A Reference Point in Lit. Fiction "Bush Pigs" in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/10/10/1994_10_10_082_TNY_CARDS_000369876
Bethel Citizen: Thursday, November 5, 1998
IRON CLAWS
Can mean certain
Death for stray animals.
A child's foot can get caught in one.
"By Opposing End" Trapping Advertisement
Letter to editor: Blood is Thickest
Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of a friend. -Proverbs 27:17.
On Tuesday last, I and my dog began to walk five minutes into the woods near my house and there an iron claw, known as a trap, left Russell in agony. As I attempted to undo the flaw one man has put down for another to release, Russell chewed hard on my hands. All the blood from the incident was from my hands. Russell licked my hand as soon as he was released. My friends, my heart palpitates. Therefore, blood is thickest. The indemnity I shall pay is double to the excise a man who traps receives from that which he traps, so long as I, JB, shall live and have the means to live.
JB Bethel,ME.
The time now is two thirty in the afternoon on August 8, 1998. I am alone in the house. just smoked a cigarette. The cigarette was rolled from handrolling tobacco. I smoked it and stubbed it out and began to write. The story I am about to tell is the story of myself.
This story stems back twenty-five years to five years ago in Sun Valley, Idaho.
It
began in the town of Lubumbashi, Zaire, where my mother conceived me
and I was born. All my life I have lived with this notion of being born
and now I am trying to understand it. I remember the day in my mind like
it was yesterday. The day I was born was a hot summer's day
in June. I released myself from the womb at midnight and the next day
is what I remember. My mother lay in the bed with me held close to her
bosom. The feelings were mutual. I held her close and cried when I felt
like it. Soon after my first day I was taken home. Home in Lubumbashi
was a very large house the company rented for my father. There was a dog
there. Her name was Katie. I remember the day I was born from the
memories I have of other people telling me about it.
On
the night I was to push my way out, a man by the name of George was at
the house. He proceeded to take care of the siblings while I occupied my
mother's time. She pushed me out and I swam into the world. There was
my mother, I thought. I thought like a blinking idiot afraid to know the
conscience of the world like I knew my own mother. I was afraid to tell
them of the things I had brought with me from the nether reaches where I
was conceived, my father and mother. I had been born to them. I was
alive. I was no longer swimming in the darkness of a womb. I am alive, I thought.
From the town Lubumbashi I moved to the West Coast of Africa...to a country
called Sierra Leone. I lived in Freetown with my parents. I was born
and now I lived on the most beautiful beaches in the world. Our house
overlooked the Atlantic. We could hear the crash of the waves distant
down the hill we lived on. The sound carried better on a Sunday when
there was not so much traffic. I grew fast. I learned to swim. I would
jump in the water, they tell me, and have to be rescued. Then, the
parents decided to enroll me in swim class. I remember the mornings, the
Saturday mornings, in the Aqua Club pool filled with green seawater.
They pumped the water
in from the lagoon. I remember once, before I took a swim class, I attempted to swim on my own. I thought I did the crawl very well. The classes on the Saturday mornings were cold. I didn't like them but I did them and enjoyed learning to swim. I did the breaststroke best.
We had a beach place about twenty miles down a pot hole road away from town. Off the shore from our beach place with thatched roof huts was an island where a friend of our family stayed. He owned both beach places but the place we lived was the fixture in our family's life on the weekend. We had canoes and kayaks and a lot of kids would come out and join us during the weekends. There was never a shortage of other children to play with. When girls would come we, the kids, would play mommy and daddy and princess and prince. The boys didn't mind these games or at least I didn't as they .were fun with the girls and it was what the girls wanted to play. When it was just me and the other boys we would throw sand at each other and hide in the rocks on the beach calling them forts. The sand we rolled into balls were like snowballs except sand. Soon these good times would end and I went to boarding school in England.
First there were the first days of my schooling in Freetown. Only one day is worth mentioning. On a hot day in Sierra Leone at school, at the end of the school day, we were meant to say the Lord's prayer. I said it so fast the teacher made me stay after school. I stayed and left sullen. This was during my first year at school. Another student who committed himself to something wrong was made to sit in front of the classroom with his shorts pulled down. School in Sierra Leone and Africa for that matter was different than in the States. There isn't that sense of shame or the sense to inflict shame in America as there is in Africa.
And then the fateful day came when I had to leave my enclave in Sierra Leone. From this point the story will be told with reference to things and places that mayor not have happened. The story takes place on a hot Sierra Leone day and I boarded the airplane to go to England for school. The stewardess made me to sit in the rear where I might be watched. I remember looking out of the window and seeing my parents walking away and tears came to my eyes. They knew it was for the better that I go away. I went for the education.
England was a short stint in my life and I learned to read and write there and learned the meaning of being bad. For an infraction a student was sent to the principal and hit with varying degrees of the scolding scale. There was the slipper for a light offense, usually disrupting class or the dorm; there was the sneaker for a heavier offense, usually for hurting someone mildly; or there were the canes, split cane and regular cane. The worst of all was the block of wood. The block bruised deeply. To top it off the headmaster was blind and very often missed the seat of your pants if he didn 't make you pull them down. He hit your legs. All students wore shorts except upper class men. We wore shorts in the winter too. The English think of shorts as a tool for upbringing children. Even on the coldest day it was shorts for me.
England was a short stay, two years. I moved to New York during the summer of 1983. I was ten years old. New York was hell. It was a frothing pit. People roamed the streets in mad desperation to get places before it was too late. The few people who had sanity left New York to discover the places in America that are peaceful. In New York the people let homeless people freeze to death in the winter and then complain of the homeless when they died on the streets forcing a step over. New York was a frothing madhouse.
I remember the first day I spent in New York. Sure I had been to New York City during the years I had lived in Africa and remembered the Brady Bunch and such TV shows but this New York was different. It was to be my home. I arrived on a hot muggy summer's day in 1983 at JFK. I flew alone from England where I was put on the plane. My last night at English boarding school was spent breaking rules and then I went to New York. In New York there are no rules. People live by the skin of their teeth. I arrived at JFK and was picked up by my brother and father. We caught the train into the city and stopped at Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue.
There, we debarked. The station was swarming with people. They were big people. They were black people. I had never seen the black people like these. Their mouths were filled with profanities. They pushed and shoved their way through the turnstiles. It was the day of the Diana Ross concert in Central Park. The concert had been rained out. There was a riot. The crowd was dispersed and they all headed to Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue for the train to Brooklyn and Harlem. I was lost in the crowd. I gripped my father's hand tightly and followed the best I could, losing my grip once. The people swarmed over me and I was pushed back. I burrowed my way through legs to the point of the lone white hand in the crowd and grabbed hold. We pushed our way through. We climbed the steps to the street. I remember the face of one man in that crowd. He was a black man. He glanced down at me and almost peered. Then he moved with the crowd forward. I was on the street. We went to a friend's apartment a few blocks away. There was air condition.
Soon, we moved into our apartment on the upper West Side. We lived in a building on Broadway and 96th. We lived on the twenty fourth floor. It was a respite from the stench of the city. The breeze from the river wafted through our windows. We had a balcony overlooking the river and my room overlooked the river. My friend from Sierra Leone was in town with his mother. He stayed with us at the apartment. He was the first to see the new place. I remember this because he teased me about it. I remember I used to tease him about living in Sierra Leone for longer than he ever had and I was not Krio boy. I am unable to remember how long he stayed with us that summer. I only have glimpses of memory surface at anyone time. remember other visits to New York he and his mother made. I remember he visited once and we went to the beach on Long Island with another friend of mine. This was after I had been in school for some time. There I smoked some marijuana and my friend from Sierra Leone did not have any. We were lying in the dunes of some beach club on Long Island next to a gray colored hut for changing. The three of us were laying in the sand and my New York friend and I smoked from a can. There were other visits.
The anger mounted and I became wroth with the world; the silent world within lashed out and I drank and I am a fool for drinking and the friends I had were fools and I discovered the train of thought I had: to one day return to Africa was a lost cause because it was not my home and the angel of the Lord spoke to me and the angel said to me I am yours to follow Jimmy Barnes. You will discover the meaning of your own existence as I have found the meaning of yourself City lights waver in the disguise of angels discovering the truth when it is the evil of the city that bears the brunt of the disintegrating chastisement of mankind on the streets ofNew York.
At the last the fearless plight of my soul lost to the silent ways of a woman disguised as a beautiful apple ready and sumptuous for eating ready now and ready for the way of man to find her out and bring her to the serenity ofthe plastic desire of man to woman. She knows the fear I exist with, and the relentless hate I regard her with, and the disregard she has for me is the jism of the disguise of the angel of the Lord: oh what have I done to deserve the wrath of the Lord upon my head to live in New York the way I did?
We had a beach place about twenty miles down a pot hole road away from town. Off the shore from our beach place with thatched roof huts was an island where a friend of our family stayed. He owned both beach places but the place we lived was the fixture in our family's life on the weekend. We had canoes and kayaks and a lot of kids would come out and join us during the weekends. There was never a shortage of other children to play with. When girls would come we, the kids, would play mommy and daddy and princess and prince. The boys didn't mind these games or at least I didn't as they .were fun with the girls and it was what the girls wanted to play. When it was just me and the other boys we would throw sand at each other and hide in the rocks on the beach calling them forts. The sand we rolled into balls were like snowballs except sand. Soon these good times would end and I went to boarding school in England.
First there were the first days of my schooling in Freetown. Only one day is worth mentioning. On a hot day in Sierra Leone at school, at the end of the school day, we were meant to say the Lord's prayer. I said it so fast the teacher made me stay after school. I stayed and left sullen. This was during my first year at school. Another student who committed himself to something wrong was made to sit in front of the classroom with his shorts pulled down. School in Sierra Leone and Africa for that matter was different than in the States. There isn't that sense of shame or the sense to inflict shame in America as there is in Africa.
And then the fateful day came when I had to leave my enclave in Sierra Leone. From this point the story will be told with reference to things and places that mayor not have happened. The story takes place on a hot Sierra Leone day and I boarded the airplane to go to England for school. The stewardess made me to sit in the rear where I might be watched. I remember looking out of the window and seeing my parents walking away and tears came to my eyes. They knew it was for the better that I go away. I went for the education.
England was a short stint in my life and I learned to read and write there and learned the meaning of being bad. For an infraction a student was sent to the principal and hit with varying degrees of the scolding scale. There was the slipper for a light offense, usually disrupting class or the dorm; there was the sneaker for a heavier offense, usually for hurting someone mildly; or there were the canes, split cane and regular cane. The worst of all was the block of wood. The block bruised deeply. To top it off the headmaster was blind and very often missed the seat of your pants if he didn 't make you pull them down. He hit your legs. All students wore shorts except upper class men. We wore shorts in the winter too. The English think of shorts as a tool for upbringing children. Even on the coldest day it was shorts for me.
England was a short stay, two years. I moved to New York during the summer of 1983. I was ten years old. New York was hell. It was a frothing pit. People roamed the streets in mad desperation to get places before it was too late. The few people who had sanity left New York to discover the places in America that are peaceful. In New York the people let homeless people freeze to death in the winter and then complain of the homeless when they died on the streets forcing a step over. New York was a frothing madhouse.
I remember the first day I spent in New York. Sure I had been to New York City during the years I had lived in Africa and remembered the Brady Bunch and such TV shows but this New York was different. It was to be my home. I arrived on a hot muggy summer's day in 1983 at JFK. I flew alone from England where I was put on the plane. My last night at English boarding school was spent breaking rules and then I went to New York. In New York there are no rules. People live by the skin of their teeth. I arrived at JFK and was picked up by my brother and father. We caught the train into the city and stopped at Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue.
There, we debarked. The station was swarming with people. They were big people. They were black people. I had never seen the black people like these. Their mouths were filled with profanities. They pushed and shoved their way through the turnstiles. It was the day of the Diana Ross concert in Central Park. The concert had been rained out. There was a riot. The crowd was dispersed and they all headed to Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue for the train to Brooklyn and Harlem. I was lost in the crowd. I gripped my father's hand tightly and followed the best I could, losing my grip once. The people swarmed over me and I was pushed back. I burrowed my way through legs to the point of the lone white hand in the crowd and grabbed hold. We pushed our way through. We climbed the steps to the street. I remember the face of one man in that crowd. He was a black man. He glanced down at me and almost peered. Then he moved with the crowd forward. I was on the street. We went to a friend's apartment a few blocks away. There was air condition.
Soon, we moved into our apartment on the upper West Side. We lived in a building on Broadway and 96th. We lived on the twenty fourth floor. It was a respite from the stench of the city. The breeze from the river wafted through our windows. We had a balcony overlooking the river and my room overlooked the river. My friend from Sierra Leone was in town with his mother. He stayed with us at the apartment. He was the first to see the new place. I remember this because he teased me about it. I remember I used to tease him about living in Sierra Leone for longer than he ever had and I was not Krio boy. I am unable to remember how long he stayed with us that summer. I only have glimpses of memory surface at anyone time. remember other visits to New York he and his mother made. I remember he visited once and we went to the beach on Long Island with another friend of mine. This was after I had been in school for some time. There I smoked some marijuana and my friend from Sierra Leone did not have any. We were lying in the dunes of some beach club on Long Island next to a gray colored hut for changing. The three of us were laying in the sand and my New York friend and I smoked from a can. There were other visits.
The anger mounted and I became wroth with the world; the silent world within lashed out and I drank and I am a fool for drinking and the friends I had were fools and I discovered the train of thought I had: to one day return to Africa was a lost cause because it was not my home and the angel of the Lord spoke to me and the angel said to me I am yours to follow Jimmy Barnes. You will discover the meaning of your own existence as I have found the meaning of yourself City lights waver in the disguise of angels discovering the truth when it is the evil of the city that bears the brunt of the disintegrating chastisement of mankind on the streets ofNew York.
At the last the fearless plight of my soul lost to the silent ways of a woman disguised as a beautiful apple ready and sumptuous for eating ready now and ready for the way of man to find her out and bring her to the serenity ofthe plastic desire of man to woman. She knows the fear I exist with, and the relentless hate I regard her with, and the disregard she has for me is the jism of the disguise of the angel of the Lord: oh what have I done to deserve the wrath of the Lord upon my head to live in New York the way I did?
New York is a lonely place. The life of an ingrate in New York is akin to a redneck of the outer reaches of Texas. When you realize the differences between the one man and another and see that within we are all born with the same discursive sense of self that to see is to believe and to speak is the corporeal extraction of the body's desire we find ourselves lost in the chambers of our homes left wanting. Wanting we want to go out and see other people; we want the companions we had when we were youths. We want the trinkets they sell in stores. The desire is to realize that these senses are very real and can lead to the disintegration of a man in his own sense ofself Lost to the perception of the world a man will discover there is only one escape and that escape isfrom himself He knows the feeling he has to know and wishes so to disregard the essence of the world around him to see for the first time what lays ahead rather than blind inhibition guiding the way.The words he speaks are by no means the avenue he chooses to discover for himself, the discursive corporeal world, but he admonishes the desire to vanquish his Lost sense of self. Oh! How I am lost in the streets ofNew York drunk.
Drunken men line the streets knowing full well their time has come and on the corner of Seventy-second-street there is the presence of an angel come to bring them into the place of hiding for the night. He stands Like a statue and comes forward to the machine of man set in his ways 10 discern the ultimate path for destruction. I remember the times I spent there on Seventy-second-street at the convening of the drunkards by the park on Broadway. They sit on park benches and freeze in the winter. This could be any person's relative, a science can cure him they say but the feelings they have are the lost enterprises of another world. Like in the substance of this gibberish, to know one's self as Descartes proclaimed to know himself never stating the reason whereby he managed to ascertain life except stating that God gave him the reason, We know Descartes' mind.
Drunken men line the streets knowing full well their time has come and on the corner of Seventy-second-street there is the presence of an angel come to bring them into the place of hiding for the night. He stands Like a statue and comes forward to the machine of man set in his ways 10 discern the ultimate path for destruction. I remember the times I spent there on Seventy-second-street at the convening of the drunkards by the park on Broadway. They sit on park benches and freeze in the winter. This could be any person's relative, a science can cure him they say but the feelings they have are the lost enterprises of another world. Like in the substance of this gibberish, to know one's self as Descartes proclaimed to know himself never stating the reason whereby he managed to ascertain life except stating that God gave him the reason, We know Descartes' mind.
Without knowing the plight I embarked upon just by living in New York I quickly became distorted. New York is alost
hope of mine to relinquish from its bowels the well of life I lost
there. In the nights on the street I remember one night on the street selling my own poetry. Of course I did not expect to sell any poetry but the fact is I stood on the street corner drunk in the eighth grade out of school on the weekend and tried to sell poetry. There were these two sixth grade girls who found me ironically standing on the corner of Eighty sixth and Lexington ranting about the coming of the Lord. Here was a child, me, in New York ranting with the best of the crazies about some mythical figure who was to come and admonish the world for its sins. I straight away tried to rid myself of the two girls who were fascinated by me by boarding a bus and going cross-town. It was funny because that night I had been up at a friend's house with several other friends and they asked me to leave. Sure, I was being obnoxious but I didn't care. I had seen her breasts and said they were awful and to put her shirt down. I remember how sweet her face was though.
The angel spoke to me to lift her shirt and lick her nipples. I did lift her shirt but did not lick her nipples. She was too ghastly. I lost control of myself in even lifting her shirt, I thought. I am dying, I thought. The death of an angel by light of the moon come to vanquish the world of the horrors of his own demise. Incise her, say, and take the knife and incise her bowels, to spill the fruit of her womanhood. Know the truth of the life you lead and don't mask the pain she will feel. Steal her soul to some distant corner and bury the body with the hands cut off But I am gentle and hope she lives a long life. Redeem yourself from the woe you feel to have thought you could determine the life of an angel in your own pocket of freedom. Know yourself to know the serenity of the hell you feel might culminate into the denigration of the name you bear. Life, my friend, stems from the knowledge of the heart's feeling to do something. You feel too much to know your own soul. The soul of your body is soiled.
Life in New York came to an end. I left my New York life and went to Massachusetts. I went to school in Massachusetts. I went to a boarding school there. I arrived the first day of the next three years, or so I believed the length of time would be, and checked into my room. I had a roommate from New York. He went to another of that rich man's prep schools in New York. Here we were.together at the school of our choice to further ourselves towards college and one day to be released into the world of discovery.
The angel spoke to me to lift her shirt and lick her nipples. I did lift her shirt but did not lick her nipples. She was too ghastly. I lost control of myself in even lifting her shirt, I thought. I am dying, I thought. The death of an angel by light of the moon come to vanquish the world of the horrors of his own demise. Incise her, say, and take the knife and incise her bowels, to spill the fruit of her womanhood. Know the truth of the life you lead and don't mask the pain she will feel. Steal her soul to some distant corner and bury the body with the hands cut off But I am gentle and hope she lives a long life. Redeem yourself from the woe you feel to have thought you could determine the life of an angel in your own pocket of freedom. Know yourself to know the serenity of the hell you feel might culminate into the denigration of the name you bear. Life, my friend, stems from the knowledge of the heart's feeling to do something. You feel too much to know your own soul. The soul of your body is soiled.
Life in New York came to an end. I left my New York life and went to Massachusetts. I went to school in Massachusetts. I went to a boarding school there. I arrived the first day of the next three years, or so I believed the length of time would be, and checked into my room. I had a roommate from New York. He went to another of that rich man's prep schools in New York. Here we were.together at the school of our choice to further ourselves towards college and one day to be released into the world of discovery.
The girls at the school all wanted boys for boyfriends attempting to lure the boys into the trap of practicing for when we are a married
thing. I didn't play along. I only decided to screw and screw and leave
before it was too late. The girls were beautiful. They were nice. I
liked them and really wanted to have a relationship with a few of them but was lost to the idea of myself being some kind of vessel of truth. I wanted so to connect with the people of my high school but was lost inside of myself. I had become twisted, distorted and lost.
The hallways were a maze around the cloister of the quadrangle infront of the building. The building was the shape of a U, a square angled U. I lived on the third floor: I lived in a loft room. The girls lived across the hall through some locked doors. The third Reich lived between them and us. I think of Pink Floyd. The losers of this world fall before the lord of their decision to show themselves to be true to one flesh sin of the mind. The mind circulates through the doors of the lap )eternal fog and then the mind is vanquished by the dark lord.Heplagues the hearts and souls of the eternal struggle to be good. He is everyone's blight. I have him in my sights now. Iam lying in the ditch of my drunken craze running away from the teachers ready to transport me home. I know where I am going I tell myself. 1 go south now. Go there you fool. Fool of your soul ... and knowledge of the past tells me the people who are attempting to secure you to their common misdeed are relinquishing you. Oh great I say and thank you for taking my parents' money. You fool we did not take your parents' money they gave us the money for keepsake. To keep me? No.Liar. Fool. Yes but I am not coming back for seven years. Fuck you.
A place revisited revisits the visitor.,"New York, I am here." There I found myself in the parent's apartment grieved to the brim of a night strangler onto me desiring of me my whole soul. He came and went like a thief in the night and stole from me the true essence of being. The stink he has is as rats defecating in their own cage and the rats that clamber over your body when you are dead. Prickly is his feeling of remorse that comes over the person he attacks. And J continued to drink beer in dousing quantities. J was lost.
I moved to Atlanta. I lived with my aunt in Atlanta. I was away finally. I was away from the bullshit of one world and into the heat of another. There are good people everywhere but I was not a good person. I drank to the utter limits of my conscious capability and stayed in my attic room for the better part of a day when I wasn't working or going to school. School was down a winding road through the suburbs. I drove there in my new truck. I drove there every morning with my cousin. The times were light. The pressure of life had been lifted from me. I was able to go to school and not think this was the end of the road, the end all and be all. The problem with those schools up there J thought was that they tutored you to no extents of your human capability. The fact remained that we were all individual people and were expected to perform on our own. I don't remember the lie they told us but I remember the lie I came to believe. I believed the end was always near and that the point of life was to skirt the perimeter of life's crux. The lie was that the end was always near. It was the end for those people. I left. I would never see them. I was faced with an entirely new set of circumstances. I met new people and did not make friends with any of them. The public high school I went to in Atlanta had no windows. I was miserable there too.
I worked in a pizza restaurant. I delivered the pizzas. I was finally holding a job and drinking less on the nights I worked. It was that I would come home and drink whiskey. I soon realized whiskey was the worst of all alcohol. I went back to beer. There was a beer store that would sell it to me.
The angel of the Lord came upon his clouds' and spoke words of discontent to me today. Why did I drink so much? He knows I am not a fool, so how can I act like a fool? In the morning J'll get up and go for a run. The fresh air will do me good. She is so sexy. I want her bad. Oh J'll talk to any woman and try to get her into bed with me. The seasons are changing from summer to fall and now winter is around the corner. Wrestling. Forget it. All these damn schools don't let you do the sport you want to do. They took away swimming and now it is wrestling. The reality is that I am a person with wants of my own. Not what they want. So forget it asshole I am not wrestling if that's the way you feel. Twice now it has happened. So I see the false impact they have had on my life. Too much strife drives the girls away. Say what. Who is she to not want to talk with me? Then New York comes to plague his mind of what he could have found in the heat of passion on those steps that night with the girl who asked him to love her and then the shaking of the boy's hand. He is remiss of her love. Did she give it to him? Not to me, he thinks, surrendering to the pain of the moment of his plight, from the angel's disguise cringing in the heartfelt scenario of the pain felt in admonishing the disease of his mind. Lies and mountains of lies in the disguise of truth and for soothe the interminable tree of knowledge and trial of the pain of his mind has mounted into the rocky crags he has at once forgotten on the runs in the morning ridding himself of the alcohol strewn across his blood stream.
She looked to me beautiful. The blond beauty of my love disguised as the heart wrencher of all time. She was in the past now.But forever she rose to meet me in the future as we kept in touch and I was kept at a distance. The disguise of a clown frowns from her nostrils knowing full well the plight that has been drawn in the sand. To cross the line and vanquish the redeemer of the heart that was taken away and knowing full well the people in my new school do not speak with me, nor I with them, am I to r~member the feeling of a past love?
Georgia was crimson in the rain shadows at sunset like an over ripe peach split and juices flowing through the sky bleeding. The shade of trees was around the house in the sunset during the sparkling hot days of summer; the crystal white days of fall and gray dour days of winter, when it is not too cold, the crimson sunset bleeds the western sky of the sun. Limelight in the early hours of morning, spent wondering of the people in my past disguised as the arch angel of the Lord come to earth in my thoughts, I sought after the early bird's worm distinguishing from right: wrong. The day grows older and wanes and with it an entire lifetime is spent discerning between the desire of pain felt through the arteries and the reconciliation of drunkenness to ease the worry. So soon had I become adapted to the way of life in Georgia that the peaches even were a delight, it came time to leave.
Onward from a life lived under the roof of my aunt's house in the lap of luxury able to swindle sick notes from my aunt and onward from the pizza store I worked from delivering pizzas, onward, I left Georgia the night of my graduation ceremony missing it. I received my diploma in the mail. I was on a plane to Africa. I remember the night flight to Africa that night on my way towards my future, or so I thought. What the future held in store for me I had no idea. I went to Africa for the summer and remained there for several months visiting with my brother and parents. Over that summer, my brother and I trekked across southern Africa in a Land Rover visiting the bush lands of both Namibia and Botswana. We went to the swamps of Botswana and stopped along the way at a place called Tsodilo Hills where bushmen from ancient times had left their mark. I remember one sighting we made clambering across the rocks and there was a bushman painting of a sable. On the ground nearby was the half circle of a piece of fruit crusted with age and the sage who painted there had probably left it. I just picked it up and dropped it in wonderment, quickly sliding to reality and kicking it.
Then a strange thing happened. I was invited to live and work in Botswana. I decided to go to college. I was determined to quit drinking. I quit and for a time I only drank soda: Then I went to see my godfather in South Africa. He was having a beer. 1 joined him. We spent the day reminiscing on the times he had in Africa. He took me around to see his friends. There were men who owned carpet stores and others who owned dollarstores. 1 spent the day with my godfather showered with gifts and then headed to the airport to be seen to my plane back to America.
In the strangest part of my life I decided I would not drink and then it took someone who was my senior to get me to drink again. I drank heavily. The fear mounted inside as to whether I would make it through the first term at college. I should have taken an ax to my head and split the entrails of my body into two equal parts. One part could be the desire to not drink and the other the drinking fool that ever was. I went to America landing in Georgia.
"Hello."
"Hello Jimmy. How was your trip?"
"It was just swell."
The airport was crowded with people coming and going to their destinations. 1 ambled along the walk towards the outer doors forgetting my resolve to not drink. 1 asked how Georgia had been since 1 had left. It hasn't changed was the answer. We crossed the parking lot to the car. My aunt drove us home.
"I am going to leave again in the next few days," 1 said.
"Going out to college so soon?"
"Yeah. 1 am going to meet a friend in Chicago."
"Oh, that'll be great."
The city of Atlanta we passed by was bright in the coming night. The buildings towered over the freeway through town. We arrived home in another fifteen minutes turning into the driveway. My uncle was home waiting. 1 had lived there with them and now it was time to leave. 1 went up to my room and packed. 1 was to leave as soon as my friend and I spoke about when to meet. The next few days I spent doing errands around town. I packed up my truck for the trek to San Francisco where I was to go to college and spoke to my friend. I left late one night around ten at night and drove through the night to Chicago passing Columbus, Indiana at around five in the mom109. I was on my way.
1 remember the year at my aunt's house going south to Florida to meet my grandmother in her nursing home. She was sick. The entrails of my body yearned for the love of my grandmother but 1 was going to a city of deceit and sin. 1 would find the heart of my problems lay in my grandmother's mind. She exercised a control over my mind like a phantom in the night directing the motion of the clouds and spirits. My grandmother was the matriarch and she lived in Florida disguised as a little old lady bedridden and helpless. The selfless acts of a man of passion would show the way to her soul and it is what 1 had in store for me. Little did 1 know the fruit of my burden to go slow on the highway of life through the towns of deceit on the way to a town of even bigger dimension than those 1 had been to. The clouds circled and followed me through America one day catching up in my mind and showing the fierceness of their intended plot against me: to release the past ghosts of my life into and including the present ...the angels that spoke in the mind.... an exorcism!
Primrose and shrubbery, the streets were lined with shrubs. Hedges clipped to exact proportions showed man to know no bounds. Lake Forest, Illinois is a place of laws that the meandering young man can easily break. Forsake the laws of the land and the sand beaches by the lake with lifeguards telling you not to and you doing what you must as dust in the air and fair game I play along for so long and then jump off the rock in the middle. There's a man playing a fiddle when I leave the beach and find my friends. He waits for a passersby to drop coins in his case. The taste I have for the fiddle compels me to drop a coin. A foible of mine has always been succumbing to the needs of others and fulfilling their needs. A deed well done is a seed in the garden of life. Too much strife drives the girls away and makes me an outcast. At last, I am in league with the book I was to read in San Francisco: McTeague.
The day waned and I like a fool remained latent in my desire to discover the real truth of which it is I might be exacting my pleasure upon. She entered the house of love in the Lake Forest environs with a white T-shirt andJlooking sexy as anyone woman might and I the fool came down-the steps to meet her in my tie-dye T-shirt and observed her quake in her boots at my presence. She drove a white fancy car in the suburbs of Chicago leaning heavily on her father's two legs to pave her way through the town of her delight. I found respite in her eyes and tied the knot with my lies. Disguised as the truth I bade her with hesitant glances to my bed but soon she rose to leave. I fiddled with my sleeve and fumbled for the words but she was gone. I remained at the house another day and left with my friends before the third day when the host's parents were to return. On my way to San Fran we stopped at the Badlands and it was to be the last morning I would see my friends who disappeared into the Montana sky. I shot down the road south to my final resting-place passing the Tee-tons, spires in the sky. I crossed the desert of Utah towards San Francisco crossing the Sierras into the Valley and across the bridge into San Francisco.
There, I spent the night in the front of my truck awaiting the next day with my pot I bought from a black man who ripped me off. I left town going north along the beaches of California to Trinidad where I spent one week. I met a gay guy there named Floyd and he gave me gas for the truck as I was running on empty. I picked up a hitchhiker that morning and dropped him off down by Eureka on my way back to town. San Fran was four hours down the road and I made it by the skin of my teeth.
I ate lunch with the other new arrivals. I met my roommate promptly and discovered him to be a Mexican. His mind was on girls and he proceeded to employ one girl in the tedious task of baiting me over the phone. She remarked how she liked me over the phone and I paid no attention. I was disbelieving of the fact that a girl had called me. She had no place in the heart I was to entail by the time I was finished with that school. She came to the room some nights with my roommate and she and he would sleep in the bed together. This was no new enterprise for me as I soon discovered the reality behind closed curtains was the instigation of a man in heat with a woman. She soon dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He left school soon after 'lInd the matter came to a close. I would leave him the room with his girlfriend and found the art of man: to break up love.
As I said, she left him and he left school. That winter, I left California to find my way back home to Africa. I did not see that room mate again. I returned to school and soon after I was besought by the entire promenade of girls in the upper floors. They desired me but I disdained them. I surfaced through the heart of my affairs meeting one girl who helped me buy gasoline when I was stranded on the road. It was early 1993. Her name is not important. I thought that she was the handmaiden of the Lord. I wrote her letters delivering them to her house. She came to see where I lived, in the dorms. She looked at pictures. She wanted me and I wanted her. She and I went to Alcoholics Anonymous together. Then, one night, I was at her house and she wanted to go to bed. She was going" to Mexico the next day. I declined. She left and this is where the mind bends.
Ah lalala ... in the darkest depths of Morder there lived a giant whose name escapes me from this day back to the present time and he had nostrils that spit fireballs. / am a fool to think he knew my name but he knew me from the time / was born and he knew my family. He knew my grandma. My grandmother had sent him to me. / sent him back. She sent him to me again. / did not realize it. / was going through life having masturbated my way through life and then this strife. To begin he was new to me. / became the stronghold of my own life. He knew my weakness./ was destined for power. He followed me throughout the streets of San Francisco./ ran the streets of San Francisco bare foot one night yelling, "/ love you:' He was my life now. That was the time / knew the girl. / had found the Lord. He was the perpetrator of the prince of darkness. He, the Lord, sent him to me. / met a man named Leonardo. He was my nemesis. At first he brought me to church. The holy Pentecostal church ofSan Francisco was to be my safe haven. / found the Lord there and forgetting my AA / became fanatic. / have found you Oh Lord! The fire of my hfe, the strife of my soul, the toll that tolls for me and the angel of the Lord in the heart of the matter before me as a vision in the church of our holy father, and with a wind he rushes over the ceiling of the outer room in the church assuaging the tensions felt in that particular AA meeting ... a vision come to life. By this time / had been through the entrails of my belief in the Lord swimming in the cacophony of the voices in my mind.The design spooked me when / realized the woman narrating her tale of woe from heroin addiction became frantic and passed out on the floor. / knew then that / would never serve another master in the years that / was living on earth. For this to happen / found a way through the maze of my heart and mind to the vanishing delight of my soul ... in Biology class they show us a devil's claw which / mistook for God's voice. Then the voice of my mother over the seas reaches me in distant San Francisco and / know for the first time / have entered a realm of common disbelief and now / know / must with all my heart follow the Lord through the streets of the world following him from the Psychology class where / professed my new found faith to the outer reaches of the universe where I might find my final rest. San Francisco was a revelation to me. She stood there by the computer in the library while I looked up the hook and said her name was Mary.
Then, after professing the Lord and saying that I was a prophet my father came to San Francisco, took me out to New York pizza on Haight Street and we decided that I should go with him back to New York where I might be put into the hospital and observed. We boarded the plane though I forget the plane ride and much of anything that has to do with the trip to New York and only reminisced on the wonderfully fantastic revelations I had during the past few months. I had quit drinking, for one, and I no longer smoked marijuana. The date I quit drinking was February 23, 1993.
In New York we went to see the doctor one evening and in the office I found myself put on the spot. I spoke harshly to the doctor and looked at him like he was a wolf trying to take away what I had found. Needless to say he wanted to put me into the hospital. I had told him that I would rip his heart out, tinker with it and put it back. Well there was more to life than speaking to doctors about my health and why would they waste their time on me. I was perfectly sane.
The night we saw the doctor, after we had gone home, my father and I, we discussed my fate. I reasoned with myself as to whether I would go to the hospital. My father became domineering, as father's are when concerned for their children. I held him for a long time. I wondered whether there was something wrong with me. In the next days I was checked into the hospital.
At first entry into the lobby of the Lenox Hill hospital I succumbed to my emotion and reiterated that I wished to be transported out of there. I remember the intake. The man spoke to me like I was a child. I was old enough to nan-ate my future but young enough to discover the truth of a moment.
In my mind I lost control. I was escorted upstairs into the psych ward and there they offered to give me pills. I said to the nurse, who offered, "you sound like Jim Morrison. 'Hey man you want pills, girls, grass ... I got jt all man.'" She left the room and then returned and put me into the locked room. There was a man at the front counter and he blurted out some eccentric idea about seeing the doctor. He said that he wanted to see the doctor to show him, the doctor, his painting. He became belligerent. He started banging on the counter. The stupid-fucking bitch that put me in here is there. I am the savior. I will save you. I am here my son. Yeah look at the lights flicker. The Lord is working in this fray. IfI stay here I might disable myself. I know full well the bitch hates me. Why do I have to remain here ? He is belligerent. Yeah you tell them. They're coming for me. They have closed the door: The man is being carted off by guards. He is a pain in the ass. Non-resistance ... the fucking liars say I resisted. They're coming for me. If you inject me you will be sorry. They are injecting me. They've injected me. I lay flat as they put me flat on the ground. I resisted nothing. NO resistance. The needle is in my ass. We shouldn't be doing this to him. Oh yes you should the big fat ugly ass bitch nurse says. Now, I want to punch them in the face. I lose control of my bowels. I piss in the room. I speak in tongues imploring the Lord who put me in here in the first place. I sleep.
In the morning I awoke to the sounds of nothing waking me just that I awoke from a sleep, a long sleep that lasted.sixteen hours. The clock behind the nurse's station that morning read 6:35. I knocked on the door. The door to my room was locked. No one noticed. I could see the nurse behind the counter. I knocked again. She noticed me. She came over. I asked her if I could leave now. She said that I would have to wait for the doctor. The doctor would be in. I decided to check out as soon as possible. No one was paying attention to me. I decided these people were Satan incarnate. They waylaid me and stuck me in this room and here I am not knowing the true punishment I was to embark on in the coming years. I still believed that I was a prophet of the Lord. I was brandishing my sword of truth and the nurses and orderlies put me into this room for a calming effect. I remained in the room for three days dressed in a gown they issued. On the second night the nurses asked me what I wanted. I replied that I would like some company. They placed a black man in the room with me. He saw the punishment I was being given. On that same night the nurses came and took away my Bible and notebook. The man in the room for company said for me to let them take it away. He believed that my being in the hospital was because of religious reasons, which reinforced the delusion. Finally, on the third day, they let me out of the room. I was to stay another eleven days in the ward.
Shown to my room off to the left side of the corridor I remained sleeping there for the next days before my release. A frightened man depressed and down said to me that he was afraid of holy men. Was I holy? He was my roommate. I met another man who knew the book of Jude by heart. I asked him to repeat it over and over. The book of Jude is about the lascivious state of dreamers who profess the word of God. I could not believe my ears. He was enchanting me. I asked him again to repeat the book by heart while I followed the text. He did repeat it as many times as I asked him to. One day soon my parents came to visit me. They entered the hospital ward and stated that I was being taken care of. My father was satisfied that I was receiving help. He sat at the table in the lunchroom and looked at me with concern. He wanted the shenanigans that I had committed myself to, to end. I wish I could have said the same for me. I was determined more than ever to release to full power of God upon the earth. I dared people around me to test it. The funny thing is I lost it. I lost the essence of what it meant to be a man of God. I was to learn some valuable lessons. The first lesson I learned during that hospital stay is submitting self to the brutality of others, meaning, humble thy self. I did humble myself and carried my load with a bowed head and discrete demeanor. They let me out within two weeks whereas they could have kept me for longer. One night, the other resident patients and I were sitting together and there arose an argument about Christ. I sensed a trick and left the seating area and went to bring tea to them. I poured the tea and by the time I arrived back the argument was over. To separate: myself from controversy was the aim of my life. I wanted to abandon everybody and go realize the Promised Land.
Another lesson I learned during my stay at the hospital was you couldn't trust anyone. The only one a man could trust was himself and his Lord. Little did I know that my Lord became enigmatic and hard to reach. I knew I had lost him along the way. My heart simply implied having lost the true love I felt. As it turns out this is circumstantial. I became interested in girls. I looked the nurses over saying to them how PJetb' one or the other looked. I knew I had to leave. I am going out of my mind but I won't show it.
The day I left I said that I couldn't wait to get out of there. A nurse overheard me and almost called the orderlies. I left that Friday morning and walked down Park Avenue and saw an old school mate. He was walking his Golden Retriever. I said hello and stopped to talk and then moved on. I don't remember the substance of the conversation. I was glad to be out and free. New York revolved around me like some distant sun and I was far away contemplating the life of an ingrate by leaving town without ever going home. However, I went home and upon arrival I received an old Bible that my grandmother had given to my father and my father was now giving to me. Inspirited on the cover was Jimmy Barnes. I now have a purpose.
I am searching for the truth. I want the truth. What happened to me? Why was I put into the hospital? Was what happened to me the truth hit across my face like an open hand or was I put under constraints to feel the pressure of the world on my shoulders? Do you know something about me? My father doesn't know about me. Why do you presume to know when I am alone in the plight of mankind and everyone else is searching for their ambition? Is it me who has faltered? Did I not touch that man in the park outside of city hall in San Francisco with the touch of love on his heart? Was it not love that I felt? Do you know anything about love? Why am I the only one who feels the true moment of when life crawls from the confines of a cage into the free air of life and love knowing full well the time is well nigh? Do you presume something about me? Do I not count for the entity of my life and the solace I receive from the angel of the Lord? But he has abandoned me. Why did he abandon me in mid stride towards the archangel's domain ? Life exists on two planes: the knowledge of self and the knowledge of other entities.
After the hospital I moved back to San Francisco and took a job painting the dorm rooms for the summer. I began to masturbate having so long gone without doing so and I felt guilty as hell for doing so. Then I met a girl in between times and took to sleeping with her and we were pretty good friends but by the end of the summer she left SF to go back home.
During the summer I took English class to further myself towards a degree and performed horribly receiving a C-. Some of my friends from the dorms tempted me by asking slighted questions as to whether I thought what I had found was true. I tempted them by saying is it not? New York was becoming further and further away. I remembered walking my rust girlfriend downtown in New York the day after I was released from the hospital. She was beautiful but she was behind me now. I wouldn't write to her. I remembered the concern my father had before I went into the hospital and I had fits to forget it. My mother bore the brunt of the exclamative words I used. I grew desperate and tried to join the Navy. I took my mother to meet the recruiter. Then I decided it would be better for me to go to Africa to retrieve from my parents what I thought they had taken away. I was a walking ghost. December came and I left San Francisco. As I turned the corner near my mother's friend's house I looked back and the white picket fence beside a house seemed to contain a spirit, which spoke to me. It said, "good-bye Jimmy."
I drove to Sun Valley in December of 1993, where Ernest Hemingway shot himself 33 years before, to see my family for Christmas. On the way I spent the nights in my truck on the side of the highway. Along Interstate 80 I spent one night at a rest area. In the morning when I woke up at seven the sun was just beginning to come over the hills. I climbed a hill across the fence into the wild lands of Nevada. I climbed to the top of the hill and just as I reached the top I noticed the sun lit the top of the hill like a candle. I was standing there looking over the snow-covered valley and the freeway when I heard yelps from some coyotes. I became frightened but noticed how the sun crept along the valley floor and dipped into the ravine where the coyotes yelped. I started back down the hill and made for my truck on the other side of the fence. I ran the last half-mile through the snow and ice wanting to be back into the realm of human life. I was in the wild noticing lor the first time that I was vulnerable to being eaten. I remembered once when I went skiing outside of Lake Tahoe I skied down the backside of the mountain and was lost but for the sound of the road in the distance. I set off for the road and on my way I saw a wolf trotting sideways looking at me go past on my skis. I emerged at the road through a summer camp for children and the cabins were clustered together on the edge of a frozen lake. On the day I climbed the hill I remembered the previous year and climbed the fence to the parking area of the rest area.
I drove all the next day and arrived in Sun VaHey, Idaho by that night. I slept in the cold of the back of my truck parked in front of a church. Both my surfboards were on top of the truck. I must have looked out of place parked in front of a church with California plates and surfboards on top in Sun Valley. I slept near a Christmas tree lit with lights for Christmas. The glow of the lights made me feel warm. I fell asleep. On the next day my parents arrived and we checked into the condo. Our condo was on the edge of a golf course. We knew Christmas was a time for jollity and I had bought a Santa Claus suit for my dad to wear. He was pleased with the idea. The day after Christmas day my sister arrived with her family. We celebrated Christmas after they arrived. The Santa Claus suit scared my niece but she enjoyed it and so did we. Along towards the end of giving presents my sister looks at me funny and my mother blurts out that it was from me, the Santa Claus suit.
In the next days I climbed one of the mountains around Sun Valley up behind our condo trudging through the snow in boots and reached a false top where there was a staff balanced between some rocks. I lifted it out and threw it down the hill and continued up. I rounded the side of the mountain and descended towards the backside of the hill. I saw deer tracks but could not spot the deer. A road lay up ahead and I followed it out of the wilderness to beside a tank containing gas and down the road towards the crossways. I hiked back to town and went into a bookstore. Just before I went into the bookstore I found a fifty-dollar bill and asked if it belonged to someone. A lady said it might belong to her uncle. So I said then buy me a book in this bookstore and we'll call it even. She agreed and I bought a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. On my way back to the condo, I read them. When I arrived back at the condo the folks had been wondering where I might be. I told them that I had climbed the hill out back. They simply stated for me to tell them before I did something like that again.
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