1,000 Days & Nights in Hell ! - bake_my_day's Blog - Bakersfield.com

Cancel the Cab - I'll give you a lift.

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:29:46 PDT

I drive early in the morning most Mondays-Fridays now in the "Bas Said," listening to the Koran. Major oil company, Kuwaitis in the van, Cymric fields.

You've caught me unguarded but aware that this is not an Article but a blog, time-stamped and dated. Skipping to the chase: Do not Accept the Given Circumstances as the Only possible-ever Opportunity to be Happy. A framed reminder that "Happiness is not a Station You Arrive At, but a Way of Traveling" hangs in my garage.

Nice, and that whole paragraph above is the title of this entry; I just won't change the other one.

"We" are in foreclosure and scurrying to move from a 3BR 1.5Bath with pomegranet, lime, lemon and grapefruit trees in our yard to a 2BR apt. This will go hard on the wife and the cat; I'm doing my best to keep my friends out of The Move because when you have wife-fur and cat-fur standing on end, you need friends. At the same time, we're looking at a rootcanal and a crown. Then, there's Gas. I'm sitting here thinking: It Can be Done. I've done it a dozen times over many years. I didn't expect that I'd have to do it again at an advancing age, with a wife (just as I didn't expect to discover the oatmeal burned a minute ago -what valid citizen would be cooking oatmeal at noon anyway?).

To the some-of-you that appreciate the adventure of a sail, we'll be looking to meet you; to the many others:

Look, times are tough, the election of any new leader may turn out good or bad for you, how you conduct your business is your business but if you were often less shrewd, calculating and greedy, business would be better and finally, no matter how tightly screwed you are, you will eat, go to work and find rest. Choose the best for yourself and love every opportunity that presents itself.

We're getting rid of a lot of stuff. If you need some stuff, let me know.

The Critical United States Citizen

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:13:45 PDT

Can I write this and can you read this and still be a loyal United States Citizen?

I came to my senses pretty early on September 11, 2001 in my apartment a few blocks from a Ventura, California beach. I wasn't awake when I clicked the cable on and walked into a small kitchenette to heat water for my french press. I remember returning to the television set and just staring at an airplane stuck and smoking in a tall building. Then, I watched an airplane stick itself into another tall building. I recognized the structures to be The World Trade Center. This is (exactly) what I said to my mother here in Bakersfield a few minutes later on the phone: "We sure must have pissed somebody off. '

I wrote the following a couple of years later when I considered the idea of a central evil place, a vortex of corruption and mis-deeds drawing un-natural elements of its own distruction.

Day 01

Jane Brauntley’s intercom chimed and she tapped the button on her communications cluster that activated her headset to permit the incoming call from Sarah Tinger, extension 734. “Jamie is touring our new Vice President, Mergers and Acquisitions.” Sarah’s whispery and suggestive voice always bubbled with a grin when she talked about men. “His name is Jeff –from Maryland- he’s really yummy and should be coming into your office in about thirty seconds. Byeee!”

Jamie Hunt, Executive Vice President of Human Resources was piloting said Jeffrey Jackman through the multiconglomerate’s two floors of trading and administrative support. The executive meeting was to begin in twenty minutes, and it looked to Jamie that they would have half that time for Jeff to refresh himself while he attended to the one quick e-correspondence that he’d obligated himself to this morning. Briskly stepping to the Senior Legal’s office door, he knocked lightly, turned the knob and entered smiling, “Good morning, Jane! I want you to meet Jeffrey Jackman!”

The limousine glides to the curb of the NorthTower’s underground reception quad. This morning started early for the driver, beginning just a few blocks away where he picked up the Towncar at 4:00 A.M., but the drive back from Long Island was smooth. All he had to do for the old prick in the back was stop at Starbuck’s for a Viennese, black and grab a newspaper. The second guy was actually out of his building and in the car before he could get out to open a door for him. It was a clear bright fall morning

–beautiful! He logged the time as he hit the sunlight on the way out: 8:32 A.M. Edidston and Pope were already in the express elevator to the 105^th floor.

Jamie concluded the Notification Form of Termination to the Fund at the same time as an HR staffer was escorting Ross Torson from the trading floor. Straight men, particularly the sort that were the most talented in this business, often failed to keep their goodies -or in Ross’s case the suggestion of his goodies- where they should be kept.

I swear, I’m hiring the next forty-five year old mother of five that can type and fills out an application. He closed down the link and walked from his office to the elevator; stopping only to confirm with his admin, a very nice young man named Robert, that reservations for lunch following the meeting had been made.

“I wonder if that would work,” Jamie said aloud as the elevator doors quietly opened.

A floor Trainer stopped talking as the HR officer walked by but he did not break eye contact with the young commodities trainee, his second day on the job. They were leaning against the wall opposite the bank of elevators, waiting for a down car. The younger man, a recent graduate in Finance from Tulane, looked perplexed. When the doors closed on Jamie Hunt, the Trainer continued, “Look, let me put it this way: Nobody here is forty-two years old; you’re ancient then. You’re dead and forgotten. If you can last until you’re thirty-five, that’s the last helium-ballooned woman-cop-stripper party you’re gonna’ get. After that, you deny it, you take the day off, you walk out of this side of the business before the young sharks rip you up and spit out your guts.”

Jackman, washing his hands, looked up from the pink marbled basin in his private bathroom. He liked what he saw and smiled. Jane Brauntley obviously liked it too. Carefully drying his hands to the manicured nails in the plush towel available to him, he rolled the sleeves of his tailored shirt in place and buttoned the cuffs. Taking his coat from the teak and gold-appointed hanger on the door, he could not take his eyes off his own image in the soft lit mirror. Maybe this weekend, maybe next –before Linda and the kids get here, and he walked back into his office for his micro-cassette tape recorder and presentation notes. He adjusted himself on the way out.

The action on the trading floor began to swell ten minutes ago. The pressure and density in the air preceded it; like atmosphere running before a giant storm or earthquake – even altering the look of the air: hazy and less defined across acres of floor. The precious metal and gem guys come in hot at 5:00 A.M. and never cool down for the next seven hours, but the crews that deal in petroleum and other commodities are just now getting jiggly, the choir of murmurs rising to a low roar. Stocks and securities brokers, commonly known never to get off their big rumps or walk away from their computer screens except for coffee, are standing and pacing, voices amping in volume, picking up the rhythm of the jabber filling the room. Commodities, already crowding the aisles and beginning to topple cubicle walls, get up on desks and then walk across them shouting invectives and profanities into their wireless infrared headsets, and at each other in one hundred and seventeen recognizable languages: searching, blindly colliding in space to do commerce. The wave of energy slams against the deck and the floor-to-ceiling windows begin to oscillate.

On top of the hundreds of shouted pleas, insults and threats there is the bellow of cattle being slaughtered in the sheds, the trumpets of elephants killed for ivory, and hungry cries of diamond-eyed black aids babies looking down at this stampede from cameras in the ceiling.

World Capital collapses, Exchange Rates rage, Futures’ cloven feet running, slipping on the bloodied carpets. Engorged, thrusting into a tight, dark, energy induced vortex. Lips opened, sucking, screaming, Oh God! Oh God as airplanes are pulled from the skies and into the Towers. Prayers follow in a moment’s pause and it all becomes reflection in vapors, a jet-fueled E Ticket Ride.

Soldier Returning Tomorrow

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:27:05 PST

At 0945 the Limos arrive.

I've polished my boots. I've a clean, white, longsleeved shirt. I've a black tie and somber expression. I've put the sodas and water in. I've taken the liquor out.

I don't want this job. I don't want to show up. I want to quit.

He took the job. He was locked and loaded. He didn't quit.

OH, GOD OF ISRAEL, STOP THE WAR! STOP THE KILLING!

poetry as events: truth or fiction?

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:05:24 PST

A Maid Before Tapestry

Gregory Clemens

In her sunlit morning room, she reads

again each word on perfect lips too young

to know a sweetheart’s kiss, her only letter from the man.

His words that found her on an afternoon

a full moon ago, she knows

His words in double hearts that long for his return from the tapestry of Earth,

behind her on the wall

in borders, rivers, mountains, oceans moving,

re-forming like the clouds above her,

She sees the face of God and knows her man lives somewhere in this panel of the World;

He’ll find this room again like the letter did, like the

brass nails and leather of her chairs, the pearls upon her desk –Yes

He’ll come to her again as sure as the ornamental iron that holds the World in Place.

“A Maid Before Tapestry” was written in response to a print of Vermeer’s painting, Woman In Blue, (Reading a Letter). The original painting is exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

If I Could Sleep Until December 15th, I Would

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:27:51 PST

Tonight, southbound on I-5, passing Lyons, I did not believe what I saw. I thought it was a gag, like the "bullet hole" you see on the back of a SuV.

It was a real boxer dog with a leash around its neck, attached to and chasing this elevated truck at 70 MPH in the #1 lane.

Friends

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:39:21 PST

This morning I talked to my wife, checked my bank balance, looked to see if anyone had read or commented on my blog and then, looked at what my Bakersfield.com friends were doing, writing, thinking.

Hmmmm.....'Don't have many Friends. So, I decided to Work on That. I probably need Some.

You may be getting a Friend Request from me. I probably won't get too involved in your Life and will be the kind of friend that reads you, pops in occasionally with a thought or question. If I do some more theatre, you'll get an invitation. If I go to jail, you won't get a call for bail.

I'm that kind of friend. (I Size everything I write about this big so I can read it myself.)

Like No Kind of Restaurant in Town

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:42:11 PST

Norman Mailer's passing was reported today.

I met the writer in a restaurant around the corner of the Promenade Theatre Off Broadway in the west 70's of NYC when he came in and took a seat at our table. He talked with Geraldine Paige and Sam Shepard. Somebody told him that I played the character Jerry Rubin in The Chicago Conspiracy Trial in LA and Chicago. He didn't give a rat's ass. He knew Ginsburg and Kunstler and Kerouac; he'd covered the 1969 Chicago convention, walked the park in the teargas, seen the bloody attempts of Daley's troops to kill dissent.

I am now the age he was then and my greatest memory of the man that night was: jeez, this old guy could kick my butt.

Executioner's Song was a popular "read" at the time. He wouldn't talk about his next novel, the one that took him 11 years to write, the one the bookstores returned to his publisher with the covers torn off. Imagine his rage and sorrow seeing the faces of his children mutilated that way, if you can, Bakersfield.