One Last Poem for 2007

Ghost of Hope

The wind before the wire rolls
in a high cicada hiss,
Graceful lines bore through night,
with a murderous look.
Into the coffin went the truth
and threw out the corpse.
Many widowed are still many—
no alternative but helpless.
The law rewards the last resort.
A million visions
drifting away thousands of miles
to focal paranoia.
Debt into sand.

The kingpins of tin-poisoned arrogance
anxiously worship the game.
Contemplate domination,
seek maps for the right disaster.
Profit exists in chaos—
in waste after overthrow.
And noise.
Soldiers given crowns without swords,
warfare without battle,
bare, carbon nobility.
Left as hanging meat for the desert.
Pain is its own end
when compassionate rape is law.

But to the river a voice, into a dragon.
Chaos spent for sake of change.
To opened minds the echo,
to human, to frail sanity.
To hear is to know the whole.
To choose, the road.
To resolve—
not as things, not as postmortem,
not to more power,
not even to see,
but to put on the sound of hope
and dance the dawn.
Listen.

Holiday Ruminations

It's snowing outside as I blog this. Appropriate, I suppose, considering Bing Crosby convinced me at an early age that I should should be dreaming of "a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know" (except, growing up here in Southern Oregon it never really snowed much on Christmas--not like in Bend, where I lived for a decade before moving back, where, by Christmas, it had already been snowing for 2 months and the prospect of shoveling the driveway just to get to the grocery store was not a dream so much as a nightmare, but, uh, anyway, I forget myself...). So, it's snowing and I'm ruminating on the holidays and thinking about what they mean to me. Not what they're supposed to mean--what they really mean to me. There are a couple of reasons for this:

a.) I've been facing a crisis of conscience regarding, what I see as, the rampant, unabashed consumerism that has engulfed the holiday and my own participation/revulsion in/at it.

b.) I've been facing the prospect of spending Christmas day alone.

First, the consumerism is unsustainable--it may not happen this year, next year, or even 10 years from now, but one of these days, in the not-too-distant-future, we will have successfully shopped ourselves out of a planet to live on. OK, I realize this isn't the jolliest of thoughts to be having on x-mas eve. In fact, I'm totally conflicted about it, and, therein, lies the problem. I'm not some Thoreuvian minimalist living in a cabin on a pond. I'm very capable of brief (and monumental) moments of economic insanity. And this, I guess, is my problem with Christmas--the obligation of it;the lack of spontaneity. Historically, what I want for myself, I purchase for myself. What I want from others and, hopefully, what I give to the people I care about, is love. Gifts are nice, don't get me wrong--it just seems so manufactured this time of year--so coerced. I was really going to protest the gift-giving thing this year and actually did with my biological family, as we (mutually) agreed not to exchange gifts (whew, fat man in a speeding sleigh dodged!) but then there's my other family--the friends I've chosen to share a household and a life with. Maybe I thought by taking a cross-country drive I could somehow avoid Christmas this year--my guilty feelings about being conflicted about it, the crowds at the stores, and, because I'm a bit challenged by it, wrapping presents. I came back from my trip, however, and damned if Christmas wasn't still happening--and there, under the tree, were gifts with my name on them. I talked to them about my feelings. I even pleaded my case but, in the end, I felt like Scrooge. I sucked it up and went out and tried to find gifts for them I know they will appreciate and use and, in that, it made me think about who they are and what they mean to me and, you know what? I realized that's really what this time (well, actually all times) should be about anyway--gratitude.

Second, the past few days (until today) I've been in a funk. Some of it, undoubtedly, was the above mentioned angst regarding the consumerism aspect of the holidays, but most of it, I think, was the fact that, for the first time in recent memory, I faced being totally alone on Christmas. I haven't talked to Nikki about her plans for the day (although we had a lovely evening watching "Elf" last night). I think it would feel strange to celebrate together (as we had for the past decade +) since we're now living apart. Cindy and Pete are off visiting family and, here I am, all alone (except for my dog, Poe). Even though I felt very little control over it, a part of me seemed to relish the "poor me" aspect--it seems so cliché; "alone at Christmas." How Dickensian of me--please, mister, all I need is a crutch. Well, today, my gratitude met my reality--that I have a number of options on Christmas to spend time with family and friends--should I choose them. Since I've ended my little pity-party (table for one), I've decided to embrace the day. Sleep in or have breakfast at my cousin's house? My choice. As is the choice to have Christmas dinner with my beautiful friends, Annie and Jeff, at Annie's mom's house (I think I'll take them up on it, however,--not to assuage any feelings of loneliness, but to have a great time with some of the most wonderful people I know). Tomorrow night I may call another friend, who is also facing being alone on x-mas (although she's not nearly as angsty as I was about the prospect), and see if she wants to hang out, drink some wine, and watch a movie. Alone and lonely are not the same thing--hopefully the past few days have taught me the difference. And now, oddly (and finally), I can't wait to celebrate a belated Christmas with Nikki, Cindy, and Pete (after they return from their trip)--not so much to open gifts, but to tell them how important they are to me.

Too schmaltzy? TOUGH! Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, New Year, oh, screw it, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Peace on earth, yada, yada...and, for Christ's sake, go tell someone you love them--do it right now, before you forget...

It's War Dammit

I found this and couldn't resist posting it considering our creepy experience in Tennessee...

Committing Poetry

These local folks could use some support (and they have pretty nifty t-shirts too). Happy Holidays!

http://committingpoetry.com/index.php

Home

We're home now. Our last night on the road was spent in a divey motel in Anderson, California that was, oddly, missing an alarm clock. We didn't want to cross over the Siskiyou summit too early in the day (which was a good thing because, well, we didn't have an alarm clock) because of the potential of ice on the road so, to celebrate our last day on the road we stopped, as most people do when they're traveling through America, at a greasy spoon in Redding. For our last meal, we chose the Black Bear Diner (and, when I say "last meal" I'm not being entirely facetious--there was so much food we, quite literally, may not have to eat ever again or, alternately, the artery clogging potential will do us in before lunch). The biscuit that came in lieu of toast, while not as tasty as the ones at the Flying Biscuit in Atlanta, was decent enough and, depending on your point of view, had the added bonus of being as big as a large infant (I actually considered not eating it and, instead, claiming it as a dependent on my taxes but, alas, it was too alluring with all of its buttery goodness and, thus, suffered a saliva soaked end). Sufficiently stuffed we made our way to Yreka where Pete agreed to meet us to tow the trailer the rest of the way with his 4-Runner, as the mountain/weather combination could have been the one-two punch to bring down Sedona's up-until-now trusty little sedan. But, of course, who needs a steep mountain pass and a blinding snowstorm to damage a car when you can, as Sedona did, shortly after unhooking the trailer in the parking lot of the ingeniously named Liquor Barn, jump it, Dukes-of-Hazzard-style, over the curb and into the street. Fortunately for Sedona there were only a handful of people watching, pointing, and laughing, and I, for my part, won't tell anyone (so, shhhhh). Luckily, the undercarriage survived--it would have been embarrassing, to say the least, to end a 3,000 mile trip 40 miles from home, high-centered on a sidewalk. The weather was not as bad as it could have been, considering, and we made it over the top with nary a problem. Even though it's nice to be home, a part of me will miss the open road--the incessant rattle of the trailer hitch ticking off the thousands of miles of blacktop, each gaudy, cheesy billboard a poem of America.

I'm Pretty Sure I Left it Here: Looking for My Heart and a Parking Space in San Francisco

You are more likely to find an Emperor Penguin with a camelback full
of ice-cold Gatorade in the Mojave Desert than affordable gasoline in
Southern California. The way Sedona's poor little Mercury Tracer is
sucking up the fuel pulling the U-Haul trailer, I may have to start
selling my body to Japanese businessmen just to get home. Now, I know
what you're thinking--"Start?"

We decided to have one last hurrah before heading home, so we took a
little detour into San Francisco and, like everything else in
California so far, it cost us dearly. Toll into the city pulling a
trailer: $6. Parking for the car and trailer at parking meters for an
hour and a half: $8. Trying to find two adjacent parking spaces we
could pull the car and trailer straight into in downtown SF:
priceless. Obviously we didn't glean anything from our experience in
Nashville, where we learned (and as U-Haul Inc probably notes in their
rental agreement), you can't get the trailer into a parking garage--it
has something to do with violating the laws of physics. Actually,
considering the chutzpah it took to even attempt such a foolhardy
feat, we did pretty well finding said parking--except we were outside
of our desired goal of Chinatown with no time to get there via public
transit. Playing the hand we were dealt, we wandered around until we
found a promising Chinese Restaurant, called, oddly enough, Canton
Restaurant. Despite the fact that the place was enormous, the
proprietor sat us next to the only other people in the restaurant--a
college-aged girl, her boyfriend, and her very Russian parents who, by
the sound of their accents, were fresh from the motherland. As we sat
and discussed Sedona's just-ended relationship, we stopped to listen
as the Russian mother listed the things that were most important in a
relationship to her daughter. "Love," she said in halting English,
"love is the most important thing." Sedona and I smiled--I think
she's going to be OK. Our meal was quite good and, breaking our
streak rather than the bank, was quite reasonably priced. As we were
leaving, our waitress, a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing a red Santa
hat said, "Happy Holidays." "Happy Holidays to you too," I said
smiling.

Next up: Homeward Bound.

Listen Up California--We Want Our Apples Back!

We decided to skip Vegas and pick up some lost time driving straight
into California. In restrospect, Vegas would have been the cheaper
option. Our first experience in California after crossing over from
Arizona was at the agricultural inspection station. If Tennesee is
wary of people saying "happy holidays," California is downright
paranoid about out-of-state flies. My recollection of the reason for
this is, some 30 or so years ago, there was an epidemic of alien
fruitflies that devastated California's crops. A law was passed
mandating these stations at all of the major border crossings and,
even though they've long outlived their usefulness, they're still
here--annoying and delaying all visitors to the state. OK, my
experience at these stops has been, when they ask you if you have any
fruits or vegetables, you say, "no" and they wave you through--advice
I gave Sedona (who was driving at the time), despite the fact we had a
cooler full of Georgian apples, pears, and one precious sharon fruit.
Well, as luck would have it, much like my "special security screening"
way back at the Medford airport, we were in for a vehicular strip
search. The woman working the station had Sedona pop the trunk and
open the u-haul and began going through the accumulated leaves on the
lip of the trunk with a pair of tweezers. When she was satisfied that
there weren't any nefarious insects lurking there, she popped the
question, "do you have any fruits or vegetables?" Sedona, apparently
rattled by the invasion of privacy, cracked faster than the spine of
an Arizona triceratops and blurted out, "we have a couple of apples."
I have to give her credit though, she sacrificed our apples but held
on to the rest of our produce. After the apples were confiscated and
we were back on the road, we laughed about the experience and
celebrated the martyrdom of those brave apples by eating pears and
tossing the cores out the window. We weren't laughing when we got to
Needles, CA however. Gas in Needles was upwards of $3.90/ gallon--
and I'm not kidding. Still blessed with a half a tank of gas, we
decided to gamble on finding cheaper gas at a truck stop on the way to
Barstow--we lost. Our last chance for gas ended up being at an out-of-
the-way place run by a surly ex-biker, where regular unleaded cost
$4.70/ gallon--let me repeat that--$4.70! We spent the night in
Barstow and were happy, as we drove out the next morning, to pay only $3.66.
Our experience in California so far has inspired me to come up with state mottos for all
of the states we've passed through on our journey (based, of course, on my very narrow interstate highway perspective). Here we go:

Georgia: Three Cops for Every Traffic Stop

Tennessee: Cold Beer, Fireworks, and Diesel.

Arkansas: God Loves Us Most

Oklahoma: What Happens in Oklahoma, Isn't Really Worth Mentioning.

Texas: Home of the Biggest Roadkill.

New Mexico: Whew! New Mexico.

Arizona: More T. Rex's Per Capita Than Any Other State - 40% Off.

and, of course,

California: The Fuck You State

More to come...