THERE IS SOME SHIT I WILL NOT EAT!

Email to the Buffalo

Saturday 09/26/09 8:00 AM Bersone:

We're in San Diego; at a best western on shelter island. Intel show
was a bloodbath and I face hard questions when I get back as to my
"numbers". Fear predominates, as usual, in all affairs human, given
our attachment to the sea of forms of which our precious egos are our
finest fabrications.

Boy, reading these Flannery O'Connor letters
brings you into a consciousness that held a rare vision of the
Catholic Church; quite an integrity in that woman -- unflinchingly
unsentimental yet profoundly devout. Interesting to see, sprinkled
throughout her letters, which range through the fifties and early
sixties (she died in 64) various writers who were in the news then:
Miller, Salinger, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Nabokov etc. She was quite
centered and lived on a chicken and peacock farm in Georgia with her
mother, bound there by her illness (lupus), although was a national
light in the literary scene with various reading trips to colleges.
Wonderful ear. We have to set aside our experiences, in a way, or
sort through them, to see what has stuck. Your novel is a process of
getting down to what was real, what mattered, what really happened.
What happened! that's the question. You can't know unless you re-
inhabit the soul of that little boy who hung by the fence waiting for
his mother in the middle of a sea of changes he couldn't understand. The compassion required for that is a bridge to all other suffering and may be the key to allowing characters to come to life.

Glad to be down here, through Wed am, by the way. I've had it tough,
brother, but I have a strange self that is more and more difficult to
conceal. My speeches to my crew are my favorite activities, and
represent my best accomplishments for the day, although what I have to do is like asking a monk, after delivering a sermon, to climb into a tank and drive it through a minefield under fire. I must say that much of my strategy lies in occupying a sublime indifference to explosions going on around me. I'm probably not the best man for the job. Many times I think, "So what?" when presented with our careening off the budget. I mean, what do you expect me to do about four guys bullshitting on the third floor when I'm busy on the dock prodding egos into a higher realm like a mother bird gently turning her eggs in the hope that they can develop in some sort of balanced way. People like to go from zero to sixty, blaming everything and everyone but themselves, and hope the problems go away. They do go away, of course, one way or another. The river carries it all down the hill. Even the sewer is a river, regrettably, more and more. Let it flow; only the flow will clear the stream.

I saw a documentary the other night where they showed about sixteen feet of some creature's stumpy footprints in the mud: they felt secure in the deduction that they were made by the first creature who came out of the sea, a fish who could breathe but not a fish, not a fish and not a reptile, a representative of a whole group of life forms before the reptile, who held sway on the earth for some time, slithering and swinging their curious heads from side to side in the strange realm of the Air into which they lurched and, to their amazement, found they could survive. This one apparently made it sixteen feet. More than most of us.

Talk to you later.


Saturday 09/26/09 9:21 AM Buffalo:

When I finally made my break from the realm of the "employed" it was in a spasm of anger. I had been "put upon" for the final time.


I'm on an airliner waiting for the final passengers to board when my cell phone rings. It's Ron Blatt, the Chief Financial Officer, to whom I, as they say, answer. I am the Warehouse Manager.

"Where are you?" bleats Blatt.

I give him a moment of silence as I consider all the options and implications. I feel a red stillness in my forehead.

"Hey, Ron, what's up?"

"Where are you? It's only three O'clock?"

Another moment of silence just to feed his angst. It's Friday and I'm on my way to see my dying mother.

"What's that? You're breaking up a little."

"Where the fuck are you? It's only three O'clock and you've got a warehouse crew here with no supervision!"

"No sweat, Ron, I put Enrique in charge."

"Enrique! He's a fucking idiot! And did you check with me first before taking off early on a Friday afternoon? Hell no, you never do. You need to get back here right now. Be in my office by 4:00 pm!"

I give him a long moment of silence which he cannot endure.

"You hear me Reddock? 4:00 PM!"

"Hey Ron, what did you say? You're breaking up." The red stillness in my forehead heats up. I see my mother sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch waiting for me to drive in. I see Blatt's red face, spittle on the lips as usual.

There comes a moment of clarity in which I say rather softly, quoting e. e. cummings, "There is some shit I will not eat!"

The lady in the seat next to me turns to look at me, judgment all over her face like thick mascara.

I think of my mother and the cancer that is growing on her bladder. I see the tall fir and pine that surround her home, and hear the soft wind high in those trees. I see her sitting on the lawn swing on the front porch, waiting. I see the warehouse crew farting around for the last couple of hours of a hard worked week. I see Blatt at his desk, furious, the spittle on his pale lips. Yes, there is some shit I will not eat. I speak into the cell phone in full voice.

"Hey, Blatt. Go fuck yourself!"

Snapping the phone shut, I turn to the lady next to me, giving her a warm smile.


One day you will hit that moment.

Glad you're here. Just let me know when you see some clear time and we'll get together. I can take you to a great beach with tide pools.

Buff



i sing of Olaf glad and big
by E. E. Cummings


i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.