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Chuck says it doesn’t matter what you write.  Chuck says once you make a move like gathering and categorizing your art you say, “What now?” That’s a hard thing to get past according to Chuck.  He says go ahead and write whatever.  Go back to your roots and antagonize friends about bikes.  Write some real stuff then change the names and make it fiction. Send June, Duane, and Manny off to war, or make them dress up like Stormtroopers and go to Comic-Con.

Rail about politics or write a letter to your old high school friends you just can’t see fit to hear from anymore.  Tell them you would rather heave vomit into the toilet until blood vessels pop in your eyes than listen to their platitudes that things will turn out okay, that your friends who are not white, male, straight, or who conveniently have avoided or evaded any sense of dysphoria will be fine.  Chuck says it is OK to write about that.  It was just time for reform and if you haven’t served than maybe you don’t exactly understand freedom and appreciate freedom as much as they do, which is why they feel obligated to remove it from your life experience. Write a how-to guide for black people to follow when stopped by the police.  If they would simply follow the orders of the law enforcement officer than everything will be fine, routine.  In every instance they tell you, if you look at the details, the black people did something wrong and got shot, even Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Jordan Edwards, and those kids who got themselves shot standing on stranger’s porches begging for help in the night.

My old homeboys.  We called each other homeboy, gave ourselves nicknames like rappers on television.  I’m the Fresh Kid, and we did our best to ape black culture  because it seemed so much cooler than our own.   Chuck D and the S1W- pride, loyalty, courage, and even a uniform- kind of like the military.  Defenders of Funk forever right? Right up until the funk gets shot. Get your asses in your deplorable baskets and don’t come out until I say when.

Chuck said it would be OK if I wrote that.

It’s hot and humid and everyone feels like partying, but I don’t feel much like partying.  I feel like digging a tunnel in the floor with a trap door and a little room underneath where me and my sweetheart can tip-toe down the ladder and stay very still and quiet until the knocking on the door goes away.  The WiFi sucks down there too, but it is cool and surprisingly dry with the fan blowing.

Maybe it will be easier to write down there.  Manny can get organized to talk to that woman about getting back in the well and healing America, and Duane and June can finally get his uncle’s car running and get on the road to Florida, because honestly, the author knows not the first thing about Gary, Indiana so this story needs to get on familiar ground.  I mean, fiction is hard enough right? Or maybe that’s the point, to make it hard.  That’s what Chuck says.  He says don’t put puppies in your song because people like puppies. That’s the worst kind of art.  Write a song about black kids that makes people feel as warm as they feel about puppies.  Now that is art, so Chuck says.

Juancho

I worry I procrastinate too much. We may never film the Paddle-boat Sonata where plastic bobbing boats of itchy fiberglass churn in a lurching murmuration designed by yours truly, and my co-founders of Slippery Horse-wink LLC, or Walm ART, or any of the hundred other names of production companies and art galleries never founded.  Filmed from above on a tiny lake in Alabama, our volunteers would launch on my command and draw a beautiful plait of wakes to a banjo accompanied by a Wurlitzer, hence the name.

Our film noir musical, Certain Death, starring my cat Iggy portrayed by finger puppets spectacularly ward-robed and shot in a shoe-box diorama also threatens to never arrive at the box office.  The images trapped in two dimensions struggle to rise from the page. Our naked fingers are on to other things.

Sweaty Duane and Black June still sit in Duane’s uncle’s apartment, awkwardly wondering if they are to be together, in passing or forever, or if they are simply pinky players in Manny “the Thumb” Fiesta’s story. Left standing at the stove, Duane holds an egg while June’s stomach growls.  Are they ever to eat?

The added pressure of the triple threat, not content to write and perform silently as Chuck’s dark conscience in Glitter Chariot, I now have two musical projects to not finish, with all of the instruments not yet learned.  Only Had One and Squirrel Bullet, headline stolen afternoons to an audience of birds and the eponymous squirrels, and one cat who fears not Certain Death.  Our nihilistic hit single, Sad Right Now, written and sung by an 8 year-old ingenue in a boon-docked Air-stream, drones on in d minor awaiting verses and a chord change.

These and all things stand behind the current masterpiece in waiting. When the earth eventually rolls around and points the humble panhandle of Florida towards the sun, and the dank, wool blanket wraps its loving folds around our town– I will revive and rinse myself beneath a fountain in the garden, or to put it meanly, an outdoor shower.

Yes! Once those waters flow from the garden hose and onto my beading head, all projects will be finished, all works rendered done.

Juancho

Wanting something is the wrong way to go about getting it done.

Nobody knew this like Reverend Charles Robert Moore.  He wanted so many things.  The ruling in Brown vs. The Board of Education ended legal segregation in the United States, and the young reverend was fired from his post for celebrating this in the most cautious sense from the pulpit.  He would not make that mistake ever again, to be cautious in the face of injustice. He stood outside the governor’s mansion protesting the executions of 150 prisoners during Governor George Bush’s tenure.  He defied the traditions and doctrine of the Methodist Church by opening the doors of his church to the nascent Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Austin, but being tolerated by the church was not enough for him.  He stopped eating, and on the 15th day of his fast the bishops acquiesced to his demand that the church accept responsibility for its contribution to the suffering of the gay community, which they did by proclamation.  His faith took him to India, Africa, the Middle East, Chicago, Austin, and ultimately back to his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas where his deepest memories of shame and inequality were born.

Reverend Moore made a mess of his life.  All three of his marriages ended because he could not make room for the comfort and love of relationships that distracted from his desire for justice. His children suffered his absences.

At 79 years-old, in 2014, he was elated by the election of Barack Obama, the first and only black President of the United States, but the hatred and racism that accompanied the moment left him heart-sick and stricken with defeat. His lifetime of wanting had brought him nowhere. He was still in Grand Saline, Texas, a child unable to make a difference. Charlie Moore was a coward, a failure, a loser.

On June 23rd of that year he drove to a strip mall on the edge of town in Grand Saline.  He paced for hours in front of the Dollar General store, while curious watchers noticed him, musing about his circumstances.  They watched him finally open his trunk, pull a foam pad from it and place it on the ground.  Those watching assumed he must be praying, perhaps a Muslim.  He kneeled and lifted a container to his head and poured liquid all over his legs, his chest, and his head.  Being June in Texas it was a steamy afternoon.

As the fumes from the gasoline choked his breath away, he pulled from his pocket a lighter and sparked it.

On the windshield of his car, he left this note.

Juancho

There was no light, just sound. It was 1:30 A:M and the frumpy little mess of a tropical depression had found its wings and formed into a proper Category One hurricane by the time it hit the coast down the road in St. Marks. Melissa and the dog were asleep, but the cat and I were awake.  I cracked open the carport door and peered into the night with my flashlight.  The treetops were swirling, the rain a steady stinging spray.  It was exciting. The electricity popped out hours ago with a boom at 10:00 P:M before the weather even rolled in, an ominous sign. Still, I felt prepared.

I heard the first deep cracking of a tree before the burst of wind got to our house and laid 100′ tall mature pines and oaks over as if they would be pushed back down into the earth.  It terrified me.  A life-long Floridian, I had never seen wind like this in person. I knew in my sour stomach we should be somewhere else, but it was too late. I shut the door and went back to our dark bed to wait.  The last forecast I saw called for winds on the back of the eye wall to be in the 90’s.  I believed our brick house could withstand that, but the time for options had passed anyway.  My plan was to rest until the calm of the eye came, then to take a quick survey before hustling the four of us under the house or into the hall.  I awoke to a total calm, only the sound of dripping water outside and sirens competing in the distance.  The storm moved east, and spared us the brunt of the tailing winds. I walked out to the street at 6:00 A.M. and saw my neighbor standing in the darkness, strong and sturdy, looking down the hill to our corner, which I no longer recognized.  Large trees and power lines were down across both roads, and in the dark it was hard to interpret the image. Headlights pierced through, weaving slowly around the debris, I expected it to be the police.  Instead it was my friend Kevin on his way to work, to see how the teen crisis shelter fared in the storm with nine kids, other people’s children, and the staff who look after them. They were all okay. He said they did great.

Melissa awoke, rested and in much better shape than myself, as did the dog. We walked our wooded lot and checked the house on all sides. There was no damage to the roof.  Our cars were fine, but carpeted on one side with fresh green pine needles and dirt.  The briefest exploration of our block determined that this would not be a normal day.  My nerves were shot, and I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything although I knew I needed to get something in me.  I chugged two warm protein drinks.  400 calories. After checking in with friends and neighbors the day took shape around the mission to free Paul and Stephanie, who had a massive tulip poplar across their driveway like a gate.  Melissa rallied me and I immediately felt better having a purpose.  Joe and Dan chainsawed while the rest of us rolled big chunks of tree to the curb.  An hour later the task was done, and thus began the ennui.  Nobody tells you the worst of the storm, should you survive, is the waiting.

The rest of the week would bring lots of sharing, a neighborhood kitchen set up in the park, and the endless tedium of preparing for nightfall.  We didn’t leave our immediate vicinity for 2 days until we heard word that stores were opening and the inevitable outing for ice had to occur.  Then each day brought normalcy to some, while others waited.  Countless offers from friends for places to stay, supplies, equipment, meals came, and continue to come actually, as there are many who are far from recovered still.  That’s what we do in a crisis.  We try to feed each other, to put a dry blanket around wet shoulders, food and drink, a break in the air-conditioning.  All of it welcome and necessary, while the one thing you really want, and the only thing you truly need can’t be had, or given by anyone in particular.  You want normal.  To be cool and full in your own living room, or to hang on the door of your own cold refrigerator contemplating a snack. So you develop the frustration of the ungrateful, for turning down so many well-meaning offers from those that regained their normal.  It is not that you want them to continue your suffering, your inconvenience, with you- well- maybe that is it.  Misery truly does love company, and this past week had its share of miserable.

Maybe those kids at the shelter did so great because their normal was already gone.  For once instead of being the ones without anything, receiving constant offers of everything but the one thing they crave, they saw the whole town coming to join them, and they were happy to have such good company.

During my next disaster?  I will still offer whatever small comforts I can should I be lucky, but my first question will be, “What sucks the most?”

Juancho

Lightning charges the sky. My small dog is pitifully smaller cowering behind the toilet, trembling and afraid of the thunder. Three weeks since my last ride, and so much pain and suffering in those weeks they deserve their own name, a season of ugliness. The Dark Time. The Wickedness.

And yet, that is the way of war, that suffering falls hard on the innocent and yet you balance your grieving with the need to fill sandbags and fortify your redoubt against the next attacking wave. Carelessness comes sneaking on the western flank as ignorance attacks head on in its stupid stumbling.

Mars hangs low on the horizon, directing the assault and supervising disruption and destruction as I drive south through the storm unaware that my shoes are not in the back with my helmet. I park last in the line as riders are marshaling towards the edge of the forest. The rain stops and a blanket of steam rises above our heads. I accept a too big pair of shoes, pump a bit of air in my tires and fall in.

Last week in Orlando a fire alarm goes off just before midnight. I am lying wide awake in sweat when it happens so I am standing in the 10th floor hallway in the time it takes to find my flip flops. I board the glass elevator alone and begin the descent, picking up scared passengers at each floor. By the third floor we are packed, and a woman is crying in panic. “We’re going to be OK,” I tell her.

So it is a lie, but the type of lie that gives a little courage in the moment, just a breath of courage to get you to the next moment, and one more breath to the next until you get there, to a place where you are safe. A recorded voice, sickly sweet and calm tells us not to use the elevator.  I invite others to join me on the stairs, one man looks me in the eyes. Nobody moves or says a word. I get off by myself and walk down the concrete stairwell. Firefighters march into the lobby calmly, passing the word that it is a false alarm caused by the broken air-conditioning. I sit with the panicked woman and her husband. She can’t breathe between her sobs.

The forest floor is charred black from fire, so the normally thick tangle of green is gone, exposing us to Mars who can now take his time with us. Filtering towards the front my stale legs are warming, and I think I may not have lost as much as I thought. Two riders are just beyond my reach, but I see them dismount for a log and calculate that if I stay in the saddle I will be on them in seconds. I pull up and throw my bike forward, then I am in the air, legs above my head flying and then down, snarled in a brown weave of dead under-story. I am dizzy, but unhurt, and Bill pulls my bike from the net of vines and sees me back into the saddle. I fall way back as the adrenaline fades leaving me spent.

An old man I know sits in his old man chair listening to the music of his years through stereo headphones. His finger taps the air directing the clave. His brow delights and furrows as he critiques each note. He is not in a hurry, the count is one, two, three, four, FIVE, one, two, three, four, FIVE and the song must arrive at each note with a precise urgency, but not hurry. He is a bass player, and only he can resolve the tune and let the final note ring out.

Mars you bastard. Randy’s tire explodes and I think the roasting ground has melted it, but it is a broken bottle with a message in it that has floated so far into the woods. The message reads, “You must stop here.”

Again, there is Bill, assisting and teaching in a soothing voice. “Let’s patch the breech and re-inflate it, not too much.” A CO2 cartridge kicks back and slams Randy’s thumb into the teeth of his gears drawing blood that seeps around his nail. He doesn’t stop working, just grimly dressing the wound to the tire while his own wound flows red. The rest of us impatiently watch him bleed, eager to be moving.  Off we go. This ride is cursed, yet in some ways also blessed. This ride has become real life, not just play. I look at the strangers around me and begin to see actual faces and hear their unique voices instead of seeing them all as just them.

The sky is unquestionably turning to night, and Mars rises red over the power lines. A gray Lincoln Town Car sits buried to the frame in sand, its wheels spinning freely like a turtle paddling its legs upside down and helpless. A young woman, stress thin, sits slumped over the steering wheel of her mama’s car mewling into her phone, trying to recruit her ex-lover to come save her, despite their earlier fight. We want to help her, but she ain’t leaving. She has chosen her spot to make her stand, and hey, I can relate. We ride on.

Our platoon of riders now broken into squads, I let my guard down. Surely this is the final stretch and I have the legs to keep up. The four of us halt in a clearing and Bill looks up and says, “That must be Mars. Maybe that’s why this night is so weird.” There are no other lights in the sky, and no distractions between Mars and ourselves. We have no choice but to run for it.
Randy’s chain is skipping. I hear him cursing an oath behind me as the other two riders drift away and out of earshot. We can’t see the trail, and we don’t know it anyway, so it comes down to dead reckoning. We find them again, but Randy and I choose the open ground and light over a sure guide through darkness. The ride out is longer than expected, and we are unsure if we have made the right decisions. We call for extraction, but beat the chopper home.

Juancho