On September 11th I put my green t-shirt on that has brail down he front of it. It is the same t-shirt I am wearing in my photo ID on my passport. I have worn the shirt, which is lovingly known now as the "flight-shirt" on every overseas venture that has ever required that I sit calmly in an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet above the Earth. That Thursday I had gone to the airport to look at the ticket window prices of flights to Scandahoovia. My bags were packed and in the truck, flight-shirt freshly washed, I was sure I'd be flying that day.
I can remember what the corner of Billy Graham Pkwy. and I-277 looked like that day, when what we said was the worst was collectively UNremembered as the rat race and feudal gas chase went on, with a tooth in the rear-view, gutted-gums and blood-residual, reminding all that to stop would be to catch up to the now, and there is no way to keep reliving the then when you are elated by the now.
I lied down on the couch. Hurricane Ike was a catagory 2, or atleast reported as such by weather channels and news outlets that were "covering the storm" which I've learned is nothing more really than having the resources to stand at a removed position and leave 500 miles of sea wall searching with all its might for balance, hanging out in an abstract delusion, similar to watching the whole thing happen in the back of a wal-mart. I paid attention, however, and with each hours update I felt the wind knock my "verbal commitment" around in the bay.
A random face from the commie mart and I had had a conversation a few days before. He was adament to want to know why I felt like leaving the United States for more peaceful ground was my outlook in the face of America's Great Push for Change. We talked and much of that conversation and those conversations are not up to me to recreate because what is said in them is usually the interwoven history of a nation, a newsreport and a person. Usually you just have to have a conversation like that to hear it. A day or so later, maybe just a few hours, he was calling me asking me if I had computer skills that I felt comfortable using; he asked if I wasn't doing anything more than nothing anyhow and if my name shouldn't be added to a list to go work to keep cellphone tower power running wherever it was needed post-seawall in the Gulf. I said there was no reason. Nine eleven, I'm laying on the couch in the flight shirt and the phone rings. "Yeah, it looks like Ike is gonna hit somewhere around Galveston, can you be on a flight in the morning?"
I left without saying goodbye to most, save my parents and a few others who I routinely talk to. Seems that the world pushes in that direction. A collection of friends makes a good intermural team but a party of every affair is a notion of crab dip and crackers, merry flutes really, when it comes to making a transfer. Its going that has to be done, moving towards it. A goodybye window could last a lifetime for me. I'd rather be sleep-eyed in the shire than glassy-eyed in the data. Perhaps I'm just utterly sick of having to see the daily transfer Americana take all the time of those who inhabit the land. I'm pretty sure there are some in the capitalist volley now who aren't quite pulling the weight. I'm pretty sure that all we've got is right next to us, and theres nothing to worry about because we know where that is. Until the contract/combat requires a good man go dying. Perhaps more than anything that is what I'm saying, my utopia, my dreamy pace of peace is the creation of freedom from that one standing idol of America and Beyond: oh timepiece, 30 slices by the mad Einstein and you still seem relavant, your index finger like London fog bent always in the direction of another morning and its uncounted shills. Oh foggy window of winter, begging not like the love of a woman, but the love of the whole damn sleeping situation, the love of the bedroom, like the chair Mr. Picasso. Time your gears are wailing in the shifting wind.
The landing gear retracted with a bang, the function of the bay door and its hydrolic cringe enough to steer the beast, like reaching for a water bottle in the cadence is enough to bring a rider down. The plane lunged, fish-tailed and looked for a jet stream to call home and the nose turned back up to the trembling atmosphere looking for anything but down. The runway was in sight and all on board had fixed an eye to its tarmac and lights. Flying into Ike, hurricne Dwight D. "Beware of the Military Industrial Complex" Eisenhower, was a pitch and roll. Too bad grit smokers and muffins in the morning, coffee and scones meet constricting arteries, meet squeezed gut juice, meet the feeling of force. Go ahead, tell it your favorite song. We circled Lafayette, LA looking to land and we took one more look at the lap dog laden swimming pool lay of the land. I mused aloud as to why my fellow pilot wouldn't just go ahead ad "90the bastard for god sakes". He kept it together.
Laffy and beyond, a pickup at the pickup, closed I-10 and the case of LA. v. chaos. Rainsuits, brief diluge followed by sheering sun, back to rain with a Kraft cheese sandwich in between. Stage set for a convoy, generals aligned and on-line, orders refined as refineries power fell back towards its natural state, oil got to sit around as oil a second longer, the cattle of the beefline that feeds our bright nights and night clubs paused to consider its gladiator status before the corporate plan od aggression sent out a 5 mile truck line on a closed interstate hauling diesel fuel and generators towards a city under water, water for miles, acres and weeks to follow. I-10 was the high ground. We were waiting to deploy in the parking lot and I was out of the car. I got a phone call asking what I was doing, the cnvoy had left, we had to catch up. I was hitting 110 and 120m.p.h. and feeling the wind lower a shoulder into the side of the rental. The drive took all night. We were eventually flagged down by state troopers who checked papers and orders before we drove through the twisted metal scene of Houston. Early morning we say john boats being deployed to rescue people from 2nd story balconies of roadside motels, entire portions of roadway stopped, water running through in its new stream, smiling and filling, flowing. No power anywhere and thats a good thing because that which we call "wire" but is actually metal was hanging, open, like the tounges of so many serpants ready to expose the ankle in the bush to so much pure void power inside. The convoy had a hard time staying together, what with all the other living people in cars looking for answers in a way out, or a way in. It was every best man for himself as we flipped on the gps and left the guys in the red truck wandering. A line of traffic to get into the yard, a brief software debriefing, an immideate work assignment, only after having to verbally disarm the two refuelers who would not have weenies in a rental passing standstill traffic lest we be the yahoo professionals we said we were, the nerds who were going to run the computers for the entire show. George walkedin with his laptop, I sat and waited to park the car. When we arrive at the trailer we had to start plugging GEN-ID#'s into the system. The previous day we had had to network 7 computers onto 4 printers and link up a software. Dude, I really had been working 24+ hours.
The army ain't lying or joking, if you want some long as well paid work it's out there and it's in a rodeo ring. The ATT trailer moved in. A small bucket setting of main street that would in the next few days turn into the bread line of the ranch dressing/jelly movers. More and more a pattern emerged and in it I found ownership. I took an office that was a folding table in the last 5 feet of a horse trailer and I mved the table next to the wall, I set up another table and I seperated the workstations so we could use the acoustics in the metal to work for us, I labeled files and I taped down wires so they wouldn'tbe tripped on, I walked into the big boss room to clarify, I asked for things, I walked across the street and asked ATT why I couldn't hear on the phone and they were a global communications giant. I wrote important numbers on the board, established protocall that we "were the last call." Before I knew it rookie energy bounced and a kid who had previousy been using a gluestick was using software. Holy shit, I did work 96 hours. More rookies showed up, in times of quiet we gained understanding of who one another was, the musi we liked, the desire and longing for real instruments, stories of dropping everything and following a goal. The calls would be flooding in by mid-day, and the office war room was ready.
Im not sure how to piece things out. Finding a 24-hour donut shop in Pasadena with a 283 and her father running the place was a light twist of peace with glaze. I was an atom sharing my energy with the unlikliest of elements, though its usually not up to the atom, eh? So just laugh along the way. Life, actual life itself, is good. The "life is good life" lasts as long as the flavor of ranch dressing being sucked through a t-shirt.
