The View

I put a Donald Duck stamp on my tongue. Four in the morning and the air was frigid; if it weren’t for the down- hooded parka I was wearing, I’d of frozen my nuts off. I sat facing east on a natural rock shelf, exposed to the wind, coming from the south. I could see to the end of the earth but it was partially covered by large balls of black cotton drifting below me to the north. For brief moments, I was with Vipor Company I-26th in the Kunar province, facing rag-heads on the move, then the images turned to dark stallions running up sheer walls…not unicorns, I don’t believe they exist. My mind was racing…Taliban fighters, then sleek dark stallions? What was in my thermos?… It tasted like coffee but with a velvety sweet finish…like it had sugary cream. Magic coffee…I doubted it, I drank mine black…period!

Cars approached and began parking near me. Fucking idiots…this was a war zone, not a drive-in. Charlie Battery, 3rd Battalion of the 321 Field Artillery, had fired 5,900 shells since they arrived a few weeks ago.

Were these cars full of sick-brass come to witness fireworks?

I stayed quiet…too comfortable and no 2-star bitch was gonna move my sorry ass, and then it hit me… some of the cars had children. This was not the Korengal Valley and I wasn’t in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan. The relief was overwhelming. I had to piss but I wasn’t going to move an inch, didn’t want to lose my place on the rock shelf, besides I pissed in my suit all the time…in the water, what difference did it make?

And then I heard it…could have been from one of the cars but it had a stereophonic resonance clearer than anything I’d ever heard in my life…

It was a Beatles tune about Strawberries.

I sang the words over and over in my head. It brought instant peace.

To the south a sliver of blue-gray light appeared, above the swirling clouds and across the horizon which was moving in waves like a deep ocean swell. The light began to expand and become more intense. Outlines of sheer cliff walls and a slithering valley appeared below… still in shadows but giving me an indication that I was in fact on Venus, and then my consciousness broke through briefly, there’s no cars on Venus.

The light was coming fast. I witnessed every new ray. I couldn’t blink. The sky was turning blue, east to west and random arrows of light began spreading like a fan from a vortex centered a million miles away. The barren landscape started changing colors: first cloudy brown, to reddish purple, to gray-green, to magenta to vermillion and then peacock blue and chartreuse and lavender and burnt orange and crimson red.

The colors began stirring in a rock bouillabaisse below mixing in shadows of light and spice and crab-legs and lavender and yellow sunflowers. Consciousness kicked in again and told me it was no stew pot…you’re tripping, big-boy.

Happy thoughts started firing on all cylinders. The trip through the Topoc Gorge, lunch on the Eiffel Tower, Playa Maya and the azure waters of the Caribbean, Tom Sawyers Island, meeting Dallas on the first date, and playing the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. My mom was talking about biscuits and gravy and dad was talking about how to wait on a curve-ball.

And then music…mostly the Beatles.

A little later, as it turns out…around noon, I started coming down.

The air was warmer and I took off the parka. A pick-up truck nearby was playing music with a lots of new-age songs, and I continued to trip to flutes and strings and chants. I listened for a long time, well into mid-afternoon.

During this cognizance, I decided the English language had too many unfriendly words that are hard to spell, have double meanings and sound the same but aren’t spelled the same. There’s a word for this… starts with an H but I gave up after two minutes of trying to remember it. Led, bass, read, and tear came to mind as problems. They make the language confusing. I don’t know how long I spent slighting English in my thoughts but the anger and confusion made me hungry. Fish Tacos came to mind.

But then I reflected on old girlfriends: my first kiss in fourth grade with Marianne Sladowski; Liz Orth who I dated for two days, Melissa (something) who I got to second base with, and Stacy Sears who was my first French kiss.

Then I gave a lot of thought to my favorite form of water. I decided liquid was best and the form I used most. Then ice, because of the cubes in my drinks and last was steam which was too hot and hard to touch.

I then turned to things I felt needed banning in the world: I would ban the ban on the use of illegal drugs by adults… adults defined as individuals old enough to drive a tank but not necessarily old enough to buy beer in some states. I would also ban roadside bombs, slave labor, gas-guzzling SUV’s, non-armor plated Humvee’s, the IRS, child pornography, megalomaniacs, TV Evangelists in tailored Italian suits with gold rings on their pinkies, derivative hedge funds, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, fried twinkies, chicken soup books, leaf blowers on weekend mornings, Christmas adds running before Halloween, hundred dollar tickets to Laker games that require binoculars, and most words that end in ism.

I hitched a ride down the volcano and continued by thumb to Lahaina where all I had to show for the experience on Haleakala was a blistering sunburn on the right side of my face. I hadn’t discovered answers to anything, but came away with a lot of heavy questions.