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| A driver's license for the getaway carTwo weeks after renweing my expired driver's license I misplaced it. I've done this a number of times, so no big suprises here. Once again I found myself, therefore, making my way to the now familiar PennDOT station in Center City. Opening the door I was greeted by a line that extended from the welcome desk to where I stood, door in hand. Beyond the line was a standing room only crowd. I waited for half an hour in the first line just to get my number so that I could begin my real wait. I was number 185. The glowing red matrix screen that arrogantly displayed the current number being served read 132. At this point I realized that I didn't have money to pay for the new license as my wallet had been stolen. I did have a couple of old checks made out in my name though, and if I timed it right, I'd be able to make it to the bank a few blocks down the road, get them to cut me a money order and be back before my number was called. Pushing my way through the mass of people at the door, I escaped into the cold air of December and walked as quick as I could down the street, trying not to draw unneccessary attention to myself.
At the bank I took my time fumbling around at the side desk, the one with all the little pieces of paper in tidy piles. I double checked my totals as I'm only about 50% in getting my math right and it's something I'd like to improve at. Turning to step into line I saw two men yelling at the teller and shoveling cash into their duffle bag. One of them had a drawn pistol. The bank was being robbed. The retired gentleman next to me got down on the ground and put his hands over his head. After a lifetime in this city, he didn't seem suprised, merely acted his part. The homeless man skulking against the wall tried to disappear, a skill he had fostered from years of hiding under bridges and on park benches. I just kept walking. I passed these two and walked right out the front door.
Quickly I dialed 911. *Emergency* "Um, there's a bank robbery at the Sovereign Bank on 15th and Market". I was suprised at how calm my voice sounded. *Can you describe the assailants* "Well, two african american men. One was shorter, one was taller. The taller man has this really big beard that goes down to his-" I quickly hung up the phone. The two men had just thrown open the front doors to the bank and I didn't want them to see or hear me giving their description over the phone. I quickly turned around and began walking the other way, doing my best to blend into the moving sea of people, praying that they didn't see me. I kept second guessing myself. "We made eye contact! He saw me." "Why did I hang up and turn around? Could I have done anything more suspicious?" I heard one of the men shout behind me, "They put a plant in it!". I looked back and red smoke poured from their duffle bag. They began running at me and I felt the strength run down and out the ends of my limbs, as if only my bones had reacted to the primordial fight or flight signal. I held my breath as they jogged past not giving me notice. The acrid smell of the smoke trail followed them.
I went back to the doors of the bank and let myself in just as the police showed. The tellers stood supporting each other in a wet slobbery mess of tears and panic. "They just took off south on 15th Street and you should be able to follow the red smoke," I told the police, and two of them took of running out the door in pursuit.
After about 20 minutes of sitting and waiting, trying to discern meaning from the frantic chatter of police radio, a detective called me over to the side. He dressed the part, black trench coat with tapered khakis. He had a receding hair line and a chin that disappeared when he looked down at his notepad. Hand scrawled notes recorded what little information I could provide. I kept staring down when I answered, reading the names and dates on the manilla file folders that filled his briefcase, files of unsolved bank robberies. He finished up asking questions he already knew the answers to. "Do you think you could pick the bigger one out of a line up?", "If he doesn't shave his beared I suppose". I felt uneasy, cooperating with the police like this. Banking institutions aren't exactly innocent. There were no clear good guys in this, but when the detective stood to shake my hand he spoke with such moral clarity, such assurance of what side of the line he stood on, that I felt guilty for some reason. "Thanks for calling the police when you did. Because of you we caught one. You're a hero." I laughed uncomfortably, trying to accept his compliment with grace.
He dismissed me, and I walked back out into the world. It was strange that all these people moving to and fro, dodging one another on their way to who knows where, went on with their business as if nothing happened. But the moving mass in contagious, and really what else are you going to do? So about my business I went with a newfound suspicion of the strangers I passed. I picked up where I left off and made my way down to the next closest Sovereign Bank branch. I cashed my checks as the security guard passed around faxes of a photo the security camera had taken of the two bank robbers. Wide eyes and hushed tones passed between the tellers. With cash in hand I walked to the Check Cashing store and bought the ten dollar money order that was responsible for all of this in the first place. I was still holding on to the little ticket that read number "185", crumbled and wet with perspiration. I walked back in through the front door of PennDot, and pushed my way through the knot of people to get a view of the red sign. It read "183". I had only enough time to fill out my application form before the lady at the desk called impatiently, "185, are you here?" I looked up to see that indeed there was number 185, emblazened in red, shining like a beacon across the dark crowd, each about their own everyday menial tasks. I handed her my number and she looked at it repulsed. "Mam, you're not going to believe this what just happened to me..."
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| The Deer Hunter
After you’ve been away from a place for a while, you start
to confuse what life is really like there with the streotypes and your adamant
defense against their inaccuracies. Texas
is like that for me. I wish I could make people feel what its like there
without relying on the preconceived imagination. It’s the kind of place where
you can drive for eight hours without passing through a city that warrants a
dot on a national map, where an insurance man from Dallas can lease 650 acres of
dirt and limestone just to shoot dear twice a year, where you work out of your
virtual office in NYC through an internet satellite feed in your aluminum trailer
that serves as your campsite, where you communicate between deer stands with
your Blackberry. I said “it’s the kind of place”, as if there were others like
it that fit into a similar genus and species, but there’s not. It’s just Texas.
I saw this because I went hunting there over thanksgiving
break for the first time. Well, technically, I went last year as well, but
spent the entire time in the local ER after cutting my eye open on the scope’s
recoil during target practice. This was the first time I went when I actually
got to shoot at anything besides an aluminum can. The man who was hosting us on
his deer lease had seen a really large dark buck that he wanted my dad to
shoot. He had prayed to God for the strength to not shoot it so that his
pastor, my dad, would have the opportunity. God had answered. That’s a lot of
pressure if you’re my dad.
On the first afternoon, my dad went into the stand where our
host had promised the buck would be. Sure enough, as my dad crawled through the
hatch, he saw the buck foraging on the edge of the brush. By the time he was
set up to take a shot, it had disappeared. Our host’s description did not exaggerate
the size or color of this buck.
Quickly my dad sent a message to our host with his
blackberry.
“I saw him, but was unable to get a shot off” *send*
Within the minute he got a response, but from an unknown
number.
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
*send*
“I’m serious, I need to know who this is.”
“Jim Hennesy, why?” *send*
“Who are you going to kill? I’m freaking out here.”
My dad had mistakenly sent his message to some poor teenage
girl’s cell phone, and I imagine the five minutes that it took to clear things
up must have been the most adrenaline filled five minutes of her life.
The next morning, we rose half an hour before sunrise to
make sure we were in place when the deer started feeding. Our host’s alarm
echoed through the aluminum walls, but he didn’t show. He has diabetes, so my
dad, slightly panicked banged on his door. “Jimmy! You ok?”. Unintelligible
grumbling ensued. “Wha- Who…” He stumbled out of the door.
“I had a rough night last night, ya’ll.” And he looked it.
“My blood sugar started dropping in the middle of the night
so I stumbled out to the fridge to grab a Dr. Pepper. I drank the whole thing
down, but it had this funny gritty taste. Stumbling back to my bed I slept the
rest of the night through. When I woke up there was this here bottle of steak
marinade sitting in the sink, completely empty.”
I did shoot a deer that afternoon. It was a clean shot right
through the heart. It died instantly and painlessly. It took me three shots
though as the first two missed clean. I figure a deer that let’s you shoot at
it three times has it coming.
My dad offered to smear the blood of my first deer on my
face and shoulders, the way his grandfather did to him. I declined, feeling
rites of passage like that have probably lost their meaning at 26, and it would
be harder to explain to my urban yankee vegetarian friends. One of them asked
me how it felt, shooting a deer. The best I could come up with was that it felt
like losing your virginity, where it feels good mostly because you know that
you’ll never have to worry about what the first one will feel like again.
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| suffer the children
I took a summer job as a maintenance guy at playground in
the neighborhood. I'm still working there and its November thanks to some sort
of glitch in the city's excessively glitchy computers. The playground bears the
name of three children of Irish-American immigrants who died fighting a war on
the continent their parents tried to escape.
I spend most of my time there picking up plastic water
bottles and the leftover tobacco from freshly carved blunts, or painting over
vandalism, the kind of scribbled hatred that makes thirteen-year-olds feel
strong.
One night I was there taking the trash to the corner while
some playground all-stars were having a spontaneous dunk competition on our
less-than-10 ft. goal. When they were finished, they slowly scattered in a
smattering of random insults and plans for when they would meet again. One of
the young men, while chatting over his shoulder, pulled down his mesh shorts,
and began to piss on the side of the court. "Excuse me..." I called
out, "I have a key to the bathroom." While being sure to take the
time to fully relieve himself he responded. "Man, this is North
Philadelphia. Know where you're at."
And I tell you that story so that you know were I'm at.
A couple of weeks ago, an artist who lives in the community
finalized a project she had been working on for months. It is a
larger-than-life sculpture that proudly displays the nickname of the
playground, "Pop's", surrounded by giant flowers, and
disproportionately larger hummingbirds. The brilliant flowers, of all colors,
so long as it starts with "bright", are made from used laundry
detergent bottles, the leaves and hummingbirds, from corrugated plastic signs
that used to declare what type of cloned corn seed was used what particular
field. Everything except the paint was reclaimed from the vast amounts of waste
that is buried or burned every day.
While this might all sound a bit kitsch, the piece was never
meant to hang from the walls of a gallery. It will never be shown in any art
periodicals. In fact, the only people who will ever really see it, are the kids
who threaten to tear it down, or the occasional couple whose domestic dispute
spills out into the playground yard. But if those kid's threats are ever
realized, and the giants birds do come down, they will descend like the holy
dove, and everyone should listen to hear if a voice declares who the true sons
and daughters of God are, because I have a feeling they play there all the
time.
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| writer's blocSo I haven't posted for the past couple of months. I had been enjoying using this a format for me to keep writing, trying to bring some sort of epic sense to the mundane of my everyday life. I don't necessarily enjoy using this format for religious or politically charge debate. Unfortunately, for the past month and a half I've been overwhelmed with the weight of the knowledge of the track that we are on as a people and a planet. So instead of not writing, I figure I'll just write what's on my mind and then maybe I'll begin to find the catharsis I was having, my public self-therapy as it were.
I recently saw the movie No End In Sight, a rather informative documentary on why the Iraq invasion has failed in its reconstruction efforts. In short, we've botched it all along the way, despite the protests from the outside and the inside of really knowledgeable people.
I understand that the situation is complicated and "Pull Out Now!" may seem a bit naive of a solution, but my suspicion has been and was confirmed by the movie that the highest ups in our government have plenty of people with realistic workable solutions, but they are ignored due to ideology and priority. I can't imagine that all of those people have stopped coming up with ideas.
The question then is not "What is the solution?", but "What is my role as a citizen?", for it must be different then the role of the advisors and generals. My role as a citizen is not to come up with workable solutions, for they most undoubtedly are already there, but to let my government know that they no longer represent me. They must know that I protest to this war being fought in my name, or in the name of ideals that I hold dear. They have violated the social contract that legitimates their rule, Iraq being the most recent of a ever increasing list of flagrant violations. Therefore, as a citizen it is my duty to continue to protest, to demand and end to this illegal war.
I say this, not to skirt the issue, but to encourage those of us in the anti-war movement to not become cynical or depressed, or confused, but continue on with a constant, unwavering opposition to the war.
But if you sit there paralyzed by the constant rhetoric that is out there, trying to figure it all out, or because your inquiring mind must have possible solutions, demands, in order to act, here are some that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure that a little research would come up with plenty of others, and I'm even hearing some quality responses by the dems, (mostly Kucinich).
1. Turn oversight of the occupation to the United Nations and the international community, primarily neighboring Muslim-influenced nations. America has proven herself incapable of managing this and it is time to resign.
2. Use the military budget to "buy" the insurgents. I would propose that the majority of the insurgency is coming from soldiers who were left with out any source of income when America disbanded the Iraqi army. If they could be hired to take on a vast public works program or something similar I would imagine that they would have a lot less motivation to wage war against their employer. This plan won't occur to any of the current politicians though, because of their dogmatic pro-business neoclassical liberalism.
3. Sit down and work with religious leaders such as Moqtada al-Sadr. America does not need to manufacture leadership that fits its own ideology, but compromise with the leadership that is there to stabilize and get out.
I'm sure if I thought about it I could come up with a few more, but the point isn't to make an exhaustive list, but to let everyone know that there are obvious options, other than quagmire, which haven't been tried because our leadership is so committed to violence as its first and only response.
War is Still Not the Answer!
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| I can't let go, its unnatural (part 4 of 4)As we traced the shore farther along, we came to an old iron bridge that crossed a small inlet into the Delaware. The city stopped here, but the kite was farther on up. We locked our bikes along the side of the bridges handrail and headed off into the brush. It felt like, for the first time we had caught a break; someone had carved out nature trails along the shore here. If I were to spend months creating and maintaining hiking trails, the outskirts of Camden would not have been my first choice but at that moment I was glad that someone had thought to do it. We weren't the only ones who were glad that they had carved out and preserved this little spot of nature, as the abandoned shells of cars that were dumped here and there along the trails had saved at least a couple of people the cost of having their car towed to the dump. The first car we past, completely covered with the red-brown of rust, was covered in bullet holes, as if a machine gun had open fired while it drove by. Both out of concern for our safety, and the excitement of feeling that we were nearing our goal, we took off running, only to resume our walking pace and catch our breath minutes later. And repeat.
Finally, after hours of chasing this kite, we spotted it, caught high atop one of the trees that extended out over the river. Without hesitation, Zach shimmied the tree. You have to understand, the reason we went kite flying in the first place was because of how intense the wind was that day. And so as Zach got farther out along the branches, the wind's effect grew exponentially, tossing him like the lure at the end of a fly fishing rod. My heart raced. Zach extended his spindly arm, and grabbed firm onto the kite. With a tug he wrenched it from the clutches of the tree and tucked it into his pants as he climbed down. I exhaled a breath I didn't realize I was holding. Dislodging the kite from his pants he squeezed it in his right hand, and we gave each other a big man-hug, the rainbow colors of our kite curling and flapping around us, the sun setting across the horizon, painting the sky the color of a fresh bruise, and my bicycle helmet securely fastened on my head.
The End.
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