Zeppelin Boy

Throughout my life as an East Coast guy, which is all of my life, local insects have fascinated and charmed me, garnering my attention to this day. I collected them as a kid, murdered and mounted, but I evolved quickly into a lover. They were a weapon to use against my older brother when he thought it might be a good idea to alleviate his boredom by wrestling me to the ground and sitting on my face. But I could get lost in their world, and frequently did, looking at and handling bees and wasps. I knew that bumble bees were the Zeppelins of the stinging set. They're big, beautiful, and rather benign. Labrador bees. I would gently cover them with my hand and lift them from flowers. When I stopped running and opened my hand to show my brother, the tide turned, he ran, me chasing. Bumble bees, among others, were my buddies. So when I went into the laundry room this morning, and heard a buzzing, of course I looked around. There, In the bottom of the laundry sink, was a big, beautiful, healthy looking, bumble bee, drinking long and hard from a thimble sized pool of water held together down there by, cohesion, adhesion or some other form of magic that defies logic. He must have gotten trapped in that room; it opens to the driveway. As I put my hand down flat on the bottom of that deep utility sink, offering him a ride back outside, he climbed up as if he had been waiting for the elevator and the doors had just opened on his floor. He gently tasted my thumb as I opened the door to the fresh air, buzzing, bumbling really, at the end of my outstretched arm. He was just being a bumblebee. Slowly, laboriously, with what seemed like more weight than power to make himself fly, he lifted off... as if he were filled with Helium..

  

Street Dogs...

Street dogs in Columbia really know how to work a crowd. Savvy, cautious, independent survivors, thin but not starving. They live an unfettered life marked by handouts from the passing crowd and deep sleep on a sunlit stoop. I bought a bag of fresh rolls, just for them. A large, shaggy Shepherd mix approached me openly as I waved a bun and called out to him. Taking it immediately into his mouth, he promptly spit it back out, staring at it on the ground as if daring it move. I picked it up and offered it again, he took it and spit it out. Given the number of mom & pop bread shops that are so common on every street, I realized that bread must be the most frequent donation the canine beggars get. This guy wanted something more substantial, egg, meat, cheese... Some kind of protein. Please, enough with the bread already! He wandered away. Four more dogs came and went, all rejecting the bread. None appeared to be starving, all just working the procession of bodies as they walked up and down the narrow street. The dogs were pros, particular about just what kind of donations they would take.

Back at home, Carla and I had a late lunch on St George Street, the main pedestrian drag for tourists visiting St Augustine. As we walked back to our car, maneuvering slowly through the crowd, Styrofoam leftovers in hand, I spotted a familiar homeless guy lounging on a sunlit stoop by the Coquina wall of the “Oldest Schoolhouse in the USA”. He's a regular at that spot, living off the generosity of the passing parade. I realized that since I hadn't touched my Shrimp dinner, it would be a special meal for the homeless guy, lying with his head propped up on one elbow. “Would you like a nice shrimp dinner? I haven't touched it!” Looking a bit like that shaggy Shepherd mix who spit out the bun, and without taking the Styrofoam from my outstretched hand, the homeless guy looked up at me and asked: “How was it prepared?” The guy is a pro, particular about just what kind of donation he would take.

Gypsy Queen

 

Flying down to Medellin,

To see my little Gypsy Queen,

I'll watch her teach the downward dog,

Add a page to my current blog,

And drink some cold cerveza.

First light calls for Cafe Tinto,

A bus ride with an open window,

Idyllic views of small Casitas,

Images of beatific Jesus,

Line hilly streets of color.

Ten days on, I'll need to fly,

A sardine can,

Built for sky.

I just so hate to say goodbye.

So I'll do no such thing.

Nos vemos mañana,

mi niña hermosa...

A "Layla" rescue...

 As is true of most mornings, I pulled up to Planet Fitness at 6:15 today. But uncharacteristically, I was able to park right in front of the main door. Inside it was a ghost town, only two other people were there. I guess some had forgotten to change their clocks and Sunday mornings are light traffic anyway. Which was fine with me. So I picked an elliptical machine right in the front row under a bank of seven flat screen TVs hanging just above. With all those channels to choose from, I can almost always find something interesting to make 30 minutes go by quickly. But not this morning. Of the seven stations available, Chuck Norris was advertizing his Total Gym on one of them and I wasn't in the mood to look at his hair, that awful dye job, and listen to him jabber. Another fitness show ran on channel 3. That guru wanted me to buy little plastic containers that are color coded to help me learn how to eat correctly. All I have to do is put the protein in the red plastic, the veggies in the green one, and so on. It's portion control for idiots. Oh, and I have to follow the workout on the two CD's that come with it. (The CD's alone are a $195.00 value!) The price for a few colored plastic containers and two CD's? Only three easy payments of $19.95. The profit margin they make on each sale is huge. No thanks, I still had five other channels to pick from. Oh shit, it's Sunday morning and all five are church stuff. There's a black preacher dancing and shouting as he wipes the sweat from his face with the small white towel that seems to be permanently sewn to the palm of his right hand. No thanks. A white lady was yelling on channel 9. I wasn't listening to the sound on any of these, just watching her get red in the face and yell. I had to pass. The last one I looked at before turning it all off and the music on, was the best. A middle age white guy, way too heavy for the red light special Kmart suit he was bulging out of while pointing at me, angry and spitting. An obvious douche. But there were thousands of people in the audience wearing suits and dresses, paying rapt attention to the fat angry guy. They were getting to me. How lame must you be to sit and listen to this blowhard yell at you or to even assume that he has anything to say that had would make it worth the unpleasantness? Pretty fucking lame. I was disgusted with myself for being a member of the human race, preferring to emulate and learn from just about any dog I had ever met over that charlatan.

So I turned it all off and the radio on. The beginning notes of Derek and The Dominoes “Layla” started playing. It was nothing short of a true epiphany as I thought: “Now. Now I really am in church! Amen brother...”

Coal Country Shack

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout...” That was January 15, 1978. I turned 30 eight days later and Carla baked me a cake in our funky antique stove. She was 21 and I whisked her off to a remote shack in the woods near the huge metropolis that is Chauncey, Ohio. Population: no more than a handful of stragglers, left over from when coal money was mainlining into the veins of the local economy. Thirty years prior, the Mill field mine disaster had forced the shutdown of the Sunday Creek Coal Company and put a period at the end of the death sentence for coal mining in that area. Our shack had been built on stilts in a three day frenzy of alcohol and hallucinogenics, or so I'm told. No pluming, no problem. I like outhouses better anyway. You know, sitting among the trees, bird calls and fresh breezes while adding to the pile below, lightly dusting each new contribution with lye... powdered sugar on an inverted chocolate cone. Carla screamed from there one fine Spring day when it seems that a snake had managed to slither up to the top of the pile and get within ass striking range. Good thing she looked down before she sat down. I quickly went into waste removal mode, no problem. All in all, it was a great year. She did typing at home for The University of Ohio, I went to grad school to study Interpersonal Communications. Mostly though, I studied Carla, and the THC content of various strains of Columbia ganja that I got from my brother. Our dirt driveway was deeply rutted from the tire chains that were standard equipment in the winter. Most cars couldn't make it. Almost no visitors was fine with me, but when the Jehovah Witnesses made it all the way up to our house, their car lumbering and shaking with age and the demanding load of four, very large ladies, they were welcome. As the first Witness put her heavy leg out, planting a too tight shoe and badly swollen ankle on the ground, I went inside to roll them a doobie, just to be hospitable.

  

Knock if You Dare...

It's said that you can never go back again, but in dreams and memories, we do it all the time.

When I look at this old door knocker, I become that six-year-old boy, looking up at the massive front door of my Grandparents cavernous Victorian home. I strain to get up on my toes high enough to lift that heavy clapper and let it fall. Again and again.

Their street was lined with mature Sycamore trees, the bark mottled, flaking off in irregular patches like the skin on the legs of my ancient Aunt Jeedie. Her bark was flaking and peeling too, made worse as she absent-mindedly reached down to scratch. Her room there at the old people's place, heavy with the dank smell of dirty laundry and human decay. But those trees were still youthful and strong, shading the street from all but the most persistent sunlight that managed to run the gauntlet from the canopy top, to the ground, once there, it would do a celebratory dance on the well-manicured lawns, like a thousand flashes of light from a brilliant mirror-ball suspended above.

Many years before that time, my Grandfather had worked in India for the Standard Oil Company. That's where my Mother was born and that's where the door knocker originated. It was more than just a way to announce visitors, it guarded the house with a grotesque grimace, daring people to knock. But I just liked to flip it and wait for Grandma to open the door to a house that felt like the setting of an old Basil Rathbone movie. A cornucopia of wonders spilled out from every room throughout that voluminous old place.

Just inside, guarding the front door, stretched out flat on the hallway floor, was the pelt of an adult Bengal Tiger that Grandpa had shot on a hunting expedition. The whispered backstory was that he hadn't actually shot it himself, one of the guides had, but in those days, the bragging rights were part of the package for the " Great White Hunter" to take home. The skull had been removed, cleaned, and inserted back into the head, forever threatening, caught in mid-attack, mouth open wide, deadly fangs ready to grab anything that moved. Bright glass eyes followed me in the door, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

I immediately flopped down, pointing my Keds in the opposite direction and kissed his nose, rubbing the stiff bristle of whiskers that no longer moved on their own. “Hello Tiger” I cooed lovingly as if to my best buddy, Roxie, the fat beagle who was probably asleep right now on the living room couch she was forbidden to mount. She would be right there, defiantly waiting for me to return home.

Roxie was stuffed too, but it was with food scraps and dog treats, and she never even once tried to look scary.

St George Street

Shade from the eves cut a sharp line across his chest, allowing him respite to look out into the unrelenting sun that had been using his eyes like a pincushion all afternoon. He propped his shoulders up against the coarse coquina wall, enjoying the back scratch as he shifted his weight. The narrow St George street tourist promenade was packed with bodies, heaving, sweating, lumbering forward to the next Sweet Shoppe or Fudge Palace. Watching the parade of excess, middle America, he felt bad about his cruel judgments, and about himself for entertaining them. A lanky high school boy with severe acne offered a sampler plate of thin crust Pepperoni pizza, small squares. just outside the door of Pizzalley's. Only two pieces, mostly crust, were left. The Eagles, “Take It Easy”, drifted in and out above the buzz of the crowd, from the restaurant courtyard two doors down. A triumph of the singers will over his appalling lack of ability. Don't quit your day job, pal. Looking down to the far end of the pedestrian street, bodies became indistinct, blending into a sea of color, heat snakes rising above, heads bobbing like peaked waves, breaking just beyond the horizon.

Looking to the left, he saw her coming, hugging the wall on his side, gliding smoothly, faster than the crowd she was avoiding, as if it were a living thing, separate and unpleasant, which it was. She almost brushed him without notice. He was no more than a lamp post or another round trash receptacle, made of coquina to match the wall he supported. The slight breeze of her passing carried a hint of Lavender mixed with Ivory soap. A black tank top clutched small breasts, half oranges with nipples that apparently thought it was cold in that summer heat, held aloft by the Gods who vied for the honor to do so. Washboard abs spoke of beach time, ripping under a flawless tan. A perfect derriere, painted black in yoga pants, her second skin. She could crack walnuts, equipped with a vise disguised as a cherry tomato. He watched her go, a waterfall of shimmering russet flowing down her back, until she too was lost to the rise and fall of that human sea.

Shifting his weight, he closed his eyes, welcoming the cool dark as he put the chaos on pause, clearing his mind of everything...except for her.