…’till the Dead of Winter. Stay tuned.

Davenports and kettle drums
And swallow tail coats
Table cloths and patent leather shoes
Bathing suits and bowling balls
And clarinets and rings
And all this radio really
Needs is a fuse
A tinker, a tailor
A soldier’s things
His rifle, his boots full of rocks
And this one is for bravery
And this one is for me
And everything’s a dollar
In this box

Cuff links and hub caps
Trophies and paperbacks
It’s good transportation
But the brakes aren’t so hot
Neck tie and boxing gloves
This jackknife is rusted
You can pound that dent out
On the hood
A tinker, a tailor
A soldier’s things
His rifle, his boots full of rocks
Oh and this one is for bravery
And this one is for me
And everything’s a dollar
In this box

–Tom Waits–

Here we are in the dark season, get up in the dark, get home in the dark. The sun maybe rises, or rather maybe you see it, depending on the Northwest monsoons.

I was recently looking through some photographs and ran across one I might have taken at, say, 19 to 21. A summer day in Southern Oregon, the Siskiyou foothills, with light falling through madrone onto a curving country two-lane, and just enough haze in the air to cut the light into beams. Suddenly, I was there, standing on the road’s shoulder, massive old Canon SLR in hand. Or maybe it was that wonderful Yashica Lynx rangefinder I had. My God, what a crisp, sharp lens that had on it (though the built-in light meter was for shit). I remembered that light. That quiet. How you could stand in the road to take a picture and have no fear that a car would come along because you’d hear it long before you’d see it. I couldn’t remember exactly when it was taken, but I could remember taking it, the memory potent, overhwelming.

So I figured I’d look around, scan it as an illustration for the blog. Can’t find it. It’s vanished. I held it in my hands just a few days ago; now it’s like it never existed. Just as that time has passed, that place has changed. I don’t want to go back. But I do want to stand in that quiet light, and feel the world again as a photograph waiting to be taken.

I can’t find that picture. It bothers me.

“…I saw a snail…crawl along the edge…of a straight razor…and survive…that’s my dream…that’s my nightmare….”

Gitmo inmate cuts throat, but survives

Thinking of Vietnam. Vietnam. It clings to me, a shadow. Like a shadow, it disappears when you turn to look at it.

See, it’s like this: once upon a time, when Bill Clinton stalked the planet and we were all making buckets of money, I wrote a play called “Waiting on Sean Flynn,” which was about American reporters perched upon the rooftop bar of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel in 1975, the central dilemma being: Saigon’s about to fall to the North Vietnamese, should the characters split with the rest of the Americans or stay on to witness history. The forward motion of the play is illuminated by flashbacks to the main character’s (Lee) experiences in the company of Sean Flynn, Errol Flynn’s son who became a respected that photojournalist and disappeared in Cambodia in 1970, his fate never firmly determined. The flashbacks increasingly recede back in time until the last one, just before the play’s climax as Saigon begins its fall, goes all the way back to Lee’s first experience in the field (a pretty neat plot structure, I thought, but hard to explain).

Besides talking and corresponding with a bunch of wonderful, generous people who either covered the war or served there, I read stacks of books on the subject and saw pretty much every film, good or bad, about Vietnam, including documentaries. I immersed myself in the subject, which is what writers do, especially when their imagination has been shanghaied. Sometimes the depth of art is merely a reflection of the quality of obsession. I know more about Vietnam than anyone need know, and, let me tell you, unless you have drenched yourself in that deep water, you don’t know and don’t want to know; and yet I know nothing about it compared to the people who were there. It’s all writerly imaginings. And the wounds, the mental pictures, some of which are rather too stomach churning to share, dear readers, are entirely self-inflicted.

When Iraq was gearing up and it was clear war was inevitable, I went to lunch with a colleague who was firmly convinced the cause was just, weapons of mass destruction, transform the Middle East, all the other utter bullshit she’d swallowed, setting the hook deep, and I just looked at her with calm, hazel eyes while inside churned the most nauseating contempt, summed up as: you don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t know the cost, your self-righteousness is beneath contempt, and yet you’re innocent…you motherfucking civilian.

But that’s past, and now only a dark, charred rind of memory remains, which amounts to nothing, just as my words at the time, which were measured, were ineffectual, gnats to be batted away from clouded eyes.

And now…how many years and deaths later…we ease toward a resolution, and though Baghdad is not Saigon, and history follows similar but never perfect patterns, I find myself back on the rooftop of the Caravelle. In the distance, small arms fire. And flames shimmering in the night. And I know that the days to come hold dry throats and tears. Dry throats and tears.

So I’ve dragged out my metaphoric flak jacket, oiled up the dried, stiff boots, and jacked a round in the chamber, the reassuring clack, and I’m shopping “Waiting on Sean Flynn” around to theatres again, one more time into the cyclone. There seems renewed interest–a number of theatres are considering it, I’ve even had a few seek me out, and Neanderthal Acting Company (can’t beat that name) in Detroit will produce the play in March. That pleases me, but it’s not a pleasure without pain.

In the desert wind, Yeats’ voice whispers, too faint to be clearly understood. Just enough to shiver the spine.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, today splattworks presents the following musical interlude from the late Warren Zevon in lieu of our regular post.

DON’T LET US GET SICK

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

The sky was on fire
When I walked to the mill
To take up the slack in the line
I thought of my friends
And the troubles they’ve had
To keep me from thinking of mine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

The moon has a face
And it smiles on the lake
And causes the ripples in Time
I’m lucky to be here
With someone I like
Who maketh my spirit to shine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

I think the following article and clip sum up pretty much everything one can say about our Glorious Crusade in Mesopotamia:

Where’s Bill Murray when you need him?

Seriously, you owe yourself an opportunity to watch the clip. Obviously, our troops will be able to stand down as soon as the Iraqi’s are able to stand up.

Warren Zevon, rocker beloved of writers (Hunter Thompson, Paul Muldoon, many others), had that writer’s eye and ear for telling details. So you listen to a Zevon song, and you’re in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel,* drinking up all the salty margaritas in Los Angeles and listening to the air conditioner hum while you think about the girl you met at the Rainbow Bar; she took you back to the Hyatt House and…well, you don’t really want to talk about it.

Don’t look for the Pioneer Chicken Stand down on Alvarado Street, it’s apparently gone, and the man with the goods has certainly moved on to another locale, but, if you happen to be walking through SoHo (London version) in the rain, apparently you can drop by Le Ho Fooks, get a big dish of beef chow mein, then wash it down with a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. An intrepid blogger has logged the evidence:

And they were doin’ the Werewolves of London….

Now if I could just figure out where the Double-E runs…poor poor pitiful me.

Steve

*Sad to say, the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel has apparently been converted into the Princess Grace Apartments. No, I’m not making that up.

Early eyelid movies. A red canna, glowing against green foilage. Blue skies with contrails. Red speckled apples rotting amid red leaves. Brown and gold carpet. Painting of Jesus in a gilded frame. Funeral procession on black & white TV, over and over and over. And over. Like the whole world has died. Held by the hand, down to see dad at the Spokane Chronicle (“the Chron”), running the crazy linotype machine nonstop, edition after edition, and the smell of hot lead, indescribable but unforgettable. Out the windows, flashing lights of movie houses.

Then the Beatles, Ed Sullivan looking perplexed. Parents looking perplexed. “Downtown” playing everywhere, and everywhere city lights, Christmas lights, tiki lounge with torches burning out front. Rainy Olympia, Washington, in a rented VW bug, the windows continually fogging. Steady procession of foggy neon bar signs. Staying in mildewed motel rooms with black dial telephones, tracer bulbs outside the windows, light show on the curtains and darkened walls. Good-bye Ru-by Tues-day. And the rain, the rain. My uncle, big, red-faced and laughing, hole in his shoe, water squishing in his sock as he crossed the room to open another beer. Who could hang a name on you?

A duplex on the Olympic Peninsula, could see the snowy Olympic peaks from the back porch, peeking over a fence, and in the field beyond, ringneck pheasants strutting, suddenly flushed, a bird explosion. One night a violent thunderstorm, violet skies ripped, and tall, bearded man, a neighbor, trembling in our living room; he’d been struck by lightning and had the thumb-thick scar down his chest to prove it. Rough workman’s hands shaking. Then in Port Angeles, stairs, an endless flight of stairs up a hillside, until, out of breath, you reach the top, and below the dark roofs, the wharf with commercial fishing boats, the Stait of Juan de Fuca beyond, dull blue, white ferries leaving wakes on their way to Canada, and the wind blows, hair blowing around, the wind blows, and on the wind you can hear “…and everyone knows it’s windy.”

S