Have I put this up before? Deja View!

Hi! How's it going? Wow... You look really hot today. And you smell great, like graham crackers and day old funk, to borrow a line from Loomis Simmons.

But anyways: To the story: And here it is:

Just an old story I dug up. I had grand dreams to write a whole short story but I'm too busy not doing anything at the moment. Enjoy!

The sun is setting, the orange and red streaks streaming from the west washing everything in a golden color. I saw that same light when I was on the Western Front. I had enlisted in l'Escadrille La Fayette. I felt it was something I had to do; though not for political reasons. I had heard the horror stories about what the Hun was doing (and I’m sure my Bosche counterparts had heard the same about me), but it was a chance at adventure and glory. And I'm sure most of those who were in with me had signed on for the same reasons.

The morning had started quite rightly. I had a quiet breakfast with my tent mate Sean. A Canadian chap who had joined way earlier in the war. He was an intelligent and educated man, dashing, adventurous, and bright. He was already an ace, where I had yet to claim a kill. I had taken care of a few of the Kaiser’s balloons but I didn't really consider them victories, much like shooting fish in a barrel is not considered hunting or fishing.

It was a chill morning and it had rained for the entire week so we knew that it was prime hunting, since neither side flew in the rain and we would all be tearing at a chance to go up. For breakfast I had runny eggs and bacon with dark toast. Sean had his usual cold roast and vegetables with a large mug of Irish coffee. It amazed me how he could eat so richly in the morning but he chalked it up to his having been raised on a farm out in Quebec, and one needed a good strong breakfast out there I assumed. Our plan for the day was to run up following the Marne and scoot over St. Chrysostome then gain altitude and fly over No Man's Land to see if we could help out a few of our dough boys. We were going up with Capt. Gerard and Lt. Vincennes who were French aviators, they were splitting with us at St. Chrysostome and heading further north.

Everything was set. Chocks, contact! And she jumped to life. My beautiful Spad was firing straight and true on all cylinders. I put the full throttle to her and she leaped into the air eager as a whippet. I was on Sean’s wing and we formed up with the captain and the lieutenant. It was a grand day to fly. A crisp chill in the air. The sun hadn't even risen yet, but the eastern sky was turning all shades of light blue. We followed our path without a hitch. Over St. Chrysostome we turned our noses to the southeast and gained altitude to 850 meters. The captain and the lieutenant continued their climb slowly turning to the north. Sean and I circled about lazily. Looking for any sort of activity in the air or on the ground. It must have been a frenzy down there because apparently there had been a major artillery barrage just before we arrived, which was rather queer, for we usually saved the barrages for after tea. The land was pockmarked and muddied with sharp fresh arty holes. It looked like a giant, angry, sore. Tree stumps an ugly monument to the forest that stood there 4 years before, and pools of filthy mud water littered with corpses and debris. There were none of the telltale red spots covering the land that signified an infantry assault. It always sickened me to see those and think of the poor bastards smudged out in an instant.

We patrolled north to south and back again on what we jokingly called the race track. On either side to the east and west were tangles and tangles of barbed wire, but they looked natural in that setting, some odd metalic plant that found a rich environment to grow. And just beyond the tangles of wire were trenches in the earth, like veins. I could see men in them, from up high they wriggled and flowed like blood. Fighting over the mess of land that not even a pig would envy.

Sean and I circled lower and lower. He waggled his wings and I flew up beside him. "I’ll break north, you go south over the Bosch!" he signaled. I nodded my head and waved agreement, waggled my wings and turned south. That was the last I ever saw of my friend Sean. But those days were the last I saw of a lot of my friends. I learned after the war that he had faced the same predicament I had, except that he had crashed his plane into a trench full of Huns, taking out scores of them.

I flew for a little over men dozing, others just waking up to a cold dirty breakfast. There were scores of them lined up though, preparing to take advantage of the barrage's handiwork. So it made sense, it wasn't our guns but theirs that had softened up the terrain. Lucky for our boys we'd come out to lend a hand. I cut my engine and let my prop feather, listening as I floated on like a cloud. It was weird, after the reassuring drone of my engine cutting out my senses peaked and I could hear the slightest sound on the ground. It must have been my excitement. Random gunshots trailed behind me, some bird hunter with hopes of impressing his mates or a new recruit trying his luck with a potshot. I kicked my engine over again and it sputtered to life. I let out a huge laugh, I always laughed after she growled on, thinking about what I would do if she didn't. The laugh was straightened out of me as a green flare shot up right in front of my plane. It was so close that I flew right through the acrid smoke trail. This was it. I pulled back on the stick then nosed over slightly. Getting the trenches in my sights. Flares kept shooting up at set intervals, the officers signaling the men. Poor bastards, poor lousy bastards. I put my finger on the trigger and applied slight pressure to it, when a stream of light came up across my nose and I felt a staccato "thud thud thud" across my plane. I heard a stomach wrenching "crunch" and a loud whine from the engine as a flame blew out singing my face. This was it. I was going down in No Man's Land. I eased her back to gain as much altitude as I could and looked for a convenient place to bring her down. HA! Convenient. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I turned eastward into the Kaiser’s backyard hoping to avoid the ugliness that was about to take place. She started to drop and I nosed her over hoping to gain some speed. I saw a relatively smooth surface with a tree stump and the remnants of a rustic wooden fence. That would be my salvation or my burial plot. I remember thinking that it seemed like a nice quiet little place to be buried. So I eased her towards it. I was dropping faster and faster. The engine finally seized and the propeller froze jerking her downwards towards the ground. My heart rose up into my throat and my stomach dropped out. She bounced once hard then clipped her wings and cart wheeled. I bashed my forehead on the windscreen and it seemed to shatter into a million pieces. I was dazed but I was alive. My legs and arms seemed to work. Intuition kicked in and I unstrapped myself from the plane. I felt myself going under. Like I was sinking into a dark pool. Slowly sinking looking up into the murky red light.

I started with a scream as I felt the heat licking at my legs. I tried to open my eyes but I couldn't see. I kicked at the heat and wiped at my eyes. I forced them open and rolled out of my beloved Spad. That was the end of her. She would have been my pyre. I looked down at my hands and realized that the blood from the severe gash on my head had coagulated and glued my eyes shut. My head ached with a long dull pain. I remembered that I was in the middle of The Great War. I looked about and saw a shell crater that would provide adequate shelter for the time being. They would be preoccupied with their assault and wouldn't be looking for me. So to the shell hole I ran and jumped in. There was a thick mud on the bottom and it splattered all over me. I felt sick but I took a deep breath and pulled out my trusty colt .45. I looked up just in time to catch the sun rising. It was the most beautiful sight ever. Rays of gold washed over me and I felt its luxurious warmth on my face and skin. I closed my eyes and smiled.

My version of PMS

This can't officially be a writing blog if it's not updated with mediocre and emotionally puerile poetry every once in a while!

Enjoy! As I whore out my most sincere emotions like a pair of very tight black pants!

I call it "Soul Moistness"

SOUL MOISTNESS

This emptiness,
a red ring of dregs
I drink no more,
shatters me.
 
This bitter herb,
a bare sapling stem
I grow no more,
embitters me.
 
This familiar scar,
a smooth livid line
I feel no more,
reminds me.
 
This torn nail,
a ragged tear
I dig no more,
buries me.
 
When the dregs are drunk
and the herbs plucked clean,
all that's left of the scars and nails
are dreams.
 

My issue with customs and the dogs they use.

Before you go absolutely bananas: I like dogs and have had dogs in my family. They just smell funny(you'll get the pun).

My issue with customs agents: They are humorless racists who can't reason for themselves. Their job demands that they be this way, and I am sure that they are screened for it according to their humorlessness and social ineptitude(if you don't believe me, hang out with a customs agent for a day off the job; I have!). Why do I say this? Because I am not an old white woman. I always seem to be the one "volunteered" for extra screening. I admit that my complexion is a lovely olive color and that my hair is dark. I also will admit that I give off a weird vibe, as though I were guilty. But why do they even call it random? No way in hell that screening is random.

Now my issue with the sniffer dogs: The dogs train with the agents and live and work and breed with them too. They will pick up on the subtle behavioural signals that emanate from the corpus of the agent. Customs agents are inherently racist, because they use generalizations about a persons looks and behavior and country/culture of origin to detain them for security purposes. So the dog in turn learns that sniffing out "the darkies" pleases his master.

A few stories that sum up my experiences with customs:

I was randomly chosen to have my shoes inspected. The customs agent(may he be a rabid foot fetishist now), who happened to be of Eastern European descent made excuses and brought up the fact that people always despised having to take off their shoes. I pointed out to him that it was acceptable considering that there was, in recent history, some guy with ties to radical terrorism, who ineptly tried to set off the bomb in his shoe(why they still let you bring on two lighters and boxes of matches on planes I don't comprehend... but anyways). I also, rather wittily I might add, pointed out to him that just decades before it were people like him that were being stopped and questioned because they could have been communist spies; may the pinko bastards rot. He did not find this amusing and the conversation was not furthered.

Another time, at another airport, the customs folks brought out a sniffer dog. The agent made a bee-line for me and snapped his fingers in front of a bag near me. The dog sniffed at it. "Don't touch the bag" he told me. I told him that wasn't my bag, mine was over here. That was the next bag he snapped in front of. The dog sat down. Apparently this was a hit. My offending bag and I were taken to a screening area. There was an international team of customs people here. Apparently it was a slow trafficking and bomb plot day so they all pored over my things. There must have been 3 Americans and 5 Canadians. Plus the dog handler and his supervisor who were interviewing me. "Why did the dog signify a hit on your bag?" the dog handler asked. I could tell he was new to the game. "I'm not sure, what is he trained to sniff out?" I asked. He started listing off a series of drugs, "Amphetamines, coca leaves, cocaine, chatt, heroine, opium, hallucinogenic mushrooms...", the senior agent stopped him. "Oh, drugs. Nope, no drugs in my bag" I informed him. He looked at me as though it were the other option. The home I was living in at the time was a major hive of pot smoking though, I informed them both which made them relax some. After close to an hour of going through my things and questioning me, they all decided that I had nothing on me and let me go back to my gate. The couple who had been sitting there when I was pinched by customs stared at me wide-eyed in surprise that I was back at the gate, seating myself, waiting to get onto the same plane as them. Their representatives of government probably received some worried telephone calls after that.

And finally, passing through that same airport during another trip, the same dog and handler came out and hit on my bag again. I went through the same process except this time after the questioning they took me back into a secluded office. They searched me thoroughly, without the invasive bits. I informed them that I would hate to be in their jobs, dealing with assholes like me all day. The senior one got the joke but the the dog handler remained expressionless, I could see that he was disappointed though, he really wanted to nail me. Probably for teasing his partner-dog with my drug scents. "Well, we can only go by what the dog says," he justified himself. "Oh, you speak dog?" I asked him. "No, we train the dog to sniff out drugs, bombs, endangered animals..." he broke into another rant. "You can go now," the senior agent told me. I collected my things and was looking for the money on the night stand, but then remembered that those days were behind me.

Interesting follow up to the dog handler saga: he and I held accounts at the same bank! I saw him in line one day on my way out the door and greeted him. "Hi agent C******, you're the one who strip-searched me! How is Atlas(the dog)?" I didn't bother for his reply and went my merry way.

Now you may think that I deserved getting hit on by the dog(which I fully admit, for the amount of weed I was smoking at that time in my life, I'm surprised the dog didn't piss all over my bag), but all the times I've been stopped by customs I've always noticed that they seem to only stop ethnic people. And I have yet to meet a customs agent that wasn't white. Now I know, you're clucking your tongue thinking that I'm just a jaded so and so, but really: If you go according to percentage of the population, most drug users are white. And I have had many white friends tell me of their escapades in smuggling small amounts of drugs through airports. So to sum up, if I were to give advice to the drug cartels and conglomerates and to the nefarious terror masterminds, it would be: Only hire old white women.

Well, to me it seems funny.

I was Cleopatra in a past life...

Here's another updated story:

I dreamt that all my teeth had broken but I still kept them in my mouth. There was no pain or blood. It felt like a mouth full of smooth gravel. I slowly came out of my sleep.

I didn't open my eyes but I knew it was an overcast day. My favorite kind. I snuggled into my warm and yielding bed, dozing easily for a little while. Thoughts of food slowly started to float into my half-dreams. Hunger overtook sleep. I rocked my legs and sat up on my haunches. I sat there with my eyes closed, a smugly satisfied smile on my face. I drew a long, deep breath and slowly exhaled, adding to the morning mist. My eyes opened gently, it was a perfectly overcast day. I scratched and rubbed my belly and wriggled my toes preparing them for the a lazy day. I tugged and rubbed my fuzzy ears and slowly rolled out of bed. "Shoots, shoots, shoots," I said excitedly, my eyes wide open. I took another deep breath but with purpose this time. I could smell them. So green, tender, and delicious. "Shoots! Shoots! Shoots!" I repeated, unsure if I said it or thought it. I followed my nose delightedly, the morning mist making them smell even sweeter. "Shoots... shoots... shoots.." it was almost a whisper. I could almost taste them, they were close! I found my secret garden. Normally, I would have just started eating, but today was a day of easy contentment. “…shoots…” it was rapture as my eyes took them in, noting each and every little individual. I settled myself in the thickest of the thicket and closed my eyes. I breathed in their subtle delicious scent and imagined just how good they were going to taste; green, crisp, tender, spectacular. I opened my eyes and looked around for the most shootful one. I spotted one but it was bowed and burdened at such a young age. His cousin however was a fine example, I could see that the others were trying to emulate her. "SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!" I daintily plucked her from the ground. She came loose quite easily, which made the day even more perfect. I tickled off the dirt-clumped roots and slowly but meaningfully stripped off the leaves and the outer skin. If this were any other day I would have eaten it all, but I was taking my time today. I put her in my mouth and just let her rest there. My tongue happily cupping around her, feeling the differences between where she stopped and I began. She was cool and refreshing, and still moist from the misty morning dew. I rolled my tongue around, letting them play together. I gave a quick suck of the juices and the forest came alive in me. The earth smelled fresher and the greens greener. The forest was one in me. Contentment and joy pulled on my little ears again. I slowly started to chew. Each bite was a smile. I ate as noisily as I possibly could, making the world jealous with my satisfaction. I giggled to myself with mischievous pleasure as I smacked my lips in joy. "Shoots; shoots; shoots." I hooted and slapped my belly as I rolled over onto the bed of shoots. Ah, the joys of being a content panda in a quiet forest.

A rotted black tooth

I screamed.
It was instinctual and completely inappropriate. Pure, raw, unfiltered. Straight from the heart. If the action of vomiting were purely vibrations in air, that sound is what it would be. The kind of scream that trumpets mental release. An utter loss of reason and function. The kind of scream you hear from murder in a lonely city. A scream that shivered the basest soul.
Everything stopped. All motion froze.
Slowly eyes gathered and swiveled to me. Pupils came into focus, hearts beating irregularly. The light streamed in from the hall through the doorway where she stood, crisply silhouetting her. Her one hand on the door knob, gripping firmly, supporting. Her other hand clutching her jacket closed, the knuckles bulging and white from the strain. She thoughtlessly tried to protect herself from whatever the scream announced. Her large white eyes scanned erratically peering into the darkness of the room. The look of utter horror painted over her face, slowly dying off as her eyes adjusted to the soft flickering light of the candles. She trembled and released the caught breath in her throat. The sigh slowly turned into a slow moan.
Those in the room with me looked away, embarrassed. Some shifted uneasily. Her boyfriend ran up to her, protectively putting his arms around her.
"You're such a fucking asshole Al," He seethed with white disgust.
"What?... Surprise!!!" I happily smiled at her, "Blow out the candles!"

Lunchtime

Here's a story I wrote a while back, can't remember if I put it up on here or not, and I'm too lazy to go back through the archive.

I sat in a 1960's era brownish-beige, rusted, metal folding chair. My elbows on a metal desk that was from the same era. Some afterthought of human comfort sprinkled on with the addition of a rubber mat to cushion my elbows. My head propped up in my hands. The floor was an industrial floor carpet that came in two foot squares. It smelled acrid and dusty. I stretched out my arms to the sides and looked at the walls, just a foot beyond my hands. I snorted loudly and shook my head. This desk was probably assembled in this room. There were no windows or shelves or anything except me, the desk, the chair, the carpet, and an obtrusively lonely hundred watt light bulb screwed into a socket right in the mathematical middle of the ceiling. I knew these details about the light because I had measured and counted them out. One day, early on when it was starting to get to me, I stood on my desk and read the fine print on the light bulb. It was too fucking bright for this little oubliette. I was blind for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t tell. The walls were glazed in a white glossy paint. Glossy like a living, breathing, membrane. I could feel the pulsations from it as it slowly digested me. There was the stench of its previous meals. Another pasty, squinted, splotched, clerk damned to the bowels of this entity. Food to break down. The enzymes of repetitious, thoughtless being slowly breaking him down. He smoked. He had left his ashtray in the desk and it had given the whole room an acrid stench. A mild burning sensation in the nostrils every time I breathed in. I noticed I was now a mouth breather when I sat eating my processed burger in the pale fluorescent light. At the neat, square, brightly colored table at the fast food shit hole. I ate lunch there. My body breaking down the meat of an animal that led a repetitious, thoughtless existence. No one ever really knew where I was. I didn't even collect my pay stubs anymore. The previous meal had been digested for thirty four years. He wrote it on the inside of the top drawer of the desk: "A.V. 1947-1981 I WAS HERE". Like a man condemned to nothingness. Digestion, the end. And in the end, he came out the end. Just waste. Nothing more. I wrote in my time too, but then covered it with a label sticker. The same stickers that went on the files, the files that went in the desk. I wasn't going out like that. I could still smell him here. The years of his stale, sickeningly sweet sweat and musky pheromones had mixed in with the cigarette smoke. Pasting on the walls like a cement stucco that coated the membrane. "FUCK YOU!" I yelled out. listening to it echo down the long cement corridor, bouncing off of the glossy wet walls up through the dark stairwell muffled by the stomach. Ending in a loud guttural belch to wherever it was heard. I opened the bottom drawer on my right side and looked in. a triangular black glass ashtray with a cigarette groove at each of the angles. It had a design in gold on the middle but I couldn't make it out anymore. All the frustrated, nervous cigarettes stubbed out on it, scraping off whatever memories it was meant to share. I once slapped myself so hard that I made my nose bleed. I just let it bleed until it stopped. I rubbed my hand in the blood. It was strangely cool for something so red. I slapped my hand on the underside of the desk. Was it lunch time yet? It’s funny how normal one can seem during lunch time. Going out and up and up and out. Everything moving so fast. I wasn’t going to rot away there in that bowel. So free, I was the vomit. I poisoned this animal and made it throw me up.

Sitting there at that restaurant. I no longer feared going back. I was poison now. I wouldn’t be digested. I put the kids meal toy I bought on top of the ashtray. Color, happy. It rolled, it could move. It couldn’t be eaten.

Wet your whistle.

I have been trying to get back onto the whole writing horse again.
It's hard. Like a drug habit that makes you impervious to derision and very very sexy.
But I'll keep at it and hopefully my creative juices will flow again like sap through something or other... I don't know. Whatev.
In the mean time here's a little taste for you to rub a little on your gums:
I call it Western Style Omelet.

*Ahem*

She stared at me with surprised eyes with pupils that looked like little pinpricks. She delicately held a small shiny metal tube in between her thumb and index finger.

"Sorry I forgot my camera..." I muttered uneasily, pointing over to where I had left it. It stared out blankly at the scene. Wanting to record the rays of light.
My eyes glanced over the HUGE line of cocaine in front of her.

"It's a habit I picked up in Tibet," She stammered out.

"Tibet, right," I wasn't sure what to do. I couldn't just leave my camera. It was cheap and old but I loved it. I took a couple steps into the room to gauge her reaction.

"Want some?" She asked politely.

"No thanks, I gave up drugs a long time ago..."

"More for me then!" She gave a little smile.
Before I could change my mind she set the tube to her nose and bent over the line. She snorted firmly and with gusto. She went through the line like it was her favorite home cooked meal.

"AAAAH! FUCK YEAH! WOOOOO!!!" She pumped the air with her fist and gritted her teeth. "Wanna screw?"

I was afraid to say no. She eyed me like piece of meat; tender, dry aged, succulent, marbled meat.

"Well... uh.. I um.." Thoughts of my bloated greasy corpse secreted in some crack house kept floating up in my mind's eye like fatty meatballs in an oily soup.
She stood up and walked over to me.

"Camera boy," she poked me in the chest, "You like your camera?".

"Yeah, it's ah.. made in East Germany," the fight or flight response kicked in. I slowly started making my way back towards the door.

She grabbed my belt buckle and yanked me back close to her, face to face. Her eyes were starting to go bloodshot and she was chewing her lip, I couldn't tell if she was doing that from lust or from the Columbian snow.

"I like you," she gritted her jaw.

"Thanks!" I yelped in a high pitched voice.

"Let's screw," she pulled me by the belt buckle to her room. Her fingers trying to reach for my goodies.

yadda yadda yadda,
It was the best screw ever!

He who controls the teleprompter, controls the world.

Recent buzzwords/phrases I've heard bandied about on the news channels:
Mea Culpa
The public has a short attention span
thrown under the bus

It seems that the same people are writing the stories for all the different news channels. Actually it doesn't seem. It actually is. Most the "news" channels get all their stories and info from Reuters or AP. Those stories are regurgitated all over the world. If you want an example try this: Go to reuters.com and read the stories. Then tonight flip in between the major networks during the beginning of the prime time news hour. The only difference between the stories will be the sequence that the stories are played.

Why is this something to be interested in?
Well in the beginning of 2007 there was a story about a Russian submarine that planted a flag beneath the Arctic ice cap in hopes of claiming oil and mineral mining rights. This story, which was a Reuters story, was repeated all over the world. It was accompanied by a picture of a submarine in murky waters. The story and picture had gone all over the world in all the major media. It had gotten to a small town newspaper in Denmark when a boy sent in a correction to the paper that the picture was not actually of a Russian sub but part of footage from a documentary he had seen about raising the Titanic. All the major media subsequently made corrections and apologies. If this is the case for something as seemingly irrelevant(for the time being) as this story, what about the big ones?

I don't watch or read the news for info anymore, I just look for discrepancies. I think it's kind of scary that we all are being fed the same stories. But the devil's advocate in me says who cares? So what if whoever's agenda gets fulfilled?

Meh...

Story to work on

I sat at the other table in the tiny cafe. Nursing my black coffee and staring at a blank page in an anonymous notebook. There were only two tables in here. I think it was an alley in between two red brick buildings that they put a roof over and put a stove in and they called it a coffee shop. I liked it because it was confined. Someplace I could go to to feel secluded. Like a cave in the middle of some lush perfect valley. Like a cloistered monk. The only other table had one of it's seats occupied by an elderly gent. He was nicely dressed in comfortable clothing. He looked over and smiled. I smiled back. "Writer's block?" he asked. "Not really just don't know where I should start," I answered. "Hmmm," he nodded his head. "A weird thing we are, humans. So different from all the other animals," he looked out the small window onto the street. "Yeah, we build cities and talk and dream," I agreed. "No not that. Other animals do that, it's what you're trying to do..." he nodded his head at my notebook. "Write?" I chuckled. "I feel like they could train the smarter animals to do that,". "No no," he smiled, "I mean creativity. It's what really separates us from the animals,". "How so?" I asked, intrigued, "Don't animals build things and create?". "They do out of instinct. We on the other hand choose to defy instinct, to experiment. We follow all routes," he sounded as though he were trying to clarify his statement to himself. "We imagine wonderous worlds, we dream of heaven and shudder from our ideas of hell. We invent fantastic new ways of killing each other. We create infinite new realities. We don't only build a nest for nestings sake. We don't kill just to eat. We don't sing just to communicate."

Lord Have Mercy!

I know..
I'm sorry...
I understand how you feel...
Please, this is not how I really am...
I've just been so bogged down with things at work/school/home/life...
I really want us to be together.
And I promise, I'll start posting more again.
Forgive me blog...
I GOT YOU DIAMONDS!