City of Legends

Seven years ago, today, I was in bed, asleep, in Salinas, California, when the phone rang about 6 in the morning.

My wife (at the time), Ann, sat bolt upright and shouted "Unacceptable!" as she hated it when people called too early or late, she being someone who needed her sleep.  I leapt from the bed and grabbed the phone.

It was my mother, calling from West Virginia, telling me to turn on CNN, that a plane had flown into the Twin Towers in New York.

I got CNN on just in time to hear of the second plane hitting, then of word that another plane had hit the Pentagon (I used to work there, and I knew my ex-wife worked not far from there).

Needless to say, the morning was a bit chaotic as word from various sources filtered in, contradicted a story from ten minutes before, etc.  Calls were made, friends confirmed safe (my ex, Jan, took forever to get home, but was safe).

I have made much over the past seven years about that day, comparing the number of lives lost to the troops we have lost invading a country that didn’t even have anything to do with the attack, to the number of innocent dead in the Sudan, but nonetheless, lives were lost in an arrogant and angry attack upon what were mostly non-military targets (if you want play by the rules, you take turns attacking each others’ military targets, not their civilians).

To the dead, to those who lost wife and husband, father, mother, son, daughter, lovers and friends, this is an anniversary of sorrow.  May you find peace, may there be resolution within you.

A pingback brought this photo to my attention, one of a set of three of my ex-wife, Ann, from a film festival in Los Angeles in 2001. She was featured on the cover of my books from an unexpected quarter and Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion and remains one of the more remarkable people I have known in this life.

People ask me why I married her, considering the age difference and some major issues we were never able to rise completely above. This picture doesn’t tell the tale of the person I came to love and respect, but it does explain why just about everyone always asked her "What are you doing with HIM?" My answer to people who asked me that question remains "Well, she asked…"

Her work with young people via Sunrise House in Salinas and with the Calfiornia Friday Night Live Partnership with the students from high schools and middle schools in Monterey County, particularly North Salinas High School, proved her a most thoughtful, charitable and competent person.

Her totem-muse was "the Leopard" and she inspired such works as sparks like frozen lemons, monday mourning poem, sacred smile and brisant revelations, which has since turned into perhaps my most kick-ass contribution to poetic rock.

To this date, she remains the last woman I touched as lover.

In a perfect world, when I go on vacation next month, it would be to several cities and countries (you know who you are), but reality is a harsh mistress (and I prefer my mistresses soft and yielding).

As it is, my likely itinerary is to travel to Los Angeles on the 7th of December, spend time on Friday and Saturday and perhaps even Sunday with my daughter, Peri, and her husband, Brian. Then, probably Sunday or Monday, make a pilgrimage to the high desert to wander in the wilderness and reconnect.

From there I will possibly travel to the Salinas area. Or not. There is frail purpose luring me there and the cost-benefits analysis hinges on my telling some people I’d be there. So, as a matter of honor, I must go…but it will probably be a brief stop over, at most.

Then later in the week I will return to LA to visit some of my old haunts and see if I can get together with old friends, the returning to the East Coast probably on the 15th or 16th. Perhaps see my daughter again. We are not as close as we once were and I can;t seem to find the right actions or words to repair the damage.

But at least she isn’t denying she ever heard of me.

Could things happen to screw all that up? Oh yeah. Man plans, God laughs and I adapt.

I put out word the other day that I am thinking of making an escape to California later this year…not to stay but as a vacation (with maybe some readings mixed in).

Then it occurred to me that I am not honor-bound to the beloved Golden State. If the stars are not aligned right and there is not some sense of a welcome (for instance, if no friends or family seem delighted by my potential appearance and make no offer to me for crash space, etc), then I will throw the whole net wide and see what other regions of the country where I have friends, family and, yes, fanbase, that may be more welcoming.

Yes, LA and Venice Beach and Salinas are homes to me in many manners, but so can New Orleans, Mobile, Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta, Tampa, Houston, Denver, South Carolina, Boston, New York, Sault Ste. Marie and many other areas lure me with little effort.

Let’s see what happens…

There was an old Spanky and Our Gang (pop/rock band from the late sixties, early seventies, best known for the civil rights guiltfest "Give a Damn") song called "Sunday Morning"…lyrics of the sort of "It’s so quiet in the street, you can hear the sound of feet walking by…I’ll put coffee on to brew, we can have a cup or two, then do what other people do on Sunday morning". I always wondered what exactly it was that other people do on Sunday morning.

Not important, just a sideshow.

Nice evening last night, although it seemed like half of the people I knew were either calling or accidentally bumping into me. As they say in sitcom parlance "Hilarity ensues." I think the guy who came up with that line should be shot.

Was telling a friend last night about some of my adventures when I was working in Salinas, as the combined (deep breath here) Monterey County Friday Night Live Coordinator, house counselor for Sunrise House, Alcohol and Drug Resource Specialist for Harden Middle School and Facilitator for the Youth Alternatives to Violence programs at Monterey County Silver Star Youth Facility and Soledad High School. Busy, busy, busy…but making a difference. I miss many of those people (getting to talk to Joey and his Grandmother last night really brought that back…) I will have to add Salinas to my list of options for relo when the time comes.

Also found out that, despite recent press coverage that Meth is starting to show up in West Virginia, it is already here, big time. The police and the media have just decide to slow play it. Why? No idea. I guess twelve year olds turning tricks for processed cold medicine made in local trailer parks isn’t as important as the latest survey (the Top Headline in today’s local paper on the the "Local News" page) of area opinion about whether or not the Catholic Church fasttracks John Paul II to sainthood.

Hey, the guy was great and you can put whatever laurels you want on him and his legacy, but Shakespeare was right (you don’t hear me say that often) in "Macbeth" - about life

"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

People we have kids dying, flesh and spirit. We have soldiers dying in Iraq. We have millions of people starving. AIDS is still with us. One in three American women will be raped at some point in her life and in 85% of those cases alcohol will be a factor (anyone for another beer ad with cheerleaders?). North Korea has both nukes and the means to deliver them.

I’d like to see some enterprising news organization decide to do news by priority, not the crapfest that has become of news since Rupert Murdoch got hold of it. Even CNN Headline news now foregoes the classic "all the news in half an hour" format in the evening, to compete for ratings. I don’t need a half hour on whether or not Brad Pitt is banging Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Garner is pregnant by Ben Affleck. I am sure they would agree it is a waste of sound and light to report it.

We have become a nation of people who do not care if our children die or our legacies befouled, as long as we are entertained. Maybe we are so full of despair that we can’t think about what is really going on around is, so we invent things we can get our arms around. As much as I despise the perverse stridency of the National Right to Life (they have a gift for twisting sloppy theology into soundbite politics) at least they have passion for something meaningful. Everybody else is busy buying Darth Vader bubblegum and worrying about cellphone ringtone uploads.

Boy, I am going to get some hatemail on that paragraph. Yeah, hatemail. Hate. The least Christian thing you can think of. I am sore tired of ignorance and those who exploit it for their own edification. I would rather lose an argument with a better or more learned mind than beat down my opposition with innacuracies and lies. This life is not about winning, it’s about the truth. And we are now turning over our lives and those of the people we love to those who keep score ahead of checking facts. And wrapping yourself in a flag or misquoting the Word of God doesn’t change that.

Slow start, big finish, I guess.

I stumbled across Joey’s number. Thought I’d lost it months ago, and since I had changed cell phones, figured it might be aeons before the next time I encountered him. But, I found the number and gave him a call.

Joey was student/project of mine when I was a counselor at Sunrise House in Salinas, Californiam and the Alcohol/Drug Resource Specialist for Harden Middle School. A bit hyper and definitely too smart for his own good, he had been labelled as a "psychotic" by a principal or vice principal in grade school, so they were waiting for himw hen he hit middle school. He reminded me of what Mark Twain said about Tom Sawyer, that he would either grow up to be President…or hung.

He’s getting by, still has to deal with the whole labelling thing. If he sneezes wrong, they come for him and accuse him of doing God knows what….bummer, but he’ll adapt and advance himself.

Gotta go for now…it’s all good…but will write more later or in the morning.