I Am the Work

Here is a note I wrote to myself a few weeks back. I guess I should have put it on “I Am the Work”:

02-01-08: What is our purpose?
Continuity — to live on beyond catastrophic events and mass extinctions. To carry knowledge and experience beyond the limitations of a few generations and build as an entity. To be aware. To experiment. Our intelligence is an adaptation of survival that opens paths to species growth on a geological timescale.

I would apologize for not writing last month, but I don’t think anyone would even hear it.

Well, if anyone is out there, hello, thanks for stopping by. I’ll try to make it more worth your while next time. Love n kisses.

BTW, please feel free to sign up if only to say hi. Your information is nominal and completely private. No one need know who you are, and no salesman will call on you.

Fat pipes and beams of green-gray emit a machine light of industrial clatter in silence smooth but completely dull and wet with breath. Tiles also smooth and clattery with puddles of hard water spattering into rubbery haze when pinky feet slap. Reverb reverb voices and chirps and the crunch of water again and back and again. Solid water in waves of no color splintering fluorescent drops back into paint. All green but the pinky feet. All gray but the red exit and yellowed tubes. All echo but crackling droplets and puddles and streams.

Plastic and green truck. Elbows between pallid knees. Wet into spongy fingers. Gray water reaches and pulls me in like a slipped apostrophe. World one-eighty and one-eighty. Upside up again backwards. Small hands holding hard to gray pipe edging gray water. Holes that cannot hold feet. Calling peep peep into peep peep echoes. Big hands pull small arms out of a square ocean in moments.

Between green and gray is a time when the world came from a factory and big people knew what everything was and what to do with it and swimming was in a box in a room in a building between buildings and cars took you there.

There’s literally millions of people — from civil engineers to energy and environment specialists to sociologists to medical professionals to people who wish they could park their cars and walk in their own towns — who have determined that civil planning for cars over pedestrians degrades a community structure. These links are just a few indicators of cities that are taking non-vehicular traffic and pedestrian-friendly design seriously enough to heavily invest in it:

About ITDP
The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) was founded in 1985 to promote environmentally sustainable and socially equitable transportation worldwide. We work with city governments and local advocacy groups to implement projects that reduce poverty, pollution, and oil dependence. http://www.itdp.org/

San Francisco’s Pedestrian Master Plan:
Path to a More Walkable City
As part of the Better Streets Plan, the SFMTA Planning Division is leading the development of a citywide Pedestrian Master Plan (PMP).   The Better Streets Plan (BSP) will rethink how the City designs, builds and maintains the pedestrian environment. The BSP will create a unifying set of objectives, policies and standards governing all elements of the pedestrian environment. The BSP will be based on the understanding that the pedestrian environment is about much more than just transportation - that streets serve a multitude of social, recreational and ecological needs that must be considered when deciding on the most appropriate design. The BSP offers the City the opportunity to integrate all these considerations into a single framework. The BSP will consist of two primary components: the Streetscape Master Plan (SMP) and the Pedestrian Master Plan (PMP). The Plans will be closely coordinated with the ADA Transition Plan for sidewalk accessibility, which will be undertaken by the City’s Dept. of Public Works (DPW).  There will be an extensive outreach process, with many opportunities for citizen input. http://www.sfmta.com/cms/wproj/28717.html

Walkinginfo.org
In communities across the world, there is a growing need and responsibility to provide options that give people the opportunity to walk-to walk more often, to walk to more places, and to feel safe while doing so. The benefits of walking-whether for utilitarian or recreational purposes-can be expressed in terms of improved environmental and personal health, reduced traffic congestion, enhanced quality of life, economic rewards, as well as others. http://www.walkinginfo.org/why/

Turner Fairbank Highway Research Cnter
Approximately 6,500 pedestrians and 900 bicyclists are killed each year as a result of collisions with motor vehicles.

As a group, pedestrians and bicyclists comprise more than 14 percent of all highway fatalities each year. Pedestrians account for as much as 40 to 50 percent of traffic fatalities in some large urban areas. The 1991 General Estimates System (GES) data indicate that 92,000 pedestrians and 67,000 bicyclists were injured in this type of crash.

Many more injuries are not reported to record-keeping authorities. A study by Stutts et al. (1990) showed that fewer than two-thirds of the bicycle-motor vehicle crashes that were serious enough to require emergency room treatment were reported on State motor vehicle crash files. http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/pedbike/research/srd95163.htm

WALKING 36 TIMES MORE DEADLY THAN DRIVING,
AMERICANS LACK SAFE PLACES TO WALK
Report ranks Tampa most dangerous metro area;
Decrease in Walking linked to Rise in Obesity
(WASHINGTON, DC) Pedestrians in Tampa-St. Petersburg Florida face the highest risk of getting killed by a car, according to a report that ranks the most dangerous large metro areas for walking in the United States. The report, released today by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, says the results show that walking is more dangerous in sprawling communities designed for the automobile. http://www.transact.org/report.asp?id=146

Walkable.org
Walkability is the cornerstone and key to an urban area’s efficient ground transportation. Every trip begins and ends with walking. Walking remains the cheapest form of transport for all people, and the construction of a walkable community provides the most affordable transportation system any community can plan, design, construct and maintain. Walkable communities put urban environments back on a scale for sustainability of resources (both natural and economic) and lead to more social interaction, physical fitness and diminished crime and other social problems. Walkable communities are more liveable communities and lead to whole, happy, healthy lives for the people who live in them. http://www.walkable.org/

The reason christianity and islam were both able to make such huge inroads into dominating the cultures of the world is that it’s much easier to ask large and difficult work of people who believe in an ideal, and it’s much easier to engender belief in a mystical ideal than a practical or ethical one. People can marry their hearts and dedicate their efforts to a religious belief in ways they never could to an earthly ideal of “peace” or “harmonious existence” or even “fairness.”

If you want real power, establish a religion with a seductive message and authentic spiritual details from established practices.

I was blurbing Cormac McCarthy’s book No Country for Old Men and was impressed (not in a good way) with the idea that there really are different breeds of human, and some of them prey on the others. This isn’t completely a new idea, but I had never thought of it in terms of being a separate breed, and one that was in competion with other human breeds for survival. I may have to pursue this theme:

So we now recognize that the ones who feel no responsibility for the damage they do are of a different, predatory breed. They are not only the criminals who pollute children with drugs, they are the capitalists for whom the markets are not people but abstract concepts of consuming. They are the chemical producers who daily risk the thousands who live and work near their factories. They are the manufacturers who build unsafe cars, pollute living rivers, bury toxic slime that will keep killing for centuries in the name of profit and business as usual in the marketplace. They are the ones who should know their payoffs in foreign countries spell the doom of whole villages, but they don’t want to know that, so they don’t. They propagate by building an edifice of permission to be this way.

The question is, will we learn to fight them in time? Will they outlive the ones who do care?

Raphael Gouda

He was six years old the first time he saw his name written. It was a Saturday, they were going to (ballfield) for a preseason game. His uncle brought over pumpernickel, prosciutto, cappicola, a big mortadella in a can painted with blue diamonds, gorgonzola, and a heavy log of cheese in wax paper with a beautiful red, white, and green label that read smokey gouda. From then on, Raphael he told everyone his name was Smokey.

His mother Lucilla was Venetian, a girl with high round cheeks and a round behind, who came to America in 1917 at the age of twelve because most of Europe was at war. Smokey remembered seeing a map of Europe in 1940 and mistaking Vienna for Venice, not merely relocating his mother’s homeland but placing her squarely behind enemy lines. He always imagined her fleeing with a human tide of panicked civilians, her hands over her head in a useless effort to ward off Kaiser Wilhelm’s bombs. No bomb had ever fallen on her, but the war had nonetheless ruined what little fortune her family possessed, so they joined her uncle’s family in Brooklyn. On a Sunday in May of 1925 she was dreaming of being the next Fanny Brice and working at (restaurant on eighth) when a bunch of hungover college boys came in looking for eggs and sausage and strong black coffee. One of them was Emil Gouda, and he serenaded Lucilla with music hall tunes and fell in love with her that very morning. Her family would not have allowed such a union, except that Emil’s people had all been artists as far back as the Dutch (spilt from Flemish) and you don’t come from Venice without appreciating fine art. That and the fact that Emil’s father had done quite well in the import business. Emil himself had never lifted a paintbrush, but it was in his blood.

******

Smokey is a minor league catcher in ~1951, moved up to the majors for one season, until a personal scandal or disaster involving a dead lover, and he took to drinking. On and off the team.

His life changes one night on a bender or resisting one. Sees a cat, talks to it. Cat talks back, spreads gargoyle wings, and flies away. Does he think it’s a demon? Maybe, but Smokey is not an especially superstitious type, despite some of his grandmothers. He sees the cat from time to time, who seems to be watching over him. It gives Smokey a certain confidence, even cockiness. He doesn’t drink any more, but he does get involved with some shady characters. He seems to have a golden touch — whatever scheme he gets into goes his way, and even the criminal types he associates with begin to talk about his luck.

He himself begins to suspect the gargoyle cat may not be the most benign spirit. He has a close call and begins to wonder if he might need to start redeeming himself before he dooms his soul. After he meets an orphan girl, things really begin to go wrong for him. She attaches herself to him, and wants him to help her escape the life of being used as a prostitute or worse that waits for her and some others. Smokey has to figure out who really is his angel and who’s trying to lead him astray.

I remember that I could barely keep up with it, and I was driving the fastest car we had.

We had been staking out the wall for weeks, and I was heading back to relieve Otis crew when this weird car passed me. It was low, like it could drive under a semi, but wide and angular, dull silver. It looked like a show car, and that in itself was weird so I followed it on a hunch, and it turned off on the old highway.

It started picking up speed. That was when I called in a pursuit. At first they told me just to keep it in sight. About two minutes later there was some radio garble and then the big boss told me to pull it over. I had the lights going and I was in pursuit gear but I could barely keep up. I couldn’t get in front and I couldn’t tap him so I loaded a low-pop incendiary and let him have it. It hit square behind the driver but I couldn’t tell if I scored anything. At 145 miles an hour the flash was gone almost instantly, and the smoke right after that. By then we were getting real close to the wall.

I tried to figure out if he was slowing down or what, but there was no sign. We were getting a little close for my own peace of mind so I played him out a little. He slowed up a little but not much. I figured he was going to hit the wall at a hundred but then I wondered if he knew something about a door that we didn’t. I followed a little too close.

By now we were in the shadow of it, and I had forgotten how big that damn thing is when you get up close to it. Three hundred feet doesn’t sound so high for a building but when it’s a solid white wall six miles wide it looks like the end of the earth. Self-preservation made me slow up but I stayed as close as I could.

I could just make out a darker spot on the wall and guessed that was his hole. He never let up and flew into that thing. That wall throws off your depth perception and I suddenly saw I was out of room. Whatever door that opened up for him I knew was about to slam in my face so I banged on the brakes and prayed.

It was a good thing I was braking, too, cause next thing I know I’m past the wall, through this tunnel thing and suddenly there’s daylight in front of me reflected off a little low wall, like a story high. I slid into a right hand turn and there was another wall in front of me. It’s like a maze, but I couldn’t see my guy anywhere. So I drive the damn maze, and in the back of my mind I’m thinkin okay, what the hell do I think I am doing in here.

Three more close turns—bip, bip, bip—and then I’m into this courtyard and there’s my guy, already rolling to a stop. I could hear his engine winding down like a jet and saw the doors open forward like unfolding wings.

Now, the next thing I remember was like a dream, all disjointed.

I remember I had my piece up, and I’m coming toward that car, and I didn’t know what to expect, a gun in my face or a bug-eyed alien or what. I get there, and there’s nobody inside, but the car just, like, hissing low and it was real cold—it was like standing next to the morgue door.

Then there’s this guy standing behind the car, and I just can’t talk cause he’s like, so beautiful. I mean, I’m only about the ladies, right, and I don’t mean like he’s femme or anything, but, like Elvis or something—just beautiful and all in white. And he’s just looking at me. I say freeze, you’re under arrest. But my voice sounds like bubbles and my hands are empty.

I remember grass. I remember feeling it with my toes. The guy is gone but there’s people on the far side of the courtyard, just sitting in the sun. I shout and run toward them but I never get there.

Then I’m outside the wall. There’s no opening, no tire marks, nothing. My car is idling there with the flashers still going. Gun in my holster, shoes on my feet. Five minutes later Otis appears from the north end. Captain Pinket pulled up right after that.

I don’t remember anything else. Sometimes when I’m dreaming I feel like I’m back there, but when I wake up I can’t remember anything that happens. Just—I feel like, quiet inside. Peaceful.

He sees the giant face of the Buddha, newly carved into the rock
where only a few years ago he and his men
had dynamited that ancient idol
of long-dead infidels.

How could this be here again, he wonders.
How could it be made so quickly, and worse to think,
who is bringing this monstrosity back to his land?

He approaches, his gun ready. He will be the fist to smite
this affront to their faith. Some from the village
are milling about, at a distance from the behemoth.
They warn him to stop. He ignores them with contempt.

He walks up, braces and takes aim
at the enormous left eye.
Then a hand comes down on the barrel of his gun.
It is his father. The gunman gapes. His father is long dead.

“Put your weapon away!” he shouts. “You disgrace me.
This spirit owns the land. We are his guests.”
He shouts as he always did
and the gunman steps back, blinks, turns his head to the side, a child again.
“Always you shoot, shoot! All you do is smash things,
never building.
Go home! Do not come here again.”

Shuffling back to the others,
he turns and his father is no longer there. His neighbors look at him
with the same scolded eyes. Their own relatives
have told them to leave the Buddha be.

“This place is holy, or a land of demons,” they say. “We are going home.”

There is a man carrying a ladder. The damp grass rushes under his feet. His daughter runs up and surprises him; he swings the ladder away to the right to avoid hitting her. It is a long ladder; its arc is heavy, and once he gets it going it’s hard to stop.

A car three blocks away is also heavy, also swinging hard around the arc of a turn.

The rain has stopped. The midday sun throws harsh shadows.

The ladder is moving at a right good clip when the man strikes the corner of his garage with it. A clattery aluminum note rings out. He barks a curse. A fourteen-inch chunk of siding comes off of the garage. The ladder is still moving, though with a heavy oscillation.

The man drops the ladder, awkwardly, trying to jump clear of its inertial path toward his left shin. It is well clear of his daughter.

He stoops to touch her, assure himself of her wholeness, scold her for jumping at him so suddenly when he is carrying a heavy ladder. Her eyes look down at the grass. His eyes catch the missing patch of siding. Part of the thin plywood sheathing underneath has also been ripped. He rises and walks toward it as he continues to complain to his daughter.

The car, braking heavily, swerves onto the end of the street.

The man pulls gingerly at the remaining siding, tugs on the plywood. A piece the size of a salad plate comes loose; he wiggles it free.

The outer face of the plywood has a semi-sticky layer of black paper still stapled to it. The back of the plywood is bright green.

He looks at it closely.

He hears the hiss of a V-8 engine idling up to the curb, the crunch of tires moving slowly. Locusts and cicadas whirr.

The man scrapes at the green color with his fingernail. It is not paint. Even when he turns it away from the sun it stays bright.

A car door slams.

The little girl hugs her father’s leg.

There is a stranger’s voice. A strange voice.

“That is a window.”

The man looks up, expecting, from the stranger’s tone, to see someone he knows. His mind tries to find the place in his life where that face belongs; a pointless activity—he has never met anyone with colorless eyes. Still, he searches his social catalog for appropriate greeting or banter. His left hand reaches to pat and shield his daughter’s head.

“That is a window, a portal,” says the stranger, his voice like Atticus Finch or Marc Anthony. Or Jean-Luc Picard. The man is only half aware the stranger’s voice is inside his head.

“It could take you wherever you want to go, but more likely will take you where you don’t.” The stranger points. The man looks down to see his thumb has sunk into the green side of the plywood. He drops it as though it were burning him. His thumb is fine.

He stares at the little chunk. It has fallen green-side-up, but it is no longer green. His daughter coos. The bit of plywood now looks like a tiny pond in the grass. It seems to reflect the sky perfectly.

“Well, now it’s a hole. You can climb through it to the world on the other side.”

The man has noticed the stranger has no hair. “Who are you?” he finally asks.

The stranger smiles although his mouth doesn’t move. He extends his hand.

“Call me Ringo,” he says. The man shakes his hand. He sees over the stranger’s shoulder that his car, still running at the bottom of the driveway, is huge and sunny yellow. The man doesn’t recognize the make.