Memo from the National Affairs Desk

Date: Jan 24, 2012

From: RWB

RE: Julio, you’re a MESS!

Ahh yes, a change in direction. Is it forward? Backward? But asking too many questions would be the easy way out.

Now that I am writing for class I have turned to the diversions of SBFTHOF to perform as distraction-procrastination-vector. Will I regale politically, waxing eloquent my persuasive gems of brilliance? Or will I verbally attack and de-bone a hapless tourist who stumbled across my inclination to express everything as zen-ambiguity? Maybe all that...and more.

We were talking about dropping cultural references into writing...a short story had a sentence where the teacher said “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!” in the Robby the Robot voice from Lost In Space. The kids in the class didn’t get it at all.

I guess I must do this all the time. Picking through the mental file of a chronic television watching media-junky yields a lot of snippets that define perception. What sticks in the mind and comes out in context doesn’t necessarily resonate with others.

I’ve been away from the sea. Not so much as a toe in the water for months. Longest dry period in 15 years. I miss her every day...I think of sitting in the sun on the deck in a gentle chop, waves lapping at the hull and the gentle 4 second tilt. Out over the horizon where the idea of infinity can be explained easily by pointing up or down.

Captaining in the Keys all those years, there were really just a precious few days like that. The “humanity” of the dive boat thing meant there was no relaxing in the sun, ever. But that has always been the idea, the dream. To sail out beyond the horizon and safe harbor, to trust ones’ instinct and experience...to dive off the beaten path, off the grid. A neo-roadtrip.

I distance myself from political things...the veering this way and that, the anger and vitriol, the craziness all enter the world through my bigscreen trans-evil-mogifier and slimes even the most beautiful day. Just gross. When Obama sang Let’s Stay Together (al green) I smiled...having switched channels from scowling Newt being lauded as a channeler of right wing anger to the president singing a song every woman in America has used as masturbation-background music left me with a warm feeling that the election will probably turn out just fine.

Is the phrase “Romney isn’t a real conservative” code for “he’s not a real christian”? The Mormon thing...no, they won’t say it out loud any more than folks will admit that the election of a black man with a foreign sounding name elected as president has ripped off the festering scab on the gaping race wound. Some things said out loud can be...difficult to explain to the “liberal” media. Thus, “the code”...”family values”, “states rights”, “smaller government” “not a real conservative” and one I just made up, Obama killed my dog. Code for; I don’t like that brown man.

I poke fun...I think Obama represents potential to be one of the best presidents in recent history. I have high confidence in him...I just wish Republicans would pop their heads out of their asses and get back to the accounting thing they do so well. That whole social-engineering-bible thing is unn-fucking-cool.

"If you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there."
Will Rogers

A waiter had a blog years ago. I would read the fascinating real life tales of being tethered to a position while the general public had unfettered access. Anyone who wanted to eat could just come in and display the range of behaviors from one extreme to the other. The 10% that are on the edges of the curve proving the idea of “probability” were the main focus. Equally irritating I suppose, those on the end marked by anger and those on the opposite side expressing hyperbolic “happy”.

In my captaining days the same thing. But in the server-world, they eat-bitch-drink-bitch-leave. For me it was boast-bitch-bitch-boast-fuckup-nearlydrown-puke-diarheea-bitch-no tip. The averages would fade, the extremes dominating my attention. That is on me, I reckon...but when those extremes present not just irritating behavior but a real threat to themselves and others? Welcome to the failure-of-zen.

I work part time in a package store, a nice word for “liquor store”. Legal drugs...mind numbing, life threatening alcohol. The average in this is not present...the myth of alcohol as a minor thing persists. People get high, that’s why they’re here. A significant number have difficulties controlling it. Not perhaps actual alcoholics, but to a certain degree they struggle. How could I possibly know this? About half purchase concealable bottles like the little airliners or a pint. “No bag, no receipt” they say and stuff the bottle into a purse or pocket. Drinking while driving, IMHO, constitues defacto evidence of a “problem”.

Home Depot: “Do you have a “No Ducks” sign?” the woman exuding pure negative asked...”umm, I don’t think we have that” said the clerk...”You know ducks can’t read, right?” he offered....”Get me the manager!” the reply.

One day at work a lady came up to the counter with a card that expressed “I Am So Sorry About the Loss of Your Daughter”...next guy in line was buying an EPT. Next a disheveled young woman with body odor buying MaxiPads and Preparation H. The circle of life.

Middle aged guy with stars tattooed around his eyes comes in wearing Paris Hilton shades...they call him “StarMan”. He paints his nails with samples, sprays himself with perfume, wearing a too tight/too short tshirt with sleeves cut off. Very effeminate in a very strange way. I would love to take his picture, talk to him...get his story. I find people like this fascinating. He seems affected a bit by some form of substance but it’s hard to tell with those big shades on. Ahhh, a million stories in the naked city and this one, I vow, I will have.

“Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.” Oscar Wilde

Perfection is in the eye of the afflicted

As is “honesty”. People boast about how they tell everyone exactly what they feel claiming their honesty pisses others off because it’s so “true”. As if their feelings and the truth were related and their vocalizing were Gabriel’s trumpet.

Honesty (in the Snappy Banter sense) and kindness are synonyms. Perception is all on you, bitches.

Character flaws and even mental disorders are often perceived by others as positive attributes. The things that drive great people? Alcohol, drugs, mania spur the person (sometimes) to achievements of historical importance. This suggests that what others see in you is more important than what you really are. Van Gogh was a great painter...Churchill a great leader. Lincoln is now deified, as is MLK. All suffered from depression and mania living tortured lives of self doubt and great pain.

Fascinating.

I had a dream of traveling back and forth in time...zipping back and forth I was able to repair sprinklers before they failed thus maintaining perfection. My iphone got left behind on one of the jumps and my dreamy smugness evaporated into a panicky sense that I had to return to the exact moment or I would lose it forever...an iphone, as important as it gets. Perfection goes BOOM. or does it?

The Giant Thumbs Up of Doom Vists Key Largo...

It wasn’t until I turned out the lights that the view cleared. In the darkness the air conditioner (window rattler) had fallen silent and the cicadas outside were buzzing like Tibetan monks on helium. “So, so real...not a bit of it true” I whisper to the blackness. A tear falls.

How do you know how not to know? Denial is just lying. Plain ordinary deceit. A nice, safe word for an ugly thing. My worst nightmare at the time had come home to roost. What I wanted lay in ruins amidst the unfolding dream of over 20 years. The first time in my life I had made a long term plan and made it happen. Trouble was it was MY dream and no one elses’.

Captaining a dive charter boat in the Florida Keys seemed so attractive back then. All my experience as a diver had been focused on diving obsessively...advanced, rescue, divemaster, instructor. As an instructor I taught every available class every week. Even past the point where I was getting paid regularly. I kept doing it because the dream was to move to the Keys and all would settle down.

Recreational diving is a clusterfuck of the highest order, however. Most never get past the noob phase and dive once or twice a year, have a near death experience or two, buy a tshirt and boast to all their friends. And sometimes, kind readers, they die. Right in your hands as you watch. You hear that rattle at the end, the eyes fluttering and rolling back...the pale blue skin. And if you accept my assertion of the frequency of the near miss, then how in the world does one keep sane when every day a new group of smiling potentials comes aboard?

I scan their faces, muttering to myself over morbid obesity, obvious physical infirmities, chain smoking hung overs...and MAW’s (middle aged women). The latter is statistically the highest percentage of casualties, flat out. Considering the overall numbers, they pop out hard in contrast. I’m not hatin’ here...we all know full well the dealio. I’m just saying it here for all the world to see.

She was late to the boat, rushed and unrepentant. Impatiently demanding rental gear 5 minutes after our departure time, and she was by herself. The dive plan? The Duane, a 326 ft long USCG off the Molasses Reef tower about a mile SW in the path of the might Gulf Stream current, a river in the ocean. And this day she flowed NE at an attention grabbing 2+mph. That doesn’t seem fast standing in the air, but when the physical properties of water cross from abstract to applied, it’ll kick your desk-jockey-couch-spud-ass, junior.

We tied up to the bow ball...the vis was glorious but any time the current runs you gotta know one of them is gonna fuck up royally. It never fails. This part of the dream wears me down relentlessly...the knowing that the consequences of human nature on scuba isn’t always fodder for a pretty picture in a glossy magazine. Amidst the bright blue tropical sky and calm seas, happy excited people...the moment where they come toward me as I stand at the bow and I hold their tank valve to steady them as they realize that it is now just them, their bullshit and the deep blue sea.

She was trembling...all signs of haughtiness and MAW based arrogance...POOF. She was a frightened small woman and when I remember her face I recall her vulnerability at that moment...she splashed and dropped down about 10 ft. Behind her 8-9 others and I put 2 more in expecting her to continue down and out of the current with her assigned buddy. But there she was, logjamming. Stopped cold at 10 ft in the maximum current. Then...she let go. “shit” I said out loud.

She drifted back and surfaced in terrible distress...my young DM went in after her, but she was unconcious by the time he reached her and he couldn’t drag her back against the current. A small private boat picked them up and raced to shore, and Kathleen was declared DOA.

So real, but the perception so untrue. While diving is relatively safe, it is anything BUT safe for professionals in the dive biz. Nobody signs up for this, and the painful echoes of these incidents and the thousands of near misses wears a brother down.

And my personal life a shambles...in the darkness, I say to myself “no one could possibly know...” Sleep evades me, the silence roaring like a train, every stupid thing I ever did, every word cuts like broken glass in the bed. And Kathleen will go home at room temperature, my young and very dear friend who tried to save her deeply uspet and traumatized. Who will call me? Who will ever know? Why does that seem so important even all these years later?

Because, kind readers, it scarred me to be alone like that. I acted all manly and brave and stoic, as captain I was in command and control of an uncontrollable shitstorm, making decisions quickly that would be scrutinized by needledick lawyers and cops. I will never get over it...a part of myself that mourns a perfect stranger, a loss of innocence in my friend, my remembering her name and that day. It is now part of who I am, and a demonstration to myself of what I am made of. Even if no one else saw it.

All anger is, at it’s core, a dark and cruel wish to harm the person that hurt you...

There are times when a brother just notices things in useful ways. Try as he might to avoid it and all. I see the truth (at times) as a hot potato, a turd in a bag, a lonesome stranger. But there it is looking at me like a lost kitten I can’t turn over to someone else to deal with.

Too many concern themselves with knowledge, whether it be intellectual or carnal, and in doing so they sidestep the concept of understanding. Why? Because understanding involves “standing under something,” and that something is the law—not the local penal code, but spiritual truth, the agony of being itself as it stands on the brink of redemption through true love. All the book-smarts and knowledge flap uselessly in the swirling gusts that blow along that ridge.

I know this because this is something I have misunderstood for most of my life...and I see it all around me.

It is an awkward and uncomfortable place to be. We all devote considerable energy to overcoming the feeling of “not knowing.” We might seek out intellectual knowledge through formal education. We might engage in scientific research. We might join country clubs, gangs, cults, cliques, or any other social organization that purports to offer some secret “knowledge.” We might search through myriads of pornographic images hoping for the special privilege of seeing what is usually kept hidden. We might seek out “carnal knowledge” through the body of another person and attempt to locate the psychological agony of our bodily mystery in the pleasure—or pain—of the other. Or we might create our own fantasy worlds—with thoughts and images of eroticism, heroism, revenge, or destruction—in which we can “figure it out” on our own so as to possess the power and recognition we so desperately crave.

Some drink/drug over it...or bitterly lash out to “get them before they get you”. There are a million ways to avoid, to not know...fuck it, I think. I quit. I’m done.

Surrender. Let it go.

July 1982; We were driving from Seattle to Jacksonville with all our shit in a U-Haul trailer behind a Nissan 200sx. Leaving Seattle is something I thought I would never do and Jacksonville, Florida? I had no clue. None at all. But when you’re fed up with being fed up the geographical cure seems “sensible”.

Her drinking was becoming problematic. Drunk as shit by 9am...”It’s Bud-O-Clock!” as we hit the road doing my exit tour. I knew it would be a long time before I ever got back to my home turf and the Pacific coast. We turned west toward Astoria headed southwest. My goal was to head down 101 and turn left in LA on I-10 and sail through the desert. But first I wanted a last look at my beloved Oregon/Cali coastline. South of Astoria the coastal mountain range starts that whole 1000ft drop out the one side and the vertical 1000ft on the other...and that’s when the real fun began. She was freaking the fuck out on the bridges. Freaking-the-fuck-out. Drunk.

So naturally, I married her.

It’s hard to ignore prima facae nasty...

I was working on the irrigation system at a huge condo on a hot Florida summer day. A woman came out of her air conditioned box like she had bounced off a trampoline and cursed at me; “why won’t you fuckers’ stop the water from coming onto my porch? You tore my screens! I’ve been complaining for 2 years!...they told me they would sue me!”. I, of course, apologized to her (it was my second day on the job) and said “I will fix it for you”. And I did just that. The screen had been put in by her and was blown out because of a huge storm the previous afternoon and sprinklers were no where near her porch. I turned them on and even in the strong breeze, not a drop. Those screens were so poorly attached that the slightest breeze would push out the rubber stays...wrong size and she hadn’t used a tool to install them.

Whatever. Another angry beaver and another day in a world filled with people whose complicated lives aren’t following the “script”...

The old me would probably have handled it differently. I smile and think that very thing. It wasn’t personal...and kind readers, I don’t really care anyway. I wanted to fix a “problem” but it had nothing at all to do with me either literally or metaphorically.

Along the seawall is Boca Ciega Bay which is a short distance from the mouth of Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Dolphins are all around crashing baitfish against the shallow ledge. I drive my golfcart along the wall walkway and they follow along looking right at me for long stretches clearly playful and curious. How amazing is that?

Right next door is a hospital nestled amidst a cluster of very large condo’s...a bridge connects them to the ER. How Floridian...wild dolphins, palms, hibiscus, old people and an ER all within 100ft. The beauty part is when I go grocery shopping down the street at the Pasadena Publix I’m the youngest man in the room.

A Brother Has To Draw the Line Somewhere...Mine Is Way Back There.

Fight or flee, the mammalian dilemma intensifies in the complex human mind. Most times neither is even possible due to social constraint and the result is instinct diverted into “acting out”. Just like “truth”. Holding it in order to avoid confrontation or to steer others away from disliking me or whatever makes me sick...it is a hidden way of controlling others but of course it comes out in code. It also makes for martyrdom or a false sense of “helping”. I am reminded that there are no “victims”...only “volunteers”. But still sometimes I raise my hand. It’ll be different THIS time, right? lol

I once stayed in a relationship for many, many years that was just bad for me. I had to watch everything I said or did carefully or “suffer” the consequence of an inquisition. A brutal emotional abuse fueled by alcohol and rage, a descent into a particularly female kind of trouble. My path was very narrow and self pity ballooned along with my egotistical belief that I was “doing the right thing” by staying. A lot of us have been there I’m sure. I think the term is “co-dependant”, and it fed my controlling nature like a lab rat.

That’s the way it was, and today? Honesty is much closer to the surface than it once was. It burns hotter and it’s light shines like the sun itself. No burn but those two elements will fool you into thinking “don’t touch!” as if it were a hot stove. But it isn’t that at all.

As all four reached the far shore through the swift icy water, the monk set her down as the other two glared in silent indignation at the “spiritual failure” of their companion. The young woman expressed gratitude and went her way and the three proceeded on theirs. The glares continued all day long until at last they reached a point where it was time to rest. Sitting down, the two could no longer contain their outrage and castigated the monk for having broken his vows. “How could you do that?” they blurted. “And for a beautiful woman to boot!”. He replied “it is true, and I carried her on my back but then I put her down. You two have been carrying her all day.”

Previous Snappy Banter...

Previously on Snappy Banter...

NEWS JUST IN: BP hires Rick Sanchez as new media spokesman

What happened to the oil? Did it all get cleaned up? Did it all just sink to the bottom of the Gulf to be “eaten by bacteria”? Or is there something really amazing and awful afoot here? I see the “media” is being blamed for hype...and like a scene from fucking Jaws...politicians are clearing cleanup crews because the turistas don’t wanna see them on the beach anymore. BP has let them all go...because in this great nation of ours...Bullshit is as valid as truth. Face it, whiners. It’s true. This vast foreign corporation has managed to jingle shiny keys in front of a television audience watching “Dancing with the Stars” and “the Food Channel”...I mean, after all, we wouldn’t want to harm all the widow’s and wounded vets that own BP franchises with a pesky boycott. Any action against BP would just harm little folks, right? And in reality...corporations like BP are akin to those “Alien” monsters from space. They can’t be killed without killing the host.

Oh yeah...oil is accelerating it’s death grip, tighter and tighter. Fools with a 2nd grade understanding of science are blabbering in reflexive opposition to any effort at the 4 letter word “conservation” and the taboo concept “alternative energy”. In this world...quoting Ayn Rand’s disgraceful and utterly vapid fiction replaces actual thought and debate...dude, that corporation is the latest example of why regulation is so essential. That our current economic state was caused by a Republican led deregulatory frenzy into Rand’s dreamworld where banks and huge Wallstreet assholes drained the coffers and stole our retirement and millions of homes seems to be having an odd effect. The people most hurt by this are themselves defending, sometimes passionately, corporations!...my o my. “This is the way the world ends...not with a bang, but a whimper” t.s. eliot

Some of television’s finest work is Ken Burn’s “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”...it shows the history of environmentalism from activists gaining popular support to the individuals who made it happen. The switch from Jackson’s Manifest Destiny to preservation had to be felt as deeply “American” before it could become the institutional National Park Service...and I hope that this spirit is alive today. The idea of preserving parts of America and protecting wildlife is an inspiring positive thing, and that is what deeply bothers me most about this oil spill. Our failure to see our own folly, the dollars flowing the wrong way, the damage to our economy and our way of life...and most of all, the decimation of THE number ONE thing all “Americans” SHOULD agree on is that the oil spill messed up a part of America every bit as important as Grand Canyon. Quit being mad at “the media”...BP pissed on a vast American wilderness like it was a giant mistake instead of predictably risky..that difference distinguishes between an accident and an incident. The oil, kind readers, didn’t disappear, it’s moving up the food chain as we speak. Fuck BP.

 Alternative energy...that’s the ticket

Previously on Snappy Banter...