TEFF VETCH FLAX

I was married on a cold day in the month of Slova. My bride, a mere child really, shuddered as the last words of the vow were hissed from between her clinched teeth and as if foretelling the future a pair of blackbirds seemed to drop dead and fall from a high tension wire as we walked out of the church. Her mother and father eyed each other wearily from their group and you could sense the animosity that had leached into the two small tribes as their eyes rolled to and fro between the bridesworks and the enemies.

“What a monstrosity.” Mumbled the preacher as he stuffed a wad of cash into his tunic.

I picked up my bride and carried her down the steps while cold metal clouds sloughed off the horizon and began shooting down pellets of ice. The wind picked up and a hand full of rice flew back over the crowd’s heads and rattled off the church windows. My mother in law’s hat flew off and away.

“We must be living on Mars.” She said as she buried her face in her husband’s lapel and began sobbing.

“You carry me over the threshold, not down the steps.” Said my bride.

Holding her to my chest with one arm I opened the door and placed her in the back seat. I turned to the wedding party who were torn between glowering down at me and glowering at each other. I just made a brushing away motion toward them with my arm and went to the other side of the car. Just as I began to open the door someone shouted, “But she’s just a girl for God’s sake!” and just as quickly someone shouted back, “She’s a cheap whore!” And that was it. The two groups set upon one another like wild dogs. Instead of getting in with my beloved I opened the front door and pulled out the driver then took off in a huff of black smoke that helped obscure the commotion and disheartening scene in the church yard.

“Well, that’s that.” I said as I sped the car through its gears and tried to wipe the ‘just married’ words off the window. Then I realized that there was something was wrong with the car. “Jesus Christ! What else can go wrong? It sounds like the car’s falling apart!”

“It’s the cans! It’s the cans!”

“Holy Christ, I feel like I’m escaping from prison!”  I said. I pulled the car over and ripped the cans off but when I got back to the door I was locked out. “All right you little rat. Unlock that door.”

“Put the cans back on.”

“What?”

“I’m not going without the cans.”

“What the hell’s it matter. We can’t leave them on all the way to Kentucky. They’ll fall off and we’ll be arrested for littering.”

“We’ll leave them on ’till the hotel then.”

“That’s sixty miles. They won’t last.”

“I don’t care.”

I tied the cans back on and got into the car. On the highway I got the car going fast hoping that the cans might become air born and they did make less noise but after a couple of minutes the engine began clicking so I had to slow down.

“Well, I’m not pregnant.” Said my little wife.

“I knew it! I knew it was a lie the whole time! You little rat! All those people back there think I’m a pervert just because you wanted to be “betrothed.”

“Now you’re my husband and you have to take care of me and buy me stuff.”

“Well that’s where you’re wrong. This whole thing’s a joke.”

“Well you promised in God’s house in front of a preacher.”

“I think you have to believe in that stuff for it to count.”

“Well, you’re a Christian.”

“No. I’m not. I think all that stuff’s a crock.”

“Well, the law’s on my side.”

“What do you know about the law, you can hardly read.”

“I know my rights.”

“You don’t know much at all. I knew you weren’t  pregnant when you refused to show me some test results and if you think I bought that ‘don’t you trust me’ crap for one second you’re crazy because no I don’t trust you and I never have trusted you. You’re a complete rat. I’ve never had sex with you–that I know. I may have been drunk on pills and faulty in the head but I knew I didn’t do anything with you. Now, I’ll give you credit for this… you definitely manipulated a confusing situation to your advantage because your dad does have some fearsome friends and my parents are definitely fools when it comes to a sob story. But here’s where you made one crucial mistake. We now have the pesos and the law doesn’t mean a thing to me. So, in a nutshell, you’ve purchased the matrimonial farm.”

Looking into the rearview mirror I could see that little face looking at me with her oily black eyes wide open and her sharp little teeth glistening in her mouth. She ran her fingers back over her head and said, “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. I can’t see you doing all of this for fifty thousand pesos.”

“Like I said, you made a crucial mistake. We have a date in Covington with someone who has something that will please me and you’re going to see that 50 thousand disappear in one fell swoop.”

“Hey, that’s my money as much as yours!”

“No it’s not. It’s a dowery. It’s what they pay me to take you off their hands.”

“Right. But you have to spend most the money on me. That’s why they give it to you.”

“Well, that would be partially true if we were living in feudal times and I chose to obey the conventions of the time, but now that we’re living in post inquisition America and the laws are splattered around like chewing gum on the sidewalk and just as insignificant… and in light of the fact that I don’t care for these laws or any other laws for that matter…”

“You’ll care when my dad gets you.”

“I don’t know why you’re going on like this. If you want me to take you back I will. If you want me to dump you off somewhere in Kentucky I’ll do that too. Actually, I’ll do just about anything you want except listen to you. I’ve got too much to think about and not all that much time to think about it.”

“What do you mean not enough time to think about it. We’re going to be driving for hours.”

“I don’t expect it to take hours to travel sixty miles.” But just as I said that I turned onto a highway that was packed with cars as far as the eye could see. There were people milling around on the berm and some cars even had birds sitting on the roofs. “Well, we’re not going this way.” I said as I began backing down the entrance ramp. The car was rolling backwards and the cans must have become caught up in the breaks because when I tried to slow down the pedal didn’t move at all. Then I tried to get the car into some gear so that I could use engine compression to slow us down but the gears just ground and would not engage. And, unfortunately, my little one had an excellent grasp of automotive mechanics because as we developed a truly terrifying head of steam going backwards she said, “You should have left it in reverse instead of being so impatient and wanting to roll faster than the law allows. And I can’t believe you forgot about the cans again. You can’t run over something like that and not expect trouble. Also, here comes a car.” And sure enough there was a car coming up behind us that didn’t seem to apprehend that we were coming at them at 30 miles an hour. “What idiot!..” I shouted just before we slammed into the car and sent all sorts of metal bits skittering down the road. The accident didn’t much phase us and, in fact, left my wife sharp enough to tell me that we’d just crashed into her family’s car.

“This is a living nightmare.” I said as I ran off into the woods with the bag of money. I ran for about a minute before stopping to catch my breath by a small pond that was evidently close to the main highway since I could hear radios playing and people talking. Looking behind me I saw my bride coming up fast, jumping over logs and ducking under branches like a real animal. “God, why can’t she leave me alone?” I wondered. She was not at all my girlfriend and really, I don’t think anyone that knew either of us would for one second claim that we were even nice to each other. The entire marriage thing was a joke and the only reason it happened was due to one fact and one phenomenon. The fact was that my bride was insane and the phenomenon was that she had a streak of lucid thoughts one fateful day that allowed her to say just the right things to just the right people. She was obsessed with getting married but to whom really didn’t matter. She could have married Chairman Mao for all it mattered to her. She just considered it to be something that had to be done. I had no desire to be married but I didn’t mind the idea of collecting a small pile of money from the parents if they were so foolish. When she got over to me she grabbed the bag of money and threw it up in the air where it blew all over the place. Then she jumped into the pond just before her dad came bounding over the brush like Danny Boone. “He threw me in the Pond!” She shouted. That was that. That was also fifty years ago and we’ve been discussing things ever since.

INSIDE OUTSIDE

Sometimes I try to get right down to the fundamentals in order to bring clarity. For instance, the other morning I walked out of the concrete facade that hides our ten thousand residents from the blight of nature and I was immediately struck with the idea that we were crazy for having to go anywhere at all. The air outside smelled like ammonia and bleach which is rather ironic since those two substances, when mixed, can make chlorine gas which eats membranes and scorches the eyes. The sun is making things crackle and burn and the perpetual fires of the wastelands issue a choking black cloud that never seems to disperse since weather, as it used to be known is dead. Anyway, as I lumbered down the street looking for scraps of commodity, I realized that we have always been trying to remove ourselves from the vagaries of nature by enclosing ourselves in cubes and recreating a world more copacetic to our senses. It was now possible to lie in repose for twenty four hours a day and yet imagine that you were flying to distant planets and galaxies. Bodily functions had been tamed by the so called “mastic cuff” and there were some people who were vying for the world’s record of not moving a muscle in years. Every day gangs of kids would collect bones that had been drying out with the mastic cuff lying deflated and crumpled around a femur or humerus. Why they did it no one knew. Kids were the last bastion of natural disorder and the powers that be were worn out with trying to whip them down since they were born somewhere secret and poured out in droves whereupon they would cause havoc until they became tired.  So I was walking down the street wondering about why we had to go anywhere when it hit me that I WAS going somewhere even though I didn’t have to. Every day I went out. Every day I went into the acid and the smoke under the illusion that I would find something of interest just lying on the ground. I had never found a thing and I knew I never would. I just wanted to go outside. It was such a ridiculous notion to want to go outside that even to myself I had to lie. Just walking out the door was the equivalent of the old going homeless and pushing a grocery cart. So, when I began to seriously ponder this inside/outside dichotomy I was overcome by a wave of nausea as it dawned on me that the “outside” had been bred out of us. The drive to domesticate had finally gone completely around and run out of victims so that it had now come back to the species of origin where it would clearly roost until we were completely still. What a plan! Who thought it up! After pondering this for awhile I purposely set out for the wild lands and began to feel better as I realized I might never go inside again. Ironically, I kept having the recurring dream that I used to make buildings in another life and the first thing I did when I got deep in the gray woods was to make a tiny shelter. What else could I do?

HENBANE

I don’t know why I thought it would be the thing to do but I went into the most exclusive restaurant in town and ordered two crazy little chickens and a bottle of fermented bacon fat. I was trying to impress that little critter that I’d had my eyes on for several months by being a unique customer who had a sophisticated palate. I figured, “What can she know? She’s just a server.” When she asked me if I was kidding I tried to pretend that I was from somewhere rather exotic but that didn’t work either. After a slight palaver I said that I was an ABC agent and I was just out funning around and that I didn’t care at all about whether her restaurant was or was not in compliance with the law. At that point she went and got the manager who came and threw me out. I waited down at the door for nearly six hours for her shift to be over and when she came out I told her the truth. “I have a huge crush on you and think we should go out together.” Oh she was fast on her feet. She said, “As opposed to going out apart you mean.” I didn’t have a quick answer for that so I just walked along beside her down the street for a few minutes and then said, “Look, I don’t know how to put this but I think we should get married as soon as possible. I’ll give you everything I have and bring you coffee in bed every morning for the rest of my life.” She didn’t slow down a bit but after a minute or so she said, “Did it ever occur to you that you appear to be crazy and insane?” I replied that I was only crazy about her and that if I was insane it was news to me and that, furthermore, I had been interviewed by a health care professional who deemed me to be in excellent mental health. “Did you pay that interviewer?” She asked. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did.” Then she told me that you can’t trust anyone you’ve paid money to to give you an honest assessment of anything. I said, “I’d sue him if I thought he’d lied about me.” Finally, when we got to her car she turned to me and said, “Look, I have a boyfriend and he’s waiting for me right now. He already brings me coffee in bed every morning and he has better things to do than hang around at restaurants trying to meet someone he hardly knows.” Well that stung but I tightened up my breath and said, “He’ll never love you as much as I do.” She looked at me for a moment and then asked why I had picked her of all people. “I don’t know.” I said. “I do know this though, I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my life. The second I saw you I knew that you would have to be my wife or I would simply die.” She put the key in her car door and said, “Well, I guess you’re going to have to die then.” She got into her car and took off leaving me standing by the curb scratching my head. The next night I went through the same routine including being thrown out of the restaurant by the manager. When we were walking to her car I said, “I’m going to come after you every night until you give in.” She kept walking and then stopped and turned to me. “Look,” she said, “If you keep bugging me I’m going to get my boyfriend to come down here. He’s big and strong and he’ll knock the teeth out of your mouth.” I stood up tall and said, “Bring him on. I’ll fight anyone for you.” She went to her car and this time before she drove off she rolled down the window and said, “You may not know it, but you are definitely nuts.” And then she once again drove away. Well this same thing went on for a few more nights. But on the third or fourth night she did bring her boyfriend who came out of no where just when we got to her car. She smiled and said, “This is my boyfriend, Ansgar. Ansgar, this is the nut who has been bugging me.” Well this Ansgar character was definitely a bruiser and he looked like he would enjoy tearing someone’s head off for the fun of it. He stood there cracking his knuckles while he glared at me through his deep sunk eyes. “Listen Ansgar,” I said. “You don’t want to get messed up in all this. This girl’s crazy about me and she doesn’t even know it. We’re going to be married and that’s about all there is to it. Why don’t you go buy yourself a pit bull or some tickets to a monster truck rally?” Ansgar didn’t like that at all and he swung at me with a mighty fist that would have taken my head off if he’d aimed better. As it was he missed and smashed a big dent in the girl’s car. The girl looked at me with fire in her eyes and said, “Look what you’ve done to my car!” I smiled and said, “You saw who did it as well as I did. You’re going out with a monkey! I can fix that dent with some Bondo in about a minute.” Ansgar came after me and I ran around the car staying just out of his reach. We ran about four laps and then I jumped up on the hood and climbed onto the roof which immediately dented down a little bit. I crawled over to the girl’s window and hung my head down. “We’ve got to get out of here. That old boy is going crazy!” She rolled up her window but not before I stuck my hand in it. She kept rolling it up until my hand was clamped between the glass and the top of the door. “Oh baby!” I said, “You DO want to take me with you don’t you!” She started the car and pulled out of the parking space in a very uncontrolled manner. “Careful.” I said, “I don’t want to fall off this thing and be dragged to your house.” Ansgar was running behind us and I could hear him huffing like a bull as his bowed legs carried him across the macadam with a clickety clack from his cheap shoes with old fashioned taps on them. I leaned down to the window and said, “Is your boyfriend cheap about replacing his shoes or is he a baboon tap dancer for the city theater?” She rolled down the window enough for me to retrieve my hand and then said, “We’re going to drive to a nice dark place where Ansgar can kick your teeth out.” I turned around and saw Ansgar about fifty feet away. “Look at that brute.” I said. “He must drink a quart of testosterone a day. Is that really what you want in a man? I’m more of an aristocrat…royal linage and all that. Wouldn’t you rather be treated like a princess than a cave woman?”  She slammed on the brakes and I sailed across the hood and onto the road where I scrapped off a big swath of forearm skin and tore open the knees of my pants. “Good God you’re a bad driver.” I groaned while I rolled around in a writhing tribute to pain. “I think you need to take me to a hospital.” I said. But she just ran over my foot while I was trying to crawl to the shoulder. Ansgar came panting up to me and proceeded to kick me in the side while I spit and cussed at my helplessness. Then everything went black. When I awoke I was swaddled in bandages and it hurt to breath. I looked over at the bedside table and saw a little thing of flowers with a card. It nearly killed me to reach over and grab the card. I opened it and it said, “You are a turd! Ansgar and I were arrested because of you and now I’m fired from my job. Also, there is anthrax in this card!” Well she was lying about the anthrax because I’m still alive. But I’ll say this, she really blew it. I’ll never ask her out again! I can read people like a book and she really didn’t like me!

INSANE HAINTS

Who would build a haunted house on purpose? I don’t think anyone would although, who knows? The other day I felt a little twinge of concern because my usually exuberant puppy really didn’t want to come over to the house. Usually, her head can be seen just below the front window peering inside like a baby seal, waiting for some acknowledgement. But then she vanished and when I would try to get her to come to me she would only do it if I wasn’t near the house. Goodness only knows what she sees, smells, hears, or whatever. Several years ago I went across the creek to find my horses frozen in place while looking at my house. I tried to bridle one of them but it wouldn’t cooperate and when I let it go it just returned to being frozen and staring at the house. Walking back to the house I noticed a sheet I’d hung out earlier in the day. It was slowly moving in the breeze and I wondered if they were looking at it. When I took it down the horses were unfrozen within a minute and back to their perpetual munching of grass. How could such a thing be so fascinating to them? Did it look like a ghost? Hmm… So I’ve been wondering if the dog sees something disturbing at the house. Does it think there is a ghost or a spook somewhere in the place? Well, I think the dog needs to take a look around the yard. She has brought home enough to make any ghost think twice about making a new home. There are bones, hardened leather hides, clumps of fur, heads, entire bunnies, birds, half eaten mice, spinal columns, entrails, partial ears, and so on. What ghost in its right mind would want to be seen in such a mess? I find it terribly disturbing to see someone who is annoyingly vivacious suddenly become subdued. I prefer the annoying incessant activity even if I do have to womp her snout now and then. So this morning I was pleased to hear the dog having its early morning battle with the cat on the front porch. I came down and there was her seal head looking in and waiting. What ever was here has cleared out. It’s a rough neighborhood and I’m so proud of my pets for keeping their eyes peeled and bringing all the hex signs home. Still, I need to rake the yard soon.

SUSS AND LOOK

Last night the highway just kept coming out of nowhere in a black heave of curves and lines some of which glowed just a little above the ground before they disappeared in the background where they didn’t glow or do anything at all. There’s something pleasing about being out late on a country road where there are no other cars and all the lights from various farm houses are off. I think about the people sleeping and the dogs standing sentinel while the last bits of heat creak out of roof beams and I imagine that I hear my own truck zooming by with the hiss of tires making a comforting sound. I started thinking about when we were little and we’d go stay at our granny’s house which was on a busy street. Our own street was dead as a doornail at night but at our granny’s the cars went by all night long and it was such an unusual thing to us that we’d count cars while falling asleep. “What could people be doing out there?” I’d wonder. “Why aren’t they asleep? How much more do they want out of the day and what could possibly be happening in the pitch black?” But now I know. People go driving out in the dark so that they can wake up the next day with a splitting headache and a vague sense of unease about the things that went by. But it’s OK. Today is gorgeous and it may rain tonight and my mind is on the other coast.

MAIDEN VOYAGE OF TIME

I’ve become very interested in time as it plays out well or plays out poorly. How it can feel running through your hands or being burned without you as a witness. How it can speed up or slow down depending on the landscape, the time of day, the age of the year, or the cadence of your blood. I spend time in many different spectra including the most preposterous of all, i.e., contemplating how it is being used. I spend time in awe of some things and stunned speechless by others. I spend time asleep where I have the best things and thoughts happen in measures which are very slippery and strange but perfectly suitable for carrying the thread of my explorations. And then, occasionally, I spend time behind the scrim of someone I like too much. Within this place there is nothing else and you wonder how an anchor can send you aloft, how such stillness can roar by, and how the weather of everyone else blows away for those few moments. I like to go away but I like my home. Behind the scrim I can be everywhere at once. No wonder it is so precious.

FOOLS OF GRACE

So I had a flight physical today up a little north of the town of Cuckoo Virginia. The doctor’s office was in his garage and it was decked out like most country doctor’s offices with the same cheap hard carpet, clanking cabinets, and antiquated equipment. For some reason the doctors who do these FAA physicals always seem to be non-mainstream and a bit dowdy. This one didn’t even have a receptionist and so the examination was interrupted by numerous calls from other physicians who were consulting my doctor about patients who seemed about to die. As I stood there, the proper distance from an eye chart holding a business card instead of an eye paddle, I listened closely to try to determine whether or not my doctor was competent or half dead himself. He was very old. Because he was very old it struck me as strange that his cell phone would have a hip-hop ring tone. During these examinations they are constantly assessing your mental state and looking for any possible neurological defect. I find that to be nerve racking in itself but if the doctor’s odd it adds fuel to the fire because you wonder about his field of context. And so I then wonder how long I should wait to blink my eyes or whether or not I should yawn. I don’t like being examined at all. I’m a “no news is good news,” person and I apply that to my physical body as well as my mail box. Well in the midst of checking the nerves of my legs the doctor found what looked like a six inch vein down by my ankle. “This might be an occluded vein.” He said as he palpitated and pushed the small ridge under my skin. All I could think was, “What the fuck? Why would I have an occluded vein?” I run like a fiend and I can’t imagine having any circulatory problems what so ever. Am I delusional? I reached down and felt the little protrusion by my ankle. Then I pronounced, “That’s not a vein. It’s a tendon or a nerve.” He felt it again and said, “You’re right it might be a tendon.” At that point I decided that my examination was now going to consist of a psychological game of anticipating what the doctor might accidently decide was wrong with me. I have learned that these federally mediated protocols have layers of booby traps and that you can trigger an avalanche of disaster with one wrong word. And if your doctor is about to drop dead from senescence, is a tad blind, confused, and distracted by hip-hop tones on his cell phone the pitfalls are considerably greater. It was the longest examination I ever had to go through. I didn’t trust a thing he did but I realized that he seemed to be very interested telling stories about the air force and his time as a military doc. I thought about that dude that blew away the people at Fort Hood. “How do these things happen?” I wondered. “How do people get to these places?”  I wonder if there is really a system out there. I wonder about how hard you should fight to stay afloat when you’re surrounded by unlikely events. The doctor was nice enough but he was a product of something that I just can’t figure out. It’s like if you’re willing to follow the rules with enough dedication and professional blindness you can achieve amazing heights and fantastic lows at the same time. I see it time and time again. I think it boils down to this: If you’re endowed with enough blindness and are willing to slog down the same path day in and day out, there is a system out there which will reward you. But the system and how it came about is a mystery to me. So be it. I got my certificate and I escaped the outskirts of Cuckoo Virginia. I was pleased.

 

CHICKPEAS ARE PULSES

Among the interpretations that could be attributed to the various things I’ve heard there are, of course, the unspeakable, the obtuse, the clearly mendacious, the cloudy, as well as the brilliant beck and call. I love them all of course as they shower down on me from the clouds of breath, or float up to my eyes from the their ant like progression, telling me things, lies, facts, truths, and with one or two having the effect of a sharp arrow striking and humming in a pine board. But the looks and the actions are also translated into these little creatures with their funny loops and stalks so that I can run a sentence through my mind trying to see how it plays and what it’s worth in reference to what happened. If I run my fingers through someone’s hair and smell someone’s neck I can’t help but to wonder what I should say about it. But there’s where these amazing creatures fail to be sufficient. Sometimes a notion will go through you and you have no idea what it means or from what past event it derived. It’s somewhere considerably below the ocean of words and the way it shakes you leaves no doubt it meant something. I really wonder though. What if all the words and logical thoughts have simply made us like domesticated animals? Somewhat lacking the ability to really live. And lacking that ability because we have to run everything through the sieve of words and the logic they compel us to believe. I’m beginning to see things that are so logical they’re meaningless. I read articles that are written by well dressed machines and all I can think about them is how I want them to be gone. I don’t care if they suck the life out of everyone else but I don’t want them to touch me or the people I like. I want there to remain a well of undefined feeling and unknown things so that there’s something worthwhile thinking about in the middle of the night. Something to talk about while you disperse the flu of the day’s rancid blather and munificent cagework.

BRIGHT LANDS AND BEASTS

A lovely day with the rain pouring down through very warm air as I sip an insipid coffee and view the passing crowds. Of course I’m going to be hanged in about five minutes and mosquitos are sucking me dry but all in all it’s not a bad morning. How could I have come to such peace? I mean I can count my life in seconds but it doesn’t bother me at all. I suppose it’s the contrast of several days ago when fires were roaring through the village and I was running around with a handful of molotov cocktails tossing them into open huts and onto the rocks surrounding cooking fires. The tribe in Peru known as the Pluzzors had taken my pet monkey, whacked it on the head with a rock, and dropped it unceremoniously onto a fire where it smoked. Then they took my cell phone and tried to eat it raw until they bit the button which adjusted the ring whereupon they threw it into the river. They then took my knapsack full of cash, drugs, and bullets. The ate the drugs and then threw the cash and bullets into the fire. They stripped me down and started painting me with reeking dyes from the forest while two very strong women poked holes in my earlobes. There was absolutely no communicating with them. Not even hand gestures meant a thing. It was like being held by a swarm of ants who were bent on some unknown goal that was going to be executed come hell or high water. When they had me dressed up more or less to look like one of them they brought me to two trees which had been pulled towards each other with vines so that they crossed about halfway up. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had seen this very method of execution in Tarzan movies as a child. They would tie your left arm and leg to one tree and the right arm and leg to the other. Then they would cut the vines holding them together and the trees would spring apart ripping you in half. I thought it was terrifying as a kid and now it was way worse. But my savages were “special.” They tied all of me to one tree and then cut the vines so that I shot several hundred feet into the forest. I landed in a mesh of green flexible plants so that I was unharmed except for where the vines they had tied around my limbs had torn away and cut the skin. I hauled ass deeper into the forest and had the pleasure of hearing the shells go off in the fires. I imagined them running around fucked out of their heads on a concoction of heroin and cocaine while bullets flew. I thought, “I must be the worst archeologist on the planet.” I made it to an outpost of the Monsanto company which was methodically sucking tons of bio material out of the forest for base materials that eventually turned into foods of every shape. I had nothing against the company one way or the other but I broke into one of their out buildings where I found a bunch of worthless junk. Among the pipes and wire there were bottles and a container of gasoline. I was really pissed about my pet monkey even though it was not a great pet by any stretch of the imagination and I decided that I was going to annihilate the natives of the village. My “vacation” took a turn for the sinister right there. Up until then I had just been a pesky foreigner but when I decided the fill the bottles with gasoline I became an insurgent and a walking talking testimony to the base instincts of man out of his element. As I walked through the woods towards the village I decided that I was going to write about fundamental good verses fundamental evil within the animal kingdom and specifically within the kingdom of furless bipeds who thought way too much about nothing of import. I mean there was something about discovering that this “primitive” tribe just as easily succumbed to  evil as the most cosmopolitan tribe of city dwellers. I was just a stranger passing through the forest looking for artifacts to loot and unusual people to write about. And I just come a little too close to this village and they decide that I was perfect material for a little torture. After I tossed the bottles of gasoline I ran back into the forest where I was immediately caught by a large ape. The thing must have weighed about 800 pounds and it held my head between its thumb and forefinger like I was a small egg with feet . It was very gentle though and it carried me while applying just the minimal amount of pressure that would keep me from falling to the ground. In very short order it became clear to me that it was heading for the village which was smoldering and where the villagers were running in circles and jumping into the air when ever a shell exploded. I just couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. I tried to back up my mind to the moment where I started down this particular path. A wrong turn on some street. An unfortunate look at some stranger. Perhaps an insufficient tip in a voodoo restaurant. The ape carried me into the middle of the village and put me down by the the main fire. There were flues of heat going up my side and smoke going into my nose but I resisted coughing even though I couldn’t stand it. What the hell is going on here? I am being tormented by an ape within a village of minimal civilization. But then I thought, “I’ve been beaten and robbed in many a center of civilization so why would this be such a surprise?” The ape pushed me down to the ground and put his foot on my chest. Then it proceeded to pull my toes until they popped right off my feet. It hurt. It really hurt. But it wasn’t unbearable because I knew that I was taking in the essence of the kind of behavior that you are bound to notice. If you are not being tortured by the villagers… if you are not having your toes torn off by an ape… if you are not noticing bad behavior… If you’re not doing any of these things and noticing these things then you are simply not in civilization. A tiger or a iguana would never think of tearing off my toes one by one. But the ape, in a state only several hundred thousand years from the divergence, with a boiling mind capable of conceiving a sliver of cause and effect was performing civilization on my feet. I thought this was a stunning realization and was plotting how I would suss out the crux of my idea when the local military came bashing through the forest in smoking, clanking jeeps while firing pot shots into the air. The natives scattered into the greenery, the ape gave one loud roar, and kicked something into the fire then smashed straight through several huts on the way to the wilds. I was the only thing left in the ruined village so I was the only thing arrested and charged with every violation that existed in the country. So, standing at the gallows I pondered all of the implications. There was no way around it. Civilization was the most curious thing I had ever seen. It wasn’t mean or even perverse. It just did what it did and that was good enough.

PAN PAN PAN

This morning I woke up and began replaying my dream. I was at the airport at my flight school which had turned into a sort of party place full of people who were the very opposite of the often right wing, militaristic, boobs who staff the school. There were a bunch of happy people dancing around and playing with computers and some high tech equipment of some sort. My former flight instructor, David Ashley, who is the son of Laura Ashley, was there in all his whacky English glory. He was trying to explain some obscure instrument flight regulation to me and, as usual, trying to lure me into complacency so he could spring a disaster on me. He did this in real life too. We would be flying along and he would start talking about something off the subject of flying and then all the sudden be like, “You’ve lost 100 feet! What are you doing? You’ve  just crashed!” He was a really good pilot though and I figured it was good to learn subtle multitasking triage. Anyway, in this dream someone was preparing a plane for me to fly. I was to fly somewhere over some water to a place that was not to be visited. But then I realized I didn’t have the current qualifications to make the flight and I didn’t have my license or log book with me. I forgot my whole flight bag. Still, I decided to make the flight and the next thing I knew I was at the controls and in the air. But then somehow as I was flying along, the little plane turned into a commercial jet and I had just flown under a high tension line. I was too close to the ground and the jet was moving very fast but the controls were like syrup. Then the engines began to wind down on their own and I pushed the throttles hard without results. Everything went dark in the cabin and I could hear nothing but the screech of wind over the fuselage. I began to hear things thumping the bottom of the plane and I knew it was going down. I tried to radio out but I couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to say Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, or Pan, Pan, Pan. And then I thought, “What does it matter? I crashed and the plane came to pieces but, as usual, I was fine and seemed to have been magically  transported to my kitchen where the lights were also out and I found myself to be extremely sleepy within my very own sleep. It was an excellent dream and as I now remember, it was Mayday that I should have been screaming at the radio. Pan is very possible disaster whereas Mayday is imminent disaster. I won’t forget now.