Dear future historians, are you laughing or crying - or perhaps both - at the twisted behavior of which we so willingly allow during these dark and epic times? How clear it will become the contamination of our minds! It must be sort of like us looking back at the wrongheaded psychotic witch burners claiming that to not kill the witches meant certain death for society.
Ah yes, nothing like the cruelest form of murder condoned by the high state. But back in those days, no one stopped the piling of wood for the coming atrocity. Rather, they were good boys and girls and helped pile it on. How very special! Oh sure, there were some troublemaking loudmouths protesting the executions and accompanying mass hysteria but who were they to question anything??
Show me a man who never questions and I'll show you a criminal.
Now if I were to attempt to burn a witch today I'd be rightly labeled criminally insane. And one day, acts commonly done today will also be seen for what they are: criminally insane. Eh, stupid is as stupid does.
Just a matter of time before they are viewed (hung!)
as the criminal element they truly are
Taking a family out of their home, throwing them onto the street to slowly die can be argued as even more cruel than witch burning. Yet we allow it everyday. But seems most people when hit over the head with a two-by-four don't question the hit, they merely say, "I need a better helmet!" When their knees get hit, they follow with kneepads until finally - if lucky - their entire body is covered by a suit of armor.
That's what it's like trying to make oneself safe through money. There's no endgame to it, you're never free! If you want to be free - and there's no possible future any other way - then stop allowing assholes with two-by-fours going around whacking people to death! Not really hard to figure out. But like the witch burners of old, we maniacally protest it's actually life we are preserving!
Pretty goddam funny if the consequences weren't so barbarous.
In my novel I wrote of the Important Papers of the "Resident", declaring the need for "solutions that do not solve". People gotta feel like they're doing something - even if they aren't. Airport security comes to mind. We're doing something alright, it just doesn't make us safe! Keep the willfully ignorant occupied and you can slide anything past them.
Rising gas prices are an excellent example! "Buy a smaller car!" "Walk to work in the rain!" "Become a hermit!" Do those things and we'll call you 'good' and 'smart' and 'responsible'. Oh, goody! Somebody said I'm smart and responsible! Clap for me! Problem is, there's no such thing as a smart sucker.
Too few question if inflated gas prices are justified in the first place - and those who do are considered just more of the loudmouth troublemakers always being negative about acts of evil. The nerve!
When faced with society's evils, the traitors will say to the truth tellers: "OK, if it's so bad why don't you go out and stop it!" They say this knowing full well that to stop a witch burning would be suicidal and have no effect on stopping the practice. Some solutions are communal. Those who do not acknowledge that are the ones who destroy the fabric of society.
OK, none of these feelings are new on my part so what exactly pissed in my Post Toasties? This laughably named “Remake America” project from Yahoo. Guess they can't call it the "Assuage Guilty Feelings So Nothing Has To Change" project.
Here I come to save the day!
"This presidential election year, Yahoo! is following six families facing the same issues and challenges affecting millions of Americans. Our families will share their journeys and our audience and our experts will help them — and America — find solutions to these issues."
Oh, how noble! Please, show six families how to survive the endless blows so we can justify beating up on people forever. You see, if bad things are happening to you it can only be your fault! We are a good and kind and just people - just ask us! Misfortune is thine own, an ill favored thing!
Yeah, well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Fuck you to the hell you propose for others.
That's John talking tough there and we applaud him in fearful knee-jerk reaction, acting as if he's been left out in the forest only to fight his way out! Only, John's problems are very much artificial and manmade.
Career asshole expert Tory Johnson met up with John to figure out why someone with years of great experience can’t leverage that into a new job. What she found was someone who wasn’t marketing himself well and someone who had become extremely pessimistic about his job prospects. In this episode, Tory advises John on how to improve his job search and leaves him with an important decision to make
Well, the cunt has a good point there. People who can't market themselves deserve to die. Put on that top hat and tails and do the ol' song and dance routine! America loves public humiliation. Those Idol ratings aren't skyrocketing for nothing! "We don't owe you a living, motherfucker. Now dance!"
Only 10% of business is about business. The rest is seeing how much you can get away with being an asshole. My father was an executive whore most of his life. He told the story of one fellow executive who loved to fire people. It literally turned him on. See, he didn't lie to himself about the rape as most of us do. He wallowed in it - untouchable.
"What's held you back as a job seeker is bitterness!"
See folks, it always comes back to something you are doing wrong. You're lazy, angry, worthless, [fill-in-the-blank with favorite self-admonishment]. The one percenters are laughing their ass off at you watching you internalize society's ills, taking on debts not your own. They love it because it keeps up the free ride they live for - and maybe the free ride you hope to live too.
Trust me, folks, if you're out hunting for a new job without ever questioning what fucked you in the first place you're not a fighter, you're a quitter. "I won't protest the witch burning just so long as I'm not the witch."
How many must we sacrifice in the name of upholding a system of greed? Apparently, the answer is everybody! There really is no need for greed or hunger, we just pretend there is to justify our rotten ways. God made us perfect. What makes us imperfect is not accepting that.
Is it possible to choose Life and Love and still keep one's life in this world? From Jesus to Lennon the answer has always been "No". We simply won't allow it. These people reveal our failures in too clear a light. Oh, we like to pawn off our assassinations on a few bad apples but truth is they are committed by common consent. We allow these bad apples to live among us.
And it's not like the situation is getting better - which means it's getting worse...
Chester was a new man driving home that wonderful, magical night. His self-image thrown into turmoil, an inkling of belief sprouted for his fanciful dreams. He also thought it unusual he was more than halfway home before he thought of calling the guys. I danced with Julie Steel! We talked! We exchanged meaningful words! This was better than any sexual conquest - Chester respected himself afterwards. He picked up his cell out of forced habit, then noticed he didn't want to call after all.
"Those two creeps." Am I a creep too? "They wouldn't understand. Not everything is about fucking." The phone returned to his seat with the fading desire but a sense of vague pestering guilt lapped up on the shores of his soul.
Chester was on top of the world but could not tell a soul. What did that mean? But it did not take long for the descent to begin.
All during the week he dreamed of nothing but her, still riding the high. He replayed their conversation, analyzed his feelings, other times the shit eating grin returning to his face all on its own. At work he was dangerously distracted. His ambition for promotion struck him as pointless folly, a tsunami of fear crashing down on him he might spend the rest of his life in meaningless labor.
Chester was a chrysalis in its earliest, most vulnerable stages. He was taking the first nervous steps of self-discovery, the dawning of a butterfly to be. But was he really a beautiful butterfly or was he just shooting off his mouth again? Admit it, you're always talking big, like you're the shit. Time to be honest with yourself!
Next Saturday, she was not there. Chester asked around, she had not shown up last night either. Of course not, she has a real life - while the club was his whole life. He wanted to resent her but he wanted to trust her more. She wasn't rejecting him, a thousand reasons for her to be someplace else. But when she didn't show again the week after, cold water sobered Chester's mind. Maybe he'd made her up. Did I really deserve that dream?
************************
Charlie Couts wanted to die in the worst way. Driving the grain truck to the elevator like a thousand times before, he misjudged the speed of the semi closing up behind him. Just as Charlie turned left, the eighteen wheeler attempted to pass him on the left, slamming his forehead into the dash, knocking him unconscious. When he came to, Charlie had run right through a barbed wire fence, sitting in a corn field with a broken rear axle.
But his shame was much worse than that.
The unconfessable secret for the reason of his crime lay at the feet of the newly elected black President. At the dining table the previous night his father's words had been so sharp - so outrageously wrongheaded about the President - Charlie found his instinct to be to rebuke his father. OK if you don't like the guy but that sort of hatred is going to eat you alive! But how could his father see Charlie disagreed because he genuinely loved him?
In the pregnant pause that followed his father’s rant, Charlie died. Pity won the day. He'll never understand. He won't change no matter what I say anyway. I'll say something later when I become a man. But Charlie's conscience wasn't buying it. And it was while reliving that hellish wrestling match when the world intruded upon his struggles leaving him unable to explain his predicament of the broken axle.
Charlie sat unmoving in the truck, staring at the glint of sunshine on the chrome trim of the windshield, praying never to be found, knowing his future filled with perilous pain.
************************
Two days later Charlie's dire drunkenness came knocking on Chester's door. He noticed neither Sam nor the trailer's owner as he made his way to plopping down on Chester's torn leather recliner. People were just going to have to understand: he didn't want to be alone and he didn't want to talk.
Sam tried the most benign story he knew. "Guess who came in for breakfast this morning? Julie Steel in these hot jeans like you wouldn't believe. Her whole fucking family was with her but I didn't care. I think I'm in love!"
"Who gives a shit!" snarled Charlie.
Charlie was right. Who gave a shit about Sam's immature desires - but immaturity had been their common bond. Growing up was treason. Yet no one in the trailer was a stranger to the misery Charlie displayed. Teenage dreams never come true for teenagers. And Charlie was staring directly into staying eighteen for life. Shame's prison knows only one way out.
Charlie told Chester and Sam the lie of his accident's facts. The truth he kept for himself, though he ached to be set free of his cell. His gun slinging ways always so quick on the draw to criticize betrayed him now in his hour of need. Surely the other two would leap at the chance to take revenge on his constant harping.
But Sam had already half-guessed Charlie's problem. What's really bugging him is something with his father. He thinks he can't confess what I already know! But if I say anything he'll bite my living head off. Two souls dying to speak, drowning in the sounds of silence. Chester had had enough of the self-pity and cowardice. He was proud of what he'd done - and damn tired of holding it in.
"I danced with Julie Steel. She told me all sorts of things. We talked night away." Chester's perusing eyes gave no quarter to any petty rebukes.
"How the fuck you do that?" Sam fearfully asked.
"There's a disco club in Amarillo. Been going there last two years. Julie showed up Saturday before last and we danced our hearts out. It was great. Un-fucking-believable. Never experienced anything like it in my life."
Shit, Chester, you're telling them everything! This must be the new you! But I see you didn't have the guts to use the word "friend". Is she your friend?
"Jesus, Chester," marveled Sam, basking in the associated glory for their gang. "Maybe you could introduce us."
"Sure thing. Come on up to the club." He'd die before he violated her privacy. Don’t be a punk, Sam.
"I ain't doin' no fag dancing!" Finally, something to make Charlie feel superior! But Chester's ears burned to a crisp.
"You fuckers do what you want. I looked into her eyes. She respects me. We moved together. You can't understand that feeling!"
"Shit, Chester! It's not like you fucked her!" - which was Sam's way of asking if he actually had. And if Chester had fucked her, Sam would never speak to him again. Sam too had an unconfessed secret.
Year and a half ago when Sam had been fired from his "real" job at a "real" restaurant he'd been forced to take a pizza delivery job. One of those deliveries was to the Steel Ranch house, a place of shiny new trucks, careless laughter and a hunger for living. Old man Steel took the pizza, looked Sam up and down and spotted the obvious loser he was. When the door shut, closing Sam off from his peek into this otherworldly heaven, he'd never felt so little and low.
Is that all you've done with your life? That was the question Old Man Steel's eyes seemed to ask. Charlie peeled out of the driveway naked before the world.
Now, for Chester to have conquered that world, to have found acceptance by its ruling queen - no, never, never! Sam was standing at the door all over again - only this time he had witnesses, the two worst witnesses on the planet!
"None of your goddam business what I did!" Chester barked.
"He ain't fucking nobody, Sam. Probably making the whole thing up anyways!"
Chester launched an attack on Charlie, knocking him off the recliner, and would have killed him had not Sam pulled him off. "Get out of here, motherfucker! Fuck you! I never been so goddam pissed in my life!" Chester made another move towards his drunk mate as Sam helped Charlie up and out the door.
"And don't come back! Go suck your daddy's dick! You know you want to, you fat fuck!"
Chester was still heatedly pacing when Sam re-entered. Chester was out of control.
"Can you believe that guy? How could he say something like that? Calling me a liar! You believe I was with her. You know I wouldn't make something like that up. God, that chaps my ass!" Chester kicked a hole in the wall.
"Why does he get to you so bad?" Sam was trickier inserting the knife than crude Charlie.
"I don't know," lied Chester, calming down, curious as to the answer himself.
"Dude, I'm not saying you weren't with her. Just kind of hard to believe you're all the sudden best friends."
"I didn't say that..." Chester's resolve faded as Sam had hoped.
"Women like that, man, they're all class. They won't say anything. They keep shit to themselves."
"What do you mean?"
Sam confessed his moment at the Steel's door in his own way. "You gotta understand, Chester. People like her see right through you. Embarrass the shit out of her and she still won't say a thing. You could be making a fool of yourself and never know it."
Was it not real? She hadn't come back since. Had I embarrassed her? I'd rather die! Just tell me! Fuck, I thought it was real! Chester drooped.
"I'm tired. 'Bout time for your shift anyway, isn't it?"
"Sure, Chester." Sam walked over knife in hand, smiling as he killed. "Don't worry about Charlie, man. He's got problems of his own." Sam placed his hand on his victim's back. "But don't let that Julie Steel make a chump out of you." Chester's eyes flashed angry denial. "Just sayin', man. Do what you want. Maybe she really will make you her man."
************************
Julie's newfound connection with Chester was just what the doctor ordered. Being able to share a piece of her previous Dallas life was the perfect tonic to her ails. She was pissed at herself at being trapped by her family obligations. She swore she wouldn't return, the ranch be damned. Her life was important too. But in the end, guilt won the day.
No one in the house appreciated her excited chatter upon returning from the club, sounded too much like escaping. They conspired the next two Saturdays to keep her on the ranch but she put her foot down at a third. Would Chester be pissed at her absence? She looked forward to making it up to him. Maybe - just maybe - he could help her find herself.
But Chester could not imagine her life as anything but perfect already, living in luxury as the most wanted woman in town.
************************
Chester cried grieving, burning tears nonstop that next Saturday night drive to the club. He decided Sam was right. He was never going to be her man. Funny, he'd been OK with that until Sam mentioned it. But he must face the honest truth: he was imposing on her. The idea she'd never return to the club drove Chester out of his mind. But what right had he to demand her time?
Only her man could do that. "Fuck you, God," moaned Chester. "Fuck you and your rules. Goddam, I want to be with her."
In this tortured state, Chester buried his own unconfessed secret: that he only reached the heights of his dance she had seen because of her, that he needed her. "Tell her that and you'll get The Lecture, the Look of Pity, and the Wave Goodbye." But it's killing me!
That night, Chester played it cool with Julie, pretending he did not want to dance with her, wiping the smile off her face. When she did dance, he spoke in loud disapproval to those around him. At last, she fled the floor when she could stand it no more. She flipped Chester the bird on her way out. He replied with a false, prideful smile.
After a face saving amount of time, Chester also left, walking in complete dread to his truck, picking up his revolver, placing it in his mouth, debating if he should pull the trigger.
-----------------------------------------------
CODA: Sam couldn't face Chester after knifing him the way he had, destroying his greatest triumph. Hounds of guilt chased him night and day. More than ever he was sure of his inability to make it in the world. What do all my smart ass remarks really amount to? Not a thing. Only resolution Sam could see was for him too to be accepted by the great Julie Steel - warts and all. That's when he got arrested for streaking on their property, proving the doubts of Old Man Steel at last, believed Sam.
The County Prosecutor salivated at Sam's very public and gossiped dilemma. He ordered a search of Sam's computer and hit the jackpot, finding 4,682 images downloaded from CandidBeachPhotos.com. After very careful examination, 46% were of the bikini babes were determined to be minors. Since the pictures were ruled to be for personal gratification, that made them child pornography in the eyes of the law.
At the press conference crowing over the guilty verdict and Sam's three year sentence, the Prosecutor declared the children of the town safe from someone who "was only a matter of time before he attacked a child." After winning re-election in a landslide, he promptly went home and viciously beat his underage teenage daughter for having "Impure thoughts".
"I am a god! I am untouchable! You will not make me look bad!"
CODA II: Charlie had the misfortune of running into the County Judge - or rather the Judge's goat. Humiliated by Chester he became more determined than ever to "man up" and defeat his demons. That only made his demons stronger. Charlie turned loud and obnoxious (real men don't give a damn what people feel) but his drinking increased in direct proportion.
In what became a legendary drunken stupor, Charlie convinced himself fucking the Judge's goat to be an irresistible act of self revelation. Real men will fuck anything that moves, he reasoned. Once sober, Charlie could face no one, overhearing his father complain, "I knew I should never of raised him as some fag Episcopalian."
Charlie works under an assumed name at a truck stop in an unidentified New Mexico city. His boss is a black man and Charlie always addresses him as "Sir".
CODA III: For several weeks Chester drove to the club but never entered. He just wanted to see if Her car was there. For a while he privately imagined dancing with her in his home, but guilt soon suffocated even that. Satisfied she was never returning, Chester lost all hope of life and love. Stabbing stress gave him his first grey hairs.
Questions pitchforked any relaxing moment. Did I let her down? How could she want anything to do with me? Some big shot is probably fucking her right now and she's forgotten all about me. What could I offer her? She only knows my dancing from dancing with her, not the real me. I must have my integrity. Truth is, I'm just nothing. Or if not, I'm the world's biggest jerk.
In Chester's new Saturday night routine he drove his pickup down furious farm to market roads, losing his mind in the darkness; his castle nothing more than a prison to which return. Lost and confused, he looked no man in the eye, embracing his new false morality of nothingness. "As long as I'm nothing I did no wrong. Nothing I must be."
Chester Climbs The Mountain,
Is Rewarded By The View!
Chester did what everyone else did in the oil field. He worked hard covered in greasy grime, put in his hours with dog-like devotion and made no complaints. And yet, Chester never belonged, the perpetual Outsider. Behind his back his co-workers sneered at his "pretensions" and "aspirations." Chester's mouth was always writing checks he could not cash. They resented his living in a fantasyland - which is why when there was a practical joke to be played, it was played on him.
Lord knows what they would have done had they known the secret kept deep in the fancy of Chester.
Forty five miles up the highway from his trailer, an Amarillo club opened with little fanfare. A private indulgence of the famously eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh III (of Cadillac Ranch fame), it had not been expected to pull a profit but rather be a gathering place for like minded souls however few. Chester was very much one of those souls.
For this was not just any club on the vast open plains of the Texas panhandle where the wind and oil pumps never cease, this was a dancing club. A city that refused to leave the Fifties, Amarillo still held deep suspicions on the notorious act of dancing. Perhaps the pillars of the community could tolerate a little boot scooting - maybe even a little dirty dancing - but not this, not disco dancing!
Every weekend possible (it was only open weekends), Chester snuck away on his stairway to heaven, escaping his castle walls for freedom's sweet taste. On the dance floor, he forgot Chester the Molester - he forgot the world - moving as one with the music, swept down a river of joy. Life held no boundaries under the flashing sparkles of paradise celebrating dreams he could not defend but knew to be true. Under the rotating crystal ball, Chester could die with no regrets.
Fearing revelation when confronted with a conflicting Saturday night invitation, he would accept with a strained smile, all the time fidgeting and longing to be at the one place where he felt important and alive. But this strand to life came with a price, for once tasted he hungered for more, to somehow take it back to his trailer and his kingdom. But he always felt so dirty in his world - how could such a feeling ever survive in his withering woe?
Why am I so excited this time? Nothing is different - is it? Unexplained anticipation electrified Chester on his usual weekly trek. The stars shone extra brightly in the sky, a tailwind at his back speeding him along. Sweaty palms gripped the thin steering wheel in nervous delight and Chester could only snort and laugh at his own condition.
But pulling into the club parking lot he did notice something different. An expensive, white SUV he'd never seen before. He couldn't take his eyes off it on his way in. His eyes adjusting to the darkness, he searched for the unknown face that must be the driver. And that's when he found her smile radiating through the smoke: Julie fucking Steel!
Earlier that day, the vaunted Ms. Steel had come to the attention of the Men-To-Boys group...
Killing animals made Charlie feel like the man he never was. With one foot in his father's world and one foot in his own, the daily diet of frustration ached for resolution. The sound of a rifle shot and the sight of dead beauty gave him that momentary resolution. He'd talk about that moment for days afterwards, hoping to reside in it despite boring the hell out of everyone around him. Luckily for Chester and Sam, a subject far more interesting appeared on TV.
"Maria Sharapova!" wailed Charlie, interrupting his own story. "Goddam, I'd like to fuck her! Look at them legs running down that ball." He made an unconscious pelvic thrust to prove his point.
"She can spank me till the sun comes up!" ventured Chester as proof of his devotion.
Sarcastic Sam was not to be outdone. "I'd suck a dick for her!" Sam had forgotten he was not alone.
Charlie channeled his father's voice. "Jesus, Sam, you need to get you a woman before you start walking around in a bra and panties! Fuck, I can't believe you talk like that!"
"Just get me that woman!" pleaded Sam, suddenly realizing how very much he was dying in the dominion of Dark America. Am I really going to die if I stay here?
"Just look at her face when she serves," remarked an entranced Chester. "Look at her concentration, you can see it in her eyes."
"You gonna fuck her for her mind, Chester?" Sarcastic Sam anxiously feared to regain his footing after the bloody faux pas he was sure to haunt him for eons to come.
"What's it to you?" retorted Chester in an unexpected show of strength. Sam sunk back into the couch.
"You two bitches wouldn't never have a shot at her no ways," scoffed Charlie, overestimating his worth as always. "You gotta handle up on them bitches like a man and show 'em who's boss!"
"What are you going to do?" Sam scoffed back, fighting for his life, "Wow her with your grammar?"
Charlie's below average school grades secretly rankled him (well, not a secret to the perceptive Sam) which wouldn't bother him that much if it didn't play into his fears of being too stupid to take the reins of the farm when time came. Tempers were rising in Chester's castle and he was desperate to change the subject.
"I saw her today."
"Bull-fucking-shit!" Charlie was ready to rail at anyone and everyone. "You didn't see no fucking Maria Sharapova."
"Not her. Julie Steel." To Chester - to all of them - she was one and the same as anyone famous. "She was coming out of the quickie mart dressed in these fancy boots and tight jeans. Boy, does she have style! It's like the dust moved around her."
Chester got the silence he hoped for as his compatriots stopped to imagine the described scene. Charlie added more news of the world.
"My dad told me she's come back permanent from Dallas to help run the ranch. Gonna be great watching her walk around town."
"Woman like that could save your soul," Sam observed with a sigh. No one contradicted him.
Swallowing his guilty life, Chester made a bee line across the dance floor to Julie refreshing herself at the bar. Any other place, any other time, he'd dare not approach her - or, if he had, it would be in stumbling disgrace. He surprised himself by his own confidence, fighting not to make it an out of body experience.
"Julie Steel!" In his mind he still sandwiched the word "fucking". "Bet you don't remember me."
He watched her eyes search their memory banks - and come up empty. "Afraid not," she graciously replied.
"We went to school together, I was a grade behind you." To sweep away the issue of himself, Chester added: "I heard you've come back to stay."
"You're Chester! Yeah, I remember you. Been a long time."
Chester could win ten lotteries and not feel that good again. Julie tried not to giggle seeing the shit eating grin her recognition had put on Chester's glowing face. She didn't have particularly fond memories of him - if any - but things were clicking so she decided to go with the flow. Plus he was most charming when next inviting her onto the dance floor.
Watching her moves, marveling at her rhythmic soul, falling in love with her innocent joy, the one word that kept running through Chester's mind was "YES!" Yes, she was everything he dreamed her to be. Yes, he was more than he feared. And yes, there is a God.
Julie was ecstatic afterwards. "That was fantastic! I mean it, really. I had goosebumps."
"Me too!" stammered Chester. "The way you move - it's so perfect - like a dream!"
The pair absorbed the night into themselves, speaking of dancing and music, of life in both Dallas and the clean country air, never straying too far from the groove they created, reading the other's mind in perfect synchronicity, dancing when the spirit moved them, tenderly nurturing the newborn flower.
"Thank you!" inadequately summed up Chester as they parted. He wanted to thank everyone: the club owner, the workers who built it, the grass for growing and the world for living! He was in their eternal debt. How could he ever repay it? He started to say more, thinking his words too little but she saw the boundless gratitude in his eyes saying so much more than words ever could.
"Thank you, Chester. To tell the truth, I wasn't too thrilled about coming back. You really gave me something here tonight and I hope we can do it again."
Later, try as he might, Chester could not remember anything past that point, his head a thousand miles into the clouds. No longer could he fight the out of body experience as he watched himself walk back to his truck in the cool evening air, listening to the crunch of the gravel and the applause of the angels. It had been greatest night of his life - but he had no one to tell. On the drive home, Chester shouted to the moon.
Now he had two secrets: the dancing he kept from his mocking coworkers and jealous friends - and the fear he kept from her. What he couldn't explain - the state secret he dare not confess under any circumstances - was that all that she saw and loved that holy night happened only because of her. Chester had never danced that way before.
Far from the shining night lights of the big city lies Dark America, safe in rural seclusion. Sustained by a connection to the salty earth, imagination is left to roam freely across the plains of wheat and rows of corn to places long strangled from the confined mind of industrialization. To some this is a blessing of fresh air, to others a curse of life unexplored. But to most it held the communal bond of their most prized and possessive gift: the life unexamined.
Chester the Molester was happy with his unhappy life. He lived in a sagging trailer five miles outside the city limits of the farming community of White Deer, Texas. Drivers zooming past his humble abode gave it little notice but if they did most were grateful to not be its surely condemned occupant. Between the scattered shacks of rust and farm implements left to die in open fields, Chester's place blended into the landscape with chameleon-like efficiency. In fact, if asked, many who drove by would swear they had seen nothing at all.
But in Chester's mind, he was king of the world.
Working off and on in the oilfield, he got enough money to get by but a mountain of cash was never his goal. To live by his own rules was. He bristled at the hooks society demanded, making your business their business. Ruling his domain in lazy rot, nary a man alive intruded upon his kingdom, and that to Chester was life itself. If misery he was then misery he be. Don't like it? Go fuck yourself - and find your way off the property. The trailer, the land, the free air around him, he owned them all outright. To rest on your own land, staring up at the sky while secured by a sea of surrounding high pampas grass was a feeling beyond compare.
Chester pitied anyone who died never knowing that feeling.
Sarcastic Sam was a running mate of Chester. While the oil fields had bulked up and burned Chester's beefy skin through his tank top, Sam was a scrawny pale white with pasty ambitions. Unlike Chester, he was bitter about his unhappy life, venting with barbed wire words every chance he got. The tiny town had three main restaurants, each of which Sam had worked in due course. He worked a split shift as a breakfast cook, coming back in the evening as the line fry cook. Sam had long coveted the fry cook position and once having achieved it found it to be just another fucking dead end.
Since everyone else drove an American pickup, Sam gravitated towards a small Japanese car. He never wanted to be one of them. They were mere hicks, trembling in fear of the big city and its foreign ways. The idiots dismissed anything as different as bad. That's what drove Sam the most to be different in as many ways as possible. He proclaimed himself a champion of the liberal and open mind, superior to his rural brethren who slogged their way through life in unfounded conservative fear.
But a fly lay in Sam's vaunted ointment: his own fear to leave, to be exposed has a poser with no real convictions. Easy to be a liberal among the shit-kickers and Bible thumpers, but life in the big city meant facing the big time.
Charlie 'Barley' Couts walked as a human see-saw, his shoulders dipping from side to side in his highly distinctive gait topped by his John Deere perma-cap. His father walked that way and in Charlie's mind, it's his successful father whom he must be. Like any closed mind, he needed That Which Is Unquestionable. That his father was a Successful Man and that he can be no less was the absolute religion of Charlie. His life's path had been laid out for him, taking over the farm and doing the Lord's work of cultivating crops and feeding the masses, carrying on the no doubt envious tradition of his family.
But having never have had to find himself, Charlie lived in a hell of unperceived self-loathing. What if he were to face himself and find himself wanting, not up to the expected task? He'd be forever branded by his father and family a loser beneath contempt. At best, they might bear him in polite disdain as Charlie imagined they secretly wished he'd die and save them the embarrassment of association. He truly believed the glorious life of his father was out there, but to reach it seemed as far as the stars in the blinking night sky.
Around the clock these insecurities ate on Charlie in devilish mayhem, alcohol his only escape. They also led him to say what he was going to say next as the evening news came on the television.
"Goddam, I can't believe we got a nigger running this country!"
Charlie and Sam had come over to Chester's trailer to help him seal his windows with some heat-shrink plastic he'd bought, but mostly the pair just drank beer, watching Chester and his satellite TV. Charlie's parental household contained much political talk. "Washington is ruining this country!" "Godless heathens want to tell us how to live our lives!" "All they want to do is take away our guns!" Charlie loved the opportunity political, of the sweet surrender of calling out someone as full of shit - the same shit he knew was full to be.
"There's some great political insight!" smirked Sam, always ready to goad anyone into anything.
"Four more years of that and you can kiss this country goodbye! What I wouldn't give to get the chance to straighten his black ass out. That boy don't know nothin’ from nothin’!"
Sam in his old Bill the Cat T-shirt was swimming in it now. "And people say country folk are racist!"
"Fuck you, smart mouth. You know I eat lunch with Freddy all the time and I'd call him better friend than you if I had to."
Chester turned around from the blow dryer he was using to seal the plastic. His opinions were almost always reactionary in nature. "I don't know. I think he's got some good ideas, about rebuilding the infrastructure and stuff. What's wrong with that?" Chester didn't know if he was a racist or not but he knew he didn't want to be called one. Sam - Chester's version of a man of the world - would know a racist when he saw one and it was to Sam whom he secretly had addressed his reply.
But Chester's openness to accepting a "nigger President" was an arrow Charlie could not endure. Charlie viewed politics in is most pure form: as voting on who should be loved. The idea of a black, big city boy who went to Harvard held up as the example of who he should be blinded Charlie with rage. He rebuked Chester as an "uninformed idiot" but his tone was clear: That's a person I can never be!
Chester was pissed, he'd just gotten out of the racist frying pan only to be called an idiot. If only he knew the elusive correct answer no one could dispute! But Sam had been cut to the quick with Charlie's claim Freddy was a better friend. He liked Freddy too but Freddy was black and listened to rap. They all three hated rap! But since Sam was rarely his own friend, he fretted over Charlie's charge and pined to strike back.
"Don't worry, Charlie, one day you'll grow up to be an educated black man speaking in complete sentences in front of large audiences wildly applauding. I can see it now. I is Charlie Barley and I grad-ee-ated sixth grade! Vote for my weenie!"
"Fuck you. I ain't no racist..." Charlie was fighting too many demons to say more. His father was a classic racist, fearing a man for the color of his skin - or even the length of his hair. Charlie hated the fact he never stood up for himself, never stated his true feelings - never doing what he knew he truly needed to do to become a man. And how would his father react when he found out he was no man?
Chester saw his chance to come off as peacemaker, swinging his opinion the other way to shore up Charlie's needs.
"You gotta admit, Sam, he's not gonna look out after us. He makes fun of us and not only that you know for sure the man don't hunt. No black man ever gonna hunt!"
"Black man get hunted," blurted Charlie, momentarily coming out of his inner battle, impossibly hoping his father could hear him. Sam would have none of it.
"You just want someone more like you, eh, Chester? Big white hunter, not meaning nothing, just a good old boy?"
"Yeah! Everyone votes for the guy most like he is. What's wrong with that?"
"You mean some ignorant, backwards ass barnstormer who doesn't know shit from shinola mindlessly shooting everything in sight?"
Charlie mindlessly responded. "Hell, yeah! Fuck 'em up!"
"We are already had one of those," Sam dryly observed. He imagined how big city liberals would cheer him if they could see him now - but would they really? He longed to know.
"I'll take anything over some black bastard blaming us for all his problems!" Charlie regained himself with a fully approved remark while not treading too heavily on his own feelings.
"This country's going to hell!" Chester authoritatively interjected, fearing to fall behind. He'd heard the claim too many times not to believe it. It's what People In The Know always said - even though Chester had no idea what exactly was bringing the country down. You work, you get paid, everything works out OK just like it always has. What's wrong with that? But it wasn't until after he imparted his pearl of wisdom Chester realized he had no follow up.
"Someone should put you two parrot heads on TV. Not an original thought between you." Sam said this knowing he'd never have the balls to show own his face on TV. "Catch the new comedy act: Oral and Barley!"
Barley took exception, in essence to make fun of him was to make fun of his father - and he knew that was wrong.
"You're a frickin' fry cook! Like you know shit. This country needs farmers like me to keep going. Needs oil workers like Chester too." Chester straightened up. "What you got anyway, Sam?"
"World needs fried chicken too!" bravely bluffed Sam, who inside was crestfallen. It was true: he offered nothing to no one. If he ever thought he could he'd move away in a pounding heartbeat, the very fact he lived in Dark America proof of his loserhood.
The trailer was silent except for the sound of the TV no one heard. Chester was left in the same fog all political conversations left him. He hated that feeling of inadequacy. Sam still smarted from the charge of worthlessness on his contribution to mankind. No one's going to love me for my political views. Charlie ached for a drink to settle the now heightened inner conflict between being himself and being his father. All three saw no way out.
Sam prayed to seek redemption with news to re-bind their friendship. Please, please, please don't look at me. Look at that over there and bless me as the messenger. "Guess who I saw in the restaurant the other day?" He made sure the other two looked over to recognize the seriousness of his announcement. "Julie fucking Steel!"
Julie Steel - one of the famously gorgeous Steel girls of the Steel Ranch - was as exotic a creature as any Hollywood star coming to town. She was an Untouchable from their shared high school days, the head cheerleader about whom one heard myths and legends, dreaming them to be true. Just the thought of her presence an elixir for their tainted souls to be a vicarious light in their lives.
Chester and Charlie responded as Sam had hoped: coming to life and no one asking internal questions anymore. Sam also relayed the breathless rumor she was here to stay. But unknown to the boys, if the rumor proved true, all their paths would be altered, never to be the same again - dreaded and feared Change upon the horizon.
I've been sworn to secrecy as to the name of the Pampa millionaire (a member of my very own childhood church!) who found himself so rudely stopped and ticketed by Estelline's finest. As one can see, it's the not cost of the ticket that irked him so, given the fact he was able to pay for this billboard, but rather it's sheer principle that's involved here. The principle to have everything your own way, that is!
Estelline, it's sort of by Amarillo
(closest city I could find on the map)
The story as I know it is that during the 80's Estelline voted go "wet", meaning you can sell the alky-hol there. Revenue from this allowed them to fund a police department and from that they constructed their very own speed trap. How said millionaire never caught wind of this I have no idea. All those little towns on state highway 287 are not to be trusted with Estelline long known as the most infamous of them all.
The Amarillo Globe News caught wind of the sign and ran an article on it, wondering who exactly was the "sign guy". The article drew a range of responses. None from Barney Fife, however, who would I assume should be the most offended.
But as I've said before, we are like a Jewish compound in WWII Germany. We are livid and outraged and furious when we think a tennis ball has been unfairly called in or out. Faces get red and it's argued as a matter of life and death. It's way of pretending to deal with reality.
But greed is not just a symptom of the banks, it's a nationwide disease. Just as when the protection of Glass Steagall was lifted, so have farmers stopped land protection practices stemming from the Great Depression as well. Some say we have set the conditions for a dust bowl all over again. He who lives by greed, dies by greed.
Another year is gone;
and I still wear
straw hat and straw sandal. -Basho
As the good book says, there is a time for all things under the sun. To me, that means there's as much beauty in winter as any season. And while oftentimes on the surface nothing may appear to be happening, the true story is under the covers waiting to blossom at a later date. Knowing this, I slipped into the Japanese Garden of my escape from this time of earthly woe to see what I could see on a cloudy, wintry morn.
After a long night's rain I found a squirrel in prayer at the Zen rock garden. In the Spring will come the time for gathering and feeding the body. In winter's respite, a time to feed the soul.
Let us meditate on the movements of the rocks
and the illusion of now.
Quiet reflection
The knell of the bells at the Gion temple
Echoes the impermanence of all things.
As blossoms prepare for their unveiling hidden from the naked eye, the garden heals itself before April's coming festival. A heavy stone from a path through the water had fallen, cutting off one side from the other for the past two years. With the water drained for that, a good time to rebuild the tea house. The garden shall return in triumph.
The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree
Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
In winter's time to each his own, a contrast of color and colorless, of leafy and bare, and dormancy and activity. The Japanese garden celebrates all these aspects with equal joy, providing a rich palette of experience in joyful invitation.
He who is proud is not so for long,
Like a passing dream on a night in spring.
The harmony of symmetry
He who is brave is finally destroyed,
To be no more than dust before the wind. - the Heike tale
Like a gathering storm
The garden is also the private domain of this heron who flies in on a daily basis oblivious to any interlopers or seasonal change. Ooaosagi is the Japanese word for a Great Blue Heron. For short, we'll call him "sagi-san". It is said he will imperiously stand in one spot for hours.
The mountains in autumn,
there are so many fallen leaves
- looking for my lost lover
I cannot find the path.
In the south end, new paths are under construction. An elevated walkway, new overlooks and even a moat's wall! But alas, I will lose one of my favorite spots: the red brick pathway through the green bamboo. The bricks are from the roads of Fort Worth. The use of bricks in Japanese Gardens is not traditional but the recycling of local material very much is. Perhaps, someone mourns the loss of their brick road as it's replaced with dull pavement.
The old pathway
It is now intercepted by new decking
Walkway descends into this new stone path
New overlook area
Mimicking stone moat walls of the great Japanese castles
Kanazawa castle
The Zen Squirrel and Lord Heron were not the only wildlife to be seen.
A ronin photographer!
When two ronin meet on the road, each stops with his hand firmly upon his unsheathed sword. The opponents search the other's eyes for strength of spirit, deciding if battle should be done. All warfare is based upon deception but the honest eye cannot be deceived. And thus we did battle with our breath visible in the frigid, wintry air.
A picture only an "artsy" judge might like
He was a "competition photographer" only. He parried forth: "I could walk around here all day taking pictures I thought were just interesting to myself." But he chose not to. Only pictures prized by committess did he also prize. But he also expressed grave doubts any picture he took on a cloudy winter's day such as today would have any merit in their eyes. "Too lifeless."
I left my sword in its scabbard. He must find his own path and I could not let him distract me from mine - there was simply too much life in the garden I might miss.
From my proud and strong friend Saburo,
who could not fail you were he even to try...
to secret viewing spots...
to the small but unique personalities...
to nature's coloring book...
To the climbing moss on the gift shop...
to the majesty of still water...
and the infinity of a single leaf,
a composition beyond all human understanding.
Our life in this world -
to what shall I compare it?
Its like an echo
resounding through the mountains
and off into the empty sky. - Monk Ryokan
