Knives and Hippies

“Bring the blade through the carrot. Don’t chop. Slice.”
Kim demonstrates Food Not Bombs approved cutting techniques to Oggy, who watches mesmerized with a long knife in his hand and a pile of potatoes and carrots in front of him, seated on a box of community supported propaganda.
“I got it,” says Oggy. He wants to please these sophisticated organizers. They radiate an aura of togetherness that he has never encountered. They are actually working for no money, no reward, with no leader or schedule or funds. It feels improbable that these men and women would voluntarily choose to dig through dumpsters and flee the police not for a better meal for themselves, but a better meal for others. The little slice of their lives that Oggy has seen has touched him deeply. Robert, Kim, Gar, Bob and others were proving that an unconventional community could be grown, intentionally, consensually, peacefully without the benefit of electricity or a car or even the blessings of the state. Abe always cautioned Oggy against defining these conflicts with sports terminology, but he can’t help it. These Food Not Bombs volunteers are fighting a battle against all odds, all ideology, financial, cultural, emotional, legal and metaphysical odds…and they’re prevailing here at the corner of River Street and Levee Spur Road on a patch of browned grass with half blind homeless cripples carrying buckets of water from the river to the wilting community garden. They are prevailing over the state police and the local judges who blockade their efforts and the Mayor’s henchmen of assassins disguised as city council members. They’re winning and Oggy has not been part of a winning team since Middle School cross country track. For the first time in many years he is proud of his company, these revolutionaries, these iconoclasts, especially Robert with his quiet demeanor and soft, unobtrusive humor, never bullying another, merely pointing out his observations. Robert, a walking St. Francis of Assisi, healing the sick and oppressed, carrying buckets of soup across town to the hungry street denizens of Santa Cruz, And Kim compliments her lover Robert because she is assertive, direct, not afraid to offend, never backing down, loud, emotional, slightly embarrassed by her crooked teeth, an anomaly in California, a woman who spends no time on her appearance. He admires this first couple of grassroots organization. He loves them, especially Kim who is slender and gentle and recycles glass and plastic automatically, and washes out plastic bags to reuse, and always composts food.

10 Serving 40

Martin didn't show up today so it was me against the backboard. I think the backboard won. The junior high school kids stole two of my tennis balls. Does anyone remember when it was funny to say, "Give me back my balls."
"Mr. Henderson! Tommy is touching my balls!"

I get to overhear the conversations and I'm not as horrified as I expected. The kids are children, raised by overwhelmed parents and clueless teachers and administrators who now make growing up a legal matter, like bullying. With a few recent suicides that were related to harassment the schools have taken a proactive approach. Man, I wish there were an easy answer but there isn't. I bring this up because I could tell by some of the comments yelled across the court that the middle school has some kind of zero tolerance policy. Basically, if you can prove a kid was intimidated by another kid then the bully is getting suspended. Now, this is a serious thing for a 13 year old to absorb. In fact, the middle school has grades 6-8 and that means kids who are 12 or 11 with kids who are 14 or 15. One of the kids at the tennis court sort of freaked out and started hiding behind gates and squeaking like a dog caught in a trap. He was about 4 feet tall. The racket was like half as big as him. I'd say he was 11 years old.
What's my point? I think it's up to all of us to make public schools tolerable. I'm sure they serve some useful function, though I'm not sure what that function is, but they shouldn't also be a place of torment and fear, in my opinion. A school-wide bullying policy is a start, but it's like expecting the police to prevent crime. The only thing they prevent is repeat offenders, which doesn't help the first victim much. It's important to be positive role models. Most kids just ape the actions of their parents. Some have loose screws, like me, and can't be helped. This will all be sorted out in the next million years I'm sure.

Martin

I reached a new stage in life today as I attempted to get some exercise. Regular exercise is the key, an older gentleman told me recently. Intermittent exercise, especially on cold days, is the way to give yourself a heart attack. So, since I'm financially covered this week because of two job interviews and the dog coming over for a stay I have to make health a priority. Even though it is windy and cold I biked down to the park with my tennis racket and basketball. The plan is to hit the practice wall until I lose all four balls over the fence. Then play basketball. It didn't take long to lose all 4 balls and just then an old old shuffling man wandered up with a basket full of tennis balls and a racket as old as time. I ran over to get the balls I'd lost and he said in an accent I hardly recognized, "Do you want to hit some?"
Well, dear reader, this man is easily 75 years old. Hell, his shoes were probably 40 years old. And when I say he is shuffling, I mean both feet are on the ground at the same time at all times. My 99 year old grandfather moved about as fast. Maybe the guy is 80 years old. 80! And playing tennis on a Monday. I admit I was really torn between feeling totally useless because I'm like a kid playing hooky from life, and also honored because I get to play tennis with this man and that would never ever happen if I lived a conventional life. I might be the first person to play tennis with him in 20 years. If there was a way to combine my love for impromptu tennis matches with octogenarians and money then I'd be all set.
"Let me get my racket," I said.
Now, until last week I hadn't swung a tennis racket in probably 18 years. No lie. I renounced all athletic pursuits when they became commercialized. I tried to incorporate athletics into my life and did a pretty good job with the merchant marines, tree planting, bicycle commuting and community gardening. There were dark periods of crippling pain and more than one doctor told me I'd never walk or run again and my knees and back remind me every day that I'm no teenager but if I can play some tennis then I'm going to play tennis.

Martin took the side so he would be hitting with the wind and we began my first volley in 18 years, me on the lip of 40, Martin on the edge of oblivion, stiffer than a board, hearing aid, coke bottle glasses, windbreaker jacket from 1988. If I can live long enough to play my equivalent in 2050 I'll be happy. And if I can refrain, like Martin, from talking about my glory days then I'll be happier still. I could tell by Martin's hands that he was once a fury on the tennis court. His hands were the only thing that worked fast anymore and if I didn't hit the ball exactly within arms length of him then it rolled past him. This proved to be difficult in the wind and since I haven't hit a ball in years I had to work to get a volley going. Fortunately, Martin had brought 30 tennis balls with him and we managed to use everyone of them. Balls were everywhere. As soon as one got past him or I hit it into the net I got another and we tried again.
Then the junior high school P.E. class showed up, which is always a bizarre moment for me because I definitely was in that same Junior High P.E. class in 1984, walking on a mini field trip from school to the nearby courts to learn the basics of 30-love, duece, foul, serve, etc. So, here I am, 26 years later, on the same court AT THE SAME TIME as the exact same class I was in plays tennis around me and a guy who is 80 years old. Moments like this have a kind of altered-time feeling to them. Exactly which person am I? Skinny jeans were popular in 1984 and, look, the lanky girls are wearing them again. I'm wearing my standard brown parachute pants and wool sweater. Or am I? Am I actually Martin in his windbreaker, shuffling to the ball. It's a complete overlap of three or four generations and I could easily be any one of them. the boys goof off and hit the ball over the fence on purpose. A fat kid hits a kid in the ass with his racket. Am I the kid he hit? The teacher says "Hey!" I yell, "Nice return!" to Martin who managed to reach a ball on the first bounce. Martin yells, "You're running me into the ground."
And he's only half kidding as I monitor his left arm for signs of trouble.
But I'm thinking we both need exercise. I mean none of us are long for this world so what the hell? Either one of us could have a Myocardial Infarction and drop dead right now. The kids are running on skinny, pale legs, short shorts and black denim pants, t-shirts with pizza sauce stains on them.

No, this story doesn't end with me calling an ambulance. If we were keeping score Martin might've pushed himself to death. But we were just volleying so he called it quits before he died. (I should point out that even though we were only volleying, Martin tried to switch hands to swing lefty at a ball that was going to get by him. I can tell you only someone who has played a lot of tennis would do this. Mentally, he knew what he had to do but physically the joints didn't work anymore. This is a guy who will miss a day of exercise only when he's dead.) I was sort of sweating. I almost told him he must've been a great player in his day but settled on "That was fun." He agreed.
He lives in Kittery and was kind enough not to ask why I'm down at the playground on a Monday morning playing basketball by myself. My answer would be that I am committed to exercise this spring and summer. This is not a moral issue, though you can make that argument. No, it's imperative that I exercise in order to retain some mobility and clear the hamburger plaque from my arteries. I can get a job building wire harnesses and I can die in July, or I can shirk all my responsibilities and play tennis all summer but still be here in August. I know which choice Martin wants me to make. He said he's there every day it's not raining. I think I'll interview him before I lose the chance.
Dollars earned today=$0
Dollars spent today = $0
Humanity points earned today = 100

On the way home my parachute pants got caught in the sprocket of my bike and I almost crashed into a fence.

Rabbit is Done

I started reading the Rabbit Angstrom books in the group home in Laconia. That was in November. So, 5 months later, I just finished Rabbit Remembered, the novella that completes the cycle. The books are as follows
Rabbit, Run
Rabbit Redux
Rabbit is Rich
Rabbit at Rest
Rabbit Remembered

I've praised these books more than once and I'll stand by the series as one of the rarest accomplishments in literature. Sequels in movies are nothing new because we're talking about generally taking the same characters and making exactly the same movie. Lethal Weapon 1-4 are sort of different because as cliche as the characters were (loose cannon + jaded veteran) the writers found a way to develop them. Riggs (Mel Gibson) gets less loose and insane and falls in love. Murtaugh (Danny Glover) watches his acting career go down the drain. But it's rare. Characters don't develop in movie sequels nor in sitcoms. That's the rule.

But there was a time before Harry Potter and the Eclipse series when a trilogy was a rare thing. Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Master and Commander, Shogun, there are probably others. Sexus, Plexus and Nexus. The Rosy Crucifixion. Should I include those trashy Jack Ryan Tom Clancy books? No. I can't. Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won the Pulitzer Prize. Find me another time a writer won two Pulitzers for books in a series. I'll save you the research time and tell you only William Faulkner and Booth Tarkington also won two Pulitzer prizes each and they were both for unrelated books.
It's rare. But, a series of five books that are written about the same character over the course of 40 years, each book being roughly ten years after the last from 1960-2000, is crazy. I mean, Updike wrote a book a year for half a century and five of them were devoted to Rabbit Angstrom. I'm in awe of this devotion. And I'm even more in awe of Updike's ability. He comes so close to slipping into despair so many times. I've mentioned how Mark Twain's later works were written from the pits of depression and are difficult to digest because of the obvious lecturing tone. I think that is more natural than prevailing over your own worldview for 40 years. I mean, how did Updike manage to stay out of his own way while writing these books? The consistency is like he wrote them all at once. He has the exact same omnipotent tone of voice for every book, the same loving attention to the forgettable. That's like 2000+ pages, maybe a million words, written without cracking. These characters cried real tears.
I don't want to spoil the reading for anyone but his greatest skill is the personalized commentary that is the bulk of the books. A person will walk into a room and say, "Is there anything in the fridge?"
And what will follow is like three pages of observations so incisive that I almost forget about my petty troubles. Then the other person in the room will say, "Why don't you look." And then another three pages of commentary on memories and hidden desires and mis-communications ranging from deaths and dreams and regrets and tiny gestures and the meaning of the most minor head nod. I wonder if Updike's life was a hellish jumble of oversensitivity and hyper-conscious observations. And all the comments do not seem to come from Updike because if they did then I would have to reject the books. No, the narrative is heavy on judgment and reaction but not necessarily Updike's. Updike managed to climb inside the skull of several people and see through their eyes. He brought his own preconceptions to the table but he also saw the dimensions one person usually doesn't see.
And it's amazing that he wrote so differently than Hemingway or Steinbeck or Kerouac, so complicated and devoted to the subtleties but it still feels like he's only giving you what you need to understand. Furthermore, the characters are basically average Pennsylvania folk, men and women who are neither saints nor criminals. So, when your setting is a gathering of middle aged men and women at a country club, then you've got to be some kind of genius to write 30 pages of gripping commentary with hardly any dialogue, but every word is skillfully and surgically dissected.
I think that's the key here. I'm hunting for the secret he had and the word 'dissected' rings true. The characters dissect every gesture and comment. They notice everything and react to it. They hold grudges and drink too much and speak too freely sometimes and everyone else notices. I think it's as accurate a depiction of human thought as I've read. He's like a scientist of human behavior and he goes to the absolute edge of the border between commentary and psychology before someone makes a frivolous comment that gets dissected again. Indulge me for a moment and read a random passage from Rabbit Remembered:

"Numb, heaped with disgrace, she follows him back into the dining room, past the tall breakfront where Ma Springer's precious Koerner china trembles at their double retreat. Annabelle has to hurry with her choppy small steps to keep up. She dressed for this occasion in a white cashmere cardigan and cinnamon-brown skirt, perhaps a little tight and short for the company. But that's how skirts come now, from New York via the buyers for the malls."

So much is happening here, from emotion to subtle action to social commentary. Never mind that this moment takes place at an emotional crisis/high point (after Thanksgiving dinner) to end chapter 3, the details could be dissected again for a master's thesis. The detail of Ma Springer's china hutch is a nod to those readers who have been with this family for 40 years. I mean, imagine that. Many readers of the first two books DIED before the last three were written. I mean, it's just a rarity in itself that one lived long enough to read them all, let alone write them all. The Harry Potter series was done in less than one decade. If you've read all five of these Rabbit books then you've seen Ma Springer, Janice's mother, from 1960 to when she died in the mid-eighties a few years before Rabbit died. (My last image of her is resting her swollen feet in a recliner) You've heard Ma Springer hold the family together through two different separations and a car dealership falling apart and her own husband dying and who knows about her own affairs with sly tennis instructors and such. And this china has been around for 40 years. I'm privileged to not only live at a time when Updike's work is complete, but I've got the leisure time to read it all in 5 months. The only tribute I could make is to write a sixth installment about a person who reads the 5 books and tries to integrate the lessons into his life, and fucks it all up in the process. Updike described his own style as an attempt "to give the mundane its beautiful due." Thus the focus on empty buildings and underclothes and penis shapes. How about this one:

"She and Ronnie left alone tended to each other's needs, one of which, never stated, was getting ready for death, which could start any time now. A pain in the night, a sour number on the doctor's lab tests, and the skid would begin."

That one I laughed at...too honest. Sometimes I felt Updike was too honest, milking the tit of life until it was dry, a little too omnipotent. When someone opens their mouth now I just hear Updike analyze the words and the gestures.
Anyway, the details never cease. Updike just pours on the analysis. I'm done with Rabbit for now. Updike, fortunately, has about 30 other books I haven't read so I'll probably die before I get to them all. I'll leave some for my next life.

Updike had a gift for not manipulating his reader. He unapologetically wrote as he saw it and didn't really try to direct the reader toward a conclusion. People have opinions and if the opinions don't match then you have an argument. Updike saw the argument itself as the interesting part and the topic of the argument as incidental. The story behind the story, that's the lesson here. I'd be a fool to try to write like this. It's just not possible. Furthermore, Updike didn't write one punchline in five books. I laughed a little at the samurai swiftness of Updike's observations such as,

"He and Pru were so upset with each other they couldn't sleep and finally fucked in an effort to get relaxed which made them both madder and sadder than ever."

I relate to that observation and I don't know many people who would read that and think, "Really? They fucked out of anger and that didn't solve everything? Huh?"

It's just honest. I think, wait, this will be my closing comment. Nelson says it to his mother's new husband after the nasty incident at Thanksgiving:

"Let me tell you something, Ronnie, something I've observed: nobody gets away with anything. Those that escape punishment inflict it on themselves. We all do it. We keep our own accounts."

And something I've observed is that if you don't keep your own account, someone else is probably watching and keeping it for you. In this case it was Updike keeping America's account for 40 years. Now, we've got a lot of writers keeping track, recording, revealing, admitting, confessing publicly on the internet. I'm not different. But there is no substitute for quality so it's time for someone else to step up and sort through all these ridiculous blogs for some meaning. There is a blog out there devoted solely to pictures of bad parking jobs. Seriously?
But is sorting through all these blogs any different from sorting through the infinite tones of voice or ways people look at each other? No, it just takes devotion. I think the word is compartmentalization. Updike could compartmentalize. I need to learn that skill. If I could take one thing away it's that line in Rabbit is Rich,

"The world keeps ending but new people keep showing up thinking the fun has just begun."

Who needs the serenity prayer when you have that? I'm going to play some tennis now.

My guitar has been drinking...the piano got evicted

A blur of Hampton Beach mistakes:
Onion Rings in name alone. Soggy like a politician's promise. No salt? WTF?
The Red Headed Slut put me over the edge at the Blarney Stone (not the red headed slut that a woman offered to set me up with, the red one in a shot glass.)
Felled several trees and saw Chicken Man on his back more than once. No pictures because we were too busy watching our asses.
Just imagine Chicken Man up about 30 feet, one foot on the teetering ladder (I'm supposed to hold the bottom but with a chainsaw and a cracked tree above me I stood back a good ten feet.) The saw chain gets stuck in the split. The trunk split creaks like my knees in the morning.

"It's coming down!"
And Chicken man lets go of the chainsaw and slides to the bottom. I step back and fall over a log.
I'm working backwards. Picking up sticks, gigantic trees cracked in half during the wind storm. Then cutting and raking. Our boss asked me if I was married and I said, "Incredibly, no. And look, I got a hair cut." She went right to work like an interior decorator matching couch fabric to the curtain rod filigree. I think she picked up a phone and started matchmaking on the spot. Her daughter-in-law knows a friend...blah blah blah.
"What's your hook?" she asked, to give her something to sell me with.
I stutter, "Graveyard videography. I'm more witty than the law allows."
I think she lost my number after that.



And then a tour of many bars in Hampton and Portsmouth. Any normal pair of healthy men would be out to mingle but we're like two terminal patients talking about how horrible everything is in the cancer ward. Girls avoid us just because of the 100 yard stares we have and I literally don't see anyone in the bar, dreaming as I do of non-existent civilizations I'll never see.
"Tell me where Labrador is again," asks the chicken man
"Oh, who gives a fuck about the wolf?"
"Lets go to Banff."
"Why not?" I groan as this weight descends on me in the form of acute angina. The futility of it all. I picture my spirit animal the arctic wolf adrift on a melting ice flow, searching for a home, some mercy, and passing plastic Hannah Montana products afloat on the water. And somehow I end up the asshole for giving a shit.

Someone hopefully asks if we put Bob Dylan on the jukebox.
"I'd punch Bob Dylan in his face if I saw him," says the Chicken Man, and he guzzles his beer.
"Who the fuck is Bob Dylan?" I say as I pick a scab off my hand.
The person moves away and the night melts into mutual despair.

So, today I decided to get on my 1974 Vespa Ciao. You know the one that went from L.A. on a one way trip to the bottom of the world, but then survived even a drunk Mexican girl laughing and intentionally gunning the throttle in the direction of heavy cross traffic. I ran next to her and grabbed the throttle but she had like a claw grip on it and I couldn't get it off so I grabbed both brakes, her laughing right in my ear and me yelling "Alto! Alto! Despacio!" but she was determined to go into traffic and she couldn't even stand upright. So I took a jagged pedal to the calf in my attempt to drag the bike down like a roped mustang. I managed to get it stopped just feet from the road and she stumbled away. That moped went everywhere with me and has become a part of my identity so it deserves another cylinder head and oversize piston even though the old one was strong enough to kill someone.

We both were not supposed to return from that trip because I felt the country had been hijacked by Republicans and had run amok. But then when hasn't the country been running amok? Never. It's just been one hysterical lurching mob movement after another. From the revolution to the gold rush to the Indian wars and the interstate highway and the peacetime police action. Congress hasn't officially declared war since 1941. It's like skiing a black diamond trail with an avalanche on your ass, you can't stop and you can only sort of steer and the screams of someone nearby saying there is a forest fire below is merely static to your ears. I have asked God to grant me serenity to blah blah blah SO MANY FUCKING TIMES that I'm pretty sure he isn't listening. Either that, or the serenity prayer is all fucked up. I'm not supposed to accept the things I can not change. I'm supposed to change it, to find a way. I can change everything. Right? All I need is the courage to change everything and the marketing strategy to know how to do it. You think the fuckers over at Pepsico ask for the serenity to accept the things they can't change? Not a chance. They put their heads together and they MAKE EVERY AMERICAN LOVE DORITOS. The serenity prayer is for pussies.


So 6 hours spent today resolving (changing) this moped matter and the lack of headlight. All the parts fit, amazingly, although I forgot to install the nice new head gasket, and I jumped on and blasted off. It's got a good engine but bad brakes. No pictures again but soon I'll be mobile on my two wheeled Italian stallion. It idled for the first time in two years and had something related to torque. Nice!

Three songs will debut soon at the Press Room:
1: J.J. Newberry's
2: Ode to Woody
3. Good neighbor, bad chainsaw


Did I leave anything out? Oh, I missed a post and haven't written a damn thing about Santa Cruz. Trust me that even a bad book is hard to write.

here's a pic of Pa Bleacher back in the day right around the time my van was first sold. resemblance? I can't look like him and Paul McCartney and Norman Bates at the same time so make up your minds.