Halloween night, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1992. I was living in a moldy studio apartment filled with cockroaches the size of paperback books. At night they sounded like pattering rats as they scuttled over the kitchen carpet--the whole fetid box was covered with the same splotchy gray fabric, even the bathroom--and tried to dig their way into the cereal box or oatmeal cylinder. My girlfriend had recently taken a job in Kentucky and I was fighting horrid loneliness, a reappearance of aggressive foot fungus because of the humid, swampy Louisiana atmosphere, and the irony of teaching creative writing up at LSU while being massively blocked myself on both a novel and a screenplay.
Outside, as I sat on my bed reading and swigging from a jug of cheap wine, the following things lurked: A misty, swampy rain, sauna hot even at the end of October, swirling down grayish-green and phantomish from weirdly-lit orange clouds; an alligator that I and several other residents had spotted repeatedly, skulking and swishing its way through the weed-choked parking lot into the woods behind the complex--animal control hadn't yet responded and each trip to my car parked a few feet from the door was terrifying; a ferret owned by the lesbian witch masseuse who lived upstairs and was always bounding and leaping up and down the stairway, fixing you with its black eyes and making a horrid FITZSSSS!!! . . .FITZSSSS!!! sound at you; my neighbor a few feet across the hall who looked exactly like Peter Lorre and never made a sound except a sickly giggle when our paths crossed.
One year ago this very night a Japanese LSU exchange student dressed up in a luminous skeleton costume had been shot to death on his way to a Halloween party when he and some of his friends attempted trick-or-treating in the wrong neighborhood. A Cajun who didn't much care for Halloween, or perhaps didn't understand trick or treating, blasted the costumed foreigner with a shotgun when the kid rushed the house screeching and waving his arms, trying to have some spooky American fun.
Hurricane Andrew had torn through the state just over 2 months ago, uprooting hundreds of the city's centuries-old live oaks. Their twisted boughs and branches still formed a nightmare maze-like jumble over the debris-strewn streets, and the clean-up was still in progress. I doubted that any trick-or-treaters would be out, and it was highly unlikely anyone would find my secluded studio, tucked in next to the laundry room in the back of the old brick building.
About 10:00 PM, when I was dithering over reading a student's story about a New Orleans undertaker who had a different sexual fetish for each day of the week--one involved mint juleps and pacifiers--or watching a horror movie on TV, there was a knock at the door.
A small person stood looking up at me through the eye-holes of a cheap molded K-Mart devil mask. It wore a red cape and tights. "Trick or Treat!"
"Take off your mask and let me see your face, devil."
The small person complied. It was a boy about age 7.
"Trick or Treat!"
"How old are you? Where are your parents?"
"I'm six. They're at home."
"You're out by yourself?"
"Yeah, it's okay. Trick or Treat!"
We bantered back and forth another minute or so, me worried about this kid out alone and unsure what do to.
"Look," I said, "I don't have any candy--I didn't think I was going to have any visitors tonight. I think I should talk to your parents or something. Give me their phone number, devil."
"Give me a treat first."
"I don't have anything sweet in here except for some cinnamon raisin bread. I could make you some cinnamon raisin toast with whipped-butter spread, if you want."
"Okay."
I stepped over to the toaster, within sight of the kid. "Look, I'm going to trade you the toast for your parent's phone number, or maybe walk you home."
As I shoved a slice into the toaster slot, the devil said, quite forcefully, "Don't toast it too much! I don't like the taste of carbon!"
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Moonscape Snapshots
Each morning I left the Mission through the cafeteria doors, took a free sack lunch from a sullen Disciple (when Disciple Brady was on sack lunch duty I always made sure to give him a belly laugh by answering the staff-required "God Bless You" with "No, Thanks!"), walked north along the Mission gates, past the forbidden gated garden, and onto the Moonscape, a bare stretch of dirt and rock bordering a railway line that appeared mysteriously lunar in a manner both ancient and forward-beckoning. Against a glaze of orange sunrise and the glitter of broken bottles, some images I remember:
--Lonnie, a legally blind veteran and conspiracy theorist who gives free lectures on ancient aliens and the History Channel; Free Mason/Mormon puppet-mastery; 9/11 and high-intensity focused military-grade microwave weapons; crop circles created by post-hypnotically controlled illegal immigrant farm workers being unconsciously trained for saucer duty; NASA fakery at Skywalker Ranch (as a black man, Lonnie admires George Lucas for dating a black woman, but knows he's in cahoots with the CIA/WHO-created End times AIDS plague); Government cell phone Neuro-Remote Control; manifestations of bible prophesies in Braille on the arms of addicts . . . practicing Tai Chi near the No Trespassing sign, white cane propped against a concrete section of sewer pipe, one of several scattered about the barren landscape. His face looks stuffed together, white-filmed eyes embedded in crushed putty, and his body swells with the edema of some painful disorder, but each morning his movements are slow, slow turnings and precise finger tracings in the chilly air as overpass traffic flits behind him in utter silence.
--The frantic hopping, groans, and hoarse exectrations of men who just can't make it to one of the contested public downtown toilets, ranging from the casino to the courthouse juror parking garage to Starbucks (One dark recent night, many downtown toilets acquired token-operated locks, said tokens obtained at the discretion of clerks or janitors after visual inspection to detect severity of indigence), yanking down their trousers, squatting and splattering.
--Jordon, a male schizophrenic and occasional model who used to sleep in the bunk above me, drank Folgers Instant Coffee 24/7, and slept like the dead--often having to be yanked and pummeled awake by a Disciple-- sitting on a dead shopping cart and eating from a monster stash of carefully wrapped Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches (expensive-looking white paper folded like some aggressive form of origami) in a canvas shopping bag, staring at nothing and gurgling "PB and J! Goddamn PB and J! PB and J! . . .what are you gonna do without PB and J? Fucking PB and J!"
--Dangerously crazy Mondo, howling from the deep-down of himself at the rising sun like some pre-Copernican barbarian, objecting to the remorseless start of another day.
--A blackened ring of ash and rocks with a scattering--like tossed Pick-Up Sticks--of syringes inside.
--My bunk mate for a few weeks, Little John, a former L.A.stick-up artist in his 60s, whirling each time I edge up behind him, crunching gravel and high-stepping over blanketed lumps, screeching at me, "Don't want no trouble, mister! I got nothing for you! No damn trouble after all this time! . . ." and trembling until I remind him who I am.
--Me, framed in the camera viewer on my little-girl-cell-toy-decorating-party phone I got at Target, snapping an early morning Moonscape shot of myself against the railway company warning sign, thinking about two main things: my achievements before arriving here--divorce, bankruptcy, car-repossession, clinical depression, addiction, eviction, and this daily trespassing--plus the undeniable fact that these 3-5 minute stretches of my 20 minute morning jaunt to the bus depot and my teaching jobs, numbering in the hundreds now, are some of the happiest times in my life.
--Lonnie, a legally blind veteran and conspiracy theorist who gives free lectures on ancient aliens and the History Channel; Free Mason/Mormon puppet-mastery; 9/11 and high-intensity focused military-grade microwave weapons; crop circles created by post-hypnotically controlled illegal immigrant farm workers being unconsciously trained for saucer duty; NASA fakery at Skywalker Ranch (as a black man, Lonnie admires George Lucas for dating a black woman, but knows he's in cahoots with the CIA/WHO-created End times AIDS plague); Government cell phone Neuro-Remote Control; manifestations of bible prophesies in Braille on the arms of addicts . . . practicing Tai Chi near the No Trespassing sign, white cane propped against a concrete section of sewer pipe, one of several scattered about the barren landscape. His face looks stuffed together, white-filmed eyes embedded in crushed putty, and his body swells with the edema of some painful disorder, but each morning his movements are slow, slow turnings and precise finger tracings in the chilly air as overpass traffic flits behind him in utter silence.
--The frantic hopping, groans, and hoarse exectrations of men who just can't make it to one of the contested public downtown toilets, ranging from the casino to the courthouse juror parking garage to Starbucks (One dark recent night, many downtown toilets acquired token-operated locks, said tokens obtained at the discretion of clerks or janitors after visual inspection to detect severity of indigence), yanking down their trousers, squatting and splattering.
--Jordon, a male schizophrenic and occasional model who used to sleep in the bunk above me, drank Folgers Instant Coffee 24/7, and slept like the dead--often having to be yanked and pummeled awake by a Disciple-- sitting on a dead shopping cart and eating from a monster stash of carefully wrapped Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches (expensive-looking white paper folded like some aggressive form of origami) in a canvas shopping bag, staring at nothing and gurgling "PB and J! Goddamn PB and J! PB and J! . . .what are you gonna do without PB and J? Fucking PB and J!"
--Dangerously crazy Mondo, howling from the deep-down of himself at the rising sun like some pre-Copernican barbarian, objecting to the remorseless start of another day.
--A blackened ring of ash and rocks with a scattering--like tossed Pick-Up Sticks--of syringes inside.
--My bunk mate for a few weeks, Little John, a former L.A.stick-up artist in his 60s, whirling each time I edge up behind him, crunching gravel and high-stepping over blanketed lumps, screeching at me, "Don't want no trouble, mister! I got nothing for you! No damn trouble after all this time! . . ." and trembling until I remind him who I am.
--Me, framed in the camera viewer on my little-girl-cell-toy-decorating-party phone I got at Target, snapping an early morning Moonscape shot of myself against the railway company warning sign, thinking about two main things: my achievements before arriving here--divorce, bankruptcy, car-repossession, clinical depression, addiction, eviction, and this daily trespassing--plus the undeniable fact that these 3-5 minute stretches of my 20 minute morning jaunt to the bus depot and my teaching jobs, numbering in the hundreds now, are some of the happiest times in my life.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Beri Beri
Lately I've been doing my sub teaching routine nearly every day--early morning bus trips to battered, weary neighborhoods and schools which cower next to chain-link-bordered front yards filled with foaming pit-bulls perfectly capable of jumping over the fence, though they're too dumb to realize it. Of course, I also get to teach at more upscale schools, ostensibly no different from any other in the district, although everyone knows this is a polite, extended-pinky-finger-fiction. (I'm also temporarily renting space on a friend's couch, so technically I'm not homeless like it says up above, at least for now. Some friendly acquaintances from the Mission tell me I'm "couch surfing," in a tone that vibrates with disapproval.)
At today's job, the merest glance at the kids skittering around the halls and into various labs and offices on their before-school errands tells me one thing right away: they have better nutrients coursing through their systems on a daily basis. Because all schools in the district serve the same cruddy carbo-loaded breakfasts and lunches, the kids in the "good" neighborhoods are getting plenty of fruits and vegetables and quality protein at home and in their nifty designer lunch satchels (Hannah Montana, Justin Beiber, the Disney Cosmos) that I lock into a special cabinet at the beginning of the day. A shocking pink sticky screams "Guard the lunch key!!!" I learn early on that sneaking Hot Cheetos onto campus is the major snack offence, and several of the kids warn me about a boy named Gage, who is apparently an expert smuggler and dealer of this toxin.
Hot Cheetos kids are round, greasy, somnolent and depressed. And because their diet is mostly sugar they get childhood diabetes at an alarming rate and often develop fatty livers which lead to cirrhosis, and then they need transplants. Also, Hot Cheetos kids who live in Fresno don't develop normal lungs so their brains are always oxygen deprived.
Just before lunch I march the kids to the computer lab for their weekly 50 minutes of online slogging through approved websites--math and spelling games, mostly. The district has diligent blocking software for forbidden sites like YouTube, but I have to patrol the room carefully to make sure the students don't find some obscure, potentially soul-damaging "content" floating around. (Most schools haven't been transformed by the computer "revolution." They simply sequester banks of PCs in a single "lab" and load in each class, K through 6, for a weekly dose of keyboards, mice, and graphics. I don't think anyone's really figured out yet how to nourish children with this technology).
Today I'm intrigued by the teacher's instructions for the computer lab: "Tell the kids they have to donate 300-500 grains of rice before they can sign onto Supermath or the NASA project."
"What the blue blazes is this thing about rice?" I ask.
"It's 'Freerice.com,' says Taylor. Today I have two Taylors, both female, one of whom has an identical twin named Trinity, three Aarons, two Serenities, a Galaxy, and an Odin (I confirm that yes, he's named after Thor's dad, played by Hannible Lecter in the Marvel movie).
Freerice.com turns out to be a site that donates ten grains of rice for each vocabulary question you answer correctly. There are about 60 or so levels of increasing difficulty, but even the really hard, unabridged OED questions still send only ten grains--an amount you could pick up with a saliva-moistened fingertip--overseas to the needy and starving. Sample question from the high end:
split
Look it up.
"So," I ask the class before they clap on their earphones, "Why don't these guys just send the rice? What does answering questions have to do with it?"
Trinity explains: "The advertisers who appear at the bottom of the page when you answer questions pay for the rice."
"How many meals have you guys donated to starving people?"
"Lots!" they chorus. After a bit more chat it's apparent that they really like this activity and do it at home, too. It makes them feel good, they say.
Then I can't help it: "Is the rice being donated polished rice or brown unhusked rice? Because in the picture here on the home page that looks like polished rice to me and that means it might be contributing to Beri Beri."
"Beri Beri? What's Beri Beri?"
The kids like the sound of the word so they repeat it several times. It's one of those utterances they like to roll around in their mouths like Jolly Ranchers--things like "fruit bat," "woop woop," or "Lake Titicaca." Often the terms become creative insults or means of mojo stealing.
"Why would you polish rice? Like the floor polisher?"
Beri Beri, in case you don't know, is common in countries that have a high percentage of caloric intake from rice that has had its husk, bran, and germ removed, meaning it can be stored longer but is totally lacking in B vitamins, especially B-1 or Thiamine.
My father was a doctor, and Beri Beri was one of the diseases he enjoyed telling us about on family outings, along with my biggest childhood fear, rabies.
"If you get Beri Beri you have trouble walking, seeing, have severe pain, and sometimes people swell up--I mean really gigantic like a parade balloon."
"That's awesome!"
"You can also get Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which means you can't form short-term memories anymore. You can remember stuff that happened a long time ago, but if a Tyrannosaurus smashed through the window over there and yanked one of you out, a thiamine-deficient person wouldn't remember it three seconds after it happened."
"Cool!" "No way!" This gets discussed and various horrific things get suggested that a victim might instantly forget.
"Well," I say, "the people you're donating to probably get to eat potatoes and tubers and beans and things like that so they get vitamins they need. And Drew Barrymore gives them cups of nutritious porridge. She was that little girl in E.T but she's all grown up now."
"What the deuce?" This is a favorite phrase of grade-schoolers because of Stewie on Family Guy.
"But it's still an important question," I continue. "Are you contributing calories to keep people alive or are you contributing to Beri Beri? And how could we find out for sure?"
I assign the project of finding out to the twins Taylor and Trinity. "Scour that website and find out what kind of rice is going out."
At the end of computer hour they've found nothing--the FAQ is useless--but a there's a Contact page which warns that Freerice.com is too busy to answer many e-mails, but they'll try. I have the twins compose and send question about the rice, then it's time for lunch.
I eat a $2.00 salad that I purchase in the teacher's lounge and after lunch, because I'm tired and don't feel like doing the boring California history lesson, I get the kids going on a discussion of the merits of Whole Foods vs. Trader Joe's. Then we play boys vs. girls dodge ball ("If I hit you you'll get Beri Beri!") and go home.
At today's job, the merest glance at the kids skittering around the halls and into various labs and offices on their before-school errands tells me one thing right away: they have better nutrients coursing through their systems on a daily basis. Because all schools in the district serve the same cruddy carbo-loaded breakfasts and lunches, the kids in the "good" neighborhoods are getting plenty of fruits and vegetables and quality protein at home and in their nifty designer lunch satchels (Hannah Montana, Justin Beiber, the Disney Cosmos) that I lock into a special cabinet at the beginning of the day. A shocking pink sticky screams "Guard the lunch key!!!" I learn early on that sneaking Hot Cheetos onto campus is the major snack offence, and several of the kids warn me about a boy named Gage, who is apparently an expert smuggler and dealer of this toxin.
Hot Cheetos kids are round, greasy, somnolent and depressed. And because their diet is mostly sugar they get childhood diabetes at an alarming rate and often develop fatty livers which lead to cirrhosis, and then they need transplants. Also, Hot Cheetos kids who live in Fresno don't develop normal lungs so their brains are always oxygen deprived.
Just before lunch I march the kids to the computer lab for their weekly 50 minutes of online slogging through approved websites--math and spelling games, mostly. The district has diligent blocking software for forbidden sites like YouTube, but I have to patrol the room carefully to make sure the students don't find some obscure, potentially soul-damaging "content" floating around. (Most schools haven't been transformed by the computer "revolution." They simply sequester banks of PCs in a single "lab" and load in each class, K through 6, for a weekly dose of keyboards, mice, and graphics. I don't think anyone's really figured out yet how to nourish children with this technology).
Today I'm intrigued by the teacher's instructions for the computer lab: "Tell the kids they have to donate 300-500 grains of rice before they can sign onto Supermath or the NASA project."
"What the blue blazes is this thing about rice?" I ask.
"It's 'Freerice.com,' says Taylor. Today I have two Taylors, both female, one of whom has an identical twin named Trinity, three Aarons, two Serenities, a Galaxy, and an Odin (I confirm that yes, he's named after Thor's dad, played by Hannible Lecter in the Marvel movie).
Freerice.com turns out to be a site that donates ten grains of rice for each vocabulary question you answer correctly. There are about 60 or so levels of increasing difficulty, but even the really hard, unabridged OED questions still send only ten grains--an amount you could pick up with a saliva-moistened fingertip--overseas to the needy and starving. Sample question from the high end:
split
Look it up.
"So," I ask the class before they clap on their earphones, "Why don't these guys just send the rice? What does answering questions have to do with it?"
Trinity explains: "The advertisers who appear at the bottom of the page when you answer questions pay for the rice."
"How many meals have you guys donated to starving people?"
"Lots!" they chorus. After a bit more chat it's apparent that they really like this activity and do it at home, too. It makes them feel good, they say.
Then I can't help it: "Is the rice being donated polished rice or brown unhusked rice? Because in the picture here on the home page that looks like polished rice to me and that means it might be contributing to Beri Beri."
"Beri Beri? What's Beri Beri?"
The kids like the sound of the word so they repeat it several times. It's one of those utterances they like to roll around in their mouths like Jolly Ranchers--things like "fruit bat," "woop woop," or "Lake Titicaca." Often the terms become creative insults or means of mojo stealing.
"Why would you polish rice? Like the floor polisher?"
Beri Beri, in case you don't know, is common in countries that have a high percentage of caloric intake from rice that has had its husk, bran, and germ removed, meaning it can be stored longer but is totally lacking in B vitamins, especially B-1 or Thiamine.
My father was a doctor, and Beri Beri was one of the diseases he enjoyed telling us about on family outings, along with my biggest childhood fear, rabies.
"If you get Beri Beri you have trouble walking, seeing, have severe pain, and sometimes people swell up--I mean really gigantic like a parade balloon."
"That's awesome!"
"You can also get Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which means you can't form short-term memories anymore. You can remember stuff that happened a long time ago, but if a Tyrannosaurus smashed through the window over there and yanked one of you out, a thiamine-deficient person wouldn't remember it three seconds after it happened."
"Cool!" "No way!" This gets discussed and various horrific things get suggested that a victim might instantly forget.
"Well," I say, "the people you're donating to probably get to eat potatoes and tubers and beans and things like that so they get vitamins they need. And Drew Barrymore gives them cups of nutritious porridge. She was that little girl in E.T but she's all grown up now."
"What the deuce?" This is a favorite phrase of grade-schoolers because of Stewie on Family Guy.
"But it's still an important question," I continue. "Are you contributing calories to keep people alive or are you contributing to Beri Beri? And how could we find out for sure?"
I assign the project of finding out to the twins Taylor and Trinity. "Scour that website and find out what kind of rice is going out."
At the end of computer hour they've found nothing--the FAQ is useless--but a there's a Contact page which warns that Freerice.com is too busy to answer many e-mails, but they'll try. I have the twins compose and send question about the rice, then it's time for lunch.
I eat a $2.00 salad that I purchase in the teacher's lounge and after lunch, because I'm tired and don't feel like doing the boring California history lesson, I get the kids going on a discussion of the merits of Whole Foods vs. Trader Joe's. Then we play boys vs. girls dodge ball ("If I hit you you'll get Beri Beri!") and go home.
Monday, September 10, 2012
The Gold Standard
I witnessed my first suicide a few weeks after arriving at the Mission. Above the main building, curving across G street to slope westward down the weed-choked hill where quite a few homeless nestle and burrow at night, the gray concrete highway overpass rests on its thick pillars like a grungy imitation of an ancient monument or temple. The access stairway, steep as a hike up a ziggurat, stands wrapped in chainlink fencing and upward-spiraling coils of barbed wire.
We spotted the man standing balanced on the freeway railing high overhead right after breakfast. His back was to us and his arms were outstretched, pointing east and west. Before anyone could shout or speculate about how he'd gotten up there, he tipped backward and fell. His long green coat fluttered. He hit the ground prone with arms still extended after a neat 90 degree turn.
The sound of his body's impact was one of the strangest, most unexpected things ever to reach my ears. In retrospect, I suppose I was unconsciously primed in the 3 seconds or so it took him to fall for a kind of wet smacking sound combined with a muffled thump. That's how a body should sound, right? We're bags of blood surrounding solid bones.
!SMACK!THUMP! or !THUMP!SMACK! Wet and heavy.
This is wrong, at least in this instance. Instead, the impact sounded exactly the way a wooden pallet--the kind you see on loading docks or in discount warehouses--sounds when dropped from a significant height. CRACK!CLATTER! That's it--precisely: the !CRACK!CLATTER! or !CLATTER!CRACK! of a flat, squarish, slatted wooden contrivance used for stacking mechandise impacting concrete. Maybe something of the !WHAP! about it. But nothing human.
That's what I thought at the moment. I don't remember any of the reactions from people around me. I had to catch a bus. Lots of blue-shirted Disciples surrounded the fallen man. Guests flipped open cell phones. An ambulance arrived as I set out.
It didn't occur to me until the next day, when a rumor made the rounds that the man, whom no one knew and was not a Mission guest, had lived for 12 hours in the hospital before dying, that I had never heard a wooden pallet hit the ground after dropping 50 or so feet. Never. Sure of it. So that made my surprise at the falling body's sound some kind of internally-generated and unjustified leap, an inference based on a cartoony mental map of reality.
Well, one thing to avoid here is some kind of juvenile solipsistic/philosophical riff ala The Matrix (a piece of cliche'd, doltish claptrap), but the body's impact immediately set off an inescapable obssession with wooden pallets and what sound they actually make in the real world .
Don't tell me that's naive. There is a real world and things make pretty much the same sound for human beings built on the same body plans everywhere unless their nervous systems are drug-addled or miswired. And people who say solipsism (the insane belief that only you and your perceptions are real) is a more parsimonious view of reality than the inferential world revealed by science are the naive ones. Solipsists have the added workload of explaining how the self-generated phenomena in their self-generated world keep generating novel behavior and revealing new layers and depths apart from any conscious effort on the solipsist's part. Really. Think about it.
In my reality, pallets were suddenly everywhere and I couldn't stop noticing them on loading docks, in piles behind markets and in alleys. In a corner of my favorite vacant lot--favorite because it's a fenced-in and barbed-wire-protected expanse of cracked asphalt enclosing nothing but tall brown weeds sprouting through jagged cracks--I spotted a six foot stack of pallets I'd never before noticed and wondered if they'd been deposited overnight. These pallets were tantalizing but inaccessible. Could I get my own pallet somewhere for testing?
And for that matter what kind of sound do falling bodies make when they hit concrete? I could wait for another suicide but that was unlikely. I wanted desperately to ask someone in the breakfast line or changing room if they remembered the overpass suicide and what they heard when the body hit. Because that's the Gold Standard, I kept telling myself--independent varification. The empirical motherlode. The Gold Standard. I repeated this phrase to myself over and over whenever despair at finding out got the better of me.
(It's against my rules and a certain implicit street ettiquette to ask direct questions. The data has to present itself in just the right way. This is what happens when you're walking the streets and riding buses all day and you used to teach college "critical thinking" classes and babbled at students who couldn't have cared less about the need for "epistemological clarity" and "cleaning your reality filters," and you have no audience except other crazies batting at the air and screeching, "I'm not a doormat, you goddamed Stalinist bastards! Give me my glasses back and I'll clarify everything for you once and for all!")
Well, I have no way of stretching the suspense out any longer. One morning in breakfast line, just when I'd given up and hadn't actually thought about the problem for a while, I heard a conversation that went like this:
"Man, I just want to kill somebody!"
"Go to the clinic, dude, you're depressed."
"Depressed? I just want to kill one of these stupid motherfuckers I live with!"
"Naw, you're angry at yourself, that's what depression is. Get some medicine! It's free!"
"Maybe I'll jump off the overpass. Maybe I'll take a few people with me! Hah! Hah! Hah! Haaaaaaahhh!"
"Were you here when that pendejo jumped off the overpass?"
"No."
"His body sounded like it was made of wood."
"What?"
"When it hit the ground it sounded like wood."
"So what? It was his skeleton!"
"No, you don't understand--"
"No you don't understand--I know what a body sounds like."
"I was there! It sounded just like in Food Maxx when I used to work there!"
"Food Maxx?"
I held my breath. Please, I thought. Please.
"Like a pallet."
"What the fuck . . .?"
Paydirt.
We spotted the man standing balanced on the freeway railing high overhead right after breakfast. His back was to us and his arms were outstretched, pointing east and west. Before anyone could shout or speculate about how he'd gotten up there, he tipped backward and fell. His long green coat fluttered. He hit the ground prone with arms still extended after a neat 90 degree turn.
The sound of his body's impact was one of the strangest, most unexpected things ever to reach my ears. In retrospect, I suppose I was unconsciously primed in the 3 seconds or so it took him to fall for a kind of wet smacking sound combined with a muffled thump. That's how a body should sound, right? We're bags of blood surrounding solid bones.
!SMACK!THUMP! or !THUMP!SMACK! Wet and heavy.
This is wrong, at least in this instance. Instead, the impact sounded exactly the way a wooden pallet--the kind you see on loading docks or in discount warehouses--sounds when dropped from a significant height. CRACK!CLATTER! That's it--precisely: the !CRACK!CLATTER! or !CLATTER!CRACK! of a flat, squarish, slatted wooden contrivance used for stacking mechandise impacting concrete. Maybe something of the !WHAP! about it. But nothing human.
That's what I thought at the moment. I don't remember any of the reactions from people around me. I had to catch a bus. Lots of blue-shirted Disciples surrounded the fallen man. Guests flipped open cell phones. An ambulance arrived as I set out.
It didn't occur to me until the next day, when a rumor made the rounds that the man, whom no one knew and was not a Mission guest, had lived for 12 hours in the hospital before dying, that I had never heard a wooden pallet hit the ground after dropping 50 or so feet. Never. Sure of it. So that made my surprise at the falling body's sound some kind of internally-generated and unjustified leap, an inference based on a cartoony mental map of reality.
Well, one thing to avoid here is some kind of juvenile solipsistic/philosophical riff ala The Matrix (a piece of cliche'd, doltish claptrap), but the body's impact immediately set off an inescapable obssession with wooden pallets and what sound they actually make in the real world .
Don't tell me that's naive. There is a real world and things make pretty much the same sound for human beings built on the same body plans everywhere unless their nervous systems are drug-addled or miswired. And people who say solipsism (the insane belief that only you and your perceptions are real) is a more parsimonious view of reality than the inferential world revealed by science are the naive ones. Solipsists have the added workload of explaining how the self-generated phenomena in their self-generated world keep generating novel behavior and revealing new layers and depths apart from any conscious effort on the solipsist's part. Really. Think about it.
In my reality, pallets were suddenly everywhere and I couldn't stop noticing them on loading docks, in piles behind markets and in alleys. In a corner of my favorite vacant lot--favorite because it's a fenced-in and barbed-wire-protected expanse of cracked asphalt enclosing nothing but tall brown weeds sprouting through jagged cracks--I spotted a six foot stack of pallets I'd never before noticed and wondered if they'd been deposited overnight. These pallets were tantalizing but inaccessible. Could I get my own pallet somewhere for testing?
And for that matter what kind of sound do falling bodies make when they hit concrete? I could wait for another suicide but that was unlikely. I wanted desperately to ask someone in the breakfast line or changing room if they remembered the overpass suicide and what they heard when the body hit. Because that's the Gold Standard, I kept telling myself--independent varification. The empirical motherlode. The Gold Standard. I repeated this phrase to myself over and over whenever despair at finding out got the better of me.
(It's against my rules and a certain implicit street ettiquette to ask direct questions. The data has to present itself in just the right way. This is what happens when you're walking the streets and riding buses all day and you used to teach college "critical thinking" classes and babbled at students who couldn't have cared less about the need for "epistemological clarity" and "cleaning your reality filters," and you have no audience except other crazies batting at the air and screeching, "I'm not a doormat, you goddamed Stalinist bastards! Give me my glasses back and I'll clarify everything for you once and for all!")
Well, I have no way of stretching the suspense out any longer. One morning in breakfast line, just when I'd given up and hadn't actually thought about the problem for a while, I heard a conversation that went like this:
"Man, I just want to kill somebody!"
"Go to the clinic, dude, you're depressed."
"Depressed? I just want to kill one of these stupid motherfuckers I live with!"
"Naw, you're angry at yourself, that's what depression is. Get some medicine! It's free!"
"Maybe I'll jump off the overpass. Maybe I'll take a few people with me! Hah! Hah! Hah! Haaaaaaahhh!"
"Were you here when that pendejo jumped off the overpass?"
"No."
"His body sounded like it was made of wood."
"What?"
"When it hit the ground it sounded like wood."
"So what? It was his skeleton!"
"No, you don't understand--"
"No you don't understand--I know what a body sounds like."
"I was there! It sounded just like in Food Maxx when I used to work there!"
"Food Maxx?"
I held my breath. Please, I thought. Please.
"Like a pallet."
"What the fuck . . .?"
Paydirt.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mission Miracles and Revelations
Recently the whole Mission chapel hour was given over to guest testimonies about Jesus and the ways he saves lives and souls. As always, guests were admonished to stay within 5 minutes, not to ramble, and to include the most important part--miracles performed by the Son of God. As each eager testifier bounded up and regaled us with tales of divine intervention in their lives, I struggled with a dream I'd had the night before and fantasized about going up to the podium and asking for advice on interpretation. Maybe someone in the congregation was the equivalent of Joseph, sold into Egypt, advising the king on his visions, or those dream handbooks on the discount table at Barnes and Noble (anything with crecent moons and pointy stars is a bad sign). My dreams are almost always embarrassingly mundane, like being chased by a wolf, or taunted with a pot of gold by a tricky leprechaun. However, this dream was so specific and pregnant with meaning, I wondered if I too had become a conduit of divine will. I'll get to the dream after a couple of miracles and messages from above:
Raymond, a huge, muscular black Texan in his late 60s and sporting a shower cap, began by begging our forgiveness for using an old cliche'-- 'Don't mess with Texas.' "Brothers, I spent 46 months on the chain gang swinging a hoe--prisoners do all the farm work in that state no mistake about it--we can beat any machine, put 100 men with a hoe and an hymn and we'll have the whole state plowed and fertile while they changing the spark plugs. Haven't been in trouble with the law for nigh on twenty-three years and aim to keep it that way, had to do another stretch in FDC Houston broke my mamma's heart for my heinous crimes but I been wiped clean, by the state or feds or by the Higher Up Man? You decide. It's MY BUSINESS.
"Let me tell you about Heaven, the streets of glory we're all headed for, contrasted with the Fresno schools where some of my grandchildren go. In Fresno the girls--and I partly mean 12th grade bitches walking around in spiderwebs and butt-thongs--they always right and the teacher always wrong. Upside down, just like this world after Eve ate the fruit. In Texas, a child come back 5 minutes late from the bathroom--they gotta swipe an identity card just to pee and it times them and if they half second late a police officer--not no renta-cop pansy-ass uniform boy--an OFFICER OF THE LAW! grabs them! The principal tells that kid next time we gonna stick a MOST DEADLY VENOMOUS NEEDLE in your arm. AND THEY MEAN IT! It's Texas!
"Whole place is organized like a bunch of Temperance Society women who meet each week to knit and hit drunks over the head with churning paddles--people behave, and if they don't they get slammed so goddamn hard--sorry--they don't ever do it again. Which is like Heaven on Earth, so Heaven is gonna be better than all that by a billion to a billion powers! AMEN! Brothers! AMEN! [Amen! echoes the crowd]
"And one last thing I want to share with you. If you gonna live a life of crime don't be robbing no 7-11 or Circle K. Express yourself! Get some big money if you gonna take that kind of risk! They don't keep what you need in a cash register!"
Next up . . .
Colin, a man who channels Old World souls of indeterminate origin and accents. "Brothers, many times I've stood before you to reflect on the train wreck of both my body and soul, and so with that in mind I want to relate a vision I believe was given to me by the Lord. Close your eyes and imagine me stretched out for miles as if transmogrified into a train on a supernaturally straight line of tracks laid down upon a flat desert with no oasis in site. Coming toward me is a train pulling hundreds of freight cars laden with booze, exotic women, spices, Turkish delights, jewels, untraceable currency of every description--and all I have to do is reach out with me filthy paws--I've got thousands of them in this vision, like a millipede-- and pull a switch shunting me onto another track leading faster and faster to escape the pull of this fallen world and from there to the City of God. Or I can reach out for gleaming and lubricious debauchery. DEBAUCHERY! But I cannot decide, brothers, I cannot decide . . . Perhaps when the time actually comes the decision will be made for me, if it's God's will. Amen! But the time hasn't come yet! So you and I are in a state of suspense. Will he? Won't he? This is moral dilemma on a knife's edge. In Christ's name, Amen.
--While all this was going on I was thinking, what difference would it make after this stuff if I went up and recited my dream? It went like this: I was standing on the rim of an active volcano next to a beautiful woman who looked a lot like the young Winona Ryder, but it wasn't really her, it was just a dream woman. Know how that goes? There were some other people scattered around us and we all seemed to be tottering over the smoking red maw of the volcano. The woman threw her arms around me and shrieked, "My God! There are thirteen of us! Thirteen! We're doomed!"
"Silly bird," I said. "You always forget to count yourself!" Then the dream shifted to the deck of a sinking ship and the exact same scene played out, the fake dream Winona Ryder throwing her arms around me and screaming about the deadly number thirteen, and me comforting her with a grin and a chuckle like Cary Grant: "And Baby makes fourteen!" The dream shifted to other scenes of peril--quicksand, burning building, tsunami, earthquake--until suddenly the fake Winona and I were alone in a meadow and I was asking her suavely, "And how many of us are there now, darling?" But before she could answer I woke up.
The dream was radically different from anything my subconscious had ever produced before and it had numbers in it and scenes of destruction. It was kind of Biblical in its own way. Maybe I should share it. Sure. Just for the hell of it. But instead of going up I settled back in my chair as Connie, the Mission's village idiot, stumbled up to the podium to cheers and bellows from the guests.
"Hi, everyone, I'm Connie, most of you know me, I love animals and I have a story I know you'll all like and many of you have probably heard it before. A man was on the beach throwing stones into the waves, and a man dressed in white came walked up to him and said, 'Hey, pal, be careful there. You might hit a starfish. Always be careful what you're aiming at.'
"Well, the two of them started walking down the beach together and neither of them said anything. After a while the man got tired and lay down in the sand to take a nap. When he woke up, the man in white was gone! He looked down the beach the way they had come and he only saw one set of footprints, his own. And that was pretty weird because he remembered walking down the beach with the man. Then he thought, 'That man looked a lot like Jesus! He was walking with me and didn't leave footprints!' So it was a miracle."
At this point someone in the audience shouted out, "That ain't the way the story goes, Connie! The man sees two sets of footprints for a while and then he only sees the stranger's."
Utter bafflement from Connie. "Well, I guess that means . . . The man walked in Jesus's footprints to follow him."
Roars from the congregation. "CONNNNNIIIIIIEEEEE! YAAAAAHHHHHH! CONNNNNNIIIIIEEE! . . ."
Somebody muttered, "That boy's all fucked up. Seriously fucked up."
Connie tried again. "Maybe the whole thing was like a dream, or maybe . . ."
The pastor stepped in and put his hand on Connie's shoulder. "Son, I think what happened was the man saw his footprints all alone and asked the Lord why he abandoned him and the Lord answered, 'That was when I carried you, my son.'"
After Connie was gently nudged off the stage and we lined up for showers, I felt cowardly and envious of the bold, if muddled, visions expressed by my fellow Mission guests. That night I had a dream about going to a movie that turned out to be all loud, gaudy previews for two hours. Then, in the manner of dreams, I went on a fruitless, circular quest through the labyrinthine theater to ask the management for a refund.
Raymond, a huge, muscular black Texan in his late 60s and sporting a shower cap, began by begging our forgiveness for using an old cliche'-- 'Don't mess with Texas.' "Brothers, I spent 46 months on the chain gang swinging a hoe--prisoners do all the farm work in that state no mistake about it--we can beat any machine, put 100 men with a hoe and an hymn and we'll have the whole state plowed and fertile while they changing the spark plugs. Haven't been in trouble with the law for nigh on twenty-three years and aim to keep it that way, had to do another stretch in FDC Houston broke my mamma's heart for my heinous crimes but I been wiped clean, by the state or feds or by the Higher Up Man? You decide. It's MY BUSINESS.
"Let me tell you about Heaven, the streets of glory we're all headed for, contrasted with the Fresno schools where some of my grandchildren go. In Fresno the girls--and I partly mean 12th grade bitches walking around in spiderwebs and butt-thongs--they always right and the teacher always wrong. Upside down, just like this world after Eve ate the fruit. In Texas, a child come back 5 minutes late from the bathroom--they gotta swipe an identity card just to pee and it times them and if they half second late a police officer--not no renta-cop pansy-ass uniform boy--an OFFICER OF THE LAW! grabs them! The principal tells that kid next time we gonna stick a MOST DEADLY VENOMOUS NEEDLE in your arm. AND THEY MEAN IT! It's Texas!
"Whole place is organized like a bunch of Temperance Society women who meet each week to knit and hit drunks over the head with churning paddles--people behave, and if they don't they get slammed so goddamn hard--sorry--they don't ever do it again. Which is like Heaven on Earth, so Heaven is gonna be better than all that by a billion to a billion powers! AMEN! Brothers! AMEN! [Amen! echoes the crowd]
"And one last thing I want to share with you. If you gonna live a life of crime don't be robbing no 7-11 or Circle K. Express yourself! Get some big money if you gonna take that kind of risk! They don't keep what you need in a cash register!"
Next up . . .
Colin, a man who channels Old World souls of indeterminate origin and accents. "Brothers, many times I've stood before you to reflect on the train wreck of both my body and soul, and so with that in mind I want to relate a vision I believe was given to me by the Lord. Close your eyes and imagine me stretched out for miles as if transmogrified into a train on a supernaturally straight line of tracks laid down upon a flat desert with no oasis in site. Coming toward me is a train pulling hundreds of freight cars laden with booze, exotic women, spices, Turkish delights, jewels, untraceable currency of every description--and all I have to do is reach out with me filthy paws--I've got thousands of them in this vision, like a millipede-- and pull a switch shunting me onto another track leading faster and faster to escape the pull of this fallen world and from there to the City of God. Or I can reach out for gleaming and lubricious debauchery. DEBAUCHERY! But I cannot decide, brothers, I cannot decide . . . Perhaps when the time actually comes the decision will be made for me, if it's God's will. Amen! But the time hasn't come yet! So you and I are in a state of suspense. Will he? Won't he? This is moral dilemma on a knife's edge. In Christ's name, Amen.
--While all this was going on I was thinking, what difference would it make after this stuff if I went up and recited my dream? It went like this: I was standing on the rim of an active volcano next to a beautiful woman who looked a lot like the young Winona Ryder, but it wasn't really her, it was just a dream woman. Know how that goes? There were some other people scattered around us and we all seemed to be tottering over the smoking red maw of the volcano. The woman threw her arms around me and shrieked, "My God! There are thirteen of us! Thirteen! We're doomed!"
"Silly bird," I said. "You always forget to count yourself!" Then the dream shifted to the deck of a sinking ship and the exact same scene played out, the fake dream Winona Ryder throwing her arms around me and screaming about the deadly number thirteen, and me comforting her with a grin and a chuckle like Cary Grant: "And Baby makes fourteen!" The dream shifted to other scenes of peril--quicksand, burning building, tsunami, earthquake--until suddenly the fake Winona and I were alone in a meadow and I was asking her suavely, "And how many of us are there now, darling?" But before she could answer I woke up.
The dream was radically different from anything my subconscious had ever produced before and it had numbers in it and scenes of destruction. It was kind of Biblical in its own way. Maybe I should share it. Sure. Just for the hell of it. But instead of going up I settled back in my chair as Connie, the Mission's village idiot, stumbled up to the podium to cheers and bellows from the guests.
"Hi, everyone, I'm Connie, most of you know me, I love animals and I have a story I know you'll all like and many of you have probably heard it before. A man was on the beach throwing stones into the waves, and a man dressed in white came walked up to him and said, 'Hey, pal, be careful there. You might hit a starfish. Always be careful what you're aiming at.'
"Well, the two of them started walking down the beach together and neither of them said anything. After a while the man got tired and lay down in the sand to take a nap. When he woke up, the man in white was gone! He looked down the beach the way they had come and he only saw one set of footprints, his own. And that was pretty weird because he remembered walking down the beach with the man. Then he thought, 'That man looked a lot like Jesus! He was walking with me and didn't leave footprints!' So it was a miracle."
At this point someone in the audience shouted out, "That ain't the way the story goes, Connie! The man sees two sets of footprints for a while and then he only sees the stranger's."
Utter bafflement from Connie. "Well, I guess that means . . . The man walked in Jesus's footprints to follow him."
Roars from the congregation. "CONNNNNIIIIIIEEEEE! YAAAAAHHHHHH! CONNNNNNIIIIIEEE! . . ."
Somebody muttered, "That boy's all fucked up. Seriously fucked up."
Connie tried again. "Maybe the whole thing was like a dream, or maybe . . ."
The pastor stepped in and put his hand on Connie's shoulder. "Son, I think what happened was the man saw his footprints all alone and asked the Lord why he abandoned him and the Lord answered, 'That was when I carried you, my son.'"
After Connie was gently nudged off the stage and we lined up for showers, I felt cowardly and envious of the bold, if muddled, visions expressed by my fellow Mission guests. That night I had a dream about going to a movie that turned out to be all loud, gaudy previews for two hours. Then, in the manner of dreams, I went on a fruitless, circular quest through the labyrinthine theater to ask the management for a refund.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Out of the Mouths of Babes: A Tale of Economic Woe
I started teaching again this week, and the required vocabulary word "dismayed" came up in a short story some third-graders and I read aloud yesterday. The protagonist, an absentminded kid forever losing things--books, house keys, caps, gloves, notebooks--and thus a habitue' of lost and founds, was "dismayed" to find that some shifty classmates had submerged his book report in an aquarium minutes before it was due. I tried, like a good teacher, to get them to define the word from context clues, but I got answers like, "He wants to kill them," or "It means fish ate the paper."
"Let me tell you a story kind of like that where I ended up 'dismayed,' I said. "I was spending the night in a friend's backyard last summer--"
"Why were you doing that, teacher?"
"I like to look up at the stars." Actually I'd been kicked out of the Mission my second night there because a paperwork error had misidentified me as a chronic dormitory litterbug.
"Don't interrupt. Anyway, I forgot about my friend's new black Labrador puppy, and I left my backpack and cell phone and wallet sitting on a table next to the air mattress. In the morning, I found the puppy had chewed my backpack to tatters, cracked my cell phone into three pieces, and had torn apart my leather wallet with about 50 dollars in it."
"It ate the money?"
"Tore it up into little pieces and slobbered all over everything then jumped on me when I woke up and got my t-shirt muddy. So I when I saw all this stuff I'd lost I was dismayed. What was I feeling?"
"You wanted to kill the dog!"
"You should have called the dog catcher!"
"I'd call the police."
"Why didn't you just go to the store and get change for your fifty dollars? That's what my Mom does." This from a smug little girl named Sierra.
I heard a pounding noise in my head. A wall was fast approaching. I had to swerve away. (Earlier today I'd had a similar feeling during math and Bear Logic, which involved basic reasoning problems involving different colored bears running races: Me: "If the red bear comes in second, and the yellow bear doesn't win the race, what does the blue bear do?" Kids: "He ate too much honey and fell asleep!" Me: "How can we use Bear Logic in real life?" Kids: "If you go camping and meet some bears you can tell them what to do.")
"Look," I continued, "the fifty dollars was gone! Haven't you ever lost some money that you really needed? It was everything I had and I couldn't even call anybody to ask for help. It chewed up my bus pass! I was totally stranded because my friend had already gone to work!"
"Why didn't you drive your car?"
"Let's stick to the fifty dollars. I was dismayed. I was sad. I was angry. I was surprised and shocked. I felt like crying and I'm a grown-up. That's dismayed. Who's ever been dismayed here?" Hands shot up.
Now a curious phenomenon started bubbling that you usually want to clamp a lid on right away, but lately I've been letting things like this reach a roiling boil for the anthropological value and absurdity. A classroom of thirty kids can be seized by a kind of mass hysteria that makes them more fluent liars than usual if they get focused on just the right thing--and the idea of losing fifty dollars was a perfect kick start. Listen in:
"I lost a fifty dollar bill once."
"How'd it happen? Were you dismayed?"
"A burglar took it."
"A burglar, eh? Most inconvenient. How did you feel?"
"Mad and sad."
The reaction gathered speed . . .kids glanced at each other, eyes rolled sideways and upwards, bodies squirmed with the cost of juvenile mendacity . . .
--"I had fifty dollars that I won at the fair but my cat ate it."
--"I was in the park playing with my cousins and I had a fifty dollar bill and it fell down a hole. I think squirrels got it."
--"I saw a fifty dollar bill on the ground once, and bent over to pick it up but the wind blew it away way up into a tree."
--"I had a fifty dollar bill to buy some ice cream but my baby sister flushed it down the toilet."
--"I was at a picnic with my family and some leaf cutter ants chopped up my fifty dollar bill."
--"I got a fifty dollar bill from the tooth fairy because I had a whole bunch of teeth under my pillow but then Chucky stole it."
--"A Killer Klown from outer space stole my fifty dollars."
--"Freddy Kruger stole my fifty dollar bill."
--"A monkey at the zoo grabbed my fifty dollar bill and wiped his butt with it."
Roars. At this point I interrupted. "So how did you all feel when you lost your fifty dollar bills?"
"I was sad."
"It was jacked-up."
One last time. I leaned over the kids, sitting on the carpet in front of me. "If you lose money that you really, really need, what's a word we learned today? You felt Di. . .Dii. . .Diii. . .? Starts with the fourth letter of the alphabet? Diiiii . . ."
Sierra, the girl who'd earlier advised me on economic recovery, threw her hands up in the air and shrieked, "DELIGHTED!"
And somehow she was right.
"Let me tell you a story kind of like that where I ended up 'dismayed,' I said. "I was spending the night in a friend's backyard last summer--"
"Why were you doing that, teacher?"
"I like to look up at the stars." Actually I'd been kicked out of the Mission my second night there because a paperwork error had misidentified me as a chronic dormitory litterbug.
"Don't interrupt. Anyway, I forgot about my friend's new black Labrador puppy, and I left my backpack and cell phone and wallet sitting on a table next to the air mattress. In the morning, I found the puppy had chewed my backpack to tatters, cracked my cell phone into three pieces, and had torn apart my leather wallet with about 50 dollars in it."
"It ate the money?"
"Tore it up into little pieces and slobbered all over everything then jumped on me when I woke up and got my t-shirt muddy. So I when I saw all this stuff I'd lost I was dismayed. What was I feeling?"
"You wanted to kill the dog!"
"You should have called the dog catcher!"
"I'd call the police."
"Why didn't you just go to the store and get change for your fifty dollars? That's what my Mom does." This from a smug little girl named Sierra.
I heard a pounding noise in my head. A wall was fast approaching. I had to swerve away. (Earlier today I'd had a similar feeling during math and Bear Logic, which involved basic reasoning problems involving different colored bears running races: Me: "If the red bear comes in second, and the yellow bear doesn't win the race, what does the blue bear do?" Kids: "He ate too much honey and fell asleep!" Me: "How can we use Bear Logic in real life?" Kids: "If you go camping and meet some bears you can tell them what to do.")
"Look," I continued, "the fifty dollars was gone! Haven't you ever lost some money that you really needed? It was everything I had and I couldn't even call anybody to ask for help. It chewed up my bus pass! I was totally stranded because my friend had already gone to work!"
"Why didn't you drive your car?"
"Let's stick to the fifty dollars. I was dismayed. I was sad. I was angry. I was surprised and shocked. I felt like crying and I'm a grown-up. That's dismayed. Who's ever been dismayed here?" Hands shot up.
Now a curious phenomenon started bubbling that you usually want to clamp a lid on right away, but lately I've been letting things like this reach a roiling boil for the anthropological value and absurdity. A classroom of thirty kids can be seized by a kind of mass hysteria that makes them more fluent liars than usual if they get focused on just the right thing--and the idea of losing fifty dollars was a perfect kick start. Listen in:
"I lost a fifty dollar bill once."
"How'd it happen? Were you dismayed?"
"A burglar took it."
"A burglar, eh? Most inconvenient. How did you feel?"
"Mad and sad."
The reaction gathered speed . . .kids glanced at each other, eyes rolled sideways and upwards, bodies squirmed with the cost of juvenile mendacity . . .
--"I had fifty dollars that I won at the fair but my cat ate it."
--"I was in the park playing with my cousins and I had a fifty dollar bill and it fell down a hole. I think squirrels got it."
--"I saw a fifty dollar bill on the ground once, and bent over to pick it up but the wind blew it away way up into a tree."
--"I had a fifty dollar bill to buy some ice cream but my baby sister flushed it down the toilet."
--"I was at a picnic with my family and some leaf cutter ants chopped up my fifty dollar bill."
--"I got a fifty dollar bill from the tooth fairy because I had a whole bunch of teeth under my pillow but then Chucky stole it."
--"A Killer Klown from outer space stole my fifty dollars."
--"Freddy Kruger stole my fifty dollar bill."
--"A monkey at the zoo grabbed my fifty dollar bill and wiped his butt with it."
Roars. At this point I interrupted. "So how did you all feel when you lost your fifty dollar bills?"
"I was sad."
"It was jacked-up."
One last time. I leaned over the kids, sitting on the carpet in front of me. "If you lose money that you really, really need, what's a word we learned today? You felt Di. . .Dii. . .Diii. . .? Starts with the fourth letter of the alphabet? Diiiii . . ."
Sierra, the girl who'd earlier advised me on economic recovery, threw her hands up in the air and shrieked, "DELIGHTED!"
And somehow she was right.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Which Came First?
Everyone here at the Mission has been slightly stunned by the reality of the gradual winnowing of guests and their ejection, starting with long-term residents who've been here years. Most guests who've been given walking papers have rejected the option to remain on for a limited time as an unpaid "Disciple of Christ," perfoming menial chores for bed and meals. The principle reason for rejecting this offer is one I can understand: the religious devotion, rituals, chores, and Bible classes required are drooling and dunderheaded beyond belief, the worst kind of primitive religiosity crossed with lots of New Age uplift guff and prison-speak.
I spoke with Lee, a man who's been living at the Mission for five years, why he was choosing the uncertainty of the street over discipleship. "I don't want anyone telling me how to worship, and I'm too old to be on my knees scrubbing shit. My feet hurt. Ain't doing no stupid-ass disciple program. Lots of people here ain't even religious. I'll sleep outside or get into the Village."
The Village is a small collection tool-shed sized structures across the street associated with the Poverillo House with no electricity or plumbing. Painted soft pastel colors (from a distance the Village always makes me think of Disneyland) each tiny shelter has two shelves inside to bunk a pair men. The waiting list for the Village is long and uncertain. Beyond that option you can risk getting rolled or raped or arrested in parks and doorways. That's about it.
I overheard a Native American homeless man and parolee discuss his fate with a companion while standing in line waiting admission to chapel:
"I already told my fucking P.O. [parole officer] I'll go back to prison before I do that Christian shit. I'm an Indian, Lakota Sioux, we don't believe that shit. The mission's supposed to be for everyone!"
"You got that right."
"These fake preachers--they're in it for the money. When we sweat in the lodge that's the real spirit! This place is drying up because nobody wants to donate anymore, that's why they're broke. The Christian bullshit prison program gets state funds, tax-payer dollars, man, the rest is donations and nobody's donating, that's why the food is such garbage. Shit, Jesus ain't gonna help nobody! We need somebody with real power like Superman!"
"Superman? What's that shit all about? You're an indian. I thought you prayed to the Great Spirit or something."
"I don't pray, you don't understand. I just like Superman."
"Well, you know, you can see Christian symbolism in the Superman story."
"What the fuck?"
"You know, boy comes to earth, has powers, saves people, his father gives his only son to us . . ."
"That's bullshit! That's backwards! The Christians got all that from Superman! They stole it! Just like everything else!"
I spoke with Lee, a man who's been living at the Mission for five years, why he was choosing the uncertainty of the street over discipleship. "I don't want anyone telling me how to worship, and I'm too old to be on my knees scrubbing shit. My feet hurt. Ain't doing no stupid-ass disciple program. Lots of people here ain't even religious. I'll sleep outside or get into the Village."
The Village is a small collection tool-shed sized structures across the street associated with the Poverillo House with no electricity or plumbing. Painted soft pastel colors (from a distance the Village always makes me think of Disneyland) each tiny shelter has two shelves inside to bunk a pair men. The waiting list for the Village is long and uncertain. Beyond that option you can risk getting rolled or raped or arrested in parks and doorways. That's about it.
I overheard a Native American homeless man and parolee discuss his fate with a companion while standing in line waiting admission to chapel:
"I already told my fucking P.O. [parole officer] I'll go back to prison before I do that Christian shit. I'm an Indian, Lakota Sioux, we don't believe that shit. The mission's supposed to be for everyone!"
"You got that right."
"These fake preachers--they're in it for the money. When we sweat in the lodge that's the real spirit! This place is drying up because nobody wants to donate anymore, that's why they're broke. The Christian bullshit prison program gets state funds, tax-payer dollars, man, the rest is donations and nobody's donating, that's why the food is such garbage. Shit, Jesus ain't gonna help nobody! We need somebody with real power like Superman!"
"Superman? What's that shit all about? You're an indian. I thought you prayed to the Great Spirit or something."
"I don't pray, you don't understand. I just like Superman."
"Well, you know, you can see Christian symbolism in the Superman story."
"What the fuck?"
"You know, boy comes to earth, has powers, saves people, his father gives his only son to us . . ."
"That's bullshit! That's backwards! The Christians got all that from Superman! They stole it! Just like everything else!"
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