Back in the homelands after many years. Early Sunday afternoon. Vince Scully is still calling games on KFWB.
“And there’s a high fly ball,” he’s saying, voice rising with the ball. “Deep to right field. Going way back is Kemp.....” Then, before the arc is completed, Scully relays an anecdote about the next batter who bought a monkey, but had to sign an agreement that he would take care of it for 40 years. After a few days at home, the player decided that was not feasible. “Kemp makes the catch at the warning track and the Mets are retired. Bottom of the first, no score.”
Scully remains the Chekhov of color commentators. But his rhythm is a little slower, with a trace of slur. A stroke perhaps, or a new denture. Not quite the same enthusiasm, not the same sense that the high fly ball is a metaphor of good times, now it’s a just a high fly ball.
Forty years ago, there was no end to the optimism. You merely had to look at Rudy,the Filipino house boy, in his 50s then, in his white jacket and black tie, on a Sunday, after making dollar-sized pancakes, sitting in the kitchen, on his stool with his old beige am radio on the counter, singing Scully all afternoon.
While he listened to the radio, I shot lizards on the woodpile.
* * *
I’m staying in Venice. The night before, I walk with S over Monet-style bridges and along the narrow walkways next to the canals, on the way to dinner. These are all glass houses. Originally, these were cottages. Those have all been torn down and tiny lots built to the brim. Everything is glass. Everything is exposed.
“You think of Philip Johnson’s glass house in Connecticut, don’t you?” We say.
“But different,” we say, “because his idea was to deconstruct the barrier between inside and out. And there, the view is of meadows. It’s private. Here, nothing is private. Here, the glass is to expose you, to taunt perhaps, to say, ‘look at me. Envy me.’
I’m struck by how many living rooms have exercise machines lined up. Living as exercise. Mechanical, demanding, for the passively active, for the quick living, and you see size does matter, look at my machine... That old artifact room, the living room, often left to entertain IRS agents, the police and a priest, the room about who we pretend to be, is gone. Now, there is no pretense. ‘ If you come to my house, I may have to exercise while we talk. I cannot just sit and converse with you. I cannot just sit. I need my endorphins, I need to lose weight, I need to gain esteem. You understand. We are all like that, aren’t we?”
QED
In Venice, the next morning. We brunch. And walk by an old garage turned into a Yoga and Spinning Center. Rows of people on exercise machines desperately peddle to the orders of a woman on a microphone. “Faster now” is the mandate. And look at those people go. When they finish they look like real bikers. But you wonder why people would seek that out. Why not actually go for a bike ride? On the other hand, this is compact, convenient, and in a country desperate for a leader, a woman gripping the mic and screaming like an auctioneer at a hog fair will do.
It’s even worth $15 a half hour, to be forced and berated, lured into becoming an insaniac riding through the Alps of a lifestyle that is mostly flat after all. Not much else to do but compare yourself to everyone else. Play As It Lays is still playing. The gardener, the checkout lady, the person in the next japanZeuro luxury sedan, everyone is either up a rung or down, from you babe, and seeing yourself relative to them is the only way you know where you are, that’s the triangulation, that’s the dead reckoning that will get you home.
* * *
All the old themes. But not as if you’d left and come back to find out that everything was the same. But as if you had never left, stayed a boy all this time, and nothing had changed, and your mind had wandered off during a red light. During the wait for a hamburger and milk and orange cake and the next to last chapter of Peyton Place.
Difference is, while you were asleep at the light, 55 percent of the people got Latino. How did it happen? The white wash is fading.
And the freeways are no better, single women are unhappier than they were before, men are more uptight, more about ‘making it’, the air is as strange and dull glossed as ever.
And you’re in the car just like it always was, driving up Robertson, past Cadillac, past Pico and Olympic, right up to Doheny and all the ghosts are sitting at a bus stop. A girl raped and garroted. A mother screaming. Another mother with a bouquet of tennis racquets. A father with dark glasses even at night, middle aged women, singers and actresses, all sitting there and waving as I go by. I wave back and go on.
* * *
A few minutes later the door opens in a dark hallway on Oakhurst, in the flats, in a building with 12-foot tall black doors but inside low and lightless, the smell of old carpet, cracked tiles, a place behind the lines.
Door opens. Older woman just out of the hair salon. Heavy make up. Betty Davis eyes. A starlet at 90 with Bacall blonde hair, a woman of some age but what. In her late somethings, but you would be stunned to hear 90. You would be stunned.
Over her shoulder familiar objects, paintings and furniture. A small dog at her feet. That’s the law now in El Lay. Everyone has to have a very small dog.
Then a sideway hug. Nothing personal, no hint of real contact. As though nothing was ever personal. — I’m glad you’re here. — I am too.
And then right into it. No warm up, no sit down, no news. No, “well, how long has it been?” I don't know how long it's been. The better part of 10 years.
No, “How are you doing?” No, "What about the old days?"
No. Everything is apparent; there's nothing to ask or say or do, except make a choice, move it out. Rawhide.
I get the backgammon table, the Queen Anne desk, the long dark bench, a table, two lamps, two recovered chairs, some odds, ends. Everything is in disrepair. Take this. Take that. I would like this. Well, actually not that.... But how about some old silver-plated serving dishes? How about these chairs?
I can’t, I say. What about this dictionary stand? I’ll take it.
I say, yes, to please, to affirm. That’s an old rhythm. That’s always been our way. You’ve had this life of horror; I will forever honor your tragedies.
She disappears. I work the hand truck. I rattle off, in and out. An hour passes. A neighbor stops by. E and this woman compare small dogs. A phone rings. The work is ending, the tension is increasing. The apartment is looking distraught, as though there had been a fight perhaps. This is the hour of the wolf in moving. She has to stay here in the confusion, with bare walls, with things missing. I’ve come and started to deconstruct not just her apartment, but her life, her future even.
Yes, this is the last time probably.
I always used to say that to Marina and Dylan. This is the last time you’re going to see your grandfather so pay attention. I became obsessed with ‘last times’. But it was never the last time until the last time and then it was all gone, him and the lifestyle and Hollywood in the old days, and the 1930s at Mike Romanoff’s, and every electric charge, gone, like the view of a city from 35,000 feet.
Well how’s your mother, she asks. Dead, I reply. She goes into a trance, like the gypsy woman in the booth at musee mechanique that tells your fortune for a quarter. Suddenly, she’s very stiff. This fortune wasn’t in the deck.
“Don’t go there,” she says, to herself mostly. “Don’t go there.” And the hair is straight on the back of your neck.
She has no emotional shocks left, there's nothing to soften the ride. And in her condition, with all that tragedy, even if the stories have been mistold or she’s recited a life that wasn’t quite so phantasmagorical, still it is amazing that she got through it, and that she could look like this now....
Of course, you should have seen her when she was my age, we are just at that point, she and I began just when she was the age I am now.... She looked like a woman in her 40s then, in the late 1960s, a ‘fragrant phantom’ as Zelda Sayre once described herself on the night she fell in love with F. Scott. Blonde and hot and would not be denied. “I can’t keep my hands off you,” she would say. “I just can’t.”
Dissolve, as we used to say.... POV, now.
“Let’s not talk about your mother,” she says.
Okay, I say.
“Keep it in the moment,” she says, "steady now."
Steady as she goes and we cross through the straits. There is no more talk.
Move this, move that. Unplug this, plug that. She empties some desk drawers, but not really. When I get it home the desk is full of credit cards and uncashed checks. And eight of an inch cockroaches.
* * *
I took the last things and put them in the back of the pick up truck, paying special attention to the paintings. I should have taken more paintings, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to make the walls barren. I just couldn’t do it, but I will regret that of course. Regret is also part of the rhythm.
She’s tried to get me to take more, to lure me with old playing cards and expensive poker chips and a cork backgammon table on which the points are barely visible. Want the stones, at least? She wanted me to stay I suppose, looking back, and yet....
We sit in her bedroom for a moment. Want these books? Some written by her first husband. Some written by this lover or that. There’s the John Huston biography; she’s Cherokee in that. No, I have all those, copies. I don’t want any more books. I can’t take them. But I suppose she’s saying, asking, for another moment. But I can’t manage it myself. All these old scents, still the original perfume, she’s wearing. And the bookcase in her room coming undone. A reminder of gray gardens. I want to get away. I would stay if she knew how to negotiate a place, a reason....
The room is as it always was. Recreated, I mean. The same paintings, of her daughter, of herself in the company of the stars of yesteryear. When people were named Belden Cattleman and Diortis Niven and Jack and Cubby Brocolli.
We wander into the living room. she looks one way, I look another. Like partners in a tango. So you don’t want this or that or anything, it seems. That’s what she’s thinking. And so she senses that I want to go, and that she wants me to go. We’re not really thinking this is the last time.....
And then suddenly she said, “okay that’s it. I’m going to turn away and I’d like you to be gone.”
She turned and I left.
Land of no goodbyes. Fade to black, to black and white reels on a noisy projector. Was I ever there?
* * *
I drove up to the old house. “The house” as it was called. As if there were no other. “Come up to the house. The bar is always open”... Decade after decade. The parties that got done in that house, the betting, and John F. Kennedy’s Los Angeles campaign headquarters in the summer of 1959.
I hadn’t been back but have been writing something about it and took the opportunity. The road was unchanged, the neighborhoods had settled. They were new when I was a kid. Now the trees have matured. The cement has cracked and been redone. It was dirt road when I first got there in 1957.
The house itself was different of course, then. Now, the garage is a house. The main house, the house, has a second floor. The cottage in the back is a house. All things have been enlarged, engorged and hidden.
I wanted to go to where the woodpile had been, to say a prayer to those lizards that I played with and then shot. It’s the thing I most regret from that time. Other crimes, which were serious enough, were nothing next to that. And why? I played with them as pets, took them in the house, put them all over me, treated them like domiciles, fed them flies, you can’t imagine. And then one day I turned, I got afraid and mean and the adolescent got violent. I became an adult and lost on whatever day that was....
I wanted to do that, to make a pilgrimage to the lizards, to pay my respects, to acknowledge my crimes, but now there’s gates and hedges, you can hardly see anything.
* * *
I finally drive away, past the park where it rained high fly balls, now to be a reservoir; past the old hotel and Our Lady of the Good Cadillacs, down into the flats, on to Pico and Olympic, past the apartment where my grandmother lived at the end.
The game is still on but Vince Scully has been replaced. The Dodgers are on their heels, the relief pitchers have fallen apart, the Mets have gone ahead. The air has that opaque quality, like air next to a waterfall, moving, moist, unreal.
Jul 23, 2007
Jul 4, 2007
July4th
After dogs and burgers, key lime pie, mustard around the mouth, men playing hillybilly golf out the window, where the thermometer has gone to 106, four women sit down at the end of the diningroom table. In the cool. Accomplished women in their late 40s and early 50s. Except for one they would not be the kind of women to see the Vagina Monologues, they don't use that word lightly, but they would gladly see the new comedy about Menopause.
One is a CFO; one is blonde; one is good; and one is big and tall. Towering, is the word. And something about her that's not only imposing but forbidding. Her body language suggests all work and no play, suggests jacqueline coming down the beanstock for women and not in a good mood, suggests feeling angry at having to be in the wrong sex all the time.
She is also the consummate matron, she's in this charity and that. She believes it's more blessed to give than to receive. She likes little kids. She's Republican and thinks the war is a terrible thing.
But lately life has been hard. Look at her smile; she can "hardly get her lips to bend. But this is why, this is why, this is why... as the kids keep singing these days. This is why she is...
She lives in a gated community across the valley from Mt. Diablo. Where she lives there are red wine orchards and over the hills to the south one of the great state parks in this part of the state. She has a view of the town in the valley below.
If the internet could be made real, so you could see it, this is what you would see. Her looking out her window and the town below and the town looking at her, all at the same time, this towering woman in the window looking down, her line of site in every direction. As an aside, this is her fate, she always has to look down, she rarely, rarely gets a chance to look up. Except at a bird or dark clouds or the moon, she looked up at the moon a few weeks ago, or the hunchback's gargoyle at Notre Dame. Otherwise, everything is below her. I won't say 'beneath' her because I don't know her, I can't prove that, I can only say 'below' her.
In this community where she lives there are rules, of course. You can do certain things to your house, for example, but anything you imagine must be approved. You have to show not tell, let's see the plans, let's know what you're doing here.
You show it to a homeowner board. Like in every community these days, even if you live in a time share or a commune, there's a board. Where she lives, you can't just convert your garages to rooms for example, You can't just pull up all the grass in your front yard and plant something else. There are standards. There is an expectation. You can plant trees but we don't want eucalyptus, which are dirty and of course they're full of water and they can fall over on your house. Or my house. You can have oak and maple and cherry just like people in Ohio, which is where all these people came from by the way.
So Mrs. Big and Tall wanted to paint her house yellow, kind of golden yellow, not wizard of oz yellow, but yellow to echo the hills around which have that yellow you see in the high hot of summer when the tall grass is dead and white near the roots and kind of pale beigy, yellowy on the top. She wants her house to look that color.
So she got a little patch with the exact color and took it to homeowner board, the lady who does these things on behalf of the board, showed it to her, she signed off, and then Mrs. Big and Tall went and painted her house.
Well the painters hadn't finished when somebody, we don't know who, somebody in the development, let's not use that word, let's say someone in the community, complained. Said, "what the heck is that woman doing?" That's a horrible shade of yellow, all the rest of the houses are beige, or some shade of beige and gray and there's just no yellow in any of our homes.
This mystery person, and it's a woman, we know that, the board lady said that by mistake, it was a woman and she doesn't like what you've done and there's some question whether the patch you showed us is an accurate reflection of the color of your house. So we need to take a sample, the board will need to review this decision. We take these matters very seriously. It's possible you may have to repaint your house. Of course, we don't like doing this, this is not an easy job, and we know you have rights just like everyone else...
Can you believe it? asked Mrs. Big and Tall who got a round of sympathy from the others at the dining room table. Some atta boys to go with her burger and potato salad. How ironic, everyone said, that on July 4th 2007 we don't have our freedoms.
"This is what it's like," said Mrs. Big and Tall, who stood up and looked down at us like a Kareem Abdul Jabar. And you expected her to say, "And I'm not going to take it anymore." But she didn't, she just shook her head, and smirked, and thoroughly enjoyed the support. Because now she was going to have to drive back there, back to the gated community and endure the derision of someone there who didn't like the color of her house.
But she wanted to add that her real anger was not at the woman who complained but the woman at the board who relayed the complaint. "She" said Mrs. B & G, "should have handled it right there. She should have taken care of it. Why bother me with this. Now I have to wait for the board to decide, but it should all have been taken care of..."
One is a CFO; one is blonde; one is good; and one is big and tall. Towering, is the word. And something about her that's not only imposing but forbidding. Her body language suggests all work and no play, suggests jacqueline coming down the beanstock for women and not in a good mood, suggests feeling angry at having to be in the wrong sex all the time.
She is also the consummate matron, she's in this charity and that. She believes it's more blessed to give than to receive. She likes little kids. She's Republican and thinks the war is a terrible thing.
But lately life has been hard. Look at her smile; she can "hardly get her lips to bend. But this is why, this is why, this is why... as the kids keep singing these days. This is why she is...
She lives in a gated community across the valley from Mt. Diablo. Where she lives there are red wine orchards and over the hills to the south one of the great state parks in this part of the state. She has a view of the town in the valley below.
If the internet could be made real, so you could see it, this is what you would see. Her looking out her window and the town below and the town looking at her, all at the same time, this towering woman in the window looking down, her line of site in every direction. As an aside, this is her fate, she always has to look down, she rarely, rarely gets a chance to look up. Except at a bird or dark clouds or the moon, she looked up at the moon a few weeks ago, or the hunchback's gargoyle at Notre Dame. Otherwise, everything is below her. I won't say 'beneath' her because I don't know her, I can't prove that, I can only say 'below' her.
In this community where she lives there are rules, of course. You can do certain things to your house, for example, but anything you imagine must be approved. You have to show not tell, let's see the plans, let's know what you're doing here.
You show it to a homeowner board. Like in every community these days, even if you live in a time share or a commune, there's a board. Where she lives, you can't just convert your garages to rooms for example, You can't just pull up all the grass in your front yard and plant something else. There are standards. There is an expectation. You can plant trees but we don't want eucalyptus, which are dirty and of course they're full of water and they can fall over on your house. Or my house. You can have oak and maple and cherry just like people in Ohio, which is where all these people came from by the way.
So Mrs. Big and Tall wanted to paint her house yellow, kind of golden yellow, not wizard of oz yellow, but yellow to echo the hills around which have that yellow you see in the high hot of summer when the tall grass is dead and white near the roots and kind of pale beigy, yellowy on the top. She wants her house to look that color.
So she got a little patch with the exact color and took it to homeowner board, the lady who does these things on behalf of the board, showed it to her, she signed off, and then Mrs. Big and Tall went and painted her house.
Well the painters hadn't finished when somebody, we don't know who, somebody in the development, let's not use that word, let's say someone in the community, complained. Said, "what the heck is that woman doing?" That's a horrible shade of yellow, all the rest of the houses are beige, or some shade of beige and gray and there's just no yellow in any of our homes.
This mystery person, and it's a woman, we know that, the board lady said that by mistake, it was a woman and she doesn't like what you've done and there's some question whether the patch you showed us is an accurate reflection of the color of your house. So we need to take a sample, the board will need to review this decision. We take these matters very seriously. It's possible you may have to repaint your house. Of course, we don't like doing this, this is not an easy job, and we know you have rights just like everyone else...
Can you believe it? asked Mrs. Big and Tall who got a round of sympathy from the others at the dining room table. Some atta boys to go with her burger and potato salad. How ironic, everyone said, that on July 4th 2007 we don't have our freedoms.
"This is what it's like," said Mrs. Big and Tall, who stood up and looked down at us like a Kareem Abdul Jabar. And you expected her to say, "And I'm not going to take it anymore." But she didn't, she just shook her head, and smirked, and thoroughly enjoyed the support. Because now she was going to have to drive back there, back to the gated community and endure the derision of someone there who didn't like the color of her house.
But she wanted to add that her real anger was not at the woman who complained but the woman at the board who relayed the complaint. "She" said Mrs. B & G, "should have handled it right there. She should have taken care of it. Why bother me with this. Now I have to wait for the board to decide, but it should all have been taken care of..."
Jun 10, 2007
Beth
The boy doesn’t know yet. He’s been upstairs, in a den, with antler heads on the wall. Playing video games, hour after hour, in the dark, in this enormous house.
His mother has been dead for three days but no one has told him. He saw her in the hospital, she smiled, she kissed his hand, she said she would be home soon, everyone said she would recover. But that was a week ago and now suddenly today is her funeral and someone has to explain.
His father is the one who should do it, but he would rather not. He believes a woman should do it. His mother might do it. Meanwhile, people are milling around below in the great house. There is the father’s family and the mother’s family. The one is from Ohio, the other from Texas. They are as different as Dickens from Danielle Steele, as Gore from Bush, as heartland from Wasteland. As a family gathering from a board meeting.
Right now the families are circling each other, everyone a matador, a boxer. In one corner, inside the Alamo, the conversation is about the mother’s half brother, the wife’s half brother who has come to be a pallbearer but doesn’t have the right shade of suit, not black enough, and too sheeny. “Like a cheap suit,” one of them says and there’s a chuckle all around These are the father, the husband’s friends, from college, asked to be pall bearers, his old frat brothers, and they all have the same shade of black suit. In fact, they all got their suit from the same store, just for the funeral. Like they did when he got married.
In the other corner, the people from Ohio, all women, and shaking their heads. The dead woman is their sister’s daughter. It’s all so tragic, they’re saying, and their mother having just died a few months before, but then to see their niece’s husband playing the role of a victim. They scowl and hurtle derision across the room. How is he going to take care of these kids? Seriously, how is he going to do that? The girl will be okay, she’s a little older, but the boy is only 4, what’s going to happen to him? And who’s going to tell him? It’s outrageous.
The house sucked the life out of her, it really did, the dead woman’s closest friend is whispering to someone from Ohio. Well, just look at it.
The pretentiousness of it, she means, but not just the size, but also the Etruscan style arches, the faux painted walls, the marble, the slate, the mirrors, my God, the frames on those paintings, which aren’t even original....
This is one of those super houses, set on a mapley clean street in a prominent neighborhood in Houston. Once the houses on this street were in proportion and that was the nature of its prominence. People who lived here understood proportion and looked down on those who didn’t. If you lived out of proportion, they felt, it meant you had to prove something, and if you had to prove something then you weren’t really rich, you were a wannabe, a ‘bourgeoise type’, and they, the elite, pronounced the word the way people in New Haven and New York pronounce it when they want to make fun of people who live in Texas and in places that are not a la mode, that are, if you want to know the truth, ignorant.
But you could argue that either way, couldn’t you? You could argue on behalf of people who don’t want to live in proportion. You could be a rebel; you could want to burn down the country club, and for good reason. Not to mention artists, geniuses, prodigy’s, many homeless people, crazy people, all kinds of people, live out of proportion. In their minds at least. You could even say the nouveau riche, for all their vulgarity and ‘ignorance’ got to where the are for their energy, because they often said ‘fuck you I’ll do it my way’ and they did.
In fact, that’s why this daughter of Ohio married the son of Texas. Because he was up and coming and she admired his courage and his bravado and if he wasn’t rounded at the edges, it was okay because he provided and if he wasn’t always as attentive as he might have been, then that’s okay too, because he had other qualities.
But the women from Ohio didn’t believe any of that. They knew it, they even hoped it might be true, but they didn’t believe it. They didn’t see any rebels here, and they know rebels, some of them had been rebels themselves, diggers in Oregon, anti establishment types in Berkeley. No, there were no rebels here, just a man who wants to get as much as the can and doesn’t care what you think, so long as he can live it his way and be with his buddies and his ticket business and his money....
However, you look at it, he paid for the original house to get a boob job and now it fills the lot. A fat man in a corset couldn’t get between the house and the fence. A thin man with boots and spurs would have to walk like a line dancer. And when you get from front to back, there’s nothing more than a small pool that comes right up to the living room door. The old trees and shrubbery are gone. Now there’s new trees and shrubbery, although not much room to put it in, and a lot of furniture and potted flowers...
Whatever is good about it, whatever you find appealing about the backyard, she did it. He didn’t care, just so long as she made it nice, so other people were awed and said how pretty it all was.
The inside of the house is like a hangar, like a new car showroom for Mazaratis. “Like wow baby, I like it”. In the words of friends of the ticket master who made all this happen. Who brought his wife in to this place and said, “Look at this, honey. Wow, huh?’ And she smiled the big blonde smile, sexy and big, but always a touch of down, now that you think of it, a little eyeliner of doubt there.
Wow, she said, but how are we going to live here? It’s so big.
Oh honey, we’re gonna have a big family. We need it. And anyway, we’re gonna live big. Know what I mean?
Sure. Why not, she thought. Why the hell not. Live big. This is Texas after all.
So he went off and made fortunes scalping tickets so he could have leather pigs around and pretend he was somebody refined. Gimme a bud, baby, will ya? How ‘bout those Astros, huh!
Meanwhile, she tried to fill the house as best she could, got Patty Madden's Etruscan collection of contract vinyl wall coverings. She read the magazine where it said, ‘Take this incredible turquoisey blue-green, like you'd see on a cloisonne vase, and paint it on the reverse side of glass. Then use it as a tabletop. You have the effect of color, once a long time ago...’
It wasn’t really her, she would have done it another way, but she would do anything to please. Not a mean bone in her body, and if she didn’t feel so well those last months, but thinking it was just pneumonia, that’s what the doctors guess it was, she just kept right on going, and when she was throwing up blood and they finally discovered it wasn’t pneumonia but cancer, she kept right on going. Don’t worry, she informed her family, some chemo and cutting and it should recede.
Then two weeks later she was gone.
But in the moment after they said, well you’ve got this thing and it’s everywhere all through your body but we can beat it, she saw how this was going to play out, and with no time left on the clock she went off on a trip with her kids, and then came back, got in her hospital bed, lingered, smiled, cried, and died.
* * *
The people downstairs are getting ready to go to the funeral. The boy’s still upstairs plying videos in the dark. Finally, the husband, the ticket guy’s mom goes upstairs. She doesn’t make a sound. ‘Your mom’s gone,’ she tells him. And when they get to the cemetery he wants to know if this is heaven. Well not exactly, his grammy explains but wherever it is your mom’s there.
The boy can’t grasp it all so he needs to understand this again. I want to see he says, I want to see her. Grammy tries to put the kibosh on that but he keeps insisting and then he starts to make a scene, starts screaming, and even if you’re deaf and dummer than dirt you can hear something in that scream that says, ‘wake up, people, my mom’s gone and I want to see her.’ The man in the boy called out and after a while, after the they got finished saying, we’ll come back and visit or there’s nothing to see or it’s private or just think good thoughts, finally they agreed.
The casket was still atop the gurney and they brought him over and the weird men from the mortuary, undid some levers, because these days you never know when you might have to do another autopsy. They opened the lid and the father lifted his son up and he looked inside and there she was, kind of like she was sleeping, and he wondered if she couldn’t just wake up, he reached out to touch her but his father pulled his hand back, and before he was ready they shut her up in there and did everything real fast, got the casket down in the ground, and threw in the dirt and sang a song and then got him back in the car and home and said it was okay if he went upstairs to the den and played his video games, and grammy brought him a sandwich and milk and sat with him, as best she could, because she was done in herself. And watched him, and didn’t have a thought in her head, and meanwhile, the boy was being a hero in the game, slaying dragons, and fighting as hard as he could to stay alive.
His mother has been dead for three days but no one has told him. He saw her in the hospital, she smiled, she kissed his hand, she said she would be home soon, everyone said she would recover. But that was a week ago and now suddenly today is her funeral and someone has to explain.
His father is the one who should do it, but he would rather not. He believes a woman should do it. His mother might do it. Meanwhile, people are milling around below in the great house. There is the father’s family and the mother’s family. The one is from Ohio, the other from Texas. They are as different as Dickens from Danielle Steele, as Gore from Bush, as heartland from Wasteland. As a family gathering from a board meeting.
Right now the families are circling each other, everyone a matador, a boxer. In one corner, inside the Alamo, the conversation is about the mother’s half brother, the wife’s half brother who has come to be a pallbearer but doesn’t have the right shade of suit, not black enough, and too sheeny. “Like a cheap suit,” one of them says and there’s a chuckle all around These are the father, the husband’s friends, from college, asked to be pall bearers, his old frat brothers, and they all have the same shade of black suit. In fact, they all got their suit from the same store, just for the funeral. Like they did when he got married.
In the other corner, the people from Ohio, all women, and shaking their heads. The dead woman is their sister’s daughter. It’s all so tragic, they’re saying, and their mother having just died a few months before, but then to see their niece’s husband playing the role of a victim. They scowl and hurtle derision across the room. How is he going to take care of these kids? Seriously, how is he going to do that? The girl will be okay, she’s a little older, but the boy is only 4, what’s going to happen to him? And who’s going to tell him? It’s outrageous.
The house sucked the life out of her, it really did, the dead woman’s closest friend is whispering to someone from Ohio. Well, just look at it.
The pretentiousness of it, she means, but not just the size, but also the Etruscan style arches, the faux painted walls, the marble, the slate, the mirrors, my God, the frames on those paintings, which aren’t even original....
This is one of those super houses, set on a mapley clean street in a prominent neighborhood in Houston. Once the houses on this street were in proportion and that was the nature of its prominence. People who lived here understood proportion and looked down on those who didn’t. If you lived out of proportion, they felt, it meant you had to prove something, and if you had to prove something then you weren’t really rich, you were a wannabe, a ‘bourgeoise type’, and they, the elite, pronounced the word the way people in New Haven and New York pronounce it when they want to make fun of people who live in Texas and in places that are not a la mode, that are, if you want to know the truth, ignorant.
But you could argue that either way, couldn’t you? You could argue on behalf of people who don’t want to live in proportion. You could be a rebel; you could want to burn down the country club, and for good reason. Not to mention artists, geniuses, prodigy’s, many homeless people, crazy people, all kinds of people, live out of proportion. In their minds at least. You could even say the nouveau riche, for all their vulgarity and ‘ignorance’ got to where the are for their energy, because they often said ‘fuck you I’ll do it my way’ and they did.
In fact, that’s why this daughter of Ohio married the son of Texas. Because he was up and coming and she admired his courage and his bravado and if he wasn’t rounded at the edges, it was okay because he provided and if he wasn’t always as attentive as he might have been, then that’s okay too, because he had other qualities.
But the women from Ohio didn’t believe any of that. They knew it, they even hoped it might be true, but they didn’t believe it. They didn’t see any rebels here, and they know rebels, some of them had been rebels themselves, diggers in Oregon, anti establishment types in Berkeley. No, there were no rebels here, just a man who wants to get as much as the can and doesn’t care what you think, so long as he can live it his way and be with his buddies and his ticket business and his money....
However, you look at it, he paid for the original house to get a boob job and now it fills the lot. A fat man in a corset couldn’t get between the house and the fence. A thin man with boots and spurs would have to walk like a line dancer. And when you get from front to back, there’s nothing more than a small pool that comes right up to the living room door. The old trees and shrubbery are gone. Now there’s new trees and shrubbery, although not much room to put it in, and a lot of furniture and potted flowers...
Whatever is good about it, whatever you find appealing about the backyard, she did it. He didn’t care, just so long as she made it nice, so other people were awed and said how pretty it all was.
The inside of the house is like a hangar, like a new car showroom for Mazaratis. “Like wow baby, I like it”. In the words of friends of the ticket master who made all this happen. Who brought his wife in to this place and said, “Look at this, honey. Wow, huh?’ And she smiled the big blonde smile, sexy and big, but always a touch of down, now that you think of it, a little eyeliner of doubt there.
Wow, she said, but how are we going to live here? It’s so big.
Oh honey, we’re gonna have a big family. We need it. And anyway, we’re gonna live big. Know what I mean?
Sure. Why not, she thought. Why the hell not. Live big. This is Texas after all.
So he went off and made fortunes scalping tickets so he could have leather pigs around and pretend he was somebody refined. Gimme a bud, baby, will ya? How ‘bout those Astros, huh!
Meanwhile, she tried to fill the house as best she could, got Patty Madden's Etruscan collection of contract vinyl wall coverings. She read the magazine where it said, ‘Take this incredible turquoisey blue-green, like you'd see on a cloisonne vase, and paint it on the reverse side of glass. Then use it as a tabletop. You have the effect of color, once a long time ago...’
It wasn’t really her, she would have done it another way, but she would do anything to please. Not a mean bone in her body, and if she didn’t feel so well those last months, but thinking it was just pneumonia, that’s what the doctors guess it was, she just kept right on going, and when she was throwing up blood and they finally discovered it wasn’t pneumonia but cancer, she kept right on going. Don’t worry, she informed her family, some chemo and cutting and it should recede.
Then two weeks later she was gone.
But in the moment after they said, well you’ve got this thing and it’s everywhere all through your body but we can beat it, she saw how this was going to play out, and with no time left on the clock she went off on a trip with her kids, and then came back, got in her hospital bed, lingered, smiled, cried, and died.
* * *
The people downstairs are getting ready to go to the funeral. The boy’s still upstairs plying videos in the dark. Finally, the husband, the ticket guy’s mom goes upstairs. She doesn’t make a sound. ‘Your mom’s gone,’ she tells him. And when they get to the cemetery he wants to know if this is heaven. Well not exactly, his grammy explains but wherever it is your mom’s there.
The boy can’t grasp it all so he needs to understand this again. I want to see he says, I want to see her. Grammy tries to put the kibosh on that but he keeps insisting and then he starts to make a scene, starts screaming, and even if you’re deaf and dummer than dirt you can hear something in that scream that says, ‘wake up, people, my mom’s gone and I want to see her.’ The man in the boy called out and after a while, after the they got finished saying, we’ll come back and visit or there’s nothing to see or it’s private or just think good thoughts, finally they agreed.
The casket was still atop the gurney and they brought him over and the weird men from the mortuary, undid some levers, because these days you never know when you might have to do another autopsy. They opened the lid and the father lifted his son up and he looked inside and there she was, kind of like she was sleeping, and he wondered if she couldn’t just wake up, he reached out to touch her but his father pulled his hand back, and before he was ready they shut her up in there and did everything real fast, got the casket down in the ground, and threw in the dirt and sang a song and then got him back in the car and home and said it was okay if he went upstairs to the den and played his video games, and grammy brought him a sandwich and milk and sat with him, as best she could, because she was done in herself. And watched him, and didn’t have a thought in her head, and meanwhile, the boy was being a hero in the game, slaying dragons, and fighting as hard as he could to stay alive.
Jun 6, 2007
Bad Weather
Tremendous storms, unheard of for this time of year.
The kind of quiet that howls in your head,
Those C sharp chords from wind on the window,
Then the relentless pounding of wooden shutters.
... the way it seems, day after day,
Unable to sleep, day after day, unable to sleep,
Nothing helps, not wine or beer or either of those
With vodka and pills, or first the pills and any of those.
There is no effective combination. Of anything.
After a while, you begin to wonder, what's the world telling me?
Is it going to be like this from now on in?
Will I even survive?
You are suddenly that tenuously small boat of yourself,
In a squall, at night, on the other side of the world,
Sails tattered, rigging undone, Captain Crowhurst at the wheel,
Sailing in circles off the coast of Argentina,
Month after month, waiting for the race to catch up,
Keeping two sets of books, as honestly as you can, and
All the while sailing into the Sea of Sargossa,
Toward the long slow calm of absolute insanity....
The kind of quiet that howls in your head,
Those C sharp chords from wind on the window,
Then the relentless pounding of wooden shutters.
... the way it seems, day after day,
Unable to sleep, day after day, unable to sleep,
Nothing helps, not wine or beer or either of those
With vodka and pills, or first the pills and any of those.
There is no effective combination. Of anything.
After a while, you begin to wonder, what's the world telling me?
Is it going to be like this from now on in?
Will I even survive?
You are suddenly that tenuously small boat of yourself,
In a squall, at night, on the other side of the world,
Sails tattered, rigging undone, Captain Crowhurst at the wheel,
Sailing in circles off the coast of Argentina,
Month after month, waiting for the race to catch up,
Keeping two sets of books, as honestly as you can, and
All the while sailing into the Sea of Sargossa,
Toward the long slow calm of absolute insanity....
Jun 3, 2007
In Mortmain
I’d been lingering in the mirror when over my shoulder, with the images bending around to eternity, I noticed myself a long time ago, a man in his 20s.
I’m at a bar, one of those blue collar joints on a frontal road in a town on the make, where girls named Betty tease boys named Rodney, until one night Rodney goes too far. There’s a loud juke box with flickering blue light, a TV on the wall with subtitles, empty bottles of cheap gin stacked behind a long wooden bar. The Iceman Cometh here, every night.
There’s a pool table in the back; a layer of smoke, a bartender and bouncer ,with a Boston accent. The clientele is an uneasy blend of college kids and townies, furtive, envious men with jaunty girls looking for anything at all.
But this is not about college boys and townies, I’m a college kid dancing with a college girl. I’ve known her for the last four years. She’s blond, it’s the end of college, we’ll never see each other again. We’re dancing for old times sake. It means absolutely nothing. She has someone; I have someone. Our future is on a remainder table.
But of course the situation is not entirely harmless. This dancing could be perceived as threatening, and it wouldn’t be the first time.
Maybe that’s it; maybe her boy friend feels threatened by me. He’s always worried about losing the girl and so he does. it’s a situation that repeats itself endlessly.
I see him at the last minute, coming hard across the dance floor. He’s a rich-kid, with his father’s pedigree and a mother’s pedicure, from a second floor bedroom looking down on a front yard with oaks and maples. In his room, pendants on the wall, tall plastic trophies and freshly vacced carpets.
Coming out of the shadows and at the very last second I catch him out the fish eye. He cold cocks me just like that, like I’d been hit with a brick. But I don’t go down. I stagger, the pain is wicked, I might as well have been asleep for the shock of it.
But I stay up, I’ve taken blind sided hit, once, at 13, I got knocked out running a crossing pattern. I never saw that coming.
But this was so unexpected, caused such a ringing of old bells. Plus, such a violation of the moment and the place I’d gotten to in recent days. I had and arrived , just when I’m beginning to enjoy the very last days of college. I said I would do it and I did. And then this maniac, as though to say, ‘you will not end on a good note, you will not remember this well....’
I tackle him right away and a broken beer bottle breaks his fall and it that takes 30 stitches to mend the rip. People pull me off. The bouncer kicks me out. The cops arrive. People tell them what really happened. Cops ask if I want to press charges. I don’t.
I go home, I’m still seething. I cannot, I simply cannot help myself.
I find out the kid’s gone to the emergency room.
I want to finish him off somehow, get in one more good punch, so I get to the hospital and there’s the girl I was dancing with and she sees right away what’s up. She knows right away and says she’ll get cops if I don’t leave.
And what about you, I’m thinking. Why are you suddenly this fool’s defender?
I wake up the next morning and I’m thinking to myself, ‘okay, it’s over’, but then I start reliving it again, I get tangled up in what this kid did for no good reason, and I think about these rich kids like him, with their sense of entitlement, with all their confidence and ease. how they’re soft, how I’ve known them all my life, how they never see me for who I am.
A few hours later I get a couple of friends and I go over to this kids house. He lives with other rich kids. We get to the house, they’re half a dozen but they don’t want any part of this. He’s upstairs they tell me and I go up and there’s the kid in the bathroom, peeing.
I say to him, “you have five seconds to explain what the fuck you did to me last night.”
He mumbles something. I can’t hear it. Whatever it was it sounded condescending, as though he hasn’t figured this out yet, as though he doesn’t owe me an explanation.
If he would only say, “you know what? I acted like an asshole last night and let me buy you a drunk.” Or, “look, I'm sorry. I’ve had a bad week.”
But he just mumbled in this condescending way and that’s when I let the dogs out. I punched him once in the face, he went right down and I followed and kept hitting him and hitting him, in the face.
How many times? I have no idea. Twenty, thirty times. Blood everywhere. I thought I might have killed him.
It’s like going leaving the bridge of yourself and slipping down into the engine room of yourself. That place is a blur of noise and motion, yet at the same time I can see everything that’s happening, I suppose I could slow it all down if I wanted. But I don’t; I have absolutely no control and I don’t want any. I just want to keep hitting him. Suddenly, I am graduated from everything I believe in myself, from everything I am not afraid to know of myself.
A minute goes by, a minute and a half and then it’s over. The kid goes back to the emergency room, gets more stitches. It’s not as bad as it looked.
Now I’m like a pit pull after the ring, lathering, shaking, jowls drooling but slowly sick at the thought of what I’ve done. No matter the history, the genetic predispositions, all the excuses, explanations and qualifications.... I could offer it all up, but would that make a difference?
Still, there is enormous pleasure in it, what can I tell you. To prevail, to clean the dirt off of something. To get things righted again. Kayo would understand. He would know exactly what this was....
Years later perhaps I will deeply regret it. Or maybe not. Or maybe I will flinch in horror, I will confess it all up, over and over. I will feel badly for a long time. And that won’t be the end of it.
I’m at a bar, one of those blue collar joints on a frontal road in a town on the make, where girls named Betty tease boys named Rodney, until one night Rodney goes too far. There’s a loud juke box with flickering blue light, a TV on the wall with subtitles, empty bottles of cheap gin stacked behind a long wooden bar. The Iceman Cometh here, every night.
There’s a pool table in the back; a layer of smoke, a bartender and bouncer ,with a Boston accent. The clientele is an uneasy blend of college kids and townies, furtive, envious men with jaunty girls looking for anything at all.
But this is not about college boys and townies, I’m a college kid dancing with a college girl. I’ve known her for the last four years. She’s blond, it’s the end of college, we’ll never see each other again. We’re dancing for old times sake. It means absolutely nothing. She has someone; I have someone. Our future is on a remainder table.
But of course the situation is not entirely harmless. This dancing could be perceived as threatening, and it wouldn’t be the first time.
Maybe that’s it; maybe her boy friend feels threatened by me. He’s always worried about losing the girl and so he does. it’s a situation that repeats itself endlessly.
I see him at the last minute, coming hard across the dance floor. He’s a rich-kid, with his father’s pedigree and a mother’s pedicure, from a second floor bedroom looking down on a front yard with oaks and maples. In his room, pendants on the wall, tall plastic trophies and freshly vacced carpets.
Coming out of the shadows and at the very last second I catch him out the fish eye. He cold cocks me just like that, like I’d been hit with a brick. But I don’t go down. I stagger, the pain is wicked, I might as well have been asleep for the shock of it.
But I stay up, I’ve taken blind sided hit, once, at 13, I got knocked out running a crossing pattern. I never saw that coming.
But this was so unexpected, caused such a ringing of old bells. Plus, such a violation of the moment and the place I’d gotten to in recent days. I had and arrived , just when I’m beginning to enjoy the very last days of college. I said I would do it and I did. And then this maniac, as though to say, ‘you will not end on a good note, you will not remember this well....’
I tackle him right away and a broken beer bottle breaks his fall and it that takes 30 stitches to mend the rip. People pull me off. The bouncer kicks me out. The cops arrive. People tell them what really happened. Cops ask if I want to press charges. I don’t.
I go home, I’m still seething. I cannot, I simply cannot help myself.
I find out the kid’s gone to the emergency room.
I want to finish him off somehow, get in one more good punch, so I get to the hospital and there’s the girl I was dancing with and she sees right away what’s up. She knows right away and says she’ll get cops if I don’t leave.
And what about you, I’m thinking. Why are you suddenly this fool’s defender?
I wake up the next morning and I’m thinking to myself, ‘okay, it’s over’, but then I start reliving it again, I get tangled up in what this kid did for no good reason, and I think about these rich kids like him, with their sense of entitlement, with all their confidence and ease. how they’re soft, how I’ve known them all my life, how they never see me for who I am.
A few hours later I get a couple of friends and I go over to this kids house. He lives with other rich kids. We get to the house, they’re half a dozen but they don’t want any part of this. He’s upstairs they tell me and I go up and there’s the kid in the bathroom, peeing.
I say to him, “you have five seconds to explain what the fuck you did to me last night.”
He mumbles something. I can’t hear it. Whatever it was it sounded condescending, as though he hasn’t figured this out yet, as though he doesn’t owe me an explanation.
If he would only say, “you know what? I acted like an asshole last night and let me buy you a drunk.” Or, “look, I'm sorry. I’ve had a bad week.”
But he just mumbled in this condescending way and that’s when I let the dogs out. I punched him once in the face, he went right down and I followed and kept hitting him and hitting him, in the face.
How many times? I have no idea. Twenty, thirty times. Blood everywhere. I thought I might have killed him.
It’s like going leaving the bridge of yourself and slipping down into the engine room of yourself. That place is a blur of noise and motion, yet at the same time I can see everything that’s happening, I suppose I could slow it all down if I wanted. But I don’t; I have absolutely no control and I don’t want any. I just want to keep hitting him. Suddenly, I am graduated from everything I believe in myself, from everything I am not afraid to know of myself.
A minute goes by, a minute and a half and then it’s over. The kid goes back to the emergency room, gets more stitches. It’s not as bad as it looked.
Now I’m like a pit pull after the ring, lathering, shaking, jowls drooling but slowly sick at the thought of what I’ve done. No matter the history, the genetic predispositions, all the excuses, explanations and qualifications.... I could offer it all up, but would that make a difference?
Still, there is enormous pleasure in it, what can I tell you. To prevail, to clean the dirt off of something. To get things righted again. Kayo would understand. He would know exactly what this was....
Years later perhaps I will deeply regret it. Or maybe not. Or maybe I will flinch in horror, I will confess it all up, over and over. I will feel badly for a long time. And that won’t be the end of it.
Jun 2, 2007
Between The Lines 2
Sure enough. Here is the rest of the story. (See "Between The Lines" below) And notice the reference to 'worshippers of the cross.'
WASHINGTON/DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-led group said on Thursday it had killed an Iraqi husband and wife employed by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Earlier, U.S. officials said the couple appeared to have been kidnapped.
The U.S. officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said that after the husband went missing late last week his wife went to look for him and then she too appeared to have been abducted.
"God's ruling has been implemented against two of the most prominent agents and spies of the worshippers of the cross ... a man and woman who occupy an important position at the U.S. embassy..." the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq said in a statement published on the Internet.
"The swords of the security personnel of the Islamic State in Iraq ... are with God's grace slitting the throats of crusaders and their aides and lackeys," it said.
The killings took place on Monday, it said.
One official described the two as "missing and apparently kidnapped."
The group said it was able to acquire a large amount of money from them. It did not give further details.
WASHINGTON/DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-led group said on Thursday it had killed an Iraqi husband and wife employed by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Earlier, U.S. officials said the couple appeared to have been kidnapped.
The U.S. officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said that after the husband went missing late last week his wife went to look for him and then she too appeared to have been abducted.
"God's ruling has been implemented against two of the most prominent agents and spies of the worshippers of the cross ... a man and woman who occupy an important position at the U.S. embassy..." the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq said in a statement published on the Internet.
"The swords of the security personnel of the Islamic State in Iraq ... are with God's grace slitting the throats of crusaders and their aides and lackeys," it said.
The killings took place on Monday, it said.
One official described the two as "missing and apparently kidnapped."
The group said it was able to acquire a large amount of money from them. It did not give further details.
Jun 1, 2007
Hey Baby
It is Marilyn Monroe's birthday today; I happened across this article. And by the way, that's more than coincidence, isn't it? Also, her initials, MM, are mine. Could that be a coincidence, too? I used to pass by her house all the time, on the way to the beach, right there on the corner of Sunset. I imagined her last night and saving her and picturing Bobby Kennedy right there at her bedside... But what about this? I once knew a girl named Sherrie. Read below and you'll understand. I also met a Melvin once. Isn't that amazing?
MALIBU, Calif., Aug. 8 2004 -- Adrian Finkelstein, MD, UCLA Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, graduate of the renowned Menninger School of Psychiatry, who won the first research award given by this institution, and pioneer in past life regression therapy will present his client, Sherrie Lea Laird, as the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe at the Lily Dale Assembly on August 13, 2005.
Dr. Finkelstein will discuss his six and a half year working relationship with Ms. Laird, which has included extensive videotaped past life regressions, and explain why he is convinced that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Ms. Monroe. Dr. Finkelstein will present similarities in facial bone structure, hands, handwriting, voice pattern, linguistics and personality traits that exist in common between Marilyn Monroe and Sherrie Lea Laird. Dr. Finkelstein will also discuss new ways of potentially proving reincarnation, such as through DNA studies and the comparison of iris patterns.
Dr. Finkelstein's work will be summarized in his upcoming book, Marilyn Monroe Returns, The Healing of a Soul, which will be released by Hampton Roads Publishing in Spring, 2006. Hampton Roads is the publisher of the bestselling Conversations with God series, by Neale Donald Walsch. Ms. Laird, who goes by the stage name, Sherrie Lea, is a singer whose production of No Ordinary Love hit the top of the charts in Canada and Europe. It is interesting to note that in her film Bus Stop, Marilyn's role was of a singer named Cherie. Ms. Laird and Dr. Finkelstein will be present to answer questions at the Lily Dale event.
Dr. Finkelstein will be joined by Walter Semkiw, MD, author of Return of the Revolutionaries: The Case for Reincarnation and Soul Groups Reunited, who will present independently researched reincarnation cases which demonstrate that facial features, personality traits and linguistic writing style stay the same across lifetimes. Two of these cases were researched by Ian Stevenson, MD, at the University of Virginia.
Kevin Ryerson, who has been described as the "Edgar Cayce of our time," will also participate in this presentation. Mr. Ryerson, who has appeared in three of Shirley MacLaine's books, including Out on a Limb, supports Dr. Finkelstein's assertion that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.
MALIBU, Calif., Aug. 8 2004 -- Adrian Finkelstein, MD, UCLA Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, graduate of the renowned Menninger School of Psychiatry, who won the first research award given by this institution, and pioneer in past life regression therapy will present his client, Sherrie Lea Laird, as the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe at the Lily Dale Assembly on August 13, 2005.
Dr. Finkelstein will discuss his six and a half year working relationship with Ms. Laird, which has included extensive videotaped past life regressions, and explain why he is convinced that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Ms. Monroe. Dr. Finkelstein will present similarities in facial bone structure, hands, handwriting, voice pattern, linguistics and personality traits that exist in common between Marilyn Monroe and Sherrie Lea Laird. Dr. Finkelstein will also discuss new ways of potentially proving reincarnation, such as through DNA studies and the comparison of iris patterns.
Dr. Finkelstein's work will be summarized in his upcoming book, Marilyn Monroe Returns, The Healing of a Soul, which will be released by Hampton Roads Publishing in Spring, 2006. Hampton Roads is the publisher of the bestselling Conversations with God series, by Neale Donald Walsch. Ms. Laird, who goes by the stage name, Sherrie Lea, is a singer whose production of No Ordinary Love hit the top of the charts in Canada and Europe. It is interesting to note that in her film Bus Stop, Marilyn's role was of a singer named Cherie. Ms. Laird and Dr. Finkelstein will be present to answer questions at the Lily Dale event.
Dr. Finkelstein will be joined by Walter Semkiw, MD, author of Return of the Revolutionaries: The Case for Reincarnation and Soul Groups Reunited, who will present independently researched reincarnation cases which demonstrate that facial features, personality traits and linguistic writing style stay the same across lifetimes. Two of these cases were researched by Ian Stevenson, MD, at the University of Virginia.
Kevin Ryerson, who has been described as the "Edgar Cayce of our time," will also participate in this presentation. Mr. Ryerson, who has appeared in three of Shirley MacLaine's books, including Out on a Limb, supports Dr. Finkelstein's assertion that Ms. Laird is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.
May 31, 2007
Between The Lines
"American officials said an Iraqi husband and wife who work for the United States Embassy in Baghdad appear to have been kidnapped.... American officials said the husband disappeared late last week and that his wife disappeared after she tried to look for him."
This is a paragraph hidden late in a New York Times story about the search for five kidnapped Britons, who include a contractor and four body guards. But underneath that, between the lines, is this story, perhaps a love story about a woman who fears the worst,then knows the worst, how can she not, what else can it be, and would rather find her husband and end it all together than apart.
You can imagine how this is going to end, their bodies discovered tomorrow or the next day, two among the 30 or so found every day. They may be recogizable or they may not. Their deaths will be a 'message' to anyone who works for the Americans. A warning, in the ruins.
But who takes the warnings seriously now? People you see in the street may be alive or they may not. The assumption is that you're alive. But you have only yourself as a witness....
You think of that young couple that died trying to reach each other across a bridge in Sarajevo, one was Christian, the other Muslim, if I'm not mistaken.
This is a paragraph hidden late in a New York Times story about the search for five kidnapped Britons, who include a contractor and four body guards. But underneath that, between the lines, is this story, perhaps a love story about a woman who fears the worst,then knows the worst, how can she not, what else can it be, and would rather find her husband and end it all together than apart.
You can imagine how this is going to end, their bodies discovered tomorrow or the next day, two among the 30 or so found every day. They may be recogizable or they may not. Their deaths will be a 'message' to anyone who works for the Americans. A warning, in the ruins.
But who takes the warnings seriously now? People you see in the street may be alive or they may not. The assumption is that you're alive. But you have only yourself as a witness....
You think of that young couple that died trying to reach each other across a bridge in Sarajevo, one was Christian, the other Muslim, if I'm not mistaken.
May 27, 2007
Last goal
After so many years the San Francisco Panthers have played in their last tournament together. The team lost two of three games in the San Francisco cup (under 14) and will not be in the finals tomorrow. In the one win Dash was sent in as a striker and scored a second half goal, his first in a tournament in years.
Some of these kids have been playing on this team since they were four; Dash, since he was 6. Now 7 years later, three state cup appearances, endless leagues and tournaments later, Super Ys, and Norcals later, it's all coming to an end. The coach has decided to withdraw, a stunning loss because he has not only kept the team focused, but he has also paid thousands of dollars in tournament fees and for uniforms.
Most of the players come from families with little or no money. It's not uncommon for one of the parents to be an illegal alien.
Now that he is quitting, the coach is dealing three of the top players to Juventes in Burlingame, one of the premier teams in Northern California. A fourth player is returning to Mexico for a year. The four youngest players, including Dash, will go to a 13-and-under team, run by an ambitious coach whose 18-and-under team won the San Francisco Cup this weekend.
Other players will be allotted to different teams around the city. Some will probably quit. This is the year, at 13 and 14, when a lot of kids peak. They burn out or become caught up in girls or gangs. They stop coming to practice, they don't perform in games, it becomes harder to keep teams together, and so the teams are endlessly falling apart and regrouping. In the cup this weekend, two players were picked up at the last moment, just for this tournament.
But here is why this story is more than a family heirloom in the bottom of the top drawer.
Two Mexicans friends started the team. Pepe and Jose. One worked as a waiter, the other worked for a landscaping company. Together, they wanted something better for their kids. The old immigrant refrain. So they created a team that kept its cohesion because the parents were all friends and because as the team began to win the parents were paid back in pride. The team's success was proof you could live in the Mission district and make something of yourself, that you could go off and play on artificial turf in the wealthy suburbs of San Ramon and Marin. You could humble the sons of the Silicon Valley elite, and the white bread boys in Santa Clara, even as your wife cleaned their homes and you built their gardens.
Eventually, the team fell into the hands of this coach, a former ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet and then the San Francisco Ballet. He's now a well-to-do contractor. His sons are, nearing the end of high school, probably going to college on soccer scholarships.
For years he has let the team's best players be guests on other teams around the Bay Area, particularly Juventes. That coach never loaned his players, although we needed them, but we lent them ours. Such is the cutthroat nature of kid soccer these days. Why does he do it? To get his best players better competition and better exposure.
He has argued that while the team has occasionally suffered losses because the best players were off playing somewhere else, the individual interest was greater than the community interest. And he would explain that some of these kids have soccer talents, which combined with good grades, could help them get into a good college, or any college. This is an opportunity not well understood in the immigrant community, where people assume that college, city college, is out of reach unless you know someone. Meanwhile, a good college is impossible unless you are Caucasian.
But now that the coach is leaving, everyone is afraid. The whole notion of using soccer to get to college seems distant. Suddenly, people feel betrayed. This possibility was held out, now it's taken away. The same old story.
And so what is the alternative? The alternative is to stay together, to fight off change. 'Remember, we are family.' Past glories are the proof that things should stay the same.
But no one has stepped forward to lead the team, the one person who could do it must return to Mexico. No one has any money. No one has the time. What will happen? Perhaps they can last a little longer. They can still get into some of the better known tournaments, but without an infusion of state team quality players they won't win and you can't keep going to the better tournaments unless you win. That's the bottom line, you can only win or else no one will invite you. Just like life in America.
So now the departing coach is being slathered with insults. After four years he's being painted as a devil. He didn't sign up for this tournament or he brought in that player who was no good or he doesn't understand us....
And that's true.
But it's not only the coach who is being defamed. The best player in the team, who has a real chance of getting to a regional team in the next year, and was drafted second in the regional tryouts a few months ago, is suddenly over-rated. Other players who rumor has it are going to Jueventes are also discredited or they are not going after all.
Now there is a furor and fear. The team that gave so much hope turns out to be more important than anyone realized. For a moment it seems as if without that team there will be no source of pride, no source of hope. If you have to work these tough jobs for little money what other reason is there to be happy at night? What else is there to look forward to every weekend? What promise is there in anything?
Some of these kids have been playing on this team since they were four; Dash, since he was 6. Now 7 years later, three state cup appearances, endless leagues and tournaments later, Super Ys, and Norcals later, it's all coming to an end. The coach has decided to withdraw, a stunning loss because he has not only kept the team focused, but he has also paid thousands of dollars in tournament fees and for uniforms.
Most of the players come from families with little or no money. It's not uncommon for one of the parents to be an illegal alien.
Now that he is quitting, the coach is dealing three of the top players to Juventes in Burlingame, one of the premier teams in Northern California. A fourth player is returning to Mexico for a year. The four youngest players, including Dash, will go to a 13-and-under team, run by an ambitious coach whose 18-and-under team won the San Francisco Cup this weekend.
Other players will be allotted to different teams around the city. Some will probably quit. This is the year, at 13 and 14, when a lot of kids peak. They burn out or become caught up in girls or gangs. They stop coming to practice, they don't perform in games, it becomes harder to keep teams together, and so the teams are endlessly falling apart and regrouping. In the cup this weekend, two players were picked up at the last moment, just for this tournament.
But here is why this story is more than a family heirloom in the bottom of the top drawer.
Two Mexicans friends started the team. Pepe and Jose. One worked as a waiter, the other worked for a landscaping company. Together, they wanted something better for their kids. The old immigrant refrain. So they created a team that kept its cohesion because the parents were all friends and because as the team began to win the parents were paid back in pride. The team's success was proof you could live in the Mission district and make something of yourself, that you could go off and play on artificial turf in the wealthy suburbs of San Ramon and Marin. You could humble the sons of the Silicon Valley elite, and the white bread boys in Santa Clara, even as your wife cleaned their homes and you built their gardens.
Eventually, the team fell into the hands of this coach, a former ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet and then the San Francisco Ballet. He's now a well-to-do contractor. His sons are, nearing the end of high school, probably going to college on soccer scholarships.
For years he has let the team's best players be guests on other teams around the Bay Area, particularly Juventes. That coach never loaned his players, although we needed them, but we lent them ours. Such is the cutthroat nature of kid soccer these days. Why does he do it? To get his best players better competition and better exposure.
He has argued that while the team has occasionally suffered losses because the best players were off playing somewhere else, the individual interest was greater than the community interest. And he would explain that some of these kids have soccer talents, which combined with good grades, could help them get into a good college, or any college. This is an opportunity not well understood in the immigrant community, where people assume that college, city college, is out of reach unless you know someone. Meanwhile, a good college is impossible unless you are Caucasian.
But now that the coach is leaving, everyone is afraid. The whole notion of using soccer to get to college seems distant. Suddenly, people feel betrayed. This possibility was held out, now it's taken away. The same old story.
And so what is the alternative? The alternative is to stay together, to fight off change. 'Remember, we are family.' Past glories are the proof that things should stay the same.
But no one has stepped forward to lead the team, the one person who could do it must return to Mexico. No one has any money. No one has the time. What will happen? Perhaps they can last a little longer. They can still get into some of the better known tournaments, but without an infusion of state team quality players they won't win and you can't keep going to the better tournaments unless you win. That's the bottom line, you can only win or else no one will invite you. Just like life in America.
So now the departing coach is being slathered with insults. After four years he's being painted as a devil. He didn't sign up for this tournament or he brought in that player who was no good or he doesn't understand us....
And that's true.
But it's not only the coach who is being defamed. The best player in the team, who has a real chance of getting to a regional team in the next year, and was drafted second in the regional tryouts a few months ago, is suddenly over-rated. Other players who rumor has it are going to Jueventes are also discredited or they are not going after all.
Now there is a furor and fear. The team that gave so much hope turns out to be more important than anyone realized. For a moment it seems as if without that team there will be no source of pride, no source of hope. If you have to work these tough jobs for little money what other reason is there to be happy at night? What else is there to look forward to every weekend? What promise is there in anything?
May 25, 2007
Bad Behavior
And if you wonder why the growing fear and hostility in Europe toward immigrants from North Africa, and the notion that Southern Europe is slowly being overrun, and that one day the highest point in Paris will be a mosque, then you need only read articles like this one, about the May 24, 2007 decision to ban junior level Moroccan soccer teams from playing dutch teams, following an incident at a recent match between a Moroccan team and a Dutch team.... The ban is for FIVE years. Here's an excerpt.
"Several hundred Moroccan fans invaded the pitch twice forcing the referee to halt the match. The aggressive fans destroyed chairs and advertising hoardings. The ballboys were evacuated from the pitch as a precautionary measure. They also whistled while the Dutch national anthem was played... The storming of the field is usually done in a friendly, good-natured manner, but this was not the case at the Willem II stadium in Tilburg on Tuesday... Kesler said that Moroccan supporters must adapt their behavior. "It is customary everywhere that spectators keep off the field after a match. So Moroccans will also have to learn this." Association chairman Jeu Sprengers said he is satisfied with the measure imposed by the KNVB. "A wise decision. We must not tempt fate. The Moroccan community has given the Netherlands a lot of good players, but we must admit that it is difficult to channel the behavior of the supporters."
Notice the condescending way Moroccans are described. Still, this is the image they are acquiring, not to mention their presence in the dock in case after case charging terrorism. Strangely enough Morocco is emerging as a source of terrorists and trouble makers. But of course it's no wonder. The keg is blown. Al Quaeda could never find imitators if there was not so much ready made despair.
"Several hundred Moroccan fans invaded the pitch twice forcing the referee to halt the match. The aggressive fans destroyed chairs and advertising hoardings. The ballboys were evacuated from the pitch as a precautionary measure. They also whistled while the Dutch national anthem was played... The storming of the field is usually done in a friendly, good-natured manner, but this was not the case at the Willem II stadium in Tilburg on Tuesday... Kesler said that Moroccan supporters must adapt their behavior. "It is customary everywhere that spectators keep off the field after a match. So Moroccans will also have to learn this." Association chairman Jeu Sprengers said he is satisfied with the measure imposed by the KNVB. "A wise decision. We must not tempt fate. The Moroccan community has given the Netherlands a lot of good players, but we must admit that it is difficult to channel the behavior of the supporters."
Notice the condescending way Moroccans are described. Still, this is the image they are acquiring, not to mention their presence in the dock in case after case charging terrorism. Strangely enough Morocco is emerging as a source of terrorists and trouble makers. But of course it's no wonder. The keg is blown. Al Quaeda could never find imitators if there was not so much ready made despair.
May 24, 2007
Correspondents
Twenty years ago I wrote about a convicted serial killer named Douglas Clark. He hated to be called Douglas, because classmates nicknamed him Dougl-ass in school. He would only be called Doug. I met him after writing a piece about a woman who killed her boarders in a Sacramento boarding house. All old pensioners. Her name was Dorothea Puente. This was in 1988. She has since become known as the Boarding House Murderer.
Doug sent me a note saying he was on death row and was interested to read my story about Dorothea because I seemed open to the idea that a woman could be a serial killer. I had simply written the facts of the case to that point; he was shooting blind. But he asked that I visit him. I did, and over the next year became caught up in his convoluted story.
In the end, I came to believe he might be innocent of his crimes, he was a villain in all other respects, but his trial had not established his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, since virtually all the evidence came from his former lover and roommate, Carol Bundy.
I came to believe she had done the crimes, either with Doug or her lover, an Australian lady's man named Jack, whom she later murdered. This is how she did it. She had sex with him in his van, then got him to turn around and shot him in the head, cut that off, and then stabbed him in the back and buttocks. She would tell police she killed him because he knew too much and Doug had threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone what he had done. She had told Jack some things and then realizing her mistake had to kill him. She would tell police she wanted to disguise crime by making it look like a "Manson" murder.
A week after he was last seen at a neighborhood bar with carol the smell of his body rotting in his van, standing in a quiet van, disturbed neighbors who called police, who eventually came looking for Carol. She was questioned but there was no evidence to hold her.
She finally called police before they could arrest her to say she knew the man who had shot those prostitutes and left their bodies along Los Angeles freeways. He'd been tormenting her for months, she said, telling her these stories until finally she couldn't stand it and had to go to the police. Y
You may wonder why this serial killer with absolutely no regard for human life and women's lives in particular, never killed Carol who had become his arch enemy. Such are the many questions in this ridiculously convoluted story.
So, on the verge of arrest, Carol goes to police, confesses to killing Jack, says she had been suffering from Post traumatic Living-With-a-Serial Killer Syndrome and would be glad to testify against Clark.
At court she presented herself as a poor widow living on nurse's wages in the San Fernando Valley, with her two sons. Whom she had sent to live with relatives some months earlier. Doug's attorney floundered, he was an alcoholic who often fell asleep in trial and never presented much evidence. So finally Clark represented himself, and was quickly dispatched to death row where he's been since 1982. Or so. Longer than some others whose crimes were more recent. Bonin, one of his bridge partners on the row, is one example. He was executed a few years ago.
I wrote one piece for Vanity Fair, which centered on the bridge game on death row, four serial killers playing each other every day, and another piece for Los Angeles Magazine, which focused on Carol Bundy and how it was most certainly her who had done the murders.
Time passed. I've not seen Doug for years. However once in Morocco, a missionary in West Africa wrote me to say she had met Doug, was convinced of his innocence and perhaps we could talk. I replied that I wasn't interested in talking about it anymore and the correspondence died.
Then a couple of days ago I got an email from someone who would identify themselves only as 'family'. This person said their two sisters had been victims of Doug Clark and wanted to know whatever I could tell her about the crimes. Here's part of the first email...
I am doing research for the last two years and am mustering up the courage to find out before it's too late. Do you think he did it? Did my sisters suffer a long time? Which one died first? What makes you think he's guilty? They were Gina and Cindy
I replied,
Dear Family,
Did your sisters suffer?
I seem to remember that all the victims were shot and perhaps there is something to be taken from that. But of course there is no way I could answer such a question.
Which one died first?
I don't remember, and I'm not sure that was ever established although it has been 20 years since I first wrote about this case. It might be transcripts, which I no longer have.
Do you think (Clark) did it? What makes you think he's guilty?
This is the heart of the matter and still again I cannot answer definitively. After spending a good deal of time with this case I came to believe that Clark probably had not committed the murders, but that the woman he lived with, Carol Bundy, and her lover, Jack Murray, had done them together....
Why?
1. Clark had a long relationship with prostitutes; the victims in this case were, to my knowledge, all prostitutes. He had no history of harming them. He was also a sensualist, even a satyr. He went to swinger's clubs, he had endless relationships with women, he imagined himself a Casanova. He told me once he preferred prostitutes because he found them open about sexuality. Remember he was also sleeping with a 13-year-old girl during this period. He had absolutely no boundaries in that sense. Moreover, he was a coward, a liar, a braggart, who would have you believe he was brilliant and a sexual prince, but in fact, he was a devout coward, vain beyond belief and suffered endless delusions of grandiosity about himself. Which, incidentally, is one of the traits sometimes associated with psychopaths, which in turn are often the personality types of serial killers. But this raises that question of basic inference, most serial killers may be one form or another of psychopath, but are all psychopaths serial killers? No, they're not.
2. Carol Bundy implicated herself in several of the murders. I spoke to her on two occasions, for 7 hours at a stretch at one point, and she as much as admitted to committing one of the murders, herself. Not one of your sisters. In another of the murders the victim's head was severed. Who did that? Bundy said Clark did it. He says he didn't. He claimed, if memory serves me, that Bundy brought it to him. We know Bundy did cut off the head of Jack Murray. That's clear; she admits it. But the two bodies were never examined to see if there was some forensic comparison. And you might well wonder, 'why not?' In a word, because this was a horrendous case and Bundy passed herself off as a poor desperate housewife, a nurse, with two kids living in the Valley, who was overcome by Doug Clark. The case seemed clear, Clark represented himself at trial, and was his own worst witness. Bundy was the real evidence against him, there was no reliable forensic evidence, it was all the crimes according to her. But you read the transcripts of her initial interrogation with police and it's filled with inconsistancies and contradictions. In one of the most famous of these she is asked about one of the murder scenes and replies that she doesn't know anything about it, 'only what Doug told me', but then she goes into this description of what happened which is so detailed that it suggested she must have been at the scene.
In the end, I think Bundy clearly killed some if not all the victims, but she did it with someone. And that's also clear. But was the other person Clark, her roommate, or Murray, her lover? I can't be absolutely sure but after looking at all the evidence and thinking about it off and on for years, I think she did it with Murray. It may have been Clark, it could have been a folie a deux, that's the only possibility with him, but the stronger probability is Murray. One piece of evidence that might have proved the point was a piece of bloody scalp found in the ventilator of Murray's van, when his body was found. The scalp was never tied to any of the victims, but how well it was examined, I don't know. it was never offered up in court as evidence.
And there are other incidental reasons that tie Murray and Bundy to the crime. You can find out about some of these in a piece I once wrote for Los Angeles Magazine. I'd have to find it in a mountain of things but If you want it I could get it.... Also, if you haven't already, read this article that appeared on line.... http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/partners/cbundy/12.html
The problem, the very damning problem about this case, is that it is so muddied, the trial handled so badly, that much of it still remains a mystery.... I have a similar mystery in my own family, an unsolved murder, and it is the cruelest legacy.
The correspondence was on. A second note then arrived from "Family"...
Sorry you were haunted. Some friends of mine say the same thing after they hear about it. I don't talk much about it and most people I know don't know what happened. I guess I'm haunted too. It's strange because I can see where we used to live on google map. What was so strange to me was reading from people that my sisters were prostitutes. That seems impossible because they were in high school, at least my sister Gina was. She finished the 9th grade and school was only out for a few days. I saw them around the block two days before when they were at a high school friend's party, and my dad tried to get her but she hopped the fence before he could catch her. They wanted to stay out late. I know she was trying to do modeling and acting. She did an ad for some footwear. It is just awful luck. Do you think people hate the family members and victims murdered by capital crimes, as if its our fault the death penalty exists? What did Clark's brother say to you? Your euphemism of placing people in the desert sounds very civil. But, if we put him in a desert somewhere, people would be outraged at that, as that is surely a cruel and unusual death. I guess it sounds nice, but really I think being stranded in a desert would be harder than what his fate is now. But then again I've never been to San Quentin. I guess I shouldn't go.
I tried to explain once again why I thought there are questions about his guilt and the way it was determined, and that certainly no question that Carol Bundy took part in the murders. She died a few years ago in prison....
That brought another note.
I just wanted to know what is it that makes you believe he is not guilty, when you visited, was it in the conviction of his voice? Do you think it would be wise for me to visit him? Did he frighten you?
I replied that I didn't think she should go, that he's not frightening, or he wasn't when I knew him, but that visiting people in this situation ultimately comes to nothing, and that she would still be left with ambiguities. I didn't press the matter, I didn't say what I really thought which was that you should under no circumstances visit him. It will bring you nothing good. I did not say, 'you know we take evil for granted in this society, but we shouldn't, and while this man is not 'evil' in an Biblical sense, the events and people around him are as close to evil as you can get and beyond the novelty of it, and beyond trying to save him from the executioner's song, there's nothing to do with him. Nothing to say, nothing to clarify.
She, I assume it's a she, sent another email, in which there were no questions I could answer or felt like answering and so didn't respond. But when I didn't reply after two days she sent this,
Mark,
Why haven't you written back? Did I say something to upset you? What did his brother Clark's brother say? Did you ever interview his parents? Why did they not defend him? Where is the logic in that? This is ancient history to you, but I assure you this is all new to me. I appreciate your candidness.
Regards,
Family member.
I sent this reply.
You might identify yourself, a first name might be nice.... As for not writing back, please take no offense, I've been very busy.... I shall answer all your questions, if I can....
What did Clark's brother say? I spoke to him on the phone, if I remember, and I couldn't use much of it, except that I asked him about Doug's childhood, because often you find the roots of psychopathology, in other words the elements that might make a serial killer in one's childhood. According to the brother, if I remember, the sense was that Doug was not abused, as opposed to Carol who was absolutely abuse: her entire history explained everything she did, which is why, to suggest that she was this innocent widow was nonsense. But the point is that Clark's brother didn't tell that kind of story. Those years were largely inconsequential, although either from the brother or Clark himself I remember that he did have an early sexual awakening and sex was always an enormous part of his life. He also got in small trouble, in schools and so forth, not so much physical, but mouthing off and lying. He also tended to brag, if I remember. Altogether not anything to build on, from my point of view. That was part of the problem, I couldn't find much in his biography that lent itself to his behavior.
Although there are those who would 'wait, there is a portrait that lends itself to murder' and they might point out that he was misogynistic, which I think is true, part of a love-hate relationship perhaps. He used his wife mercilously, I know that, and in prison has made endless attempts to strike up relationships with women. And he worked in upholstery, which is the handiwork, for reasons I've never understood, of many serial killers.... But you see how thin that is.....
I didn't interview his parents, although I read a couple of letters from his mother. I may have spoken to her once. I just don't remember. They were 'normal' as much as I know, although I think his father was in t he military, the Navy?
His parents DID defend him, although they didn't have much money, I seem to remember. But I think to the extent they didn't support him was out of extreme embarassment. Did they believe his claim to innocence? I don't know. I know he got letters from his mother from to time, which were sympathetic.
And you know he was married, Clark was married, while on death row They have since divorced. I think that's right. At least separated. She lives in the Mid West. They saw each other only in the visiting room at San Quentin.... For a while she was interested in his case and then after time she felt used and became bored with his endless derision, his endless errands on his behalf...
But what about Murray? What was his background? He was Australian, every bit the womanizer and had a long sexual relationship with Carol, who, interestingly, when she first called police to say she wanted to turn in a serial killer, described Murray..... And even used a derivative of his name. But then when she sat down with poilce everything changed....
I must go now...
She replied the next day and identified herself.
HI Mark,
I get so incensed about the girl because I am her friend. She was only 11 when it happened! She was 13 at the trial, she's the same age as me. No 11 year old is sexually active without the coercion they gave her. That's the B.S. Clark likes to portray her as, that poor girl. I'm really glad she made it through. It sounds so much more innocent on Clark's behalf, but you have to realize he would say anything to prove his innocence.
I do know Clark rented the storage space and called my sisters' friend, a number he got from Gina's wallet. Mindy. She identified him. They found her blood in his storage and also in his car, the one he sold to someone that went all the way to Ohio. The best thing about my sister dying is that her blood is what linked him to the murder. That much I have learned.
I don't care about his family's financial status, just their feelings. Like I always say: I really want to know what happened. My guess is some guy saw them at the beach and told them they could be in the movies, or in some ad and they head for LA, or that they were going to a 'casting call'...I know cause that happened to me many times when I got older. California is full of creeps. I was picked up by grown men since I was 13. But I knew better, through their mistakes. Nonetheless, I'm tired of speculating. You don't think that if I was to visit Clark I could get a semblance of the truth?
I hope you keep me confidential! Please don't reveal my identity...I'm rather terrified!
Did you read the case? Here is the link: http://online.ceb.com/calcases/C4/3C4t41.htm
I have not replied.
Doug sent me a note saying he was on death row and was interested to read my story about Dorothea because I seemed open to the idea that a woman could be a serial killer. I had simply written the facts of the case to that point; he was shooting blind. But he asked that I visit him. I did, and over the next year became caught up in his convoluted story.
In the end, I came to believe he might be innocent of his crimes, he was a villain in all other respects, but his trial had not established his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, since virtually all the evidence came from his former lover and roommate, Carol Bundy.
I came to believe she had done the crimes, either with Doug or her lover, an Australian lady's man named Jack, whom she later murdered. This is how she did it. She had sex with him in his van, then got him to turn around and shot him in the head, cut that off, and then stabbed him in the back and buttocks. She would tell police she killed him because he knew too much and Doug had threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone what he had done. She had told Jack some things and then realizing her mistake had to kill him. She would tell police she wanted to disguise crime by making it look like a "Manson" murder.
A week after he was last seen at a neighborhood bar with carol the smell of his body rotting in his van, standing in a quiet van, disturbed neighbors who called police, who eventually came looking for Carol. She was questioned but there was no evidence to hold her.
She finally called police before they could arrest her to say she knew the man who had shot those prostitutes and left their bodies along Los Angeles freeways. He'd been tormenting her for months, she said, telling her these stories until finally she couldn't stand it and had to go to the police. Y
You may wonder why this serial killer with absolutely no regard for human life and women's lives in particular, never killed Carol who had become his arch enemy. Such are the many questions in this ridiculously convoluted story.
So, on the verge of arrest, Carol goes to police, confesses to killing Jack, says she had been suffering from Post traumatic Living-With-a-Serial Killer Syndrome and would be glad to testify against Clark.
At court she presented herself as a poor widow living on nurse's wages in the San Fernando Valley, with her two sons. Whom she had sent to live with relatives some months earlier. Doug's attorney floundered, he was an alcoholic who often fell asleep in trial and never presented much evidence. So finally Clark represented himself, and was quickly dispatched to death row where he's been since 1982. Or so. Longer than some others whose crimes were more recent. Bonin, one of his bridge partners on the row, is one example. He was executed a few years ago.
I wrote one piece for Vanity Fair, which centered on the bridge game on death row, four serial killers playing each other every day, and another piece for Los Angeles Magazine, which focused on Carol Bundy and how it was most certainly her who had done the murders.
Time passed. I've not seen Doug for years. However once in Morocco, a missionary in West Africa wrote me to say she had met Doug, was convinced of his innocence and perhaps we could talk. I replied that I wasn't interested in talking about it anymore and the correspondence died.
Then a couple of days ago I got an email from someone who would identify themselves only as 'family'. This person said their two sisters had been victims of Doug Clark and wanted to know whatever I could tell her about the crimes. Here's part of the first email...
I am doing research for the last two years and am mustering up the courage to find out before it's too late. Do you think he did it? Did my sisters suffer a long time? Which one died first? What makes you think he's guilty? They were Gina and Cindy
I replied,
Dear Family,
Did your sisters suffer?
I seem to remember that all the victims were shot and perhaps there is something to be taken from that. But of course there is no way I could answer such a question.
Which one died first?
I don't remember, and I'm not sure that was ever established although it has been 20 years since I first wrote about this case. It might be transcripts, which I no longer have.
Do you think (Clark) did it? What makes you think he's guilty?
This is the heart of the matter and still again I cannot answer definitively. After spending a good deal of time with this case I came to believe that Clark probably had not committed the murders, but that the woman he lived with, Carol Bundy, and her lover, Jack Murray, had done them together....
Why?
1. Clark had a long relationship with prostitutes; the victims in this case were, to my knowledge, all prostitutes. He had no history of harming them. He was also a sensualist, even a satyr. He went to swinger's clubs, he had endless relationships with women, he imagined himself a Casanova. He told me once he preferred prostitutes because he found them open about sexuality. Remember he was also sleeping with a 13-year-old girl during this period. He had absolutely no boundaries in that sense. Moreover, he was a coward, a liar, a braggart, who would have you believe he was brilliant and a sexual prince, but in fact, he was a devout coward, vain beyond belief and suffered endless delusions of grandiosity about himself. Which, incidentally, is one of the traits sometimes associated with psychopaths, which in turn are often the personality types of serial killers. But this raises that question of basic inference, most serial killers may be one form or another of psychopath, but are all psychopaths serial killers? No, they're not.
2. Carol Bundy implicated herself in several of the murders. I spoke to her on two occasions, for 7 hours at a stretch at one point, and she as much as admitted to committing one of the murders, herself. Not one of your sisters. In another of the murders the victim's head was severed. Who did that? Bundy said Clark did it. He says he didn't. He claimed, if memory serves me, that Bundy brought it to him. We know Bundy did cut off the head of Jack Murray. That's clear; she admits it. But the two bodies were never examined to see if there was some forensic comparison. And you might well wonder, 'why not?' In a word, because this was a horrendous case and Bundy passed herself off as a poor desperate housewife, a nurse, with two kids living in the Valley, who was overcome by Doug Clark. The case seemed clear, Clark represented himself at trial, and was his own worst witness. Bundy was the real evidence against him, there was no reliable forensic evidence, it was all the crimes according to her. But you read the transcripts of her initial interrogation with police and it's filled with inconsistancies and contradictions. In one of the most famous of these she is asked about one of the murder scenes and replies that she doesn't know anything about it, 'only what Doug told me', but then she goes into this description of what happened which is so detailed that it suggested she must have been at the scene.
In the end, I think Bundy clearly killed some if not all the victims, but she did it with someone. And that's also clear. But was the other person Clark, her roommate, or Murray, her lover? I can't be absolutely sure but after looking at all the evidence and thinking about it off and on for years, I think she did it with Murray. It may have been Clark, it could have been a folie a deux, that's the only possibility with him, but the stronger probability is Murray. One piece of evidence that might have proved the point was a piece of bloody scalp found in the ventilator of Murray's van, when his body was found. The scalp was never tied to any of the victims, but how well it was examined, I don't know. it was never offered up in court as evidence.
And there are other incidental reasons that tie Murray and Bundy to the crime. You can find out about some of these in a piece I once wrote for Los Angeles Magazine. I'd have to find it in a mountain of things but If you want it I could get it.... Also, if you haven't already, read this article that appeared on line.... http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/partners/cbundy/12.html
The problem, the very damning problem about this case, is that it is so muddied, the trial handled so badly, that much of it still remains a mystery.... I have a similar mystery in my own family, an unsolved murder, and it is the cruelest legacy.
The correspondence was on. A second note then arrived from "Family"...
Sorry you were haunted. Some friends of mine say the same thing after they hear about it. I don't talk much about it and most people I know don't know what happened. I guess I'm haunted too. It's strange because I can see where we used to live on google map. What was so strange to me was reading from people that my sisters were prostitutes. That seems impossible because they were in high school, at least my sister Gina was. She finished the 9th grade and school was only out for a few days. I saw them around the block two days before when they were at a high school friend's party, and my dad tried to get her but she hopped the fence before he could catch her. They wanted to stay out late. I know she was trying to do modeling and acting. She did an ad for some footwear. It is just awful luck. Do you think people hate the family members and victims murdered by capital crimes, as if its our fault the death penalty exists? What did Clark's brother say to you? Your euphemism of placing people in the desert sounds very civil. But, if we put him in a desert somewhere, people would be outraged at that, as that is surely a cruel and unusual death. I guess it sounds nice, but really I think being stranded in a desert would be harder than what his fate is now. But then again I've never been to San Quentin. I guess I shouldn't go.
I tried to explain once again why I thought there are questions about his guilt and the way it was determined, and that certainly no question that Carol Bundy took part in the murders. She died a few years ago in prison....
That brought another note.
I just wanted to know what is it that makes you believe he is not guilty, when you visited, was it in the conviction of his voice? Do you think it would be wise for me to visit him? Did he frighten you?
I replied that I didn't think she should go, that he's not frightening, or he wasn't when I knew him, but that visiting people in this situation ultimately comes to nothing, and that she would still be left with ambiguities. I didn't press the matter, I didn't say what I really thought which was that you should under no circumstances visit him. It will bring you nothing good. I did not say, 'you know we take evil for granted in this society, but we shouldn't, and while this man is not 'evil' in an Biblical sense, the events and people around him are as close to evil as you can get and beyond the novelty of it, and beyond trying to save him from the executioner's song, there's nothing to do with him. Nothing to say, nothing to clarify.
She, I assume it's a she, sent another email, in which there were no questions I could answer or felt like answering and so didn't respond. But when I didn't reply after two days she sent this,
Mark,
Why haven't you written back? Did I say something to upset you? What did his brother Clark's brother say? Did you ever interview his parents? Why did they not defend him? Where is the logic in that? This is ancient history to you, but I assure you this is all new to me. I appreciate your candidness.
Regards,
Family member.
I sent this reply.
You might identify yourself, a first name might be nice.... As for not writing back, please take no offense, I've been very busy.... I shall answer all your questions, if I can....
What did Clark's brother say? I spoke to him on the phone, if I remember, and I couldn't use much of it, except that I asked him about Doug's childhood, because often you find the roots of psychopathology, in other words the elements that might make a serial killer in one's childhood. According to the brother, if I remember, the sense was that Doug was not abused, as opposed to Carol who was absolutely abuse: her entire history explained everything she did, which is why, to suggest that she was this innocent widow was nonsense. But the point is that Clark's brother didn't tell that kind of story. Those years were largely inconsequential, although either from the brother or Clark himself I remember that he did have an early sexual awakening and sex was always an enormous part of his life. He also got in small trouble, in schools and so forth, not so much physical, but mouthing off and lying. He also tended to brag, if I remember. Altogether not anything to build on, from my point of view. That was part of the problem, I couldn't find much in his biography that lent itself to his behavior.
Although there are those who would 'wait, there is a portrait that lends itself to murder' and they might point out that he was misogynistic, which I think is true, part of a love-hate relationship perhaps. He used his wife mercilously, I know that, and in prison has made endless attempts to strike up relationships with women. And he worked in upholstery, which is the handiwork, for reasons I've never understood, of many serial killers.... But you see how thin that is.....
I didn't interview his parents, although I read a couple of letters from his mother. I may have spoken to her once. I just don't remember. They were 'normal' as much as I know, although I think his father was in t he military, the Navy?
His parents DID defend him, although they didn't have much money, I seem to remember. But I think to the extent they didn't support him was out of extreme embarassment. Did they believe his claim to innocence? I don't know. I know he got letters from his mother from to time, which were sympathetic.
And you know he was married, Clark was married, while on death row They have since divorced. I think that's right. At least separated. She lives in the Mid West. They saw each other only in the visiting room at San Quentin.... For a while she was interested in his case and then after time she felt used and became bored with his endless derision, his endless errands on his behalf...
But what about Murray? What was his background? He was Australian, every bit the womanizer and had a long sexual relationship with Carol, who, interestingly, when she first called police to say she wanted to turn in a serial killer, described Murray..... And even used a derivative of his name. But then when she sat down with poilce everything changed....
I must go now...
She replied the next day and identified herself.
HI Mark,
I get so incensed about the girl because I am her friend. She was only 11 when it happened! She was 13 at the trial, she's the same age as me. No 11 year old is sexually active without the coercion they gave her. That's the B.S. Clark likes to portray her as, that poor girl. I'm really glad she made it through. It sounds so much more innocent on Clark's behalf, but you have to realize he would say anything to prove his innocence.
I do know Clark rented the storage space and called my sisters' friend, a number he got from Gina's wallet. Mindy. She identified him. They found her blood in his storage and also in his car, the one he sold to someone that went all the way to Ohio. The best thing about my sister dying is that her blood is what linked him to the murder. That much I have learned.
I don't care about his family's financial status, just their feelings. Like I always say: I really want to know what happened. My guess is some guy saw them at the beach and told them they could be in the movies, or in some ad and they head for LA, or that they were going to a 'casting call'...I know cause that happened to me many times when I got older. California is full of creeps. I was picked up by grown men since I was 13. But I knew better, through their mistakes. Nonetheless, I'm tired of speculating. You don't think that if I was to visit Clark I could get a semblance of the truth?
I hope you keep me confidential! Please don't reveal my identity...I'm rather terrified!
Did you read the case? Here is the link: http://online.ceb.com/calcases/C4/3C4t41.htm
I have not replied.
May 22, 2007
Speaking of a lost crucifix....
This story appeared over the weekend and you probably didn't see it. It's religious devotion the old fashioned way. And my kind of absolution...
LONDON (AFP) — The Archbishop of Canterbury absolved one of his top bishops Monday after he went on a much-talked-about mystery walkabout after a few drinks at an embassy reception last December.
Rowan Williams said "no further action" would be taken after an investigation into the incident involving the Right Reverend Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark.
Butler, who has repeatedly denied he was drunk, got a black eye, a bump on the head and lost his briefcase, crucifix and mobile phone after drinking at a pre-Christmas party at the Irish Embassy in London.
A witness claimed to have spotted him near his cathedral, clambering into a stranger's car and hurling toys into the street before a brief tete-a-tete with the disgruntled owner.
According to the car's owner, Paul Sumpter, after he found the robe-wearing trespasser in his vehicle the following conversation occurred:
Sumpter: "What are you doing in my car?"
The bishop: "I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do."
A brief fracas then occurred, and an ambulance was called, but the mystery man apparently staggered off into the night.
The bishop, who said his travel pass records show that he used public transport that night from the city centre to his home in south London, admitted he couldn't remember anything about the evening, but denies he was drunk.
Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, said in a brief statement that the incident had been investigated under the Church's clergy discipline procedure.
"In the light of all the evidence submitted to him Dr Williams has determined, under section 12(1)(a) of the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, that no further action should be taken," said a statement from his Lambeth Palace office.
LONDON (AFP) — The Archbishop of Canterbury absolved one of his top bishops Monday after he went on a much-talked-about mystery walkabout after a few drinks at an embassy reception last December.
Rowan Williams said "no further action" would be taken after an investigation into the incident involving the Right Reverend Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark.
Butler, who has repeatedly denied he was drunk, got a black eye, a bump on the head and lost his briefcase, crucifix and mobile phone after drinking at a pre-Christmas party at the Irish Embassy in London.
A witness claimed to have spotted him near his cathedral, clambering into a stranger's car and hurling toys into the street before a brief tete-a-tete with the disgruntled owner.
According to the car's owner, Paul Sumpter, after he found the robe-wearing trespasser in his vehicle the following conversation occurred:
Sumpter: "What are you doing in my car?"
The bishop: "I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do."
A brief fracas then occurred, and an ambulance was called, but the mystery man apparently staggered off into the night.
The bishop, who said his travel pass records show that he used public transport that night from the city centre to his home in south London, admitted he couldn't remember anything about the evening, but denies he was drunk.
Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, said in a brief statement that the incident had been investigated under the Church's clergy discipline procedure.
"In the light of all the evidence submitted to him Dr Williams has determined, under section 12(1)(a) of the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, that no further action should be taken," said a statement from his Lambeth Palace office.
May 21, 2007
When Maddy Went Missing
The story of Madeleine McCann's abduction has been big news in America as well as Europe. Among the recent stories, this chilling anecdote that appeared in the London Telegraph last Friday, May 18. The story recounted an inconsistancy with the stories of a suspect's friend. Then, on another tack, there was this....
Meanwhile, a Norwegian woman said today she saw a young blonde girl who she was “very sure” was Madeleine in Morocco last week.
Marie Olli, who lives in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol and once lived in Leicestershire, contacted police after returning home to Spain and hearing about the young girl’s disappearance.
She was on holiday with her husband in Marrakech on May 9 when she saw the blonde girl, who initially appeared to be standing on her own in a petrol station.
Then a man came over and the girl asked him: “Can I see mummy soon?”
Mrs Olli said: “I am very sure it was Madeleine."
The girl was wearing pale blue pyjamas with a small pattern on the top.
The man was in his late 30s and “anonymous looking”, wearing baggy clothes and carried an empty-looking rucksack with a camouflage pattern.
Mrs Olli said: “She looked sad. When the man saw me looking at them he turned away, so I couldn’t see his face.
“It’s very strange to see a small girl in a petrol station in Marrakech.
“If it was me with a child there I would hold their hand, but this man was a metre away from her.”
Meanwhile, a Norwegian woman said today she saw a young blonde girl who she was “very sure” was Madeleine in Morocco last week.
Marie Olli, who lives in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol and once lived in Leicestershire, contacted police after returning home to Spain and hearing about the young girl’s disappearance.
She was on holiday with her husband in Marrakech on May 9 when she saw the blonde girl, who initially appeared to be standing on her own in a petrol station.
Then a man came over and the girl asked him: “Can I see mummy soon?”
Mrs Olli said: “I am very sure it was Madeleine."
The girl was wearing pale blue pyjamas with a small pattern on the top.
The man was in his late 30s and “anonymous looking”, wearing baggy clothes and carried an empty-looking rucksack with a camouflage pattern.
Mrs Olli said: “She looked sad. When the man saw me looking at them he turned away, so I couldn’t see his face.
“It’s very strange to see a small girl in a petrol station in Marrakech.
“If it was me with a child there I would hold their hand, but this man was a metre away from her.”
May 18, 2007
They Do
Rarely but vividly when they do, half-sketched figures from dreams appear, or else ghosts, even of people I've never met. Once, I was driving across the upper level of the Golden Gate Bridge, into San Francisco, one afternoon, and the ghost of Margaret Lesher appeared in the seat next to me. I was writing a story about her murder, which my friend Mary and I solved but there wasn't enough information to convict the man who did it, that buffalo riding-husband of hers who let her drown in an Arizona lake. She wanted me to go on with the story, I was an at early point, and deeply frustrated. Go on, she kept saying and I could see just her outline, not even that, but let's just say a presence, an assurance that she was there. I totally believed it. She was there and she asked that I not give up with her case.
Now, of course, this is all a projection, a romanticism, a wishfull visualization. I suppose. And perhaps that's what's happening lately when my father keeps appearing in dreams. "Put me back in my bed," he keeps saying. "Let me die in my bed."
When he was dying we put him in his den, a small room with a fireplace, a sofa, a leather lounge chair and footstool — the closest he ever got to a leather pig, which was very popular in those days, particularly among people of a different social class and people he detested — a book case, a TV, two closets, one filled with old Montovani and Herb Albert records, a desk, and next to it on the wall, the letter he got from JFK thanking him for campaign work. There was also a bathroom just off this room, with a nude Modigliani above the toilet, one of the many copies my father made of impressionist paintings.
At the very end, at 84, but I can't remember which year, 92 or 93, having had his toe amputated, no longer able to conduct those long dinners when he would raise a toast and say, "Isn't it wonderful out here on the fan deck. I love being on the Titanic, don't you?" Or sometimes he would say the Lusitania.
A short bad death. With Dylan's merlin on the bedside table and the very end he whispered to me, 'put me back in my bed'. He had a traditional wooden framed bed in his old office. He hadn't slept with my step mother in years. Neither of them could stand sleeping with the other. So there he was in his room, with a gun in his underwear drawer, and on most nights in that last year, listening to religious broadcasts of one sort or another.
"I want to die in my bed," he said.
But I didn't. It was more convenient where he was, to take care of him, next to the bathroom, a high hospital bed... and then the next morning he died.
How his words keep howling. And lately he's there, in that room, in the late afternoon, in the fall, that was his best season, with the light coming in through the trees and the wooden blinds, he's there, on the edge of the sofa, with his dark glasses, watching the telly, alone, waiting.
Now, of course, this is all a projection, a romanticism, a wishfull visualization. I suppose. And perhaps that's what's happening lately when my father keeps appearing in dreams. "Put me back in my bed," he keeps saying. "Let me die in my bed."
When he was dying we put him in his den, a small room with a fireplace, a sofa, a leather lounge chair and footstool — the closest he ever got to a leather pig, which was very popular in those days, particularly among people of a different social class and people he detested — a book case, a TV, two closets, one filled with old Montovani and Herb Albert records, a desk, and next to it on the wall, the letter he got from JFK thanking him for campaign work. There was also a bathroom just off this room, with a nude Modigliani above the toilet, one of the many copies my father made of impressionist paintings.
At the very end, at 84, but I can't remember which year, 92 or 93, having had his toe amputated, no longer able to conduct those long dinners when he would raise a toast and say, "Isn't it wonderful out here on the fan deck. I love being on the Titanic, don't you?" Or sometimes he would say the Lusitania.
A short bad death. With Dylan's merlin on the bedside table and the very end he whispered to me, 'put me back in my bed'. He had a traditional wooden framed bed in his old office. He hadn't slept with my step mother in years. Neither of them could stand sleeping with the other. So there he was in his room, with a gun in his underwear drawer, and on most nights in that last year, listening to religious broadcasts of one sort or another.
"I want to die in my bed," he said.
But I didn't. It was more convenient where he was, to take care of him, next to the bathroom, a high hospital bed... and then the next morning he died.
How his words keep howling. And lately he's there, in that room, in the late afternoon, in the fall, that was his best season, with the light coming in through the trees and the wooden blinds, he's there, on the edge of the sofa, with his dark glasses, watching the telly, alone, waiting.
May 14, 2007
Running down the beach
A man came running down the beach this morning. Middle Aged, and as he passed I noticed a silver cap on one of his left front teeth. He was not jogging, he was running and not like he enjoyed it. He wore shorts and sneakers and a t-shirt with the words, "Devil's Little Helper". His hair was unusually long. He didn't seem to be with anyone.
You wouldn't have noticed him at all but then he kept looking over his shoulder as though he were being followed. And sure enough he was! I looked up and there was a huge monster bearing down on him, a Loch Ness monster, with the head of a dragaon and the jaws of the 'alien'. Long blasts of fire came furling out the mouth. Like something from the mind of St. George. But not just a monster following him, there were women running after him too, all naked, all very angry, throwing spears and yelling obscenities. Finally, he turned and told one of them he would see her in court and not one second sooner. At one point they nearly surrounded him, poking at him, but he darted off into the dunes.
One of these women in pursuit stopped close by. I asked her what was going on. "Can't you see? He's impossible. And now enough is enough. Do you know what he dreams at night? He keeps dreaming that he's trying to get to the Today Show. You know, NBC. And you know what?
What?
"That says it all." She looked up. I followed her eye and it turned out there were all these other things following him, clouds, moons, winged defeats, old fashioned wooden gliders, bird cages drifting like balloons, and a Baron Davis look-alike who took off his shirt and made a triumphant grimmace.
Later, this running man appeared one more time. He was still sprinting, I couldn't believe what good shape he was in. Real encouragement for men who are about to give up trying to stay in shape. I heard one of the people chasing him say they worked in the collections dept. of the W & J Sloan Company, which went out of business 40 years ago. I don't know what that was all about, I can only tell you that finally this running man ran out of sight and I didn't see him again.
You wouldn't have noticed him at all but then he kept looking over his shoulder as though he were being followed. And sure enough he was! I looked up and there was a huge monster bearing down on him, a Loch Ness monster, with the head of a dragaon and the jaws of the 'alien'. Long blasts of fire came furling out the mouth. Like something from the mind of St. George. But not just a monster following him, there were women running after him too, all naked, all very angry, throwing spears and yelling obscenities. Finally, he turned and told one of them he would see her in court and not one second sooner. At one point they nearly surrounded him, poking at him, but he darted off into the dunes.
One of these women in pursuit stopped close by. I asked her what was going on. "Can't you see? He's impossible. And now enough is enough. Do you know what he dreams at night? He keeps dreaming that he's trying to get to the Today Show. You know, NBC. And you know what?
What?
"That says it all." She looked up. I followed her eye and it turned out there were all these other things following him, clouds, moons, winged defeats, old fashioned wooden gliders, bird cages drifting like balloons, and a Baron Davis look-alike who took off his shirt and made a triumphant grimmace.
Later, this running man appeared one more time. He was still sprinting, I couldn't believe what good shape he was in. Real encouragement for men who are about to give up trying to stay in shape. I heard one of the people chasing him say they worked in the collections dept. of the W & J Sloan Company, which went out of business 40 years ago. I don't know what that was all about, I can only tell you that finally this running man ran out of sight and I didn't see him again.
May 12, 2007
Lives That Cannot Be Recalled
The story I had was not entirely correct. The suicide was not AFTER everyone had arisen. It occurred earlier, in the hour of the wolf, before anyone was up. Then the discovery. But no word about the shot and whether anyone heard it and where he was found. And nothing about how those last minutes might have gone. Here was a man who loved mathematical patterns, who deeply enjoyed complexity and the order to be found what others assume is chaos. But suddenly he must have seen through the patterns or not been comforted by them. Order must have seemed like chaos and not an interesting chaos, like storm clouds or the sight of white caps from an airplane.
As I told you he was the life of parties, bigger than life, and taller than life. He said things like, "Turn up the music so we won't hear them scratching at the door," "A headache is a sure sign of aspirin deficiency," "It's going to be big," "It is the misfortune of pigs that they are so tasty," "You all are dangerously close to having too much fun," " Don't make me use the pepper spray," "So, you're the designated drinker," "When I was your age I went to bed before midnight."
Does that sound like a man who would turn?
There was also a letter; by one account, a very "angry" letter. And now, for his wife, the double pain of loss and the trumping of the letter. 'You see it's come to this, and you are the cause.' Something like that perhaps and if that was the gist of it, and I don't know if it was, then he committed a double murder. And no way for him to say, as he surely would have, on a more temperate day, or given the rarely used, little known opportunity, to kill yourself and then use the get-out-of-death card: "I'm so sorry I wrote that letter. It was a terrible mistake. I didn't mean it. I couldn't sleep, I've been depressed. I'm worried about our finances. Please forgive me. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't understand what it meant. I got carried away with what I thought was reality...."
At the neighborhood soccer game the boy was absent. He and his mother have sought refuge with family. But at the game everyone was talking about it, trying to get more information. For some it was a warning label; for others it was simply sad and not much to be done but think well of the family, send a card perhaps, drop off some fruit, and go to a mass. For still others it was an exciting drama to sustain lives in which not much happens, not much is ever seen.
***
After the game I returned to the garage where I take my car on Saturdays for one fix or another. The place is run by Dale, who is from Fiji. He asked how I was, for some reason I told him I was consumed by the suicide of a man I didn't know. Oh yea, he said, yea that happens a lot. He told me about a man who hung himself last year in Daly City. And his brother hung himself 10 years before that. All from Fiji. "Women," said Dale. "They always do it over women."
I'd struck a nerve. Dale, I realized, was now a carrier. I'd infected him just as I'd been infected.
"Yea, and my wife's sister's daugther killed herself..." He described a 24 year old girl who left Fiji and went to New Zealand. It was a culture shock. And then she fell in with the Hare Krishna. And then she fell in love with a man and that didn't go well, for some reason. She was told the man was off limits. She also suffered from depression. She was very beautiful, very confident. Everyone thought so. Then one day, less than a year ago, her mother came into her daughter's room and found clothes over a chair. Dale's story was confusing, he passed over that, but the girl's sari was missing. And that got the mother frantic. It was too late. Her daughter had gone into a public park and using the sari hung herself from the thick branch of a tree. Someone saw her and tried to get her down but it was too late.
"Yea," said Dale. "My wife's sister still isn't over it. And what has it been, almost a year." He shook his head and walked back into garage.
As I told you he was the life of parties, bigger than life, and taller than life. He said things like, "Turn up the music so we won't hear them scratching at the door," "A headache is a sure sign of aspirin deficiency," "It's going to be big," "It is the misfortune of pigs that they are so tasty," "You all are dangerously close to having too much fun," " Don't make me use the pepper spray," "So, you're the designated drinker," "When I was your age I went to bed before midnight."
Does that sound like a man who would turn?
There was also a letter; by one account, a very "angry" letter. And now, for his wife, the double pain of loss and the trumping of the letter. 'You see it's come to this, and you are the cause.' Something like that perhaps and if that was the gist of it, and I don't know if it was, then he committed a double murder. And no way for him to say, as he surely would have, on a more temperate day, or given the rarely used, little known opportunity, to kill yourself and then use the get-out-of-death card: "I'm so sorry I wrote that letter. It was a terrible mistake. I didn't mean it. I couldn't sleep, I've been depressed. I'm worried about our finances. Please forgive me. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't understand what it meant. I got carried away with what I thought was reality...."
At the neighborhood soccer game the boy was absent. He and his mother have sought refuge with family. But at the game everyone was talking about it, trying to get more information. For some it was a warning label; for others it was simply sad and not much to be done but think well of the family, send a card perhaps, drop off some fruit, and go to a mass. For still others it was an exciting drama to sustain lives in which not much happens, not much is ever seen.
***
After the game I returned to the garage where I take my car on Saturdays for one fix or another. The place is run by Dale, who is from Fiji. He asked how I was, for some reason I told him I was consumed by the suicide of a man I didn't know. Oh yea, he said, yea that happens a lot. He told me about a man who hung himself last year in Daly City. And his brother hung himself 10 years before that. All from Fiji. "Women," said Dale. "They always do it over women."
I'd struck a nerve. Dale, I realized, was now a carrier. I'd infected him just as I'd been infected.
"Yea, and my wife's sister's daugther killed herself..." He described a 24 year old girl who left Fiji and went to New Zealand. It was a culture shock. And then she fell in with the Hare Krishna. And then she fell in love with a man and that didn't go well, for some reason. She was told the man was off limits. She also suffered from depression. She was very beautiful, very confident. Everyone thought so. Then one day, less than a year ago, her mother came into her daughter's room and found clothes over a chair. Dale's story was confusing, he passed over that, but the girl's sari was missing. And that got the mother frantic. It was too late. Her daughter had gone into a public park and using the sari hung herself from the thick branch of a tree. Someone saw her and tried to get her down but it was too late.
"Yea," said Dale. "My wife's sister still isn't over it. And what has it been, almost a year." He shook his head and walked back into garage.
May 8, 2007
The Inventor
These things happen. It's 8 a.m. In just a few minutes your son will be picked up to go to school. He goes with his best friend every morning. You are with your wife, your son and your parents, if I have this story correctly and I may not. But these details are not important. You are a 50-year-old inventor. You are a happy man, according to friends. You are a go- lucky. At parties you are the life and later when it's all over people will say, 'yes, that was a little strange, the way he always had to be bigger than life.' You are unusually tall, taller than a tall man, you can see over people.
Meanwhile, you give your inventions away, to your friends and their children. A strange looking clock that lights up. You are brilliant, everyone agree, and your son is dreamy. What better quality in which to grow genius, to pass it on — than in the blonde, curly-haired head of your son.
And so here you are with these other people, including your father, which is particularly significant, and your wife who has a reputation for being 'different'. "Strange" and "odd" are the words that come to mind. You're having breakfast. Someone remarks about what a beautiful day it is. Then, for some reason that you cannot explain, you bypass that thought and all of them, you put down your coffee cup, smudging a blueprint perhaps, go into the other room, stop for a moment to get something from your drawer and then walk into the garden and shoot yourself. To death. This is not an attempt, this is through to completion. This is, as my good friend put it, irrevocable.
It's hot these days by the way and there's a strange wind, an 'earthquake wind' I call it. People can't sleep and yet the heat is popular. It's reassuring. If the world is being baked to a crisp it's still nice to have one of those langorous days, and nights, when the sounds of the city seem more vivid, and just now around cinco de mayo, when spring is in earnest, when the white rhodenderons in the park smell as beautiful as they look. What a charm it is, how they take away all other sensation for that moment that you hold them close. What could be more satisfying than the free scent of those rhododenerons.
You, another you, walk through the park with your wife. You tell her this story and smell the rhododenderums. In fact, she knows this man, these people. You don't. To you, they're names only. You vaguely remember the tall, curly blonde boy. Your wife is deeply affected by the news and as you talk about it you realize the radiation caused by suicide. How it upsets the hope mechanism for miles around.
"Can you imagine that," you say, "right now they're having to face that, having started the day as 3 and now 2. And then tomorrow morning, what will that be like? And every morning they will be reminded...."
Your wife is deeply affected by these words. It's as though you showed her a photo of the body. She cannot bear to hear it. You were stupid to say such a thing. Which is perhaps proof of how little you can feel it. The thought of it is clear and striking but can you feel it?
"Don't ever do that," she is saying, "no matter how bad things get."
No matter how bad things get? And you think of that, how bad things could get, and of course you would never do such a thing, how could anyone, and here you are with your wife and there are your children off in the wing. "Irrevocable". Just the right word. The bad check you can't recall. The deed you can't undo. But the point is, the idea lives. That's part of the radiation. It's the illness of doubt. All of a sudden, you think, that option is still on the table. And while you are thinking about it, she is saying how she told someone where she works that no matter what, she would never do that. It stunning to think that the thought would get that far with her.
So you see it is live, these ideas breathe, the denial itself is proof. Everyone has thought of it, of course, but when this happens you realize how close the thought is to the surface. And then you think about others you've known who have tried suicide. How sympathetic and angry it makes you feel at the same time. And all of a sudden the whole world seems to come flaming down like the Hindenberg.
The upsetting passes. You are back to the car. Dusk has faded to black. The fog is back in place. Out the window, the familiar vistas reappear. But you think how careful you have to be now, how absolutely careful you have to be for a while, until this little incident is forgotten.
Appropo of nothing... There are times when I'll be driving along, on the freeway, down some suburban street with houses on one side and design stores on the other, and I'll see someone in another car and I imagine that I will never forget them, no matter what, I will remember them.... Or if I commit some mistake, dart in front, drive too slowly, I minagine that they will forget this ever happened, that I will be invisible.
Lately, life seems like that. So thin, so dreamy, so... if you hesitate just for an instant, you'll see something, hear something, something so subtle you could never describe it, and it's as though you've seen over the horizon.
Meanwhile, you give your inventions away, to your friends and their children. A strange looking clock that lights up. You are brilliant, everyone agree, and your son is dreamy. What better quality in which to grow genius, to pass it on — than in the blonde, curly-haired head of your son.
And so here you are with these other people, including your father, which is particularly significant, and your wife who has a reputation for being 'different'. "Strange" and "odd" are the words that come to mind. You're having breakfast. Someone remarks about what a beautiful day it is. Then, for some reason that you cannot explain, you bypass that thought and all of them, you put down your coffee cup, smudging a blueprint perhaps, go into the other room, stop for a moment to get something from your drawer and then walk into the garden and shoot yourself. To death. This is not an attempt, this is through to completion. This is, as my good friend put it, irrevocable.
It's hot these days by the way and there's a strange wind, an 'earthquake wind' I call it. People can't sleep and yet the heat is popular. It's reassuring. If the world is being baked to a crisp it's still nice to have one of those langorous days, and nights, when the sounds of the city seem more vivid, and just now around cinco de mayo, when spring is in earnest, when the white rhodenderons in the park smell as beautiful as they look. What a charm it is, how they take away all other sensation for that moment that you hold them close. What could be more satisfying than the free scent of those rhododenerons.
You, another you, walk through the park with your wife. You tell her this story and smell the rhododenderums. In fact, she knows this man, these people. You don't. To you, they're names only. You vaguely remember the tall, curly blonde boy. Your wife is deeply affected by the news and as you talk about it you realize the radiation caused by suicide. How it upsets the hope mechanism for miles around.
"Can you imagine that," you say, "right now they're having to face that, having started the day as 3 and now 2. And then tomorrow morning, what will that be like? And every morning they will be reminded...."
Your wife is deeply affected by these words. It's as though you showed her a photo of the body. She cannot bear to hear it. You were stupid to say such a thing. Which is perhaps proof of how little you can feel it. The thought of it is clear and striking but can you feel it?
"Don't ever do that," she is saying, "no matter how bad things get."
No matter how bad things get? And you think of that, how bad things could get, and of course you would never do such a thing, how could anyone, and here you are with your wife and there are your children off in the wing. "Irrevocable". Just the right word. The bad check you can't recall. The deed you can't undo. But the point is, the idea lives. That's part of the radiation. It's the illness of doubt. All of a sudden, you think, that option is still on the table. And while you are thinking about it, she is saying how she told someone where she works that no matter what, she would never do that. It stunning to think that the thought would get that far with her.
So you see it is live, these ideas breathe, the denial itself is proof. Everyone has thought of it, of course, but when this happens you realize how close the thought is to the surface. And then you think about others you've known who have tried suicide. How sympathetic and angry it makes you feel at the same time. And all of a sudden the whole world seems to come flaming down like the Hindenberg.
The upsetting passes. You are back to the car. Dusk has faded to black. The fog is back in place. Out the window, the familiar vistas reappear. But you think how careful you have to be now, how absolutely careful you have to be for a while, until this little incident is forgotten.
Appropo of nothing... There are times when I'll be driving along, on the freeway, down some suburban street with houses on one side and design stores on the other, and I'll see someone in another car and I imagine that I will never forget them, no matter what, I will remember them.... Or if I commit some mistake, dart in front, drive too slowly, I minagine that they will forget this ever happened, that I will be invisible.
Lately, life seems like that. So thin, so dreamy, so... if you hesitate just for an instant, you'll see something, hear something, something so subtle you could never describe it, and it's as though you've seen over the horizon.
May 6, 2007
Monet girls
Late afternoon at the beach. Sun off the water, the light hits you like skipping, shimmering stones, it's blinding. And yet, at the same time, the scene is gauzed, blued, impressionist. Framed are five women on a blanket. Middle age, all beautiful in their way. Facing the ocean in dark glasses and hats, like Captains Courageous, faces like prows, you think of those Marines putting up the flag on Iwo Jima. Five women, some of whom barely know each other, drawn together for a birthday party, all writers but one, the German, she is the most beautiful of all, a woman in her late 40s, a little uneasy in the company of writers (her father was also a Nazi which makes her uneasy around these people) Two of the women are Jewesses. Their families destroyed in the Holocaust. They from Berkeley, intellectuals, writers, high achievers, former hippies, one lives with a partner, the other is married outright, all have lived outrageous lives and share it like matza.
The father of one committed suicide, at 49, when the girl was 19. She was there when he did it. With a gun. And then her brother died. She didn't say, but between the lines you got the sense died from HIV. Another woman's brother died of HIV as well. These five women are all linked in strange ways. Through dead fathers or mothers, or bad men, or the writing life, or depression, or middle-aged women-dreams and wants, and desires. They're talking. You see them only from the knees down. Calves reminiscent of bullfighters. Later, they all dance in the little kitchen, oblivious to the Chinese families sleeping on either side. To soul music because one of them had a long affair with an African American playwright and this was 'their' music.
The most fun they've all had in years, they will say later. But just now, for this moment, before dinner and dancing, with the sun running like new yellow lead onto the horizon, these women, in a scene out of Checkov or DH Lawrence, or I'm thinking of Visconti's Death in Venice, like women in some other slower more cultured century, all facing the sunset, with hats and glasses, perfectly placed to suggest a heroic pose, Washingtonetttes crossing the Delaware. And it's a wonderful representation. A stirring rendition of old times.
The father of one committed suicide, at 49, when the girl was 19. She was there when he did it. With a gun. And then her brother died. She didn't say, but between the lines you got the sense died from HIV. Another woman's brother died of HIV as well. These five women are all linked in strange ways. Through dead fathers or mothers, or bad men, or the writing life, or depression, or middle-aged women-dreams and wants, and desires. They're talking. You see them only from the knees down. Calves reminiscent of bullfighters. Later, they all dance in the little kitchen, oblivious to the Chinese families sleeping on either side. To soul music because one of them had a long affair with an African American playwright and this was 'their' music.
The most fun they've all had in years, they will say later. But just now, for this moment, before dinner and dancing, with the sun running like new yellow lead onto the horizon, these women, in a scene out of Checkov or DH Lawrence, or I'm thinking of Visconti's Death in Venice, like women in some other slower more cultured century, all facing the sunset, with hats and glasses, perfectly placed to suggest a heroic pose, Washingtonetttes crossing the Delaware. And it's a wonderful representation. A stirring rendition of old times.
May 1, 2007
Fear Is The Important Thing
I received this email from another parent at Dash's school. She believes this warning might be beneficial. I don't know who wrote the original email, I assume a woman is the author based on a comment toward the end. I only know that this message is "Crucial" for me, and probably for you to read.....
Because of recent abductions in daylight hours, refresh yourself of these things to do in an emergency situation... This is for you, and for you to share with your wife, your children, everyone you know. After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.
1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!
2. Learned this from a tourist guide. In New Orleans If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM Toss it away from you.... chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!
3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lightsand stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will.This has saved lives.
4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. (DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE. And If someone is in the car with a gun to your head DO NOT DRIVE OFF, repeat: DO NOT DRIVE OFF! Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it . As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.
5 A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage: A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat. B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars. C..) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than sorry .)
6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot.
This is especially true at NIGHT!)
7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control,ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably ! in a zig -zag pattern!
8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP It may get you d, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.
9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last,and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, open the door." The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said,"We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night. Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby ----
This should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana. I'd like you to forward this to all the women you know. It may save a life. A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle.I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if you love your mothers,wives,sisters, daughters, etc., you may want to pass it onto them, as well. Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it's better to be safe than sorry. Everyone should take 5 minute to read this. It may save your life or loved one's life.
(The part about being put in the trunk is especially helpful advice if you're ever trapped in a Martin Scorcese movie called Goodfellas)
Because of recent abductions in daylight hours, refresh yourself of these things to do in an emergency situation... This is for you, and for you to share with your wife, your children, everyone you know. After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.
1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!
2. Learned this from a tourist guide. In New Orleans If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM Toss it away from you.... chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!
3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lightsand stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will.This has saved lives.
4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. (DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE. And If someone is in the car with a gun to your head DO NOT DRIVE OFF, repeat: DO NOT DRIVE OFF! Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it . As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.
5 A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage: A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat. B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars. C..) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than sorry .)
6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot.
This is especially true at NIGHT!)
7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control,ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably ! in a zig -zag pattern!
8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP It may get you d, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.
9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last,and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, open the door." The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said,"We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night. Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby ----
This should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana. I'd like you to forward this to all the women you know. It may save a life. A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle.I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if you love your mothers,wives,sisters, daughters, etc., you may want to pass it onto them, as well. Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it's better to be safe than sorry. Everyone should take 5 minute to read this. It may save your life or loved one's life.
(The part about being put in the trunk is especially helpful advice if you're ever trapped in a Martin Scorcese movie called Goodfellas)
Apr 30, 2007
Onward
Here was a recent post in an evangelical blog.
"I went to Spain to a port where ferries crossed the Mediterranean to Morocco. In the port we distributed the Jesus video produced by Campus Crusade for Christ, and the New Testament in French and Arabic. It was an awesome time of sharing God's Word with Muslims from North Africa." ---Madison1101 on 4/29/07
Prosletyzing of any kind is illegal in Morocco; those who convert are often punished. One man was sentenced to 15 years in the south, although that story may not have been exactly as it was told in local papers. In any case, the police are quick to punish, if only to show the Islamic hardliners that the government is an equal opportunity oppressor.
But such is the sensitivity of those Evangelical cats, the generals, who send kids off on these pilgramage adventures. It can be dangerous. Here it appears the Christian soldier did not cross over but merely stood on those docks at either Tarifa and Algeciras, they appear here and there in the terminal, like Mormons, standing around, dressed as well as possible, not in black coat and tie like the blues brothers, but neat and kempt, heart filled with pride for the heathen.
"I went to Spain to a port where ferries crossed the Mediterranean to Morocco. In the port we distributed the Jesus video produced by Campus Crusade for Christ, and the New Testament in French and Arabic. It was an awesome time of sharing God's Word with Muslims from North Africa." ---Madison1101 on 4/29/07
Prosletyzing of any kind is illegal in Morocco; those who convert are often punished. One man was sentenced to 15 years in the south, although that story may not have been exactly as it was told in local papers. In any case, the police are quick to punish, if only to show the Islamic hardliners that the government is an equal opportunity oppressor.
But such is the sensitivity of those Evangelical cats, the generals, who send kids off on these pilgramage adventures. It can be dangerous. Here it appears the Christian soldier did not cross over but merely stood on those docks at either Tarifa and Algeciras, they appear here and there in the terminal, like Mormons, standing around, dressed as well as possible, not in black coat and tie like the blues brothers, but neat and kempt, heart filled with pride for the heathen.
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