Friday, September 28, 2001

who was that masked man? // I had a mini break-through yesterday morning but before I get into it I want to clarify and elaborate on my last transmission. Re-reading it, I was struck by how mighty and high-falootin it sounded. I'm not always like that and in fact, those closing words might seem incongruous coming from me. Those of you who know me are well aware that I do a fair amount of blame-throwing, usually at the authority figures in my life: politicians, mainstream media, the intelligence communities, corporate america, etc. I suppose it may make me appear somewhat hypocritical to be so righteous talking about understanding, acceptance, getting to know, even loving people whose actions were heinous and horribly destructive. But I think it's not. To put it into a context that might make sense I will turn to my yoga practice. In Bikram class, the teacher talks us through the postures by describing the form of (what sounds to me like) a perfectly performed posture. S/he also describes in detail the various steps or stages of motion that can bring us to the completed posture. Naturally, I cannot do a "perfect" posture. As far as I know, I will never be able to do so. My understanding is that I'm not supposed to be able to do a perfect posture. The teacher's job may be to show me the way and to lead me in that direction but we both know that I can only work, to the best of my ability, to move TOWARD'S the perfect posture. The benefit to be gained from yoga (or most anything) isn't in the completion of a posture or a set of postures but rather it is in the development of a discipline that keeps us moving forward towards something. Ideals aren't meant to be attained -- they wouldn't be ideals if they were actually attainable, they would be goals. There's a difference.

In my practice of life, I struggle constantly to move towards my ideals. The limitations that I carry with me were learned a long time ago and I try to overcome them when I can. It is no surprise that, in a times of trauma like these, in the face of devastating human conflict, I find within myself the capacity to empathize (not sympathize, not appreciate, not condone) with the perpetrators, with the underdog, with the angry and with the desperate. I learned at an early age how to live with and how to survive trauma and crises. I am often at my best when the shit hits the fan, so to speak.

I also have the capacity and the ability to experience a full range of emotional responses. In the first several hours after the attacks I felt angry and I had the urge to lash out. It sickened me to admit it but there were moments during those first hours when, upon hearing talk of a military response, I felt a surge of excitement and adrenaline, imagining bombs being unleashed on those despicable human beings who caused us (me) to feel such deep pain and sorrow. I wanted to get revenge and to hurt those who would hurt us (me). I quickly tried to suppress and deny those feelings, to hide them from the world and hence from myself. I felt shame and embarrassment for having them. But then I decided to invite them into the room with me and to sit for a spell. I put them on like an old favorite shirt that had been lost and was now found. As soon as I did this I realized that they didn't fit me any more. In fact, the more I looked at them the more I saw that they weren't a shirt at all. They were a mirror. They weren't just a regular mirror, though. They were a two way mirror. At first glance I could see only myself looking back at me but the more I looked the more I started to make out another face in the background. In the darkened room behind the mirror was another person looking out at me. He was wearing a red turban and he was riding a fiery missile down on New York like Dr. Strangelove only his cries weren't the whoops and hollers of a cowboy yelling, "go git 'em dawgie!" He was singing, "La ilaha illa 'llah." There is no god but God!

When does it end? If we bomb the bad guys into the stone age won't their followers, their brothers, their children, their grandchildren and so on ad infinitum, keep on coming at us with their suicide planes, trains and automobiles? Isn't the only logical conclusion genocide or, worse if that's possible, mutually assured destruction?

OK, back to the travelogue and back to the mini-breakthrough. And I do mean mini. Prominent among the many reasons I wanted to stay in downtown Flagstaff was the proximity to urban culture and experience. Walking distance to the very cool newsstand, MacGaugh's, that I remembered from a previous visit and to the hip whole foods restaurant, Cafe Espress was key. Of course, and wouldn't you know it, things change. MacGaugh's went out of business and Cafe Espress lost it's hip -- white table linens, clean cut, casually uniformed waitrons and uninspired art on the walls. Fortunately, I found another restaurant to take it's place. The hippies, punks and lesbians have taken up residence in a vegetarian coffeehouse and bakery across the tracks on Beaver St called Macy's. So, yesterday morning, in the mood for a cup of joe and a newspaper, I walked over there. And then I did a typically Eric thing... I walked in the door, saw a long line of people waiting and immediately turned around and walked out. I was disappointed but I had a schedule to keep. I had carefully planned my morning so that events would occur in a timely sequence resulting in a precise 11 am departure. The long line screwed things up so I was heading back to Cafe Espress. I was actually going to sacrifice the one thing I wanted most in order to delude myself into thinking I had some small amount of control over myself and my life. Thankfully, as I was reaching the entrance to the Cafe, I came to my senses, turned around and walked back to Macy's. Screw the plans, screw the schedule, just relax and slow down, I had to remind myself. What's the fucking hurry? In my haste I almost missed out on a truly marvelous breakfast and an amusing and endearing experience. Macy's has tables and benches on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and a coffee-to-go window overlooking them. The woman working the coffee machine just inside the window had brought her dog to work with her. The dog was standing on a bench at the table just outside the window with her chin resting on the table top. This was the only "unoccupied" table available when I came out with my coffee and bowl of yogurt, granola and fruit so I sat down. Every few minutes the woman would poke her head out the window and coo a few words to the dog who would lift it's head, wag it's tail and then return to rest it's head on the table. Fortunately, she (the dog) wasn't interested in my breakfast and I didn't have to share my granola or my double-decaf-cappucino-viennese-with-soy-milk. California, here I come.

The bulk of the drive through the rest of Arizona and the southwestern California desert went by quickly and uneventfully. I left the highway just after Kingman and drove Route 66 over the mountains and through a little ghost (read tourist) town called Oatman. The scenery was incredible, rocky desert with small exotic looking succulents and cacti. The road was slow-going, winding back and forth up and down, each turn opening up to a new vista more expansive and more picturesque than the last. I didn't stop in Oatman, where the burros run free and in the streets, mostly because I had stocked up well on drinks and snacks in Flagstaff and had no need of a ghost town t-shirt or some crystal schlock. I did stop at a few overlooks to take in the view and to snap a photo or two. As with the Painted Desert, Lava Fields and Petrified Forest, I didn't take a lot of pictures -- every time I held the camera up to my eye and looked through the viewfinder the view disappeared. I'm not sure where it went...

I thought of Afghanistan and I wondered if these rocky, mountainous slopes were anything like the terrain that was being described nightly on the teevee as the treacherously dangerous hideout for Osama bin Laden. I wondered if those baby-faced marines telling the cameras that they don't really want to go but they're willing to "do what has to be done" were headed for the nightmare of their lives into an environment as hellishly hot and dry as this one. The heat was almost unbearable, hotter than any Bikram class, and the water in my plastic jug was so hot it tasted like a freshly brewed cup of tea without the tea bag. I had the windows down (AC off) and so I at least had some wind which, added to the sweat, helped keep my body temperature less than feverish. I couldn't imagine throwing a hundred pound backpack on over a full-body camouflage suit and a belt full of steel and gunpowder and trudging on foot up and down these slopes. And then... and then to imagine throwing dust, dirt, fatigue, deafening noise and... blood... into the mix. Unimaginable.

As I got closer to the city I rolled the windows up, turned on the AC and put on some tunes. I did my daily sing-along with Michael, followed by a very sweet and little known Dylan album, the original soundtrack for a movie called, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which Bob has a role as a knife-wielding killer. The music tells a melancholic story about fate, destiny and death, life, love and longing. As I passed Barstow and began to approach the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area I turned on the radio for a little NPR. Big mistake. Some guy from Pew was citing the latest poll statistics: 83 percent of Americans approve of George Bush's handling of the situation; 79 percent of Americans think we need a military response; 61 percent think that it will be a long, protracted war fought on many fronts; -- wait a minute! Isn't that exactly what the "news media" has been telling us for the last two weeks? Didn't I just hear a pentagon spokesperson saying the same thing to a bank of microphones and cameras the other day? Click.

Music again. Amy Ray, Stag, rock 'n roll. Yeah, that's good, traffic's getting thicker, desert is giving way to outlet malls. Civilization looms, guitars are wailing, drums beating. Holy shit, the road is getting wider but the lanes seem more crowded than ever. Interchanges and exits are beginning to criss-cross and split and merge into a giant asphalt race track with multiple simultaneous races and no pace cars or indicator flags to clue me in to which race I'm supposed to be in or which track I should follow. Oh yeah, baby, the highway buzz is turning into a frenzy and the music segues accordingly. Sepultra, Roots Bloody Roots. Don't know it? Think loud, heavy, screaming, head-banging thrash metal. Furious lyrics spewed in a vomitous rage into broken fuzz-coated microphones, "leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone," and "what goes around comes around" and "what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck do you want me to be?" With Sepultra, it's not so much what they say, it's how they say it. Hollywood, here I come!

I should have saved the "Touchdown" for today (Thursday night). I have arrived in LA.

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