We may stick a gun in another’s face and shoot- only by means of dehuminizing the opponent as creatures of subhuman qualities.  We desensitize ourselves in that way- by telling ourselves that the “other side” isn’t like “us” and by using that excuse we gain the full capacity to rip someone’s life away from them.  I’m not saying that some people don’t enjoy killing another humanbeing- generally those who do so are mentally instable anyhow.  I’m speaking of those mentally competant who are able to commit acts that at one time in their life they would never fathom.  Generally speaking, I’m talking about the art of war- I’m talking about what troops need to create in their imaginations to carry out such actions.

Beyond the individual acts within warfare, we, as a people of the world need to join together in the fight to rise against wars full of traps- wars like Iraq, and fight in order to achieve a general consensus among nations of what humanity is.   The traps of our own psychology prevent us from doing so.  Within my lifetime? No.  Within my children’s? No. Generation upon generation feel the effects of war.  It is a perpetual human act.  Can we reverse it? Maybe. But it starts off with baby steps.

It starts off with people caring.

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

”Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to out mind.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Harmony sat in a metal fold out chair on the side of route 43. She had stolen it from the front of an abandoned car repair shop three miles back. The garage was only ten feet away from the road. Wheat seeds had drifted in the wind above the patches of farm acres; eventually settling in the gutters of the building. The swaying wheat danced. Feeding on chipped white paint wood, fungus churned ever so slowly away at the window frames. An old black faced manual clock with white hands was frozen on 10:34. It stood high upon the main office wall inside; visible from outside though the door frame. Time may have stopped, but the building was still alive. Harmony muttered, “Shit,” when her high heel slipped when she stepped into a dusty pothole. It was dusk and the crickets were starting their love songs. She’d spent all day walking down the two-lane road and seeing the lonely chair invoked a sudden urge to sit. It rested a foot from the building. Decades past an old man rested in the chair; nodding at the occasional car that passed. The face of the building overlooked a dirt road and beyond the road, the earth dipped slowly down. In the near distance a river cut the corn fields, swerving through corn, then wheat, back to corn for a bit then onwards to oat. The man gazed at the open land, routinely picking up a can of dip to pack his lip. An old tin can stood near the chair. Ping! Ping! Ping!

Harmony sat. Facing the west, she watched the fading sun dip below the horizon. With the vanishing crisp orange and red streaking sky in front of her and the darkened dilapidated building standing behind her she felt a shudder pass through her. Something about the building made her uneasy. Her mind raced and she felt a presence in the chilly air. She hurriedly got up without looking back and took up the folded chair and kept on walking. The black top road was glazed smooth with tar from county tax dollars that had nowhere else to go. Stars and a full moon flooded the sky silver. The silence, especially today since the wind died down, ceasing to ruffle the corn husks, was maddening. Harmony found herself singing a song her mother had crooned to her as a child. “I got no sugar baby now, got no sugar honey babe.” As she kept on singing, over and over, she realized how messed up it was that her mother had sang her this song. “Some rounder come along. Rounder come along with his mouth full of gold. Rounder stole my greenback roll, and I got no sugar honey baby now.” Her clear voice pierced the air. The fourth time she sang the verse, “Ain’t got no use, ain’t got no use for that red rocking chair, I’ll rock that cradle when you’re gone,” she sang “gone” flat and sighed deeply. Her ears perked up when she heard an almost imperceptible rumbling. This would be the twelfth car to pass in the past seventeen hours. In her purse she still had some Chex Mix and a Snickers, but she didn’t have any water left and was starting to get nervous. She had supposed she could feast on the corn that lined the road, but when she had shucked one she realized that it was probably best boiled. The rumbling became louder and her heart raced- as it did for every car. It was a red Ford truck. She pulled down her tank top to expose her bra and straightened her skirt out. The truck slowed down and there sat an elderly man with a long wiry beard. He screwed his eyes to study her and his curiosity immediately shifted to shock as he sped away. She screamed, “FUCK YOU!” and violently unfolded the chair and sat down, crossing her legs and arms.

For the next two hours Harmony sat in the chair, ceasing to be bothered by the mosquitoes feasting on her legs. She had dozed off, with her head laying crooked to the side and a stream of drool dripping down her chin. In her dream Aiden drove up to her in his truck. The same truck that they had laid in, staring up at the brilliant night sky, years before things went awry. In her dream, the sky was slate gray and she started to breathe heavy, her breath lingering in a cold cloud. She shivered. Aiden didn’t say a word and she got in the car. He drove. All was well again. When the gray 1990 Chevrolet slowed to a halt next to her, she had failed to snap out of her long overdue dream state. In her delirium, she had made sure to keep her thumb propped out when she passed out. About five seconds after the car had stopped, she suddenly remembered that she was sitting in a metal fold out chair stranded on the side of route 43.

“Well, Jesus Christ, you wanna ride or what?” A woman yelled over her engine to Harmony.

Harmony was wide awake in an instant. She stood up, gathered her purse and left the chair on the side of the road. She slipped into the seat besides the woman. The ground was littered with trash- old crumpled up McDonald’s bags, empty Dr. Pepper bottles and destroyed magazines. Harmony gingerly put her feet down, hoping not to crush anything important. “Thank- “ The woman cut her off.

“-Just so you know, my cell has 911 dialed in, and my finger is on ‘send,’ so don’t try to pull any shit.”

She held out her hand and said, “I’m Claire.”

“Harmony.”

“Where ya headed?” As she asked this, she gunned the car, causing a tiny peel to sound. Claire was a middle aged woman with what looked like a scorpion tattooed onto her temple. There was a naked woman on her arm who sat with her breasts pointed to the sky, as if offering them for somebody to caress. The woman sat with her legs bent and her back arched. The woman tattoo could have been more beautiful had the artist been a bit more skilled. Her gray hair swooped down past her breasts. Years of smoking caused her mouth to look like a child’s depiction of a sun. Her sun-lips had wrinkles protruding away in rays. Garth Brookes crooned softly from the radio.

“Kansas City, but if you’re not headed that-“

“Kansas City? Jesus Christ I’m on my way to a cosmetology conference in Kansas City! She looked at Harmony. Her eyes screwed up and she snapped on the dome light above them.

“Wow, that’s a coincide-“

A look of confusion invaded Claire’s eyes. Her eyebrows furrowed and her nose scrunched up. She asked, “Jeeeeeeeeeeesus, are you a man or somethin’?”

“Well I was born one, yes.”

“Well, shit, I lost my glasses a week ago. Haven’t been able to see shit.”

Harmony clicked her seat belt. “Yeah, I’m tryin’ to save up money for an operation, but it’s really expensive. I always felt I was a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Harmony’s voice was a clear, ambiguous pitch. It could pass for either a feminine man’s or a woman’s deep sexy voice.

“I seen some of you’s when I was in New York,” she paused, “God musta been twenty years ago now. Well, honey, you look pretty damn sexy for bein’ a tranny. You got any lipstick I could use?”

“Actually,” Harmony pawed through her purse, “Yeah, it’s somewhere in here.”

Claire took the tube of lipstick and paused from her cigarette and applied it without a mirror. She smacked her lips. “My husband Bobby bought this piece of shit a year ago. I go, ‘Jeeeez thanks Bobby, I get to drive this piece of shit while you can drive the brand new Hummer.’”

Harmony didn’t know what to say so she kept quiet.

“She’s my precious baby. MINE. Bobby always claimed that it was his but I said ‘No Bobby, it’s mine. You got it for me when we got married ‘member?’ Bobby won’t even notice that she’s gone! HAH! He can go suck a big fat cock!”Claire’s voice rose into a frenzy, quivering with passion. She spoke fast. She took a sharp breath and seemed to regain her composure. She rolled the window down and shoved her head out, letting the night blast her hair and face. She came back into the car and explained how the cold air helped “drain me of shit.”

The glow of Claire’s cigarette turned blood red as she pulled, changing to an orange when she let go. The sky started to become the lightest gray. Claire said, “Ah, this color gray means we have a sunny day today. I know my dawns.”

They drove through Kansas. Harmony was shocked to see how close she was to a busy interstate. A ten minute drive and Claire had them on a busy four-lane interstate. The sound of cars sliced past the open windows. Claire disregarded the 55 M.P.H. road signs, preferring to hover around seventy-five. An obnoxious voice emanated from the speakers, shouting “DON’T MISS THIS CHANCE! IT’S NOW NOW NOW! YOUR USED CAR IS WAITING FOR YOU! NO CREDIT? BAD CREDIT? WE DON’T CARE!”

Claire broke in, “So, what’s your story?”

“What story?”

“Well, considering I picked you up, you, a transvestite sitting on a chair on the side of the road outside of Plamier, there’s got to be a story, so what is it?”Claire shook an empty pack of cigarettes and threw them out the window. She fumbled around her feet searching for another pack.

“Well, it’s a long story, really.”

“Beautiful! I love stories!”

So Harmony told Claire about the insinuating circumstances which led her to be stranded on the side of route 43. She told Claire about Aiden and how he still had her heart. Waitressing in Kansas City, Harmony had met a charismatic drug addict named Michael. Michael managed to fill the void she felt. He had convinced her to take a road trip with him out to California- said money wasn’t an issue. Once they got to Witchita, things had turned bad – fast. They began verbally abusing each other, turning to beating each other up. The moment Harmony decided to leave Michael was while she was lying on the bed in a motel, her eyes slowly following the ceiling fan’s paddles rotate clockwise around, around, around. Dust had collected on the right side of each paddle, threatening, with a tiny nudge, to sprinkle down in snow. Harmony was paralyzed in a drug induced stupor. The only problem with this idea was that she carried it out on route 43 as they headed west. She had screamed at Michael to pull over and he obliged, leaving her in a dust cloud.

“Hah! Talk about screwed, Hunny. I left my husband in our bed with his brains dripping out the back of his head. And believe it or not, all I’m worried about is the nice sheets!” She laughed a harsh laugh.

“WHAT?” Harmony screamed.

“Oh hunny, you’re sweet. I only shoot motherfuckers,” she paused and took a deep pull of her cigarette. While she exhaled a very faint smile formed at the corners of her lips. She chuckled, “Hah!” She broke out in a huge grin. Her blue eyes were illuminated. They were both blinded by the sun that suddenly spilled across the plains.

Walking from Mahar to the Union, I told him this revelation that I found striking. The snow, which would have been otherwise drifting softly, stung our eyes in pelts from the Lake Ontario wind. We lit our cigarettes with skills acquired from four years of Oswego. I said, “So pretty much we’re fucked.”

He said, “Yeah, but by then we’ll be dead.”

It was that moment that I realized the absurdity of my life. Campus was eerily quiet, with a few students staggering out of the buildings after 5 sleep-less nights from finals. You could tell the bleak sun still reflected off the snow just enough to make their eyes squint, their heads throbbing from algorithms and pointless historical facts that were pouring out of their heads each step they took away from the building. I laughed.

Yes, my life is absurd. So is everybody’s. Even Hitler’s wrath will be felt only through reading accounts or seeing pictures. People will claim, “How horrendous, how horrible that somebody could ever do that.” But for the most part, his actions will be a ripple in the fabric of human history. It won’t be real. The footprints I leave behind in the snow will be long gone. The roads traveled, the friends made, everything, will not matter. A small girl from a small town who had heart-pains from her ability to love too hard will mean nothing.

I’ve had this experience before, namely, on planes. The woman sitting across the aisle from me is very, very pregnant. She lightly touches her cross around her neck and touches her head, her chest and her shoulders with her eyes shut. I smile lightly and place my forehead on the cold window pane. The planes wheels gently lift off the ground and I stare at the ground. First the cars become invisible, followed by big yellow buses. Then culvasacs become distant jagged circles. Then patches of farmland stick out in their different shades of greens, browns, tans. Wisps of clouds glide past my window and then it is all gone.

And here’s what they poured into her head:

Don’t get me wrong, living in Dublin for six months has been a blessing. Walking down old cobblestone streets with a bouquet of flowers and hugging an Italian tourist holding a sign saying “free hugs” is such a beautiful life to live. But when you leave a town that you’ve grown so accustomed to hating, experiencing a new life always makes you long for the past one- no matter how dull and boring it seemed at the time.

My favorite dream. I am flying home from Rome. It doesn’t start in Rome, more like around the Snubbing Post area. Wisps of hair tickle my cheek as I fly, fly with my arms outstretched. Down Route 46. I turn a bend and I see the Christmas tree farm, hidden at first by lush green trees. The trees filter the sun so it rapidly bounces off my eyes.

As a child I used to play a game while sitting in the car. I would squeeze my eyes as tight as possible when the sun shined into my eyes, only letting them open when we were going under shade. Sometimes I would be unsuccessful and be shocked by the rays on my pupils. Or, while staring out the window, I imagined a huge chain saw was attached to the side of the car and it was completely wrecking havoc along the country side.

I realize that this entry has been a rambly one. But please keep in mind that after living in a weird and strange place, any writer will revert to telling old stories, no matter how warped memories may become after decades of life. Please keep on reading. These entries will probably become entirely unreasonable and ranting in their nature. So, my very own free blog-site has lifted ground.

Enjoy your stay here in Becca Land.