Feb 222010

Real-Life American Bros

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key west

My bread supplies were already running low. Fortunately we still had plenty of beer.

Paolo, Silent Dan, Zak, and myself had no money, nowhere to go, and nothing to do in the summer following college graduation.  Worse yet we were living in New Jersey.

In my mind I was ready to teach graduate level seminars on the New York School of poets, but the distance between that fantasy and the concrete heat of the New Jersey landscape was impossible to breach.  It was probably Paolo that thought we should go to the beach.  Zak advocated Florida. Silent Dan probably didn’t say much.  I had $87.

The drive to northern Florida was typical. We listened to Modest Mouse and White Zombie and shot at a couple of cops at South of the Border. Read books, took pictures.

I remember waking up in West Palm Beach.  I was already halfway through my money but had enough peanut butter, bread, and beer to last me at least until the drive back to Jersey. We were going to camp somewhere in the Keys.  Sleep on a beach. We weren’t hippies, surfers, druggies, or anything like that. We just didn’t have any money.

We camped at Bahia Honda, about 30 miles north of Key West. A wiry silver-haired hippie by way of Asheville, NC approached our campsite. You guys…smoke the ganja? Mitch asked before procedding to pass around a joint roughly the size of my arm. We pissed on the campfire we had built and got back into the car.  Things were getting loose and the more fun we had, the less crazy the world felt. I fastened my seat belt and we careened out onto US Route 1 South headed to Key West.

Now, I don’t always remember who says what, but I remember it must’ve been Silent Dan that stashed a 30-pack of Budweiser into the back of the car, because it was Silent Dan that cracked open the first can with a thunderous CLICK and a silent smile.

I grabbed a can.  Cocked back the tab, pulled the trigger.  Drinking in an automobile, high on the reefer, in paradise, with my friends – you could say I liked it. It was like losing my virginity, disavowing God, and getting drunk for the first time all at once while getting caught with my pants down by my parents masturbating at church on Christmas.

I won’t try to remember which one of stayed sober enough to keep our shit show together, but let’s pretend it was Paolo.  We shouted down our devils in the bars on Duval Street as we worked our way back past Mary Star of the Sea Church. Paolo’s Camry, 3 AM. My bread supplies were already running low.
Fortunately we still had plenty of beer.

Paolo’s cousin offered us a place to crash in Columbia, SC a day or two later. He drove a late-model BMW as did his roommates. White kids, finance majors. Here we were, hanging out with some real life American bros, in the muggy South, underweight, underfed, gruesomely hungover.  Morning sunshine would slice my face in the coming AM. Reciprocity. Fuck. We sought refuge in a bookstore with a Florida room exterior.

nights of naomi

NIGHTS OF NAOMI - Bill Knott (1940-66)

I found this book.  It’s called NIGHTS OF NAOMI (Plus 2 Songs).  This poem changed my life:

To look at things in a new slant is fine
But it’s more fun
To jump into the slant and disappear forever
Like a spark’s belly
Whooshing blue trisms
The circus-horse scissors used in drowning
The calendar’s gills used in haunting
The keg of bees used in drowning

- Bill Knott (1940-1966)

The trip to Florida was pretty cool, too.
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Feb 172010

The Tan Satchel

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drinking

There's a little bit of poetry in it, and lots of blood.

No science in politics and no art to war.  No instructions for life or time for truth in the countdown to extinction. Not enough whiskey to shoulder the coldness of humanity. Nor enough coldness to freeze the indifferent toxins of exploitation. What began as the emperor’s new clothes has morphed into the world’s biggest nudist colony.

Because the world is aflame and everyone is lying for money, I take to my Walkman and a handle of bourbon. We’re all pushing each other around until it comes time to ask for a helping hand.  The lucky should be thankful to find loyalty. Amos says, if the market is guided by an invisible hand, that hand is surely attached to an invisible douchebag.

Mountainside bromides. Background of total black night.  Drinking without thinking about the amount of cans filling these construction bags. Truth is, I need more than 5 minutes between jobs to write; I need a patron, some coin, some advantage.  Something. And yet something in a David Bowie melody could come forth and grip me; alcohol could warm me, Aladdin Sane would try to warn me, but I’d ignore the narrative for just a few minutes of feeling.

I once had a tan satchel and within it, the means to nourish myself: water, granola, journal, camera, bandanna.  A plain tin flask filled with whiskey or brandy. Chug chug chug, pick up my stuff, keep moving.  Northern Liberties. There were homeless people everywhere and I knew all of their names. I had invented them myself on the bus headed into New Jersey.

You can hear the consanguinity of life through a seashell or the heartbeat of an alpaca, but you can’t ignore the ongoing history of competition among all things fighting merely to exist.  There’s a little bit of poetry in it, and lots of blood. Somewhere in the combustion we impose our love and hate onto unassuming things. We impose morality where we discern cruelty, seeking an otherwise unattainable divinity through what we call ‘compassion’. But in the end, the War rages forward, silently minding the eyes of the dreaming saints, our drunken eventides, these sleepy eyes, weeping towards eternity, ever-aglow for tomorrow with glorious visions of love and epiphany.
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Jan 072010

Stealing Is Not Nice!

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Some people steal from my wife’s yarn store.  Given the small nature of her business, a small store in a very rural area of New England, it’s always a realistic impact at the end of the year.  A couple of needles here, a couple of skeins there – it all adds up.  We’re a humble bunch here in southern Vermont, where incomes are low, but respect for community is paramount.  We don’t want to become a multinational banking cartel.  My wife sells organic yarn, much of which is local.  I know our vendors because I deliver their mail on Saturdays.

That’s right.  Even though I hold an amazing position in a nearby college that I am ever-grateful for holding and experiencing, I work on Saturdays as a rural carrier for the United States Postal Service to try to keep our finances afloat as a small business in trying economic times.  I use my own Toyota Corolla.  I drive on the left and reach over to mailboxes on my right. It pays $13.05 an hour.  There are times when my wife and I argue over money.  We’re late on bills sometimes, even being in our 30’s now.

It is understandable when one needs to steal for everyday life essentials.  Life is hard.  I understand petty theft in this regard.  When you boil it down far enough, all businesses exploit the resources of the Earth to perpetuate the Western business model of profit-driven social patterns, so all business is corrupted from the start.

But that’s the world we live in.  We all steal from one another in some way.  The point is to eliminate violence and theft whenever possible.  This week marks a decade of veganism for me (please refrain from applause until the end of the blog entry).  I could eat meat or dairy.  However, I choose to limit my impact on Life and the Planet.  Veganism is the best way that the Western world can respond to its ruinous meat-based diet while eliminating senseless barbarism.  It’s not perfect.

The world is not perfect.  But stealing from a local yarn shop is politically indefensible.  We support local vendors, and barely scratch by ourselves.  It’s an awesome life, and we chose it, but don’t steal from us.  We are your Friend and Neighbor.  Thank you and Have a Nice Day.

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