It's becoming clearer & clearer

that most of the girls I really give a shit about

don't really give a shit about me.

Which isn't to say that they aren't kind

or that they don't care about me.

Most of them are.

And most of them do.

But come on,

let's face it:

I'm not looking for kindness & caring.

We all know that.

The Return

Tomorrow morning, I will begin driving back to Washington from Georgia.  10 days, 9 nights on the road.

Click here to check out a map of my basic route--all the major overnight stops, none of the minor details.

To all my Georgians: I can't begin to express how sad I feel about leaving.  I miss you already.

To all my Washingtonians: It's been so long!  I look forward to seeing you all soon.

To Everybody: I love you.

Because I know the feeling, even if I don't feel it now.

IT'S RAINING IN LOVE

by Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,

but I distrust myself

when I start to like a girl

      a lot.

It makes me nervous.

I don't say the right things

or perhaps I start

       to examine,

             evaluate,

                   compute

       what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"

and she says, "I don't know,"

I start thinking: Does she really like me? 

In other words

I get a little creepy. 

A friend of mine once said,

"It's twenty times better to be friends

      with someone

than it is to be in love with them." 

I think he's right and besides,

it's raining somewhere, programming flowers

and keeping snails happy.

      That's all taken care of.

                   BUT 

if a girl likes me a lot

and starts getting real nervous

and suddenly begins asking me funny questions

and looks sad if I give the wrong answers

and she says things like,

"Do you think it's going to rain?"

and I say, "It beats me,"

and she says, "Oh,"

and looks a little sad

at the clear blue California sky,

I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time

       instead of me.

[Stuck in my head tonight: "Act Naturally" by The Beatles.]

Dye a log.

"See, I learned early on that it doesn't pay to be a good person.  There's a line in Catch-22 that reads, 'The Texan was generous, good-natured, likable.  No one could stand him after three days.' Well that's not it exactly, but it's something like that.  But it's true! The more good a person is, the quicker everyone gets sick of them."

"You've read Catch-22?"

"Yeah.  Three times.  Why, are you surprised?  You think I'm dumb or something?"

"No, I don't think you're dumb.  Take it easy.  But yeah, I'm a little surprised.  You've just never really struck me as, uh, bookish."

"I've only read the first half.  That line is from the very first chapter, actually.  But I have read the first half three times.  That part was true, for what it's worth."

"Okay.  So maybe I was right about you not being much of a reader."

"Half-right, I guess. [laughing] But you get my point, right?  About people getting sick of good people more quickly than they get sick of the Average Joe?"

"Yeah, I think I do.  It's sort of like the whole 'nice guys finish last' thing.  But raised to a more universal level.  Really ground-breaking shit. [laughing]"

"Yeah. [laughing] Exactly.  Nice guys, good people, finish last because no one can stand to hang around a person who is so obviously better than everyone else.  Not that all good people advertise their goodness, or even try to be good.  They just can't really help themselves. I mean, goodness is rarely viewed as a negative thing.  For obvious reasons.  But let's be honest, it gets annoying."

"Even if someone can tolerate excessive goodness, if they don't find it annoying, a person who constantly does the right thing is inherently predictable.  And predictability is always boring.  Not to mention that hanging around with a good person makes you look bad by comparison.  Nobody wants to come off looking or sounding like a dick just because the dude standing next to them happens to be a goddamned saint!  It's not fair, you know?"

"I don't mind looking like a dick.  Not one bit.  Sure, there are pitfalls, but in the long run the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.  Think about it.  We're both pretty nice guys, all things considered.  But if we didn't pull some asshole moves every now and then, we'd be plain old boring annoying good guys.  After three days, no one would be able to stand us.  

Good people have it way harder than we do, man.  Mild dickishness is a blessing in disguise.  You can quote me on that."

"You're absolutely right.  And I will quote you."

"Word.  

Thank you."

Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

I finally finished reading Tree of Smoke last week. Took me long enough (I'm ashamed to admit that I tend to be a pathetically slow reader). Tree of Smoke is the latest novel from Denis Johnson, who is probably my favorite "active" writer. Simply put, I believe ToS to be a great novel, worthy of a significant devotion of time and study; a big part of me felt ready to start reading the book again from the beginning as soon as I had read the last word (I didn't).

While reading, I found myself underlining and dog-earring noteworthy phrases, sentences, and passages throughout the book. Sometimes the selections expressed ideas which piqued my interest but, more often than not, I simply liked the way the words read. Johnson really has a way with language; there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in reading the way he strings words together, even before you've made sense of what it all means.

By the way, the book takes place during the Vietnam War. It's not about the Vietnam War, though. Not specifically, at least. Of course much is said about the war, but ToS isn't really a war story. Arguably. Anyway, the context is important.

---

In fact he was no longer persuaded that blood and revolution made useful tools for altering the concepts in a person's mind. Who said it?--probably Confucius--"I can't beat a sculpture from stone with a sledgehammer; I can't free the soul of a man with violence." Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.

"Get in there. Have intercourse with snakes. Eat human flesh. Learn everything."
"That's pretty broad."

Dickens called human hope a thing "as universal as death."

He busied himself recovering to the third dimension the flattened cardboard boxes.

"It ain't never tomorrow, not in this fucking movie. Never ain't nothing but today."

...the roosters alone on neighboring farms began to scream like humans...

"You got one of them crawly-caterpillar mustaches."

She looked magical...

[A]round them loitered ducks and chickens, huge water buffalo, fawn-colored, starved-looking Brahman cattle, bag-of-bones ponies, all behaving as if war were impossible.

"Be alive."

"We can't win like this. Our young foot soldier this morning phrased it correctly. This shit ain't funny no more. This shit is a mess. This shit has got to stop."

"What's this now--no cigars?"
"Some days they taste a little scummy. You still don't smoke."
"No."
"Don't start." He smoked. "It's a war, Skip."
"I understand."

They threw hand grenades through doorways and blew the arms and legs off ignorant farmers, they rescued puppies from starvation and smuggled them home to Mississippi in their shirts, they burned down whole villages and raped young girls, they stole medicine by the jeepload to save the lives of orphans.

James leaned close and looked down into the sarge's eyes. Eyelashes shellacked together by tears, radiating out in a burst, as in a child's drawing. Beautiful blue eyes. If they were a woman's you couldn't stop looking at them.

"Don't be smart about it. The Holy Spirit's been battering away at the souls of the men in this family for generations. But do you think he's ever made so much as a dent?"
"Yeah--you know what? Maybe the Holy Spirit ain't so holy."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"You been to Oklahoma, ain't you, and Arizona. And that's all."
"What do you mean by saying that?"
"I don't know. Just you need to get around a little more, before you start talking about the Holy Spirit."
"James, do you go to church?"
"No."
"James, do you pray?"
"To who?"
His mother began to weep.
"Woman, let me tell you about the Holy Spirit. He's crazy."

He dreamed a great deal each night. It felt like work. Sleeping made him tired.

"I don't want home leave."
"Don't you want to see home?"
"This war is my home."

"There's no shame in hating, son, not in a war."
"I ain't your son."
"Forgive the presumption."

The rain stopped. Across the road in front of a small house a young woman played peekaboo with a child just walking, who lurched on tiptoes while a slightly older sister danced a solitary improvisation, with sweeping, parallel gestures of her arms, all three of them smiling as if the world went no farther than their happiness.

"I said I wouldn't mind," she said, and they commenced with an awkward kiss.
"Mr. Benét, do you have any wine?"
"I do. Thank God, I do. And half a fifth of Bushmills."
"Sounds like a party," she said, and laid two fingers lightly on his forearm. Taking the fingers in his hand, he led her to the double-sized bed, where he put to use what he'd learned from Henry Miller's daring passages, from small obscene photographs, dorm-room bull sessions. As in the time in Damulog, they didn't speak. Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other. As she'd said, she didn't mind, and at the very last part she gazed upward at something on the ceiling and cried out. And for an instant he thought, I am James Bond, before he dropped again into gray doubting--Artaud and Cioran, the dog, the weather, the point of it all, waiting for contact with a supposed double agent, the thing he'd been brought here nearly two years ago to accomplish. And it was folly. The wild-card operation and the war itself--folly on folly. And this woman beside him with whom he'd just made love, perspiring like a handball player.

"Then listen to my grandmother. She always told us, Don't scatter your kindness in the forest. Plant them where they'll grow and feed you."

With the side of her foot, she kicked the dirt into the whole, careful to get as little as possible on her sandal. Her husband stared at this operation as if wishing he could grow tiny and throw himself in.

The double had arrived.

Skip watched the road beyond the gate. Not thinking about is mother at all. He supposed he'd think about her later. He couldn't predict the order of the these emotional events, his mother had never died before.

"I know from experience that life is suffering, and that suffering comes from clinging to things that won't stay."

"Uncle Ho won't catch us sleeping! We are absolutely thoroughly prepared for one year ago."

People die when you're thinking of someone else. That's the way of it.

When Sands learned of it he was out behind the villa watching three young boys harry a water buffalo from its rest in a mudhole across the creek. [...] A woman, their mother, someone in authority, appeared from the blossoming bougainvillea above them and tempted the beast with a swatch of greens, and like some geologic fact it developed massively out of the ooze.

And I thought, well, that is a poem. A poem doesn't have to rhyme. It just has to remind you of things and wring them out of you.

The King of Cao Phuc. Psy Ops. Labyrinth. And the Tree of Smoke.

Fest missed his family altogether. And why not?--the old man's death had made him mawkish and philosophical. At first the news had rocked him, but he'd quickly adjusted to a loss so long expected. A few days later sorrow attacked him again as he realized the old man was still dead. As if some part of him had believed his father could die and later one could visit him and talk about it.

"Skip, you're not expected to behave when being questioned by the enemy. We're not the enemy."
Skip said, "'Enemy' is no longer a term I'd use in any case. Ever."

James said, "You took a suicide run."
"Yeah. Sure did."
"I been on a couple runs like that."
"Yeah."
"Hey. You still got your gun? You want me to shoot you?"
The man looked dapper in a tweed sort of sports jacket over a thin beige sweater, pale blue pajama bottoms, and flimsy cloth house slippers. He took a reflective drag on his cigarette. "I left the gun at home," he said.

At the edge of a burning field once he'd found a dead dog with newborn pups at her teats, and he'd taken the minuscule beasts home and tried to nurse them from an eyedropper. That's who he'd been once.

--read until his focus loosened and the lines of text divided into duplicates and floated on the page.

"Unwrinkle your soul, man. You ain't dead."

The men hooted encouragement while he tied his laces and as he climbed the path and until he was out of sight watched him possessively, as if they'd fashioned him and sent him forth.

The letter comprised several--many--handwritten notebook pages folded around a four-by-six snapshot: dozens of people and their wild miscellaneous luggage surrounding a Filipino jeepney with one of its rear wheels removed. Every face smiling, every chest expanded with pride, as if they'd just brought down the vehicle with spears.

"Memories used to come like beestings, ouch, out of nowhere, but now they don't come. But sometimes I get such an urgent, this urgent--feeling."
"I see...Or no, I don't."
"This fist just grabs me by the heart and yanks at me like a dog telling me, 'Come on, come on'--"
"Well, I guess that's, that's--well--understandable, in a way. And--"
"I don't know you well enough to talk like this, do I?"


[No song today, I'm sorry to say. My mind is all muddy with the written word now. Sorry.]