20080902
Post Mortem Dump
or What I Did While I Was Fangling.
by Stephen Kemp
or What I Did While I Was Fangling.
by Stephen Kemp
At our life's end, just as it ebbs away, the last bit for us is said to be that of watching our lifetime flash before our eyes. Somewhere along the line, I started actually planning for that moment, trying to pack into it everything I can, over the course of my life, in hopes that the moment will last as long and be as meaningful as possible, in the expectation of the final realizing that life and death come together in the world,
So far I have accumulated something like this, written as I imagine it might go, just after my dying rattle, as my life unwinds into the cosmos:
Not here before I was born: where did I come from? Not here after I die: where will I go? Now and for always, being as far away from death as ever I will be, and as close to birth as ever I will be: born with a black eye as the North Island noon whistle blew.
SONG: In the Mood - Glenn Miller - 1944
Being a very small boy, living next to the ocean in Sunset Cliffs, loving the smells and sights and feeling of it, riding the bus, seeing a man pick his nose, learning to do it, too. At a downtown bus-stop, standing behind a woman with a fur collar, petting it, smooth, furry. Mom in a polka-dot dress doing a load of wash, watching her run the wringer. Scary. Dad telling me to eat the pill so my belly button will glow in the dark. Thinking how happy I am to live in America. Humming, with my teeth just barely touching, making a little buzzing sound along with my voice making my first harmony.
SONG: Old Devil Moon
Going up the hill and around the corner to a big black tall box -- mystified at seeing a phone on the wall. Going back down the hill to home, banging and banging on the back door, but the kids aren't letting me in. Crying and crying, kids finally coming to take me to the right house -- so relieved. A pony coming for taking my picture. Visiting my little girl friend down the hill, her dad curling his index finger to beckon me, dumbly just looking at him, her explaining that that means 'come here.'My brothers taking me to the secret passage leading down into the great cliff cave grotto, scary, candles, climbing down, climbing up, excitement, and all the way them protecting me. Mom fixing me tapioca pudding with nutmeg and mace, eating macaroni in hot milk with butter.
*****
Moving far away one Fall to live in cow-smell country, eating the cattle's oats, electric fence, tiny first bike, dad making me itch just by suggesting it. Earning a quarter by riding the new bike across the lawn. Discovering cherries from the kids, who go to pick them, ruining their tee-shirts from the color of the cherries. Snow coming, getting real cold, making angels in it, the boys peeing in it to write our names. New words: coaster sled, galoshes, mittens, snowball fights. Holding a lamb, riding in the Marine pickup truck with dad, drinking grape Nehi and listening to the radio while Dad is teaching me to search along the road for bottles to buy beans. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer all new to me.
SONG: Ghost Riders In The Sky - Vaughn Monroe
*****
Moving into Salt Lake City, much nicer. Brothers shaving a peach, making itching powder to use on me and laughing at me. Stealing dad's lighter, playing with fire with my Swedish friend Kennit, him teaching me how to cuss in Swedish, learning how to charge things at the store, charging up lots of cookies. Nobody teaching me to skate. My earache popping and yucky stuff running out. Getting the measles and scratching them, the kids letting me go out at night to crawl under bushes, gathering night-crawlers. When I lay me down to sleep, not really comfortable praying "If I should die before I wake."
Going to school even if I'm not six yet, taking naps and singing. Teacher taking me out in the hall to shake me, shaking and shaking, with me never knowing why. Liking the girls but them not letting me play along with them. A boy named Rusty picking on me. Loving to play on the monkey bars, but hearing that a person could fall off and die. Hating and fearing Rusty. Reading being easy, singing being fun. Singing at Christmas, up on the rooftop, click click click. Getting stung on the hand by a yellow-jacket, getting a toy train.
SONG: Tennessee Waltz - Patti Page
Discovering how to pick apricots off the trees. Brother Jon spraying my throat with perfume saying I will sing better, and me breaking out in a rash, but Mom worrying that I have scarlet fever, and getting me a shot, but not hurting too much, and me being brave. Playing on a typewriter, typing my name. The NCO club, while Dad hangs out with buddies, me plugging nickels into slot machines: three cherries! The folks at Bingo, Dad painting me up as a Halloween clown, cute kid. Free films at The NCO club -- Sands of Iwo Jima. Going into a real movie theater to see The Day The Earth Stood Still, eating a Three Musketeers candy bar: only a nickel, and big enough for
Brothers telling the family about fighting off the Mormon boys by standing back to back. Mom listening to music and frowning about the UnAmerican trials on the radio -- she loves Lucy. Her getting a job at Keely's restaurant. Me falling off the chicken coop at the babysitter's, front teeth slicing far into lower lip. Close call.
Brother Rob having a bullwhip and going to ride horses with Sue while he is supposed to babysit me. Dad bullwhipping him, making him run away for a long time. Dad as a clown at the Shriner's circus for the orphans and me getting to go too, but never getting to wear a fez. His big first aid kit in the trunk of our shiny new maroon Chevy. Hiding in the back yard next to the neighbor's chicken-coop and looking under the Kennedy girl's panties. Brother Jon saying he'll tell Mom and feeling really scared that he will. Looking under another girl's dress in the bushes around the flagpole before school. Big 78 records, but no one letting me run the wire recorder, or even touch the piano.
SONG: Wee Cooper o' Fife - Burl Ives
Dad taking me to visit a bakery and a cannery, but then leaving me in the car for hours while he goes in the bar. Crying and crying, trying to start the car, but when I push the button the car lurches forward. Too scary.Later, Dad getting mad at something and trying to chop the car tires with the ax, but Mom driving us away into the night, sister claiming that I want to take the raggedy andy, but I don't.
SONG: Lavender Blue
SONG: The Thing
SONG: It's In The Book - Johnny Stanley
Driving for hours, through the night, while I try to go to sleep, but then us turning back in Montana. Walking home from first grade and the snow being over my head beside the sidewalk. Vowing to myself that I will never live in a place with snow when I grow up, but feeling too young to make a vow. Peeing down the heater vent - stinky, so we had to move.
*****
Getting back to California palm trees, the ocean, seaweed and smelling the tacos again! Third grade, hunting craw-dads, having two ducks, they chase the little MG. Girl with ugly name Stella, real mean bully named Angel. Schoolgirl desk partner teases, taunting: Me snapping, rageful, turning desk upside down, Mrs. Ross understanding. Dad going to fight in Korea, brother Rob finally coming back home. Barbed wire head gash, getting caught again at the panties of girl friend Sally under her house and then yet again in plain view on the pickle-weed slope.
SONG: That's All I Want From You - Jaye P. Morgan
1954: Moving onto Camp Pendleton and going to play at the camouflage range, the obstacle course; overnight camping at Combat Town, half Asian, half European, sitting in the old Japanese pagoda tank, cranking the turret around, sitting in the top of the German bell tower eating beanie-weenies and K-rations. Crawling through a captured Japanese landing craft; out on the tank range wearing a helmet to take a ride in a tank - it has periscopes! Close order drill, Marine Band parades.
Right after sundown, speeding down a hill on a bike, trying to race a car to the intersection at the bottom. It almost hits me, did not see me coming, I almost lose the race. Close call.
SONG: Semper Fidelis
Brother Jon stealing dummy anti-personnel mines. Dad taking me to get first ever computer label printout: my name on labels. Wow. Hearing Earth Angel and Sh-Boom, loving the new style of music, but Dad calls it jungle music.
SONG: Earth Angel
SONG: Sh-Boom
*****
1955: Moving back to San Diego, middle of fifth grade. Hating long division, loving fractions. Baseball being fun. Not being fast enough for football. Poring for all possible sex in Readers Digest or True Magazine or topless native women in National Geographic. Smoking my first Hit Parade brand cigarette. With friends, exploring down into a mile-long drain pipe just tall enough to stand in, pitch black, very scary, but go through to the end. Hearing Heartbreak Hotel, That'll Be The Day. New words: filter cigarette, sitcom, VW, hula hoop, Calypso, frisbee.
SONG: That'll Be The Day
SONG: Heartbreak Hotel
SONG: Roll Over Beethoven
SONG: Blue Monday
SONG: Banana Boat Song - Day-O
Clothes being important. Sputnik shocking everyone. Hearing about Castro kicking out the dictator, freeing Cuba -- revolutionary hero. New states Hawaii and Alaska, newfangled penny. Up in Pendleton hills in Rob's camper truck, deer hunting, beautiful ivory-inlaid 30-ought-six, M1 in hand, sliding two seconds down gravel slowly, vision of valley floor below, tenuous rotten-branch slowly sliding grip, yelling for help, slipping, thrown rope-grab. Close call.
SONG: Swinging Shepherd Blues
1959: Trip to Salt Lake City, blistered fingers from hammering too much, not no carpenter. Train trip back for a fantastic desert sunrise, pining for the smiling little blond I keep spotting on the train, but no, too shy, no satisfaction. New words: IQ, high-fidelity, beatnik, satellite orbit, Gran Prix, dragster.
SONG: Tom Dooley
*****
1960: High-school, them putting me into dumb-bell English again, but Mr. Carey figuring it out, rescuing me and getting me my own column on the school paper. Finally starting to feel like I am fitting in. After-school job making money to buy an old Chevy.
SONG: I Pity The Fool - Bobby "Blue" Bland
1960: La Costa Beach State park
Unchaperoned California Easter-break beach park camping trips -- girls girls girls, drinking rum with the guys, night body surfing in red tide fluorescent flashing waves, running down the beach leaving behind a trail of disappearing footprints glowing in wet sand.
Sunset bundles of grape-stakes pilfered from coastal flower-field forays for firewood fueling the flickering at nightfall.
SONG: Bongo Rock - Preston Epps
It's happening! Young wonderful women being drawn to our biggest fire on the beach, bongos bang out rhythm, tentative folk music, but then the serious making out as eyes are starting to close while lips are beginning to part; crawling rolling, sprawling spreading, splaying playing upon warm shadow-driven fire-ring blankets, in our first-ever gathering together, untethered surging into a smoky blazing free rush of hormone-tetched teeners, a circle of strangers, couples stroking groping probing, touching fingers flicking and teasing tongues tasting, raising the stakes of freedom to test the odds of these new-found stud pokers, a roiling crowd bubbling flouncing flouting flirty bouncing, mingling, tingling, bungling, giggling or crying next to the glowing embers, seeking the night's soothing finally silent sound of the eternal surf tumbling down upon itself, as the beach is left with only the running of the grunion, tiny fish wriggling, burying their eggs or spewing their milt upon the sand in their comforting climax here, appearing as a single wriggling mass, a silver sheen reflecting the light of this full moon's cycle.
SONG: Tonight I Fell In Love
SONG: Stand By Me
Eating abalone sandwiches, cooking for everyone, watching a few fights -- get into one, silly pointless harmless. Fifties Chevys and Pontiacs. Long time coming, prom night back-seat first sex, coming too quick, damn! But yet, being grateful, then smiling at the memory.
Barefoot summers hitchhiking to body-surf at the beach. In winter storm surf, wanting to surf in the 14 footers, but no one would come with me. Great fun in the big waves, but finally one being too big for me, violent slamming, smashing me head-first into the wet sand concrete on the sea-floor, really hurt, would have killed me except for my staying conscious. Close call.
SONG: The Lion Sleeps Tonight
At school, senior year, hating Beowulf, teacher hating Zen and Kerouac, writing only what I choose, Reader's Digest parody, stream of consciousness, funny stuff, but yearnings for philosophy and social science.... D in Honors English. Drinking rivers of coffee.
Stupid showing off squirrel laying rubber '57 Ford around corner, wet pavement fishtail wheel-spinning starting to roll, up. over, two wheeling sideswiping spiderweb glass shattering slow motion crash, back to earth, safe. Close call. Graduating from high-school with precisely a C average. New words: DNA, birth control pill, ICBM, Viet Nam, stereophonic, letterman, proof-read.
*****
1963: Cuban missile crisis, everyone anxious, waiting for the A-bombs to fly above us. Getting bored with junior college, splitting to live in Hollywood. New words: Cinerama, transistor FM radio, pill-box hat. Sunset Blvd. gas pumps, movie stars, apartment sex, too embarrassed for buying rubbers: pregnant, wife, father, baby son, first household near Disneyland, workaday aerospace slave -- folding blueprints, learning printing, ditto, paper paper paper.
SONG: Satisfaction
Driving like crazy on road rallies, murdering that damned Simca, a semester and a half in The Valley at a real college, landforms, symbolic logic: The Sentential Calculus - good profs, feeling mature, running out of money, going back to being a printer. Buying an old '53 Plymouth for a buck and 1 half -- the price of a voltage regulator -- grass growing in it, the headlights going out when I push the clutch in.
*****
1965: San Diego atomic reactor factory, finding a path into learning computing, keypunches, beginning of programming. At home, collecting music, recording. New word: stereophonic tape recording. Scary earthquake, the draft, Viet Nam TV news. First joint while sitting on the floor leaning against a friend's piano, then love-in pot smoking, researching psychedelics and religion, Baba Ram Dass, Tibetan Book of the Dead, the I Ching, Zen one-hand clapping. Wow! -- acid plunge, wet brain sloshing in skull pan, laughing hysterically, watching my weird pulsing and deformed limbs, listening to the music, seeing God flowing in the grain of wood, time stretching. -- Bang! -- ego dying, I hate being Frank Zappa. This agnostic morphing instantly into devout mysticism forevermore.
SONG: Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles
Temporary Autonomous Zone Newport rock festival, throwing a mustard bottle to that unruly band of mud-covered people. Hari Hari, Jeff Airplane, Quicksilver.
SONG: Pride of Man - Quicksilver Messenger Service
SONG: Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane
*****
1968: Migrating to San Francisco hippies, the Fillmore, stoned telephone operators, stoned DJs, satisfying job, cop a plea, expunge my record, buying the lawyer a Corvette, another son, tasting first Reuben sandwich at the Pup Hut, soap bubble art, Crescent Park, Berkeley, Temporary Autonomous Zone People's Park, Cal campus, choppers, tear gas, shotguns, underground newspapers, underground comics, psychedelic art, posters, communes, radical economist, hip architect, alternative psychologist, Grateful Dead, Big Brother, loving one another, Temporary Autonomous Zone Speedway Meadows free concerts, free store, free love, free clinic, free speech, smoke bubbles, geodesic domes, R. Buckminster Fuller, World Game, man walking on the moon, eating laced brownies while posing at post-grad parties, intellectuals, folk, alternative -- new words: ecology, ten-speed -- friends named Apples and Parsley being FBI civil rights fugitives, VW campers, computer hacker-sent bills marked "For God's sake, stop the war now." Flashing the Vee. New words: protest, hippy, right on, service bureau, mini-computer, modem, floppy disk, organic, ten-speed, power to the people.
SONG: Get Together - The Youngbloods
*****
1970: Divorce pangs, empty bed, phony commune, tripping and a wrong-way one-way in front of close-call cops ready to arrest, flute stolen, pale future, shredded emotion, worry, recession, unemployment, desperation, homeless ten days in a warm beetle, Clapton's Layla, getting a shower at a swimming pool, bottoming out.
SONG: Layla - Eric Clapton - Derek and the Dominoes
Finally settling into peach and apricot orchard valley soon to be called Silicon, finally finding ultimate super-computer lab salvation. Henceforth forever a hippie-hearted poseur. Single dad, nice little cabin with fruit trees and both boys, sullen drunken brother Jon, learning to cook more than breakfast & hotdogs & hamburgers, remembering to separate the colors and the whites. Grocery bag half-full of stolen opals appears, lingering for fingering the fiery things, then stolen again by the nameless Lebanese villain. Hearing "Doctor My Eyes, you must help me if you can."
SONG: Doctor My Eyes - Jackson Browne
Saved by my first actual lover, daring deep brown-eyed erotic satisfied Rita satisfies, lithe leggy lively lovely willing finally filling-belly-full Rita, fantasy drive-in movie beetle sex.
More workaday world, trying too hard to be good dad now to one latchkey lad, no roots, free school, working at NASA space lab, watching first live planet Jupiter probe, 60 mile commuting worker bee, then a bobbing string of loving one-night beauties. Surfless, oceanless, empty, aimless, homeless feeling numb.
****
1974: Whoring to build loan-shark systems at AVCO Newport Beach, no integrity, but subversive software and cool computer people, boring bosses, disco, Jaws, The Sting, Rule of seventy-eights, turning into a good home with both boys together again in Our Town. Next door rock concert back stage press-pass poseur.
SONG: The Entertainer - Soundtrack of The Sting - Scott Joplin
Volunteering with bicyclist buddy surfer Stokes, for late night pre-chalking of the guidelines for all 22 turns of tomorrow's bicycle-benefit route for marathon ten-speeding pumpers.... At first, haggling with growling Sandy the dog for the shotgun seat in Stokes van, but by the time we finish turn 11, even Sandy has joined in, and we get really fast. Pick up unsuspecting hitchhikers to blow their minds without any warning by repeating our wordless refined rhythmic routine: Drive on to find the next turn, pull up, jump out, open the back hatch, pull ramp out, wheel out the lime chalker, chalk up the line for this turn, then reverse, reramp, reload, slam the hatch with unmatched time/motion precision, then the dog, me and Stokes jumping back in, while clueless hitchhikers hunch haplessly in the back, goggling, agasp, gaping at what is flying by so fast in front of their very eyes. Fun fun fun surprise street theater, ending with everyone laughing at each other, even happy Sandy smiles.
****
1975: Back home San Diego, sad, crazy, first real love of my life, Karina, both desperately craving, me madly loving her beauty. Family straits, worst end dire suddenly toothless Dad sad, silent, smoking through that throat hole, broken heart, burned out liver, Wallace Stevens Blue Guitar frown, then dead -- with Mom watching, helpless health declining herself slowly, slowly, suffering no pain, horrid, more silent, more still, nerves wasting awry, completely lucid excruciating mental torment grinding, hospital cockroach, dreadful, speechless, final death relief, rattling rale, aura. Church full of dead bees.
SONG: Rhiannon
SONG: Darkness, Darkness
Desperate, abandoned, my stupid surrender is half-assed bottles of pills and Cold Duck, but angel pulling strings to guide my puppet second chance mad dash to the ER, life now struggling to live. Stomach pump moron disgusting myself, ptui! Close call.
****
Move on, first room-mate, discover how to use a back-brush. Meet pretty killer cooker Kathy, lithe, mysterious, clever, loving devouring her french onion soup, her honey bucket butter-creamy, gently folded fluffy crepes, mmmm.
Still carrying too much death drama. Wow, meeting pretty black belt silk white-skinned lover Tricia uttering "Arpanet" -- and then lying in bed alone the morning after, while she is off teaching karate class men admiring her moves, wondering about her belt, plying her every move, all making me yearn to eat her rose. New words: e-mail, The Net, word processing.
Bluegrass flute, more folk, first real vacation, Ink Spot Vegas jackpots, Boston travel improvisation, seeing Atlantic ocean, sunrise over the ocean lobster pots, beautiful Back Bay delicate French sauces, cross-continental railroad-riding Pullman trip back home.
SONG: High On The Mountain - OlaBelle Reed
****
Friend piloting light plane trans-California north to Mariposa, and back, aloft, wings icing up over Grapevine pass, white-knuckled dodging lightning storm cells through LA, into clouds, and droning on out to sea -- where are we? Air controller kid glove guides to return to dry land, finally seeing calm clear San Diego skies. Feeling like a close call.
****
Mission Beach with both sons, TI-99 talking home computer, beach life, first band, Waterbound, then sax, The Gnarlys, Skinn & Bones, The Oneironauts, Group Therapy, The Impounders. Dear burned-out Delta blues torch singer Lou Cole teaching me how to sing harmony, LIVE MUSIC at beach dives, zilch pay, priceless. Giant spewing storm surf slams seawall, swallows sand, unhidden silver bonanza surfacing, old cache of coins. New word: personal computer.
****
Grinning camera girl sudden high-speed shutter-slapping wide-open eye-popping F-stopping unabashed flashing aperture: Dinah. Instant hard lust four year full-on full-time wide-on captive of no-escape tightest mighty grip funny sexy wondrous one, never-says-no Dinah. Expo 86 Vancouver One o One road-trip, turning on safe in the Cuban pavilion, seeing the peeing boy at UFO-H2O flying saucer fountain, and a wop-bop a loo-mop balop-bam-boom. Lying next to her naked white skin for the loving under giant redwoods; in our own cruise-ship wardroom-mirror party peering on our private pairing; in the camper ever-coming bouncing on the bed, and then after Magic Mountain whooshing, ever-willing-whiplash-whirl-girl hot buttered Danish Dutch Dinah, dreamy drilling, wake-me-up-shuddering-sex: best ever. But unlucky dragon. Too good to last, too hot not to burn out: sex drugs rock and roll not being enough, but whee! a great era! Final.
New words: sushi, segue, Reggae, mota, nose-candy, BBS, sysadmin, video recorder, MIDI, UNIX, Macintosh, WYSIWYG word processing.
SONG: Spirits in the Material World - The Police
SONG: Stir It Up - Bob Marley
Ocean Beach assertion remorse, still in woeful wasted and lost love. New start, Twelve Step wonders, drugging away dragging depression, at long last my eyes finally opening, lovely Rebecca's Fifths serenade therapy, making Macintosh music, Tequila-Tango MIDI four-track recording.
SONG:Tequila
SONG: One Ring Tango
At work, twelve years of public eyes, own neat newsletter, hopeful help desk, UNIX writing reams, wide-eyed teaching, building software. Then stupid PC DOS stumbling up like a tongue-tied drunk, just as monster mainframes hit the wall, world-rocking recession layoff. Damned ignorant Microsoft career bye-bye. New word for my computer work: legacy systems.Realizing I am running into more people who are younger than me than those who are older; and very many more new-fangled objects than old-fangled. The artifacts of my time get sparser as the new-fangledness slowly covers their traces and fangledness itself is disappearing from view, slowly dissolving.
****
1990: Hawaii Halloween arriving Kauai, alone, two years Hawaiian living, Barking Sands missiles, white guy dumb haole, try learn talk da kine pidgin, but no hula girls for me, nor music, nor writing, just Kill a Haole Day, being a victim making me discover my own racism.
Becoming addicted to Japanese bento lunches, sticky-rice... spam? Plunging face into burst-open passion fruit, gooey, tangy, now learning why they call it passion.
Stupid smoker me, swimming alone in Hanalei beach surf rip current, panting, tiring, panting, failing, panic pecking at me, heaving final breathing exhaustion toes-touching sand success. Close call.
Hurricane Iniki, weird siren, mournful wailing Dale the cat. From high school shelter, watching 140 MPH winds lofting a church steeple by in midair to dismay the scared chattering Hawaiians, turning all idle observers into participants, floor-diving under tables after the shrieking monster outside flinging flying logs flogging thumping at the cafeteria walls.
The eye is serene for twenty minutes. Brave souls exploring. Me too. Too scary. Running back into the cafeteria. Wind reversing then rushing again, whipping the giant mascot football helmet flopping and fumbling down to the football field's far final foot -- back to where it came from, four hours ago. Comical. Spawning of mini-tornadoes twisting flying corrugated metal, spearing a two-by-four into someone's bedroom wall, a pickup truck bouncing around up off the ground, trying to go aloft, two-wheels in the wind, but must be a good emergency brake. And two restroom-hiding German boy scout campers clutching the bowl for dear life, being a close one for them. But funny.
Then now all are reverent souls, equal, vulnerable, kind, simply aloha, facing danger everywhere, walking over unrecognizable moonscape devastation neighborhoods, among fallen poles, shattered glass shards strewn, laying over electric and phone wires, maybe dead, maybe not. Downed pole's power lines scrubbed wash-boarded gashes leaking through my roof, Dale the cat being thoroughly pissed at me, no eye contact for days. Poor ancient giant rootless goner mango tree now laying safely next to the house. Lucky. Sad bent black-frond palm trees, old rusted van roofs peeled up curling like old sardine cans. Slime rife, ready to spread strife, ancient fungus goo, God only knows what, blown to here from the actual wettest place on earth, that swamp above, there on Mt. Waialiali.
Black of night, National Guard silhouettes silently slogging in along the highway, three days no water, flute plays Amazing Grace over the flattened sea of smashed stick houses. For now, no power, phone, or radio -- no news, no clues, no idea, just deep lingering silence and black silent nights. Much later, announcement of seven dead, 6000+ homes wrecked or vanished in the wind.
Humvees rolling by, weeks of eating hot Army chow, or cold MREs -- too hard for local mokes to understand cooking instructions: radio station comes back, on-air explaining how to "knead" the MRE peanut butter: "Make lomi da peenot bottah.". Have to laugh. No ice for weeks. Really missing ice. Busy ants appear at the bedroom, three-inch ones racing away from my unsuspecting out-reached hands, and then very fast tiny ants making living paths on a dresser.
Becoming a Civil Defense poseur delivering desperate young girl a 12-year birthday cake, copping cases of Kotex for cranky Kekaha clapboard weary wa-heenays, all da kyne bleedeeng too-ghedda. Pitiful castaway Hawaiian honeymoon newlyweds nesting in a rental car. Everyone aloha for them, but have to laugh.
Silly goony Guard, but welcome aboard to Marine Corps, shrewd and able, saving a suffering USMC mosquito net baby, making refrigerator ice, putting out reverse osmosis fresh water bladders. Salvation Army there firstest with the mostest, solely kind unassuming humble helpful souls. Then tardy Evangelicals arriving -- but with them, none can eat until all first obey, be silent, and pray their christian prayers. Pissed. But Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park company surviving the storm, leaving behind their big generator for the duration, no prayers required.
Forty GeneralTel phone booths appear in Kekaha - free phone calls, big relief all around. SitRep ex-vet Viet tunnel-rat down to eating the last ugli fruit, Marine Major surfer, ten weeks no power, sweeping swamp-borne rampant wind vector fungal infections, forgotten forest, lost bewildered birds just hanging out, and weeks of burning huge heaps of refuse and rubble. Dozens of erect phone poles stretching off into the horizon, each with a lineman perched aloft to pull cable.
Fly out for resting and recreation Oahu relief tour -- ICE! -- car stereo driving driving driving for fun. Movies and room service, TV, big relief concert: Crosby Stills Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmie Buffett, all stars, but Bonnie reigning with such a BIG voice.
Boiling Big Island lava bubbling and a total eclipse, mid-day birds roosting, and dogs wanting to be fed again after totality. Funny.
Finally a cop-chasing suing eviction summons, and a sneaky skulking path to make good my airport escape. Aloha grand total sum of two friends, named Tom -- Tom the astronomer, and Tom the geodesic domer, and a friend named Angie -- but otherwise lonesome toiling sentence. Adventures in Nature! Nice place to visit, but.... new words: akamai, kama'aina, pupus, pau.
****
1992: Blown off islands into Christmas serene SoCal sand sculpture scene, mellow OB with pelicans, seagulls, kelp smells. Fat Hawaiian unemployment checks, FM synthesizers, fruitless recession job searches -- two mangled eyebrows after a grinning witchy stink-eye nutcase speedfreak haircut. At Halloween. being a scary dark-glassed mohawk studded leather big boots bike-punk, finding myself herding fleeing fear-filled patrons off into other aisles and scaring unsuspecting no eye-contact clerks. Suddenly, strange Halloween-party women gravitating toward me to check out my stud and then wanting to love me. Actual big biker stranger cordially sayin howdy. Best halloween ever for me: it is all poseur unexpected mind-blowing.
****
1994: High on a mountain watching telescope cataclysm on planet Jupiter, with everyone on earth sharing the sight of that string of comets thundering down upon the surface of the planet, in awe, eyes catching the very light of cosmic events unfolding there across hundreds of millions of miles. Scary.
1996: Wowie zowie! WWWeb wonder: Internet becomes a brand new giant bright and cosmic light shining into every earthly nook and every spiritual cranny, a final answering avalanche of all the answers ever sent begging for questions: what does hallelujah really mean!!?
Re-hooking up with Karina for ten day American dream cross country Route 66 motel love fest, through Vegas visiting one dying good friend Ken, and then, 300 miles later, a different good friend Ken, dying the day after us getting back to San Diego, a music disaster, tears, struggling and funk following. and Karina slipping away again.
Dodge Colt, innocent rambling, narrow two lane road, blind-sided by dumb tourist smashing rear quarter, whoop-dee-doo 180 spinning, steering to safety sitting backwards, stunned silence, no more hits, like a flash. Close call.
New words: erotic breathing, multimedia, browser, search engine, interactive gaming.
****
1999 - Rich strike from my buddy Wall Street bull, up 2600%, paying cash for half a tiny beach duplex, touring Chicago, then Manhattan, seeing Temporary Autonomous Zone "De La Guarda" off-broadway -- it was flying people, wet, steamy, sexy, defeating reality, way fun. Year 2000 ten day trip to stay in Wimbledon, beans for breakfast, Mind The Gap, London, -- then chunnel to four-star hotel New Year's eve on the packed Champs-Élysées in Paris, and then the sex museum -- but no potatoes for breakfast.
****
2002: Ocean Beach doldrums, Y2K trench-job with moron bosses, one morning treadmill-watching 9/11 falling towers, home price doubling. New old truck, new paint, new heads, new tires, LA freeway at speed, from behind, idiot dithering, slithering sloppy slewing skewing slipping four lanes over then insinuating up and past me, darting to dash over in front of me towards off-ramp, changing mind, jamming back into my path, my full-on brakes suddenly stomping screeching sliding save me, only neatly nick him with one bumper in passing, barely safe, and no pulling over for me: fuck him. Close call.
****
2003: nearly overwhelming fear and paranoia over dirty bombs and the submarine nuclear arsenal harbored in the hill behind me, and all only 60 miles from Mexico. Cash in, moving away to search for survivable greener pastures. With all my beans in one big pile, embark on seeing, playing, smoking and pleasuring: Christmas season in Amsterdam, way cool, even with lost credit card and a case of pink-eye, everything else being all a young man would ever want, everything but the rock and roll: the ten days added years to my life. Listening to Holland's seagulls with their barely recognizable curious guttural Dutch accents.
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2004: Rent an Oregon basement at the Seaside promenade, living with a funny borrowed black cat. Two week later Super Bowl day cross-mountain snow drive, following carefully, downhill black ice brake one tap and oops, fishtail, back, forth, way back, way forth, slippery steering wheels whoop-de-doo 180 wind-up way backward on shoulder. Adrenalin. Not a snow driver. Close call.
July Fourth Seaside beach charred shell holes sulphur smell aftermath conjures the vision of a deserted Iraqi mortar battlefield. Irony. One Jennifer. Then boredom for a year.
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Astoria cottage living around Finns, Swedes, Norwegians still reliving Viking Baltic battles for control after all these years, alcoholic, provincial-thinking, proud. Music drought, string conspiracy -- "not from here" mentality: so, no new pioneers please -- disconnect, cut-throat hungry working-man town (got-a-buck?) by many desperately unemployed. Great Coastal Gale of 2007 wind bashing roof banging finally stops, go back to sleep only to awaken to one half a roof. Minor annoyance, insurance boon so convenient.
****
2009: Finally finding some solace, gray panther in college, breaths of fresh air one semester at a time, great profs, something very cool here at last. Yoga, madly writing, yay, 24 track recording, composing, web music collaboration, NetFlix, grandchildren, too much to mow green lawn, sparsity of apt females, paying taxes, keeping up, getting older.... not enough. All shades of gray emotion, except for this flaming surge of writing. Yearning for company and good conversation: poring over old grave-sites is just not enough. I feel like some kind of mirror universe Rip van Winkle who has awakened long ago in mouldering Astoria: is this it? The end?
Not here before I was born: where was I? Not here after I die: where will I go?
And I am, yet still, now and forever, being as close to birth as ever I will be and as far away from death as ever I will be.
