggest fan.
We've a great big plan.
We are going to go
to old Mexico
to see the Aztec ruins
some monumental hewin'
the size of the WTC
or the Pentagon in DC.
Image stolen from Radical Ann.
Because I can.
I'm her biggest fan.
We've a great big plan.
We are going to go
to old Mexico
to see the Aztec ruins
some monumental hewin'
the size of the WTC
or the Pentagon in DC.
30.4.06
29.4.06
And yes...the Cedar story will continue...its very long you know and a very bad cold going on in my nasal passages. So a few poems in the interim and a gentle cry called release for things gone by this week. Very important things resolve in a matter of seconds sometimes and leave you wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place. The mystery of fuss, the release of captives and the forward flight of our feet into the next days and weeks that become the past even as we are folding the last letter and slipping it into the drawer labelled, "Let go now. It's all over."
And still, Time waits for no one in the final hours before the present disturbs the future with its curious assumptions and prophecies.
And still, Time waits for no one in the final hours before the present disturbs the future with its curious assumptions and prophecies.
Parts Of Joy
(for Nicholas)
Notice please the animals
how they are trapped
by pleasure, frozen
in desires of rub and sleep.
Even ants are on the verge
of something new each time,
concentrated into long lines
of pillage and search where
love and anger are sequential matters.
Cats balance on the edges
where rubbish contains the odor
of the thousand places they've been
as they wait and flee,
bouncing and sailing through
the air. They always know
where they are going
and perform with ease
that which is easy.
This type of thing becomes them.
(for Nicholas)
Notice please the animals
how they are trapped
by pleasure, frozen
in desires of rub and sleep.
Even ants are on the verge
of something new each time,
concentrated into long lines
of pillage and search where
love and anger are sequential matters.
Cats balance on the edges
where rubbish contains the odor
of the thousand places they've been
as they wait and flee,
bouncing and sailing through
the air. They always know
where they are going
and perform with ease
that which is easy.
This type of thing becomes them.
28.4.06
A Sad Sort of Reminder
There is no such thing as silence
save for the absence of curious other
noises and talks. One day we hold
a person and the next, it grows away
refuses our touches and grasps
until hope against hope
the child returns to the quiet ages
of our tired despondence that sounds
as loud as the absence of the prattle
quite below the hum of mirrors and sinks
in those peculiar hidden frequencies.
Old men and old women stay
like shade near the stronger solid trees
looking each the same in the sound
of thunder and the memory of lightning:
one moment flush with thoughts and dream;
the next, pushing out the last breaths with
a decided effort as if only living mattered
next to the chill in the rumble of an echo,
struggling to get up and just move.
As if there were options.
Children grow old too and move on,
must hear the familiar looming song-
one day but not now, maybe not this now -
covered in a succession of evolutions and improvements.
Prodigals, sentient little beings that we are,
dust to dust as the sayings go. We all come back.
A building up and then these inevitable erosions.
The closer you get, the louder it seems.
There is no such thing as silence
save for the absence of curious other
noises and talks. One day we hold
a person and the next, it grows away
refuses our touches and grasps
until hope against hope
the child returns to the quiet ages
of our tired despondence that sounds
as loud as the absence of the prattle
quite below the hum of mirrors and sinks
in those peculiar hidden frequencies.
Old men and old women stay
like shade near the stronger solid trees
looking each the same in the sound
of thunder and the memory of lightning:
one moment flush with thoughts and dream;
the next, pushing out the last breaths with
a decided effort as if only living mattered
next to the chill in the rumble of an echo,
struggling to get up and just move.
As if there were options.
Children grow old too and move on,
must hear the familiar looming song-
one day but not now, maybe not this now -
covered in a succession of evolutions and improvements.
Prodigals, sentient little beings that we are,
dust to dust as the sayings go. We all come back.
A building up and then these inevitable erosions.
The closer you get, the louder it seems.
24.4.06
The Sound of Olatayo
I've known people who were passengers
on high-jacked planes.
They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace
and probably still are.
I've seen a black man
come out of the sea
like an aborigine -
Mexican sand on his face
and hair twisted into tribal knots
a week after he stormed out
of the Que Pas, a community college diner
where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,
watched him and the other Nigerians
as they listened to the sound
of foreigner's eating.
Not a word between them
and I recall how sweet their silence was
when I was in it with them.
But Mahdi came out of the sea
and I remember how angry he was
when the Arabs at the table,
Saadi Sartawi and his big pipe, Faisal the Libyan, Wassim
the Palestinian brothel owner's kid from Egypt,
kept calling him Abed all the time
instead of just calling him
The Sudan-ee, because
he was not their slave, he was just
from Africa and knew
how to make an impression
when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.
I've known people who were passengers
on high-jacked planes.
They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace
and probably still are.
I've seen a black man
come out of the sea
like an aborigine -
Mexican sand on his face
and hair twisted into tribal knots
a week after he stormed out
of the Que Pas, a community college diner
where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,
watched him and the other Nigerians
as they listened to the sound
of foreigner's eating.
Not a word between them
and I recall how sweet their silence was
when I was in it with them.
But Mahdi came out of the sea
and I remember how angry he was
when the Arabs at the table,
Saadi Sartawi and his big pipe, Faisal the Libyan, Wassim
the Palestinian brothel owner's kid from Egypt,
kept calling him Abed all the time
instead of just calling him
The Sudan-ee, because
he was not their slave, he was just
from Africa and knew
how to make an impression
when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.
Firsts
There are so many firsts in life. The first time you have a baby, the first time you lose a tooth, the first time you stay out after school without permission and the first time you see a dead person or kill a live one.
The first time I did something I wasn't supposed to, it was Francie Vasquez leading me home by the hand but only to the corner where the old Atlantic Richfield sign towered over the fig tree next to old Mrs. Holland's house. We used to run errands for her (when we were old enough to tie our shoes). We'd simply knock on her door and knew if she needed sugar or milk, we could get a dime out of her. I barely remember her though or the way her house looked. The Atlantic Richfield sign far too important because it was on the Corner.
Some of us could climb up onto the billboard and walk on the platform where each month a man would come with a new sign to roll out onto the giant canvas, but I wasn't one of them. I was too chubby and couldn't do alot of the stuff everyone else could. I never did learn to swing on the pipes upside down without my hands but I could flip over it once or twice and backwards too. Everyone should grow up near a Corner like that because a corner is so many things...a place to sit and horse around, swing upside down on the pipes or to organize bike voyages.
In this case however, the Corner was the closest Francie Vasquez wanted to get to my mother whom she knew would be waiting for me with a Cancer Tree switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother had gone berserk looking for me that day. Kindergarten let out at 12:30 because I was in the 'morning class', a specific group of people that would stay the 'morning class' for the rest of our lives as opposed to the 'afternoon class', people who I can barely remember their names let alone their faces. That particular day I went to visit a sick friend. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Donna Cole hadn't been to school for three days so I just took a right turn from the school stairs and headed on down to Brophy Avenue instead of going the 'back way' down Mayer like I was supposed to...past Mr. Williams fine gardens and Rosemary's old place, past the Peralta's and up my hill. Not this time. I headed up to 'no man's land' on Brophy where the rough families lived: Figueroas, Maestas, Carabeos and Vasquezes. I'm not really sure why they were considered dangerous up there because they always treated me as one of their own. Just like Francie did that day.
I was inside Donna's house. She wasn't really sick but her mom had been on a three day binge. She was living in a small rental under the Maestas place, two rooms and a kitchenette plus a water closet for the toilet. We played paper dolls for a while and watched some TV. It was a fine afternoon and the hours didn't really matter. They never matter when you are four years old. I was an early starter you know because my birthday was in November. I think it is the reason I'm always the short one in the group even if I'm taller than someone else. You just never get over starting life with five year olds when you are only four. Never get over it.
It must have been about four p.m. when Francie came banging on Donna's door. All she said is, "Meg, you are in BIG trouble. You've got to go home because your mom is looking all over for you." The look on her face, well, the look on her face. I knew she was right and anyways, she was already seven so she knew better than me what I had to do. I had to face facts. So Francie took me by the hand and Donna's face disappeared behind the dirty screen that was her lopsided front and back door. She held me by the shoulders as we stood on the Corner and looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to get a whipping. Don't cry." Then she gave me a shove and pushed me into the back alley.
There was my mom and in her hand, as expected, was the thin branch from a Cancer Tree with all the leaves pulled off. Those are really neat, you can hold the tip and run your hand right down the branch and the leaves come off pronto. Instant corporal punishment tools of the trade. I didn't really even get within five feet of my mother before she started swinging at my rear and the backs of my legs. My stomach was still sore from the gash I'd made when I climbed over the wall on Brophy and a Cancer Tree branch, the mature part, cut me wide open. It probably needed stitches but I'd never show it to anyone because stitches weren't my cup of tea. I mean, whose cup of tea are they anyway? I remember the first time I was told I needed stitches...Davy Dominguez had been horsing around with me while we watched everyone else play football in the Duchene's yard and he knocked me off the wooden railing and split my leg wide open. I hopped around a bit that time and didn't cry a tear. Just cussed and cussed and Bobbie Duchenes' stupid mom came out and put a band-aid on it. Bobbie was really spoiled and his mom used to keep him inside when it was hot because she thought he'd get sick or something. I showed my brother the gash and he said, "Uh oh, you need stitches," and repeated it, turning it into a Nana Nana BooBoo song. You're gonna get stitches, you're gonna get stitches. So nope. I'd take the beating I deserved for scaring my mom and never show anyone the gash in my gut. No way. She beat me all the way up both sets of stairs to our house and then some more in the living room and then she just sat down and cried for a while. She was always scared of that prisoner that got out of the town jail once. Although I never knew what he looked like, I can see him now...hiding out in the hills above our house. A murderer and my mom took some sort of pleasure in recounting the tale of the escaped convict that hid out in the hills there for a week or two before they finally caught him. She just cried and then she hugged me and it was all over. Francie always had good advice.
But this isn't about that sort of thing. This is about first times. I don't know but I think the first time you get arrested and booked, you don't really remember every detail. You don't really remember what the ink pad looks like or how big your thumb print is on the card. You don't get a copy of the mugshot and that is truly unfair. I'd really like one of those. It be a cool thing to keep in a family album like the one of my dad in the coffin. Some people think it is weird to want things like that but I think THEY are weird for not wanting them. Those are histories. And from the looks of me now, no one could believe that I faced three felony counts.
What I do remember is that orange jumpsuit and Francie, plus I remember the psycho I stayed overnight with in the cell. I remember the pancakes too, they weren't all that bad. I can see how a person could get used to free jail food and a bed to sleep in. The only problem is the roommates they put you with. Well, yes and no. I had two but the orange jumpsuit deserves more discussion. They took away my broken high heels, my black slit skirt and my gorgeous pink sweater with missing buttons and my panty hose. I really didn't want to give those up because panty hose make you feel thin but in jail, they help you to get out of this world should you want to. The cops are afraid you'll kill yourself once you get inside. They don't seem to worry too much if someone else might try to kill you though and they put people like me with crazy women who take drugs and cut out other people's tongues for kicks. But that's jumping ahead just a tad.
I put on my orange jumpsuit with Cochise County Jail in block letters on the back, turned over my possessions and stood at the iron gates looking at the mofo who had arrested me and was standing on the other side with his shit eating grin in full bloom. He was really enjoying it all. I was practically catatonic to be honest. I mean, I was in jail. Although I'd done alot of stupid things like burglarizing houses when I was six or seven, I never really thought I'd end up in jail.
He looked at me through the bars, up and down and said, "You know, when this is all over, I'd like to take you out for a cup of coffee." Yea, right. No one heard him except me but I know when and if I get to heaven I want to see him in hell. He was evil. When you are religious and a believer you think about stuff like that. I'd also like to see all the Lemony Snickets there on the other side of the final iron gates, looking at me and begging for a cup of water. I'd really like to see that. I don't want to see the judge there though, even though when they called him he refused to give me the option of posting bail because it was after closing time, small town you know. My one phone call to my brother was really a waste of time except that at least my family knew I needed some help. That was old Judge Helms, the hanging judge or sometimes, the marrying judge. No, I don't want to see him there behind the gates of hell. Afterall, he didn't arrest me for littering and certainly, he didn't look at me a year later while he was dancing with his wife at the Gadsden and flash a shit eating lavicsious grin. That was the state trooper, not him. No, he married me to the love of my life and got me to the Cedars for the first time. He gets off.So do the dentists who pulled out my teeth and the boys who made fun of me when they found out a fat girl had a crush on them. They all get off. They all were important in the scheme of things in one way or another and without them and their joys, rejections and pains, I'd be somewhere else. Maybe even working in a Dairy Queen or perhaps as a court stenographer or maybe even a barfly like an old friend I just met this summer at Elmo's bar and grill for the first time in twenty years. Barb looked awful. Divorced and still in love with the cad. Still making drunken treks between all the bars in Cochise County at midnight to see if he was there and dancing with someone else. I bought her a drink that night, several in fact and we laughed a bit and went our separate ways, hers being the Brewery or the Lowell Waiting Room. Mine, somewhere else.
The jail cell was beige and aren't they all some kind of drab color. I'll bet if they painted them orange there would be less recidivism. I'm sure of it. There is something about the color of those rooms that isn't impressive enough to keep you out nor enough to keep you in. The big door closed behind me and I saw Francie Vasquez sitting on one of the four bunks with a look I cannot describe. She was as shocked as I was.
"Meg! What are YOU doing in here?" Strangely enough, I had the same question. There was another in the room but she just turned her back when I walked in and placed something under her flat pillow. I told Francie my story and she just shook her head. She was innocent too. Something about embezzlement from the public school funds. I don't know and it isn't really important. She never really got out of the jail system and I heard that she is still in and out of them but that might just be gossip.
I was really lucky because they hadn't served dinner yet and after a half hour or so, chatting with Francie over the mutual problem we were having, a hand shoved three trays through a slot in the door. I can't remember what we ate but they did give us each a big navel orange. Francie told me not to eat it, that we'd be needing it overnight. I didn't really understand that but I did what she said. Francie always had good advice. I was trying pretty hard not to cry once I found out how slowly time passes in jail. It just crawls by. They don't give you a clock but you can tell by the way your body feels that time has slowed way, way down. No TV either. Just a bed and a couple of roommates and oranges that you save for some reason.
After we finished our meals we shoved the trays back through the slot. The other girl was watching me the whole time. She didn't talk but just stared and stared. Her eyes lacked a specific color. Finally though, she pointed her finger at me and said, "Come here." Francie didn't say anything so I did what I was told. The girl said, "I want to show you something." She pulled the book she had placed under her pillow and thumbed through it to the page where she'd folded down the corner and had circled a word in red ink. "This is what I am."
Psychotic.
Francie called me back over and told me that we'd have to stay awake all night. Our 'room mate' Francie told me, was traveling with her boyfriend in a van, dropping acid and smoking pot when they picked up a hitchhiker. Then they cut his tongue out. Just like that, lopped the poor suckers tongue right out of him. I heard later that they re-attached it though.
"We are going to play Oranges to stay awake Meg. We have to stay awake until she falls asleep. I mean it." So we started tossing oranges, to our roommate as well. We did that for what seemed hours until the other girl quit and went and laid down, then fell asleep. Francie and I took the bunks opposite and she made me sleep on the top for my own protection. You just don't find friends like Francie everyday and you have to remember them sometimes. You hope you'll see them once again, in heaven. That is where they belong because it isn't their fault. None of it is their fault really and even the psychotic girl probably had her reasons for doing what she did. God only knows.
And we slept, or sort of. I just lay awake in my bunk and listened to the silence outside. There isn't anything like the silence of a small town at night, dogs barking and no cars. The sound of doves in the morning is all you have in jail to know that dawn is on its way. I miss that place but not very much, jail that is. One night is more than enough for anyone.
......more to be revealed about Judge Helms, his secretary and that big trip up to the Cedars which, when concluded, my daughter remarked, "For any other family this day would have been abnormal."
There are so many firsts in life. The first time you have a baby, the first time you lose a tooth, the first time you stay out after school without permission and the first time you see a dead person or kill a live one.
The first time I did something I wasn't supposed to, it was Francie Vasquez leading me home by the hand but only to the corner where the old Atlantic Richfield sign towered over the fig tree next to old Mrs. Holland's house. We used to run errands for her (when we were old enough to tie our shoes). We'd simply knock on her door and knew if she needed sugar or milk, we could get a dime out of her. I barely remember her though or the way her house looked. The Atlantic Richfield sign far too important because it was on the Corner.
Some of us could climb up onto the billboard and walk on the platform where each month a man would come with a new sign to roll out onto the giant canvas, but I wasn't one of them. I was too chubby and couldn't do alot of the stuff everyone else could. I never did learn to swing on the pipes upside down without my hands but I could flip over it once or twice and backwards too. Everyone should grow up near a Corner like that because a corner is so many things...a place to sit and horse around, swing upside down on the pipes or to organize bike voyages.
In this case however, the Corner was the closest Francie Vasquez wanted to get to my mother whom she knew would be waiting for me with a Cancer Tree switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother had gone berserk looking for me that day. Kindergarten let out at 12:30 because I was in the 'morning class', a specific group of people that would stay the 'morning class' for the rest of our lives as opposed to the 'afternoon class', people who I can barely remember their names let alone their faces. That particular day I went to visit a sick friend. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Donna Cole hadn't been to school for three days so I just took a right turn from the school stairs and headed on down to Brophy Avenue instead of going the 'back way' down Mayer like I was supposed to...past Mr. Williams fine gardens and Rosemary's old place, past the Peralta's and up my hill. Not this time. I headed up to 'no man's land' on Brophy where the rough families lived: Figueroas, Maestas, Carabeos and Vasquezes. I'm not really sure why they were considered dangerous up there because they always treated me as one of their own. Just like Francie did that day.
I was inside Donna's house. She wasn't really sick but her mom had been on a three day binge. She was living in a small rental under the Maestas place, two rooms and a kitchenette plus a water closet for the toilet. We played paper dolls for a while and watched some TV. It was a fine afternoon and the hours didn't really matter. They never matter when you are four years old. I was an early starter you know because my birthday was in November. I think it is the reason I'm always the short one in the group even if I'm taller than someone else. You just never get over starting life with five year olds when you are only four. Never get over it.
It must have been about four p.m. when Francie came banging on Donna's door. All she said is, "Meg, you are in BIG trouble. You've got to go home because your mom is looking all over for you." The look on her face, well, the look on her face. I knew she was right and anyways, she was already seven so she knew better than me what I had to do. I had to face facts. So Francie took me by the hand and Donna's face disappeared behind the dirty screen that was her lopsided front and back door. She held me by the shoulders as we stood on the Corner and looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to get a whipping. Don't cry." Then she gave me a shove and pushed me into the back alley.
There was my mom and in her hand, as expected, was the thin branch from a Cancer Tree with all the leaves pulled off. Those are really neat, you can hold the tip and run your hand right down the branch and the leaves come off pronto. Instant corporal punishment tools of the trade. I didn't really even get within five feet of my mother before she started swinging at my rear and the backs of my legs. My stomach was still sore from the gash I'd made when I climbed over the wall on Brophy and a Cancer Tree branch, the mature part, cut me wide open. It probably needed stitches but I'd never show it to anyone because stitches weren't my cup of tea. I mean, whose cup of tea are they anyway? I remember the first time I was told I needed stitches...Davy Dominguez had been horsing around with me while we watched everyone else play football in the Duchene's yard and he knocked me off the wooden railing and split my leg wide open. I hopped around a bit that time and didn't cry a tear. Just cussed and cussed and Bobbie Duchenes' stupid mom came out and put a band-aid on it. Bobbie was really spoiled and his mom used to keep him inside when it was hot because she thought he'd get sick or something. I showed my brother the gash and he said, "Uh oh, you need stitches," and repeated it, turning it into a Nana Nana BooBoo song. You're gonna get stitches, you're gonna get stitches. So nope. I'd take the beating I deserved for scaring my mom and never show anyone the gash in my gut. No way. She beat me all the way up both sets of stairs to our house and then some more in the living room and then she just sat down and cried for a while. She was always scared of that prisoner that got out of the town jail once. Although I never knew what he looked like, I can see him now...hiding out in the hills above our house. A murderer and my mom took some sort of pleasure in recounting the tale of the escaped convict that hid out in the hills there for a week or two before they finally caught him. She just cried and then she hugged me and it was all over. Francie always had good advice.
But this isn't about that sort of thing. This is about first times. I don't know but I think the first time you get arrested and booked, you don't really remember every detail. You don't really remember what the ink pad looks like or how big your thumb print is on the card. You don't get a copy of the mugshot and that is truly unfair. I'd really like one of those. It be a cool thing to keep in a family album like the one of my dad in the coffin. Some people think it is weird to want things like that but I think THEY are weird for not wanting them. Those are histories. And from the looks of me now, no one could believe that I faced three felony counts.
What I do remember is that orange jumpsuit and Francie, plus I remember the psycho I stayed overnight with in the cell. I remember the pancakes too, they weren't all that bad. I can see how a person could get used to free jail food and a bed to sleep in. The only problem is the roommates they put you with. Well, yes and no. I had two but the orange jumpsuit deserves more discussion. They took away my broken high heels, my black slit skirt and my gorgeous pink sweater with missing buttons and my panty hose. I really didn't want to give those up because panty hose make you feel thin but in jail, they help you to get out of this world should you want to. The cops are afraid you'll kill yourself once you get inside. They don't seem to worry too much if someone else might try to kill you though and they put people like me with crazy women who take drugs and cut out other people's tongues for kicks. But that's jumping ahead just a tad.
I put on my orange jumpsuit with Cochise County Jail in block letters on the back, turned over my possessions and stood at the iron gates looking at the mofo who had arrested me and was standing on the other side with his shit eating grin in full bloom. He was really enjoying it all. I was practically catatonic to be honest. I mean, I was in jail. Although I'd done alot of stupid things like burglarizing houses when I was six or seven, I never really thought I'd end up in jail.
He looked at me through the bars, up and down and said, "You know, when this is all over, I'd like to take you out for a cup of coffee." Yea, right. No one heard him except me but I know when and if I get to heaven I want to see him in hell. He was evil. When you are religious and a believer you think about stuff like that. I'd also like to see all the Lemony Snickets there on the other side of the final iron gates, looking at me and begging for a cup of water. I'd really like to see that. I don't want to see the judge there though, even though when they called him he refused to give me the option of posting bail because it was after closing time, small town you know. My one phone call to my brother was really a waste of time except that at least my family knew I needed some help. That was old Judge Helms, the hanging judge or sometimes, the marrying judge. No, I don't want to see him there behind the gates of hell. Afterall, he didn't arrest me for littering and certainly, he didn't look at me a year later while he was dancing with his wife at the Gadsden and flash a shit eating lavicsious grin. That was the state trooper, not him. No, he married me to the love of my life and got me to the Cedars for the first time. He gets off.So do the dentists who pulled out my teeth and the boys who made fun of me when they found out a fat girl had a crush on them. They all get off. They all were important in the scheme of things in one way or another and without them and their joys, rejections and pains, I'd be somewhere else. Maybe even working in a Dairy Queen or perhaps as a court stenographer or maybe even a barfly like an old friend I just met this summer at Elmo's bar and grill for the first time in twenty years. Barb looked awful. Divorced and still in love with the cad. Still making drunken treks between all the bars in Cochise County at midnight to see if he was there and dancing with someone else. I bought her a drink that night, several in fact and we laughed a bit and went our separate ways, hers being the Brewery or the Lowell Waiting Room. Mine, somewhere else.
The jail cell was beige and aren't they all some kind of drab color. I'll bet if they painted them orange there would be less recidivism. I'm sure of it. There is something about the color of those rooms that isn't impressive enough to keep you out nor enough to keep you in. The big door closed behind me and I saw Francie Vasquez sitting on one of the four bunks with a look I cannot describe. She was as shocked as I was.
"Meg! What are YOU doing in here?" Strangely enough, I had the same question. There was another in the room but she just turned her back when I walked in and placed something under her flat pillow. I told Francie my story and she just shook her head. She was innocent too. Something about embezzlement from the public school funds. I don't know and it isn't really important. She never really got out of the jail system and I heard that she is still in and out of them but that might just be gossip.
I was really lucky because they hadn't served dinner yet and after a half hour or so, chatting with Francie over the mutual problem we were having, a hand shoved three trays through a slot in the door. I can't remember what we ate but they did give us each a big navel orange. Francie told me not to eat it, that we'd be needing it overnight. I didn't really understand that but I did what she said. Francie always had good advice. I was trying pretty hard not to cry once I found out how slowly time passes in jail. It just crawls by. They don't give you a clock but you can tell by the way your body feels that time has slowed way, way down. No TV either. Just a bed and a couple of roommates and oranges that you save for some reason.
After we finished our meals we shoved the trays back through the slot. The other girl was watching me the whole time. She didn't talk but just stared and stared. Her eyes lacked a specific color. Finally though, she pointed her finger at me and said, "Come here." Francie didn't say anything so I did what I was told. The girl said, "I want to show you something." She pulled the book she had placed under her pillow and thumbed through it to the page where she'd folded down the corner and had circled a word in red ink. "This is what I am."
Psychotic.
Francie called me back over and told me that we'd have to stay awake all night. Our 'room mate' Francie told me, was traveling with her boyfriend in a van, dropping acid and smoking pot when they picked up a hitchhiker. Then they cut his tongue out. Just like that, lopped the poor suckers tongue right out of him. I heard later that they re-attached it though.
"We are going to play Oranges to stay awake Meg. We have to stay awake until she falls asleep. I mean it." So we started tossing oranges, to our roommate as well. We did that for what seemed hours until the other girl quit and went and laid down, then fell asleep. Francie and I took the bunks opposite and she made me sleep on the top for my own protection. You just don't find friends like Francie everyday and you have to remember them sometimes. You hope you'll see them once again, in heaven. That is where they belong because it isn't their fault. None of it is their fault really and even the psychotic girl probably had her reasons for doing what she did. God only knows.
And we slept, or sort of. I just lay awake in my bunk and listened to the silence outside. There isn't anything like the silence of a small town at night, dogs barking and no cars. The sound of doves in the morning is all you have in jail to know that dawn is on its way. I miss that place but not very much, jail that is. One night is more than enough for anyone.
......more to be revealed about Judge Helms, his secretary and that big trip up to the Cedars which, when concluded, my daughter remarked, "For any other family this day would have been abnormal."
22.4.06
First Iris, photo by Radical Ann Porter
Ode to the Two Pointers
Hanging the pipes between our clothes line
and theirs, a hand could borrow sugar
from our open windows, that close,
a two-pointer swung from his haunches, eyes all froze.
We came home running to see what was shot,
heard it all the way down by Old Man Riley's garage,
a two pointer, not a doe. Everyone heard it.
It was big news, big game and there he was,
draped over the squash and winter iris
looking out like that, just looking.
A pressure cooker steamed inside
the kitchen window, it tooted and hissed
as the buck waited to be butchered.
Takes a long time to cut up a deer like that,
and longer still, to bag one.
Times were pretty lean, the winters pretty cold.
God is as an animal, our fortress.
21.4.06
...so where was I? Oh, the best part (or maybe not).
I bit his hand, yes. I bit it very hard and it seemed to me the absolutely correct thing to do. We both grabbed for the keys with my teeth on his knuckles and his left hand reaching under his highly decorated left pocket to open the door and drag me out of the car. I managed to start the car and he managed once again, with one hand plus my teeth, to turn it off. Somehow he managed to get me out of the car and I started begging and begging, "No, no, you can't do this!" Then, "Please don't do this!" All the way back to his patrol car like that, pushing and shoving, trying to extricate the car keys from one another like kids fighting over a soccer ball and ready to tumble into the scrub oak at any minute. I'm not sure why some cops do the things they do but they wear uniforms while they do it and people in uniforms generally don't need reasons, they have authority. When you bite them in the knuckles however, they have the best reason of all and it is as if they almost can predict who will commit a felony and who will just sign that ticket and stuff it in a pocket book and move along and forget all those times the same cop leered in their window staring at their boobs with their shit eating grins just waiting for the right opportunity.
By the time we reached the patrol car, the struggle was not only in full swing but was turning a bit violent. He had my wrists together, they were hurting and was trying to lift them over my head using one hand while opening his door with the other. I was like a wet cat held by the tail. By then of course, my heel broke and I was half limping and half hopping. I can hardly imagine what it must have looked like had there been one soul there to serve as a witness but at Grace's Corners, the only witness a sign pointing in one direction to Double Adobe and in the other, to Tombstone, Arizona.
He managed to slide into the front seat of the patrol car and picked up his radio to call for assistance. I was still begging and really, even though I had my hands near his neck, it was all very friendly on my part. It was like a kid tugging on dad's pant leg asking for a fudgesicle on a hot day. It wasn't really what I'd call "resisting arrest, assault on a police officer and disturbing the peace". I was simply asking for him to reconsider....then suddenly his Brown Tie was in my grip. There it was and I pulled ever so slightly and then, there it was, in my hand and I held it there, not believing really what kind of trouble I was actually in. It was, horror of horrors, a CLIP ON. Just like that, one minute a law abiding teenager, albeit a speed demon, and the next, you've got The Man's Tie in your fist and nothing else. Nothing can save you then. There's proof. Fingerprints all over the little metal clips and his voice on the radio and all you can hear is "...backup. I need backup." Because you are a teenager you forget you've shared quarters with the District Attorney. You just don't realize those types of things when you are eighteen. There's lots you don't realize at eighteen actually. Like my daughter on the streets of Tripoli a couple days ago and I'm holding down the flank with my evil stares at the old leering men we passed by one after another. Some of them even warranting a "What you looking at, you old geezer?" And then they look away.
It was then that I just sort of gave up and submitted to what was apparently unavoidable. It happens all the time to folks like that. You do something stupid and then you are sitting in the FRONT SEAT of a patrol car with your nice legs crossed at the ankles and broken high heels, a few buttons missing from your pink shell sweater, your hair prettily disheveled and on your way to jail...all because you dumped rubbish on the highway in a 55 mph zone. You've no idea that one day you'll be a refugee on a highway heading north dodging bombs, telling the others you've picked up on the way out of town to keep their heads down; or that one day you'll reach the mightly Cedars and say, Oh My, so this is why I've come and where is that river Gilgamesh was talking about? It was worth the wait and the trip. It was definitely worth the trip.
The state trooper made some small talk and explained why I had to sit in the front seat with him, and in handcuffs, as opposed to the back seat where not only can one not escape because there aren't any door handles but one cannot reach a patrolman's tie either, nor his neck. I'm sure he knew how to tie a tie but it must be that that would require two hands and it is the one thing they simply don't teach them in police college. I'm relatively sure though they aren't advised to ride around with known felons, dangerous people, in the front seat of their patrol car after having told their supervising officer to skeedaddle and they'd meet for doughnuts or something later. In fact, he didn't have to explain a thing to his supervisor about the original crime but I was just too young, just too naive to know how much trouble he should have been in, the trouble both of them should have been in for sexual harrassment. I could have called old Dave Blunt, DA (name changed to protect the innocent wife of the Kung Fu freak). I could have called him with that one call but instead I called my brother Jack. That is what you do when you are eighteen and you have a brother named Jack. You call him. You'd call him all time if you could and you'd call the other two brothers as well to whoop someone's arse. That doesn't work though in the real world of police reports and orange jumpsuits. It doesn't work with psychotic cell mates either. For that you need a Francie. In fact, you need a childhood pal like Francie more than once. Sometimes you need them twice and I'll tell you why. You wonder where they are as you stare at the cedars from thabible. You wonder where they all are, the Francies, Bobbies and Marys.
So anyways... I went to jail. People go to jail all the time. It is a serious issue. It is especially serious when someone has just asked you to marry them and you know for sure that isn't going to work out at all. Who wants to marry a jailbird? Well, it seems, some people do. Some are suited to them quite well....
...is it time for a poem yet? I think so. Tomorrow is the 22 day of April 2006 and we've a long way to go...we need a rest stop it seems. Rest stops are always good...
Ode to My Monster
There you are you little Frankenstein,
I birthed you in marriage:
a village boy who read the garbage for news.
I was much better even when you cursed
all my living relatives and some of the dead.
We didn't know much then about creation did we?
You, my old glove. My masterpiece.
I, your beloved wife, your help-meet.
How I pray you'll live beyond me
so I don't have to cry when you go
but then I think, I couldn't do that to you either.
So the next best thing is to stage a duel.
That's it, we'll just trust our instincts.
Yesterday, I napped in front of your grandparents
while they fought. I was at peace.
The old man stoked his fire. Your grandmother cried.
They were waiting for each other to go.
Or maybe....it is this one that belongs here...maybe they both do. They are both very heavy things and like "they" always say: Everything's Connected.
Ode to Bill
There were so many of you:
Bills and Bobs and Marys.
Though now, you are dead asleep
in the White Mountains with the fish
and the Indians it's come to pass
that I remember you were the one
who never pulled my hair or called me fat.
In your final days before parting
from all the others - the lawmakers,
your father the judge who must be
quite old by now and older still,
I wonder, did you ever think of me?
Did you ever remember in your last moments,
your fine kind of kindness
to a red headed girl?
The long line of the law you came from?
Did you ever see the Louvre?
I bit his hand, yes. I bit it very hard and it seemed to me the absolutely correct thing to do. We both grabbed for the keys with my teeth on his knuckles and his left hand reaching under his highly decorated left pocket to open the door and drag me out of the car. I managed to start the car and he managed once again, with one hand plus my teeth, to turn it off. Somehow he managed to get me out of the car and I started begging and begging, "No, no, you can't do this!" Then, "Please don't do this!" All the way back to his patrol car like that, pushing and shoving, trying to extricate the car keys from one another like kids fighting over a soccer ball and ready to tumble into the scrub oak at any minute. I'm not sure why some cops do the things they do but they wear uniforms while they do it and people in uniforms generally don't need reasons, they have authority. When you bite them in the knuckles however, they have the best reason of all and it is as if they almost can predict who will commit a felony and who will just sign that ticket and stuff it in a pocket book and move along and forget all those times the same cop leered in their window staring at their boobs with their shit eating grins just waiting for the right opportunity.
By the time we reached the patrol car, the struggle was not only in full swing but was turning a bit violent. He had my wrists together, they were hurting and was trying to lift them over my head using one hand while opening his door with the other. I was like a wet cat held by the tail. By then of course, my heel broke and I was half limping and half hopping. I can hardly imagine what it must have looked like had there been one soul there to serve as a witness but at Grace's Corners, the only witness a sign pointing in one direction to Double Adobe and in the other, to Tombstone, Arizona.
He managed to slide into the front seat of the patrol car and picked up his radio to call for assistance. I was still begging and really, even though I had my hands near his neck, it was all very friendly on my part. It was like a kid tugging on dad's pant leg asking for a fudgesicle on a hot day. It wasn't really what I'd call "resisting arrest, assault on a police officer and disturbing the peace". I was simply asking for him to reconsider....then suddenly his Brown Tie was in my grip. There it was and I pulled ever so slightly and then, there it was, in my hand and I held it there, not believing really what kind of trouble I was actually in. It was, horror of horrors, a CLIP ON. Just like that, one minute a law abiding teenager, albeit a speed demon, and the next, you've got The Man's Tie in your fist and nothing else. Nothing can save you then. There's proof. Fingerprints all over the little metal clips and his voice on the radio and all you can hear is "...backup. I need backup." Because you are a teenager you forget you've shared quarters with the District Attorney. You just don't realize those types of things when you are eighteen. There's lots you don't realize at eighteen actually. Like my daughter on the streets of Tripoli a couple days ago and I'm holding down the flank with my evil stares at the old leering men we passed by one after another. Some of them even warranting a "What you looking at, you old geezer?" And then they look away.
It was then that I just sort of gave up and submitted to what was apparently unavoidable. It happens all the time to folks like that. You do something stupid and then you are sitting in the FRONT SEAT of a patrol car with your nice legs crossed at the ankles and broken high heels, a few buttons missing from your pink shell sweater, your hair prettily disheveled and on your way to jail...all because you dumped rubbish on the highway in a 55 mph zone. You've no idea that one day you'll be a refugee on a highway heading north dodging bombs, telling the others you've picked up on the way out of town to keep their heads down; or that one day you'll reach the mightly Cedars and say, Oh My, so this is why I've come and where is that river Gilgamesh was talking about? It was worth the wait and the trip. It was definitely worth the trip.
The state trooper made some small talk and explained why I had to sit in the front seat with him, and in handcuffs, as opposed to the back seat where not only can one not escape because there aren't any door handles but one cannot reach a patrolman's tie either, nor his neck. I'm sure he knew how to tie a tie but it must be that that would require two hands and it is the one thing they simply don't teach them in police college. I'm relatively sure though they aren't advised to ride around with known felons, dangerous people, in the front seat of their patrol car after having told their supervising officer to skeedaddle and they'd meet for doughnuts or something later. In fact, he didn't have to explain a thing to his supervisor about the original crime but I was just too young, just too naive to know how much trouble he should have been in, the trouble both of them should have been in for sexual harrassment. I could have called old Dave Blunt, DA (name changed to protect the innocent wife of the Kung Fu freak). I could have called him with that one call but instead I called my brother Jack. That is what you do when you are eighteen and you have a brother named Jack. You call him. You'd call him all time if you could and you'd call the other two brothers as well to whoop someone's arse. That doesn't work though in the real world of police reports and orange jumpsuits. It doesn't work with psychotic cell mates either. For that you need a Francie. In fact, you need a childhood pal like Francie more than once. Sometimes you need them twice and I'll tell you why. You wonder where they are as you stare at the cedars from thabible. You wonder where they all are, the Francies, Bobbies and Marys.
So anyways... I went to jail. People go to jail all the time. It is a serious issue. It is especially serious when someone has just asked you to marry them and you know for sure that isn't going to work out at all. Who wants to marry a jailbird? Well, it seems, some people do. Some are suited to them quite well....
...is it time for a poem yet? I think so. Tomorrow is the 22 day of April 2006 and we've a long way to go...we need a rest stop it seems. Rest stops are always good...
Ode to My Monster
There you are you little Frankenstein,
I birthed you in marriage:
a village boy who read the garbage for news.
I was much better even when you cursed
all my living relatives and some of the dead.
We didn't know much then about creation did we?
You, my old glove. My masterpiece.
I, your beloved wife, your help-meet.
How I pray you'll live beyond me
so I don't have to cry when you go
but then I think, I couldn't do that to you either.
So the next best thing is to stage a duel.
That's it, we'll just trust our instincts.
Yesterday, I napped in front of your grandparents
while they fought. I was at peace.
The old man stoked his fire. Your grandmother cried.
They were waiting for each other to go.
Or maybe....it is this one that belongs here...maybe they both do. They are both very heavy things and like "they" always say: Everything's Connected.
Ode to Bill
There were so many of you:
Bills and Bobs and Marys.
Though now, you are dead asleep
in the White Mountains with the fish
and the Indians it's come to pass
that I remember you were the one
who never pulled my hair or called me fat.
In your final days before parting
from all the others - the lawmakers,
your father the judge who must be
quite old by now and older still,
I wonder, did you ever think of me?
Did you ever remember in your last moments,
your fine kind of kindness
to a red headed girl?
The long line of the law you came from?
Did you ever see the Louvre?
20.4.06
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
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
Notes and Addendums to Twenty Five Years.....
Bear with me (Carmen, yer just a cat so I have to explain things to you). Carmen tends to forget things all the time wrapped in the sunshine on a warm spring day in Beirut.
I thought to end this blog now. Why? Because a part of me died last month. The hopeful part. The Shia part is only beginning to make itself known and I was born a Shia. I know that now. I love the underdogs. And just dogs. Even when they bite me and give me pink eye too. Winning comes through perserverence, it is the only way anymore. One must perservere.
In the next few days (to perhaps weeks) I am dedicating this blog to describing how I reached the Cedars of Lebanon. The ones in the Bible or just "Thabible" as Ali and I call it. I could say so many things in the interim and perhaps I will, like 'thabible' which is a relatively unknown Scrabble Term my son and I developed one day and just roared with laughter. Because I call it, thabible and read it now and then. It is a strange book that doesn't really make much sense until you read a few others related to it. I could say that my spice cabinet has things in it like Santa Cruz Chili powder and corn husks AND it has Sumac. It also has camooni which is a beautiful conjoining of cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cumin, cardamon and rose hips.....makes a most delightful Arizona Chili Food. Personally, I know that between that and my idea to put a paging button on TV remote control devices...I could be relatively wealthy for my inventions. I could market that Camooni and give it a label and be rich by selling the 'mix' to a chain store like Albertson's or Piggly Wiggly...I could get rich. But I'd rather just tell someone to PLEASE go invent a TV remote control device with a pager on it so you can find it in the sofa cushions. You can keep the money. I don't mind. Money is an illusion anyway but a remote control is a reality.
So bear with me and I'll tell you the story of how I met Fred Tarr and stood at the bases of the Cedars in thabible with my hand on my heart saying, Oh My!
Let's get down to business...must be a circus in town what is dis, can I get a witness? - Emenem
Bear with me (Carmen, yer just a cat so I have to explain things to you). Carmen tends to forget things all the time wrapped in the sunshine on a warm spring day in Beirut.
I thought to end this blog now. Why? Because a part of me died last month. The hopeful part. The Shia part is only beginning to make itself known and I was born a Shia. I know that now. I love the underdogs. And just dogs. Even when they bite me and give me pink eye too. Winning comes through perserverence, it is the only way anymore. One must perservere.
In the next few days (to perhaps weeks) I am dedicating this blog to describing how I reached the Cedars of Lebanon. The ones in the Bible or just "Thabible" as Ali and I call it. I could say so many things in the interim and perhaps I will, like 'thabible' which is a relatively unknown Scrabble Term my son and I developed one day and just roared with laughter. Because I call it, thabible and read it now and then. It is a strange book that doesn't really make much sense until you read a few others related to it. I could say that my spice cabinet has things in it like Santa Cruz Chili powder and corn husks AND it has Sumac. It also has camooni which is a beautiful conjoining of cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cumin, cardamon and rose hips.....makes a most delightful Arizona Chili Food. Personally, I know that between that and my idea to put a paging button on TV remote control devices...I could be relatively wealthy for my inventions. I could market that Camooni and give it a label and be rich by selling the 'mix' to a chain store like Albertson's or Piggly Wiggly...I could get rich. But I'd rather just tell someone to PLEASE go invent a TV remote control device with a pager on it so you can find it in the sofa cushions. You can keep the money. I don't mind. Money is an illusion anyway but a remote control is a reality.
So bear with me and I'll tell you the story of how I met Fred Tarr and stood at the bases of the Cedars in thabible with my hand on my heart saying, Oh My!
Let's get down to business...must be a circus in town what is dis, can I get a witness? - Emenem
19.4.06
13.4.06
The Last Letter
Z is compatible
for the morning revelation
as dawn bleeds over the palest star:
zephyr, zoraster, zero, zen.
Those in vaults
like diamonds where
the eldest prisoners tortured
are chaste, rehabilitated and ready.
Privy to the static
age old whisper: dia-gnosis.
Aftermath to etc., aftermath to was,
aftermath shall be the vague carress
of temptation a fancy term:
Mighty apocrypha tear down these walls.
Where are your villages, your birds?How many brothers walk?Fruit on the branch is willing.A door for entry, one for knocking.Cattle at the butchery, their eyes.Heavy melon carts, spring.Collars creased to the napes of necks.Twisting called spine.Blistery disk melts the sea's a cold blanket covering the earth.Clouds organize into shadows.Wind and too many crops.Disasters happen once, myths twice.Waves toss the work of towns into trees.Night vision turns sleepers into green.A general curled next to his pyre.
Memories fade, they fade.Survival is for brutes.
Z is for lightning.Birds laugh in the morning, dogs all night long.
The thunder said, remember me?
Z is compatible
for the morning revelation
as dawn bleeds over the palest star:
zephyr, zoraster, zero, zen.
Those in vaults
like diamonds where
the eldest prisoners tortured
are chaste, rehabilitated and ready.
Privy to the static
age old whisper: dia-gnosis.
Aftermath to etc., aftermath to was,
aftermath shall be the vague carress
of temptation a fancy term:
Mighty apocrypha tear down these walls.
Where are your villages, your birds?How many brothers walk?Fruit on the branch is willing.A door for entry, one for knocking.Cattle at the butchery, their eyes.Heavy melon carts, spring.Collars creased to the napes of necks.Twisting called spine.Blistery disk melts the sea's a cold blanket covering the earth.Clouds organize into shadows.Wind and too many crops.Disasters happen once, myths twice.Waves toss the work of towns into trees.Night vision turns sleepers into green.A general curled next to his pyre.
Memories fade, they fade.Survival is for brutes.
Z is for lightning.Birds laugh in the morning, dogs all night long.
The thunder said, remember me?
12.4.06
From Universal Physics To Submission
To The "weak forces" and "strong forces" of pure Chrarisma.
A link and a few thoughts as I've been through a heavy case of anti muslimist bigotry lately. You know...it is hard to be a muslim. Really hard even though there is this whole story regarding the "Night Journey" in which Mohamed (SAW) travels to the farthest reaches of heaven (outside the fallacy of time) and 'visits' a few folks. One of the folks he visits is Moses. (And I hope I'm getting the names right...tend to be a bit Alzheimerish after all that drinking I used to do.) Anyway, the two of them enter into a conversation after Allah assigns something like 50,000 prayers for the faithful Monotheists at the time. Moses (it could be Abraham here and my apologies if it is...it is important but not important to the kernel of truth contained within the digression). It is obvious that no one could pray that many times a day so the 'old' prophet advises the much 'newer' one to go back and negotiate. So he does. He ends up getting the amount divided several times, all the way down to where it is now, Five Dailies. Reasonable but still, in this day and age of commuting to work and throwing things in the microwave, it is still involves a conscientious effort. The older prophet still thinks Mohamed (SAW) ought to negotiate once again...but he doesn't. The older prophet (Moses) had a habit of pushing the envelope sometimes and this contains the notion of the need to clarify the 'old' protocols versus newer and more advanced, reasonable ones. Suffice it to say that the point here is that although Islam is aimed at making things "easier" it is still very hard to be one and shouldn't be taken lightly by the new convert. It stands as well that to 'aim' at converting others is not any muslims duty because it is an assignment too tough for the Average Batman.
I just met (online) a fantastic guy who has been an Islamic Scholar for many, many years. It is so nice to be able to just digress at will with someone like that even though he admits to not desiring a "conversion" or as some NewAge muslims call it, "reversion". He knows he isn't ready now and maybe he'll never be. So I told him that I thought that was part of the balance we need on this planet...afterall, it wouldn't do if the muslims got all the "good guys" on their side and left everyone else in the hands of shadowy religious characters and clerics. Sheesh, we have some of our own of that variety and sometimes I really wonder what we ought to do about that. Like Micheal Jackson for instance. He has converted. Oh dear me. Not the best PR but anyway...it isn't up to me or Joe Blow who gets to convert/revert. Some violent sects actually MURDER other muslims because they declare them "kafir" or infidels. Sheesh...some Sunnis call Shia the "Jews" of Islam. Now...that in itself isn't something to be ashamed of if one considers the basic premise of "all" living things created in a state of Islam but apparently, to some sects, being a JEW is the worst thing a person can be even though in the Koran they are called "The Chosen People" So maybe..it is actually a good thing to be part of that group at least I think it is. I've no problem with that sort of comradeship...none at all. In fact I adore the idea of "blending" because that is the whole point of Islam. It is a type of "evolutionary" science (built on the knowledge established in the other two great big ones, both faulty and non faulty premises as all good science should be based as much on error as it should be, on truth) that is literally no different from modern day physics which cites the "Universal Observer" as a type of 'entity' that observes all potential histories of particles WITHOUT influencing their outcomes. Of course, physicists KNOW that is impossible....the mere act of 'witnessing' causes the history of any given particle to change. It is simply a fact. But they have constructed a Theoretical Framework to contain their "God Belief" which states that the universe as we know it was created literally in the 'blink' of an eye and have dubbed it: The Big Bang Theory. Some of them admit to their God Seeking and some do not. It is surprising how many actually do admit to it when we have a real Galileo Age upon religious scholarship and thinkers. Death to the priests! Death to the Deacons! Death to the Rabiis! on and on like that. So...you get folks like Dr. Rashed Khaleefa murdered in his mosque in Tucson more than twenty years ago by Al Qaeda fundamentalists...all because he uncovered a code relating to the GEMATRIA of the Arabic language and perhaps, lighted on the reason for the existence of certain strange 'letters' at the top of some of our Suras in the Koran.
And lets remember, no one has a PHOTOGRAPH of the Big Bang either. Nor one of God. Both are "faith" based realities whether folks want to believe it or not and I am certainly not the first person to make note of it. Just passing along the scientific data you know...having such a strong interest in Acid/Base balance, Calcium ions in the channels of the heart and stuff generally related to things like Cardiac Output, brain death (Sharon notably significant right now to many), and that curious "democracy of death" that I sooooooooooo believe in having witnessed so much of it...having literally carried the dead bodies of infants in my own arms. Everyone ends up the in the same damn "God Hole" whether or not they believe in the potential histories of particles or the potential histories of belief patterns influenced by so many variables that it is no longer possible to calculate the weird idea that the universe had two more likely outcomes: instant collapse and nefarious cloud. Instead, the Universe continued on the least likely path and that is one in which the Grand Unification Theory seeks to 'tie' together using, infinite density. Ahem. Yeah. It is infinite alright, density that is. Least I think so.
Why am I talking about this? Because I can. It is MY blog hahaha. But more importantly I wanted to share a link that demonstrates the 'blending' of souls in this world and note that at one time, I was literally "tarred and feathered" for even SUGGESTING that there were people of all 'types' interested in our CRAZY religion...which obviously....if you follow my logic and aren't 'blind'...isn't so crazy after all. It is though, very hard. No doubt about it especially when there are those who seek to "label" others with all sorts of VILE DESCRIPTIVE ANTIMUSLIMIST TERMS because, let's face it...we have a terrible reputation to UPHOLD and others think we need, "a little help". And usually I would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing...turn the other cheek...offer my jacket when someone steals my shirt.....and actually I DID ATTEMPT that sort of thing....but apparently even the Christian Ethic and the Crystal Hugging Pagan-slash-Wiccan-Spell-Casting Ethic is a bit tired nowdays of the belligerence and has adopted hatefulness as part of their universal 'code'. Whatever....it doesn't really matter other than to discuss the difficulty level involved in actual submission and then, the relative ease of it once it is in 'place' and all the logic is stored and called up and applied to various situations NOT MENTIONED in the Koran, like Chinese Foot Binding as it relates to FEMALE CIRCUMCISION (which was mentioned), or for that matter, male. Or about that issue of Wife Beating which appears to the untrained observer as an INJUNCTION TO ABUSE as opposed to what it really is, a LIMITATION on the more or less, universal occurrence of what we call, SPOUSAL ABUSE. The Koran didn't leave out much in terms of application but it did leave alot of the details up to history and the common, everyday intellectual and theologian. Like any good thinking man's book should.
The story of one Shebati Zevi is in order. I came across Mr. Zevi in the course of reading the MORE THAN WONDERFUL ex post facto NUN, Karen Armstrong whom I cannot say enough wonderful things about. She tells is like it is. And she knows the story of Shebbati.....
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/RabbiMessiahMuslimSabbataiZevi.htm
....and now any lonesome readers here know it too. It is definitely worth further research as a trivial detail or perhaps, a gigantic detail of the shared potential history that goes ignored and abused in the constant stream of attention 'given' to us by the media.....and it isn't the only interesting tale. The best stories about the *prophets are the details the books of sacred evidence don't provide (they are numbered at around 40,000 in the Koran and not assigned 'gender'...for that you have to turn to the historians and Ms. Armstrong is the leader of the pack in that regard. If you haven't read her...you should.
And you should follow that link to other stories from the "insane" like Mike Shapiro. His is great because I remember EVERY SINGLE ONE of those arguments that I engaged myself with and especially the one about how two religions (and for whatever it is worth people still get into heaven even if they aren't muslims depending on their 'relative' ability to navigate in "cloudy conditions"...in fact maybe they even get MORE credit for a job well done under less than clear admonitions)...how two religions are named after "groups" or "ethnicities" and the third, the final word (and let's be honest here...there haven't been any more real prophets after Mohamed although there have been a number of fake ones from Jim Jones all the way down through Jimmy Baker and his lovely ex-wife and current wife who could have shared him had they 'copped out' and played for our 'team')..the third great one, Islam is named after a "condition" available to all men/women regardless of social strata and color.
Or maybe not, just maybe not all HUMAN BEINGS are being allowed to be MUSLIM. Because 'freedom of religion' isn't really a sacred human right in the United States now, is it? No. It isn't. Of course it isn't. It is a Christian state lest we forget that before ending this wonderfully long session of absolute religious anarchy. Meet Mike Shapiro:
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/michael-david-shapiro.htm
I think I'll run over and say hi to Mike. Sounds nice. We muslims all get along....more or less. When people generally stop pestering us about our milk, honey, water and oil.
To The "weak forces" and "strong forces" of pure Chrarisma.
A link and a few thoughts as I've been through a heavy case of anti muslimist bigotry lately. You know...it is hard to be a muslim. Really hard even though there is this whole story regarding the "Night Journey" in which Mohamed (SAW) travels to the farthest reaches of heaven (outside the fallacy of time) and 'visits' a few folks. One of the folks he visits is Moses. (And I hope I'm getting the names right...tend to be a bit Alzheimerish after all that drinking I used to do.) Anyway, the two of them enter into a conversation after Allah assigns something like 50,000 prayers for the faithful Monotheists at the time. Moses (it could be Abraham here and my apologies if it is...it is important but not important to the kernel of truth contained within the digression). It is obvious that no one could pray that many times a day so the 'old' prophet advises the much 'newer' one to go back and negotiate. So he does. He ends up getting the amount divided several times, all the way down to where it is now, Five Dailies. Reasonable but still, in this day and age of commuting to work and throwing things in the microwave, it is still involves a conscientious effort. The older prophet still thinks Mohamed (SAW) ought to negotiate once again...but he doesn't. The older prophet (Moses) had a habit of pushing the envelope sometimes and this contains the notion of the need to clarify the 'old' protocols versus newer and more advanced, reasonable ones. Suffice it to say that the point here is that although Islam is aimed at making things "easier" it is still very hard to be one and shouldn't be taken lightly by the new convert. It stands as well that to 'aim' at converting others is not any muslims duty because it is an assignment too tough for the Average Batman.
I just met (online) a fantastic guy who has been an Islamic Scholar for many, many years. It is so nice to be able to just digress at will with someone like that even though he admits to not desiring a "conversion" or as some NewAge muslims call it, "reversion". He knows he isn't ready now and maybe he'll never be. So I told him that I thought that was part of the balance we need on this planet...afterall, it wouldn't do if the muslims got all the "good guys" on their side and left everyone else in the hands of shadowy religious characters and clerics. Sheesh, we have some of our own of that variety and sometimes I really wonder what we ought to do about that. Like Micheal Jackson for instance. He has converted. Oh dear me. Not the best PR but anyway...it isn't up to me or Joe Blow who gets to convert/revert. Some violent sects actually MURDER other muslims because they declare them "kafir" or infidels. Sheesh...some Sunnis call Shia the "Jews" of Islam. Now...that in itself isn't something to be ashamed of if one considers the basic premise of "all" living things created in a state of Islam but apparently, to some sects, being a JEW is the worst thing a person can be even though in the Koran they are called "The Chosen People" So maybe..it is actually a good thing to be part of that group at least I think it is. I've no problem with that sort of comradeship...none at all. In fact I adore the idea of "blending" because that is the whole point of Islam. It is a type of "evolutionary" science (built on the knowledge established in the other two great big ones, both faulty and non faulty premises as all good science should be based as much on error as it should be, on truth) that is literally no different from modern day physics which cites the "Universal Observer" as a type of 'entity' that observes all potential histories of particles WITHOUT influencing their outcomes. Of course, physicists KNOW that is impossible....the mere act of 'witnessing' causes the history of any given particle to change. It is simply a fact. But they have constructed a Theoretical Framework to contain their "God Belief" which states that the universe as we know it was created literally in the 'blink' of an eye and have dubbed it: The Big Bang Theory. Some of them admit to their God Seeking and some do not. It is surprising how many actually do admit to it when we have a real Galileo Age upon religious scholarship and thinkers. Death to the priests! Death to the Deacons! Death to the Rabiis! on and on like that. So...you get folks like Dr. Rashed Khaleefa murdered in his mosque in Tucson more than twenty years ago by Al Qaeda fundamentalists...all because he uncovered a code relating to the GEMATRIA of the Arabic language and perhaps, lighted on the reason for the existence of certain strange 'letters' at the top of some of our Suras in the Koran.
And lets remember, no one has a PHOTOGRAPH of the Big Bang either. Nor one of God. Both are "faith" based realities whether folks want to believe it or not and I am certainly not the first person to make note of it. Just passing along the scientific data you know...having such a strong interest in Acid/Base balance, Calcium ions in the channels of the heart and stuff generally related to things like Cardiac Output, brain death (Sharon notably significant right now to many), and that curious "democracy of death" that I sooooooooooo believe in having witnessed so much of it...having literally carried the dead bodies of infants in my own arms. Everyone ends up the in the same damn "God Hole" whether or not they believe in the potential histories of particles or the potential histories of belief patterns influenced by so many variables that it is no longer possible to calculate the weird idea that the universe had two more likely outcomes: instant collapse and nefarious cloud. Instead, the Universe continued on the least likely path and that is one in which the Grand Unification Theory seeks to 'tie' together using, infinite density. Ahem. Yeah. It is infinite alright, density that is. Least I think so.
Why am I talking about this? Because I can. It is MY blog hahaha. But more importantly I wanted to share a link that demonstrates the 'blending' of souls in this world and note that at one time, I was literally "tarred and feathered" for even SUGGESTING that there were people of all 'types' interested in our CRAZY religion...which obviously....if you follow my logic and aren't 'blind'...isn't so crazy after all. It is though, very hard. No doubt about it especially when there are those who seek to "label" others with all sorts of VILE DESCRIPTIVE ANTIMUSLIMIST TERMS because, let's face it...we have a terrible reputation to UPHOLD and others think we need, "a little help". And usually I would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing...turn the other cheek...offer my jacket when someone steals my shirt.....and actually I DID ATTEMPT that sort of thing....but apparently even the Christian Ethic and the Crystal Hugging Pagan-slash-Wiccan-Spell-Casting Ethic is a bit tired nowdays of the belligerence and has adopted hatefulness as part of their universal 'code'. Whatever....it doesn't really matter other than to discuss the difficulty level involved in actual submission and then, the relative ease of it once it is in 'place' and all the logic is stored and called up and applied to various situations NOT MENTIONED in the Koran, like Chinese Foot Binding as it relates to FEMALE CIRCUMCISION (which was mentioned), or for that matter, male. Or about that issue of Wife Beating which appears to the untrained observer as an INJUNCTION TO ABUSE as opposed to what it really is, a LIMITATION on the more or less, universal occurrence of what we call, SPOUSAL ABUSE. The Koran didn't leave out much in terms of application but it did leave alot of the details up to history and the common, everyday intellectual and theologian. Like any good thinking man's book should.
The story of one Shebati Zevi is in order. I came across Mr. Zevi in the course of reading the MORE THAN WONDERFUL ex post facto NUN, Karen Armstrong whom I cannot say enough wonderful things about. She tells is like it is. And she knows the story of Shebbati.....
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/RabbiMessiahMuslimSabbataiZevi.htm
....and now any lonesome readers here know it too. It is definitely worth further research as a trivial detail or perhaps, a gigantic detail of the shared potential history that goes ignored and abused in the constant stream of attention 'given' to us by the media.....and it isn't the only interesting tale. The best stories about the *prophets are the details the books of sacred evidence don't provide (they are numbered at around 40,000 in the Koran and not assigned 'gender'...for that you have to turn to the historians and Ms. Armstrong is the leader of the pack in that regard. If you haven't read her...you should.
And you should follow that link to other stories from the "insane" like Mike Shapiro. His is great because I remember EVERY SINGLE ONE of those arguments that I engaged myself with and especially the one about how two religions (and for whatever it is worth people still get into heaven even if they aren't muslims depending on their 'relative' ability to navigate in "cloudy conditions"...in fact maybe they even get MORE credit for a job well done under less than clear admonitions)...how two religions are named after "groups" or "ethnicities" and the third, the final word (and let's be honest here...there haven't been any more real prophets after Mohamed although there have been a number of fake ones from Jim Jones all the way down through Jimmy Baker and his lovely ex-wife and current wife who could have shared him had they 'copped out' and played for our 'team')..the third great one, Islam is named after a "condition" available to all men/women regardless of social strata and color.
Or maybe not, just maybe not all HUMAN BEINGS are being allowed to be MUSLIM. Because 'freedom of religion' isn't really a sacred human right in the United States now, is it? No. It isn't. Of course it isn't. It is a Christian state lest we forget that before ending this wonderfully long session of absolute religious anarchy. Meet Mike Shapiro:
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/michael-david-shapiro.htm
I think I'll run over and say hi to Mike. Sounds nice. We muslims all get along....more or less. When people generally stop pestering us about our milk, honey, water and oil.
Hankies and Shrouds
Yours has hers already ironfolded
on top the armoire. She looks at it
now and then. Washes it. Puts it back.
Mine had hankerchiefs. I have perhaps
a dozen of them in a safe place
where they won't get dirty anymore.
Yours isn't into keeping much about.
So much work and she is so old now.
The shroud is her only effort.
Mine is gone already so I have these left
to protect for a while longer. I give one
away when it is important to do so.
They still smell like her closets.
Yours is always complaining of her bad luck.
She isn't worried about what comes next,
she knows it. She tries it on now and then for practice.
Mine made peach cobbler and complained
all the time but not to me. I can hear that
from yours and mine was already very old anyway.
She knew what kind of history repeats itself.
Yours has little eyes behind magnifying lenses.
Mine had sunken ones too deep to sink into.
Yours has hers already ironfolded
on top the armoire. She looks at it
now and then. Washes it. Puts it back.
Mine had hankerchiefs. I have perhaps
a dozen of them in a safe place
where they won't get dirty anymore.
Yours isn't into keeping much about.
So much work and she is so old now.
The shroud is her only effort.
Mine is gone already so I have these left
to protect for a while longer. I give one
away when it is important to do so.
They still smell like her closets.
Yours is always complaining of her bad luck.
She isn't worried about what comes next,
she knows it. She tries it on now and then for practice.
Mine made peach cobbler and complained
all the time but not to me. I can hear that
from yours and mine was already very old anyway.
She knew what kind of history repeats itself.
Yours has little eyes behind magnifying lenses.
Mine had sunken ones too deep to sink into.
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