Voici mon secret

 

 

 “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

 “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

 

The conservative "go" years

 The 1950s were a curious cultural blend.  On the one hand, the decade was the era of the organization man and conservative fashion, epitomized by the man in the gray flannel suit, as well as the era of the stay-at-home mom and pleasant if predictable suburban life of Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave It to Beaver.

But the cars of that era, especially towards its exuberant climax, seemed to have been styled by people on drugs, all fins and wings and weird shapes. And chrome. Lots of chrome.  They were powered by giant V-8 engines -- the Cadillac offered a 500cid and the Lincoln a 460cid -- that seem like they could have powered World War II fighter planes.

And the music; I mean the music adults listened to, not rock'n'roll -- that was pimple music for teens -- was also far from conservative, but hip and swinging, like the Kirbystone Four's version of "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," rendered in their "go sound" -- new for 1958! -- or Bobby Rydell's finger-snapping take on "Volare!"  Somehow, it all fitted together: Bishop Fulton Sheen and Hugh Hefner, Bunny Yeager and Debbie Reynolds, Dwight Eisenhower and Jerry Lee Lewis, Edward Teller and Albert Schweitzer....

Well, maybe it did.  Willoughby!  Next stop Willoughby!

Things he says to me

"I was thinking that I like knowing that a guy complimented your ass." 

  "When I saw that guy trying to pick you up, I didn't get mad, I got turned on.   It arouses me to know other guys want you.  I can have you any time I want, and they can never even have a cup of coffee with you."

"You might not believe this, but whenever I know you're coming, I get excited.
I drop whatever I'm doing to be ready to be with you.  And when I see you I am just happy."

  "If  I may be honest and blunt, I think your breast size may be ideal.  Any bigger and I suppose they could cause some strain and get in the way."

 "Even when you are being snarky, you give me a raging hard-on."

Him: "I need my dose of Vitamin W."
Me: "What's that?"
Him: "Vitamin Wanda!"

"I think when it comes to sex we are very much in tune.  We both like the same things.  I'm never shy to tell you what I want you to do." 

"I used to worry a lot about you when you were in Afghanistan. I kept thinking, no filthy raghead is touching my Wanda."

"I have a stash of pics of you, a lot of them that I took when you didn't know.  I just like looking at you.  Sometimes when we are out together, even only grocery
shopping, I lag behind just so I can look at you and think I wish I had a girl like that and then I think hey I do and go up to you and slide my hand over your rump or hug you from behind and grab your boobs and you say cut it out!  But you smile."

"If you were the last person in the world, I'd be content with that.  I really do appreciate you, more than words can tell."

 "I bask in the memory of our times spent together, as I'm sure I will our future memories." 

                       "The thing is, I care so darn much for you even if at times perhaps it seems like I don't.  But God knows I do, and I always want to be here for you."

 "Wanda, you don't have to believe me, but there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about you.  And whenever I think of you, I ask God to watch over you.  You're far too precious to me to simply shun the times we've shared through good and bad, and, well...,  I should shut up now."

 

Old memories

A grandfather's jotted memories --

 

 

 

 (A division is four airplanes divided up into two elements of two airplanes): 

First combat:

"I rev'd my engine up to take-off rpm and manifold pressure, holding my brakes, and when I got the signal from Fly One I released my brakes and started rolling down the flight deck.  It's all as close to me as yesterday, the feel of the air and the sun, and thinking of all that lay ahead.  About two-thirds of the way down the deck, I popped my flaps and we floated into the air.
"I joined up with the rest of my division and we climbed to 25,000 feet.  I could hear over my radio, 'Bombers approaching from 270 degrees, 40 miles...bombers still coming from 270 degrees, 30 miles.'  And then, 'Flight of Zeros coming five minutes behind bombers, course 270 degrees.'
Finally the whole horizon filled with planes.  There were 56 of them, 26 bombers and 30 Zeros.  There were so many, and so near, that I couldn't really believe that they were enemy planes and that I was about to engage in actual combat.
"My division leader led us into a high-side run against the bombers, Type 97 Mitsubishis.  I'd seen the Zeros above and behind the bombers before we began our attack--painted brown with a big red ball on each wing--but I didn't notice them now, I only saw the bombers.  I selected one and opened fire at 450 yards which is a lot too far off.  But as I closed in I saw my tracers going apparently right in front of the wing, which means they were going right into the wing; when they seem to be hitting the wing, they're actually going behind it.
"The left engine began to smoke, not gradually, but with a big black puff.  I fired a long burst and the engine began to flame, then the whole plane was on fire--bing, just like that.  It just fascinated me.  The bomber had looked so big I didn't see how I could do anything to it.
I was watching the Mitsubishi fall when all of a sudden my whole windshield disintegrated right in front of me.  I felt a sharp pain in the right side of my head, and my left foot went kind of numb.  Glass blew all over the cockpit.  Something got in my eye.
"I knew somebody had me right, so I did a half-roll and got out of there, straight down for a couple of miles.  There was nothing behind me when I leveled off and looked things over.  There was glass all around me.  The bulletproof windshield was a mass of cracks.  My left eye was pretty bad and there was a slug of metal sticking into my left shoe.  The prop felt funny, too.  There were three bullet holes in it, I found later.
"I felt woozy but I found the ship and caught the wire and the deck crew helped me out of the cockpit.  In the rear of the plane were a bunch of six-inch holes made by cannon shells.  The radio equipment in the fuselage was all blown to hell.  Evidently a Zero had made a high-side pass on me."

He was patched up in sick bay and back on flight status after a night's rest.  One of the pilots in his division was shot down, bailed out, swam and treaded water for 48 hours before making it to shore on an island, where he was marooned for five days before being spotted by a passing flight of SBDs and picked up by a J2F.

The next day, another combat:

"I can remember every cloud in the sky as we climbed up into it.  We were intercepting two flights of nine bombers with 13 Zeros escorting.  At 27,000 feet we got off to the side of the bombers and began edging above them to make our pass when the Zeros dropped down on us.
I got separated from my division.  I was watching the Zeros coming down and not paying enough attention to where the rest of the boys were going.  I was too inexperienced.  I was too green to remember everything that had been hammered into our heads.
"Pretty soon I found myself scissoring with a Zero.  That is to say, he had the altitude to keep diving at me, and I kept turning into him, trying to stay behind and below.  We scissored five or six times, and every time I made a sharp, steep bank, I lost altitude.  Altitude is what pays off in an air fight, and this looked bad.  He forced me to keep making those quick turns to keep him off my tail, and with each turn my plane shivered and shook and lost altitude.  It was hell.
"He passed above me and did a steep wing-over.  I dived and started to climb.  It wasn't an intelligent thing to do, but I was lucky.  He couldn't quite get his guns on me.  Then he did the damnedest thing you ever saw.  He came down from above and behind, and instead of riding it out on my tail and filling me full of bullets, he let himself go too fast so that he went by me.  He should have dodged off to one side and got out of there, but instead of that the fool rose right up under my nose and did a roll.  What was he trying to do?  Maybe he thought I couldn't hit him if he kept his plane tumbling like that.  As a matter of fact, he was just making himself a bigger target.  I used a three-second burst, and he was dead before I stopped firing.
'"We had scissored all the way down to eight thousand feet--to show you how he had been driving me into the ground--but even eight thousand feet is a long way when you're looking down.  He made a splash no bigger than a porpoise.  Then he was just part of the soup."

The next day, the Japanese came back again:

"Vee after Vee of bombers came down on us, escorted by dozens of Zeros.  Our squadron CO told us to stay with them and fight, no matter what the odds were, no matter how bad the position might be.  That day we showed him we'd heard what he said.  We went after the bombers but the Zeros were up there watching us the way cats watch mice.  As they closed on us we turned into them head-on and they broke off.  I went after one and got him in my sight and let him have it, knocking a big puff of white smoke out of him. He rolled left onto his back and dove away.
"Then I found myself rising underneath and behind another Zero.  He did a split-S and I lost sight of him.  That is the trouble.  Things change so fast in the sky.  You have your man, you miss him, you lose him--and maybe you've lost the whole world and yourself along with it.  It happens while you're snapping your fingers a couple of times, in just that short a time.

"But I saw my Zero again, pulling up and heading northwest.  I poured wide-open throttle to it and went right after him.  I got above him, closing the gap a little more and a little more.  In the meantime he'd been doing S turns, and I kept sliding over so that he wouldn't see me.  Finally I got up to 20 yards--just like opening a door and walking into a room it was so close.  Then I fired the shortest burst I ever used, not more than 20 shots, but they were all smashing right home into him, and he blew up all over the sky--up there at 12,000 feet--and it was just like putting a stick of dynamite into a room.  I was hoisted up in my seat by the force of the explosion.
"I saw the pilot blown up 30 feet in the air.  The chute he had on didn't open fully and he dropped, the chute flapping above him.  Little pieces of the plane hung like leaves in the air.  I followed him down and watched him hit the water.  The shroud lines of the chute were holding him, and he was lying there as though asleep."

He landed back on his ship, was rearmed and refueled and launched again against another incoming bomber force, a division of four F4Fs against 18 bombers and six Zeros:

"As we climbed to 26,000 feet, far away among the clouds now and then we could see little drifts of planes fighting, like a whirl of leaves.   We attacked the bombers straight in.  I made my pass against mine, went under him, climbed up again, and while I was doing a wing-over I saw 15 more Zeros, a whole cloud of them.  It's hard to straighten out a fight, even when I try to remember every detail.  I recall asking over my radio for  a little help, but everybody was busy.  After that it all came fast, the Zeros were everywhere, taking punches at me.  I punched back, making one smoke and spin and another drop away in a ball of flame, but the rest kept coming at me.
"I dove on another one and was closing the range, ready to fire, when a Zero opened fired on me from behind.    Machine gun bullets and cannon shells shook my plane.  Two 20mm shells smashed into my cockpit, and the shrapnel from the bursting shells hit me in the right side and knocked my leg off the rudder pedal, which caused my plane to roll over on its back and start spinning.
" I pulled out of the spin at about 19,000 feet.  The Zeros hadn't followed me down and I was alone. I realized that I was wounded when I discovered that I couldn't move my right leg back to the rudder pedal.   I looked at it.  Shrapnel had torn up my thigh.  Two pieces had driven down into the muscle, another fragment had open a big gash.  I didn't see much blood then, and my leg was numb, not painful.
"The flying was not so good.  I had to lift my leg with my hand and put it on the rudder pedal.  So I called the ship and said I was coming in for an immediate forced landing.  Pretty soon they called back and told me to wait.  I made a circle of the ship and dropped my wheels and flaps.  Once more they called to  tell me to wait.  They said, 'You can't land.'  I simply said, 'The hell I can't!' And by that time I was on the deck.
"I don't know why they warned me off.  I didn't see any enemy planes around.  It still makes me mad to think of that voice telling me not to land when I was pretty fortunate to be able to get down without crashing.
"My plane was junk.  They stripped off a few parts that they could use, but the rest of it just went over the side."

 His wounds were severe enough that he was evacuated to a shore-based hospital to recuperate. 

I'm not a believer

 

Take a walk...

... through others' minds...

 “But as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.”
― Charles Bukowski  

 “The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.”
― Ross McDonald 

 “I went to the library. I looked at the magazines, at the pictures in them. One day I went to the bookshelves, and pulled out a book. It was Winesburg, Ohio.. I sat at a long mahogany table and began to read. All at once my world turned over. The sky fell in. The book held me. The tears came. My heart beat fast. I read until my eyes burned. I took the book home. I read another Anderson. I read and I read, and I was heartsick and lonely and in love with a book, many books, until it came naturally, and I sat there with a pencil and a long tablet, and tried to write, until I felt I could not go on because the words would not come as they did in Anderson, they only came like drops of blood from my heart.”
― John Fante

 “So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw...As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark”
― Quentin Crisp

  “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”
― John Green

 “One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea's cold flow
And man's dark soul.”
― Robinson Jeffers

 “I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago ― but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither ― I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

  “Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.”
― John Green

 “Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.”
― Horace Mann 

 “The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.”
― Rudyard Kipling

 “Don't you know who you love, Pudge? You love the girl who makes you laugh and shows you porn and drinks wine with you.”
― John Green

 “I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”
― Vladimir Nabokov 

 “The past was filling the room like a tide of whispers.”
― Ross Macdonald

 “No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

>

Good times...I've had a few....

 Well, it was fun while it lasted. All good things come to an end.  But we can remember them all, at least for a little while longer.  Just a little while longer.

Memorial Day

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

 Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~ Sara Teasdale 

 

Good-bye, LCpl Calvin Smith

 I was a CACO for a while.  Because of my educational background and training, I was expected to be especially good at it.  I tried.  It was hard, but not as hard as it was for those I visited to see me.  Not even close.  I thought about how I could make it easier for my relatives should a CACO visit them, but I never really thought it would happen.  No one ever does.

Les jours s'en vont, je demeure

Taking a look back.  The time goes so fast.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The quarter-century mark. One-third gone. At least. Most likely. Oh, well.
Actually, 2008 was a pretty good year for me, all things considered. I moved on. I acquired professional credentials. I am officially a scientist. Huzzah! I can teach at university level, should I choose to. I decided what I am going to do with my life--waste it! Haha! Not!
I have some more goals to accomplish, but I am on track for those.
I've decided to have..., to do...; well, those are for me to know because they involve only me.
But I have decided, after almost 3 years of not believing it, that I am happy, more or less, most of the time. I've also decided that, as my dad says, I'm lucky. He means it in the sense of being fortunate, maybe being blessed.
For one thing, I'm not stupid in the low IQ sense--I'm top 5th quintile, and pretty far up in that. I may lack common sense, but I ain't stoopud. I don't say that to boast, but to recognize it. What if I had an IQ of 95? One out of three people has no more than that. One out of two people has an IQ of 100 or less. That's just a statistical fact. So I should appreciate what my brain allows me to do. Four-year college degree? If you don't have an IQ of at least 115, you won't be able to earn one. Masters degree, even more IQ power needed. Ph.D? More still. I don't have to worry. Lots of people do, so they can't achieve goals that I can.
That doesn't make me a better person than they are. Just lucky. Like my dad says.
For another thing, physically, I am lucky, too. I am a natural Size 4. I don't struggle with weight problems. I'm not big-boned, heavy-set, chunky, plump. I don't have cravings for fatty foods or sugary foods. Nor am I really thin, flat-chested, bony. I'm just right in the middle. I don't have a lot of body hair. I might shave my legs a few times a year, mostly just for the heck of it. They don't really need it. I am naturally blonde, which seems to be a big deal, considering how many brunettes bleach their hair to look like me. Too bad for them the carpet doesn't match the drapes, lol. Nor do their eyes. Brown-eyed blondes? Oh, please! Again, I'm just lucky.
I don't have a problem getting pregnant. I've been surprised at how many women struggle with that. And I've decided that I want to have a child again. For a long time I swore never again. Not again would I make myself hostage to fate. But.... I shall.
What else? I could go down a long list. I'm an American, a Christian, heir genetically and culturally to Europe, the greatest civilization in the history of the planet. I'm not saying that to be superior to those who are not, but to remind myself I could have been born in Somalia or Afghanistan or... Luckily, I was not.
I was not born in poverty. I was not abused as a child. My parents took care to educate me and instill in me the work ethic, respect for learning and education, a love for nature, animals and the outdoors. They taught me...well, so much. Pleasure in reading, in music, in art, in history and science, in cooking, in making others feel good, compassion, empathy. Maybe I haven't made as good a use of these things as I could have. But I will!
Despite my times of doubt, I do believe in God and a universe created with a purpose. I am not a reductionist. How is that lucky? Well, lots of people don't believe life has a purpose or that there really is a God. They may say they do, they may even believe it, but by their actions it is clear that they do not. A person who in her heart of hearts believes life is without significance or value cannot be happy in the face of her on-rushing rendezvous with personal oblivion.
I have debated this point countless times. I have thought about it endlessly. I have my own personal experience with non-existence and felt the rush of wind from the wings of the Angel of Death. I have dealt with the deaths of those so close to me as to mean more to me than my own life. Without an abiding belief in God and Purpose, I would have stepped off long ago.
Oh, well, I digest....

 A couple  of responses:

"F" wrote:

If you believe in nothing, you have nothing, no goal, no ultimate purpose... no life.

I'm sure that you will make a great mother, and will raise a beautiful and well educated human being to be kind, decent, intelligent and respectful to the values of life and nature itself. Whoever the father may be will be a very fortunate person.

All of the things that you wrote about yourself in this entry, and a lot more, are the reasons of why I consider myself blessed to have known someone like you, and more importantly, to be able to call you my friend... a real friend! :-)

"D" wrote:

I wanted to say thanks for this blog entry. It is very uplifting and it’s wonderful to hear that you have found happiness in your life. That is a precious thing.

The thing that intrigues me about your intelligence is that many people with high IQs use their intelligence to belittle others, whereas you use it to help people and even sometimes go out of your way to hide it. That is something quite special. By the way, if you want a good example of irony, the British headquarters of Mensa is based in a place called Wolverhampton; a city of people with possibly the lowest IQ in the country!

 

 

Cómo Han Pasado los Años

How the Years Have Passed 

 

Uh oh...

 

Conversations with a Ghost

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I chat with her about as often as I do with anyone. I ask her questions. I even argue with her. She explains things to me, forces me to think about subjects I know little about. Every time I have a conversation with her she teaches me something.
She's my favorite aunt, no question about it. And one of my favorite personalities in all the world. But I have only the vaguest memories of her. She died when I was a small child.
No, I don't hold seances or channel her spirit.
But I do read her books. My dad inherited them after she passed away...I guess no one else wanted a bunch of old paperbacks...and I have been reading them for as long as I can remember.
The books are, for the most part, not ones I would have bought. Lots of politics and political philosophy. Lots of European history. Government. Economics. That sort of stuff.
My aunt was no mere passive reader. She was a margin writer. She commented on passages that struck her. And she underlined, starred, drew exclamation points and question marks. She wrote-in the definitions of unfamiliar words. The end pages of her books are covered with commentaries, summing-up thoughts, assertions.

She held no author in awe, even her favorites, jotting a snide comment here, correcting an error of fact there.
Once in a while she tucked in a letter she meant to mail later, but somehow never did. I discover these gems and read them with an eager curiosity, peering into a vanished life that I am more familiar with in some ways than any of my friends' lives.
Here's a letter I found slipped into a book about the Spanish Civil War. It was written in 1976. It's on very cheap, newsprint-like lined paper, written with a ball-point pen, red ink. I have no idea who the people named are or more than vaguely what the subject matter is--

Hi, Carlos,
Don't know where you are or when I can mail this but thinking of you. Reading Homage to Catalonia. From that as a taking off point got into some pretty hairy arguments Saturday.
What is a Trotskyist--what I think it is--(communism to succeed must be international)--then why was calling the POUM Trotskyist like a dirty word when they were called that by the communists (PSUC)?
Shirley's finance is a JackASS. He likes to argue but refuses to back up anything he says except with a 'trust me' or 'take my word for it.' Thinks he's a big something as he's an E-4 in NSI--air force intelligence I think-- I got fed up with some of his asinine statements, said 'Who the hell do you think you're kidding--don't think you've ever read a book--a newspaper or even seen a news program.' Blew my KOOL!
Sometimes I get so damn frustrated at how stubborn & stupid people are. He brought up something about the Mayaguase (Sp?) & was hoo-raying our govt. So I asked a question & asked him to give a yes or no answer & he kept saying he was answering but never did--he back-tracked to Hitler somehow. Felt like yanking his hair out!
Ye GODS! We argued from 8:30 to 12:30 & got nowhere.

It ends as if she intended to write more later, tucked the letter inside her book...and forgot about it.
I so love her spirit, her intensity of feeling, her passion. I can't imagine arguing politics for four hours, but I so totally get her frustration with ignorant, stupid people.
I wonder so much about her life. Whenever I have asked those who might know, I have gotten only vague replies. I used to think that was deliberate, but now I believe it is more likely because they don't know. What I do know is that she left home before she graduated from high school. That she had a stillborn child while she was in high school (or could it have been an abortion?--an unmentionable thing in those days). That she was married twice--the first, to a hold-up man who ended up in prison, being annulled; the second to someone everyone agrees was a bum and it didn't last. That she lived in Europe for some time, then in San Francisco and was in some way part of the beat/hippy scene. That she became a commercial artist.
Then she got cancer and died.
I have only the vaguest personal memories of her, and those may be confused with photos I have seen of her. In those she looks gaunt and strained, but seems to be always forcing a smile, being cheerful with a kind of look that says "Oh, don't mind me. I'm okay, really."
She always has a cigarette in her hand or is sitting next to an ashtray full of stubbed-out cigs.
She wears a pleated skirt, turtleneck, knee-high boots and a beret, her hair cut about three inches below her ears. In photos taken outside, she often has on a leather car coat and dark sunglasses.
She looks beautiful, like a young Catherine Hepburn, but a young, ill Catherine Hepburn.
I see echoes of myself in her. I am passionate about the things I care about. Someone recently pointed out to me that I don't suffer fools gladly. I hadn't thought about it, but I guess it's true. Just like my aunt!
I think about all the hours, the endless, tedious, frightening...doomed days she must have spent in hospitals--oh, do I know all about that!--and when I find in one of her books shakily underlined the passage, "It is sound instinct that warns people to keep out of hospitals...Even now doctors can be found whose motives are questionable. Anyone who has had much illness, or who has listened to medical students talking, will know what I mean...."; well, I feel such an affinity for her, such a longing to somehow say to her, "Oh, I know! I know!" I want to touch her hand, look into her eyes and say, "You and I--"
But she's been dead for 20 years. Twenty years. Technically, that is. Because for me, she is as alive as anyone else in my life; at least in a certain way. I know what she thinks--thought--about so many things. Her thoughts are still there in her books, written down fresh as they came to her, and when I come across them, reading the exact same book, it's as if she speaks to me, pointing something out, directing my thought where it might not have gone. Nobody else does that with me. Nobody reads what I am reading as I read it, commenting to me about it as I go along. It's a very intimate experience. Very real. Very much in the present.
So...how can she not be? How can she no longer exist? How can she have been consigned to oblivion before I even knew how to read? I refuse to acknowledge that.
I refuse.

 

Hope

Paean to a once and future country.

Wise man

“I like women who haven’t lived with too many men.

I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women
who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience.
There is a quality about women who choose
men sparingly;
it appears in their walk
in their eyes
in their laughter and in their
gentle hearts.
Women who have had too many men
seem to choose the next one
out of revenge rather than with
feeling.
When you play the field selfishly everything
works against you:
one can’t insist on love or
demand affection.
You’re finally left with whatever
you have been willing to give
which often is:
nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

Time Out

 Overheard: 

 "... and that's why I went to jail wearing a carbide lamp."

 When I was crossing the border into Canada they asked if I had any firearms with me.  I said, "Well, what do you need?"

 Q. What did Jeffry Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbitt?
A. Are you going to eat that?

  I'll tell you the meaning of life,
 but first you have to promise not to laugh. 

“In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take.”
—Adlai E. Stevenson

"A girl phoned me the other day and said, 'Come on over, nobody's home.' I went over. Nobody was home."
~ Rodney Dangerfield

A black guy and a gorilla go into a bar together. He says to the bartender, "I'd like a beer, and a gin and tonic for my girlfriend here."
The bartender says, "Oh come on, pal, we don't serve no gorillas in here."
So the guy figures he'll fix them, so he takes the gorilla home, shaves off all her hair, gives her a nice wig, lipstick, red dress, etc. He takes her back to the bar and says, "I'd like a beer, and a gin and tonic for my girlfriend here."
The bartender gives them the drinks and they go off and sit down and chat. The bartender turns to his buddy at the bar and says, "You know, that drives me crazy: it seems like every time a good-looking Italian girl comes in here, she's with a black guy."

"In Starbucks my dawg and me sat,
 ’Cause dat where de white womens at.
 We’d like to drink lattes
 While watchin’ de hottays,
 But a n—– just cain’t affode dat."
~ Desanex 

"In my sex fantasy, nobody every loves me for my mind."
~ Nora Ephron 

Just because he's deployed doesn't mean  I'm single.

 

“She was trouble looking for somebody to happen to.”
― Ross Macdonald

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”
― Charles Bukowski 

"When God created you lying naked in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying naked in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.”
― Charles Bukowski

 

 

Next Generation

Watching the ships sail away, Yokohama harbor, 1966.

I made a post about a Japanese woman my family knew who was born in Mukden and ended up working for the US armed forces Far East Network.
This is about her daughter, whom I mentioned in that post.
Well, she grew up as a fairly normal child of postwar Japan and graduated from what is called a commercial high school, basically a trade school, as I understand it, where she learned to type and take dictation and file.  That sort of thing.  After graduation, she went to work for a subsidiary of Nissan.  She was ambitious, and assumed that she would advance through company loyalty and hard work.  In the new Japan, with it's Franklin Roosevelt New Deal American-guided emphasis on equality and opportunity, there could be no doubt of that, she believed.
However, after several years of serving tea and smiling politely and being asked to entertain VIPs, she came to realize that no matter what the official line was, she could never be anything more than an "office lady," as Japanese termed women who worked in the corporate world.
She was not happy about the situation, but didn't know what to do.  Finally, an egregious episode of sexual harassment that her boss laughed off decided her to quit, an unheard of thing for someone working in a giant conglomerate like Nissan; you were part of the Nissan family and lived in Nissan-built housing, took vacations to Nissan-owned resorts, and, of course, drove a Nissan car.  In return you were guaranteed a job for life, with retirement on a generous pension at age 55.
She threw all that away and found a much lower-paying job with a small cosmetics company.  The reason she took the job was because they promised to send her to the United States as a demonstration model and sales representative.
The USA was the promised land, according to her mother, so she leaped at this opportunity.  She arrived in the States during the Bicentennial, and traveled to department stores everywhere from Raleigh to Minneapolis, Jacksonville to Pocatello.  You mention a city to her and she will name the department store she worked at.
Her contract with the cosmetic company was limited, however, and after it was up, she returned to Japan.
But she had seen a different world, one in which she saw women in charge of entire store departments, handling purchasing, sales campaigns, you name it. 

The Evangeline in the early 1980s.

The women did not defer to men, as far as she could tell, and it astounded her to see women order men about and get promoted above them.
She had to get back to America.  She worked a few more years at various jobs, saving every yen until she had enough to pay for study in the United States.   She flew to Los Angeles and found a room at the Evangeline, a women's residence near downtown and began studying English at Evans Adult School.
The world she entered was harsh and unforgiving, with no second chances.  For example, at the Evangeline, meals were served at certain times and if you wanted to eat, you couldn't be late.  Five minutes after the dining room doors were opened, they were closed and locked.  You could eat as much as you wanted, but you had to clean you plate completely.  You were not allowed to take any food out of the dining room, not even a cracker.  Proctors with hawk eyes watched  everything that went on.  You couldn't even talk too loudly without being chastised. She recalls another Japanese student who tried to take a boiled egg out of the dining room after eating breakfast, slipping it into her pocket to eat later.  She was caught and expelled from the residence. Gone by noon.
Absolutely no alcohol was allowed on the premises and anyone who tried to smuggle any in would be kicked out.
No men were allowed to enter the Evangeline beyond the lobby.  And then only if they had business, the mail man or UPS driver.
The women who lived at the Evangeline were either foreign students or old white ladies, each of whom had a story of why they had ended up there at the end of their lives.  None were good stories.
The Evans Adult School was equally harsh, the teachers demanding that you perform at your best and unwilling to accept less than that.  She particularly recalls a Miss Rosen, a bitter woman who had failed to earn a Ph.D., and now taught ESL to a motley collection of foreigners she made no effort to hide her contempt for.  She was constantly reminding her students that if she thought they were not sincerely trying, she would have them expelled, their student visas revoked, and they would be deported.  She hammered into them the fact that Evans was support by the taxes of American citizens who expected them to work hard and be successful in return for their education.
She remembers that two Chinese (perhaps Taiwanese) students were expelled at the order of their teacher, a Mrs. Yamamoto, because they had, in Yamamoto's words, "betrayed her," presumably by cheating. 
After completing her course of study at Evans, she attended Pasadena City College, intending to get an AA degree in bookkeeping.  She didn't think any higher than this.
She left the Evangeline and moved to South Pasadena, becoming an au pair girl for a well-off family.  They put her in the laundry room, next to the cat's litter box.  She slept on an inflatable camp mattress on the floor.  She cooked and cleaned, did laundry.  She also did the grocery shopping, being given a limited budget to do so.  Many days, the family ate all of the meals she prepared and she had nothing to eat.  Her weight dropped from 107 lbs to 95 lbs during her time with this family.
She had difficulty with her classes at PCC because her English was not up to college reading levels.  Sometimes she would spend two hours on a single page, going back over each sentence again and again, dictionary in hand, trying to grasp it's meaning. 
But eventually she improved, so much, in fact, that one of her instructors told her she should not settle for being a bookkeeper, but should get a four-year degree in accounting and become a CPA.
He recommended the accounting program at UCLA.  Unfortunately, just at that time there was some kind of professors dispute at UCLA and the entire accounting department left and joined what was then called Pierce College (now Cal State Northridge).  As a result of this, there was a waiting period of more than a year before new accounting students would be accepted.
She was, however, able to be accepted into the accounting program at USC.  To pay for this, she took a job as a book keeper for a Japanese firm in Little Tokyo.  Her hours there were very long, and she often didn't return home till after 2am.  Then she would do her au pair chores and prepare meals which the family could heat up for themselves.    This arrangement was not accepted and she was discharged.
She found out she was no longer the family's au pair when she came home from work one night and saw her belongs piled on the front porch and a note telling her to collect them and go.
For the next few weeks, she lived at her place of employment, keeping her belongings in a pay locker at the downtown LA Greyhound bus terminal.
When her boss found out he put an end to that.  She moved into a room at the Rosslyn Hotel next to skid row in downtown LA.  Initially, she paid $100 a month for the room, which swarmed with cockroaches and had no bathroom -- that was down the hall.  But then she got a job working the front desk and her room became free.  So she was working two jobs plus going to  USC full time.  Her weight dropped to 92 lbs.  She developed a chronic cough.
She did not own a car, in fact did not know how to drive, so walked or took the bus everywhere.  She shopped for clothes at used clothing stores, but usually nothing fit her; everything was too big.  So she would alter them herself, cutting and sewing while she manned the hotel front desk.
Despite all, she managed to graduate from USC with an accounting degree and also passed the state CPA licensing examination.  She applied for work at the Big Eight accounting firms, as they then were, one of which was run by a self-described USC mafia -- everyone on staff was a USC alumnus.  They hired her at a good salary -- a fabulous salary as far as she was concerned.  She was able to move into a studio apartment in a decent neighborhood, learned to drive at a driving school and bought a used Toyota Corolla.  She spent almost all her waking hours at work, the demands of her clients and bosses were brutal, but she was happy to have a real job working as hard and appreciated as much as her male colleagues.
After a few years, she bought a house in Burbank and a new Camry.  Then she was hired by one of her clients at a substantial increase in salary.  She had an expense account that was not closely monitored and a company car, a Buick Park Avenue. 
The company owned a number of restaurants at which she and her guests could dine for free -- Il Fornaio, Norwood, Johnny Rockets and several others.
She gained so much weight that she had to go on a diet.
As a weekend getaway, she bought a condominium in Avalon on Catalina Island, and a 27-foot Neptune sailboat.
After a few years, with a thorough knowledge of how to make money in business, she started her own company, which became quite successful.  She bought a house in Palos Verdes, drove a Lexus, sailed a 44-foot Pacific Seacraft yacht.  She traveled extensively, developed an interest in opera and bought season tickets to the New York Metropolitan Opera, vacationed in Europe to see operas there.  In short, she was successful, well-off and enjoying the good life.
As an example of how well-off she had become, her last business venture, something involving a Brazilian company, resulted in a personal loss of $4 million.  She was flat-out cheated by the Brazilians, as she tells it, and has nothing good to say about that country or its people.  "All they have is credentials and pride!" she says, though I'm not really sure what that means.  She says she was robbed seven times on trips to São Paulo and had to ride around in an armored limousine.
She was able to sell her investment in the Brazilian company and recover her loss, but then decided it was time to retire.
So these days she tends her flower garden at her home, enjoys the view across the ocean to Catalina Island, and talks about her life with interested visitors.
She loves America and thinks it's the greatest country in the world -- "this country is so generous!" she declares with honest emotion -- and is contemptuous of anyone who has a bad word to say about it.  She despises American blacks and thinks they should be "dealt with in some way."  She says they should be ashamed to behave as they do and doesn't understand why they are not embarrassed by their criminality and parasitism.  She likes Mexicans, admiring their hard work.  She acknowledges they aren't all that bright, "but that doesn't matter," she says, "because they are not ashamed to work at whatever job they can do, no matter how hard it is.  They will be successful in this country."
She doesn't like Chinese, saying they cheat and are dirty, but her best friend is a Chinese born in Japan, who now lives in Monterey Park in Los Angeles.  She points out that although this person was born in Japan she is still regarded as Chinese by Japanese and she could never become Japanese, but had she been born in America she would be considered just another American.
Would she, herself, have liked to have been born in America?  "Yes!"  Why?  "Because then my English would be good."
Those days at Evans and the Evangeline still live in her mind.  As do her days as an au pair.  She can't stand the sound of a washing machine and has her laundry sent out.  She visited Japan recently to claim her Japanese social security benefits, a pitifully small amount but she earned it and would have it, and visited her brother, who lives in a modest apartment in Chiba.  To her, everyplace was crowded and ugly, everything was small, even yogurt cups, overpriced and not as good as anything in America.  She left earlier than she had planned to because everywhere she went reminded her of why she left.  Her only regret that she wasn't able to leave when she was 10 years younger. 

Newsman

One of my older relatives was what he called a “newsman” for 40 years, working on a city daily. He never went to college let alone got a degree in Journalism or English. He planned to be a printer, eventually have his own print shop, so he learned touch-typing in high school. 

After high school, he took a job as a printer's apprentice during the day, and worked the night shift at a local gas station.  There was a cot behind the register and he dozed there between the infrequent customers, usually long-haul truckers.  He ate midnight pie-and coffee at the diner across the street and became friendly with the night waitress, who had gone to the same high school, but quit when she was 16 to go to work.  On her break she would walk over to the gas station and they would entertain themselves on the cot.

His first published news story.,

When he was 19 he got his draft notice.  Because he could touch-type,  the Army made him a clerk/typist and shipped him off to Viet Nam, where he was assigned at first to typing up assorted paperwork, then assigned to the division newspaper, a job he found interesting and enjoyed.  Also it was perfectly safe.  He spent his off-duty hours smoking Park Lanes, a heroin-laced local brand of cigarettes, and hanging out at the local steam-and-cream, a sort of massage parlor/steam bath staffed by pretty young local girls who gave expert handjobs and, I assume, provided other services as well.  He went on R&R to Australia and spent most of the time there in a brothel.  All in all, he had a great time, and was glad to have served in the army and been sent to Viet Nam.

When he got back to the States, he saw a help-wanted ad for a printer at a newspaper and applied, but while he was waiting a harried-looking man asked if he was there about “the job” and he said yes, and after a brief look at his resume, from which he only seemed to have noticed that he had written for a newspaper and served in Viet Nam and apparently assumed he was a stone-cold killer, he was hired — but not for the printer job, rather as a police beat cub reporter, the man remarking to him, "You've learned what the world is really like so you can handle cop world." He was a bit surprised but took the job because he needed one. He did, however, explain to the editor who hired him that he didn’t know the first thing about being a reporter, going out and getting news.  He had only written up information provided to him.  The editor replied, “Kid, you can learn everything you need to know to do this job in three months. If you can’t, I’ll fire you.”

And he did learn — nut graphs, pyramid style, knowing no one reads past the jump so put favors to sources back there, have at least two independent sources for every statement of fact, have a fat Rolodex full of reliable sources, snitches, gossips and blackmailers that you keep in a locked drawer, share your opinions with your bartender not your readers, never use a two-syllable word when a one-syllable word will do, Democrats are corrupt, Republicans are naive, cops don’t give a shit about anybody…and so on.

He discovered that covering the police beat was far more exciting than what he had been doing in Viet Nam.  He had a police scanner in his car, which prominently displayed a "Working Press" decal on the front windshield. He was right on the scene at accidents, fires, crimes of all sorts.  One of the first crimes he covered was a bank robbery.  He interviewed everyone he could think of and put together a good, fact-filled story that his editor complimented him on.    But an FBI agent called him, curious and somewhat suspicious about how he had gotten so much detailed information.  Apparently the FBI, supposedly specialists in bank robbery, had only a copy of the police report and hadn't done any on-scene investigation.

And so it went, year after year, as he moved on from police reporter to political reporter and columnist.  For a while he even had a commentary slot on the TV station owned by the newspaper, discussing local politics.  When he retired, his last column was a thank you to the local draft board for tapping him on the shoulder.  Being drafted, he wrote, was the greatest thing that ever happened to him except for marrying the night waitress across the street from the gas station, which he did when he was mustered out of the army.  They were married for 50 years.

Testing me

I detect a pattern...

 

I don't know what a "tradesperson" is. It sounds British.  But I ain't no tradesperson.  Totally not, señor.