Amazing Grace

"The air here, it's breathin' fine fine fine.
We cooked us up an ass-kickin' lifetime"

~WP

Contrary to traditional interpretations of certain physical laws - there's a strong kind of benign energy that's actually created when people gather.

There are waves in music - acted upon by sonic landscape instead of ocean floor, created by group-instinct and cooperation, independent of genre, venue, and instrumentation. Individual players provide the building blocks, and each piece evolves, constantly adjusted according to the rest of the mix. A wave begins to gather as different components of the audience start keying on the different parts. It's building as those parts start feeding into a whole and everybody in the room becomes aware.

The band is not just playing, they're also listening, appreciating, adjusting their approach with every passing second to build a better whole.

The audience isn't just listening and appreciating, they're playing. Every shout, every murmur, every fist pump and scream and bodily convulsion is feeding into a group energy that's in constant reflection back to the players. It's a perfect feedback loop that produces effects - long term and short - that are unique and beneficial but essentially nameless and inexplicable.

The wave crests as the band hits an important note. The crowd screams and swoons as one, and for one tiny series of moments, everybody in the area agrees with everybody else. Them all that positivity and wonder reverts to square one. The wave breaks, band and audience breathe out, and everything starts again.

It's a strange conundrum in modern societal construct that we celebrate the individual - always - and never the collective that rises in creative support. Society celebrates the Kennedy brothers, but American foreign policy is as bloody and imperialistic as ever. Americans dedicate a national holiday to MLK, but organized group civil disobedience in 2012 might credibly end in a tazing. We teach children to regurgitate information, and we grade them according to their performance on tests they take by themselves.

These are shitty, pre-historic ways of doing things, dismissing as they do, the idea that people can and do function on higher levels as a group mind and collective actor.

One obvious corollary to all this is that music need not enter the proceedings for the beneficial effect to be obtained. Any gathering of any number of people doing anything can create a similar effect. Speeches, lectures, sit-in, infantry array - any time humans gather, our potential increases. An important facet of this idea is that its malleable enough to never duplicate itself, yet novel enough to induce true, delighted surprise every time it does.

We are greater than the sum of our parts, but it's a truth you have to discover for yourself, through years and miles and heartbreaking trial and error. That's not good. Of the gajillion things music might teach us, this is arguably the most important.

Interpreter #1

The guy was twitchy. His eyebrows jumped ugly with his arms and head, and he told his stories using the whole of his person, as if mere conversation wouldn't be enough.

"it's funny what they show you. Not even show you, it's the whole...how can I say it? Like, they talk about this, the prison, Abu is this and that, kept this guy naked and water boarded this guy, whatever. And waterboarding is part of it too, By the way: I ain't seen guys gettin' water in the nose and it feels like drowning so the guy talks. What I seen: they take a guy's wife and like drown her. And not even the guy talks or doesn't talk, no. This, they take the guy and chain him up and bring in his wife and hold her head underwater until she's fuckin' dead. Not for interrogation, intel, information...No. They do it just to do it. Just because.

"You know what they did all the time? Like this is almost...it's funny cause one of the pictures this broad took...You see this, this girl she looks like a dude? Little dude? She was on HBO saying shit about how she didn't know this and that. Dude I seem this girl, on the phone they'd have her call a guys family. His cousins, aunts, kids, fuckin' like who's ever at the house, right? And say:

"This is Sargent so and so down at Gharib, uh we got y'boy, and we gonna execute this guy, today, so you better come say goodbye."

"Then they'd wait, and sooner or later a family of Iraqis gonna show up, and this little girl come up with ten dudes with guns and take everybody. This family, dirt poor, got nothin' , dad killed or he disappeared, now they gotta sell the whole house just to come to Gharib and say goodbye. Instead the little dude meets em, takes 'em an lock 'em up.

"Now you talkin' . Now he gonna talk, right? Cause the gang's all here son, right? These guys start makin' shit up. This dude, they killed everybody in that car, a young kid too, a little girl. Six. This guy wrote a fuckin' book, cause I heard him. He named everybody in Iraq! Fucking guy recited the phone book. No dice. They chained him to a wall and trotted them out. They dumped gas on the little girl. This guy named everybody and they still burned his daughter in front of his eyes...

Porridge

He was drunk. "Make no mistake" he was telling them all, "Make no mistake: mucho - steenko-boracho!"

And the boys, gathered around Settiz Faquek later that very night, cracked up and bought him drinks as he celebrated. The party raged into the night. I watched every bit of it, from the bar, the bandstand, the bathroom...I watched all of it.

"God knows why"

Is what my uncle Egrit when I came home that day. At the time I was delicate. Perhaps I overreacted, but I detected a tone in his voice that I didn't like. You can't let stuff like that go by, because every time you do a piece of your soul dies in your chest and your manhood is severely diminished.

I helped Egrit to his feet, because punching him had taken the tension out of the situation and we could speak like gentlemen. Egrit - fat fuck - he said he saw the men come. Egrit said they were loud, and obviously from the government and there were men there, bad men, who he'd recognized. He thought about calling me.

The shop phone is out. Undependable...

He said it like gospel, but the phone worked fine. It had been out just once in my entire life, for a two week period in the summer of 1999.

I felt I should hit him again, and I did. Afterwards, what else? I went where Egrit told me to go. For vengeance, for my family.

Afterward

In Carlisle we humped past two dudes eating another dude. No big deal, right? Dudes (and the occasional girl I guess) were the only things to eat for a hundred miles in any direction. They watched us come up for a mile from the porch of a house that had burned long ago. They were old. Two old men, decked in the standard rags and plastic bags. There was a firepit between the porch and the muddy washout where the road once was, a crude spit, half a guy (or half a human anyway, all burnt up you couldn't tell) speared and roasting. It was small enough to be a child, looked like, but - everybody knows - cooking makes a body smaller by half. The air smelled like sweet pork roast. The old guys made no effort to conceal the dirty work, but they stopped preparations to leer at us going by, watching with raw, grey eyes as the company made its way. They were probably thinking about which one of us they could rip out of line...to grace the spit for breakfast, maybe. Nobody ever mentioned it again, but I remember later on in camp it was a big deal, the first crazy thing we'd seen at war.

Mutiny #3: The Last Thousand

"He'll be seventy-some inches tall. He'll be drinking a beer, and he'll be grabbing his balls. He's the remote explosive waiting for someone to call"

 

This fucking guy…The raincoat’s demise…rental adventure…A pony discussion…The smiley motorman…Things get ugly…Texas…A package arrives…A Cadillac burns…Rest stop.

The yellow rain coat had been effective. There was rain the whole way from Midtown to the park, and wind - swirling and modulating - in the vast cement canyons, driving the water before like a team of horses. Even so, the dramatically colored jacket had kept it all off of him, including the most important parts: his forehead and his hands. Over the past few weeks – wet as they’d been - he’d had great need, and great use of the raincoat, and he thought it was a shame to have to leave it behind. Nevertheless, he was down to a $1000 roll of 50’s and 100’: Soon the coat would have to go.

***

He followed them for three blocks. A small girl – he was guessing around seven - and a young mother, walking along park between 77th & 78th. He'd overheard a conversation, downwind of them at strawberry fields. The plan was uptown for lunch, then Astor Place to spin the cube and St. Marks for t-shirt buying.

They were heading for the station at 72nd, which would make things easier. He could envision the scene: The R was coming, uptown / downtown express, with the N train moments later, uptown express and local, seconds apart. There were steel trusses spaced three feet apart in the station, separating uptown from down, two sets on each side. They were rusty, tons of trash and shit strewn around them, piling at the concrete base, infesting the steel frame like termites in ancient Oak.

They stopped at Starbucks so he watched them from a few feet away. The girl was cute. A brunette, an easy smile, easy laugh, nine years old instead of seven, turning ten the very next day. He could see the three of them in his mind’s eye, entering the station on the downtown side, on 71^st and Park. They finished and he followed them at 15 yards. They never turned around. Talking – all the while - about horses.

Moments later in an almost empty mid-afternoon subway station, he closed to within five yards, leaning on a tiled pole, watching them move up to the yellow line. He could hear the train coming, it was almost time, and they were still talking about horses. He moved up. Six feet away now, the two of them standing close, waiting. He briefly considered doing both, but quickly opted no. The girl was getting louder:

I do want a pony, but just not now, you know…

She was yelling over the metallic concussions popping off all around as the old train moved close at full throttle.

***

Two quick steps closed the gap and the mom was still eyes locked on the 9 year old. He bounded off his left foot, brought a knee and thigh into the kid. She flew only a few feet before the uptown express seemingly vaporized most of her, leaving no trace but a bleach white “Keds” sneaker in almost immaculate condition. He and the girl’s mother watched it bounce and spin across the platform like a badly hit ball dribbling foul.

He’d thrown low. The motorman had seen nothing, felt nothing, so the train continued on through the station. In an instant he can see the immediate future unfold in front of him like a brilliant sunrise.

The downtown N train on the opposite track (separated by those rusty old trusses) is coming in. He can see it in his head and he can hear it in real, super HD fidelity, showing up about 30 seconds after the downtown express on the opposite platform. Both trains coming in, feel the station shaking and feedback echoes of echoes. Commuters on the opposite platform begin crowding up toward the tracks, jockeying to gain a predictive advantage over envisioned subway doors soon to open. The whole place is vibrating, and the woman whose daughter he just murdered begins to scream - not cry, or wail, but scream - at the ragged top of her voice directly into his face. She’d waited about five seconds before starting in, and he’d spent the entire time staring into her eyes right there on the platform. Now things began to happen all at once: The awful train roared past, and an imaginary count-down began:

At twenty seconds the speeding uptown express is finally past them, and he’s leaping away from the now wailing mother, who – in retrospect – seemed younger than he’d originally thought. At 18 seconds he lands between the tracks on his side of the 72nd street station and considers that perhaps the young woman hadn't been the mother after all. A nanny, perhaps? An elder sister? At 15 seconds he’d leapt from his position between the first set of tracks, over the infamous third rail and into the gap between the second set of tracks. He could still hear the mother/nanny belting it out, even in spite of the sound of the R local, now fully out of the tunnel and lurching to a halt, breaks screaming, grinding into position between he and the hysterical woman.

At 14 seconds he sizes up the truss situation from up close. At 11 seconds he’s through the truss and jumping out over the entire first set of rails, landing between the tracks with the N express blasting from the tunnel, bearing down on him like an artillery shell. At six seconds he can see the motorman fixing him in a terrified gaze through the front window of the downtown express. At five seconds he leaps for the far side of the tracks, shedding the bright yellow rain coat just before take-off. He doesn’t see it hang there for an instant before the massive air-wave of the speeding train blows it high up and out of sight, deep into the duct-works of the old train station. At two seconds his hands meet the far platform as the downtown local – just on time – comes sliding up. At one second his matador, gator-suede boots are finally safe atop the ancient concrete of the 72 St. Station, and the doors of the downtown N train open like a mother’s arms to welcome him in. 

***

There was a van rental place at 59^th and the west side highway. The guy took his fake license without looking at it and said:

$165 for the next 24 hours. You want the insurance?

Without waiting for the reply, the guy threw the keys to a 2011 Charger on the high counter between them and continued speaking:

Black on black. Tinted all the way around to the legal limit. Fuckin’ sweet. Where you headin’?

***

In minutes he was on open track, 120 and climbing, leaving great chunks of the Henry Hudson Parkway behind him with each stretching second of travel. At the very top of the George Washington Bridge he let off on the pedal, looked south out over the bay past the Statue of Liberty, imagined himself jerking the wheel hard left, ripping through guard rail, Jersey barrier, and giant cable-spans like so much tissue paper. He saw himself floating into the windy void hundreds of feet above the Hudson River with hard trajectory and total silence. How long falling? He wondered.

Instead, he rolled the passenger window, reached into his inside pocket, flung his brown leather wallet out over the rails. He rolled the window back up and dipped into the Charger’s throttle once again. Hours later he was out of jersey, heading south at over 100mph, the $837 dollars unprotected in the pocket where the wallet had been.

***

He pulled off into a rest stop at 3:05am. There were signs for Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Mobile, and Krispy Kreme Donuts. It took him 10 steps to get from the glass vestibule to the bathroom and making them he counted eight people in the rest stop. There was a man wearing a Red Sox hat in the bathroom, pissing into a urinal, and he could hear somebody else in the stalls. As he was washing his hands, the first guy – Red Sox hat – stepped up to do the same, saying:

Holy shit man. Fuckin’ guys, right?.

Red Sox hat caught a flash of movement to his left. He leaned over the sink to wash his hands as a gush of hot, crimson/black blood flooded from a great gash in his throat onto his hands. He caught himself in the mirror looking helpless and scared, and he began to panic. He saw the reflected bathroom door swinging closed behind him just as the darkness began creeping at the edges of his vision. He reached up for his throat, fell to his knees and pitched forward onto the formica counter top between the sinks.

***

He walked out of the bathroom without tending to the stall. He saw seven of the eight people he’d seen before. There were four people at burger king, two on either side of the counter, females selling, men buying. Similar ages. 20’s, early 30’s. He walked over to them, eavesdropping. One was having trouble deciding and the other was frustrated:

Fuck. Alex. Fuck. Really? Really? Fuck.

Shut up dood. Fuck. Gimme a minute fuckin’…

He closed in, smelling a cloud of alcoholic vapor enveloping this are of the rest stop. The women on the other side, both dark, heavy, and aggravated-looking beamed at him as he arrived with pleading glances. He was not moved. One of the men turned as he arrived and fixed him in a bloodshot stare:

Dude…You look just like…

Just as he’d been about to say the words “Keith Richards”, the man drove an ice pick through Alex’s right eye to the wooden handle. There was a sound like a water balloon hitting pavement, a weird fountain of fluids and blood began oozing and bubbling from the wound as Alex – still standing up – began repeating the word “like” at strange intervals and weird tones of voice. The girls were gone as soon as the pick happened, dialing 911 in the back, or maybe just fleeing, he thought. Alex’s friend, however, was too scared to run away. He seemed transfixed by Alex’s ruined face, but the assailant only allowed a few seconds to indulge the fascination. Swinging his right arm up through its full range of motion, snatching the ice pick on the upswing, he drove it into the friend’s lower abdomen and wrenched his hand up hard and fast through skin, bone, cotton and nylon. There was a gasping noise as his Alex and his friend fell, side by side on the rest stop floor in an expanding blood slick.

***

Outside he heard the sirens, closing from both directions out on the freeway, but instead of making for the Charger he went for the woods. As the troopers lined up outside and began to staging he was already in the darkened neighborhoods off the rest stop exit. The neighborhood was nice. There was a gigantic late 80’s style contemporary commanding a cul de sac off the street he found himself on. He made for that, taking careful note of the new, muted glow low the western sky.

It was set back farther than had been apparent, and he made his way up a winding, unlit driveway with the sirens blaring back at the rest stop. The house was huge, basically a giant rectangular box with a great open space carved out of the center to form a carport and circle-back. He went silently about, testing doors and windows for an unsecured latch, when a light went on at a window close bye and he hit the dirt. Noise from inside “Yeah yeah yeah” or something like that. Not the voice of somebody who’d been sleeping. Then he heard the sound of scraping paws against kitchen flooring and understood. He began moving along the ground, making for the doors he’d seen in the back.

The guy opened the door closest to him and he offered a tiny “thank you” to the universe as he acted. The guy inside was insulting the dog, angry at having been woken:

Fuck dog! You push and you push im tellin’ you. You bring this shit on…

He stopped, because there was a very strange looking intruder standing in the door from which he’d intended to fling the pet. It was a man, taller and wiry looking, dressed in what looked like velvet pants and black leather.

***

12 hours later he was eating at a diner three miles away, dressed in a three piece suit he’d borrowed from the guy with the dog. The weather section said storms coming, but calm further south, and he took the info to heart. The bill for his breakfast was ten dollars, 47 cents, which he covered with a hundred dollar bill before leaving. He walked south, heading for easier weather.

He found a big supermarket and began going door to door testing locks. It took him almost an hour, and three more big parking lots, before success. The car was huge, a caddy, 1979 or so. The rear door was opened, and he ducked in to wait. Storms were gathering and the air felt old and cold and angry. The parking lot served what looked like a hundred smaller stores and outlets. An hour went by, then another. He was drifting, thinking about the wife and the little girl from the grey contemporary.

Eventually they came. Two girls. Teenaged or at least very very close. They carried bags of different designs. Big day shopping. They did not notice the passenger upon pulling out. One of them – the prettier one judging by voice – was talking about a long drive ahead:

Fuck it’s late. O M G Katie we are in soooo much trouble. Holy shit holy shit holy shit. It’ll take hours!

The other – not nearly so incensed – shot back casual:

Longer. We’re on ”E”…

***

He left the caddy burning on the side of the road in an area he’d thought was Texas. After dealing with the girls he’d discovered that disposal of their mortal remains wasn’t feasible considering his circumstance. Instead, he left them in a bloody, rank smelling stack in the back seat and drove south as fast as he could, until the daylight, and the horrible smell forced a decision. He’d put a hundred dollar’s worth of gas in the trunk, so the last 1000 had become the last 737 dollars. He watched the police converge on the scene from all directions, but stayed undetected in his flight, hidden by the grassy tufts and boulder piles almost a mile out from the road.

That night, long after the excitement on the highway had been scrubbed away, there was just the road. He walked back out towards it, grabbed a hundred dollar bill from the wad in his pocket, and held in a clenched fist with the thumb extended.

5 hours later he rented a room just over the Texas/Oklahoma border, paid the man a hundred dollars in advance of two nights stay, then walked quietly out to his room. Arriving, he fired off a text:

Moving day – send everything over night for tmrw: Texas Motor Court, 50 Alamo Drive, Plano Texas, 02320

then fell asleep for ten hours. By 8:00 the next morning he was dressed and in motion, headed for the front desk to pick up a package. He found the front desk guy cutting cardboard boxes up behind the counter, before he could open his mouth to speak the guy stopped his cutting, turned his attention to his guest:

Fine Mess! Fine Mess?

The front desk guy was air-quoting as he said it. After a while, though, it became apparent that no reply was coming, he bounded over to a rack of mail cubbies on the desk behind him. Our hero noticed a sign on the wall reading “Don’t rush me. I’m making mistakes as fast as I can!” The man said:

First this!

Picking from one of the cubbies, the front desk man handed our hero a postcard, then began sifting through a small pile of packages. He finally pulled out the only black envelope among them, held it up, saw confirmation in his guest’s eyes, and handed it over without another word. Almost.

Hey that’s weird you look…

That was the last our hero heard of the front desk man before making his escape. Out of the office and into the dull dust of the hotel parking lot, he quickened his gait, rushing toward his room in something like a slow jog. Inside he studied the postcard. It featured a picture of a man in dread locks smoking a gigantic joint. Across the top, the words “Wish you were here” were written in script. At the bottom, in the same hand, were the words “Wait, I forget: are you here?” and under that: !JAMAICA AGAIN! In bold black caps.

The main package was about shoebox size. Upon opened it, he removed a smaller item inside amongst balled newsprint. The smaller package was soft, wrapped red and green tissue paper. It contained three wholly expected items, one of which – a small red wallet made of climber’s webbing - would have to wait until a healthy portion of the first two could be dealt with.

***

Later on he called a cab, paid 29 dollars getting to (ballpark), paid a scalper 100 dollars apiece for a field box ticket, a grandstand ticket and a bleacher seat. He arrived deep into the third inning and went straight to the bathroom. Ten guys on line, 12 stalls with another 5-6 dudes que'ed. He didn’t wait long before a stall opened.Once inside, he took a tiny white canister from a pocket and dumped a great pile of its powdery white contents on to his hand, then jabbed his wrist up into his nasal area with a mighty sniff. After that he doused the first caniupster, took another one from a different pocket and repeated the process. This time the powder not so white, the pile not near so big. He pulled his legs up under him and listened.

Public bathroom usage takes on some unique characteristics during baseball games and the closer the game, the more pronounced the effect. Football, concerts, festivals…Most public entertainment deals with great chunks of time during which attendees will delay bathroom trips for as long as they can. Nobody wants to miss stuff so they suffer, willingly. Baseball is the same way, but instead of long hours of delayed peeing, the side changes every inning, creating an irresistible pocket of opportunity for anybody holding it in, and an easy decision for those who can hold it for another go-around. Inside the bathroom, this effect manifests as a tiny “rush” to the bathrooms every 10-20 minutes with periods of relative emptiness between the crowds. Our hero had come to the stall during just such a rush and now, after sitting through it, was waiting for the next.

It came quick. Within five minutes, he heard a gaggle of noisy guys come roaring in to the tile echo chamber of the first room, nobody came back to the stalls. An instant later he heard another small group come into the bathroom. He heard seven people at first, but they’d all stopped in the urinal section. He was trying to hear their voices but the auto-flush echo was fucking with his understanding. Finally he heard a distinct, useful sentence. An older man, talking to another man, pissing next to one another:

Hey did Ben leave? Ben!?

The other guy came right back:

He’s hear. Still shitting…Right Benny boy?

The water was running. He heard dudes washing hands, and he heard a voice from the stall next to his:

Just fuck off JUSTIN. Dad I’m fine. Just go, I’ll be there.

There was no reply. The man’s partners had left the bathroom. Our hero let his feet down and – waiting until the last footsteps rang out in the exit tunnel – began to speak.

***

The shits, and on game day too. Billy Lukens was dejected, sitting alone in his own rotted stink while Josh Beckett struck out more Ranger,s and the innings rocketed by. He was missing precious at bats to his awful guts. Two weeks, he thought, probably time to go see the doctor. He spent the next few minutes thinking about cancer and dying, but was interrupted in short order by a voice that sounded more like a hiss:

Hey. Buddy. I need help. Can you help me?

The bathrooms tile interior was fucking with his ears, and it sounded like the voice was coming from everywhere. Some primal feature in his darkest self sprang awake upon hearing it, and began assessing the surroundings for threat, and escape routes. It was like a put on, this voice, a horror film parody of something dreadful. He answered back:

Uh. Well I’ll do what I can. I’m not sure I can stand up…

The voice came back directly at the “P” sound:

Perfect. That’s perfect. You see, I’ve dropped my ring, and it’s terribly important to me. It’s just over there, in front of you on the right.

Lukens looked. Saw.

Ok yeah. I can see it. Ok, you want me to slide it back over?

Hand.

Excuse me?

Hand it over.

The primal dread was cresting, pounding on his thought process and signaling immediate evacuation, but it was too late. Lukens leaned, grabbed, and tried to hand back. Holding the recovered jewlery – a miniature silver skull and crossbones – in his hand for a fascinated few seconds, he said:

Cool ring

before u-ing it under the stall to allow access on the other side, and that’s as far as he got.

***

He’d just come from the ATM at the El Al gate (New balance: $100,000) and a drunken stranger spoke to him, pointing to an article in the newspaper on our hero’s lap and bitching up a vapor cloud of Marlboro and Corona.

That is scary. I mean can you believe it? That’s why I’m going! That’s it! People look at me as if I’M the fucking nut!

Judging by the smell, the guy would have been happy to go on, but a soft sounding female voice issued from speakers high above them and interrupted him into concerned silence:

This is a last pre-boarding call for El Alal flight 911, direct from New Orleans Louisiana to Montego Bay. Once again final pre-boarding begins in just a minute folks. Make sure to have your ID’s ready to present. You will not be allowed on the plane without valid ID. I repeat: you may not board the airplane without proper photo ID.

At this our hero got up from his place beside the nosy American and walked over to a trash can mounted in the wall near an ancient bank of pay phones. Anybody giving a shit would have observed him plainly, taking an pristine-looking black leather wallet from his pocket, tossing it into the trash, removing another, very different looking wallet from a well-hidden pocket and turning back towards his gate, and the future.