Keith Richards, Medicine Man

Physician, Heal Thyself!
-- Jesus Christ

Given that the Stones have always tried to trump the Beatles--recall that John Lennon once blasphemed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ--it shouldn’t be surprising that in a recent interview with GQ magazine, Keith had this to say, “Apparently, I do have an incredible immune system, I had hepatitis C and cured it myself.”

Speaking of Keith, many channels have been airing the Rolling Stones’ “Rock and Roll Circus” of late. Here’s my thumbnail critique. Jethro Tull, a band I wasn’t that crazy about, open the show and, arguably, “Song For Jeffrey” provides the best performance of the evening.

Next come The Who. Here is British pretentiousness in all its glory. Long before “Tommy” The Who had flirted with the concept disc idea on “A Quick One While He’s Away.” Many of the British invasion bands were very much influenced by the British Musical Theatre music of the late 19th century, Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, for instance. One thinks of songs like the Beatles, “When I’m 64,” the Kinks “Sunny Afternoon,” and The Who’s “Happy Jack,” to name a few. Also consider “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Octopus Garden,” two of the worst songs ever written. Suffice it to say The Who do not acquit themselves well in this film. Never being a Roger Daltry fan, I had only to hear Pete Townshend sing to understand why Daltry was the lead singer.

Marianne Faithful can’t sing, she must have had other talents, and we’ll leave it at that.

Taj Mahal is cool, and it’s a chance to see some rare footage of Jesse Edwin Davis, Carl Radle, and Jim Keltner.

Then come the Dirty Mac Band. I’m unsure of whether Clapton is on speed or Heroin, since he variously looks paranoid and sedated. Mitch Mitchell and Keith Richards hold it down nicely, as well they should with Yoko caterwauling like a dog hit by a car while this overplaying and under-amplified Israeli violin dude, Ivry Gitlis, chimes in with his cat-in-heat high seriousness. “Yer Blues” is not one of my favorites. It’s a classic case of trying to gild the lily by dressing up an American blues riff in the cloak of pseudo originality.

Then come The Stones. While the last 4 songs are from “Beggars Banquet” and “Let it Bleed,” they open with “Jumpin Jack Flash.” The song is quintessential British rock and roll. It’s a gas, gas, gas. “No Expectations is interesting in that Brian Jones (note the lobotomized glaze) plays slide guitar on a Gibson Firebird, while Keith plays the big Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar. It’s cool to see a side of the Stones that has rarely been filmed. For me, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” highlights why Mick Jagger is so influential as a front man. In retrospect, his shamanistic, tenor howl at the song’s end, and convulsively rhythmic pagan dancing throughout, conjures up the ghosts of sixties decadence at its high point—compare Mick’s romantic delivery of “Sympathy with the Devil” with the Maysles brothers’ 1970 footage (Gimme Shelter) of the hollow little man who sings this three years later at Altamont (note the psychopathic stares of the so-called Hell’s Angels bodyguard). But getting back to Jagger’s performance in “Circus,” he reminds one of Jim Morrison, Iggy Stooge, Joe Cocker, and Arthur Brown all rolled into one electric persona. When he rips off his shirt, he reveals the kind of manic, tattooed, anorexic arrogance that many bands would later emulate, but few would achieve. As with The Who set, Richard’s attempt to carry a tune on “Salt of the Earth” provides ample evidence of why Mick does the singing.

While watching the close-ups of Mick, I was struck by his perfect teeth. I thought the Brits conformed to the stereotype set by Austin Powers. I can only surmise that dental tourism began when those British invasion groups stopped on a secret island on the way over, perhaps Bermuda, and had their choppers overhauled.

WARNING! Weird Fiction Zone

On another side of town, at first light, snow began falling lightly, like lazy mayflies on dusky summer evenings. Above the bright orange ribbon where the lake meets the sky iron gray clouds form a leaden backdrop for the brownstone gothic cathedral. Had it been any darker Cindy would have stayed in bed. This time she got up, dressed and sat down in the bentwood rocker where she could see out the window. She was a tall, willowy young woman whose thin blond eyebrows gave her the look of someone ten years older. Her faraway expression suggested that kind of intense insecurity that produces focused inattention. On her right were stacks of books related to horseback riding and gardening. On her left, record albums with names like, Moondog, Melanie and Blodwyn Pig.

Ignoring the snores of her roommate, she stared out at the first streaks of snowy dawn, waiting patiently for the world to come into focus. The dorm window was her imaginary portal on what should be. How many times had she dreamed it could whisk her from this lonely place, this forlorn backwater, and deliver her to the comforts of home and friends. During the first weeks at school she would often skip her classes and gaze out the window, picturing the people and places from her childhood: the patch of snapdragons by the Raisin river, the Black Walnut stump where the morels grow, and the corridor of maples that ushered in her mother's appearance at the bus stop.

Cindy missed Southfield. It wasn't just the milder weather, the things to do, or her family and boyfriend; it was the feeling of connection with where she grew up, her place of origin, that psychic location that somehow defined her. "Mom, I'm coming home for the weekend. I'm leaving late Friday afternoon and driving straight through. I should be there at 1:00 AM." Between deep drags on her Pall Mall, Cindy's mother cautioned her daughter to be extra careful on the drive. "I've been listening to the weather reports on the radio. They're calling for heavy lake effect snow along the lake Superior and Michigan shorelines. US2's gonna be treacherous. The bridge might even be closed." "Don't worry mom, I know how to drive in the snow." There was an awkward pause, that silence that says nothing but anticipates the worst. "Besides," Cindy continued, "I just got new snow tires and put 100 pounds of rock salt in the back seat," as if these reassurances could ease her mother's fears.

Three hours later, while Cindy was turning off of south 117 onto east US2, the Bridge authority was weighing the possibility of closing the bridge. Cindy was hopelessly behind schedule.

Driving along the northern coast of Lake Michigan can be a pleasurable experience. It can be scenic even in late Fall, but not that day. The combination of wind and waves pounding the U.P. shore of lake Michigan had turned US2 to a sheet of black ice. The digital clock in Cindy Pluehaar's Bug read 12/16/71.

"It'll be horrible after Naubinway," Cindy thought. Even worse, she was out of smokes and the cassette didn't work. The stations she could pick up were either fading in and out, or too corny to listen to. "Following Hits for the Mrs.' we'll have the Mackinaw County on air auction coming your way. Neighbors, this is your chance to get rid of that used Kerosun or old refrigerator in the garage, and make money to boot!" Cindy frantically twisted the knob. It was either the auction or static. She snapped it off.
East of Brevort, just as she drove onto the Cut River Bridge, a hazy figure suddenly appeared in the road. "Who in their right mind would be out on a night like this, much less on a deserted stretch of two lane highway," she thought. She remembered the story of the Good Samaritan, and how virtue was its own reward; not consciously of course, but as internalized reminders that acts of kindness are measured by what you do when no one is around. Violent gusts gave the trees the appearance of freezing sirens, sadly terrified, as if trying to change what fate holds for all things living or otherwise. The Bug swerved as she slowed to stop. The man got in the car.

"Whew. It's cold out there. Thanks for picking me up," the stranger rasped. Suddenly Cindy was afraid. Almost simultaneously, she blurted out that she would only be going as far as the bridge. She lied. "That's far enough," he said with an ominous air of uncertainty. "My girlfriend works the information booth on the downstate side and I told her I would meet her at midnight." Struggling to disguise her terrifying helplessness, Cindy lit a cigarette and tried to assure herself that there was nothing to those hitchhiker stories she had heard while growing up. She made a miserable attempt to deny the reality of what was happening by imagining crackling campfires on summer nights at Burt Lake.

"Hmmm, a Saint Christopher medal, you must be Catholic," the man said. "That's good, if you're ever in an accident God will protect you. God's good like that. Isn't he? Hearing these words, the flesh at the back of Cindy's neck began to creep, that tingling sensation that only comes when the perceived danger is real. "Oh no," she thought. This can't be happening. It isn't real. "I can drop you off right at the booth," she said. "Be nice, cooperate," she thought to herself. "Our worst fears usually amount to nothing more than imagined threats," she thought. Again came the rasp, "We need to put our fate in the hands of God...I'm sorry, what was your name? Leslie, Leslie Franklin," Cindy said somewhat delicately. "And yours?" "Gary" the man said. "Gary what?" Cindy said. "Gary Phillips," he shot back coldly. "You know, John Lennon said that God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I like the Beatles. My favorite song is "A Day in a Life." I can read the news, but I've never been that lucky man who makes the grade. Do you ever pray, Leslie?

12/17/71: "It's funny how one learns to recognize human fear. It doesn't smell; but it's just as tangible. It's all about adrenaline, really very scientific. Her offering me a cigarette and trying to act cool, that was funny. Like she really cares what kind of music I like. I have two rules about that: I hate small talk, and it's all small talk. I like pain. It's all I can relate to--at least according to my therapist. Dr. Marcia says that we're each responsible for the pain we inflict upon ourselves. She says it is important that we care about others, but that ultimately this concern is secondary to personal responsibility. She says I'm mainly responsible to myself. It's the American way. If I care about myself everything else will fall into place. Then I'll be O.K., I'll be happy. Well, I need pain to be happy. For me pain is normal. When I'm cruel, my inner child is at peace. Like the time I put the cats in the dryer. Seeing them clawing to get out was thrilling, funny. And what's funny makes me happy. Isn't happiness our right? Shouldn't we all seek happiness? And aren't we all responsible for our own happiness. Happy is good. That doesn't change. The only thing that shifts is our priorities."

Hail Kevorkian! and Attend to the Walrus, Sir!

MUSIC

Dear Walrus Faithful:

Allow me to unpack the Upfront & C. e-mail some of you Walrus fans may have seen on my blog. While I am amenable to a reunion, and I will only speak for myself, I doubt it will happen. Philosophical differences are at the heart of the problem. The question of whether aesthetics or nostalgia should rule the day presents a dilemma as intractable as it is silly, or perhaps better, foolish. Is this one-week of the year an individual forum or a collective celebration? Regarding the former, the need to express one’s creative side is important, whether it be writing arcane thematic pieces that challenge the listeners’ sense of time, or penning personal torch songs that tell of lost love and dead flowers. As to the latter, the gathering of former band mates and their supporters has a nostalgic value unrelated to talent or creativity. My position is this, since many of us rehearse regularly with our own bands during the other 52 weeks of the year, the short week of the Walrus gig may not be the time to overwhelm the audience with our respective genius. It’s not just about us, it’s also about those fans that have loved and supported us.

One of the sticking points in getting together has to do with the status of French and me. I've been deemed worthy, but only if I abandon the notion of playing the guitar and move to bass. Perhaps the fact that I can sing lead, as well as play bass, makes me the choice, and Kim the odd man out. Who Knows? Suffice it to say, the issue here has less to do with Kim's abilities than Mike's disdain for my guitar playing. My view is this, technique is all well and good, but an instrumentalist must also have passion, this is what connects a musician with the audience. Without this connection, what's the point? Playing that lacks passion is soulless, drab, and mechanical, and perhaps worse, uninteresting.

Since I’ve only heard from one band-mate that Kim should be excluded, I can only assume this sentiment is shared by other members. Further, it would seem disingenuous (a fancy word for gutless) to have an extended phone conversation with French in the fall and not tell him the band would do better without his services. Those of us who don’t want to play with French should have the integrity to tell him to his face. If the reunion were about playing together on a regular basis, individual talent would be an issue. It is precisely because it is a once a year gathering of old friends, and not a reflection of my colleagues’ musical abilities, that I enjoy doing it.

Since I cannot in good conscience trade on the Walrus name in securing a gig, I’m thinking about being up front with Upfront. To that end, I’m kicking around the idea of assembling a group called “The Queen City All-Stars.” The band would feature Randy Tessier, Kim French, Don Kuhli, Andy Adamson, Dave Cavender, and Peter ‘Madcat’ Ruth, as well as a number of featured local guests.

I say “kicking it around” because, aside from the bar even going along with this, I’m not sure I want the logistical headache of putting this together. It’s hard to resist lying on Squaw Beach for three weeks. But given that I’m healthy and ready to rock, and because I feel a personal obligation to my musical supporters in the U.P. and elsewhere, I’m leaning heavily towards making this pitch. In the event, however, that the Walleye can overcome their differences and play together, I welcome our reunion.

Peace – Randy

POLITICS

In “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King writes, “Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

One such gadfly, and a hero of mine, is Jack Kevorkian.

Here’s Johnny! Jack announced on Tuesday he will be running for a spot in Michigan’s 9th Congressional district in the House of Representatives. What’s important is that his candidacy puts euthanasia advocacy back in the spotlight. Running as an independent, Dr. Kevorkian had this to say, “I’m not a politician. My mind is free. So I can say what I think.” What’s important to remember is that a lack of recent discussions about euthanasia doesn’t mean it’s not an issue of public debate. As political Science Professor Michael Traugott points out, “The belief is that most Americans don’t care about this issue,” but “That could just be an artifact of not enough questions being asked about this.”

RE: Walrus Fans FYI

Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:34:47 -0400
From: Lee Haynes lee@upfrontandcompany.com
Reply-To: Lee Haynes lee@upfrontandcompany.com
Subject: RE: Walrus
To: rlt@umich.edu

Randy,

I hope this email finds you well and things are going in a positive direction for you. As I said back in September I need to make a decision for the Walrus August date around this time. Can you tell me if you guys are available for the date of Friday August 1 as Walrus? I don't want anything but the band Walrus....so please let me know if that's available.

Thanks,

Lee Haynes
Entertainment Director/Talent Buyer
Upfront & Company
102 E. Main St.
Marquette, MI 49855
(906)228-5200 (ext 110)
(906)226-2824 (fax)

The Politics of Indifference

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
-- William Blake

When Vice President Cheney was told last week that 2/3 of Americans see the Iraqi war as a lost cause, as not worth fighting, his response was, “So?” One wonders what his response would be if told that it is our precious sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, 4,000 of them that have sacrificed their lives for Cheney’s indifference. But who cares about the 4,000 dead soldiers, the real proof that the war has been a wasted effort is evidenced by the 4$ a gallon my Hummer requires to get to the mall.

When Noam Chomsky wrote in 1967, “It hardly is necessary to resort to the ‘new economics’ [defense spending] to show that such measures can reduce unemployment and keep the economy functioning,” the corporate illusion was in place--an illusion that serves to delude the public--that the military industrial complex might facilitate a redistribution of income, a new responsibility to the public good, and a dissolution of corporate political power. Chomsky recognized just how crucial the maintenance of this myth was to American hegemony, and how it disguised plutocracy in the cloak of democracy: “[it] requires little political insight to see why the government is likely to expend the resources it commands on research and development that yield an immediate profit, on missiles and ‘fast-deployment logistic ships’ rather than on a mass transportation system that conflict with the needs of the oil companies and automotive industry, on nerve gas and manned orbital laboratories rather than on farming the oceans (while wealthy farmers and farm industries are subsidized to cut back agricultural production). It is reasonably clear that unless the commercial and industrial system comes under some sort of popular democratic control, political democracy will be a sham and state power will continue to serve inhuman ends.”

America’s stooge media has been instrumental in portraying the post 9/ll political zeitgeist as a “clash of cultures,” the righteous against the infidels, Christian against heathen, a false set of binary oppositions that the American public is, at least was, more than comfortable with. The civilizing westward expansion that systematically displaced and annihilated the indigenous peoples (Indians), was valorized by an oral tradition, and then disseminated in literature and film representations of heroic trappers, cattlemen, and homesteaders reedeeming the pagan wilderness by shedding christian blood. Further, it was legitimated by virtue of the sacred assumption that, since the "chosen" were descendants of a superior Western European culture, they had a God-given right to appropriate the “frontier,” a convenient culturally constructed phrase for Indian lands and territories. It takes just a skip, hop, and a jump to move from social Darwinism to manifest destiny. And in following the ancient Germanic tradition of the “Volk” (see Herder, Spenser, Wagner), the same political philosophy co-opted by Hitler to justify the Holocaust, the American political psyche assimilated the belief that, as Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies put it, “violence is a redemptive act of justice by which civilization is secured and advanced”(172). The scant coverage given to collateral damage and civilian casualties--the destruction to the Iraqi infrastructure is near irrevocable and the civilian dead are at 600,000 plus--is understandable when one considers why the vanquished are unmourned: “they do not require the reflex of regret, for as agents of evil they are by definition of less human worth”(174).

Credit Card Miasma & Zeke Pluto Story

Credit Card Miasma

Miasma 1. A noxious atmosphere or influence. 2.a. A poisonous atmosphere once thought to rise from swamps and putrid material and cause disease.

Eighth Seventh Bank Card – 8,756.25$ owed
Bear Stearns Visa – 31, 012.33$ owed
Crapital Two (What’s in your colon?) – 29, 213.44$ owed
NOT GIVING A SHIT – PRICELESS

------------------------------------

Take heed of the perils of lovemaking
And change your ways accordingly…
Avoid blochy folk
And don’t despise those who are loyal
partners;
For to keep a man’s lance out of any old
hole
The Great Pox was created

Stick to sweethearts, who are not to be
lightly dismissed.
But make sure you don’t start the job
Without a candle; don’t be afraid to
Take a good look, both high and low,
And then you may frolic to your heart’s
content.

Anonymous, c.1498

--------------------------------------

WARNING! The following fiction may be unsuitable for some. Adult content and/or lack of aesthetic value may ensue.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
--Shakespeare,
Hamlet, 1600

1971

The tidy apartment smells of steam heat and baked goods, markers of a Scandinavian frugality and hospitality typical of the far north. The table is neatly covered by a worn knitted tablecloth, a kind of oversized doily depicting Christ among the children. Above the faux fireplace there are small plastic dance trophies and religious icons from the Finnish Lutheran church. At the center of the mantle is a framed photograph of a mother and child on a summer day. In the picture the smiling mother enfolds the child in warm embrace. Behind them is a granite statue of Father Marquette framed by an imposing iron-ore dock and the glistening waters of Lake Superior.

"Put your boots on Lina Flatley, you may be 17, but you still need overshoes in this stuff. It's almost Christmas. Mother knows best!" Lina balked. "We're being dropped off right in front of the studio. If I can wear my leotard under my coat, I can wear my street shoes." She liked her Penny Loafers, and saw the rubber overshoes as not only unnecessary but square. Her mother had been to every lesson clinic and recital Lina ever had. "Mom, I love you," Lina said as she left the Brownstone apartments on East Ridge. While waiting at the bottom of the hill, she marveled at her luck. "I'm 17, a ballet instructor at Savitsky's School of Dance, and I've just been accepted at Julliard. Like mom says, the world is my oyster. Here's my ride." As the car pulled away, a wicked November gale was rapidly moving in off of Lake Superior. The upper harbor coal dock was now shrouded in a wind driven black sleet.

"And 1, 2, 3 kick, 1, 2, 3 kick. That's enough for today kids. See you Thursday at 7:00," Lina was glad class was over--the weather was changing. She slipped her dad's Carhart over her dance outfit, waved goodbye to the custodian and stepped into the night to await her mother's arrival. This was the last time anyone saw her alive.

11/29/71: "Fate is cruel, Baker. Why did she have to see me in the store? What right did she have to look so perfect, so plainly beautiful, so normal, so happy. The world is not all beautiful. Not all good. Evil has its attractions. Relief requires pain. Good has no more value than misery. What's good is whatever brings happiness, a matter of preference. Why is your value system better than mine? Wrongness is a matter of practicality. Changes of a moral nature are just the reestablishment of one's priorities. Cruelty is satisfying. Moreover it is a satisfaction I find rewarding in that it gives me a sense of personal achievement. Misery is identity, my ego, and I see its image reflected in you. Your misery makes me someone. Why can't you see that? What emotions would you spend without the horror I inflict. What better way to elevate petty gratifications than to encourage the belief that tragedy is inescapable--we suffer and die. Darwin had it right. Survival depends on domination at every moment, in all things. Maintaining my space requires a certain amount of control and extinction. So I violated her and extinguished her being, released her from the misery of existence. I had to. I always have to. It's like having a cigarette, a habit."
"She screamed for help, of course, begged for her life, and finally, a merciful death. How typical. How utterly boring and predictable? Don't we all want mercy, understanding, and compassion? Who ever gave it to us? How we crave these kindly acts. But who really exhibits these virtues? Aren't there a hundred thousand killers and torturers for every Mother Teresa? No one ever showed me these so-called virtues. These conceits are disguised survival strategies, not moral values. No one truly has these qualities, they only require them."

Sheriff Jake McGee stood by an unmarked Crown Victoria examining the blood trail while the deputies combed the woods. McGee worked his boots back and forth on the railroad tracks in a futile attempt to remove the caked on coal dust. He was staring out at the lake, where twilight squalls were blowing in blizzard night. "Over here sheriff."

The semi-circle of cigarette butts around the stump told him the assailant had waited patiently waited while Lina was teaching. The sheriff surmised that her attacker watched her from the woods behind the Mayflower Moving and Storage warehouse and then dragged her across the road into the coal piles. Here she was repeatedly stabbed and raped. Although she lost consciousness at some point, according to the forensics report, the nature of the wound patterns suggest that she was revived by cigarette burns so that the perpetrator might renew his assault.

An Easter Encyclical

What will you do the day you’re asked to explain?
Deny the truth, you bear the markings of Cain.
Swear on your Savior that you killed for the Lord,
No false believer ever got by your sword.
-- mE

My Easter Encyclical

One of the illusions of existence is that study, meditation, physical exertion, sickness, and alteration of consciousness can affect a view that being is profound, that there is a depth to experience.

It’s Easter Sunday, the purple sheaths have been displaced by idolatrous statuary of every stripe, and in all of its glory. From ashes, to palms, to resurrections; gospels, to force, to occupations; and torture, to killings, to insurrections; mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. There’s your depth—Catholic Guilt. But not really. There’s no profundity in allowing one’s supernatural indoctrination to temper compassion and fuel cruel, immoral perversions.

I remember serving as an altar boy during lent. I was a true believer. Once, as we paused before Our Lady of Tears, I saw the blood trickle from her stigmata. Behold my new feast day. Call it the Epiphany of the Trickling Stigmata. At that moment, for the briefest time in my life, my faith seemed proved. Yes, I know, it is oxymoronic to associate faith with proof, but there it was, rapturous confirmation that God, the saints, devils, tooth fairies, Santa Clauses, and yes, Easter bunnies, do exist.

May there be Peace in the valley.

Nancy & Me

“Unless you enter the tiger’s den you cannot take the cubs.”
-- Japanese Proverb

Chronologically, dear reader, I’ll get back to the written exam period, but since fictions play with these kind of conventions, allow me to randomly discuss the strangeness of Nancy.

As I said, she packed 2 laptops and 2 printers. Why she did this soon became apparent. She treated these somewhat fragile machines like, for lack of an accurate comparison, common gardening tools. While I would be working on one, a Dell I believe, she would roam around the library, or hotel, or wherever we happened to meet, carrying the other laptop as a child would, holding the thing by a corner of the screen, carelessly dangling it against her thigh. The image I’m going for here is an institutional setting. Picture, if you will, a gowned retard shuffling around a mental ward, sucking her thumb and dragging a threadbare blanket.

No wonder she wore a bandolier of flash drives. When she wasn’t accidentally deleting hours of my painstaking work, she was inadvertently stepping on newly purchased flash drives strewn amidst the academic debris she had trundled in and dumped, yes dumped, on the floor. Oftentimes, I would arrive to the sight of her simultaneously pounding on the laptop keyboards of both computers! Why, because she was so A.D.D. that she would literally save 50 or 60 files of the same document, carefully naming them all, and thus ensuring that it would take me sometimes hours to find the most recent version of “her” work. She would give them different names, but her nomenclature was like those Indian Tribal languages they used in WWII to fool the Japs. Sometimes I tried to decipher them phonetically, but even this sort of effort was thwarted by her impenetrable incoherence.

One of her wildest, perhaps, inventions was the fantasy that she had a baby. As we came to know each other, and as the baby took on a role in our weird interactions (In retelling this tale, I sometimes forget that we are both experts in communicative issues related to interpersonal boundary management) scenes from the Mike Nichols film adaptation of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”(1966) became a recurring daydream. Recalling the fantasy child George and Martha conjure up to confuse and hoodwink Honey and Nick, reinforced my doubts about Nancy’s baby (as I recall, it had no name or gender). For years after I last saw her, the “baby” (to be perfectly candid, visualizing Nancy as a part of the procreative act required to produce a child was impossible for me) came to represent a mythical kind of objective correlative for my phantom dissertation.

Did I really write the thing? Only my closest confidantes knew anything about this bizarre story, and this all came second hand, from me. Hilariously, for a time both my ex wife and girlfriend entertained the suspicion that this Nancy might be an illicit liaison that neither one knew about. Yuck! This was until Brigitte snooped around the library sites at BSU.

In truth, Nancy meetings served many purposes, but that’s another story.

Wildcats, Wolverines, and the Bush Malignancy

Tonight the Northern Michigan University Wildcats take on the University of Michigan Wolverines in the CCHA hockey playoffs. While I will always have a place in my heart for Yooper underdogs, and was ecstatic about their victory over their former mentor and rivals, Rick Comley (he does look like a bit of a serial killer, but so do I) and the hated Spartys, I have to cheer on the Wolves. Naurato, Kolarik, Porter, Pacioretty, Palushaj, and Ciraulo provide the flesh and blood reasons for my allegiance. They have all been students of mine, and to a man are a bunch of swell guys. Go blue!

Speaking of serial killers, consider these quotes delivered on March 19, 2008 at the Pentagon (isn’t that a Satanic symbol?) by our Commander in Chief:

“[t]he speed, precision and brilliant execution of the campaign will be studied by military historians for years to come.”
-- El Presidente

Truer words were never spoken, George, but these studies, of which there will be many, will have nothing to do with “precision” or “brilliance of execution.” This guy needs a dictionary. Try words and phrases like “quagmire,” “debacle,” “carnage” and “senseless waste of life.” Here’s what L. Paul Bremer III recently had to say (watch out for guys with Roman numerals after their name), this from the former presidential envoy to Iraq, and the very same charlatan who ignored Bush’s national security team in making the horrendously tragic mistake of disbanding the Iraqi army and police force, effectively pushing them into joining the insurgents and creating an atmosphere where lawless gangs and criminal looters had free reign: “I should have pushed sooner for a more effective military strategy.” Really? Do tell? Duh!!!!

“Because we acted, the world is better and the United States of America is safer.”
-- El Presidente

Another gangster flunkie who recently deserted the ship of state, Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, had this to say, “A group including the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice [who I like to call E. T.], and the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet—with President Bush’s approval--blundered into an ill-conceived occupation that would facilitate a deadly insurgency.” Regarding the idea of helping the Iraqis build their own society, Perle suggests that this is “something we didn’t know how to do and should never have tried.” Ah Dickie, we hardly knew ye.

The quotes above beg the question, what planet is W. living on? Somebody break this guy's crack pipe. Given their ignorance and arrogance, it would probably be too much to ask that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld explain to the families of the nearly 4000 young American dead, never mind the 600,000 dead Iraqi civilians (oops, I forgot, they don’t count), that this war has been “well worth the effort.”

Here’s a word, “appalling.”

Oncogenic Darwinism

“In the United States, about 40 percent of us will eventually get cancer bad enough to be diagnosed. And autopsies suggest that virtually all of us will be nurturing incipient thyroid cancer by the time we die. Among octogenarian and nonagenarian men, 80 percent carry prostate cancer when they go. Cancer is terrible, cancer is dramatic, but cancer isn’t rare. In fact, it’s nearly universal.”
--David Quammen, Harpers, 4/08

Does the fact that others might be secretly happy that they can’t get cancer, mean that I, might secretly wish that they had it. After all, common wisdom tells us that it is not contagious. The word “contagion” has a repellent ring. We take it as an article of faith that cancer is not infectious. But if cancer is not a virus, some scientists see an association between virus’s and some cancers. Similarly, chemical exposure has been linked to cancer, but we don’t think if it as a kind of poisoning. Unlike renal and coronary diseases, which are marked by organ dysfunction, cancer is the result of cellular reproduction gone haywire.

What’s interesting is that the single tumor-of-origin is produced by the victim and not by some outside source. These replicant mutations, cells run amok, are obsessed with wildly reproducing to the point of ignoring the host organism (yes, like a parasite).

Which brings me back to the hidden glee of the contagion free. So far, medical research confirms the comforting belief that cancer is a solitary phenomenon. It is the self-originating character of the first rogue cell that sustains our faith in science. And so too do cancer’s victims suffer in the solitude of knowing cancer can’t be caught, it is ultimately, and inexorably the victim’s fault.

But what might Darwin have to say in this? Well yes, I know, he’s dead. But what if he weren’t. What if he said a cell is a simple organism, and more, that if cells are analogous to species, they evolve. And what if he made the further supposition that (yes, like a parasite) since they depend on inhabiting a host animal, it would seem likely they mutate toward a capacity to be passed along from host to host, towards transmission.

The malignant tumor’s circumvention of the immune system, as well as external defense mechanisms, like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are achieved by a relentless mutation, reproduction, and proliferation. Darwin would say that these tumors are the “fittest” of the malignant.

Jack Johnson's Story

Athletes, Academics, and Assessment

Sports is one aspect of The Ann Arbor News’ reportage that has always had an edge to it. This otherwise conservative publication has produced some fine maverick columnists who eventually moved on to work in bigger markets. One thinks of Chris McKosky at The Detroit Free Press, Mike Downey at the The L.A. Times, and Jason Whitlock of The Kansas City Star to name a few.

Now comes Jim Carty. I for one find Carty’s work a breath of fresh air. In a town filled with “homers” who see the “Big House” as a kind of athletic Vatican, and dissent from the Bo doctrine as tantamount to blasphemy, Carty tells it like it is. His columns on Rich Rodriguez’s duplicity in taking the Michigan job, and his troubling conclusion that the commodification of the head coaching position has become ubiquitous in Division I college football are right on target. Tradition, the intangible aura which once surrounded programs like Notre Dame and Michigan, has been replaced by market forces; potential coaching candidates know that nowadays a school’s loyalty to a coach is contingent on wins and losses. The shelf life is short, and the memory of a coach’s success usually extends as far back as the last victory. Carty rightly points out that universities and coaching candidates alike take the attitude of consumers, not loyalists, to any particular alma mater or philosophical principle. Thank you, Jim Carty.

My comments here, then, should not be taken as a disagreement with Carty’s, Heuser’s, and Fenno’s four-day series on the state of athletics and academics at U-M as much as the perspective of a university insider who wasn’t one of the 87 people interviewed.

As an English instructor who works in the CSP (Comprehensive Studies Program) I appreciate Carty’s et al. rhetorical skills, after all this is what I teach, college writing. What’s missed in the conversation is the issue of assessment, a topic of constant debate among academics, which is as it should be, given the ever-changing nature of how subjects are taught and the ways evaluation has to be recalibrated to address these changes.

I will confine my comments to the humanities only, which would include psychology, a central focus of your investigative articles. An ongoing topic in current debates about assessment has to do with “longitudinal progress,” the question of how improvement over time figures into grading. Key to this idea is the controversial notion that rather than comparing students to other students, students should be measured according to their own progress. This is not to suggest that rubrics should be abandoned, it simply means that rubrics are one of many tools in the assessment process. The controversy arises when those students who can achieve “A’s” without really trying are outraged that less gifted students should be rewarded for attendance, effort, and improvement. The fact is, however, that these “A” students oftentimes show much less improvement than their hard working colleagues.

While Carty’s article offers one perspective on Chad Kolarik’s academic experience, for another view, one need only google an 11/17/06 piece by The Michigan Daily on his experience in my classroom, and how it influenced his decision to keep a diary as well as his attitude about writing in general.

I also had Jake Long in a Spring Eng. 325 (Essay Writing) class, and he was (excuse the athletic parlance) a flat out great student--smart, conscientious, and dedicated.

A final example from my experience is that of Jack Johnson. Too many students look at the pursuit of a degree as simply a way to make money. Seeing how Johnson addressed his university experience taught them a lesson about the value of an education that I could never impart. Although he was drafted by the pros in 2005, Johnson elected to stay in school. In 2006, however, the possibility of injury, and the offer of instant playing time and a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract made it impossible for him to hold out. At the time, he was in my Eng. 225 class (Argumentative Writing). It was late winter with about three weeks left in the semester. He came to me and said, “Dr. Tessier, I have to report to the L.A. Kings for their last six games, but I want to finish up here so I can continue my education next year on the west coast. If you’ll allow me to work on my papers for the week and a half in L.A., I’ll return to class with my completed essays and be in class for the last week.” Even though Jack was set for life financially, he was of a mindset that a degree was something with an intangible value that can’t be measured with a monetary yardstick. The students were blown away.

While I have had many student athletes in my time (I would say that Peter Vignier, now a lawyer in Arizona, was perhaps the brightest), these are just three examples of the kind of work ethic Carty’s article fails to emphasize.

Randall L. Tessier
English Department
Comprehensive Studies Program
University of Michigan

An Unholy Alliance

Nancy’s written exams took the form of 6 questions, each of which required an approximately ten-page response. Given that English uses the MLA (Modern Language Association) format, writing in the APA (American Psychological Association) system was new to me. The lit review, methods and research sections, and in-text citations present a different set of challenges than a humanities manuscript.

Nancy’s M. O. regarding these early appointments set the pattern for what would follow over the next three years. She would first query me obsessively on how long I could work with her. It was as if she couldn’t process my answer. Despite my reassurances that I could work as long as she wanted, she would repeat the question: N. “but how long can you work?” R.“I just told you, I can meet for as long as you want.” N. “Are you sure?” This dialogue would usually be repeated at least three times before she moved to the next item of business. N. “Okay, what time can you meet?” R. “After two o’clock.” N. “It takes me an hour to get there, how about three.” R. “Fine, I’ll see you when you get there.” Well, she was never, ever, on time. Eventually I made it a rule that if we set a time, the clock started when I got there. Of course, her invariable tardiness led me to bend this rule somewhat.

Her idol in the communications field was one Andy Petronious. Nancy had actually attended conferences where Petronious, a guru of CPM (Communications Privacy Management theory) had presented. Nancy’s bizarre fantasy world was such that she fancied herself as one of Petronious’s theoretical collaborators. Nancy saw her own critical ideas as foundational to Petronious’s theories. In Nancy’s words, “that bitch stole my ideas.”

The supreme irony in this crazy story is that her discipline and my dissertation, the idea that either one of us, two very different but wholly lost dysfunctional souls, could provide any insight on issues even remotely related to healthy family communication. More laughable is the idea that in spite of the obvious disconnect between her oral persona and the written work she was turning in, it was still possible to sustain the attention of a graduate committee, and ultimately produce an actual Ph.D. Wow!

A2 News - Abortion - Violet Shadow - Letters 2/13/08

“A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits.”
-- Edith Sitwell, 1923

I must confess, I have never seen quite the hoopla in the Ann Arbor News as I have of late over the Violet Shadow editorial letter of 2/13/08. Not more than a week ago the News devoted an entire section to other letter writers' responses, most of which were overwhelmingly negative. Then yesterday, 3/12/08/, a writer from Whitmore Lake again blasted Shadow. Calling Shadow’s thoughts on the morality of abortion “sickening” and lacking “morality and logic,” the writer comes to the patently illogical statement that it makes no sense “that a person would think that by decreasing the population global warming” will be lessened. She further undermines her rationale by saying, “if anything it will only slow it down.” What’s wrong with that?

The problem with most of the anti-Shadow letters is that they miss Shadow’s rhetorical wit, which I found thoughtful and entertaining. This letter is very much in the tradition of Swift, Twain, and Mencken.

The first indicator of literary hi-jinx is the name. “Violet Shadow?” Come on folks, put on your critical thinking caps, that’s a sarcastic pseudonym if ever there was one. Then there’s Shadow’s argument that since Americans are the most wasteful consumers on the planet, “politicians could consider making abortion mandatory for anyone under the age of 21.” The Whitmore Laker’s vitriolic response to Shadow’s tongue-in-cheek conviction that “if a society cannot trust a person with a beer, how can society trust the same person with a child” ignores a long history of social satire. It is not the logical comparison between abortion and the drinking age that is important, rather it is the humor in the incongruous nature of the analogy that makes her case. Instead of seeing the humor in Shadow’s call for mandatory abortions for those under 21, Shadow’s critic’s accusation is that it “screams of communism.” She might have invoked Nikita Kruschev’s shoe pounding threat that “we will bury you.”

What most of Shadow’s critics miss is that none of their letters come close to garnering the kind of response that writing like Shadow’s generates, which is after all the mark of a well written letter. I may be off on this, but the savvy reader will immediately recognize this as the work of a radical feminist thinker, and one who provides a thoroughly funny take on a serious social issue--population growth.

Peace - Randy Tessier

Communication Breakdown

She always wore a black and white suit. One of her favorite stunts was to commandeer a study room in the Angel library by telling the students it was reserved for faculty business. Of course, she was no more on the faculty than I was the man in the moon. One of my long time Ann Arbor acquaintances (he had his 15 minutes of fame some years ago when he barricaded himself in his car when it was about to be towed for parking tickets) was a sort of library watchdog, a Cerberus who scrutinized any and all that came through his portals. And while he didn’t have 3 heads, he could tell something was amiss about this psycho Swiss Miss (I think she was Italian). We probably worked there for about a week before his suspicions led him to begin his surveillance in earnest. I guess you could say I was her accomplice in the sense that I played literary Jekyll to her illiterate Hyde.

One of her habits was to sit in the corner like some kind of insane “Rocking Horse Winner” and furiously scribble and highlight the journals she trundled in. Typically, at approximately 10 minute intervals she would interrupt my writing and research to show me some profound passage she had gleaned from the reading, such as, “results show,” or, “these are important findings.” Then she would proudly announce that we needed to get these ideas in her dissertation. When she wasn’t doing this she would argue with me for 10 or 20 minutes, and sometimes longer, about whether “given,” or “consequently,” was a word. Her vocabulary was so limited that I had to patiently, and oftentimes in a thoroughly exasperated manner, that she should put her undivided semantic and syntactic trust in me, but her psychological condition/demeanor was such that this was impossible. After all how could someone with her retentive capacities apply my received wisdom over any length of time?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At this point I was working on her written exams, which would later provide the framework for her longer thesis.

Waiting for Petronius

And so there she was, roaming the halls of the Angel College Humanities Institute. How could I know that fateful knock on my office door would lead to a story of academia run amok? On first appearance she looked as crazy as she turned out to be. She was paying a couple of Swedish exchange students to assist her with her written exams. These preliminary exams were required prior to pursuing a doctorate. She was paying them 10$ an hour, and I suspect she had sought help elsewhere. Her psychosis, however, was such that I doubt anyone else but me could have helped this poor creature. Now, I know “creature” sounds harsh, but I say this deliberately because her intellectual abilities, or perhaps better, mental faculties, were such that she had no more business in graduate school than my dog, Shadow.

She got my name from someone in Huron Michigan University’s Distance Education Program’s editing department. Normally, editing is not that dangerous, but one look at her and I knew she was trouble. She squawked when I told her my fee was 50$ an hour.

But when I started to shut my office door she suddenly acquiesced and asked me if I could start the afternoon of the following day. We agreed to meet in the U.G.L.Y. (Underground Graduate Library) at 3PM. I don’t know if there is really such an animal as a “pack rat,” but the person I observed going through library security, bringing in a clear plastic trunk of raggedy, dog-eared, sloppily highlighted, communications journals, overstuffed backpack of stolen books, and multiple laptop computers and printers, would certainly qualify as some kind of pseudo-intellectual vagabond rodent.

NANCY & ME

'My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

T. S. Eliot, from The Wasteland (1922)

The small god of the world will never change his ways
And is as whimsical--as on the first of days,
His life might be a bit more fun,
Had you not given him that spark of heaven's sun;
He calls it reason and employs it resolute
To be more brutish than is any brute.

Goethe, from Faust

"There is no happiness in comfort; happiness is brought by suffering. Man is not born to happiness."

Dostoevsky, from Notebooks: Idea of the Novel

NANCY & ME

Notwithstanding those infamous authors who invented the mendacious memoir: Clifford Irving, who in 1972 penned the fictitious autobiography of Howard R. Hughes; Binjamin Wilkomirski (Bruno Doesseekker) whose 1996 memoir, “Fragments,” offers the harrowing, but wholly fictional, story of the Nazi concentration camp he survived as a Latvian Jewish orphan; Misha Defonseca (Monique De Wael), in “Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years,” spins a yarn out of whole cloth about a woman who, rather than living with wolves and killing German soldiers, grew up a Belgium Catholic; Nasdijj, a Native American who, in his youth, was sexually abused by his white father, and in his adult years adopted a child with fetal alcohol syndrome and tended to his brethren suffering from AIDS (his real name is Tim Barrus, a white man whose only writing experience is in the field of gay pornography); Laura Albert (J T Leroy), who in her 2006 novel, “Sarah,” and the short story collection that followed, “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” constructed a fiction written in the persona of the son of a West Virginia truck-stop prostitute, after which she had the half-sister of her friend impersonate the fictitious mother in public readings; James Frey, who in 2005 reinvented himself in “Million Little Pieces,” as a hopeless drug addict who sought redemption in rehab (it wasn’t true); Emily Davies, whose pseudo-memoir, “How to Wear Black: Adventures on Fashion’s Frontline,” chronicled her made-up experiences in the fashion world (plagiarized passages were rampant); and Margaret B. Jones (Margaret Seltzer), who gave us the 2007 gang memoir, “Love and Consequences,” this story is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (aren’t all narratives, in some sense, fabrications?)[1].

While the story is true, I don’t have to invent a pseudonym for the subject of this tale. Why, because the name she gave me was made up to begin with. She told me her name was Nancy, and I believed her. But if her name was a lie, her physical presence was very real, sometimes surreal. I intend for her story to be a recurring narrative for awhile. I’ll sort of serialize it and see where it takes us.

[1] Those of you interested in postmodern/poststructuralist (deconstructive) literary theory might consider the case of Paul de Mann. After his death it was discovered that he had written anti-semetic and pro-German articles for the Nazis in the 1940s.

Written on the Wind (True Story)

She punched in the keywords “Privacy Boundaries” and there it was, just like the lost WWII squadron in “Close Encounters”. My girlfriend, Brigitte, had gone to the library site at Bruce State University and the first thing that popped up was the abstract for my dissertation. It was registered under the Communications Department. Is that my discipline? Well, not really. Actually I have a doctorate in English Language and Literature. But I wrote every word of it. For a long time I thought I would never see it again, after all I wrote it for someone so psychotic that; a) I never really believed a major university dissertation committee would allow someone as dysfunctional as Nancy to get a degree and; B) I was resigned to the fact that her meticulous thwarting of my every attempt to find out her real name and where she went to school would forever prevent me from seeing the fruit of my…err…research. I first met her at Angel College.

The Rise of Plutonism

1991

Although it was hardly noticed at the time by reviewers, on July 18, 1990 a two-volume work was published in Milwaukee, the manuscript was written in prison during the previous year and a half by Zeke Pluto. “Anarchies of Reason” and “Anxiety of Contentment” set out the Plutonic Signifier’s philosophy.

It was evident from a close reading of the work that Pluto had strong pretensions to entrenching a major religious movement, and that he considered the world as a whole to be in danger of forever corrupting itself. There were, he argued in the book--as he had earlier and repeatedly argued in the public arena in Queen City and elsewhere in the mid-west--twin perils threatening "the fabric of humanity." One was the “soulessness” inherent to unchecked technological growth, the other, "rampant utilitarianism." It was his experience in foster care, military service and prison that taught him "the truth" about the New World Order's' Conspiracy to rid the world of "altruistic collectivism" by means of political coercion, ideological domination, and spiritual corruption.

The rubric, New World Order," hitherto an umbrella term, referring to those economically affluent nations defined as the First World, took on, in Pluto's theory, a new meaning, one that within a decade was to capture the minds of millions worldwide. For Pluto, "altruistic collectivism" was synonymous with "virtue." By contrast, "New World Order Conspiracy" was synonymous with "moral corruption." Pluto's ideological tracts were full of appeals to individual Edenic innocence and vulnerability. Considering the "inexorable insidiousness" of the New World Orders' political project, Pluto wrote, "how could their unfortunate victims be blamed?" The politics of the mass consumer culture conspiracy were such that its proponents were precision disseminators of "dialectical perfidy." Their ideological apparatuses were marked by what Pluto deemed, “pseudological” distortions of truth. According to Pluto, modern life itself was a calculated device, an epistemological and ontological trap. The bourgeoisie working class worldwide and the global under-class were the victims, not the beneficiaries, of technological progress.

Pluto positioned himself in "Anxiety of Contentment" as a man who had experienced, and who would forever reject, not only the depersonalization of progress, but also the destruction of a sensibility of communal obligation and therefore life on earth. The threat, as he perceived it, concerned the integrity of self-identity and personal autonomy, and the New Order’s attempt to deliberately sever the connection between material progress and moral responsibility. He told his readers:

"The ideological functionary bides his time, insidiously categorizing, quantifying and appropriating the unsuspecting target's ontological center with his pernicious psychosocial machinations, indoctrinating through a dogma of false consciousness and thus alienating the subject from the bosom of the natural world. The New world Order ideologue marshals every resource available to undermine the foundations of core selfhood. Systematically, he blurs the distinction between ego and machine, striving to sever the ties between self and language. Technology, misused, is responsible for weapons both inert and organic that present the most dangerous and immediate threat to mankind. Only through an unremitting and thorough rejection of technological meliorism can we prevent the impending apocalypse."

In “Anarchies of Reason” Pluto outlined his mission: he would expose and then annihilate the looming threat posed by the rise of technology. Pluto not only warned his readers of what he considered the life-threatening dangers to mankind; he also explained his role in combating those dangers. His message was apocalyptic: "Should schizophrenic technology, aided by consumer ideology, triumph over being," Pluto wrote, "its inexorable movement will be the funeral march of mankind, and this planet will follow its orbit through the ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago. And so I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the unnamed and prime mover. In smiting down the technologies of materialism I am defending the Lord's creation."

By 1992, Zeke Pluto's attraction reflected his cults' propagandists' political skill in creating a hero of the man of the streets, and in glorifying him as an innocent victim of a soulless society. Pluto did not impress all observers.

Theologically, Plato's dogma was predicated on those gaps that comprise the contradiction between faith and disbelief. His ministry was an attempt to reconcile this paradox. Pluto understood that, if the Bible tells us that "God is our refuge and strength, / a very present help in trouble (Psalms 46:1), we should also understand that, as Thomas Szaz put it, "If you talk to God you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia." It was within this schizophrenic rapture that mediated God's "talk" that Pluto found the core of his doctrine. Schizophrenia, in fact, came to define Pluto's ideas on how one should live. That the "New World Order," a post cold-war euphemism for the "ancien regime," would associate this sensibility with silent minorities and the fanatic fringe was typical of pre-genocidal propaganda historically.

The left colored him as a racist ethnocentric while the right saw him as an immoral Jeremiah born of anarchistic revolutionary forces. So it was easy for conservative talking heads, like Howie Boekrusch, and liberal byte-spinners, like McCarthy Magwitch, to condemn Pluto's ideas according to their self-tailored political agendas. In one famous tract, Boekrusch (pronounced Buckrush), compared Pluto's cult members to the Hutu minority, who, in Rwanda in 1994, butchered 800,000 of the Tutsi majority. The colonial construction of this bloody rift was never mentioned. In a similar fashion, Magwitch had excoriated Pluto on theoretical grounds, claiming that the totalitarian bent of his group should be less influenced by Stalin and Mao than Marx and Trotsky. The charge was that Pluto had abandoned all things socialistic and even democratic, applying violence as a means of internal allegiance in the same way that dictators resorted to terror as an instrument of domestic policy. Both views held some truth.

Claude Guerre 1957 (Fiction)

Now the fall and winter of our discontent gives way to the hopeful uncertainty of spring. To live with uncertainty is to be in the real. Illness banishes that most cherished myth of the healthy: the denial of finitude.

FUBAR plays Happy Hour this Friday at the Heidelberg Club Above in Ann Arbor (5:30-8:30). Please attend.

The fictions that randomly appear are excerpts from a manuscript I began some years ago. A central strand of the story has to do with the rise of Zeke Pluto and the cult of Plutonism. A parallel narrative thread concerns the sordid history of his father, Claude Guerre. I would only add that memoir, unlike autobiography, is a sort of creative non-fiction. This isn’t that. What follows is a story loosely based on my own childhood memories of growing up. Here is an excerpt.

1957
Sergeant Love

When Nancy was 10 and Celeste was 14, they would often sit in the dark at the top of the stairs and listen to Sgt. and Mrs. Hank Guerre fight. The Sarge would choke Jean while she would cry and taunt him derisively. A typical bout would begin with an enraged Hank accusing Jean of cheating. A charge which she would invariably admit to and sarcasticlly beg forgiveness. Hank's response to this was to abuse and berate her in the cruelest way--physically and psychologically. It was also his habit to follow these horrible sessions by sitting his blood son on his knee and asking him me who he loved the most, the Sarge or the boy's mother; and who little Claude would want to live with if they ever divorced. During the worst of these tirades he would threaten to kill their mother if she ever tried to leave.

On one such occasion, it was a scraping noise in the kitchen that woke Hank. Puzzled, he stumbled downstairs. The closeness of the overheated living room stoked his raging hangover. He crouched behind the banister, silently spying on her. Then, emerging from the alcoholic mists that perpetually swirled around him, he focused his attention on the shabby, lumped form immersed in the dirty dishwater of fish-stick cookie sheets and ketchup enameled plastic plates. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Jean paused. "Sweetie. Do that in the morning; what are you, nuts or something!" he said. Clutching her nightgown to her neck, she gasped, "don't scare me like that. Jesus Christ, what's the matter with you? You like that, don't you? Sneaking up on me, terrorizing me...owning me. What do you want?" "Why do you do this stupid shit at night? What's the matter with you? Huh? Who you tryin to kid with this phony clean up bit; you're a lousy wife and a bad mother" "Leave me alone, you stupid Flyboy; I can't stand you. I HATE YOU! I hope you die; and if you don't, I hope I do." "Have a gin honey, let's talk about my transfer. They wanna send me to Laos. It's near a place where there's trouble, Viet Nam. The whole fuckin country is off limits to dependents. That means you guys can't go; and you're not staying here without me. Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do!" "You coward. Why talk about this now? Are you afraid the kids will see you cry and whine, afraid they might see the yellow side of their big military hero daddy? You're not chicken, are you Sarge?" "Come on, Jean. We haven't talked in a long time."

Jean paused nervously, then, "You want to talk. Ha. You haven't heard me in years, and its been even longer since you said anything I listened to." She laughed, her head shaking with the palsy that always came when she said things that provoked him to hit her. "You curse and insult me and then expect me to talk to you. Get serious, Sarge. For Chrissakes, I'm afraid to go out. I have no friends. The only ears for your wicked bullshit are the children's, ours and the ones you adopted for money; but then they were all forced on me. What happens when they begin to see who you are; when they see how you treat me?" "That's old stuff--" "Cut the shit. What do you want? Say it and leave." "They want to send me to a combat zone. No Families. I'm not going--not if I can't take you." "I'll write the Base Commander and make sure you go. Bet on it, brother." "You're not fit to take care of these kids. If I go, you go. I can't live without you and the kids. We're supposed to be together, a family. Let's go somewhere else. I'll put in for North Dakota, Minot. We'll start over. I can't keep living like this." "That's the truth," she said sarcastically, but it's 'we', and we will. I can't take it anymore. I've had it." "Why do you talk like that," Hank threatened. "That's why I've got to get outta bed and correct you. I don't want the kids hearing this. I don't talk like that. That's what you'd do if I was gone; turn them against me, make them hate me. Jesus Christ, Jean, I'm gonna find a way to take them from you. Show em how you cheat. You wait; I'll get even. They'll know what's what before they start acting like Tuttle's.""Tuttle's," she laughed. "I'm not even a Tuttle. I don't even know my daddy's name, you ignoramus. My mom's family is all they know. Without me they'd be like you, ignorant New Hampshire Canooks. You're nothing! Trash!" Hank glared at her, "I'll take the kids and leave, live in the Base housing area." "You don't have the guts," Jean snarled. "Go ahead, they're right upstairs." He hesitated, "you're crazy. I'll see you tomorrow. You look like a witch. Go to bed, witch!"

She smiled painfully, "No kidding? and you're a regular Rock Hudson," her hands shaking violently, the scouring pad rattling against metal the only sound now. She turned to wipe her eyes hoping he, the house, the kids, and her miserable life would all disappear. She implored him. "I can't take it anymore. It's killing me, making us all crazy. Let's separate. I'll take the kids to my moms in Indianapolis. You go to Asia--or wherever it is; and when you get back we'll make a fresh start. Things will be different. Your transfer is lucky. We can get out of this backwater and start over. I can work at Fort Ben, near my mom." Hesitation, and then anger filled Hank's heart. "You won't get my kids. You've tried to wreck my home for years. Crying to your sisters, cheating and lying. Well it ain't gonna work. Those kids are my life. Without them I'm nothing. I've waited all my life for this and now you want to ruin it." He paused, confused and wounded. No woman could ever understand his love for his children." He faltered, unsure. "The law can't help me. You're their mother; they'll give em to you." "You coward. How dare you say that! You don't even want them! Neither your own or the one's the state pays for!" "Shut up!" he said menacingly. "We'll see who wins. Go to bed. You're always making up lies about my kids. You've never told the truth. Fuck you! Fuck you! Bitch! The Air Force is my life; but you don't care; all you want to do is put on some makeup and cheat on your family. Who you been seeing? You lying cheat."

"I can't stand you. I detest everything about you. I loath the ground you walk on. Get out of my life! Get out! I hate you, Hank! It's killing me. It's wrecking my family. My children can't sleep. You're killing me, making me old. I won't let you do it!" "You're ruining my family! But you won't get away with it. You married me for better or for worse--you have to take care of my kids--" his voice seethed,--"our children." He raised his hand, but then turned toward the stairs. "I'll see you in the morning, witch!" "I want a divorce," Jean cried. "I'll write to my Congressman and you'll never see those kids again. Family man. Ha! All you care about is yourself! You can take your son. You only care about the Guerre blood anyway. Take him and get out. Go play soldier dad with someone else, his mother, your saint; she was lucky! she died." Hank erupted, "you don't talk about her like that. Never!" His enraged shriek gave way to an eerie quiet, brooding and ominous, the silence of attentive ears, of witness; the eye of the storm--and still, Claude, Hank's blood son, slept. Jean said, "you'll come back to an empty place. You'll have to start a new family; peddle your drunken misery somewhere else." "Shut up, goddamn it, shut up before I knock your teeth down your throat."

"You took a 16 year old virgin and knocked her up. What a man. What a man! You with your smiling crewcut and shiny ribbons, pouring your meanness and ignorance into what little innocence my miserable childhood left me," Jean said, her ire now beyond fear, calculated to incite. "Bellowing to the young G.I.s about your bravery and spouting your ugly Catholic morals; and all the while suffocating my body with your pitiful manhood. You force yourself on me like an animal and call it love. Your slobbering lust filled me with babies while it drained me of passion, of kindness. I hate you! I hate my kids! I hate myself. Don't you hear my screams? That's not love, it's desperation, terror. You don't satisfy me, you hurt me. My tears only make you madder. You ignorant fool! Please stop, leave me alone. But you can't! Having me is the only power you've got. You don't love me, you love controlling me. You know how to manipulate me; keep me trapped me in this rotten corpse of an apartment. You poke holes in your rubbers to make me pregnant--you're unbelievable! I've washed and fed you and your filthy kids, and for what? Another black eye, another six months with my jaws wired--'I slipped on the ice again, kids'; 'It's my arthritis acting up...I hate this limp'--no thanks. You pollute this house with your evil ways, your disgusting habits and your uneducated gutter talk. I've heard enough of your stupid shit!" Jean was over the top now. Big talk, little action; that's your middle name. Hank the blowhard. You dumb ass. I've had it with you and your precious little boy; crawling with lice and stinking up the place. It's been too long. I'm through! Get the hell out and take him with you. Go back to the hole you crawled out of before you were suckered into the military, back with those greaseball, hood brothers of yours in New Hampshire, spread your loud mouth lies there, go back and live with your shit-faced sister, and take your slut mother with you."
Hank slapped her hard across the mouth.

Smiling tearfully she ran into the living room, screaming for the children to come down and rescue her. Hearing Celeste on the stairs she gathered herself, grabbed a butcher knife and cursed him, slashing furiously at his face before he had the sense to block it with the dish rack, knocking the knife to the floor and sending the clean dishes crashing down on her head. She stumbled and collapsed on the shard strewn floor where she lay exhausted and bleeding. Celeste and Nancy, staring from the landing, frozen with terror, now ran down the stairs to her, frantic and crying hysterically, begging him to stop. Celeste, her nightgown falling open at her breast, bent towards her weeping mother, who was trying to sit up. Celeste lifted her gently, but Jean brushed her aside, saying, "leave me alone. All of you. Leave me alone! Just go away." I'm sorry mom. What did you do, dad? Its my fault! You're not my dad. Why do you hurt mom.
I'm sorry--"

Hank paused in stunned silence, full of rage, disbelief and self pity. He shoved Celeste away and carefully checked to see if he was all right, then as he glared at Jean, crawling in an inhuman way, struggling from her knees to her feet, and pushing her blood clotted hair from in front of her face, he said in a small, impersonal voice, "get to bed, the fights over."
Celeste hesitated, to terrified to believe him, but held her tongue. Jean eyed Hank warily, "I'm not staying here with you; you'll kill me, you bastard." Moving in the fearful crouch of a wounded animal, sniffling and crying, gingerly feeling her bloodied nose and lip, she stood up and shielded her face. "The hot water's running, Sam said cautiously. Jean slowly turned, shutting off the noisy faucet. "Get to bed," Hank quietly repeated. Celeste and Nancy moved toward the stairs, haltingly, but unwilling to get between them, sensing there was nothing else they could do. Celeste, turning on the landing, urged Nancy to bed, comforting her. "I'll be right up, don't worry, go to bed: Celeste will be right up." Jean!" Hank interjected. "Jesus Christ, what now? she wondered aloud woefully. "Look at me," he extended his right hand and looked victimized, flaunting the superficial nick on his knuckle that had already stopped bleeding.

She threw him a dishrag, "here's something for that awful cut, Sarge. You act like you're one of those phony martyrs at your stupid church" Jean sagged, finally crumbling to the floor in a sitting position, back against the refrigerator, knees bent and held tightly together in front of her, as Hank awkwardly picked up the rag. Hank twisted it tightly around his knuckles, and eyeing her coldly, said softly, "You know you love me, and that eats at you, don't it. You love me. This is it. This is love, baby."

After making sure the water was shut off, Jean stooped disconsolately, inconsolable and humiliated, clinging to her sad self, her head lolling on her left shoulder; and like all of those cruel epiphanies that shatter human illusions, noticed the tarnished wedding ring at the now distant end of her arm. As she stood, hypnotized by its tawdry dullness; that woeful symbol of blind commitment that strangled her spirit; at night, through long days and in public and private drudgery, in domestic misery, children's flu's and birthdays, in the toilet and pantry, that attended to excreta and mending, that pulled back and cleaned the foreskins of her infant twins, that accompanied her in truth and deceit, through light and darkness, that reminded her at cocktail parties and illicit rendezvous, during bank signings that gave access to her hard earned money, that cut off all circulation in the same way that the man who gave it to her suffocated her self, she tried to gather, to compose herself for the next outrage. If this ugly little band stood for an eternity of pain and shame, of desperation and enslavement and premature old age, it also represented the truth behind the illusion of a moral pillar who, in reality, would be nothing without the foolish integrity she invested in the insidious ring's pitiful glare--a foolish belief that sustained her. Suddenly, through the veil of lies, she felt the soul sucking power of social wifery; they were in a death embrace to the end--after which their sweet repose would give way to that worm of time which would erase all traces of his fleeting self importance and her deformed image of love. In truth, this insignificant, self-deluded joke of a man could never stand without her. She was caught in the trap.

Hank railed on, "--My will has survived combat in war; so listening to you tell me how bad you've got don't mean nothin. Those days when I worry about the kids--not you--its like something’s after me but I don't know what. Are my kids safe? You don't think of me like that, like someone who cares. You think you've suffered. What about me? I sacrificed for you and the kids. Jesus Christ, how many times have I worried that you would run out on us, or worse, take my kids, wondering whether your threats to kill them were true or not. Last week when I got home one day nobody was here. I looked everywhere and started asking the neighbors. You made my ulcer start bleeding; even the doctor said so. Where were you? Hiding in the cellar, feeling sorry for yourself, bawling about how bad you've got it. I never know when your crying is a bunch of bullshit, you're such a goddamn liar. Liar! Liar! I never know what I'll come home to, you bitch. Your hysterics make me a bad soldier. My buddies have happy homes; their wives treat them right. Why? Because they love em. Get it. I hurt my career by marrying you. I should have left you to some cock sucking second louie. But no, I had to love you; act like a mom to our kids. Everything I dreamed of, down the drain. I hope you're happy." Jean, drone-like, poured two steaming cups of hot water from a tarnished electric coffeemaker.

"Get your own instant and sugar, Henry, it's in the pantry." "I go TDY," Hank whined, in a sad voice. "I went to Thule, Spain and even volunteered for Wheelis so that you could have time alone with the kids." Jean, who had heard it all before, sat back against the stove, sipping the scalding coffee, saying nothing. Her face regained its color and her eyes recovered their focus. Hank quickly extinguished the small flicker of mutual recognition, "What did you do? Went snowmobiling with 3 young officers; that's what you say?--, anyway. Jean dunked her dried cinnamon toast and said nothing, though she gave him that tight-lipped look, her way of hinting she was about to speak, a cue which he invariably ignored. It went right by Hank. "I never trusted you. I can't believe you! I'm no fool, Jean. Jesus says to forgive, turn the other cheek; but when a woman's cheated once they'll do it again. A woman who lies to her husband is a sinner. I hate to say it but I never believe you. A man can't forget once he's been lied to."

This monologue caused Jean's face to contort with anger, but she turned away just enough to keep it from Hank. He sensed her distress and tried to backtrack from the dreary litany of perceived miseries; but the words wouldn't come. He wanted to say that maybe things could be different; that moving away could be a new beginning; that they were getting older and wiser; that the children were growing up, and with the onset of adolescence the family would come together; that they had a duty to raise future citizens America could be proud of--but he wasn't smart enough for this.

Hank, the victim, reappeared. "What have I done to deserve your hate. You don't really hate me. Do you? Do you? Hank snarled, "well I hate you, too. Every couple argues and says they hate each other, but they don't mean it. It's just talk; just a way of getting along."
"What in the hell are you saying, Henry; and don't bring Jesus into this, he never beat his wife. You're just lying to yourself if you think our hatred equals love. It never has and never will, you pathetic little NCO. We don't like each other, Henry. That's our problem. What did you need me for? Why marry me? You should have found somebody else--anybody else."

You're not Catholic, Jean, so you don't understand, marriage is holy, it's a sacrament. It's our duty to have kids, that's why I won't use rubbers, it is my duty to God. Our marriage is even more sacred because of our kids, and we've got to stay with those kids. We can't let them down, they can't see our holy vows as a lie. I won't let them! How will they know what's good? What's right? That's not gonna happen here, Jean, I won't let it. They've gotta have a home, a place to protect them from the world, to teach em about life. Maybe our kids will be famous, war heroes or inventors. Their dad's a brave person and their gonna be too. The two girls'll be okay, too; marry some rich guys or become nuns or nurses. I've done my job. If they turn out bad it's your fault. Maybe they'll help their country in other ways. Jesus says be fruitful and multiply, well that's what I'm doin. Don't you see, that's why were married, and that's why we're staying married! You've hurt me but I've stuck it out for the kids. Everyone that knows us is on my side." Jean's reaction, a silence born of futility, manifested itself in the sag of her blood-matted hair into the empty cup before her. "Are you starting to understand me," he said. A leaden silence prevailed, hanging in the sticky steam heat air, acrid and oppressive. "Honey, Hank whispered," after a heavy pause, "look me in the eyes; don't turn away, look at me."

The rest of the house was asleep; Celeste had eventually crept from the landing to her bed. Jean, emotionally drained, in a moment of profound emotional despair, looked at Hank with a resigned fatality, strangely smiling--or was it a grin-- with her soft blue eyes. Her eyebrows, carefully framed by thin eyebrows penciled in a pseudo Egyptian style, were, in Hank eyes, as close to perfection as anything in this world; and even when he hated and despised her most, those flashing eyes always penetrated his instinctive meanness. Their incontestable beauty was the closest association with actual love he could make; for whatever reasons, incomprehensible to logic, the concepts he attached to love were objects or physical characteristics, tangible things, rather than human actions and behaviors; his capacity to empathized was grounded in aesthetics not morality--this lowly Sergeant; but he didn't know this.

"Baby," said Hank, wanting to hold her, "let me kiss you. Kiss me. You're still my wife, sugar, and I love you." Jean was unmoved; staring quizzically, as if looking at an animal, her eyes blinking, flickering robotically' like an automaton or zombie. Sad, bitter instincts and grim habits took hold. "You're not going anywhere. You're staying here with me. You love me." Stiffly, he drew her to him; she resisted weakly before giving in. "Sweetie," he said with twisted sincerity, "let's have another baby, to celebrate our new beginning. We'll make a new life as a sign of our love. Let's do it. Come on. Let's start right now. Let's make a baby. You want to make me happy, don't you? It's me and you against the world, baby. I can do anything with you behind me. I'm really a good guy, you know." She paused, shaking, then struggled to a knee; but the sad habit which she was now powerless to fight cancelled all resistance. Mechanically, she stacked the cups in the sink and picked up the broken pieces of glass and china and, to save herself. "I will survive, somehow, I'll make it until he's gone; I'll find a way, somehow. I can bear it," and the hope of a time beyond the present sustained her as she lowered the clattering dishes to the sink.

Over time, little Claude learned to sleep through these awful episodes.

Mission Accomplished

3/4/08

POLITICS

Before there was a war on terror there was a war on drugs. Way back when there was even a war on poverty.

We should be in control of the biggest drug dealers in the world, I mean we’ve got an entire army positioned right at the heart of the global narcotics trade, Afghanistan. So how’s it going in Afghanistan?

Six years and billions of dollars, that’s what the U.S. has spent in Afghanistan. And for what, the situation is this: the Taliban operate with impunity while provincial governors ignore their drug dealing. The drug kingpins trade guns and money for the radical militants protection and transport to market. Friday’s official report on global opium production notes that Afghanistan produces 93 percent of the world’s opium poppies. It’s probably just a coincidence that the Taliban has renewed its strength in the face of concerted U.S. anti-insurgency efforts. Much like Iraq, I.E.D.s, suicide bombings, and attacks on police are also on the rise.

America’s presence has only exacerbated the problem. Ironically, the drain of forces being deployed in Iraq has destabilized what was once a manageable conflict. According to the Associated Press, the plus 6,500 dead in Afghanistan make 2007 the bloodiest year since the 2001 invasion. In a recent independent study co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Afghanistan is on the verge of collapsing because of waning international support and a growing insurgency. Top U.S. intelligence officials informed Congress that the Karzai regime controls only 30% of the country.

Since 9/11 Congress has appropriated 140 Billion for the Afghi war. Osama bin Laden is at large on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. The Karzai defense ministry dismisses the U.S. National Intelligence Director’s assessment that the Taliban control 10 percent of the country, and local tribes hold authority over the rest. While the Karzai government rejects this assessment, the State Department’s report on the drug problem confirms McConnell’s views.

The 2007 poppy harvest produced all time record numbers for the second year in a row.

Where's the Suboxone???

One Month Out

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
-- Yogi Berra

The next morning, Friday, I felt groggy, sicky, slightly dizzy, and generally worn out. After my suboxone experience on Thursday, I decided that ¼ rather than ½ tablet would be the proper dosage. Over the next week, I took ¼ tab sublingually in the morning. Although miraculous is too strong a word, the suboxone had a wondrous affect on me.
It literally quelled my desire, for sex, for beer, for everything. Twas passing strange, doggone it. For me, a control freak whose identity has been defined to a great degree by chasing my desires, it was an epiphany, a chemically altered perspective that validated Heisenberg’s principle. It cleared my head. As the chemo fog lifted so too did the opiate haze dissipate. My thinking became more focused.

In practical terms, the suboxone does two things for the addict: it negates the craving, the oxy junkie typically craves more every 4-6 hours; secondly, it negates all withdrawal symptoms. Perhaps the molecular structure of the buprenorphine opiate is such that it lasts longer than the time interval from dose to dose. Whatever the case, there is neither craving nor withdrawal. It unshackles the addict from constantly watching the clock and thinking about when he’s going to get his next fix.

Although the chemically induced happiness was nice, cozy and comfortable, it was also, for me, a false paradise. I was sick of being sick, and fed up with taking medications. After a week, on Friday, January 25th, I met again with Dr. B., showed him the pills I had left, and told him I was ready to wean myself from everything. After patiently listening to his advice that I continue on the smallest dose for 2-4 months, I said I was ready for the fast landing.

This is how it went: after a week on the minimal dose, on Saturday, January 26th, I cut the pill in half and took this dose for 3 days. On 29, 30, and 31, I took a quarter pill, and on February 1, 2, and 3 (Super Bowl Sunday), I took an eighth. That was the last time I took any pills of any kind.

It’s been one month now, and I’ve been to the gym for the last 21 days. I swim a ½ mile everyday, and alternate between cardio and weights every other day. But this story is a little too nice, don’t you agree. You may ask, “well Randy, how was the 4th, 5th, 6th, and those days that followed your last dose?”

Here’s a brief primer on withdrawal (this is taken from, “Suboxone The Drug Blog”: “Withdrawal produces drug craving, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (‘cold turkey’), kicking movements (‘kicking the habit’), and other symptoms.”

The 1st day I felt pretty good. Days 2-8 were miserable. The suboxone was a godsend, but there really is no magic bullet. By a hardcore addicts lights my withdrawal was fairly easy. There was no vomiting, but I did experience a low-grade manifestation of the rest of the symptoms.

As I say, it’s been a month since I quit (kicked, if you will) and life is beautiful. After two weeks, the feeling that something was missing from my life, that an old friend had died, the psychological pull, began to ebb. Although suboxone helps if you really want to quit, will power is still a key part of the therapy. Exercise (if you can do it) helps tremendously. Endorphins work and they’re cheap!

That Night...continued

“An Idle Mind is the Devil’s Workshop.”
-- Sister Ruth Marie

There is one uglier, wickeder, fouler
than all! He does not strike great
attitudes nor utter great cries, but
he would happily lay waste the earth,
and swallow up the world in a yawn.

It is Boredom!—an involuntary tear
Welling in his eye, he dreams of scaf-
folds as he smokes his hookah. You
Know him, reader, that fastidious
Monster—hypocrite reader, my fellow-
Man, my brother!
-- Charles Baudelaire

That night (Thursday, January 17th, 7pm) happened to be the evening “Trees” had scheduled for a rehearsal. Lindsey, Jesse, and their percussive confederate, Nicole Falzone, were in town to play a gig at “Johnny’s Speakeasy” on Friday the 18th, a very cool underground music venue in Ann Arbor. At about 4pm I took one whole suboxone tablet.

At about 4:30pm it hit me, the stuff he gave me in the office and the one I took after that. Never mind the tolerance I had built up over the last 8 months, I was suddenly higher than I had been since the early eighties, and, as I remember it, the buzz was totally heroin. Unlike those salad days, however, it was no fun (it probably wasn’t then, either, foolishly, I didn’t know any better). I started nodding out, projectile vomiting, sweating profusely, and scratching like a hound. It was too much for me. It slowly dawned on me through the narcotic haze that it’s somewhat of a guess to know how much an addict needs, and Dr. B. had overestimated my tolerance. Put on the Charlie Parker jams, I was gone.

The chickens had come home to roost. I decided the show must go on, and I had to attend the practice. I looked like warmed over death. They recoiled in horror at the gaunt, wraith-like figure I presented. I could see the grayish blue pallor of my skin, and the sickly glow it affected, reflected in their eyes as we hugged in tearful reunion. And I do mean tearful. It was like the pharmaceutical apocalypse had come to my little private Idaho. Praise God!

In spite of our collective doubts, I wasn’t sure how my hands would work and they probably wondered if I could play that high, it sounded great.

Next: The Birds, the Trees, and the Suboxone wean.