Chase It

I used to think it was disruptive to exert agency upon any object.  I tried to sit still until the mud settled, like Lao Tzu recommended.  Things usually worked out, which proved that Lao Tzu was right.  That’s why I refused to apply for any job. 

Like Fish, the homeless Cherokee man said in Austin, Texas: be like water; water always finds its way.  Then two cops came around the corner and Fish was forced to swallow a burning joint so as to avoid arrest.  Then they arrested him and told me and Cockroach to scram.  

Anyway, I tried to not try, like Fish and Lao Tzu.  Things usually worked out.  Sometimes God even told people to give me money so I could pay for food and smokes.  They told me straight out, “God told me to give this to you.”  Who was I to argue?  Once, when my buddy, Fred, and I were completely broke except for a buck and a quarter between us, we won twelve dollars with a scratch-off lottery ticket and bought two value meals at Burger King.  I felt like Han-Shan on Cold Mountain, biting into that Quarter-Pounder-With-Cheese.

I didn’t consider it wrong to accept when somebody offered me a job, as long as I didn’t apply for it.  It wasn’t exertion that was wrong, but agency.  It was the application for the job that was cacophonic.  So when my dad’s friend offered me a job planting trees in upstate New York, I said yes please.

“We’ll see bears,” he told me, as we drove.

“That’s cool,” I said.

“We’ll probably see a lot of them.  Maybe four.”

I popped my Bob Dylan tape in the deck.  “All I really wanna do, is baby be friends with you,” Bob Dylan sang.

“He’s lying,” my dad’s friend said.  “You can’t trust a man with a voice like that.” 

But I could tell that he was digging the music.  He kept on asking me to tell him the lyrics when he couldn’t understand the words.

When we pulled up to the trailer at the end of a dirt mountain road in the woods, he kept the headlights on while we shuttled back and forth between the truck and the trailer, taking things inside.

Then before we went to sleep he told me the rules.  Rule 1: Don’t go outside at night without the gun.  Rule 2: No smoking in the trailer.

So we spent four days planting trees, driving around on the four-wheeler with soil and saplings and tools.  We dug and planted and watered from dawn til dusk.

The last day I was outside smoking in the morning.  It had rained that night so everything was fresh and green.  He was in the kitchen making coffee and pancakes and bacon for breakfast.

“Psst,” he said.  He had a big grin on his face.  He pointed behind me.

I turned my head and looked and saw that he was pointing at a bear.  The bear was poking around, probably eating some berries or something, minding its own business.

Then he grinned even bigger.  “Chase it!” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Chase it!” he said again.

That was against everything I believed in.  But I chased it.  I ran straight at that bear.  It seemed surprised to se me running straight at it, waving my arms the way I was.  It turned and took off, hurtling down the hill and I ran after it.  I kept on running after it, hopping over logs and ducking under vines, until I was deep in the valley, and the bear was nowhere to be seen.       

16 Years Ago

The New Millennium

I was sitting in a bookstore, reading with my headphones on. Jazz music filled my head. My backpack was beside me on the floor.

"Hey," said a man in sweatpants.

I slid the headphones off my head and lay them on the table. Still the music played quietly from the tabletop. I looked up and saw the man standing at my elbow. A hood shadowed his face. He was grinning broadly. I could see his teeth.

"Hey, man," he said. "Have you heard of the New Millennium?" he asked.

I paused. "What about it?" I asked.

"The year 2000," he said. "Jesus is coming back," he declared.

"That's good news," I said.

He nodded excitedly, took off his hood and said victoriously: "And here I am!"

"Good to meet you," I said and offered him a seat. "Take a seat," I said.

"Thank you," Jesus said. He sat down heavily in the chair. I picked up my book and began again to read.

"That looks like a good book," Jesus said.

"It is," I said. "A friend gave it to me out east for Christmas."

"Christmas," he said. Then, "Hey man," Jesus said, "you got any weed?"

"No," I said. "I'm sorry, but I do not."

"Yeah," Jesus said. "You probly don't smoke weed. You probly got a good job and a nice house. You probly don't smoke weed."

"I work in a warehouse," I said. "It's a pretty good job."

"Yeah," Jesus said.

It was raining outside.

"Hey, man. Can you spare a dollar? I lost my bus pass, and I just gotta get home tonight so's I'm not sleeping on the street. Shit, you got a dollar? Just a dollar, please."

"I think so," I said and fished a dollar out of my pocket and handed it to him.

"Thanks, man. God bless you," Jesus said.

Through the reflection of the bookshelves and magazines racks in the window I could see the headlights of cars passing by in the rain.

A man was standing behind one of the racks, flipping through a magazine. He tilted his head back and peeked over the magazines at Jesus and me sitting there talking to one another.

Jesus had my headphones on and was talking very loudly. "I dig this music," Jesus said. "It's got a real sweet groove."

The man hid his head again behind his magazine. It was a magazine about automobiles.

Jesus took off my headphones and lay them down on the table. Quietly, the music played continuously from the table top. Horns tooting, piano, and the driving chromatic bass up and down the scale. I could barely hear it. But undeniably, it was there. It was raining outside.

I looked up from my book and noticed that Jesus was staring at me. He leaned into my personal space. "Can I touch you?" he asked.

Outside, it was raining and the cars moved by, puddles splashing in the headlight beams. Jazz music played quietly from the table top.

I responded somberly, "No, sir. You cannot." He was leaning into my personal space. I could smell his breath. I looked down and began again to read.

Jesus looked very sad and made ready to leave. He put his hands in his pockets and stood up. "God bless you, son," he said and started walking towards the door.

I nodded and kept on reading my book.

The sturdy cover of the paperback was green, decorated with interconnected vines winding in and out, merging and diverging bifurcation. All things considered, it was a very nice book.

Jesus walked towards the door. But then he stopped and turned back towards me. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned down and kissed the back of my head four times in the shape of a cross.

"God bless you," he muttered, and walked out the door into the rain. I just kept reading my book.

The Differences Between Things

In Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, I spent a week or so in the basement of a hotel, living with the gardener. Late at night, mosquitoes buzzing in the tiny, smoke-filled room, he sometimes had an intense need to communicate. He slept on the bunk above me and scratched on the bed frame to get my attention. I pretended not to notice and he said my name with a loud, hoarse whisper. He leaned his head out over the bed above me, dangerously teetering--his silhouetted face looming, dreadlocks hanging off his beard, and glassy eyes fierce with earnestness. Then he launched into his ruminations. “D’ya check? Excuse me. D’ya check? I don’t know but this world need a messenger, and God, he give me words.” I assured him I was listening to his words and he disappeared back over the bed and keep talking until he fell asleep.

When Ben came to the island, he spent a couple nights with us in the basement. The gardener welcomed him with an especially involved invocation, taking it upon himself to point out the differences between things, or maybe pointing out the fact that there were differences.

"An orange is not like a melon; a melon is not like an apple; an apple is not like a pear. A monkey is not like an iguana; a dog is not like a cat; a fish is not like a butterfly; a Korean is not like an Ethiopian; a black man is not like a white man; a melon is not like a cabbage; a Chinese is not like a carrot."

He just kept talking and talking about how everything is different from everything else. It was a long, narrow room with an American flag in the corner and a musical doll on the table that you could wind up and listen to it play “I Never Promised you a Rose Garden.” The room was so narrow we couldn’t sit facing either other. The three of us positioned ourselves in a row, the gardener closest to the door upon a chair. I sat with my guitar in my arms absentmindedly strumming. Ben sat behind me lying on his back upon the floor smoking his corncob pipe, fingering his harmonica.

The gardener told us that everything is different from everything else, reemphasizing his point repeatedly as if he suspected that we were sorely tempted to suppose the opposite. He kept promising that he would finish off his speech by listing off for us the nine planets. But first he wished to tell us of his secret joy.

I don’t remember if he ever got around to telling us about his secret joy. But I do remember him suddenly declaring that he would recite a poem to us that he had written about how good friends are hard to find and that they are not like cheap wine. But then he kept forgetting the words and standing up and walking over to the door and closing it to eliminate distractions if it was open, or opening it to cool off the room, if it was closed. Intermittently, he stood in front of us again, palms up, pausing to collect himself.

Then next day, Ben left to find his own place to stay. One night he slept in an abandoned bus. Another he spent roaming the island from coast to coast, happening upon all manners of dogs and strangers. Eventually we got jobs and rented a studio apartment on Back Street above Food fo’ Days.

The Inability to Breathe

The war ended in 1996 so it must have just ended when I showed up in Guatemala. But I didn't know anything about it. I was just there to play guitar on the street and meet funny people. From a bus window, someone pointed out the camps where the rebels were being held for demobilization and all that. But I just nodded. It didn't seem all that interesting to me. The only other war-related thing I saw when I was there was graffiti on some house out in a mountain village saying, "the peace of the nation was bought with the blood of the pueblo." I think that's what it said anyway. My Spanish wasn't all that good.

Regarding music and funny people, though, a few anecdotes stand out.

I used to play music in the park in Antigua next to the big stone fountain, and this big guy with a big voice asked if I wanted to play in his band so I did. First we played at a little restaurant there in Antigua, a funny little town, to well-dressed men and women sitting at sporadic tables sipping wine and eating veal. It was dark outside (cobble stone streets and volcanoes dark against the moonlit sky.) We played for a while, and I sat there smug because it's funny finding myself before a foreign crowd and plus they gave me money and meal.

And Ricardo, the bar tender watched me affectionately out of the corner of his eye as he ran to and fro with bottles, trays and meals because one afternoon as the rain poured down I sat with him in a little bar called La Estrella and together we drank a liter or two of Gallo and talked of who knew what and somehow he lost my Walkman which was okay.

And the Mexican boyfriend of the restaurant's proprietor yelled out and hollered machismo euphorics inspired by the rock and roll and alcohol.

Three peace corps volunteers I had met two weeks before were sitting at a table, happy as happy could be.

It was getting late; I was getting drunk and soon I'd have to begin walking home. Down the narrow streets and past the park and fountain arching rainbows spraying in the night and the lame and homeless insane poet named Francisco who loved to scare away the little children with a very loud song as he beat on the strings of my guitar: "Palomita, donde vas?" And the little boys and girls would run away and scream, but not tonight. It was very late and everything was silent. And everything was freeze-framed like a Polaroid and I walked through the petrified wood forest of the stillness of my memories.

Later we had a gig in Guatemala City. It was my last day there and I was out of cash and I was going to be hitching back across Mexico to the States, the next day. So I hoped the bar owner would give us lots of money.

Before heading out to Guatemala City, I wandered around the park, trying to sell all my books, to make a little extra cash.

"Want to buy a book?" I asked everyone I met. "Do you like to read? This is a very good book. I'll sell it to you for ten Quetzals."

Happily, I found a couple buyers ("Yes," they said, "I'll buy that book") and walked away three dollars richer, three dollars more in my pocket. Then I went to Guatemala City.

First we went to the bar owner's house for dinner. His four young daughters, between seven and twelve, loved me calling me Pablo.

"Call me Pablo," I said, when they could not pronounce my name.

"Nate," their father corrected sternly.

"Pablo," the four girls chuckled behind their hands.

Then he took us to his bar, outside of which was a big poster announcing the arrival of our band: Live From Canada! And we played music and late that night, during one of our breaks, a brawl broke out and that was pretty funny.

I guess somebody pissed somebody off because everybody was shouting and shoving each another. People ran in from outside, wanting to join in.

I was leaning on the bar, in this little cantina in downtown Guatemala City, chuckling to myself at everybody bustling by in the smoky shadows. I took another sip of my beer. The rhythm guitar player on his fleet-footed exit grabbed me by the shoulder, so I followed him out the door. Out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody crash into a table, collapsing sprawled out on the floor. The two girls (daughters of a colonel) who came to all our shows, they were beside themselves with panic. By the time I got outside, their chauffeur had already whisked them away to the wealthy part of town.

We stood outside, waiting for everyone to calm back down. The son of the owner of the bar was standing with us, shaking his head disapprovingly.

"Before," he said, "Every weekend people are fighting here. Now not so many. There was much fighting here, before."

Eventually, we went back inside and signed a bunch of autographs for drunk people. I signed a Led Zeppelin CD cover. Then we left and walked back to the owner's house. We walked through Guatemala City alleyways, along the walls and fences, skirting puddles and crumpled newspapers on the ground, through the scattered buzzing flickering lights, orbited by our ever shifting shadows.

We walked back to the owner's house and lay down to sleep on his living room floor. But I could not fall asleep because I could not breathe. I lay there, arching my back with every breath wheezing in my lungs, tossing and turning and sitting up, my elbows locked, palms pressed against the floor. I lay back down and tried to fall asleep. The stale smell of smoke and alcohol clung to our clothing, as we lay sprawled out on the floor, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. The other three breathed deeply, regularly, ticking off the time with every breath. Tossing and turning a few hours later I found myself the patient of four very young nurses who hovered over me as the sun rose and they kept me awake, whispering, "Pablo, estas enfermo?" I had told them to call me Pablo. Nate was too hard to pronounce.

Eventually the sun itself came through the panels of the window on the east and through the lacy curtains in opaque beams diffracted.

"His name is Pablo," they whispered to one another. "Pablo, are you sick?"