Hard Morning on the Prairie

     The village was waking up, slowly. Maybe the dance the day before had been a little too much for the old folks- but me and Teardrop Star were up early anyway, trying to make a game of checking on the ponies. The ponies were all kept by the river, where we knew no enemies could approach but to come right through the village first.

     I don’t know how it happened, except that, one minute Teardrop Star was there beside me, we had tied a long rope from a tree back toward one of the council tents. But then he was gone. I never heard it. He was just gone. I hadn’t heard it, but somehow, the enemy had come and stifled him, and dragged him off.

     At least, that was what he told me, in the aftermath. It must have been Wakan Tanka kept me from learning where he went- but anyway, soon I would have a lot worse problems.

      Not long after Teardrop Star was gone (and I spent some minutes walking up and down the grassy bank of the river, calling for him) I heard it. It was as it often was, whether it was soldiers coming or it was enemy warriors. You heard the thunder of their ponies first, then their whooping.

      The enemy came on the village, fast, and they weren’t using coup sticks, they were using real whips, arrows, tomahawks, lances, clubs, one might have even had a pistol.

They were on us! Because I was there I began screaming and soon men came from their lodges, the alarm had been raised, men and their wives were making provision to melt into the prairie where the enemy was waiting.

     There were more of them riding now through the village, hurling lances almost at random, jumping off if they found someone to attack, stopping where they could to do whatever damage they could. A spear fell by my feet.

      I saw Spotted Dog’s mother beaten with a dogwood club by an enemy warrior. The eyes in his head went white and rolled up when she took a stone maize crusher and swung it with full force into his forehead, and he fell. To my left, his jaw clenched tight with anger, Bear Wolf, the strongest of the young man hunters of our village, had pulled one of the enemy off his horse, and was twisting his braids around in his left hand, a knife in his right. The enemy fell, again.

    On my right, I was lucky enough to look up just in time.

     He was riding right for me. It was an enemy old man. He had few teeth, but he had all his war and spirit decorations on, and he was heading straight my way, a lance in his hand. I could swear that I was unaware of aything other than cold stark paralysed fear.

     But he came on- and as the point of his lance came near, I picked up the spear lying on the ground, and when he came charging at me with his lance, mine was just long enough to get to him, bfore he could jab his into me. I stepped to the left as I punched its tip into his ribcage.

     I did not want to die. I did not want to kill. But he was enemy, and it was our village, and these were my people, and I took the lance and drove it straight deep into his chest. He looked at me with no sense of surprise, more an understanding- you are no longer the child. You are doing what I would have asked my own son to, if I were young and I were you. There was a glint of acceptance as well as respect as he fell, thick like a stone from the pony. He stared up from the dust, toward the stars.

    When the old man fell from his pony, I grabbed up the reins and jumped upon it. I rode to the side of the village where my parents had their tent, and brought them that pony, and tied it outside the tent. I went back to the body of the old man and took his necklaces. I did not want his scalp. What use would I have for it? I did not care to clutter my own lodge with this unwanted reminder, I had killed a man.

      Teardrop Star reappeared in the afternoon and I told him. He said I should be proud that I had done what was right. I did not feel it was right. The old man had lived his long life, and they were attacking us, but the look he gave me when he was dying made me feel that the entire war with the enemy- - was not really the way of the Wakan Tanka.But enemies are Indians too. And all men come through the Wakan Tanka and return there.

     I was too confused, I almost began to cry, though I could not and did not let Teardrop Star see.

     Later that evening when the village had a chance to repair the tents, patch whatever wounds there were- nobody on our side died, luckily- the elders all called a council. They called on me to tell my story. When I finished, the old chief who was even more respected than Bear Wolf handed me the pipe and told me to smoke with him, Bear Wolf, and the other big men and warriors. I sat with my eyes on my lap, and passed the pipe when it was offered, afte breathing in a breath and praying to White Buffalo Woman for the old enemy I had lain down.

Summer Baseball Thinking

     Halfway through the baseball season now, the All-Star break upon us. Time to take stock of our favorite teams and consider the prospects for their postseason runs...

     The San Francisco Giants end the second half in fairly good shape, albeit on a down note of 1-5 finishing road trip. Just before the fatal encounter with Washington and Pittsburgh, the Giants had shut down the Dodgers three days in a row and held the Reds to another shutout, and a week before, Matt Cain pitched a perfect game, the very first in Giants history (128 years of it).  The pitching this year has been good, if struggling with one lame wing.
 
     The lame wing belongs to the team's ace Tim Lincecum, who took a nosedive this spring with a 3-10 record. The surprise of the year for the Giants is that their wunderfreak Cy Young winner of three years back is now learning the facts of entropy, and arms lose velocity as they age, and that he isn't fooling people with the change-up like he was when things began. They are figuring him out. I like him but he needs to make adjustments and make new strategies. He should make a book on all the batters and how they've dealt with him, and vice versa, and work it, the way Greg Maddux did, and do more to finesse people than just slam fastballs past them.

     The other big surprise was the resurgence of Barry Zito, after three years, finally earning the top dollar the Giants paid for his contract. At 7-6 Zito has kept the team afloat- especially in the opening weeks of the season- and has been more reliable than any time int he last two seasons.

     Their off-season trades for Melky Cabrera and Jose Pagan paid off well. Cabrera is hitting at the top of the NL on as many days as not and while there have not been home runs, the team's offense looks better than it did last year. A half game behind the faltering Dodgers for first, they caught the Dodgers and may well pass them up and take hold of first by the end of August. If.
 
     There have been disappointments amongst the surprises. Aubrey Huff freaked out about his bad year last year and wore it on his sleeve into this year, and went down due to anxiety attacks. It could be a great cause of anxiety to have such frustrating declines in batting average and making outs in key RBI situations. Brian Wilson went down, but in my opinion, that was not such a bad thing.

     I have been no fan of Wilson's pitching, even as I enjoy his personality. A closer is supposed to go in and shut down the opponents. Not let them keep going! The Giants "torture" is all on Wilson Seven years ago when he came up I was cringing every time they'd bring in Wilson. You never knew if you were going to get a save or a blow. He's still like that. He improved over a couple of years and in 2010 he was passable, more saves than not, but only just. You want a guy who can bring you 1-2-3 outs. Like Sergio Romo is able to do. I would not mind seeing that scenario play out, Romo replacing Wilson as the Beard closer..

     The Giants bad week on the road won't affect their renewed vigor after the break. Four Giants were voted to the starting team, in no small part due to Giants fans stuffing the ballot boxes. As for that, I say, about time. All those generations past, spent watching the East Coast teams pack the ballot boxes with Yankees, Braves, Phillies, Red Sox players - I like seeing Giants on the All-Star team. The Giants Nation grew and picked up new fans in all those other baseball towns around America. No Giants fans are a presence in the foreign stadiums. The Giants have a vibe no other team has this year, even if they (still) don't yet have that one BAT.

And Time Ticks On

     The pathway to the little watch repairman’s cottage wound its way off a sidestreet. The dusty, muggy heat of a Delhi spring day lent a melancholy aspect to the mood of the approaching proprietor.

     Pandit Chaghandipore had held the deed to the cottage for over half a century, inherited from his father, a watchmaker and repairman himself. Pandit (his real name was Olema) had learned the trade by his father’s knee. In his seventeenth year, however, he had taken off to the wilds to live with the sadhus. He had eschewed material gain (at least, he did while still a young man) and had returned, to take up the family business.

    

     That, he felt, was needed, was because his father’s ailing health, and the knowledge thateven while he felt the lure of the mystic and love of God pulling at him, he could never turn from his father and mother in their time of need- of what charity would that prove, to live as an ungrateful son, in the company of monks? So he could not be a total or a “true”, “pure” renunciate, in this way.

     Over time, as well, he knew he could not speak any philosphy to the world which did not involve a compromise, or a balance, between his spiritual nature, and the material neccesity of existence. He refused, for example, to wander the world with nothing but an alms bowl. For to insist on living on the good will of others was to invite sloth and non-contriibution to society. This would only reinforce the bad karma of parasitism. He would rather earn his rice and beans than expect others to provide for him. In this he was only being practical- in ways his sanyassin brethren could little relate to.

 

     After a number of years in the shop, he began holding discussions after hours with various customers, who had come in with their troublesome timepieces, noticed the devotional photographs and paintings on his shop walls, and began making comments regarding them, asking questions, and leaving, with both their watches repaired, and the feeling that… Olema knew what was what about life. He might not have a family, nor wealth- his shop made just enough to keep afloat, and to set a side a small sum each month in a savings account- but Olema always made them feel, how should we say, but,

a little bit lighter, whatever their daily concerns, when they left.

    These discussion groups grew until Olema had a number of “regulars” coming every Wednesday night. Usually he would pick some line of scripture, whethter from the Ramayana, the Koran, the Bible, or even the Zendavesta, and the idea would be picked up and walked around the circle, so that each attendee was able to speak at length as to their own interpretation. For Olema felt that every unique individual had their own ideation of what constituted God- or what was not, or whether or not there even was a God. All ideas were welcomed in the groups. Usually debates were civil, and usually, everyone who came to the discussions, again, left feeling at the least like their own opinions had at least recieved an airing, whether or not a majority agreed.

    From this, then, grew Olema’s reputation, so that within a decade’s time, he had been unofficially given the moniker of “Pandit” or “Learned One” within his community, and as the discussion groups grew so then did the demands upon his shop, and so did the idea that Pandit Chaghandipore was perhaps “the best guru in the Province.” That, in a land of thousands of gurus per square mile! But he did not complain. He saw reputation for what it was- fleeting, and of no consequence other than it did allow him to keep working, both on ideas (for the varied input from the discussion attendees assured a wide variety, no less) and at the watch repairs- for now, people had begun to make excuses to bring him watches, when what they really wanted was a piece of his wisdom.

     For his own part, Olema began to enjoy the work, the fine detail and demands on his memory he flet were excellent challenges. Once in a while there might be a really problematic issue, but in those instances, he would advise the customer to save  for a new watch, and he apologized, letting them know that he never claimed to be able to fix every watch that came his way, only to attempt his best. Then there were cases where people had really messed up on their own, and what he was being asked to do was just not possible, because the delicate mechanisms had been ruptured beond anyone’s repair.

     Somehow, it was this honesty in acceptance that some things were repairable, others not, which led his customers (at first it was his customers, but as his patience became legendary, later, it was his disciples)- to spread his reputation beyond the little store on Chandi Chowk, and out into the suburbs and hinterlands. There really were times when he preferred, perhaps, to be back in the forests, his mind fixed on the ineffable, perhaps with a chillum and a pot of chai, and another sadhu to help explain whatever quandary he held at present.

     But now the words he had spoken had come to be passed along from mouth to mouth. Sometimes, a customer would come in with a perfectly good watch, only in order to ask a philosophical question. It was not in his nature to discount anyone’s motives, nor to toy with these types, when it was well within his power to send one or two home with a real put down. Put downs, he felt, were hardly in keeping with the life of a philosopher, nor one’s proper demeanor.

    

     And it was on this muggy day in the monsoon season that Olema was to have a rendezvous with fate, in some sense, unwittingly, as all such rendezvous manage to occur.

    The bell rang in the shop and he looked up. A memsahib stood there, her hair tied up in a kosher bun, holding in her hands a mud-encrusted timepiece. He smiled, nodded, and she placed it on his counter top. The woman was not much older than her early thirties, and he thought little more than “well, here is another customer to serve.”

    As he examined the watch, and brought a little emery file out from his tools drawer and began ticking the mud away from the face, she began explaining the crisis to him.

Her thick Welsh accent did not deter him, he could let her speak while he made his assessments without interruption.

    “My husband and I have just arrived here two days ago. We were headed out to see the Taj Mahal- wonderful place, I must say- and while we were on our way, riding in one of those little rickshaws, the clasp came undone, and my watch fell into the street. I asked the driver to halt, and, as he did so, a swarm of beggars fell upon the watch as it lie in the wet muddy street. My husband immediately got down and engaged in some struggle, resulting in his loss of fifty rupees in order to regain our possession. Anyway, at least he did not have to fisticuff his way out of that hideous mob and regain his seat- after the exchange of the money they all ran off together…

   

     “But my watch was all wet and muddy, so I tucked it into some tissues and left it until this morning. I have read reviews of your shop, and so, I decided to bring it by. Something tells me that you have the skill to repair not only the clasp, but perhaps, you might test the machinery and let me know if there’s damage or not.”

  

      She stood smiling as she waited. Olema had taken all the big mud off with his emery board, and now, only residue remained, and he could tell that this watch was perhaps one of the fanciest he had yet worked on. Having it in his care would be an honor, and with all these diamonds! My word, he would need to place it in the safe, when he was not in the process of deeper examination.

   

     “Yes, Memsahib, I can see this is a most fine piece of equipment here. And most valuable. We do have onsite a facility which we can safely say will keep it secure, and I cannot give you any deeper estimate of a cost at the moment, until I am able to take off the rear cover and ascertain what if anything is wrong with the gears the crystal and all. Meanwhile, feel free to wait here-“ (he indicated a chaise on which she was to rest her tourist bottom) and give me a few minutes, could you?”

  

      Her smile never wavered as she sat herself down, and looked around at the little shop’s walls. Olema enjoyed the various styles of devotional art and displayed a true eclectic’s eye for variety. There were Greek and Russian Orthodox icons, Roman Catholic novena cards, Hindu manifestations of Ganesh, Shiva, Vishnu, Rama and Krishna, an entire section made up of nothing but “guru-bhajan wallet photos”, and a number of hand-painted, brush-and-ink Buddha life scenes. She was fascinated. Never had she experienced such ecumenical variety in one place and this piqued her curiosity.

   

      “This is such a fascinating collection of religious photographs and paintings and all.

I was under the impression that people here in India are rather sectarian and separatist…”

     

     “Ah, but, Memsahib, we are a different bird than the common Indian, in this shop.

I hold spiritual discussion groups upstairs here – in fact, one will be this evening at 7 PM.

I must invite you – if you feel that this is your cup of tea that is.” He gave a little bow, and then, took her watch back to his work table, where he flicked on a desk lamp and put on his jeweler’s cup.

     

     He prised off the back of the watch, and saw that there was no real harm done. Everything seemed to be exactly in order, and so, really, what really all it needed was a good cleaning- the diamond settings alone would take an hour or more to get the crud from their nooks and crannies. The face itself had received no abuse, all this really meant was an exterior cleaning. She probably had not even checked it for accuracy since it fell, he thought to himself. He would replace the battery, however, so that it would be closer to true.

      

     “I have read some Zen Buddhism and I feel near to that way of life” she told him. “Will I be welcome in this discussion?”

   

      “Memsahib, all philosophy is welcome in my groups. We do not see evil in anyone, we only hope to find common ground and to leave each meeting with a sense more of what people deeply feel and hold as truth. No more, no less. You and your husband will be most welcome.”

  

      “Now, for your watch, here, we feel that we can have it all set right and all it really will need will be a cleaning, and if you agree to, a new fresh battery will be provided at no extra cost…” He did, however, want to get something from the woman for the cleaning, and the jam jars full of batteries he kept ready for any occasion were never a big expense – friends of his on the Chowk dealt in such things wholesale and supplied him with plenty.

   

     Please return in one hour, and I will have you watch sparkling fresh and shiny as the day… as the day…”

    She finished his sentence for him. “As the day my husband set it upon my wrist. Yes, thank you, Mr…”

   “Chaghandipore, Memsahib.” He took a business card from a little holder on the counter top, and handed it to her. She placed the card in her purse, and gave a modified curtsy, as she turned for the door.

   

     “Thank you, Mr. Chaghandipore- I shall return this evening.”

     When she left, he began his cleaning, using paintbrushes and wire brushes to clean the nooks and crannies. He took his time, making sure there would not be a single grain of dirt to defile the shining diamond frame. He buffed the case so that the glass shone, and when he was done, placed it into a snap-case with a velvet mount. Good as the day it went on her wrist, yes, Memsahib would be pleased.

      He opened the safe and locked it away. She would be back in the evening, so there would be a lot of time- and many locals calling-in the hours between. He did not wish to tempt anyone with the idea that this fantastic rarity might be –perish the thought!- for sale. Meanwhile, he would go upstairs, make the refreshments for the night’s meeting, and listen for the shop bell.

     Olema fancied himself a good cook, and so for this evening, he baked a tray of samosas, one of ginger cookies, and a large pot of kir. Several of the regulars were so fond of his kir they often took home a jar of it “for the kiddies”, although he knew, perhaps from their girth, that it was themselves they would indulge. He had four other customers come in, which interrupted the baking and the boiling and the cooling and the

jarring, but these were all set-asides, and work that he could tackle at his leisure.

    Tonight he wanted to deal with the current crisis of philosophy, “Existentialism and Nihilism- a Modern Solution, or a Quandary?” The debate would no doubt be dominated by the young men who felt the fashionable French philosophies, as well as the critical politics, were the wave of the future. He looked into his library, but he had no such books as Sarte nor Camus nor even Nietzsche. He had read, Nietzsche, of course, but much younger, and the idea of a post-moral superman, he also rejected, primarily due to its Nazi compulsions.

****

     Mrs. Abbryggdd had a hard time convincing her husband that she told him she would  absolutely go all by herself if he did not accompany her. As an English martinet from a sometime ecclesial family, he insisted such  a smatter of latter-day philosophy such as would be on the discussion board that night at Olema’s Philosophy Wednesdays.

     So it was only by a stealthy manipulation of Lord Abbryggdd’s emotions, ego, and British Raj tourist too much that he could but no longer withstand the nagging. He went, dressed in his pinstripes, white puttee,s and Dan Porter hat.

     They sat in the little room with four other individuals and six other empty chairs., waiting for Olema,  as he was finishing the making of tea and biscuits in the tiny kitchen just of the main salon. Music played over a radio-cassette boombox on a little table by the door, which also held two incense burners, fully ablaze.

     The music was Ali Akbar Khan’s. A sarod, a flute, a tabla, and violins. The two English minded their own while, as the four Indians – nor related, and of both genders- went on speaking to each other about the last week’s meeting. Would Olema be leading them into dangerous territory with tonight’s lecture? Some of the time, Olema knew that at least one of the audience would create a statement which so fully dominated the continuance of the dictating the “dichotomy of the week”, but newcomers always brought their own naivete and unspoiled perspectives. He would welcome having the English here.

     The lecture on Existentialism and Nihilism was one of the most interesting roundrobins Genevieve Abbryggdd had ever been invited to hear, and it would also prove to be the most divisive thing in her marriage in due time. After stating the point, people began with their own inputs. The young Indian woman in her twenties wanted to know if tantra and sexual yoga could be considered in the discussion, but it was overruled.

      “I would like to begin by asking which side of the argument you feel you want to take- which is more inclined to your way of thinking and you feel it is appropriate to live.

To an existentialist at least, there is an object to life, the purpose of which is to live it.

For the nihilist, there can be nothing got from life for nothing matters anyway, we are all doomed and for a menaing of –what” The nihilist motto is “to hell with it”, and the existentialist’s is “I hope I am doing enough.”

     The little man in the red fez and  kamiz said he absolutely didn’t care. He said that the arguments were moot. “All they are are examples of attitudes, not ways of life.

     “If nihilism was worth anything then where is the manifesto, where is the pinnacle of Nihilist thought, where have been their schools? They do not create, they destroy. Since nothing matters there is no reason to be, to do. For the existentialist, it is to do, or to die.

I can hardly see how we can make a long enough discussion over what is so obviously a cut and dried matter.”

    The little man took a sip from his teacup, cut a biscuit with his molars, and sat back in his seat, satisfied.

   

     The second Indian woman who had come dressed in nurse’s whites and silently meditated while the others had waited for the Pandit to fishih in the kitchen, opened her eyes and said this:

    “ What we are is what we are. If we do believe that to be is to be then I too say there is no use, no sense, no place for nihilism. Even if I were to consider the words of the Buddha that all is maya and a trap to attachment, I could not countenance the wanton disregard for the inner being, the ultimate degradation of all which is upright in the interior of the soul, which is this “nihilism’. How many good institutions could be founded from such nonsense? I should’t think any.”

     “Very well, Kamala.I tend to agree” said Pandit, sipping on the tea in his cup, smiling at the English, and looking out his window to the darkening sky over the western city.

  

     “I believe that such philosophies- the debauchees, the bacchanals, the infusions of Saint Anthony’s fire, all the rest, these are cyclical things which happen in societies once people have more time on their hands than they have work to do. Rarely were Indians out of work, because, there is always work for someone to do. Out caste system is really to blame for too much. But now I believe we have had a real new start. To be new. Even in our oldness.”

    “Hear, hear,” said the little man in the red fez and  kamiz,  resting his chin in his hands, listening, thinking, interested, disinterested.

       When the discussion was over- and they went on in such a fashion for the better part of another two hours- Lord and Lady Abbryggdd tipped their hats to Olema, the Lord collected another business card, and they hailed their rickshaw in silence. She knew that he was thinking, and that there was something brewing under his twitching mustache (it always did mean a storm was brewing) and she steeled herself for what would come when they were back behind closed doors.

****

    “ That was the most… the silliest… the ….  Oh, bother!” sniffed Stokely Abbryggdd, when they returned to the hotel that night. Lady Abbryggdd ordered a dinner up from room service, and as she ate (by herself- Stokely was too incensed and fuming) she considered that it might well have gone like that- for Stokely. She would have to wait until his Anglican Presbyterianed down a little bit.

     “I thought it was eclectically elucidating” she giggled. “I never get that sort of thing back home! Back home, it’s all workaday garden variety garden clubs and that sort. If you have no taste for the metaphysical, Stokely, I am afraid you will be asking yourself a lot more question s about the universe than you will ever get answers for.”

     “What the deuce is that supposed to mean?” he snorted. “All that is a lot of piggle-wiggle and bacon on the side.I just mean that, for myself, of course, there’s no need to ask that many questions. Things just are. What is not is not. And that, is rather simple, for me.”

     “Well, obviously, Stokely, I guess you just did not get to eat enough mushrooms, or something, back in the day. Those times were very good for some of us. Just because one person can’t handle a bad trip, that does not mean nobody else can, or even that they have them. And you would be a lot less of an atheist, if you had,” she sniffed back.

      “Hallucinogens? Bah! Food and fodder for little boys with big heads. I never saw anything in that Leary bunch. Belong on an Indian reservation, or something.”

     “Well, I am going then again, next week.”

     “What? Why? We are scheduled to be in Pondicherry next week! The subset are going to be expecting you.”

     “I have a right to my mind and my own time, Stokely”, she reminded him. Their prenuptial agreement did not state that Lady Abbrggdd need be at all and every of the clan’s traditional social register rituals. Especially here in the former Raj, where they still held a little interest,, at the least, on behalf of the natives.

     “Then I shall go by myself! I will not be showed up or not show up or be seat in any way in a bad light for our Indian retinue, whom we still pay good wages and who still regard us as honorable and honest!”

    Lord Stokely Abbryggdd had come to India to research his great grandfather, a contemporary of Robert Clive, one of the original Raj East Indian nabobs of the 19^th Century, that period of English imperial zenith and sunset. The family had lost their seat in Parliament, which had been theirs for generations, they had lost their lands and the castle (Keep Abbryggdd, in Gwldyr); they had been hounded pillar to post whenever Blimps wanted to make bones about one or another celebrity who had gone native, gone to ground, or gone to pound, in India… The Abbryggdd family was Welsh to the bone, and by coming to India to look after the trail of old Lord Percy Abbryggdd I, he would satisfy the curiousity Stokely’s father (Percy Abbrggdd; Jr.) had stoked in him at the earliest age.

    

     To return to India and ask again, why, the reputation he had earned in India was enough to get their entire line blackballed and eschewed the royal favor for the generations to come. The more they learned about Percy, who had not only gone native, but helped to arm the Sepoy and Gurkha against the Mahouts, and the Touts, the Louts, and the Redcoats, the more they realized how well-loved he actually was in India- by the Indians, mind you, not his own nation.

     And now all this bother that Genevieve puts me up against about this wise man she sees. Or what she sees in him, I do not know.

     But that night Stokely had on his mind getting to Pondicherry and observing the state of decay inevitable- of the old family home there, the mansion built with East India Company and Royal Treasury money. There were always new papers surfacing, new clues that could one day clear the good name of Abbryggdd back in the Home Realms.

There would be the inevitable toddy festival, as would what happened every time one of the expatriates came to Pondicherry, all their servants take the afternoon off and the entire grounds go on an afternoon jag of bhang and toddy… the air would be thick with hashish and incense, and of course, there would be music.

      And Stokely, of course, in whose honor it was being held, would have to hold his own without Genevieve at his side. He should not fare so badly. He had been through the toddy festival five times already, and to tell the truth, he liked it more each time. Genevieve apparently had enough after only  her first two.

****

    When Stokely took off the morning of his scheduled train to Pondicherry, Genevieve got up and let the windows and breeze in. She felt the air, the soft turbid droll which is Delhi in early June. She made her way, at a reasonable hour, to Pandit Chaghandipore’s shop. Making small talk, she soon moved herself into such a position that she was eye to eye with Olema, looking deeply at him, taking his hand in her own.

       Lady Abbryggdd leaned over Olema, closely.

      Her pearls hung down over her ample and zafdig decolletage. The scent of her English perfume (Bain Water) in Olema’s nostrils. Mingling with the perfume, the thicksmoke of the incense and her realization that now, here, in Olema’s salon, was (and would be the only) time she could have a man other than Stokely. The stocking she chose for that evening were the oldest and rankest of the lot she had brought along- the remainder of which were recent indeed.

     By her standards. It would be even better to enjoy India with no underpants at all, since the weather was hot enough, anyway. She wasn’t just yet aware that the India of 1980 was not the India of 980, and a woman without underwear in this society would be a tinderbox for the average single Hindu male. For his mind, for his attention, for his affections. Such a woman would definitely be a catch! Which was why, the rickshaw they had driven the afternoon the mob stole her watch and dropped it in the mud, had been followed by just this type of Indian, in a score. Lord had driven them off, yes, but she could tell the “liberal west”had a long way to go in this part of the world.  Muslim piety and Hindu asceticism had made good sure of that.

   

      As though all the “Kama Sutra” monuments of Khajuraho were really only a blip in time, and had existed for a patient moment, and then the world had just gone back to being hung up about being naked, and about sex, all over again. For an Englishwoman of her generation to relate to the prudity of the average Indian was not yet comprehensible. Someday it might be, but not now, while Mrs Abbryggdd held Olema by  the hand, and guided it beneath her skirts, he struggled to free himself form his own clothing, bottom end first.

    Soon, she had off all his clothes, and as they kissed, she implored him to take her.

        

      No, the India of 800 years ago was not the India of today, but Mrs. Abbryggdd felt assured that she could bring Olema to the modern one by the time she was done this afternoon. The Pandit did not resist. He fumbled around and found his way into her.

****

     Afterward, she left him behind with a small envelope, with a great deal of cash in it.

     Olema felt torn in two directions. On one hand, he felt he was not a prostitute, and if she  were offering this money in return for the favor of his sexual indulgence, it would mean she could never really uphold the role of a chela, or even, a regular attendee. Just that the personal relationship had occurred made that a non possibility. That she would return to England soon, when Stokely returned from Pondicherry, was a certainty.

     There would therefore be no gossip among Pandit’s sewing circle (which was larger, after all, than the four that had showed up to the evening the Abbryggdds attended)- and at that, Olema chuckled. He also thought of how funny it was, this little thing, about gurus and memsahib chelas and sanyassins and saddhus- they seemed to be symbiotic, and the sexual involvement had to be either the absolute most chaste, or the most profligate and promiscuous libertine, to qualify as being of integrity, and not corrupted, but either way, men were just men, after all.  

****  

     He put the money in his bank. Perhaps it might make a big help for his young nephew, who was studying the sitar, and also, western instruments like guitar. If  he did not spend it himself, but used it to better the life of someone else, then there had been no prostitution of himself at all. Besides, the sort of amusement offered by a delicensed woman  like Lady Abbryggdd – perhaps it made every Pandit a little more worldly, a little more believable, a little more honest in the eyes of the average Indian.

     Stokely Abbryggdd’s return from Pondicherry was met by a very different Lady Abbryggdd than he had left behind, of course, in more ways than Stokely could know. The trip had been something of a success- while once again, the retainers the Abbryggdd clan had left behind with orders to research and collect any documents, writings, watercolors, etchings, indeed, whatever the old nabob had left intestate mislaid around India somewhere- they had once again failed to turn up new works or papers of any sort since 1947. Stokely began to question the sense of always traveling to India after all that.

What if it all left somehow for Pakistan? They had not even considered it, how daft of them.

     So when he drew himself back into Delhi and the arms of the new Genevieve, he welcomed her avid attentions. She was certainly adding on more than she generally would, which was to say, rarely if but out of some wifely duty. But now Genevieve was being… friendly.

     This enough would be enough, perhaps, to soothe the irritated fur of the lion, but she threw herself upon him sexually in a manner that she had not since they first met, when they were in their mid twenties. And now he responded, with a vaguely detached, curious, and altogether observant point of view. Indeed, there was nothing he could take for granted about Lady Abbryggdd any longer- not after that night’s performance.

     So the Lord Abbryggdd declared the trip to have been a success, in one fashion at least, and he returned to England and the jolly’o’s and old chaps and nick it while you cans and walked tall- a peacock, if a somewhat bewildered one. And soon she was taking herself to gynecologist’s appointments. And soon enough, their might be an heir!

An actual male heir for Lord Abbryggdd! That might fight on, in that dogged Welsh manner, for the manor and the manner born, to never say die, my goodness.

   “Have you thought of a name for the little blighter?” He asked, nine months after the return from India, after the afterbirth had been swabbed, the birth certificate left blank for the fortnight, the babe swaddled and in and out of all the relative’s arms.

     “I will call him Guru.” She answered. “Because he will be a guru. He will be a wise and a patient man, both as a child, and as a boy, and as a man. IT will be the world that remembers him, whether or not he cares to remember having come, at the end of his road, or not. But I know he will be bright and intelligent, like his father.”

       Stokely beamed. He held the little blighter,tickled, and the little boy smiled and cooed and made sounds that one might call baby laughs, explosions of pleasure not yet fashioned into any one tongue of expression and a national or a racial language. Guru, he thought, yes, that might be a good name. Set you off from all those gadabout laddies, the run of the mill, the sawdust from the mill. Set you out a fine man, we shall.

     The little boy’s eyes twinkled and laughed up at Stokely. He barely noticed the boy’s eyebrows... thick, pondering, and black.

[author's note: This story was originally posted in two parts, this is a consolidation of both]
for the full story as well as others see https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/308624

3-23-74

     The Dead were playing at the Cow Palace soon- it was now March of 1974. I had no ticket, but figured that I would get one when I got up there. After looking at the situation in the refrigerator (one slice of ham for a sandwich was about all there was in ready-made food- the side of bacon from the construction contractor last Christmas was still basically untouched)- I made one, stuck it in the pocket of my surplus field jacket, and hitchiked up there.

     I ran into Donohue in line. He had also come up from Pacifica via Geneva Avenue, and we were both pretty jazzed to be catching the Dead again. Inside, there was a real change in the way things looked up on stage. It seemed there were now hundreds, literally, of speakers lined up in tall stacks behind the band. Well, there had also been a lot of them at that concert at Kezar, but now, we were talking twice as many and stacked twice as high.

     This then was the premiere of the famous Wall of Sound- a PA system unparalleled, unrivaled, and heretofore, unprecedented in the annals of music history. Each stack of speakers was set for one instrument, one only, with the exception of the bass, which got four. (Or two, but separated into four channels.) The midrange vocals were hanging in a configuration a lot like a rounded halfdome set on its side, at the center of the stage, and hanging from a scaffold. There was Keith’s grand piano, and everyone had those Macintosh power amps with the little glowing blue dials. I think there was even an oscilloscope hooked up to Lesh’s amp stack. In any case, it was a marvelous impression all that gear made, and the sound- when it happened- was absolutely spectacular.

     The PA had been tuned for the hall, this would be its first shakedown cruise, but in general, the way they worked was they would acoustically test each hall while setting up, and figure out the exactly best angles for the different columns. The propaganda they sent us through the Dead Heads newletters said this was so that {“each seat and each person in the hall could have a pristine field of hearing up to 100 yards”}*

     There was no opening band- from the start, when they came out playing US Blues, one got the feeling this would be a very, very special night. Kevin dropped half a hit of acid he had got from one of the ‘Bini Brothers back on the coast that day, I had just a few joints in my pocket, but I had a lovely time. Acid was never that neccesary for a good Dead show experience, it just happened I was not in the mood for it that night.

     Kevin, however, by the end of the night, had been through some Stygian nightmares.

     The center of the hall made a good place to begin the show, and I was there for most of it.

Once the second set began, (with a long “Playing in the Band-Uncle Johns Band-Morning Dew-and back out again” sandwich), I was really feeling upbeat. Getting to the midpoint of Morning Dew, everything so quiet, you might have heard a pin drop. I listened to audience tapes of the night  later with Scott Wiseman and discovered that my clapping along (in time, and rather loud!) seemed to dominate that part of the tape. 

Oh well, I said, I’m not in this world to help you make pristine Dead tapes, I am at a Dead show to party!

     Kev went for a walk back into the area behind the arena and ran into a guy he said looked “just like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot’. Ramblin’ Jack had blown our minds, discovering one little song on a tape in Charlie’s collection,  his “912 Greens” song about the folks down in New Orleans he met one year, and his line:

     Did you ever stand and shiver-

     Just because you were looking at a river…

     Well, we did learn later, it actually had been Ramblin Jack. And the song was truly iconic for both of us, opening us up to all kinds of hopeful future situations…

     While Kevin was out there in the lobby beginning to feel like he was Dante exploring the outer regions of the circles of Hell, I was in the arena, toward the back, beginning to get my own snapshots from Hades. 

A young woman about my age, perhaps a year or two older, was dancing barefooted in front of me. 

I noticed there was a broken quart beer bottle right there underneath her feet, and I tried pulling her away, toward where she wouldn’t need step on any of the shards. She kept pulling back from me and going on with her dancing. After three or four such attempts and screaming each time into her ear “There’s broken glass down there!” I finally gave up. There’s only so much you can do, for people unwilling (or too high) to receive help, I suppose.

     Kevin and I linked up again right at the end of the show, and we hitched ourselves a lift back down the coast highway to the Marine Boulevard house. The driver looked a lot like Jerry Garcia, himself, but he was a welder and lived farther down the coastside from us, and Moss Beach was no trouble. The spooky rocks and cliffs of Devil’s slide in the dark, let us know were were, indeed, exiting Hades and coming back to more familiar territory.

     Debbie, Suzanne and a Half Moon Bay kid named Mike Watson were up at the house, wide awake, drunk, and offering us more. I had a little of the beer,  smoked what was left of my pot, and Watson wandered off into one of the corners and puked. I guess it had been a good party! In the morning I got up, showered and hitchiked back over the hill.

 *{more or less. I no longer have the document to express it in exact terms}

[excerpted from No Backstage Passes In Heaven (an autobiographical memoir)]

Nadastra Snivaras

     The stark white tin of the roof of the van replaced the black inkling stars of the early morning sky, as Nadastra Snivaras woke at the ungodly hour of 3 AM. First things first, he thought, rolling up his sleeping bag and heading inside to his little shop, and lighting 

a stick of incense, he placed it at the altar and began his puja.

     It had been some sixteen years since he had slept with his wife, who still mended his clothing, and now did her own share of work in the shop with him. It was cheaper than hiring more workers, who only had to have things explained to them. Some were fast learners, but if they showed any signs at all of not being attentive- if, for example, they were intellectually trying to solve something other than the matter at hand, he would impatiently drive them forward with immediacy and determination.

     Maybe he hadn’t always been this way, since his conversion thirty some years before, when a traveling swami lecturer came through his town, and was rounding up disciples. “My guru,” sighed Nadastra, with an exhalation following, “Om, Shiva.” His guru was half a world away, now milking a cow in the ashram, then distributing the pot of milk to the many village children who called him Bapu.

     Nadastra blew on the incense, waved it before his guru’s portrait, supplicated himself to the statue of Shiva, and placed fresh flowers in the vase beside it. Once upon a time, his name had been Timothy, but that was before he became enlightened. Once upon a time he had been in the service, but that was a lifetime away now also. He couldn’t hack it, they had all called him a sad sack then, but he was going to show them, the stupid morons. He’d gone into university soon after his dishonorable discharge and got himself teaching credentials as an astronomy and mathematics professor. He knew what was what.

     What he knew now was all so different. He would need to consult his Vedic astrologer for a little more information about the current aspects. The business was going to be in hot water soon. Soon he’d need to lay off more of his worthless staff, if they couldn’t come up with more sales. It was all their fault. Inventory never seemed to get displayed properly, our advertising isn’t good enough, our customers are demanding payment, rather than the deferred credit options that he preferred. After all, it was easier to pay people in play money for what he couldn’t afford to spend on anyone other than his wife and daughters, and having a son in law on his way from overseas now, he needed every dime he could get, in order to cobble a good story up for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

     As for the inventory, half of that was crap, anyway, he thought. I have to keep items here because I never know when that one person who believes that item was made just for them is going to walk in. He hated the new wave of atheistic, tattooed yuppies who made up two thirds of the customer base now. But he always wanted them to be mollified, and maybe it was his karmic lesson, to learn to need to satisfy those people he would have despised, in any other situation.

     His wife showed up at close to 9:30 and began her usual daily routine, working in the back room. Her job consisted of toiling diligently all day with a can of lighter fluid and a razor blade, scraping hour by hour to clean price stickers from past sales off the various comics and magazines the store bought to resell. Other items that needed cleaning were also sent past her. Dolls, jack-in-the-boxes, puzzles, games, stuffed animals. Snivaras couldn’t give a damn if she sucked up carcinogens all day long, and she seemed not to mind much either. He’d much rather be exposing a member of his own family to this than some actual employee, who someday might instigate a lawsuit, should they become cancerous even indirectly. Scraping by by scraping. It wasn’t all so bad.

     For Nadastra, there was absolutely nothing but the business that mattered. He could never openly show his contempt for those he employed, that would have been bad policy. Instead, he hid it all behind a cover of “striving for harmony. Our business is not to make money but to spread harmony” he’d say. Of course, the fact he paid little money out of hand for health insurance- even managed to hold off offering any, until absolutely required to under new federal regulations, didn’t bother him, nor did the idea of even entertaining retirement accounts for his employees ever mean a thing, either. The only people who’d be able to earn anything off his enterprise in retirement were he and his partner, and the two of them together believed employee austerity was a far better business model than employee profit sharing. There would be none of that in his little kingdom!

     So his day was beginning easily enough, until Craith showed up. Craith was the office gofer, the chief cook and bottle washer, the man without whose expertise in used comic books Snivaras would have been totally at sea. He had been there the longest of all the other employees, and he had worked hard for Snivaras. In fact, there were many, many things about the daily operation of the store he was on top of before Snivaras ever had a clue- that was how good he was.

     On plenty of occasions, Craith had saved Snivaras’ ass, of course, and even those occasions went right past Snivaras. The time the fire marshals had breezed through, looked the joint over, and written up a thirty-three point citation. Craith had handled that directly, and had set a couple of the other workers to busy correcting the problems before Snivaras even knew the Fire Department had been by. It had been three weeks before he received a letter, informing him that the store was not in compliance.

     “Ask them to come by again,” said Craith. When the Inspectors came through again,on the very afternoon, this time they were quite pleased. No longer were the stacks and shelves topped off with another row of books, reaching to just inches of the ceiling. No longer was the asbestos fiberglass in the attic of the store drooping from the roof and contributing to the general fire hazard. Of course, a store dealing in comic books, old phonograph records, and magazines, would be bound to be a tinderbox for any suspected arsonist. But those matters had been handled under Craith’s diligent eye, and for now, at least, Snivaras knew he could depend on another great write-up from the Chamber of Commerce.

     Craith never liked interrupting Snivaras. Sometimes it was indeed necessary, as when the delivery truck, which took many of the newly bought comics and records off to the online center where his partner worked, didn’t show up on schedule. The truck not being there might mean a huge backlog of transport cartons and banker’s boxes would pile up in the rear entry hall – another situation the Fire Marshall would be unhappy about. The backlog could sometimes take a week to clear out, in that case, since the store continued, daily, to buy more and more material. Some of it would go immediately out to the shelves, some of it would immediately be sorted for the online, and a lot of it ended up in the back room, where Mrs. Snivaras scraped and scraped.

     At precisely ten o’clock, the next of the dedicated crew turned up- two elderly ladies, who had supported the store from its inception, and Pandanus, another one of the more experienced hands. Pandanus had spent a great deal of his younger life working as a musician, although for now, he found the comic store all-consuming. It was also gaining him friends, and that was another benefit. Besides being able to borrow and read any new comics, or listen to any new (used) records, the store afforded him a social life he could neither beg, borrow, or steal on his own efforts. Pandanus was something of a humble geek, in other words. He didn’t possess the self-assurance of Craith, nor the ability necessarily to hide out his own flubs from Snivaras. Snivaras’s eagle eye, of course, could spot a miscue from around a corner and behind a blind wall. It had to be that way, of course.
     

     The two of them, Pandanus and Craith, spent a great deal of time chatting each day with the two elderly ladies (Joann and Pisces). Pisces had spent her childhood in Argentina and loved the memory of the wild, free flat pampas, flinging a bolo at escaping grouse, hotting and hollering like a true gaucho. Joann came from the Rocky Mountains, where her own childhood had been spent shooting rattlesnakes and mountain lions. She was nobody's fool, either. They had both, however, become a part of the religious order to which Snivaras belonged, and through it, had become his employees. So they served with impressive loyalty and were probably the most well-remembered point of contact for the store’s many regulars.

     The regulars were a cast of characters deserving a story all their own. But to serve this one, we’ll only mention two or three, the most problematic, perhaps, from the point of view of the clerks and owner, but also the ones who had contributed primarily to the welfare of same as well, due to their addiction to the comic trade.

     Perhaps one of the most vexing was their friend Tracy. Tracy was paraplegic, and so, was precluded from actually visiting the comic book store personally. So he would call, four times a day at times, to ask if they had the most recent Batman the Twilight Avenger, or X-Men, or just whatever it happened to be that he had been reading about online. Almost every phone call he made to the store, Tracy would mention how he was reading a blog that mentioned (said comic) and so he was interested if the store had it yet. Pandanus would roll his eyes – usually, no one had let go of the recent releases- rarely anyone ever did until they were at least six months old. So Pandanus was often the one the other clerks would turn to if Tracy was calling. Generally if anyone knew that something was in or not, it might be Pandanus.

     Craith had his own problems at the moment- one of them was, are we going to be paid on time again, or not? More often than not, no, the paychecks would be delayed again, for up to two weeks. Craith wondered how Nadastra expected anyone to survive, on a regimen that paid out only once per month, demanded that each employee budget on to the very last penny three weeks ahead (if not two entire months) and did not cash out advances, either. It was as though they were all little chicks chasing after the big mother hen who might dash them a grain of corn, if they were lucky, but otherwise forced each of them to peck willy-nilly for whatever crumbs they could fathom on the edge of the pen.

     Craith slammed the door after the last discussion with the book keeper. No, of course not, there was not enough money in the tiller to pay everyone on time. Now, each clerk would need to wait until a pre-specified day to cash a check that wasn't worth the paper it was written on- until that day. Uniformity was apparently another essential business function that had been relegated to the medieval business model Nadastra and his partner had made their own.

     Some of them were lucky actually, to have a cult to belong to, which coincidentally allowed them the luxury of being assured a roof over their heads. For at least two others, the surety of a loving wife, and her substantive income, was all that held them apart from the various homeless who would sometimes camp out on the benches outside the store.

     So it was just such a day. Craith was pissed off. There was not going to be a payday for him for the next eleven days- and this was the seventh straight month in a row that Nadastra was not paying out on schedule. “It’s all late again!” he muttered to Pandanus. Pandanus would just shrug and say, “Oh well…”

     Of course, if one asked Nadastra exactly why pay was late, it would generally be some lame excuse such as, well, we didn’t have it budgeted exactly (thank you, Mrs. Bookkeeper!) or ‘your section isn’t performing up to standard. I want to see you step it up and improve the display” or something guaranteed to switch the blame to the employee, and get it off his own back.

     Of course now, Nadastra was a pillar of his community. The religious cult he and the elderly women belonged to asked him each year to lead their biggest festival, the Diwali. But there was going to be a wrinkle in it all this year. Since the bookkeeper had not budgeted for the store’s IRS bill this year, Nadastra and his partner both were going to be forced to work overtime for several months, put most of the stock out on discount tables, and nobody was going to be getting any raises this year, either, by the way. Worst of all, he wouldn’t be able to lead the congregation in the Diwali bhajans. Horrors!

     “It’s been a long time since I was even able to feel grateful I had a job at all,” Craith completed the idea. To that, Pandanus returned another shrug.

     Now, it never really occurred to Nadastra what-all fiscal responsibility to his employees might mean. As mentioned before, employees were a necessary evil, hired only when the staff just couldn’t take another camel-straw, and as easily let go as the ones who really could not stick it out under the harsh once-a-month pay schedule broke on the rocks of their self-dignity.

     That was why it was up to Pandanus to mop the floors and scrub out the toilets every day before customers arrived, and to vacuum the rugs across the entire square footage. This had to be done each day, of course, lest customers get the idea that nobody cared about appearances. The fact the rugs were at least as old as the store itself didn’t seem to make a difference either, so long as they were clean. So often, Pandanus might spend fifteen minutes to clear a long string of rug from between the vacuum’s rollers. Adding to the frustration might be the fact that sometimes the vacuum would have had a similar problem when the night janitor used it, and they’d set the drive belt back in, backwards. Such were the petty problems. Nadastra liked to apply himself to the bigger questions.

     And so, the petty questions, the smaller things that were the glue that held his store together, were mainly handled by Cratih, Pandanus, his wife, and their younger daughter. Craith sometimes wondered what made a cool chick like that stick around. Apparently there was some family loyalty that went beyond growing up a second-generation converted Hindu vegetarian. But that was a question he just couldn’t answer. It all seemed at times to be too much to bother with. He tried to focus on the things about the work he actually enjoyed- such as, the opportunity to see books others wouldn’t, first crack at a good read, and the ability to borrow any work he wanted to. And sometimes, the odd incoming item that would prove interest above and beyond the call of shelf life.

     Such an item turned up one afternoon while Nadastra was off visiting his partner at the online office. It was a… very special comic book. The cover, for one thing, showed the very back counter where Craith and Pandanus were sorting the new used items. And there was Nadastra, sitting behind his computer as was his usual way on a weekday afternoon.

   
     There behind the counter, engaged in a conversation- were Pandanus and Craith, drawn very meticulously accurate, and Craith looked up at the seller and smiled.

     “How many of these in production?”

     “I believe we ran a thousand to begin with. We’ve sold a lot, actually.” Craith also recognized the face before him at the counter. It was Daniel Harmoneras, a well-known comic artist and a local character. He didn’t question why Harmoneras might have been in line on this particular day, as he skimmed the pages, he noticed… things about the comic that made it… rather more interesting, the further he went.

     Meanwhile, Harmoneras stood waiting for his ticket to be written up. Tales From A Crypt was but one of a stack of sixty comics he had brought in- all of them still pristinely packaged in slipcovers, most all of the in mint condition. Harmoneras had brought in, it seemed, his entire 1960’s-70’s underground collection-rarities such as Air Pirates Funnies, Dirty Duck, Dan O’Nelll’s Bodkins… the list went on- many Crumbs, Craith noted… also a lot of Gilbert Shelton and Kitchen Sink. This would be an expensive ticket.

     Nonetheless he wrote him up. Harmoneras needed the cash. Again, Craith didn’t ask questions. He handed him the slip. Harmoneras nodded. $175 might be a little low for some of these titles, but he had to take into account the store needed to profit by the purchase.

     As Harmoneras left to cash the slip in at the front register, Craith called Pandanus over to have a look.

     “My my, said Pandanus. It appears we’re going to be famous! Will you let me borrow it after you're done?”

     Craith nodded. Meanwhile, after another short skim and looking over, he stuck the comic in his backpack for reading at home that night.

     It wasn’t very flattering, he found, but at least, Harmoneras hadn’t made him the target of his pen. Apparently Harmoneras and Snivaras had had dealings in the past. Harmoneras didn’t feel that good about things, and each page of the comic (it was a four color press) showed Snivaras in ever increasingly critical situations. Apparently Harmoneras had some sort of third eye, some extrasensory perception, as each panel seemed to depict something that Craith absolutely remembered vividly as an incident that had either upset or annoyed him, as to some aspect of Snivaras and his personality.

     It was a lot like being inside a disappearing Chinese hall of mirrors. Nevertheless, he found it clever, inspiring, and absolutely riveting. By the time he had finished the comic he had made up his mind.

     When he dropped the comic with Pandanus the next morning, he also left a note inside Nadastra’s inbox. 

     “Sorry to do this, sir, but I am taking an indefinite leave of absence.
I am sure you will find suitable replacements for my services.” He smiled. There would be a lot of hard work ahead, but he knew- he didn’t feel like living in that disappearing hall of mirrors another day.

     Snivaras did strike some people that way. The Dickensian manner in which he had managed the shop had not only alienated his most serviceable employee, it had stranded the most tenured ones. For the afternoon that Harmoneras had visited, he had given pink slips to the two old ladies. They had sat with him for two hours afterward, crying in their handkerchiefs. “But – this will destroy my life” said Pisces.

     “Now… if I have a choice between destroying someone’s life and saving my business, well, there’s no question for me, I’m going to save my business” he answered. Apparently beneath his holy and righteous exterior he hid an inner Macchiavelli- willing to kick over anything and anyone that got in his way- the end justifies the means- who were these people, these annoying drains on his personal profit, these tax liabilities, these expenses of medical insurance he often fudged on reporting because of his contempt for federal regulations? And there was plenty of crap on the shelves- fully half of it is crap, he thought, and he made no secret of it. But still, he needed every copy of every comic book that came out, just in case that one person would walk in who needed that one book-

     Pandanus pulled his jacket down at the end of his long shift. He had read the new comic over his lunch break. He considered leaving a note, himself. But no. Instead, as he turned out the lights, he left the comic sitting on the stool where Nadastra would find it in the morning. And then, he was turning out the light, and locking the door behind him.

     For Nadastra, it would be a lonely future.

Transition- Back to Suburbia

     Moving is always a hassle no matter who you are. I am making my third move in as many years- in 2009 I moved from San Francisco to the Peninsula (Menlo Park)- in May of 2011 I moved to Mountain View and Kurt Kieffer’s restored 1880 farmhouse- and now in March of 2012 I depart “the country” for the more relentlessly suburban life across town, in a six-plex where we have a corner unit with a large backyard.

   Of course I would not have it any other way that I found a place with a yard, since Carolyn’s pets would have had to have been split up, otherwise, and I didn’t feel like living with a woman stressing out over having had to give up a pet for the ability to have someplace to go- since the farmhouse was always one of those “only so much time to be here” kinds of deals, and Carolyn is up against the limit of other things in her life… recuperating from a foot injury she got on the job working for Whole Foods when she broke an ankle and having a terrible time getting back to health, with a possibility remaining of future surgery and another year’s recovery…

No, I don’t think it would have been a good idea to move Carolyn without her dog. And neither, her cat, who’s grown rather fond of me his own self. Two unrelated and uninvolved members of the opposite sex have to respect each other’s space and we do. It’s actually kind of like an experiment for myself, to see how well I can relate to another of the opposite sex in living closely without the emotional gamesmanship that goes along with relationships, but since we had mutual friends we have a leg up on being total strangers trying it. For financial reasons, I having been unemployed almost the entire time I lived at Kieffer’s, and her being on workmen’s comp, we needed to get someplace we could afford that would afford us fewer nuisances like credit checks, references, let us keep the dog and cat and still come up within our mutual shelter budget.

The dog and the cat, well, they just have to deal. The large acreage of the Calderon Avenue house was carefree- we could let either of them out any hour of day or night and they would be relatively no bother. Here they are crowded into a fraction of the space they once had, so their territoriality senses will have issues for a few weeks, if not longer. And there are other critters about who have tenure... they need to get used to that.

    The fact Carolyn was so close though, to the Expresso band and all of its members, and that she is into photography, and is also a friend of my newest musical collaborator Bundy Browne, makes for our getting along too. Not to mention that we both grew up within a couple of miles of each other on the South shore of Oahu during the early 1960’s, and that she, her sister and I all happened to go to the same school there for a time (Punahou) leaves us with a lot to talk about. She also has similar musical tastes that range from acoustic and electric ja and blues through the Dead, the SF rock scene of the 60’s. and mid-sixties Brit-rock like the Beatles, the Stones, as well as Dylan.

     Carolyn’s relationship to Kieffer was something like “sister out-of-love” That is, while they were never lovers, they had lived together (like this) off an on several times over their lives. Carolyn has tons of Kieffer stories- my own friendship with him was so far back (adolescence) that many of them I just absorb and grin… Kurt was the first guy I knew who built his own bong- out of something other than bamboo. Long ago, my  friend Kevin’s brother John brought a bong up from Santa Barbara on a college break. The pipe grew in popularity anongst John’s younger brothers, Matt, in particular, who was Kurt’s best friend many years, began going on raids (with Kurt) in the upper reaches of San Carlos’ Eaton Avenue, for tall bamboo stalks to be cut into foot-sized bongs. After a couple of years of bamboo pipes, however, it was Kieffer got the idea first to make a ceramic bong. Under the cover of creating a coffee cup in his high school Ceramics class, he crafted a pipe known as the “Treebeard bong”- it has a pipestem shaped like a face, with the pipe bowl where the nose might be. Carolyn still has this pipe, which Kurt gave to her many years ago as a token of friendship… nowadays they are all made of pvc and glass, but Kieffer was the first person I can recall, as early as 1971, who made the personal creative step of taking the traditional Vietnamese design one step beyond.

     As a performer, Kurt’s style of playing- tone, phrasing, is nost similar to Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, John McLaughlin, Stevie Ray Vaughn- who were his heroes. He liked Jerry Garcia, but didn’t especially go for Dead music per se-”too sloppy”- nor hope to be part of the Dead Scene the way I did. His playing was often flashy for the sake of flashiness, but as he aged and matured he became, like me, one of those “less is more” type of players. Steve Miller once commented on his prowess and offered to make Kurt a part of his band- whether Kurt really needed the boost or not, life circumstances were such as he didn’t take Miller up on it. Besides, in Steve Miller’s band there could really only be room for one star. And (in my opinion), Kurt was obviously the focus of Expresso… though I am sure the other members might argue it! He only would have eclipsed Miller, given the time.

     My other favorite memory of Kurt came through hanging out with the Donohue’s when their home on Frances Lane in unincorporated Deadwood was sold. We would hang out in the living room with the piano, which had not been moved out, alhough the family already had, and Kurt drew a large mural on the living room wall, a mountain scene similar to Mount Tam, and it was fun to play the piano and imagine oneself inside the picture. Certainly those few weeks between the one house and their new one (on Southgate St.) were idyllic- no adults around, and the house to ourselves, we would smoke what and when we wanted…

     However, because Carolyn and I are not an item (nor planning on becoming one), there’s the space to be ourselves without the private stress of intimacy. She has an ex-boyfriend comes round a bit, Jose, but on that I dare not speculate. Now that I am working again once more I can begin seeking out that other part of my soul who’s been hiding the last fifteen years or so, while I struggled back from divorce, uprooted from one home (or two), several jobs which took me from working class to middleclass and back again, (and now once more on the upswing) and I am ready as I will ever be for all that relationship means.

One thing I mean it to mean is loyalty on both sides of the aisle. I am never the one who leaves, who quits, who walks away from a love. No, it’s always the other way around. I am the one who gets left, (usually, for some jerk who’s less intelligent, less creatively talented, and less individualistically assertive, and I suppose by all that, "less threatening?") and I have little to apologize for in order to “deserve” a future relationship, certainly a lot less than I may have had at age 23, when everything I had worked for to that point failed me. No, if I have someone to love, they are my life and world, so this time around I intend not to give 100 % to anyone who won’t give 100 % of themselves to the “us”. Only in that way can you really achieve “50-50” anyway. And don’t you know that finding love is only the beginning? THEN the hard work begins! Too many people are running from being committed. I never ran from it, I just have done without it, since I can’t seem to find partners worthy of the matchup, or haven’t yet, at least. Forever is always scary to a coward, & I suppose I have never been afraid of living.

  

Anyway, moving helps you to focus on what you need in your life and what you don’t. During these last three moves, I have shed a little of my baggage, and yet still have one box full of ephemera, effluvium, stuff that had a purpose or has a future use which is yet cloaked in uncertainty. Things that could come in handy, “if”/”when”. And once I work my way through that box, tossing the needless and the purely dead wood, then I’ll have the ship on a trim sailing footing.

My work now involves describing pictures in textbooks for the blind. This involves seeing things in a different perspective- undertanding things from the perspective of those who cannot see but who are relying on your ability to communivate what you see, what the message is of the image, without subjectivity or editorialism.
I can’t add what isn’t being explained to any explanation, it always needs to be in the context of the text and a particular lesson. In some ways it is like being Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984- I have to help interpret history to the blind, and in some cases, make corrections (or allowances) for the stupid historical ignorance of (some) supposed professors of same. And I get off on being able to write better descriptions than “professors” and PhD’s would, in their “specialty” subjects. There is a difference between being able to recite history, and being able to interpret a historical artifact like a political cartoon, without bias…

But nonetheless, it is being paid for creative writing. Like, all I need to do now is get the publishing world to take on some of my work… there’s a lot on the shelf, in the drawer, completed work, work that can be completed on spec (if there’s backing) and work that’s just completed, needing only an editor to pick and choose and frame in a manner that’s acceptable… to those folks in those places & offices. For all the years I have spent working, getting paid for writing was always a goal, but it’s a hope that now that it’s working for me (one way) it can score for me the other way too… we’ll see. At the least I am getting in on the ground floor of a new assistive technology and getting my feet wet in electronic publishing. The way I look at it, it can all ony get better, because things have been (for far too long) going in a direction that required good financial management, deprivation, and rethinking of materialistic needs and acquisitions, and sheer persistence in knowing that I culd and woould hook up with a new ‘dream job” if only the right opportunities arose. And they have. I look forward to the next three to five years, and beyond…

Commissar Konev & the Pit

     I was at my post  early on a Friday morning, smoking a cigarette, feeling rather chipper. It was November of 1989 and I was a border guard in East Berlin, working the guard station along the Aleksanderplatz. Konev, several years my elder and three ranks my superior, had the prime watch and showed up late that morning. The news out of Moscow had been dispiriting to him. He was a hardliner. Gorbachev’s perestroika had been restructuring the country to the point that the natives were restless, and getting quite uppity. Daily patrols about our position would reveal to us many East Berliners not quite happy with our longstanding détente with the West. They were itching to get at us,

you could feel it, and the daily rounds of rock-throwing by teenage hooligans were ever-increasing.

     It was in just such a climate that we saw it. It was coming from over the West side but it had obviously circled around a bit- a large transport plane about the size of a fin whale.

Inside were about 200 Ukrainian Jews on their way toward a new life. Gorbachev had bought them a new lease on things, and they were in their own way, now escaping us.

   

     The guard station looked out over a large expanse of the Aleksanderplatz, including a section which had been transformed into an archaeological dig. Recent investigations had

shown the exisence of extensive underground chambers and bunkers (no, not the Fuhrerbunker) which ran underneath the city out toward the Brandenburg gate. The historical societies had managed to gain permits from the city to allow them to create

a large, soccer pitch-sized hole in which they everyday would bring shovels, picks, and paintbrushes, wheelbarrows and buckets, and work at deciphering some of the conundrum which had been the legacy of the fascists on Berlin.

    To be fair, some of their finds were often quite fascinating, and would receive big writeups in the newspapers. But on this day we had reason to attend to the pit for other reasons.

   

     The plane taxied in on the middle of the avenue. It was certainly odd enough, and all I could do to keep Konev from discharging his weapon in its direction- after all, flying in from the West, it seemed to be perhaps aimed at the Wall like it were a missile. But it didn’t. It taxied to the end of the block, and you could tell the pilots were doing all they can to apply pressure to the brakes to keep it from skidding into the pit.

    But that was exactly what happened next.

    When the plane reached the edge of the pit it had almost acquired inertia but the final push of its wheels toppled it into the pit. My concerns were for the pilots, taking the brunt of the fall, as the plane teetered and toppled headfirst into the sixty foot deep hole. However it was not long before the passengers and pilots emerged from the vessel and milled about on the floor of the pit, gesturing to us, asking for help, a ladder, anything to bring themselves up to ground level and back to civilization. The idea of them being trapped inside a Nazi-era fortification must have been both highly ironic, as well, the idea of their being yet trapped behind our border had to have been doubly disconcerting.

    Konev looked about the edges of the pit. He did note that there was a tall ladder of about fortyfive foot height nearby, and he set about positioning it on a ledge so that the refugees might begin ascending it. The first of these was a babushka of about seventy five years of age. She retained some measure of pluck, however, and began to take the ladder one rung at a time.

    “Come on, come on up, come find your taste of freedom!” Konev assured her, and the look on his face became quite quizzical. If I could say he appeared to be the cat who ate the canary that would be a good approximation of his expression.

     Meanwhile, I was watching Konev’s hands. He was fingering the safety on his Kalishnikov, and setting the mechanism to single-shot. I barely got the words from my mouth “What are you doing, you fool!” when the old woman reached the top of the ladder, and Konev put a bullet right into her chest. She toppled headfirst back down into the pit, and was soon swallowed up by the crowd of babushkas at the bottom, wailing lamentations and defiantly shaking fists.

    I knew what I needed to do. I realized there was no other choice, that if this went on, it would become an international incident. I set my own weapon to single-shot and drilled him. His body toppled and he fell himself, down into the pit, landing face first on an archeological grid of twine and dust. I said a prayer for his soul, and indeed, one for my own. But had I not done this, he would have continued his taunting the refugees, and he would have continued firing at them, perhaps until they were all dead. I knew he had done it for in his opinion they were attempting escape. Such it was in those years.

    I looked down into the pit and called for the next woman to come on up. “Come on, taste your freedom, I swear, I shall not fire!”

    It was with much trepidation that the next babushka began to climb the ladder in my direction. When she reached the top of the ladder I set my weapon on the ground and helped her off with both hands, so that the others could see I was no longer armed.

   I cut the wires that separated the pit and the lip of the pit from the free air of the West. I helped seventy of them across before the guards from the neighboring guardpost came and assisted the rest of the refugees up and out themselves. The Wall would be coming down in the morning. We too were tasting our first breath of the new wind.