photo by © rel

This week has seen a paltry amount of writing from this author. Oh, I did put up a post on Monday and Thursday, but in reality, I've neglected my writing, reading and posting for the week. The fact that it is also the second week of vacation makes it seem worse to me since I should have had a surplus of time, time to attend to those things, such as writing, that I savor. I deplore excuses. They are poor apologies for not doing something you should have done and didn't and now your looking for absolution.

I've been in one of those doggedly unambitious moods and I just didn't feel like applying myself to too much that was constructive or required much mental exercise. Partly, this state of mind was brought about in concert with a melancholia precipitated by the deaths of two men my age, and the mid-week class and test I need to pass to maintain my certification and thereby my privileges to work at the hospital.

My Wife's recent retirement has fostered a resurgence of energy and zest for life in her that has had her busting her butt in the yard and flower gardens to get the manor spruced up. She has started a diet and kick started her exercise regime to include a start at some running. At this juncture I must say that she has not been a nag nor has she pushed me to do anything more than a few menial tasks. Of course her example did create a sense guilt enough so that I did keep up my exercise regime, welcomed the new diet regime and I did infact get some household tasks completed, but be assured that except for an 11 mile run, I did not bust my ass around here.

But, I digress:
This post is really about two deaths and a test. The test was anxiety producing only because I'm a professional procrastinator. In fact, if procrastinators got paid for their level of procrastination I'd be buying out Warren Buffet. Since I passed the test with flying colors I'll leave that as is.

On April 27th, 2008 Mike St. Andrews died. That would be last Sunday. Because he'd lived most of his adult life in Illinois his obit didn't appear in the local paper here until Wednesday. Mike was 61 years of age.

Mike was a year behind me in high school and therefore a year younger. We weren't friends in the traditional sense; we hung around with different people, came from opposite sides of the tracks, and lived in different worlds even in the same town. But in a greater sense we were family. We were siblings in the brotherhood of sports. Mike was a pitcher for our varsity baseball team....I was the catcher for that team. Mike was a quarterback for our football team. I was a guard and a linebacker on that team. That special commonality made us family.
I graduated and left for the military life. Mike had one year left 'til graduation. Things change and life moves on. It's the natural flow of things, and so you would be right to think that that was the end of our siblingry (-neologism-) so to speak.

February 16, 1966 I was waiting in the DaNang, South Vietnam airport to catch my flight back to CONUS (continental U.S.). I was goin' home from the war. As I watched the incoming soldiers and sailors deplaning I recognized one of the sailors...Mike St. Andrews.
We talked in the usual banalities. He was envious of my departure and I wished him all safety and good luck. And you know; hey man how are ya? And holy shit man it's good to see ya and yada yada yada. That was the last time I saw my bother; brother in sports, brother in arms. Mike with the calm, lamb like personnality and rel the boisterous, ferocious, lion.

The time is soon to be upon me Mike and I'll join you on the tarmac beyond this world.


Thursday last, David "Gordie" Warren died from complications from a stroke. He was sixty-two years old, same age as me. Gordie and I were siblings in the family of community. We live in the same town, his home town, my Dad's home town and my adopted home time. Gordie and I interacted countless times. Gordie was a smart, industrious, savvy guy. He could be everybody's friend but at the same time he brooked no bull shit. He embraced life and lived it to the fullest and he left us too soon....Gone, like a member of this extended family we call community.

Might as well get the third prompt in here while we're at it; identity.
Mike and I identified with each other on one plane. Same with Gordie and I. Each of us has many identities: son, daughter, husband, wife, mother, father, friend, worker and so on and on.
But in the end we will all share the same identity;

Dead.

I penned a little to poem to express my feelings iterated above, and if you've read down this far I hope you finish up with this.

Family
Ferocious
Identity

As turbulent times
Are wont to be,
This past week had
Ups and downs
For me.

A test to garner
My recert.,
On Wednesday I did spend.
Without success
Would my identity thereby end?

Bracketing the week
Front to back
Were two friends deaths.
One friend from long ago,
Just last week, the second said hello.

My friend from long times past
Was a meek and mild
Kind of guy.
While the other had a
Ferociousness from time to time.

Now they lay side by side
This lion and the lamb.
These two,
Members of
The family of man.

Sadly, over time
Their identities
Will be
Imprinted
Only
On a stone.

#30 / 2 "chance encounter"

It was a dark and stormy night. No, no it wasn’t actually, It was a balmy, early spring night. The day had been cool, bright and sunny and just the perfect day to start clearing some plots for the extensive vegetable gardens he’d planned to put in.

The east side of the house proper, between it and the newly constructed compost bin, was rife with over grown honey-suckle bushes. Clearing this mini forest took him most of the day. Just before supper while making a delivery to the compost heap he startled a snake, who in turn startled him. Hard to say who was the most surprised. Being a novice about snakes he assumed that all snakes were poisonous. He knew better, but not being able to identify any snakes beyond perhaps the common garden snake he felt it the better part of caution to treat all snakes with caution. This particular snake was definitely not a garter snake; two to three feet long, fat and multi-colored, almost a diamond shaped pattern on his skin, and acting extremely aggressive put on quite a show. This sent him running to the garage to retrieve an axe with which to dispatch this seeming threat to his well being. Alas, upon his return, the creature had disappeared.

The snake, probably a puff adder or hog-nose was just taking its normal defensive actions, but not knowing that, the chemicals of fear were circulating wildly in the man.

After he finished supper and still mildly distraught as well as fatigued from his day’s labors, the thought of a fresh brewed cup of mint tea sounded like just the ticket to help sooth his nervous system. There just happened to be some new spearmint growing up underneath the hose hook-up by the cellar window. By the light of the moon he made his way around to the east corner of the house to where he had seen the mint growing. Being sure of the place, he did not take a flashlight. When he reached the place where the mint was growing he bent to pick a handful of leaves while inadvertently stepping on the garden hose in his flip flops. And then, AND THEN!, the hose moved purposefully. Holy shit he thought, jumping wildly away and running at the speed of light, or so it seemed. Jeeze, “I stepped on that SOB of a snake,” he thought

Breathing rapidly, in short gasps, he dropped the mint, tore through the front door and scaled the stairs two or three at a time and collapsed on his knees beside the tub where-in his wife sat, taking a bath and blurted out;" You won’t believe this, I just stepped on that god-damned snake in my flip flops!"

Stifling a smirk and refraining from chuckling, his wife knew he was in a terrible state from the ashen look on his face and the trembling of his hands.

Whether it was truly the/a snake or just a wiggly garden hose we will never know. What we do know was that the snake never showed itself around there again and there were no further chance encounters of that kind again.

#30-Flight

Fear of flying was not yet a novel by Erica Jong when Edmond (Eddie) Oaks was winging his way homeward in the belly of a Hercules C-130. Humorous erotica, which may have held his imagination captive while on the ground, was the last thing on his mind today 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

Eddie hated to fly. The thought of going up in an airplane would cause days and weeks of trembling anxiety in Eddie. Yet as a Boomer, he was living in the era of unsurpassed air-travel and speedy arrival at destinations was rapidly becoming the norm. One example: Many of LCpl. Oaks Marine Corps buddies had been shipped to Viet Nam on troop ships, taking 30+ days to make the crossing from the west coast of the USA to Viet Nam. Eddie wasn’t sure he’d of liked that either but taking the plane from San Francisco to DaNang, a 17 hour in the air flight, literally caused his mind to enter constant fright mode.

His escape from the reality of the trip was sleep. Yes, He slept for the greater majority of the hours the plane was airborne. Waking, or being awakened to eat was the only time he ventured into the reality of being suspended miles above a huge and treacherous sea. Thoughts of the plane diving into the ocean and plunging miles below the surface were constant reminders of the peril he saw himself in. The thought of the impending exposure to enemy gunfire was seen as a welcome reprieve from his current state of fear. To add fearful imagining to fearful imagining he also knew that after the plane had settled on the bottom of the ocean, the sharks would come in to the plane and shred his body, devouring his flesh while his mind was painfully aware until the shark finally gulped down his head.

Believe me I have given you but a minuscule snapshot of Eddie’s fear of being in a plane.

Despite the fact that he had arrived without mishap, and obviously had done so many times up to that point in his life, his fears remained unabated.

He had been taken to and from numerous battles by Huey helicopter, literally saving his life on a few occasions and still he detested flight.

Eddie was wounded in both Operation Starlight and Harvest Moon, yet any fears engendered by the war never rose to the level of that of flying.

Now here he was, cradled in the webbing seat of the uncomfortable cool cave of the C130’s cargo hold. Looking out at the sunny cumulus cloud filled sky watching the beautiful billowy clouds passing in close proximity to the plane’s window. Eddie was startled by a cloud formation that resembled a person of great stature sitting on a throne. He tried to decide if the cloud sculpture was Odin, or Zeus, or may be Neptune. No not Neptune He’d show up if they crashed in the ocean. No, No it couldn’t be God he thought. Well, He supposed it could be but anyway it was sure a curious apparition. As he continued to stare and conjure imaginings he suddenly heard a voice, a deep baritone voice and there was no mistaking that it was coming from the “God” on the cloud throne. The voice and the words were so clear, he had to look beside him to see if there was someone sitting beside him and talking to him. Nope, he was alone.

The voice said: Don’t come back this way again!

Eddie came home in 1965 and the war continued for another ten years. Interestingly, Eddie refused to watch any newscast or read any media concerning the war because when he did so he would be overcome with a strong to desire to go that way again.

#29 Lost Highway

There's a highway leads to nowhere,
I've been there many times.
For miles and miles it stretches
With nary a soul to find.

There's always been an exit
To get me back to town.

Time and time again
To the lost highway I am bound.
And I know the day will come
When no exit will be found.

The road of life has been kind
To me, and gentle by and far.

That lonely road to nowhere-
I'll trod 'til who knows when.
Put my picture in the obit there,
I won't be to work again.

SPELLBOUND....#26

He captivated the State if not the country. Eliot Spitzer held the electorate of NYS..... SPELLBOUND. Too many saw him as a savior, a political savior to be sure, but a savior never the less. He was the knight in shinning armor who would lift NY from the stagnant depths of depravity and into the status once held by the EMPIRE State. As a man of multi-millions he would be immune to bribery from the prostitute lobbyists populating the capital. He had charisma and chutzpah. His take no prisoners, holier than thou approach to reform of both wall Street and Brothel lane Showed him to be the high stepper we needed.

Although I voted for his opponent, John Fasso, I secretly wanted, no, I knew in my heart of hearts that Eliot Spitzer was going to be elected. No one, well 70% of the voters, listened when Fasso pegged Spitzer as a low life sleaze. They shucked it off as political rhetoric of a namby-pamby hotshot wanna be. “Eliot Spitzer, he’s our man, if he can’t do it no one can!” Ta-rah-rah-rah-boom-de-aye!

As the drama of March 10^th, 2008 unfolded and the pundits, the amateur psychologists weighed in with their analyses, I was compelled to do some research into the sexual peccadilloes of American Politicians. Lordy, God A’ mighty, the list of mayors, governors, legislators, and presidents who have had their careers marred or destroyed by their sexual indiscretions was/is phenomenal. From Thomas Jefferson, to Eliot Spitzer, the list would fill an average size roll of toilet paper.

Reading along, my memory stroked and stimulated into recalling many of these events, I asked myself if I could detect any commonality in these people. This is what I came up with: First, they were all men. Not one woman was listed in the whole sordid bunch (on the perpetrator’s side). Next, because they were all elected, most of them to more than one term, they more than likely possessed some sort of hypnotic attraction, the ability to mesmerize their public, to hold the populace SPELLBOUND.

Ponder these names for but a moment, and if my essay has not held you captive then certainly do a Google search and discover for yourself the sexual scandals in their lives and careers: Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Gary Hart, Marion Barry, JFK, MLK, and of course, Bill Clinton.

These pedestalized men all had/have the appeal necessary to bamboozle and captivate the public. These qualities aren’t something that are kept in some election time file for “character traits to exhibit to get elected.” No, these are the same qualities that allowed them to attract and keep beautiful, intelligent women by their sides and call them wife.

It is these same attributes that promote hero worship and demagoguery. They are seen as modern day Sir Lancelot. Yes, it’s these characteristics which allow him to dally and dance in forbidden women’s underpants.

Usually some good comes from catastrophe. I believe that Gov. David Patterson can do what Eliot Spitzer could not; bring the NYS legislature together.

On another, but related note, this debacle has given me a focus on our nation’s presidential race. Let it be known before hand that I intend to vote for Sen. John McCain ® Ariz.. We are brothers of the Vietnam War. He took my share of torture and suffering and the share of many others in that V.C. prison camp. He refused to feed their propaganda machine by rejecting early release or any leniency. I feel that I owe him.

Barack Obama has given the youth of this great nation a reason to get involved in our country’s politics. That’s a wonderful thing. He has given the black populace (he is black isn’t he? Geraldine Ferraro said as much) a hope not enjoyed since MLK. He is a handsome, soft spoken, bright, very intelligent man with a beautiful, intelligent woman at his side called his wife.

He has charisma!

He has the populace SPELLBOUND!!!!!!

#21...Changed

Changed

Lying, limbs entwined

Pelvises hinged in thrusting.

Lips brushing, tongues darting

Her face flushed; the pressure

Builds

She focuses on her woman-hood.

The exquisite pleasures rise,

Peak, crescendo—subside,

Rise again and again.

Each time the pleasure holds

All of her attention!

Breast and belly swell

Aureoles, nipples darken—

Linea nigra scores her swollen corpus.

The warm fuzzies of mother-hood

Gives way to the waddling near term discomfort.

Lying, limbs akimbo, panting

Through chapped, pursed lips.

Pressure builds with tightening uterus.

Pain’s intensity grows stronger,

Peaks, crescendos, subsides,

Rises anew.

Pain, each growing pain, holds

All of her attention!!