Sunday, March 31, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Mary Magdalene Rage 2009
Fifteen years ago I received a very negative comment about my entry for Mary Magdalene on Mangozeen.
The Argentinean writer had responded to a Facebook survey of what Biblical character she would be. Zuckerman's website search engine chosen Deborah of the Old Testament. The prophetess had predicted the defeat of King Sisera at the hands of the persecuted Israelites. The Canaanites' assault chariots had been stopped by the muddy fields below Mount Tabor. The commander fled to his camp, where his wife, but also a prophetess, Jael, pounded a tent peg through the sleeping man's skull.
Extolled above women be Jael, Extolled above women in the tent. He asked for water, she gave him milk; She brought him cream in a lordly dish. She stretched forth her hand to the nail, Her right hand to the workman's hammer, And she smote Sisera; she crushed his head, She crashed through and transfixed his temples.
The Israelites were attempting to steal the Canaanites' land of Milk and Honey.
Same as the Zionists in Palestine.
My rebelliousness forced a rude reaction.
"Better you were Mary Magdalene. A fucking whore."
Opps, I never really thought of Mary Magdalene that way.
http://www.mangozeen.com/2009/04/22/religion/bound-to-burn-at-the-stake.htm
Here's Dampira's riposte.
I'd rather message you then comment on your "blog."
Mary Magdalene wasn't a fucking whore, you ignorant fucktard. You are the fucking whore for believing it after it was proven that she wasn't. It's been cleared up. You think it's okay to call a woman a "fucking whore" let alone a innocent woman like Mary Magdalene that had nothing to do with prostitution?
Ignorant douche-bag.
People like you should be fucking dragged into the street and get impaled by tons of crucifixes then shipped off to Rome to be imprisoned for two decades for being a ignorant fucktard you are!
It's amazing you have pictures of women dressed like fucking sluts on your blog and you lust after these fucking skanks. You worship them. Fuck them. Give them fucking respect.
Mary Magdalene never did these things and yet she gets flak. She was proper and didn't dress provocative unlike the fucking THAI tramps in that lame ass third world shit infested garbage dump you love so much. Fucking hypocrite. FUCK YOU GAY LAME ASS ANIMAL.
I'm out.
Don't bother typing back to me because you are not worthy and I don't plan on reading your trash.
I will never visit your sorry excuse of a so called blog. Goodbye, pig.
IGNORANT DOUCHEBAD ANIMALS LIKE YOU SHOULD BE ON LEASHES!
Wow.
It is true that I like sexy girls and the Church has never canonized Mary Magdalene, but the writer was correct in his assertion that Mary Magdalene was never an alabaster woman. There was no mention of her selling her body in the Gospel. Western Christianity mixed her up with an unnamed repentant woman anointing Christ's feet in the Gospel of Luke.
She was the beloved of all apostles and in the rotting pages of the gospel of Philip was written about Mary Magdalene, "Christ loved Mary more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples disapprovingly said said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Saviour answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness."
MM was his girl.
For better or worse.
I stand corrected as an ignorant douchebag, but every sinner deserves a reprieve and secondly the girls of Pattaya are more saints than any westerner will ever realize. So fuck Dampira too.
LAZARUS II - POETRY ON SALE
LAZURUS II
BY
PETER NOLAN SMITH
FOTOS BY SHANNON GREER, RAOUL OLLMAN, AND FX TIMONEY
PUBLISHED BY MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2024
Nearing Christmas 2022 I was experiencing liver failure. At 69 my chances for a transplant were slim, however early on Yulemas Weill-Cornell called to say come in, "We have a liver for you>"
I packed a bag ready for all outcomes. 5-10% of transplant end badly. I had had a good life and showed up for any eventuality. After a ten-hour operation I returned to life from the dead.
Lazarus II.
This glossy booklet contains a long poem LAZARUS II about my miraculous coming and going with a happy ending complete with eleven high resolution photos shot by Raoul Ollman, the cover, Shannon Greer the interior, and the back by Francis X Timony. Shannon's photos are graphic nudes revealing the horror of one of the most intense operations on this planet. Many have likened them to the horrific photo of Andy Warhol wound after the Valerie Solanis shooting.
Price $12 plus $3 shipping in the USA
Venmo Peter-Smith-18
Essence
Last year I died three times.
Once on an airplane
Coming from Bangkok
Twice on an Operating table.
Passing from this life
To white oblivion
Not heaven
Not hell
Merely a white oblivion
Coming back
Not as a reincarnation
But
To this life
To this body
To the meaninglessness
Of the Now.
My body healed
Skin and bones
Looking like Willem Dafoe
My soul
Joyless
Still in limbo
Of a world
Not of my making
Months pass
Healing
Winter to Spring
Healing
Alone
Spring to summer
Alive
No longer barely
Alive
Not looking like the before me
Not looking like Willem Dafoe either.
Halfway between the old me
And the new me
In June
Stronger and I went to the Rockaways
My friend FX
My lifeguard
A better than good swimmer.
The Atlantic shore break was dangerous
I stripped off my clothes
Naked to the elements
A long scar across my abdomen
FX looks at me
I at him.
I am not alone
I am with him
The wind
jThe earth
Water
Sky
The ocean calls
I race through the waves
Dive into the sea
Surface
The sun to the west
The glow of life
Surges
Through my veins
Duck under a wave
Surface
Alive
Filled with the memory
Of hundreds of beaches
Around the world
Higgins Beach Maine
My mother reaching down to pull me up
Nantasket Beach
A drowned man
Wollaston
Swimming around the sewer
The water warm
Moonlight Beach
California
LSD with seals
Mazatlan
Waikiki
Bingin Beach Bali
Nice, Cannes, Biarritz
Koh Phi Phi
I lose count
FX shouts
I shout back
The waves washing away the tears of joy
I am alive
And I no longer look like Willem Dafoe
Just another version of me.
Lazurus II
Blinding Snow - Mount Ranier - 1998
In 1998 my father, Todd Shikegane and I toured the Northwest in my friend's van. Arriving at Mt. Ranier in the morning Todd and I went for a hike. My father remained in the lodge by the fire with his crossword puzzle. In his 80s his tramping days were over.
The path climbed through sunny alpine meadows to the tree line. We were both wearing adequate gear. About an hour later Todd and I were caught in a snowstorm. I recommended going down. Todd kept on going. I watched him disappear to the flurries and descended to reach the lodge after a two hour descent. I reported to the rangers that my friend was still on the mountain. They weren't too concerned. It was still daylight. I went into the lodge and sat by my father, who asked, "Where's Todd?"
"He kept going."
He looked up at the cloudy mountain and said, "Oh well, he'll show up later. Care for a glass of wine."
Of course I said yes and Todd showed up thirty minutes later. A little cold. He also had a glass of wine.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Last Supper For Thirteen
The Synoptic Gospels recount Jesus Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem on a donkey.
Seven days later the preacher had been betrayed by Judas, arrested by the authorities, tried by the Romans, crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, buried in a cave, and rose from a deathlike coma a week later.
Over the centuries scholars have debated the date of the Last Supper. Most Biblical experts agree that the even took place sometime between AD 30-36 with one physicist, Colin Humphrey, pinning down that mythic repast with Jesus and the twelve apostles to April 1, 33CE.
A tumultuous eight days.
To celebrate Passaich one of the apostles hired a room just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in a joint called the Upper Room perhaps run by an Essene from Bethany, who must asked joked, “Everyone know what they want?”
"Something traditional," a member of the thirteen probably punned with a shrug.
There wasn't much of a choice.
According to culinary historians the Saarmeal consisted of leaven bread and other food cholent, a stewed dish of beans cooked very low and slow, olives with hyssop, a herb with a mint-like taste, bitter herbs with pistachios and a date charoset, a chunky fruit and nut paste.
No one ever said it was a good meal, but things soon went south with Jesus' arrest by the Temple guards of the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane. His enemies within the temple wanted him gone and nine hours later Jesus was dead on the cross.
No last meal.
At least none I can find.
The Temple hierarchy really didn't like him.
A lot.
Last Passaic after a long walk to the Brooklyn Museum to view Jimmy DeSana's SM photos Dakota Pollack and I dined on cod, sweet potato, and broccoli.
Not glatt kosher, but none of it tref.
And since I don't drink anymore. No wine.
No beer either.
Sei gesund.
ps there is no such thing as a good kosher wine.
Feh.
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Damn les Habitants - 2011
My introduction to French was via the heavy accent of a cartoon skunk, who appeared on TV every Saturday morning during the 1950s. Pepe Le Pew never got the girl. Skunks smelled bad and supposedly the French also never bathed with soap. I knew little else of France. That country lay across the Atlantic Ocean, but another France was much closer to my hometown of Falmouth Foresides and that France was Quebec.
The largest minority in Maine was the French Canadians. They worked in the mills and logging camps. A radio station from Montreal played songs for these workers and their families. I listened to the Quebec stations on a ROCKET RADIO, Miniman Model MG-302. Somehow attaching its alligator clips to the metal frame of my bed powered the crystal. I listened to the French music. None of the words had any sense, but several evenings a week in the winter a hoarse voiced announced the hockey games from le Forum in Montreal.
The Canucks in Maine supported the Canadians or 'les Habitants and the team dominated hockey in the NHL, winning six of the decade's Stanley Cups. My father came from an old New England family. We rooted for the Boston Bruins. They always lost to the Habs just like Pepe le Pew never got the girl.
n 1960 my father moved our family from Maine to the South Shore of Boston. My ROCKET RADIO was upgraded to a Japanese transistor and I caught the Montreal station clear of static. The music was changing from smooth to pop led by Francoise Hardy, the Yeh-Yeh Girl.
I bought her 45s in Mattapan Square. The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills taught us French. I partially understood the lyrics and plotted to meet her one day.
Pop lost favor for rock in the late 60s.
I loved the Sultans' garage rock version of LE POUPEE QUI FAIT NON.
But some things never changed.
The Bruins continued to lose to the Canadians with regularity and the Montreal team captured four Stanley Cups in a row, until the Bruins' Bobby Orr scored a Cup winning goal in 1970. The victory was against an expansion team, the St. Louis Blues, but I didn't care, because this triumph was their first Cup since 1940, plus they had been lucky to avoid the Canadians during the playoffs.
They never lost to the Bruins.
A year later the Bruins were favored to beat the Canadians in the semi-finals. The goalie Gerry Cheever had allowed one goal in the first meeting. It was Easter Week and my three friends and I were driving down to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break.
We had rented an apartment across from the Elbow Room, famed from the 60s movie WHERE THE BOYS ARE.
Below Washington DC we entered the Deep South. We were longhairs and rednecks hated hippies almost as much as we hated the Canadians.
Our only stops were for gas and food.
Throughout Georgia we listened to WBZ's broadcast of the second game between the Habs and Bs. The Boston-based radio station had a strong 50,000 watt signal. The Bruins went up 5-2 at the end of the 2nd period. The signal died at the Florida border.
In my mind the Bruins were returning to the Stanley Cup. We stopped for complimentary OJ at the state hospitality stop and drove the rest of the night to reach our destination at dawn.
I had never been to Florida and marveled at the palm trees, the Gulf Stream, and co-eds in bikinis.
At noon I went down to the store for beer and picked up the local newspaper, opening the sports section. I blinked several times in disbelief before the printed tragedy hit me with full force.
The Habs had come back from the abyss and scored 5 goals in the 3rd period.
The series was tied at 1-1.
After the Easter break Bruins pushed the Canadians to the limit and lose game 7.
That misfortune was repeated over the next four decades, but in late Spring of 2011 with history on the line the Bruins played the Habs in another game 7. I watched from Mullanes across the street from Frank's Lounge, which does not do hockey.
The teams went into OT tied.
I was ready for the loss, but the Bruins of 2011 were not those of 2010 or 1971. We won the game and I toasted my team with another beer. I was the only Bruins fan in the bar and I lifted my glass to Pepe Le Pew, hoping that he had been lucky to get the girl in the end, because no one loses forever.
December 16, 1978 – East Village – Journal
A Pleasant Paradise
1963 Snipers murdered JFK
1968 A sniper kills Malcolm Luther King.
Gunmen assassinate Malcolm X and RFK
Our leaders dying before their time
Before their replacements
Richard Nixon betrayed the USA
But kept coming back
The Messiah of the Silent Majority
Why did you live?
When so many others died.
Almost sixty thousand US soldiers in Vietnam
Millions throughout Indochina
And Henry Kissinger
The blood of Cambodia on his hands
Palestine too.
He will live to an old age
Never to go to Hell or Heaven
Only finally to death
Leaving us in a pleasant paradise.
Bad poetry
Happy Purim - Bet On Crazy - 2015
Five years ago I wandered through West 47th Street looking for a job. No one was interested in hiring a goy on Purim and my Hassidic friends cajoled me into having a drink with them.
"Whiskey is kosher."
They poured a good measure of Scotch into a glass.
"Shalom."
I clinked glass with the religious reformers following the tradition commemorating the six-month drinking feast by the Persian King Ahasuerus.
"What do you know of Purim?" Rondell invited him into his office and poured us Scotch.
"Me? A simple goy."
"There's nothing simple about you." The chubby diamond broker and I had cut a few deals, but none this year. "And you're more a sheygutz than a goy."
"A wise guy."
"So let's hear it."
"This Persian king drunkenly celebrates his reign and demands his wife appear naked before his nobles. Vashti refused this humiliation and the Persian ruler demanded all young women in his kingdom to audition to be queen."
"You didn't mention the queen's embarrassing skin condition."
"Probably bullshit." I had drunk three whiskeys with my friends.
"Please don't use that language."
"Sorry, anyway the king chooses a new queen to replace Vashti. Esther."
"That's not sure. According to the Book of Esther she was orphaned at a young age and was fostered by her first cousin Mordecai. Some rabbinic commentators state that she was actually Mordecai's wife, since the Torah permits an uncle to marry his niece. Anyway she finds favor in the king's eyes, and belongs his new wife. Esther does not reveal her origins nor that she is Jewish. Her uncle is appointed vizier, but the non-Jews plot against them. Is that enough?"
"No, I like the part, where the king kills all the Nazis for Esther."
"The Torah says nothing about Nazis."
"They were thinking about killing Jews."
"But Esther beat them to the punch. Not many goyim know this story. Another about killing."
"There was a lot of killing back then."
"And not enough drinking like we Irish." I tapped my glass for a refill and Rondell poured three fingers in respect for my ancient race. "You know why Yashim created whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world."
"No, your people must have sold it to us."
"You're good customers."
"Repeat ones too."
I drank deep from the Scotch. I liked Jamison better.
"If you don't mind, I have to be going." It was Shabbas.
"Se`udat mitzvah."
It's a good time."
"With kosher wine."
"Yes."
"Better you than me."
"There was no such thing as good glatt wine and I downed the whiskey.
"Sie gesund."
"You too."
I walked back onto the street.
A starker and Irish to boot.
It was good to be one of the old Tribes.
Friday, March 22, 2024
Backmasking STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Beware of Satan and his mysterious ways.
Supposedly if you play Led Zeppelin's STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN in reverse on a BizarroWorld Stereo ie backmasking the lyrics of the 5th stanza are transformed into a prayer to Satan;
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now,
Its just a spring clean for the may queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on.
And it makes me wonder.
INTO
Oh here's to my sweet Satan.
The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
He will give those with him 666.
There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.
For a listen go to this URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgtxpRNT-r0
Shit I could never remember the lyrics either way.
Led Zeppelin Newport Jazz Festival 1969
On July 6, 1969 my older brother and I drove from the South Shore to Newport to see the Sunday show of George Wein's Jazz Festival. It was a sunny day and we arrived around 10. Parking was touhg and I stuck our VW Beetle on the edge of a Little League field. Thousands of hippies and young people were thronging to Festival Field. Our tickets cost $3.50.
Dave Brubeck opened the afternoon with his oratorio LIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS.
Around 2pm Nipsy Russell warmed up the crowd for James Brown
Everyone groaned, as the emcee introduced him.
We had only seen him on WHAT'S MY LINE.
No one was prepared for his off-color blue performance.
He told a joke about fucking bald-headed twins.
The pot-smoking audience begged for mercy.
Our ribs were stitched by paroxysms of laughter.
After an hour Nipsy gave up the stage for the Godfather of Soul.
Hippies gave up their arm waving and danced to the black soul of the JBs.
James Brown ended his two-hour performance with PLEASE PLEASE ME.
There was a small intermission and then the evening began the Latin bop of Willie Bobo followed by the Herbie Hancock Quartet. BB King rocked the night with his guitar Lucille and Johnny Winter joined him for a duet of scorching guitars. Buddy Rich's Orchestra warmed up the crowd for the final act.
Led Zeppelin.
They took their time taking the stage.
Jimmy Page was sick.
Rumors crisscrossed through the audience.
The show was to be cancelled.
After an hour the band hit the stage.
Jimmy Page later said, "You don’t blow a date like this one. Not after all that. The Newport Jazz Festival was far too important to us to just cancel out and I’m very upset at the whole thing. Wein should never have announced one of us was ill.”
They blew us away.
Here's Zeppelin tuning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpq5a1sPAYQ
And what about HOW MANY MORE TIMES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQSyc7I02Y
We left during this song.
My brother wanted to beat the traffic.
We heard the bass line miles away.
I hear it now too.
But I still laugh at Nipsy Russell's joke about bald-headed twins.
And I can't remember it at all.
DAZED BY ZEPPELIN - 2014
Everyone in the world has a phone. I can call Fenway's mom in Thailand and Mam will pick up the phone on the other side of the world. This is a miracle, considering only twenty years ago phone service to foreign countries was a costly expenditure. Now international connections are linked by communication satellites circling the globe to transmit billions of cellular calls and SMS messages to their distant destinations, yet this Sunday no one has called me at the Fort Greene Observatory.
And it was not the advent of the Zombie Apocalypse.
Planes and helicopters flew over Brooklyn and cars hummed along Lafayette Street, so I'm not Mada, Adam's dead end, but twelve hours have passed since my last spoken word. That stretch of silence is not a record. I have gone longer, since Sundays have been my traditional day of silence.
Back in the last century I lived in the East Village. My apartment was small, but comfortable. My Sundays were spent watching football or basketball, reading a book, luxuriating in the bath or all of the above. Every once in a while I'd check the phone to see there was a dial tone.
The phone was in perfect working order.
No one wanted to speak with me, until I started dating Ms. Carolina. She liked talking. I couldn't blame her. Ms. Carolina lived in a redneck community south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Some of her neighbors entertained funny thoughts about the intermingling of races and religions.
Early Sunday service at her husband's church lasted two and a half hours. Baptists wasted the entire morning in prayer. Her congregation was very advanced for the area. They believed blacks had a soul.
Around 11am the telephone rang and Ms. Carolina recounted the preacher's ranting sermon in accent. I didn't have to say a word.
She was originally form New Jersey. Her family was Old Yankee same as half mine. We had more than those genes in common. I knew her husband. He was a good man. Ms. Carolina spoke low and ended with the wish, "Good luck with your vow of silence."
Luck had nothing to do with my Sunday's silence, because my mouth was silted with the residue of Saturday night drunk.
Wordlessly I hung up the phone with my vow intact. My function was to listen to a woman's yearning. I was good at it.
As a junior in 1968 my girlfriend Kyla suggested that we spent the weekend on a spiritual retreat at a suburban monastery. The buxom cheerleader felt guilty about the sexual stirring. Two weeks earlier Kyla had confessed to the parish priest that she and I had come close to sex.
Our pastor had convinced the 17 year-old cheerleader that our wanton behavior was Satan's work, even though dry-humping wasn't proscribed by the Bible.
"You sure this has nothing to do with your mother?" Kyla's mom was a devoted church goer same as mine.
"No, I feel something in my heart calling me to Jesus. I want you to feel it too."
"Okay." The weekend cost nothing and no priest could shake my lack of faith in God.
"I only want you to do this, because I love you."
"And I love you."
Kyla and I had never gone all the way. Our sex was blunted by her unwillingness to be naked. I respected her wishes. My hands were not so obedient.
"I want to be pure as snow." Her skin was whiter than baby powder.
"I'll do whatever you want."
I signed up for the retreat. Chuckie Manzi, feared losing me to the priesthood.
"They might drug you with LSD holy water."
"I'll be okay." I had been faking my belief in God since my best friend drowned in 1960. A weekend was not likely to test me.
My mother was ecstatic to hear of the weekend. Her uncle was an arch-bishop. She had been praying for one of her four sons to answer God's calling. She never thought it would be me and on Ascension Weekend a bus rolled down our street with Kyla and fifteen other couples. My mother kissed me on the cheek and said, "Open your heart."
"I'll do my best." I looked over her shoulder.
Chuckie stood on the lawn. His eyes said good-bye forever and I got on the bus to sit next to Kyla. The bus pulled away from my house and we drove ten minutes to a wooded monastery underneath Big Blue Hill.
We were met by priests and nuns; one for each couple.
"Purity is the one true love." The habited nun raised her hands with welcome.
"I know you are all virgins." The head priest was tall and bald. His smile beamed sanctity. "God knows you are pure and purity is the best way for young people to show your love for God and Jesus, so you are going to be separated by sex."
"All weekend?" I was holding Kyla's hand.
"Except for prayer meetings and Mass." A young priest with a guitar motioned for us to move apart.
The Nuns of Chastity escorted the girls from the monastery to a nunnery hidden by tall pines.
"See no evil." The Pastor led the boys inside a separate building. "Hear no evil."
I stifled a groan.
This was going to be a long weekend.
That evening we ate beef and mashed potatoes followed by a lengthy prayer session in the basement. The girls were on one side of the room and the boys the other, as we discussed our immortality of our souls and the temporal existence of our bodies and souls.
The head priest noticed my looking at Kyla.
"Saving her soul is more important than your desire. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, Father." I loved the girl with the green eyes more than physical pleasure or so I thought in this basement.
We hit the beds early. The lights went out at nine. I heard several boys masturbating under the blankets. Two of them went to the bathroom together. Without girls we left on our own.
The next morning started with Mass. I took Holy Communion for the first time in years and stuck the wafer in my pocket once I reached my pew. After the service we ate breakfast and the nuns led the girls to chapel. The boys sat under a tree with the guitar-playing priest.
The day was warm and the sky was free of clouds. The priest indoctrinated us with the ways of God. I couldn't stop thinking about Kyla. The priest strummed his guitar and said, "A woman will steal your precious fluids. Women were the handmaidens of Satan. Touch one outside of matrimony and you'll brut in Hell forever."
Some of the other boys confessed their sins of thought and deed. I wanted to run for the woods, but I wasn't leaving without Kyla. After dinner we listened to religious rock on the stereo. God was never far from us on this weekend.
That night I had spilled my seed twice. Other boys joined my one-handed prayer. Masturbation was our most holy sacrament.
On Sunday morning the priest and nuns celebrated the ancient mass and the head priest preached about the eternal satisfaction of serving the Church. The climax of the weekend was the grand one-on-one session with an older priest in the basement. He was the exorcist for the diocese.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" His rheumy eyes were skilled at searing into souls.
"My love for my girlfriend is untainted by penetration."
"But you have touched her?"
"Not the way you think?"
"Have you ever touched a man?"
"No."
"Have you ever thought about a naked man?"
"No."
"Are you asking everyone this, because the only other times I heard these questions were from drivers trying to pick me up hitchhiking. Do you do that? Isn't that a sin?"
"The Holy Trinity absolves our trespasses." He put his hand on my thigh. I pushed it away, then heard an electric guitar blast from the stereo in the meeting room. The priest looked up. This music was not on the program and I recognized the guitarist as Jimmy Page from the Yardbirds.
"I gotta go." I ran upstairs to find Chuckie by the stereo.
"I just got this from the record shop in Mattapan Square." He held up the cover of the Hindenburg crashing in flames. "It's Led Zeppelin. You got to hear this."
Chuckie turned the stereo up to 10 for DAZED AND CONFUSED.
Bass and guitar.
High-pitched vocals and then the avalanche of drums.
6 minutes and 25 seconds later I went upstairs and packed my bag. Chuckie put on HOW MANY MORE TIMES and the rest of the boys joined my flight.
The priests tried to stop Chuckie from playing the album. He had a Boy Scout knife, which was sharp enough to fend off the soft palms of the church. We stormed across the lawn to the nunnery. The girls had heard the music and were already to go. We walked to the road. Chuckie had somehow organized enough cars for escape. He was a good friend.
"I love that music." Kyla touched my hand.
"It is pretty cool." Her touch was nicer than that of the priest."
"Let's go to the beach." Chuckie shouted 'Nantasket' out the window.
It was a day fit for the gods.
None of us attended Mass after that weekend. We defied our parents' deity. Our Sundays were centered on breakfast at the local diner and I celebrated the Sabbath with simple words.
"Bacon and eggs over easy."
Kyla and I never went all the way. Led Zeppelin was a huge hit. My older brother and I saw them at the Newport Jazz Festival. Kyla and I broke up a week before the Senior Prom and she married a boy from our hometown. They made a good couple. She would never have been a groupie for Led Zeppelin.
My present vow of silence endured into the darkness of night. I didn't have to be anywhere until tomorrow, but felt like a beer in the company of others and there's no where better in Fort Greene to have a beer than Frank's Lounge with the lovely bartender, Rosa. She's a girl who doesn't like silence, then again most women like the sound of voices. It's part of their nature and no one knows that better than a man.
TO HEAR JAKE HOLMES ~ Dazed and confused PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1g7qFaWaLkThursday, March 21, 2024
Gut Gemacht Berliners - 2014
A white flag has symbolized a call for truce or surrender since the Eastern Han dynasty Any combatants under this flag considered themselves safe from attack, although at the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho elders, women, and children under the protection of a nearby fort were slaughtered by drunken US Calvary despite a white flag. Kit Carson, famed pioneer and Indian fighter, harshly criticized the action by saying, " I tell you what, I don't like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I've fought 'em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would."
White flags have been ignored throughout history, but this year on July 22 unknown people exchanged the American flags atop the Brooklyn Bridge towers with two white flags. The NYPD and Homeland Security were embarrassed by the failure to protect the bridge after spending billions of dollars to lock-down New York against any threat of terrorism.
Police were equally perplexed by the lack of a letter or manifesto or video explaining the white flag, but promised to prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest measure of Law and Order.
The War of Terror
Fox News preached fear.
Mohammadans were at it again.
I thought the flags were a call for a truce.
The War of Terror versus peace.
Still no one said nothing until today's admission by two German artists.
“We saw the bridge, which was designed by a German, trained in Berlin, who came to America because it was the place to fulfill his dreams, as the most beautiful expression of a great public space. That beauty was what we were trying to capture.”
Their clandestine feat was carried out well past midnight and said according the the Zionist NY Times that when they removed those flags, they ceremonially folded them, “following the United States flag code.”
Mr. Leinkauf, 37, and Mr. Wermke, 35 have pulled off similar stunts without such recognition and I applaud their effort, although they answered the question 'why' with "There is no why?"
A girlfriend had once said that leaving me.
"Sometimes you don't to know why."
I kicked her in the ass.
A brute.
Same as the NYPD will be, if these two artists venture back to NYC
A white flag is a call for peace.
And a call for peace is not nothing.
Time in our time.
Immer, mein jung Berliners.
Postcards From Clover Nolan 1979
Nor the last.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Motorcycle Columbian Watch Thieves
In Columbia two thieves on motorcycles targeted drivers of luxury cars with their arm hanging out the driver's window. The driver grabbed at the Rolex, as the drier tried to fight off the theft, the pillion driver stuck a lit cigarette in driver's right hand. Vroom off into freedom with the watch. Columbians are also the world's best pickpocket and the Roma of Paris are a close second.
In 1990 I broke my left wrist in a head-on motorcycle crash with an Lanna Thai opium farmer's pick-up. I was killed instantly and even faster reincarnated into this life. Same body, except my wrist thereafter resembled a Klingon Bird of Prey starship.
No watches have sat right on my left wrist since.
Foto by Randall Koral and the car in the ad might be his.
Legong Dancers Ubud Bali 1990
In 1990 I summered on Bali. Five years before the Internet. I traveled north from the surfers' mecca of Kuta Beach to the mystical village of Ubud.
My grandaunt Marion had traveled to the Orient and brought back a small carved mahogany bust of a delicate Balinese dancer. My aunt passed in 1959. The bust became mine. I dreamed on Bali ever since.
Here I was. Almost forty years later. My simple windowless bungalow overlooked a deep ravine at which families bathed afore sunset with verdant rice paddies stretching miles to a horizon of dormant volcanoes. My days were simple. Toast and coffee from the landlord's second son, Made. Writing on a manual typewriter. Countless typos. An inexpensive Lunch of nasi goreng or fried rice with chicken at the Jalan Raya Ubud market. Dirt underfoot. Shade from the hot sun. A cold Bintang beer. $3 plus tip. Saya Suka Bali. After lunch a short stroll to watch the guru tari or teacher instruct young dancers practice the exquisitely elegant Legong ballet accompanied by a lilting gamelan tape.
I sat in the shades of the temple observing the centuries old choreographed ritual steps and gestures. Despite the increasing numbers of tourists Ubud retained its hold on eternity and I was blessed to hear the wondrous gamelan music floating over the rice. I thought of Aunt Marion, wishing she were with me. I guess she was.
Somewhere in my storage awaits the Balinese statute.
THE MESSIAH - Netflix
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
English Health - 2008
From Pattaya Rag
After an exhaustive review of the research literature, here's the final word on nutrition and health:
Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English.
Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English.
Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English.
Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English.
Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English.
The French eat foie-gras, full fat cheese and drink red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the English
CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.
ps: Americans are just genetically modified fat.
Monday, March 18, 2024
Finite Immortality - Pattaya - 2010
The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that For years I thought Dtam-ruaat meant 'make blood', however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the last syllable. Thai culture remains strong, however beer is beer and pizza remains pizza, so foreigners don't starve to death in the hinterlands. 1150 is telephone number for Pizza. Pay the gas and the motorcycle delivery boy will drive to the most distant reaches of ban-nok ie the sticks.
Other commonly shared words are whiskey, taxi, sex, and WC for 'water closet', which along with pizza cover most human needs. This week I returned to New York from Bangkok via Narita Airport. 27 hours from Soi 12 in Jomtien to Fort Greene in Brooklyn. Most people would have taken several days to recover from such a trip. I needed money and showed up at work 10 hours after passing through customs at JFK.
I was exhausted from the trip, yet couldn't sleep and tried to explain to my son's mother why I couldn't sleep. I explained over the phone to Mam about the time zone. My Thai is rudimentary and Mam was getting increasingly frustrated by my ignorance of the her native language.
The Thais are the French of the Orient.
Their love for their country's traditions, food, and culture border on fanaticism and after residing in Thailand I have to admit that they aren't half-wrong. The only problem is that I had to move back to America. New York to be exact. The other side of the world and this week my body clock is off by 12 hours.
Day is night and night is day.
"I can't sleep," I explained to Mam over Skype. There was very little echo over the line, but she didn't understand the reason for my sleeplessness. "Last night I had a dream about our staying in a house with no walls. It was in the middle of a rice paddy. Very beautiful. Made out of wood. You were sleeping in bed and I was holding Fenway."
Fenway is our two years old son. Every night his body spins on the bed like a clock. I slept like a stone with him.
"Good dream?" Mam was a firm believer in beauty sleep, however children steal sleep from their parents like professional kleptomaniacs. The theft gives them control. Fenway was no different from the rest of the young in their preparation to usurp the strength of their mothers and fathers.
"Not a good dream. I see men in the dark. They attack us. I wake up screaming." I live alone in the top floor apartment of a Fort Greene brownstone. The walls are thick. No one heard my terror. "A nightmare."
"Fan raai." A nightmare is scary in every language.
"Yes."
"Are you thuuk-phee-am?" Mam was horrified at the possibility that I had been possessed by an evil spiritor 'phee'.
"Not at all." I never scoffed the Thai belief in ghosts. I had been to the house of a 'maih moht'. Magic existed in the heart and soul of her country, however my dream was the harvest of several sleepless nights. My next attempt to clarify the reason for my insomnia pierce the language barrier.
"You mean 'jet lag'?"
"Yes, jet lag." The word was the same for Mam as it was for me.
"Can not sleep?"
"No."
"I understand now." She had never traveled outside of Thailand, so the effects of jet lag were a mystery.
"I can't sleep. Four nights now." The CIA used sleep deprivation to persuade secret prisoners to tell the truth. I had slept maybe ten hours since Tuesday.
"'Oht nawn' not good for old man." Mam was twewnty-six. I was more than twice her age. Youth had a mission to take over the world. No one lived forever.
"I'll fall asleep soon." I couldn't say when, but Mam cared about my health.
"Nawn dee." She wanted me to reach a hundred years old. Thais hated being alone.
And at the tender age of late mid-fifties, so do I.
We have a couple of words for wanting someone else to live forever. Neither does English.
"Never want to say good-bye." Barry White sang those words.
And I feel the same way too.
Like a man born to finite immortality.
Pneumatic Tubes
Winchester Gun Club - Jomtien -2007
For the last months of 2007 the facade of the old Beggar's Arms in Jomtien had been undergoing renovation. The venerable Jomtien institution had been closed for the better part of a year. Someone had dropped money to resurrect the short-time bar under the guise of the Winchester Club on Soi Wat Boon.
I used to go to the Manhattan Gun Club on West 20th Street every Monday with my Dutch uncle, Howie Hermann. I worked in his diamond exchange. Guns were part of the business as were the thieves, who made them necessary. I never fired once in anger, but Howie and I popped off hundreds of rounds each week. I like 9mms best. Soft trigger and little recoil.
Strangely many of Pattaya's elephant camps have shooting ranges and the pachyderms were freaked by the daily gunfire, figuring one day a Chinese or American tourist might go safari-hunting frenzy. For some reason I suspected that the new owners weren't installing a basement shooting range and suspected that the 'gun club' was a euphemism for activities pursued within the confines of the second-floor bedrooms.
Jamie Parker called Sunday.
"I'll buy you a few beers at the Winchester."
"It's open?"
"Yes, and they have a free buffet with ribs." Jamie knew I was a little short for cash this month and that I also had a weakness for ribs. I told my wife I was going out to get the oil changed on my bike. She rolled her eyes in disbelief, but didn't ask too many questions, since I had paid for repairs to the car.
Her accident.
My bill.
Sunday traffic had become infuriating with the influx of Bangkok weekenders in a rush to get everywhere fast and I avoided the congestion on the back road through the wetlands, reaching the Winchester within ten minutes. About thirty bikes were parked in the dirt lot.
The door was plastered with a Thai-language anti-gun sticker and a long sentence saying that shirts were required for all male customers. No tank-tops. Nothing puts me off drinking beer more than seeing some old geezers' saggy tits.
I stepped inside the bar. It was dark as midnight, except for around the bar. Girls in dresses lurked in the shadows. My eyes adjusted to the murk, yet I couldn't make out their faces. The men with them seemed pleased by this lighting arrangement, since dim lighting cuts both ways. A hand touched my shoulder. Jamie.
"Good, huh?"
"Black as a witches heart."
"And it's only 3pm." Transylvanian blood ran in his family and the New Yorker tried never to see the light of day.
"How are the ribs?"
"Good." He signaled two beers and offered a rib. It was tender and free. I went into the pool room to load up a plate. Back at the table Jamie and I talked about baseball. He was a Yankee fan and as a New Englander I hated the Bronx Bombers as much as a Tottenham Hot Spurs fanatic despised Chelsea. Our discussion was getting heated and Jamie said, "Good thing there's a 'no guns' sign on the door."
"Not like the old days." Red Sox Nation believed more in fistfights than shootings. "When I first came to Thailand the hotels and bars had signs forbidding landmines, grenades, dynamite, dogs, and durians."
"A sensible policy, especially about durians." Most farangs ran at the smell of an over-ripe durian and the stench clung to the walls too. "Smells like old baby diapers."
"I like a little durian." The Indonesians say 'when durian comes down, the skirts go up', referring to its aphrodisiacal powers. Probably a myth, since my wife never reacts amorously after eating the foul-smelling fruit.
"You can have it." Jamie was eying the girls closest to us. He was a single man with money and time on his hands. I was married with a kid and bills for school. Another beer was as far as I was going to get today, but Jamie disappeared upstairs for a test run of the new facilities.
Sean loomed out of the darkness. The Elfin Aussie was proudly wearing a Winchester Gun Club shirt and explained that he had branched out of his visa service on Soi Buakhao to become the CEO of the Winchester Club. "In other words I get to shut the door at night."
"You have a good crowd." More than two farangs was a success this low season.
"They come from everywhere. Businessmen on the way home to Ban Amphur. Golfers. Husbands seeking someplace secluded without having to get involved with a 'mia-noi'. And this is August."
"You expecting a big high season?"
"High season for 2006-7 was shit. Punters had no money and they didn't come here this summer either, but you can't tell me that they can stand a year away from here. I mean the UK is brutal for men our age."
Bald overweight single men in Britain have sex with another person once a decade. Married ones even less.
"Which is why the internet is loaded with spam for Cialis and porno."
"Sex for the home bound."
"And also fighting off baldness."
"Too late for me and here who cares." Thai girls were notoriously forgiving of a male partners' physical flaws and social faults.
"No one." My wife was equally blind to my age. I drank another beer and then pissed off for home, where my wife sniffed the tobacco on my shirt. She made no comment, but thought the worst. I could expect nothing else.
Jamie later called from the Winchester and said he was on his way to getting supremely drunk.
"It-chaa?"
"More than a little jealous." I was sober, but next time at the Winchester I would take advantage of the eternal night.
If only to celebrate Beermas.
WINCHESTER GUN CLUB - Soi Wat Boon near Jomtien Beach Road.
Hours early to late
NO REST FOR THE WICKED - Boston - 2008
Eleven years after leaving the USA for good I departed from Thailand in May of 2008. My internet business had been wiped out by the shrinking dollar. Being broke in New York was not fun and at the month’s end I bussed up to Boston to celebrate my birthday.
Written 1/9/13 2:51 PM
That night my brother-in-law, she, and I ate homemade pizza and drank wine. After bidding the two good-night, I lay on the guest room bed, tossing and turning in fits. I had four children north of Bangkok. The cost of living was less than in the USA, but nothing was free in Ban Nok in the Western Forest of Thailand.
“You sleep okay?” my sister asked the next morning in their kitchen.
“Not really.”
I told Gina about my situation. My brother-in-law was expecting to be hit up for a loan. His wife sighed with sympathy and went online.
“I’ll find you something.”
“A job?” I hadn’t worked in Boston since way back in the last century.
“No, a medical experiment. Dave did three of them for toothpaste.” Gina typed out words in the Google search engine.
“$100 for each and all I had to do was test their product.” Her husband smiled with bright white teeth. He had retired from his executive position two years ago. “And it didn’t take long either.”
“I like the sound of that.” $100 wasn’t going to solve my money problems. I had four young children back in Thailand.
“This looks interesting.” My sister took off her glasses and squinted at the screen. “Beth Israel Hospital is conducting a sleep deprivation experiment. They will pay $1500 for a 6-day session culminating with a 60-hour session of staying awake. They have a trial starting next week.”
“Are drugs involved?” I exchanged a glance with my brother-in-law. We were brought up in the 1960s.
“No drugs.” My sister burst our bubble.
“I stopped drugs year ago.” Ja-bah and Ice were the only intoxicants available in Thailand and I wasn’t into crystal meth. “But if I eat garlic I can’t sleep.”
“Really.” Gina like my dearly departed mother loved garlic. “I eat it and I sleep like a baby.”
“Different vibes for different people.” If I was accepted to the experiment, then I would have a pocket filled with garlic to help me through the end stretch.
“Call them now.” My sister handed me a number.
“Yes, boss lady.” I went downstairs and called the Sleep Deprivation Unit or SDU. An operator answered my call and scheduled an interview for that afternoon. Gina was heading into Boston to teach at her university.
“I’ll drop you at the hospital.”
“You wanna join me?” I asked her husband in their day room.
“Last thing I need is to be deprived of sleep.” Dave was lying on the couch and lifted a thumb. The 59 year-old retiree was destined for a mid morning nap. “But you have my blessing.”
“No sleep for six days.” It sounded like a CIA rendition test.
“But $1500 at the finish line. Keep your eyes on the prize.” Dave was already heading to the Land of Nod.
My sister and I discussed our children on the way to work. Her daughter was living up in Maine and her son was working in Washington. Mine were on the other side of the world.
“I wish they were closer.” I actually wished that I had never come back to the States, but there was little work for farangs in Thailand other than running go-go bars or teaching English in up-country schools. The worst rather than better I was stuck in the USA.
My sister dropped me at Beth Israel.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I walked into the reception area and the woman at the desk handed me a special pass for the 7th floor.
“The research labs are closed to the public.”
The magnetic strip on the pass allowed access to that floor. An armed guard stood at the glass doors. He examined my ID and escorted me to a small office with a view of Fenway Park. He pointed to the forms on the desk.
“Fill out those and a doctor will be right with you.”
The door shut and I filled out my age, DOB, weight, medical history, and checked that I had no allergies.
An attractive female doctor entered the office. She shook my hand and read my application.
“Everything looks fine.” She held up a syringe. “You mind if we take a blood sample?”
“Not at all.” I rolled up my sleeve and allowed her to draw blood from a vein. She buzzed in the guard, who took the syringe to another part of the lab.
“The tests begin on May 30th.”
“That’s the day after my birthday.” I planned on drinking flagons of wine that evening.
“Congratulations.” She picked up a form and read out the schedule for the test. “The first two days are for observation and cleaning out your body. You’ll be fed and can do most anything you want, except drink or smoke.”
“That’s fine. Can I bring books?” I was reading Peter Hopkirk’s THE GREAT GAME and ON THE ROAD was next on my list.
“Yes, but once the experiment begins, you’ll be put in a room without any stimulation. No books, no TV, no music.”
“Alone.” Solitary confinement was a punishment for rebellious prisoners.
“No, there will be a nurse with you and the room will monitored along with your vital signs. That stage will last sixty hours. Still interested?”
“Yes.” I was in this for the money and reckoned that I could stay up two and a half days without any artificial stimulation. “And do I get paid at the end of the test?”
“$1500 upon completion. Less for a shorter period.”
“Sounds good.”
“Your blood work should be ready later this afternoon. Call us around 4.”
“What are these tests for anyway?”
“To test the endurance of a body and mind under stress,” the young doctor said with the politeness of a camp commander at Dachau. “Is that a problem?
“No.” I exited from the office and then the hospital steeled for the task ahead.
I rode the trolley back to my sister’s house in Boston’s western suburbs. Dave was kneading bread. I phoned the hospital at 4. I was accepted as a guinea pig and we drank a glass of wine on his porch.
“Easy money.” We toasted my windfall.
A half-hour later my youngest sister turned up on her way back from work. The defense lawyer had a bottle of wine in her hand. Dave and I were in no condition to refuse her generosity and raised glasses to toast the wonders of modern medicine. Pam asked, “What’s that about?”
I explained about the upcoming test. The sun lowered into the trees across the street.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” She put down her glass.
“No.” I planned on sleeping twelve hours a day or more until May 30.
”You have to be crazy.”
“Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights.” As an atheist I hated quoting the Bible, especially since I felt like I had confused the Mesiah's fast in the Wilderness with Noah’s Flood.
”A client of mine did something like that for Harvard and she’s still not right.” Pam punched up the devastating effects of the experiments on Dave’s computer. She was good with research as every defense lawyer should be for their clients. “Some student from California stayed awake without any drugs for 264 hours. The doctors claimed that it didn’t bother him.”
“So I’m good to go.”
“No." She shook her head reading further from the 1964 report. “The monitor said the subject suffered from moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations.”
“I can deal with that.”
“At one point thought he was the winning quarterback in the Rose Bowl game.”
“That’s better than being the loser.”
“No, but it says here even moderate sleep deprivation can result in psychosis.”
“You don’t want a broke head.” Dave was also kibboshing the idea.
“I need the money.” I had less than $20 in my pocket. The Fung Wah bus to New York was $15. No one hitchhiked on the highways anymore.
“Not that bad.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Cancel it.” She held up my phone and I obeyed her command.
“Here’s a check for $300.” My sister wrote it out without hesitation.
“Thanks.”
“And I’m driving you to the bus station tomorrow.” Pam wasn’t risking my doing the test anyway.
“Ha.” Dave knew my ways too.
“I’m not going to the hospital.”
“Yes, you are.” My youngest sister was adamant.
“Not before my birthday.”
“He’s got you there.” Dave opened her bottle of wine. It was a nice Pinot Grigio.
“And I have to stay for your birthday.” Hers was June 1. “We’ll drive down to Hull and have lobsters on Nantasket Beach.”
“You’re on.” Pam handed the bottle to Dave.
“That’s what great about family. They know you better than you know yourself.” Our host raised his glass and we clinked to his toast, as I pocketed her check.
$300 wasn’t $1500, but it was better than losing my mind.
That I could do on my own for free and that night I slept the Sleep of the Dead. It was almost better than life itself. At least until I woke the next morning with the smell of bacon wafting up from the kitchen. My brother-in-law would be cooking breakfast.
Oh, what a lucky man I was.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Plastic Plastic Everywhere 2011
Over forty years ago Jomtien Beach was a hidden paradise. The drive from Bangkok took 4-6 hours depending on the tides. The Sukhumvit road was flooded twice daily by the coming and going of the sea. The Old Roué of the Orient tells on swimming at dawn with a lovely Thai girl.
"Fish leapt from the water. It was clean as gin."
Thirty years of tourist expansion have not been kind to the Gulf of Siam.
Two days ago I had arrived in Thailand and taxied south from Bangkok to Jomtien, where my wife lived with my son, Fenway. I sat with my friends on the narrow strand of beach. The beer was cold and the islands on the horizon hovered over the sea like UFOs from Eden. The wind was gentle and holiday makers from Ban Nok frolicked in the shallow water. For many it was their first time seeing the sea. None of them noticed the thousands of plastic bags floating on the surface like desiccated jellyfish. The shoreline was a solid bunker of plastic trash.
I spent five minutes picking up flotsam. Mostly plastics bags. Within ten minutes the beach was clean.
"I don't know why you bother. Everyday. Next high tide and the trash is back." An overweight British lager lout had witnessed my Sisyphean efforts on the beach before.
"I don't care about then. I care about now," I took off my glasses. My myopia Xed out the plastic in the water, but the Brit was right. The next high tide deposited another harvest of trash.
Once more mostly plastic bags.
Thais blame the sea-borne garbage on fishermen. They are mostly Cambodian. No one likes to blame themselves, since the real source of the plastics are 7/11s and food stalls shops along the beach. The person leave their trash on the beach, as if they city of Pattaya is paying someone to haul it to a landfill on the Moon.
The city depended on the sea.
"Remember in THE GRADUATE," said my friend Richard, who was teaching in Saudi Arabia. No bars. No booze. No women. No porno. The South African's sole form of entertainment was watching old movies. "The man saying the future was plastics."
"He was a prophet." Mark an Aussie mate detested my crusade against plastic, viewing my work as demeaning for a foreigner. He also hated the plastic. "Some Swede invented plastic bags in the early 60s. They didn't hit the UK until the 80s."
"Fish was wrapped in newspaper. Sometimes the skin would bear the headlines."
"Teenage packers at the supermarket check-out specialized in sorting the right shaped food into the bags." Mark was almost as old as me. The 60s were a different time from today.
"The Thais used banana leaves." I remember buying khao surrounded by a leaf. The cook had added spices. The rice was delicious.
"Now the stores give plastic bags for everything." Mark pointed to a passing Thai beachvendor carrying a plastic bag of fried bananas.
"A pack of gum or cigarettes." Richard loved his cigarettes.
"The Chinese pharmacist on Pattaya Tai says her customers think she is being kee-neo or cheap, if she doesn't give them a plastic bag. Food candy or chips. They want them no matter the size of the purchase."
"Whenever I refuse them, the clerk regards me as if I were pian or weird."
The Thais are no different from farangs, who regard my trash discipline as that of a crazy man. "Young people think that is choice or old-fashioned."
"Young people regard us as dinosaurs. "
"And they're not wrong." Fifty-nine years old, however my aversion to plastic bags was spreading across the globe. Bhutan was the first nation to ban the eyesores. Ireland and France placed a surcharge on the bags. 90% reduction of bags entering the garbage centers in those countries. The petro-chemical companies have lost 25% of their global reach due to bans and restrictions. The USA has been slow to buck the plastic mania as Big Oil rules the nation.
"Africa is covered in plastic bags filled with shit. It's called the poor man's toilet." Richard had recently visited his family in SA. He considers nowhere his home.
"Nice image. Shit and plastic. The future is plastic shit." Mark ordered three beers for the beach boy. "Mai sow tung plastic."The Thai beach boy brought the beers in a plastic bag, saying he only had two hands.
They were cold.
Later that evening I mentioned the ban of plastic to Fenway's mom. She thought that I was crazy."Not have plastic bag. Have what? Banana? You choie."
Thais throw plastic out the window and expect the trash to blow away with the wind.
Breaking this addiction to ease will take years.
Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific. Remote and idyllic, yet millions of plastic bags wash up on the tropical beaches every day.
I don't mean to lecture.
I hated sermons.
And I don't mind picking up plastic bags.
Keeps me limber.
But one day I'd like to see none of the beach.
No, actually I'd like to see them never.
Cause that's the way of the new modern world, no matter what the the Rich want.
Twins of Ireland
Last year my older brother was my # 2 friend. My best friend was my father. The native of Maine was 89. His address was an Alzheimer hospice south of Boston. Once a month I took the Fung Wah bus to South Station and then the commuter train to Norwood. It was a ten-minute walk to his rest home. Throughout the summer his condition deteriorated to the point where he couldn't remember where he was or what he was doing there. My brothers and sisters warned that he didn't recognize him and last September I approached the re-designed doctor's house with a heavy heart.
He greeted me by name. My sisters saw him 2-4 times a week. My father has no idea who they were and I asked him, "Why can't you recognizes them?"
"Because they don't look like they used to?"
"And I do?" At 58 I had my teeth and hair, but the reflection in the mirror was not me.
"No, you look like a stranger too, but something about you reminds me about your mother, so I think of Angie and then you." He shuddered at the connection. We were never friends until my mother's passage from this world in 1996. I talked a lot. She spoke more. In some ways we were the same person for him.
"You remember your son Frank?" His memory was dim as a winter candle.
"My # 1 son. You two were Irish twins." My mother had dressed her two oldest sons alike since I stopped wearing baby clothes. Frank and I fought over everything, but she also loved that people thought we were twins.
"We weren't really Irish twins." The term pertained to children born within a year. My older brother and I were separated by 13 months. Actually 59 days. He was born on April 1. I arrived the morning of May 29.
"60 days were a week back then." He was talking about the 1950s. TV was black and white. Eisenhower was the president. America was the top world power. My father pointed to the clock on his desk. Time meant nothing to most to Alzheimer patients. "You were never on time." On time for him meant to the second.
"I was never really late." My punctuality ran 15-30 minutes behind the clock, although I had achieved perfect attendance throughout five grades in grammar school. My mother had saved those awards. I have the one from 5th Grade.
"Only once and once was more than enough." "That's an old story." My father was talking about the time that I had stayed over my girlfriend's house well past midnight. Her mother was not on the premise. We were alone. The radio had been playing THE VELVET UNDERGROUND. We came close to losing our souls to ROCK AND ROLL. "If it was so old I would have forgotten it." "Forty years is a long time." Janet had been wearing her cheerleader outfit. It was football season. "Forty-five years to be exact." My father had been an electrical engineer. He had studied at MIT. Numbers and math were his expertise. "To be exact you're right on the money." The year was 1967. I was 15.
Janet's mother came home at 1:30. I had left through the backdoor with my clothes in hand. I dressed in the backyard and watched the lights go out in Janet's house. There was no yelling. I waited for a minute to see if Janet came to her bedroom window, but she was a cheerleader and not Juliet and the only breaking light was a harvest moon. My neighborhood in the Blue Hills was a good four-mile walk. Bus stopped running at 9. The houses were dark. Everyone was asleep. I heard a car coming from the opposite direction. It was my Uncle Dave. The Olds stopped at the curb. "You want a ride home?" He had been coming from the VFW bar. Uncle Dave had served in the Pacific. Three years on a destroyer. "No, I'll walk it." I was in no rush to get home. "Your mother and father know where you are?" Uncle Dave was a good man. He made no judgment of other people's kids, even if they were family. "Sort of?" It was a teenage answer. "I was a teenager once. Your dad's going to be pissed at you, if you haven't called. You sure, you don't want me to drive you home?" "I'm good." I thought about sleeping in the woods. It wasn't that cold, but that would make it even worse. "Thanks for the offer." The Olds drove off in the direction of Quincy. Uncle Dave would be home in five minutes. I figured that I had another hour to go. I was wrong. My father pulled up to me at the crossroads before the parish church. He flung open the door of the Delta 88. It hit me in the thigh. "Where have you been?" He demanded with a voice that I had never heard from him. "At a girl's house." I hadn't told my parents about Janet. My mother wanted me to be a priest. "At a girl's house." My father knew what that meant. He had six kids. "You have any idea about what your mother thought happened to you?"
"None." I hadn't been worrying about my mother or father or school, while lying next to Janet's hot flesh.
His right hand left the steering wheel in the blink of an eye. I never felt his wrist smack my face. "I didn't want to do that." Tears were wetting his eyes. "I thought something bad happened to you." "Nothing bad happened, Dad." I rubbed my face. He had never hit me before. I tasted metal in my teeth. All of them were intact. "Next time call and let us know where you are." "Yes, sir." "Let's go home. I'll handle your mother." He sighed with regret. The next morning my eyes were shadowed with black and blue. My mother was horrified as was my father. Janet cried upon seeing my face. She said that she loved me. In some ways I felt like she had become Juliet, although I was no Romeo. My father and I maintained a cautious distance throughout the remainder of my teenage years. Hitting me had scared him and at the nursing home I held his hand. I had kids now and said, "I understand why you did what you did that night." "What night?" The memory had sunk back into the fog. "Drove me home in the dark. You were always a good father." I kissed his bald head, as my older brother walked into the room. My father looked at him with doubting eyes. "It's Frank, your oldest son." "That's not Frank. He didn't look like that." My brother was wearing a suit and I thought maybe that threw off my father. I stood next to Frank. "See the resemblance." "We're were Irish twins," My brother took off his glasses. "You two were never Irish twins, except for your mother." "It was good enough for her, Dad." She had loved her children with all her heart. My father too. "Then it's good enough for me, whoever you are." He offered a hand to us both. We spoke about Irish twins three times in succession without his retaining a single word. His mind had been swept clean of the good and the bad and I was lucky enough to possess a memory of both good and bad for him. My mother wouldn't have it any other way. I was her Irish twin and that was good enough for my father too.
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