Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in philteller's LiveJournal:

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Friday, September 28th, 2007
1:46 pm	Goddamn it! Goddamn it! My body tells me that I have fractured the healed areas between the two fused vertebra and have to begin all over. Goddamn it! It took me a year to get to being almost normal, then that asshole on Camano Island bullied me into doing work I could not do. My employees left me, and in my blind state of stupidity, thinking I was cured, I broke shit. Goddamn it! It is real bad. I am almost incapable of moving from a sitting position. I don't want to admit to myself or anyone else just how bad it really is. It is bad. I am no better today than I was a year ago, just a month out of surgery, maybe worse. Looking back, I now know that I fractured the healed area while lifting a re-bar cage into place at the insistence of the homeowner. I knew it the moment I did it but said nothing. Hurting in a big way, I went to the gym to try to make it better and exercising it seems, was just what I needed to make the crack larger and more painful. Now I am done for. Sue sent me home because I can't even walk properly to get myself some lunch. I have not been in this much pain since my days in a wheelchair. Goddamn it! Goddamn it!! Current Mood: angry (Comment on this)
Monday, September 17th, 2007
12:46 pm	Art cars “Ever get pulled over in that thing?” This, probably the most frequent of the frequently asked stupid questions I get whenever someone not familiar with one of my art cars sees it for the first time. I get this question a lot, but mostly while traveling the interstate highways. Rest stops, gas stations, fast food joints, pretty much any parking lot with a moderate level of pedestrian traffic will draw a few people if not a small crowd. “Oh sure” I reply. They smile, not realizing the implications of being stopped and questioned by the police for looking “unusual”. “Really?” They often respond wanting more details. “I’ve been stopped twenty five times in this car alone, see here on the dashboard” I say pointing to the twenty five white paint pen hash marks on the passenger side of the dashboard just below the block print lettering that states “POLICE TRAFFIC STOPS NO TICKET. “I keep a tally of all the times I have been stopped and not gotten a ticket.” This information usually quells their excitement somewhat as they begin to realize the implications of this response and they find themselves thinking about what it must be like to be stopped once every two months for a routine examination of one’s car by over-zealous police. Looking at the car, most people don’t see it as threat enough to warrant a traffic stop, and they are surprised to know that it really is. “What do they stop you for?” They most commonly ask. “Usually, they want to know what all this stuff is on my car, so I ask them; what’s all that stuff on your car?” At this point my audience will invariably smile at my purported insubordination. I step slightly to one side as though I am the police officer and say in a deeper voice, “This is my emergency lighting.” My audience gapes in anticipation. Then I step to the other side as though I am me during a traffic stop, and wave my arm in the direction of the car and say in a perfectly calm voice “ Well, this is MY emergency lighting.” This response always bring audible laughter; they love it because I have first painted them into a nightmare of personal privacy invasion, and then let them out with a humorous response to a fictitious situation. Just the comedic relief they were looking for. In a few short minutes, two, maybe three at the most, I have given my audience many things to enjoy, unusual art to look at, something strange, inventive and mechanical with numerous nuances to it’s appearance to examine more closely, a tale of intrigue and danger, and finally a laughable ending. In this very short time span, I have transformed a perfect stranger from inquisitive vigilante, to my closest personal friend who now wants to know if he or she can take a picture with a camera phone. I always agree, and often pose with spouses and children who have no trouble smiling for the photographer. Often, they thank me and leave almost immediately after the shutter clicks, but if they stick around for any longer, they will get a speech about the importance of the arts and of how the clothes they are wearing were designed by an artist, a fashion designer, the car they are driving was first molded by a clay model artist, the glasses they have on their faces, the phone or camera they have in their hand, all designed and drawn by someone. I tell them that the United States spends more money on art than on sports by over twice as much. This information gives them pause and makes them smile. They tell me how much they love my work, and I encourage them to copy it. “If you like what I am doing,” I tell them, “you need to build one!” “How many times in your life has someone asked to take a picture of YOUR car?” This brings more smiles and often laughter as the question takes the person WAY out of his comfort zone as he imagines himself in my place. They always go away laughing and poking each other if they are in pairs or groups. I suppose taking my art to my audience is what it’s all about. I don’t have what it takes to have my art hang in a gallery somewhere, so I take it on the road. I think maybe I have a larger audience than many two dimensional artists. Based on the number of people who took pictures of my work on our last trip down I-5, I would be surprised if that is not indeed the case. I had Linda keep track of the number of times someone took our picture as we towed our art Airstream with my Capissen 38. It averaged to once every 30 minutes or less. We were on the road for 92 hours. In the rest stops we couldn’t keep track there were so many. On the freeway, they are absolutely predictable. An SUV whizzing past fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit will slow down substantially, sometimes dangerously, just after passing. You can see the wife digging between her legs to find the camera she has stashed in her purse. The driver will pace himself to be right along side and down will come the electric window. After a few flashes of the camera, we may get a wave, maybe not, then the SUV will speed up dramatically and race away so as not to be caught in the act of taking a picture of something that is in a public place which is perfectly legal under all circumstances. I find it curiously ironic that the guy probably spent over sixty thousand dollars on that car, and I spent a hundred and fifty on mine, and here, she wants my picture. I sometimes wonder if she even HAS a picture of his car. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
10:26 pm	SUICIDE ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN I ate 120 Vicoden tablets, but didn’t have the chutzpah to eat them all at once, so I did it one at a time over five or six months. Marilyn Monroe, clearly I am not. I don’t want to scare anybody by ending my life all at once, in a blaze of glory, so I am taking my time about it. No tall building here, no large caliber handgun. No bridge abutment at 2:00 AM for me. No, instead, I just live a little bit less each day. I am less dangerous than I once was, less exciting, less passionate. My mood swings are more like clock ticks than the movements of the great pendulum of scary movie fame. My emotional highs and lows go from me thinking, “ It’s a nice day, maybe I will go out and mow the lawn” to “ Fuck this, I’m taking a nap.” Fewer and fewer people know who I am or care what I think and soon I will just vanish into the great universal expanse of mankind. An endless sea of humanity, lost forever like the ship that never returns to port, gone without a trace, no wreckage, no life jackets, not even an oil slick. No longer an individual, no art, no love of life, no risk of anything but for the waking up again tomorrow, and then gone, I will be gone and the world will be no worse for wear. Cha-ching, “ Thank you, please come again.” Cha-ching, “Thank you, please come again.” Cha-ching, “ Thank you, please come again….” I kind of miss all that living. The passion. Dreaming of great things and having profound thoughts once filled my days. Big ideas and small acts of courage are far from me now. Now I am only waiting. Listening to the hum of the motors, and waiting. My life drifting away from me like a vapor, the steam of a warm, still, pond on a cold fall morning. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 9th, 2007
7:42 pm	ABSOLUTION So, what exactly is it you seek? Absolution? For what? For seeing a person in need at a critical time and doing everything in your power to help. To provide comfort, some level of security when all else seems lost? You have some doubt that what you did was in any way not exactly what you would have done? All right then, I absolve you. Bless you my child, say three hail Marys and go with God. Is it forgiveness that will free you from carrying around this burden of doubt? Forgiveness for giving all of yourself, for taking another into your home to receive the most intimate care. Forgiveness, for providing the antidote to the chemical catastrophe taking place there before your very eyes? If it is forgiveness you need, I forgive you. Pooja, my beloved, this is my blessing; now bathe yourself in the mighty Ganges and wash away your doubts. Had this event taken place at the scene of a terrible accident, or on the battlefield, and had you performed your duties as a trained professional with the same discretion, the same level of competence, the same concern for the well-being of another you would have been graced with praise and applause. Welcomed home to a hero’s parade, all ticker tape and confetti. You see this handful of shredded paper I hold now? I throw it in your honor. This, your medal of pride, your welcome home for it is you who are my hero. Oh yes, there may be others who would condemn, rush to judgment, would say you should have taken this person to a medical facility where she could have been treated with leather restraints, cold chrome buckles, and injections of technical solutions, into her terrified arms that would have provided no level of console, no soft caring voice, no reassurance of survival. But you would not listen to any but your heart. I judge you only in this way. Your blood is my blood. It is the only blood that matters. My heart beats your heart; no one is closer to you than I. Only you and I get to judge your actions and mine, for only we will take them to our graves. Only you and I. See this? This is me throwing confetti. This is me waving, arm high, fingers spread, chin in the air, looking from behind the adoring crowd with my loving eyes to see if you see me as you ride past on the back of that long shining convertible. This is me, wiping a tear of pride from my cheek as you wave your parade float wave to the cheering masses in slow motion. This is me waving and smiling, proud that you have done your best work. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
10:52 pm	The boat story Gordie had completed the math test, and had provided a sample of his handwriting, had done the abstract reasoning part of the test with the stupid little word games and now sat before the interviewer, in a tiny cubicle of an office that only a desk with two chairs opposite each other would fit into. She profiled him to see if she had a job opening that she could charge him three thousand dollars for. Of course she had one, but she had to make him feel it was worth the money. “Gordie”, she said, looking at him over the top of her designer reading glasses, “Tell me about the best day you ever had at work” She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair holding a small note pad in one hand and a chrome ball point pen in the other, as he began to tell her this story. “The best day I ever had at work was when I was working a boat dealership in Bellevue. It was nowhere near my favorite job; I worked there almost a year and always felt like the new guy. I never made any friends there. I mean I never seemed to fit in. The people were nice, but I never felt welcome, like one of the family. There was always so much pressure to sell, sell, sell, but you can’t force someone to buy a boat. People buy boats when they win the lottery, or when they get a big tax return. The managers always acted like it was my fault no one wanted to throw down twenty-five grand the week before Christmas and take delivery of a walk around fishing boat. . It had been winter for what seemed like eternity and people don’t buy boats when it is rainy and cold. So one day, it must have been May because that day was the first day it seemed like spring. All of a sudden it was sixty-five degrees without a cloud in the sky. I was there at my desk calling neighborhoods out of the phone book, because I had called all my boat show leads and all my friends, and family, and I was just calling around to addresses where I knew people with money lived to see if anyone wanted to buy a boat It’s about ten o’clock in the morning, and this woman with two kids walks in, and it’s my turn to be up. Up, means that the salesmen in the showroom all took turns in rotation greeting the next person who walked through the door so they could try to sell them something, and it was my turn. Mostly the people who walked through the door just wanted directions to the parts department, or to get out of the rain till the next bus came. I invite the woman and her kids into my little glass booth and she and the kids sit down and get comfortable. She smiles, and we make small talk for a couple of minutes, then she drops one of our boat brochures on my desk. I though, this must be my lucky day! When someone drops a boat picture on your desk, someone’s going to buy something. Well, it’s about then that I notice just how beautiful she is. I mean this babe was off the planet gorgeous, perfect teeth, sparkly blue eyes, beautiful blond hair, she was every man’s dream of the perfect woman. I mean, even the kids were pretty. They looked just like her only shorter. She starts telling me this story in the smoothest southern accent I have ever heard, and, I figure out pretty quick that she’s not only knock down good looking, but smart and knows plenty about boats. She tells me about how her husband and his father used to go fishing together when he was a kid, but then the father died and ever since, her husband’s been dreaming about owning a boat, only they lived in central Texas where there’s no water but it is still his dream to take his kids fishing just like his father did. So years go by and one day he gets a promotion, and they get transferred out here to Seattle and he’s one step closer to his boat dream. He takes her and the kids to the boat show, and this is where she picks up the free brochure. She tells me that she’s been secretly saving money for six years, and that now she has exactly ten thousand dollars, and that today is his birthday, and asks me if ten thousand will buy this eighteen foot cuddy cabin with the outboard motor, and points to the picture of the boat in the brochure, then points to exactly the same boat on the show room floor. I tell her I ‘ll see what I can do, and I go into Mike the manager’s office and sit at his desk and tell him her story. We both know the boat lists for twelve grand, but I tell him won’t take my commission on the deal, I only want the volume, and that I’ll even give up the split on the next deal if he lets me have this one. He does the numbers and says it only pays two percent, which is three percent bellow bottom, but since it’s my only deal this period, he’ll sign the paper. I smile, and get up to leave, and he says, “ Throw in a Coast Guard kit and I’ll give you the cut.” Meaning that if I give her a free Coast Guard kit that includes the four life jackets, the air horn, the flare gun and the fire extinguisher, that he will actually approve the two percent commission on the deal and not hold it back for being under the required five percent. Sweet, I think to myself, this means I make about two hundred bucks for a months work. So I go back to my office, walking about eight inches off the floor, and try to look all poker faced, and sit down, and she looks at me with those puppy dog eyes, and I tell her she has a deal. Well, she and the kids start laughing and clapping, and she can’t stop thanking me and the kids are hugging me and this goes on forever. So, we do all this paperwork and make five trips back and forth between Mike’s office the license girl and the delivery guys, while she and the kids tell me their life story. I take her over to parts, and tell the guy to give her the free Coast Guard kit, and she hugs me, then the kids hug me some more, I mean it’s like Christmas! Together, we carry all the stuff over to the boat and she starts putting it all away, she’s running her hand over the fiberglass, the little girl is laying in the V-berth, the son is behind the steering wheel pushing all the buttons, and there’s a moment of quite there on the ramp, and she says to me “ Now I need a favor.” I say to myself, here it comes. “ Sure, anything.” I tell her. She hands me a phone number written on the back of my business card and tells me to call her husband and tell him that her car is broken down and ask him to come down and pick her and the kids up. Well by now, it’s almost noon, so I call the guy and tell him that Lisa and the kids are here, and we are taking good care of them, but her car is broken and could he come and pick them up. He tells me he will be there in half an hour. About twenty minutes goes by with me buying the kids M&Ms and her a cup of coffee, and the guy shows up while she and the kids are sitting in the boat. I point to them up there on the ramp and the guy goes up there, and everyone in the store comes out to look because by now they all know what’s going on. As he gets to the boat, she’s in the passenger seat, the kids are both in the back seats leaving just the driver’s seat empty, she looks up at him and smiles, and there is absolute silence in the showroom, and she says “ Happy birthday darlin’” and chucks him the keys. The guy catches the keys, and sort of fumbles them, then looks at them, then looks at the boat, and drops to his knees and starts crying, and I don’t mean just tears rolling down his face, I mean crying, hard, so everyone can hear. And she and the kids get out of the boat and they all do a group hug, and they’re all crying, and then everyone in the store starts crying, and I just can’t stop laughing, I got tears rolling down my face, cause I’ve never seen anyone so happy in my whole life, and I got to be part of it. Mike slaps me on the back, and Dave shakes my hand, the delivery guys come over with the dolly, and we all go out to the parking lot with the boat and they hitch the guy up. The whole time the guy and the woman are telling each other “ I love you, no I love you more, no, I love YOU more, and finally they’re all ready to drive off. She tells her husband to wait for a minute, and she walks over to where Mike and I are standing, and she puts out her hand, so I shake her hand, and I’ll never forget what she said to me. She looked straight into my eyes and said, thank you, you just helped me give a man his dream. Then she turned around and got in her car. Mike grabbed me by the back of the neck, and steered me back to the showroom and told me I had done a great job for those folks. And that, ma’am, was the best day I ever had at work.” (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 24th, 2007
9:54 pm	Some people don't care if they live or they die. Some people just want to know what it feels like to fly. So they gather their courage and they give it a try..... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
6:09 pm	I was in a large department store this afternoon and did not find what I was looking for. Instead, I bought something else I needed but not what I had gone there to buy. At the checkout counter, the very helpful, middle age, attractively cute, overweight clerk with sparkly blue eyes asked me cheerfully with a medium rare Louisiana accent, "Did you find everything you were looking for?" "No, actually," I responded putting on airs of disappointment, "I wasn't able to find any civil rights.....I lost mine you see, and I was looking for some more. Maybe some first, fourth, fifth, or sixth amendment rights, maybe some habeous corpus...." I paused as though waiting for a response. She looked at me quizzically and said " Did you look on aisle 24?" I think we may have a few rights down there, but I think we are pretty much out of everything except the right to remain silent. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 11th, 2007
6:47 pm	Kelly October, early in the month, late in the day, close to five-o-clock, maybe a little after. The atmosphere radiated clear light blue, as the bright afternoon sun slowly slid lower in the sky like a naked person just in from the cold, easing into a hot tub. The air temperature still hovered in the low seventies, unusually warm for this time of the year. Julie and Kelly had collected a short shovel and a burlap sack from the old barn just up the hill behind the men’s house. Sharing the news of the day, they wandered up a narrow, rocky, rust-red dirt path, barely an animal trail, or maybe the remnant of a rivulet from a long past Pacific Northwest rainstorm. From a back corner of the barn they hiked, up a slight incline of straw colored range grass and prickly pear cactus that grew among sharp high desert rocks, toward the fallow high pasture rangeland that lay before them. Off on an excursion to dig late season horseradish, that grew along an old broken down fence section, in an overgrown mound that had long ago been abandoned as a compost heap. As they walked along the path in single file, the quiet sounds of life on the ranch faded slowly behind them. Their conversation eased as they plodded along, and soon they stopped talking altogether so as to better appreciate the quiet and beauty of the landscape that drifted lazily by at walking speed. As they walked along, the sound of their breathing in the high mountain air and the crunching of small stones under their feet was vaguely disrupted by a sound from somewhere up the pasture. Julie focused her vision in the general direction of the sound; at first thinking it may be a coyote singing. She slowed her pace a little, as she looked to see if she could spot him posing on a rock, or under a short clump of juniper bush. The sound came again, like distant yelling. This time they both stopped on the trail and listened. There it was again, a long mournful howl almost like a person far away imitating the horn of a freight train only more painful, more anguished, more lonesome. Alert and curious, they moved off the path in the direction of the sound and hunched down as they walked several yards through the wild scrub grass. The long yowl came again. Kelly more confidently led the way along a small ridge and as they came over a small rise in the pasture, they saw a distant figure kneeling on the ground in front of a perfect rectangle of tall bright green grass and wildflowers. Kelly stopped in her tracks and knelt down. “It’s Diane.” she whispered. “What’s she doing?” Julie asked. “Must be the tenth.” Kelly said quietly. They carefully eased themselves down into the crunchy yellow-brown pasture grass that grew nose high to a sitting person, and watched from a distance as Diane raised her arms in the air taking in a deep breath, then let out a long, sad, half scream, half moan, weeping loudly as she brought her arms out to her sides then in to her chest in a praying motion as she cried. Kneeling on the ground, Diane rocked back and forth as she sobbed. “ What’s the deal with the tenth?” Julie asked quietly. “That’s Albert up there.” Kelly said pointing. “ Who’s Albert, was he her husband or something?” “Yeah,” she said whispering. “This was his family’s land. When he died, she inherited it. Albert’s was Alan’s father.” she continued. “ How did he die?” Julie asked. Diane howled again, far off in the space between them. It was clear to both of them, she was trying to say something, but her words came out as long sobbing howls. All that sorrow and crying made Julie feel uncomfortable. She felt sorry for Diane and tried to think of something else so she could separate herself emotionally from the pathos she observed there in the distance. She was a little ashamed of watching someone in so much anguish and not doing anything. She quietly battled with what the right thing to do should be. She didn’t know if they should leave Diane alone in her grief or to go up there and try to comfort her in some way. If she had not been with Kelly, she probably would have just tiptoed away and left Diane kneeling in the dirt, bowing to the ground, tears streaming down her face, her mouth contorted in sorrow. Julie had never seen this side of Diane, this weak vulnerable side, the part of her that made her look like a little girl who had lost her way home from school and was now scared and lonely and afraid. The strong, powerful, determined, Diane, channeler of Na Alii, the omnipotent king warrior of three thousand years. The Diane that ruled the Ashram with an iron fist and a dictator-like personality, now looked like nothing more than a scared little kid who had mistakenly taken up residence in a woman’s body. “He went up to Seattle,” Kelly began quietly, “ I guess he was gone about a week on some kind of business deal. When he came home, he was all happy about some partnership thing that was going to happen, I never knew what it was about, but then right away, he started complaining about not feeling good. I thought he looked thin, like he was losing weight even before he went.” She paused to play with a few strands of her hair. “ So after about three days of him complaining about food poisoning and vomiting all the time” she continued, “ Diane drove him into Ashland to the V.A. hospital. When she came back, she said they had admitted him. We were all pretty worried about him, but the next day, he called her and said they were letting him go home and she had to go back to Ashland to get him. So he comes home on some kind of medication, but right away he gets real sick again, so she had to drive him an hour and a half back to the V.A. This time they keep him in there. A few days later they take him into surgery and find he has a blocked artery, the one that serves blood to his intestines and kidneys. So they had to take out almost all of his intestines. At first they thought he would be all right, except he would have to be on a feeding tube for the rest of his life. They even let us go up there and visit him, but then, three days later, Diane came back and said he died. We were all devastated.” Kelly took a deep breath and looked out over the horizon for several minutes. “It was only ten days from him coming home all happy and full of life to gone. She paused as though remembering. “ He died at five thirty on October tenth. Now she goes up there every October tenth and stays with him all day.” “ So is that were she buried him?” Julie asked. “ We all buried him.” Kelly said looking down at the ground and pulling a long blade of dry scrub grass out of the ground. “ After he died, Diane decided to have him buried on his family’s land. She had to spend almost a week in Ashland trying to get them to let her do it. She had to go to the building department and get an excavation permit, and had to get a judge to sign the papers to let her take him, but he said she had to have the grave dug first. She came back here and told everyone what she had done, and that she was going dig the grave herself. She took a shovel and started walking up the pasture so everyone went with her and watched her dig. After about fifteen minutes she got tired, so one by one, everyone took a turn with the shovel, and we all dug his grave.” Kelly sat quietly for several minutes and regained her composure then went on. “It took hours. We had to dig it down ten feet, and it had to be ten feet long, and four feet wide. “ I always thought a grave was only six feet deep.” Julie whispered. “ I don’t know” Kelly answered, but we dug it to ten feet and four feet wide. Well, the next morning the building inspector came” Kelly said very matter-of-factly, “and we all followed him and Diane up to Albert’s grave. It was so weird, the two of them walking together up there and all of us following behind. When we got to the grave, nobody said anything; the inspector got out his tape measure, and measured the hole, signed the permit and gave it to Diane. The whole thing only took about three minutes then we all went back down and had breakfast. After that, Diane and some of the guys went down to the V.A. and they were gone all day. When they finally came back they had Albert in a packing crate and they took him into the house. I didn’t want to go in there. I had never seen a dead person, and didn’t know how it would be, and. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing him dead, so I decided to keep the memory of the last time I saw him, sitting in his hospital bed, all moon-faced from the surgery, cracking jokes and keeping the hospital staff entertained, typical Albert. Some of the ranch people helped her get him out of his crate, and I guess he was in a body bag, but the next morning, they had him all wrapped up in different kinds of cloth. Everyone brought whatever bright colored cloth they had, and they wrapped his body in layers and layers of it from head to toe so he looked like a mummy all wrapped up for Christmas. When the men carried him out of the house, they had him on a sheet of plywood laying on one of her rugs. We all went up the hill with them. up there to the grave.” She said pointing to where Diane now sobbed loudly, laying on her back spread eagled on the ground. “When they laid the plywood down with Albert on it, there were these long coils of fabric that she had braided out of all their favorite clothes. She had cut her wedding dress into long strips and braided it in with pieces of his bathrobe, and some of her jeans, and his favorite coat, and her best dresses and a bunch of stuff people brought her, and when she was done, she had these two long braids that were about thirty feet long. They used the braids to lower him down into the grave, then they dropped them in the hole with him.” Kelly’s chin quivered, she took a deep breath, her mouth turned down at the corners. “Then every one dropped some piece of themselves in there and breathed in the essence of his aura.” Tears now filled her eyes. “ Some people took off their clothes and dropped them in the hole, some girls cut off their hair and put it in there with him” she said, unconsciously running her fingers through her hair. “They gave him incense, and tobacco, and whiskey and their rings.” Kelly sobbed and looked at the third finger of her right hand as a large tear dripped off her cheek. She defiantly wiped her face with her hands and stared off into the distance for several minutes. “Some people gave him their instruments and their books, and everyone gave him some part of themselves because that is what he had given them. They all thanked him for all the stuff he had taught them, and everyone was crying and hugging each other, but they were all laughing and smiling ‘cause they weren’t mourning his loss, they were celebrating his life. We were all crying tears of happiness for him, it was great!” Kelly now openly cried as she told her story. “They danced around his grave naked because he had their clothes and they sang his favorite Beatles songs. When they started singing…” Kelly paused long and took a heard breath, “ In My Life….” she sobbed again as she tried to speak, “ one by one, they started to cover him up, each person putting a shovel full of dirt in his grave.” she whispered. “ When it was still about three or four feet deep, they brought a truck load of topsoil up and put it in there, and mixed it with a backhoe bucket full of fertilizer. Now, every spring, Albert’s grave is the fist thing to come up, and it always grows real tall and so green you can see it from just about anywhere, ten feet long, four feet wide. And every fall, when everything else is dead, you can still see where he’s buried. “ Kelly now saw the tears that rolled down Julie’s face. “ And every October tenth, she goes up there and tells him how much she loved him. How much we all loved him. She does it every year like clockwork; some of us do it other times, like on special occasions, like when we first met him…. Or the last time we made love with him.” She said not really speaking now but just mouthing the words. Julie put an arm around Kelly’s shoulder and pulled her close. She kissed Kelly’s head and rocked with her for several minutes. She’ll be up there most of the night, we should probably leave her alone.” Kelly said wiping tears from her cheeks with both of her sleeves as she stood and turned back in the direction of the path. Julie stood and followed without saying anything as they found their way back to the red dirt path and plodded along to the old compost heap to dig the horseradish that Albert had planted there so many years before. Albert was a man who loved his horseradish (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 29th, 2006
3:48 pm	Traffic stop number 25, no ticket Another traffic stop in the Godspeed. This one number 25. Twenty five traffic stops, no ticket. This time the officer informed me he THOUGHT it was illegal for me to have all the stuff on my car. He told me that my rear windshield was obstructed and he THOUGHT it was illegal for me not to have a front windshield mounted rear-view mirror. I advised him that I had two outside rear-view mirrors, and that if it was indeed illegal for the rear view window to be obstructed then all semi-truck drivers would be in violation as they can not see behind them. I advised him that the two side view mirrors allow me to drive with no center-mounted rear-view mirror, as well as with an obstructed view from the rear window. The officer said he would radio his sergeant for verification, which he did. After some time, he returned my driver’s license and advised me that I was free to go. Linda put another hash mark on the dashboard with a white felt marker that we keep in the console for just such an occasion. We drove away wondering why a police officer wouldn’t know the rules governing legal rear-view mirror application, and why the absence or presence of my rear-view mirror was all he could come up with as legal probable cause for a traffic stop, identity check, and visual search of my vehicle. I mean really, is the population of our country so naïve and “dumbed-down” now that someone can get a job as a police officer and not recognize art when he sees it? Really? No, really? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
4:39 am	Never fly Alaska Airlines I used to think that with all the TSA security in place we were relatively safe when flying from place to place. Not the case. Seems that baggage handlers, whether TSA inspectors or airline employees, can make substantial extra income, with which to support their meth or crack addictions, by stealing shiny items of value and prescription drugs from the luggage of passengers who have entrusted their personal belongings to them. First time ever, we decided to check our little blue duffel bag full of bathroom stuff, including Linda's sleep medication, and our new Canon Power-shot digital camera, thinking surely our items would be safe, as they are so scrupulously inspected for the presence of illegal drugs or bomb making materials and sharp objects. I believed there would surely be some level of security in place that would, within reason, guarantee the safety and security of our most intimate possessions once they had been placed on the big black conveyor belt. Not so. When we arrived at our destination, an hour and a half after entrusting our personal property to the airline, we found we had been ripped off. Like cheap street niggers, oops, I can't say nigger can I? Like cheap street hustlers, the airline employees who searched our baggage had helped themselves to our valuables and prescription drugs. So I, unabashed confrontationist that I am, called to complain. Hours later, " Please hold and the next available agent will be with you shortly" I was informed that the airlines do not have cameras or other surveillance equipment in place to monitor baggage handlers. Nor do the airlines have any way of tracking which baggage handler handled which bags that were put on any given plane at any given time. In short, they have no idea who took our bags, not even which crew, off the conveyor belt, rummaged through them, removed which ever items they found attractive for what ever reason, and put them on the plane. That would be Alaska flight 396 from Seattle to Oakland, leaving Sea-tac at precisely 9:43 PM on Wednesday night. " No, we don't keep track of who is loading the planes, or who is examining the baggage, and we do not cover the loss of cameras, electronic devices of any kind, jewelry, watches, cash, or prescription drugs". " Yes, we are aware that pilfering and theft does occur from time to time but no, we do not have any security measures in place to deter or track that kind of behavior." "All of our employees are screened before they are hired." Kind of scary isn't it? You can't get from one location in the airport to another with a travel size bottle of shampoo, without being arrested if you don't declare the item, but if you are a baggage handler, there is no one who is tracking anything you do, or take. Stealing from passengers is almost promoted by the fact that at Sea-tac at least, there is no security of any kind in place to protect the private property of the flying public. The front pages of the local press is covered with pleas on the part of the airlines to check your baggage and to reduce the amount of carry-on luggage you travel with so flights can leave in a more timely manner. Kind of like the farmer holding the door to the chicken coop open for the fox don't you think? The attitude of the airline customer service agents to whom I so vehemetly objected was one of incredulity at the notion that I didn't know not to pack anything of value in my luggage. As if to say " Idiot! Of course we are going to steal from you. Everyone knows we steal from you! Stealing from the passengers is listed as a line item in our benefits package!" " Get over it!" Sorry, I am not "getting over it." I will not fly Alaska, an airline I once held in relatively high regard in terms of customer service, I will also not stop writing about my experience. I will write about it and publish my opinions in as many venues as I can possibly find. And also, from now on, I fly with nothing but old clothing in my checked baggage. Well, clothing and condoms half filled with hand lotion, and maybe the natural sleep aid Valerian.....have you ever smelled Valerian? It works great as a sleep aid, and comes in a capsule, but smells exactly like human shit. And I vow here and now to never fly Alaska again, not at any price, and to always fly with an opened capsule of Valerian sprinkled about in a pair of old underwear packed on top for just that purpose. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006
4:39 pm	These are interesting times. We have only one job going, a small bathroom remodel in Lake City, and after that, nothing. Meanwhile, I am working on two steel building projects, one in Carnation, one in Lincoln City Oregon. To do the Oregon project I need to be a licensed bonded insured contractor in Oregon so I have been working on that project. Went to Oregon to bid the job, applied to become a contractor, had to study 16 hours, register with all the different divisions who want some of my money and on Thursday I will go back to Oregon to take my test. I will then be licensed in two states, incorporated in three. When we go to Reno for Thanksgiving, I plan to offer Chelsea and Howard positions on the board of directors for Addison-Teller Inc. These will be unpaid advisory positions but will have the benefit of required attendance at the annual corporate meeting. The meeting this year will be on July 22, the 10 year anniversary of our incorporation, and we plan to hold the meeting, as legally allowed, on the Island of Kauai. All costs incurred by board members to attend will be a fully tax deductable business expense. It would be wonderful if the corporation could pay the entire cost of the meeting, but I don't see that happening unless we get at least one new steel building contract a month. Ted Salmon says that could actually happen and it would not be an unreasonable expectation. I am not making any hotel reservations at this time......Going back to my contractor's license test studies. I have acupuncture again this Wednesday in an attempt to speed up the recovery process from surgery. The muscles are all healed up but I still have what feels like bone bruising. When I stop taking my Vicoden for several days and it clears my system, I get quite uncomfortable and need to modify my activity level. I can go along fine for three or four days with no pain meds, but the first sign of actual work or unusual activity and I am right back on them. Gone back to work.... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
1:06 am	Chapter I don’t know yet Albert It was October tenth, late in the day, close to five-o-clock, maybe a little after. The sky was clear blue, the sun bright and lowering in the sky. The air temperature was still hovering in the low seventies, unusually warm for this time of the season. Julie and Kelly had gathered up a short shovel and a burlap sack from the old barn just up the hill a little from the men’s house, and started off, up the worn dirt path that led from the back of the barn, up a slight incline to the high pasture range. They were going to collect some horseradish that grew along an old broken down fence section in a mound that had long ago been abandoned as a compost heap. As they walked along silently together, the quiet sounds of life on the ranch fading slowly behind them, there came a sound from way up the pasture that Julie at first thought was a coyote singing. As she looked to see if she could see him the sound came again, like distant yelling. They stopped and listened. The sound came again, a long mournful howl. Alert, they moved off the path in the direction of the sound and hunched down low as they walked. The long yowl came again, only this time it sounded almost human, and as they came over a small rise in the pasture, they saw a distant figure kneeling on the ground in front of a perfect rectangle of tall bright green grass and wildflowers. “It’s Diane.” Kelly whispered. “What’s she doing?” Julie asked. “Must be the tenth.” Kelly said. They stopped where they were and sat down on the crunchy brown pasture grass to watch. Diane threw her arms in the air letting out a half scream, half moan as she brought her arms straight out to her sides then in to her chest in a praying motion as she cried. “ What’s the deal with the tenth?” Julie asked quietly. “That’s Albert up there.” Kelly said pointing. “ Who’s Albert, her husband or something?” “Yeah, Albert was her husband, this was his family’s land, when he died, she inherited it.” Kelly explained. “ Albert’s Alan’s dad” she continued. “ Oh, that would explain it.” Julie said. “ How did he die?” Diane howled again. It was clear to both of them that she was crying hard, she was trying to say something but her words just came out as long sobbing howls. Her loud weeping made Julie uncomfortable. She felt sorry for Diane, and a little ashamed of watching someone in so much anguish from such a distance. She quietly battled with what the right thing to do should be. She didn’t know if they should leave Diane alone in her grief or to try to comfort her in some way. “He went up to Seattle,” Kelly began quietly, “ I guess he was gone about a week on some kind of business deal. When he came home, he was all happy about some partnership thing that was going to happen, I never knew what it was about, but then right away, he complained about not feeling good. I thought he looked thin, like he was losing weight before he went.” She went on. “ So after about three days of him complaining of food poisoning and vomiting all the time, Diane drove him into Ashland to the V.A. hospital. When she came back, she said they had admitted him. The next day, he called her and said they were letting him go home and she had to go back to Ashland to get him. So he comes home on some kind of medication, but right away gets real sick again, so she drives him back to the V.A. the next day. This time they keep him in there for three days but then they send him home again. The next day he’s still real sick so she takes him back. Three days later they take him into surgery and find he has a blocked artery, the one that serves blood to his intestines and kidneys. They had to take out almost all of his small intestines. At first they thought he would be alright, and they even let us go up there and visit him, but then three days later, Diane came back and said he had died. We were all devastated. It was only ten days from him coming home all happy and full of life to gone. He died at five thirty on October tenth, nineteen ninety-seven, nine years ago today. She still goes up there every October tenth and stays with him all day. “ So is that were she buried him?” Julie asked. “ We all buried him.” Kelly said. “ After he died, Diane decided to have him buried on his family’s land, so she had to go to the building department in Ashland and get an excavation permit. She came back here and told everyone what she had done, and that she was going dig his grave herself. She picked up a shovel from beside the barn and started walking up the pasture. So everyone went with her and watched her dig for about fifteen minutes. But then she got tired, so one by one, everyone took a turn with the shovel, and we all dug his grave. It took hours. We had to dig it down ten feet, and it had to be ten feet long, and four feet wide. “ I always thought a grave was only six feet deep.” Julie whispered. “ I don’t know” Kelly answered, but we dug it to ten feet and four feet wide. Well, the next morning the building inspector came, and we all followed him and Diane up to Albert’s grave. It was so weird, the two of them walking up there and all of us following behind. When we got to the grave, nobody said anything; the inspector got out his tape measure, and measured the hole, signed the permit and gave it to Diane. The whole thing took about three minutes then we all walked back down and had breakfast. After that, Diane and some of the guys went back down to the V.A. and they were gone all day. When they finally came back they had Albert in a packing crate and they took him into the house. I didn’t want to go in there, I had never seen a dead person, and didn’t know how it would be, so I just stayed out here, but I guess a lot of the people helped her get him out of his crate, and I guess he was in a body bag, but the next morning, they had him all wrapped up in different kinds of cloth. Everyone brought whatever bright colored cloth they had, and they wrapped his body in layers and layers of it from head to toe so he looked like a mummy all wrapped up for Christmas. When the men carried him out of the house, they had him on a sheet of plywood. We all went up the hill with them, up they’re to the grave.” She said pointing to where Diane now sobbed loudly, laying on her back spread eagled on the ground. “When they laid the plywood down, with Albert on it, there were long coils of fabric she had braided out of all their favorite clothes. She had cut up her wedding dress into long strips and braided it in with strips of his bathrobe, and some of her jeans, and his favorite coat, and her best dresses, and they used the braids to lower him down into the grave, then they dropped the braids in the hole with him. Then every one dropped some piece of themselves in there and breathed in the essence of his aura. Some people took off their clothes and let them fall in the hole, some girls cut off their hair and put it in there with him, they gave him incense, and tobacco, and whiskey and their rings and their instruments and their books, everyone gave him some part of themselves because that is what he had given them. They all thanked him for all the stuff he had taught them, and everyone was crying and hugging each other, but they were all laughing and smiling with tears running down their faces cause they weren’t mourning his loss, they were celebrating his life. They were all crying tears of happiness for him, it was great! They danced around his grave naked because he had their clothes and they sang his favorite Beatles songs. When they started singing In My Life, one by one, they started to cover him up, each person putting a shovel full of dirt in the grave. When it was still about three or four feet deep, they brought a truck load of topsoil up and put it in there with a backhoe bucket full of fertilizer. Now, every spring, Albert’s grave is the fist thing to come up, and it always grows real tall and so green you can see it from just about anywhere, ten feet long, four feet wide. And every fall, when everything else is dead, you can still see where he’s buried. And every October tenth, she’s tells him how much she loved him, how much we all loved him. She does it every year like clockwork. She’ll be up there most of the night, we should probably leave her alone.” Kelly said wiping tears from her cheeks with both of her sleeves as she stood and turned back in the direction of the path. Julie stood and followed without saying anything as they found their way back to the red dirt path and plodded along to the old compost heap to dig the horseradish that Albert had planted there so many years before. Albert was a man who loved his horseradish (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
7:27 am	I'M SCARED SHITLESS Last Saturday night Peach invited me to take the Cappissen 38 to a local Serenity function in Seattle. There were close to 100 in attendance, a fun group of odd types who sang all the words to the Serenity theme song and ate different little snacks that were relevant to the show. Shortly after we arrived, Peach told some of her friends that we had brought the car and someone made an announcement over the PA system. Thirty or forty people with cameras came out to view the car and ooh, and ahh over it's adherence to the theme of the film and episodes. They all loved it! Here's the bad news. Someone took a photo of the car and posted it to a local Serenity fan club web site. The photo she took shows a nice clear picture of the back of the car including not only the fire cannon, but the plate number as well. Because the plate number is shown, the registration of the vehicle can be tracked by my government which puts my freedom in serious jeopardy. I am an artist and we all know that in time of government totalitarianism it is the artists and intellectuals who are the first to go. The recent legislation that removes constitutionally guaranteed freedoms that passed our congress and went straight to the president for an enthusiastic signing, allows for any person to be detained without charge for an indefinite period of time. To be interrogated using methods not approved by the Geneva Convention, meaning I can now legally be tortured to give information, I can be forced into self-incrimination, and although I may retain an attorney, neither I nor my attorney may see the evidence brought against me. I can be tried by a military tribunal in secret, and my permanent incarceration or death by execution sentance would be final and have no legal recourse for appeal. If ANYONE who views my artwork feels threatened by it, offended by it, or has any other motive-what-so-ever, real or imagined, can accuse me of an act or terrorism under the U.S.A. Patriot act. I can be accused of a terrorist act or association, arrested without formal charge and held at a military prison for "an indefinite period of time." tortured into a confession, and be executed or held for the rest of my life without the possibility of appeal or parole just for making art. By making art, I am no longer covered under the United States Constitutional provisions of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, or the Sixth Amendment. Here's the bad news, if they can do this to me, they can do this to you. Here's what you need to do. Be informed. Read everything you can about this recent legislation and it's consequenses. This piece of illegal lawmaking is far more dangerous and frightening than any act of terrorism this country has ever experiecnced. Look in the mirror. Are you white? Male? Christian? Have no criminal record including traffic tickets? Never been arrested or fingerprinted for any reason? Never donated money to any charitable organization other than your church during services in cash? Do you hold a current U.S. Passport? Are you absolutely sure that there is no one in your life who may dislike you for any reason? If you can say "YES to all of these, you are probably reasonably safe. However. If you have any identifying marks like tattoos, brown skin, married or dating someone with brown skin, your or your parents, your lovers, or friends are or ever have been immigrants illegal or otherwise, have ever been arrested, ever associated with any religious group not Christian, if you have ever given money to Ronald McDonald House, or any other non-Christian faith based organization or program, do not hold a current U.S. Passport, have ever protested any action taken by the U.S. government in person, in writing, or in any electronic format, have ever written or published an article, essay, book or statement critical of the current administration, or have anyone in your life who just doesn't like you, you no longer have Constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech, expression, from illegal search and seazure, self-incrimination or Habeous Corpus which requires all government officials and employees to adhere to the law as set down by the Constitution. YOUR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED TO ABIDE BY THE LAW AS SET DOWN IN THE CONSTITUTION. Really, this is what this means. Really! What can you do? Risk everything and tell everyone you know how frightened and angry you are. Contact your local politicians. Contact your Senators and Congressmen and never shut up about it. Vote!!! Vote every scary frightening Christian Republican out of office that you can. Don't be fooled by any of them. Vote! You must Vote! Now I will wait to be arrested.... " It is wrong for the American people to think! " George W. Bush, In a 2006 press conference when asked if the terrorists we are fighting may have feelings similar to our own when it comes to the death and injury of the people they care about. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 30th, 2006
6:11 pm	Donnie Huffman “Doctor Rosenshein please dial four six four three.” came through the overhead hospital intercom in a smooth female voice that sounded like something out of a futuristic Stanley Kuberic film. It was just after eleven o’clock at night. Bruce Norquist heard the voice but paid no attention to the announcement as he slid his ID badge through the card reader. There was loud metallic click followed by a buzzing sound that emanated from the round brass doorknob in the heavy steel door. He pushed his way through the door and let it close behind him with a heavy echo that sounded like doom itself as it vibrated down the length of the psych ward hall. On his right was an ancient heavily varnished office door with a plaque that read LEONARD J. ROSENSHEIN M.D. Halfway down the long, wide wardroom was a nurse’s station behind a large glass window and a gray steel door. At the far end of the room was a common area with a jumble of round cafeteria tables and metallic brown folding chairs. A television mounted to a bracket, high on the wall, silently changed from scene to scene behind an expanded metal screen. The ward smelled faintly of urine, body odor and stale hospital food. Twenty three year old nurse Charlene Chen sat at the cluttered desk behind the window in the nurse’s station working on a short stack of medication verification charts. She looked up from her work as Bruce came through the door and noticed immediately that his blue hospital scrubs had been ironed and had crisp creases in the pant legs. Bruce walked to the window and spoke through the round stainless steel two-way microphone. “Good evening nurse, uh, Chen,” he said reading the nametag pinned to her lapel. Charlene didn’t look at all Asian to him and he wondered about her name. “Is Doctor Rosenstein in?” “ That would be Doctor Rosenshein, uh, Intern Norquist” she replied reading his nametag. “No the doctor isn’t in yet, how can I help you?” Bruce smiled uncomfortably and repeated “Rosenshein, Doctor Rosenshein”. He laughed a faked inappropriate laugh there was an uncomfortable silence between them, then he said, “I’m the new intern and I’m supposed to report to Doctor Rosenshein.” “Ah, the new intern” Charlene said a little sarcastically. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious or just having fun with him. “Well, Doctor Rosenshein isn’t here yet, so I suppose you could pretend you belong here as long as you don’t scare the patients. She smiled. “Copy that,” Bruce nodded, giving nurse Chen a two-fingered Boy Scout salute. “There’s coffee,” Charlene said, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder. “We have forty-one customers right now, you want to start with the head count?” “Sure” Bruce said. “Here’s the form,” she said, sliding a paper form on a clipboard under the thick glass window through a slot in the stainless steel counter top that separated them. “All you have to do is look at the room number,” she said, pointing to the form through the glass, “then look in the room and make sure you can see a head. If you can’t see a head, you’ll have to go in and look.” She pushed a large key through the slot. Bruce took the clipboard and the key, and began to read the green form as he walked away from the nurse’s station. He worked his way, first down one row of aging, beige steel doors, each with a chrome pull handle, a key lock, and a twelve inch square glass window, then the other. On one of the door handles near the far end of the room hung a hotel DO NOT DISTURB sign. Someone had hand lettered, with a felt marker, FURTHER on it, so the sign read DO NOT DISTURB.. FURTHER. Bruce smiled at the humor as he fingered the plastic sign and mumbled to himself, “Isn’t there a rule about stuff like this?” He’d heard about the sick sense of humor that purveyed the fifth floor psych ward. He had also heard the rumors about Doctor Rosenshein. It was said the good doctor had a rather unorthodox method of treatment for his patients. Doctor Rosenshein it seemed, practiced psychiatry through pharmacology and was particularly fond of a cocktail of Thorazine and Compozine that not only heavily sedated the patients but erased their short-term memory as well. “Milk Of Amnesia” he called it. Doctor Rosenshein believed that if he could make the patients forget about their neuroses and disturbances with a little chemical assistance, their mental illnesses would in time just fade away and they could once again live productive lives. He prescribed Compozine, a drug used to make surgical patients forget about the trauma of their procedures, believing this would allow his little theater troupe of paranoid schizophrenics to forget about their demons and living nightmares. Then he added a good dose of Thorazine, in a one-size-fits-all treatment, that calmed them into a near comatose state just in case the Compozine didn’t do the trick. If the loss of memory didn’t cure everything from posttraumatic stress syndrome to paranoid delusions of persecution, the Thorazine would turn the patients into an easily controllable herd of living dead who were too loaded to do much of anything but stare vacuously at the television and compliantly follow the simple directives of the minimally available staff. Bruce looked in each window at the chemically altered patients and marked their names off on the checklist. He noticed that most of them were geriatric and all of them physically abnormal in some way. Morbidly obese, anorexic and skeleton-like, or otherwise horridly unattractive by normal societal standards, these appeared to be the worst of the worst. While hundreds of others just like them were still out there in the city sleeping under the over-passes, these were the ones who couldn’t survive spending their days begging for handouts with their cardboard signs, or pushing shopping carts over-loaded with plastic bags full of their lives from place to place obsessively, compulsively, looking for somewhere to belong. Out there they were all about the same. Society’s dirty little secret. The American dream gone horribly wrong. The freedom to be insane, and to have nowhere to go. In here, they had three meals a day, a shower twice a week, car commercials and The Sleep Number Bed on TV, and the pharmaceutical cocktails that would temporarily make them sane enough to be sent back to the streets where they would as likely or not end up as a John or Jane Doe, six floors down, in the morgue of the Pubic Health Hospital. A loud electric bell rattled overhead startling Bruce in the otherwise silent ward. He visibly jumped and looked in the direction of the noise that came from just above the steel door that separated the psych ward from the real world. He saw a black face looking in through the glass window in the middle of the door and nurse Chen nodded to Bruce indicating to him that she wanted him to open it. Bruce wondered if this was the missing Doctor Rosenshein as he walked quickly down the hall to the door and slid his ID tag through the card reader. The lock clicked and buzzed for a second before the door opened. Two of the largest black police officers Bruce had ever seen entered the ward, each with an arm through the elbow of a huge man in handcuffs. Behind the handcuffed man was an orderly who was bigger than either of the police officers, wearing a crisp white hospital uniform. Standing there together they looked to Bruce like the skyline of a medium sized city. The man in handcuffs was well over six feet tall, and almost three hundred and fifty pounds. His head was shaved, his arms were tattooed with swastikas and flames, he had a short red beard, and was perspiring profusely. Sweat dripped from his chin and eyelids, as he stood before Bruce looking as red and angry as any man he had ever seen. The police were also perspiring heavily, and one of them appeared to have a bruise over his left eye. His eyebrow was clearly swollen and somewhat darker than the rest of his African American face. “Where do you want him doc?” the officer asked. Bruce looked to the nurse’s station, but he couldn’t see Charlene there so he turned back to the police and said “ Uh, let’s put him in a room. I think there is an empty bed down here.” Bruce led the enormous army of four men down the hall. The man in handcuffs seemed to relax a little as they headed down the hall and walked defiantly but without resistance or hesitation as he was escorted toward the door Bruce had pointed out. He was almost smiling as they reached the vacant room on the left side of the ward and appeared quite resigned to being placed in there. Almost all the tension and anger had gone out of his body language and he looked more worn out than dangerous. As the police began to un-cuff the man, Bruce interrupted them saying, “Uh, maybe we should put him in a protective restraint for the time being.” not wanting to use the term straight jacket. The police stopped what they were doing and waited as Bruce found nurse Chen, who directed him to a closet inside the nurse’s station, where several straight jackets hung. He collected the largest one he could find, rolled it into a large ball of canvas and leather straps, as though by rolling it up he could somehow disguise the apparatus, and returned to the police officers, the orderly, and handcuffed man who had been exchanging polite conversation with one another. The police let the huge man out of the two sets of handcuffs that held him, one hand at a time, as he politely placed his arms into the straight jacket. Bruce fumbled with buckling the straps across his back while the orderly worked the leather crotch strap between the man’s legs and buckled it to the waistband of the jacket. Once the man was all trussed up, the police began to relax a little more and one of them said,“ Well, there you go. Good luck Donnie”. “Good night Donnie.” The other officer said patting him on a canvassed shoulder. Donnie smiled and nodded politely in response. Bruce led the officers and the orderly back to the steel ward door and let them out with his ID badge. Donnie stood patiently outside the door of the room watching Bruce return. In a perfectly normal tone of voice he said “ Dude, I hate to do this to you, but I really have to take a piss.” “What are you in here for?” Bruce asked. “ A stupid mistake” Donny responded. “What kind of mistake?” Bruce asked. “They think I was trying to kill myself. I was just showing off for some chick.” “Are you cool?” Bruce said. “Fuck yeah, I’m cool, I just really need to take a leak, I had to pee an hour ago and those assholes wouldn’t let me. If I don’t find a place to go real soon, I am going to piss down my pant leg right here.” “ I’m sorry man but I am not helping you pee if you’re in a straight jacket” Bruce said “ If I let you out of there, will you be cool?” “Yeah man, I’ll be cool, I promise, no shit, I just really need to piss.” He looked very uncomfortable. Convinced, Bruce unbuckled Donny, helped him shake off the straight jacket, and led him to the men’s room door next to Doctor Rosenshein’s office. Donny quickened his step as they neared the bathroom and grabbed at his penis as he went in. As Bruce watched Donnie dance into the men’s room, a loud angry shriek came from the other end of the ward. “ FUCK! FUCK! FUCKING FUCK!” an obviously very upset Charlene shouted as she marched in the direction of the nurse’s station swatting what looked to Bruce like feces, off the sleeve of her blue hospital scrubs. As she stomped past him he saw that she also had what might have been, feces in her short-cropped brown hair and on her ear. For a moment he wondered how that could be possible. Looking in the direction from where the disturbance had come, he saw what appeared to be something splashing out of one of the rooms at the other end of the ward. He quickened his step then broke into a jog and ran to assess the situation. When he reached the door, he saw a naked female patient kneeling on the floor in a puddle of vomit. As he realized what was happening, she leaned forward and vomited projectile across the room as liquid feces shot out of her rectum splashing onto the top of his shoes as he danced aside. She had both feces and vomit dripping from the front of her body and the backs of her legs. The stench was unbearable and Bruce gagged as he spread his legs wide to avoid slipping in the mess and lifted her off the floor. He sort of guided her fall as she slipped from his grasp, in the general direction of one of the steel folding chairs just outside the door to her room. She slumped into the chair and began to slide off onto the floor. He caught her again as she slid from the chair onto the floor, and laid her on her back then rolled her onto her side so she wouldn’t drown if she vomited again. Almost immediately, she began snoring as though she was asleep. Following his instincts, he grabbed at the sheets from her bed with his thumb and forefinger and to the best of his ability covered the horrid mess of bodily waste in her room. It was at this moment that he first heard the huge racket now coming from Doctor Rosenshein’s office. He called for Nurse Chen, and reluctantly, she came from the nurse’s station where she had been wiping feces from her hair with a pillowcase from the linen closet. “Take care of this patient”, he said to her authoritatively as she approached him, then he sprinted to the other end of the hall, frantically wiping his hands on the front of his freshly washed and ironed scrubs, where great crashing and banging now emanated from behind the large varnished door to Dr. Rosenshein’s office. Bruce heard glass breaking and the sound of heavy objects being thrown at the walls. He heard the unmistakable sound of a file cabinet hitting the floor and then there was silence. When he skidded to a stop outside the door panting, he grabbed at the knob and turned it but the door didn’t budge. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed with all his strength, his feet loosing traction on the polished vinyl floor. The door moved slightly so he gave it another shove and realized that Dr. Rosenshein’s desk had been pushed up against it from the inside. He pushed hard against the door again and was able to force it open just enough to squeeze past it into the room. There he saw what looked like a disaster zone. Donnie was standing naked on Dr. Rosenshein’s leather chair with his penis in his hand, having just emptied his very full bladder onto a large pile of patient files and other papers that were on the floor along with a broken computer monitor, several picture frames, Dr. Rosenshein’s diplomas, a stuffed bass, a copy of The Wall Street Journal, some golf clubs, a broken desk lamp, and a dozen or more medical text books, all now wet with urine. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!” Bruce shouted, startling Donnie, who appeared not to have noticed Bruce pushing his way into the room. Startled, Donnie leapt from Dr. Rosenshein’s chair to the hardwood floor near a window several feet away. Donnie looked more frightened than angry and grabbed the brass handle at the bottom of the window, which he slid open effortlessly, sending the window slamming into the top of the window frame. He looked momentarily surprised by the ease at which he had opened the window, and by the loud noise it had made. His escape now blocked by a steel mesh safety screen Donnie was momentarily confused, but with a loud grunt and a giant foot, he kicked out the safety screen breaking off much of the wood window frame the screen had been bolted to. The screen, both windows and most of the window frame fell to the sidewalk below with a loud crash that surprising both of them. Donnie smiled at Bruce then climbed naked onto what was left of the windowsill, clinging to bricks where the window frame had been and screamed “DON’T COME NEAR ME OR I’LL JUMP!” Bruce hesitated for a second and couldn’t help noticing Donnie’s unusually small and hairless genitalia. He looked around at the ruined office as he tried to get a handle on what to do next. “FUCK YOU THEN. JUMP MUTHERFUCKER!!” he said to Donnie in a firm loud tone, thinking he would call Donnie’s bluff. Donnie looked surprised for a second, then smiled, gave Bruce the finger, shrugged his shoulders and pushed himself backward out the fifth story window. Bruce gasped and lunged forward with arms flailing trying desperately to get past the huge desk that blocked his path; as though there was some way he could possibly have stopped Donnie. A split second later, he heard loud distant thump and a metallic crash as Donnie hit the sidewalk and the window frame below. Pushing the desk out of the way, he moved through the wreckage of the room, slipping on the wet papers on the floor, to the window sill now vacant, and looked out not really believing Donnie had actually jumped. He took a deep breath not wanting to look down and when he did his eyes were met with a scene below that was far worse than he could possibly have imagined. Almost immediately a woman came out of a door on the first floor, looked at what was left of Donnie, turned around and vomited. “Oh My Fucking God” Bruce said to himself, as his heart began to pound like a base drum at an all night rave. “My God, Oh My God, Oh My God!” he said swallowing hard trying not to throw up, trying not to faint, trying to catch his breath. He staggered away from the window and supported himself on the corner of Dr. Rosenshein’s desk with one hand as he began to black out. He slid to a sitting position with his back against the massive desk, and then slumped all the way to the floor in an attempt to maintain consciousness. He thought about calling a code on himself but knew he didn’t have the strength to move far enough to look for Dr Rosenshein’s phone. He lay there on the cold vinyl tile floor, in the now quiet dark office; sure he was having a heart attack, and waited for help to arrive. Three days after the Donnie incident, young Dr. Norquist had been transferred to oncology, the only ward in the hospital worse than Psych. Oncology, the cancer ward, a place where all the patients were dying and all of their relatives were blaming him. Not long after his transfer, he had called his first actual code. A patient had flat-lined while Bruce was talking to him and. a frantic, all out, team effort had ensued in an attempt to bring a dead person back to life. Calling a code was rarely successful on the oncology ward, but the staff was compelled to do it anyway unless they knew for sure there was is a living will directive that said otherwise. He had struggled in vain to save the life of a woman who was “bleeding out” from every orifice in her body as her family members looked on in horror pleading with him to help her. He had tried hard to be distant, professional, nonchalant and unaffected by the painful crying and moaning of the patients he treated, to the best of his ability, but it got to him. The same as it gets to everyone who has to watch an eighty pound, thirty five year old woman, beautiful and full of life not a year before, now waxy white with sunken eyes take a breath only once every two minutes, then exhale softly while her husband and children hold hands and sob as they recite the Lord’s Prayer. Oncology, a special kind of medical hell where they separate the men from, . . . . well, . . . . everyone else. Seventeen days into his rotation, an interoffice manila envelope arrived at the nurse’s station addressed to him. Inside was a simple one-sheet form. A summary of the coroner’s inquest regarding the death of one Donnie Huffman. The cause of death was determined to be “Accidental suicide”. Bruce closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief then went back to work knowing, that like losing his virginity, for the rest of his life, he would forever remember the loss of his first patient. (Comment on this)
5:56 pm	I wouldn't really mind having the time back. The time again. To do some more of the time I had. The healing time. The resting time. The doing nothing time because I couldn't do anything else. The refreshing time. The rejuvinating time. The re-birthing time. It seems that time is fading fast. Here comes the rushing world like a lane of traffic. Time to put on the signal. Time to push the pedal all the way. Time to try to catch up with the rest. Time to pay back all those I owe. Time to forget who I was for a little while and go back to who I am supposed to be. I have not written a word, not guided the stroke of a pencil, not made new art in many days. I just don't have the time. Instead, this is me jogging along again. Maybe if I am lucky, I can catch up to you. Maybe we can jog together. We can have a plesant conversation. I can tell you that I love you, again, even though I don't see you often enough. Thup, thup, thup, thup, this is me trying to catch up. Just look over here, here I am, smiling at you. Just saying I love you, and can't see you soon enough to satisfy my lonely old heart. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
4:53 pm	My world is quiet these days. I see very few people in my day. I live in the story in my head, and although I am telling a story, I am relating the histories of my semi-fictious characters and even they, actually say very little. I don't listen to the radio when I travel in my funny little car from place to place. In the conduct of my daily business I have few if any interpersonal contacts. I swipe my credit card to buy gas, use the self-check out at Home Depot, drive through for Breakfast reciting only my usual order, " Number three with milk please.." The hispanic minimum wage employee who speaks little English says nothing to me as she hands me my daily sack of assembly line nourishment. The Quick Check Out at Fred Meyer. All designed to reduce if not eliminate social intercourse of any kind. I suppose for me, they work pretty well. I don't see or speak to any of the seven billion other people out there to chose from. When I go to the hot tub and the therapy pool it is the middle of the day and I am alone except for the exercise swimmers who never stop stroking except to pull themselves out of the pool and leave. It is quiet here, alone in my world, alone in my head. I have much to think about these days, but little to say anymore. I surely miss the laughter the banter, the talk about the traffic and the weather. I find it odd these days, to be me, and to have nothing to say. Or is it I just have no one to say it to anymore? I much prefer to listen than to say anyway. Saying always seems to get me into trouble. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 17th, 2006
7:47 am	The chaos in the world is reflected in the hearts and souls of human beings. A brown dog lays in the cool dirt in the noon-day sun and watches as Julie passes by. There are things about your childhood that your master finds very interesting. You're going home now, watch your heart. You have a problem with your heart, that's why you sleep so much. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 16th, 2006
10:51 pm	Here in my dark little basement room. Staring at this blank page. I have been writing what I must. Wishing I could write what I feel. There is no one I can tell now. There never really was. Albert is gone now and I have no one I can tell who won't judge me. There is nothing I can say that won't be mis-understood. There is nothing I can feel or think that won't hurt someone. Even if it is only me. How I long to hear my own father say " Sometimes you fuck shit up son, you'll just have to live with it and try to do better next time." Then he would hug me with a gray sweatshirt hug and pat me on the back and I would be ok. Really, I would be ok. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 8th, 2006
7:00 am	Morning morphine mouth and coffee. Dizzy and confused by chemical amnesia I listen to the thump and beat of the overhead techno that fills my space, nice break. I will take the day off today. A day off from work. A day off from rest. A day off from life. A day off from death. From worry. From the bills. The customers. The employees. A day away from it all. I'll cut the little blue pill into pieces so it will disolve faster. Work sooner. Ah morphine. My savior. "Do you accept the lord Morphine as your one god and savior who died for your sins that you may live and one day go to heaven?" " I do!" " Then take this son, may it serve you well.....may you reside in the kingdom of heaven.....for at least this day." "Praise Morphine, I am saved!!!" (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
1:15 pm	I once worked in the home of a man who had terminal prostate cancer. He was only a few years older than me and his cancer was inoperable and advanced stage and had traveled through out his body. He had little time left and was making preparations for the end of his life. He cheerfully worked day after day throwing away stuff that was no longer important to him or anyone else. Old papers, files, receipts, mementos. He gave me his tools, his friend received his golf clubs one day after stopping by for coffee. He was very much at ease with his impending demise and his only regret was that he would not be around for his daughter who was the same age as mine. He was a little apprehensive about the actual end though, the last hours, the final moments, he didn't know exactly what to expect, and occasionally talked to me about his fears. I listened patiently and carefully, and gave him the best advice I could offer, that when the moment of death arrives, we make a conscious decision to go. We know that it is time to die, and we do it gracefully. He liked that explanation, and offered me more coffee. I didn't make much money on that project because I spent so much time just hanging around talking to this man who was seeking the comfort of companionship from anyone who crossed his path and I spent so much time visiting with him that the job took twice as long as it should have. Every relationship was very important to him regardless how casual. He formed a lifetime bond of love and friendship with the guy who came to install his kitchen cabinets, and would be standing in the driveway waiting and smiling with two cups of coffee in his hands each bright spring morning. Waiting to share some quality time with another human being for the sheer joy of doing it. I was the guy. The bond we formed was very special for both of us. These past several weeks have been very painful for me in many ways. I have experienced more physical pain for longer than at any time in my life. During the same period, I have known more emotional loss, regret, disappointment, and sorrow than I have known for many, many years. Combined, this has made these passing seasons the most difficult I can remember. I am understandably very depressed. Filled with remorse, self-loathing, and doubt all the while incapacitated by never ending physical limitation, exhaustion, and the drugs that keep me from fainting, or throwing up each time I accidentally find an uneven surface beneath my feet or move just the wrong way. The endless pain is just awful and very difficult to survive through. For weeks now I have tried to overcome my feelings of falling endlessly deeper into pit of despair by staying active and attempting to be productive in some small way. I have been cleaning my office and my garage. Throwing away the things that are no longer important to me. Picking a single used rubber glove up off the floor and walking it over to the garbage can is a major undertaking, but I do it. Endlessly I carry three or four bolts to the bolts box. Carefully I move a cardboard box with a small roll of wire in it. Sorting through boxes and file drawers, as I am throwing away the wires, and the transformers, and the dried up cans of contact cement, the out-dated computer parts, the pieces of tin-foil, software boxes and floppy disks, I think about my customer who was preparing for his death. I feel like I am doing the same. I have a lot of stuff I will never use again. Stuff that is not important to me anymore, meaningless stuff that I keep just in case. Stuff that I still have because I haven't had time to get rid of it. Stuff that I have needed to get rid of for a very long time and as I fill another trash can with stuff that used to be part of my life, I have time to contemplate, and have come to believe that death, when it is time, will be easy. It will be a conscious decision. I will know when it is time and I will decide to die. It won't really matter. I have lived the best life I could. I have had plenty of fun, done lots of things, gone many places, known many people, and I can't think of what else there is that is important to me. I don't have any big dreams or aspirations. There isn't much that matters to me on my horizon, so I throw stuff out with a little enthusiasm. I have less reason to question whether or not I will ever need this can of walnut gel stain or these short pieces of speaker wire ever again. I could finish this up and die by the end of the week and be ok with it. Really. I could leave tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. I had a great time, the ride was fun, but I am tired now and just want to lay down and sleep. (1 Comment |Comment on this)