Shane T. Adams - Chaos & Beauty

Portrait

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:04:00 +0000

E.S. 2008 - Digital image APS-C sensor

Landscape - 2008

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:48:00 +0000

The Path Through The Trees - 2008 MF silver halide and gelatin emulsion

Still Life

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:23:00 +0000

Leaf with Branch 2008 - Silver halide and gelatin emulsion

Self Portrait with Shroud

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:15:00 +0000

Self Portrait with Shroud 2007 - Multi-media

Rates Of Exchange, Chapter 11

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:50:00 +0000

At first, I thought someone was shaking me awake. Then I realized the bed was moving. Then traffic sounds and that smell of diesel exhaust that makes me think of Morocco. I had a headache. The smell of Turkish tobacco made me ill with the thought that I was still in Italy with Frank. Then I thought about that and realized that I couldn’t be still in Italy with Frank if I was basing my feelings on not wanting to be back there – can’t have it both ways, I thought, idiotically. So where was I? Little returns of memory from the previous night floated up in my mind. I opened an eye carefully and the ceiling swayed. The expected nausea didn’t arrive and I realized the swaying was due to the fact that the ceiling was actually moving. I was in a motor-home. I remembered that they call them caravans here. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned my head toward a little eating area where one of the brothers, Glad or Gorno, I couldn’t remember which, sat smoking. He turned his head and when he realized that I was awake, he smiled. It was a normal friendly smile. No malice. I swung my legs carefully and touched the floor with the soles of my feet. Discomfort must have been obvious because my host pointed at a narrow oak-panelled door. I went in and relieved my bladder, steadying myself with one hand as the caravan took a corner and accelerated. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Rough with bags under my eyes and a day’s growth of beard. I looked for the flush-handle but couldn’t find it. I washed my face in some luke-warm water at very low pressure and dried myself on my undershirt. A deep breath and went to rejoin my host. As I stepped out into the companionway I could see all the way forward to the driver’s area. A momentary shock lit up my skin when I saw that there was no-one in the left-hand seat. Then my brain sorted out the right-hand drive and that the other of the brothers was driving. We were on a highway. I eased my way forward and sat down across from Gorno at the little table in the eating area. My host extended his hand.

“I am Gorno. Glad is…” He paused
“Driving?” I filled in. A little irritably.
“Yes, thank you. Driving. I apologize for the - …”
He gestured to indicate the caravan, the smoke, France maybe. I didn’t say anything.
“Where is Lana?”
“She is in Paris,” he looked at his watch. “Perhaps she is looking in someone’s mouth, now.” He made an expression of distaste.
“And where am I, Gorno? What are we doing?”
“We are going east, to a place called Grigy. Oh,” he reached inside his jacket and pulled out my wallet. He handed it to me. “You are Thomas,” he said smiling. “I welcome you to our little enterprise, Thomas.”

I rolled my eyes. I really needed to go back to sleep for a while. I hadn’t slept for about two years.
“My things?” I asked.
“Ah. I took the liberty of putting your suit in the compartment there,” he gestured to another narrow oak door beside the one that I had gone through during my constitutional. “Your luggage is there too.”

I looked at the wallet. I didn’t go through it but it did felt thicker. Gorno looked at his fingers as if inspecting his nails for some fault in manicure. I opened the billfold. There was money in it. Money that I hadn’t had. I pulled the bills out and counted out what I knew to be mine and pushed the rest, several hundred Euro, towards Gorno with out looking at it, keeping my eyes on Gorno. He sighed and turned toward me.

“It is your money,” he pushed it back toward me. “An advance. For defending Lana’s honor,” he said. Lana’s honor. I looked at my hands, looking for where the marks would have been had I actually struck somebody. I searched my body for the little strains and soreness that show up no matter how smooth your move was. Nothing. I hadn’t hit or thrown anybody last night. I doubt that I could have - given my state - but adrenaline will often win.

“Lana’s honor,” I said.
“Yes, she prefers her life in Paris,”
“So?”
“She was the fortune teller.”
“I thought she was a dentist,” I said.
“Yes, she is, now. She was before and then there was a man…” Gorno spread his hands in the gesture that seemed to be the stand-in for man-problems.
“And then she was your fortune teller,” I said. Gorno broke out into a big smile. He had a few gold teeth but the rest of them were blazingly white.

“And I’m a safe-cracker,” I said, not without a note of sarcasm. “Retired,” I added.
“And how is your pension plan, might I ask? Forgive me.” He raised his hand, palm toward me and lowered his eyes, waving the question away. “I am offering you honest work. Please.”

Gorno looked genuinely embarrassed at his words but I saw where this was going and I needed time to think. Being press-ganged into the circus was not exactly what I had in mind but... On the other hand, I also needed money and somewhere better than a flea bag to live. I needed time to think, I thought again. I kept circling that until I gave in. It wasn’t just the deal – if there was one, I needed to get off the map, under the radar, out of survival mode, whatever, for a while. I had spent a lot of time thinking about Frank, Venice and my cut while I was in jail. All that thinking was tempered by survival initiatives – get through each day and then the next – trying not to get too far ahead of myself. That was what had got me into trouble in the first place - I hadn’t spent enough time reading ahead.
“What’s the deal? If I accept it, that is,”

Somewhere down in the limbic, the awareness of already having come to a decision stirred but there was no need in admitting to Gorno that his proposition suited me. A diversion was required. I got up and rummaged through the little closet for my carry-all. I found it and the cards inside it. A quick cut showed me swords and a boat. I did another cut and it made me think of the piece of paper Lana had given me in her office. I pulled my pants and shirt on and dug the paper out of my pocket. The penny dropped. Gorno spoke of numbers in the background.

“We pay you 2 percent of the gate. We give you 50% percent of your take. We feed you but don’t go crazy.”
I looked at Gorno. He was slim with strong hands and his arms looked like they were well muscled under his jacket. Food enough. Or genetics. Then again, he was the boss – probably nobody regulated his eating habits.
“What’s the gate? How many people? Do I have a tent? How does it work? Where do I sleep?”
“You will sleep with the riggers for now. In the big coach. A bunk. Stay out of their way when they are working. I will rent you Lana’s old tent. 10 Euro a night. You set it up yourself. The gate depends. Near Paris, Lyon, those kinds of places, we open at 10 and we close at 23, - maybe. We charge 10 Euro. Tonight and tomorrow we charge 5. It is a small town. We run two nights only. That’s all it will bear. Lyon, we will be two weeks there. That is the longest permit we can buy. Tonight we will do a thousand people – that will be 100 Euros for you from the gate. Plus your tips and take. Lana charged 5 Euro for 5 minutes. Short readings. Four hours gets you forty so 200 Euro 50/50 split. We will be six nights this week in three towns. You can think 100 from the gate, 100 from take, you keep the tips. Pretty good, I think, yes.”

I looked at him for a long moment. He had way more experience than I in the game and at this stage of the game, I was still a mark. I knew nothing of the circus. I wasn’t a carny, I’m a - what…? What was I? A retired safe-cracker? Is that really what I was? Back to Gorno. I figured that he was offering less than what he could pay. Over selling the numbers too, I’d bet. Instinct told me to push back a little. Gut sense said I was going to be very good for business - after a while.

“Four percent of the gate, throw the tent in, after all, I’m maintaining it, 70% of the take and food. Oh, I work from 12 to 14, then 18 till midnight. Any business I drum up outside I keep. I’ll sleep in the coach, ah, okay, but that’ll have to change pretty quick.”

“Yes, they are a rough group,” he said. He appeared to consider my proposal. “I think I cannot give you more than two points on the gate. It will start a revolt. I have 15 ‘attractions’ that I have to support – I cannot go more than 2%. Fuel costs alone…” He looked sad. “But what about this: we’ll give you the tent set up, rent free, with a doorman to collect and 40% for you of the take and the hours you like. You keep tips.”

“There’s no change there, Gorno. I’ll take your original proposal, no rent on the tent, set up by the riggers, the doorman would be there anyway, oh and make it a girl, and I advertise in the tent for add-ons and for private readings out-of-hours in the tent.” This was starting to feel like a formality.
“Add-ons?”
“Okay, you sell a card reading. The door girl takes the money and the interested party sits down and gets a reading and while that’s happening, he or she sees a sign that says “Extras”. Love advice, matters of the heart, etc. All for a nominal extra fee.”
“Okay but I want fifty percent. That is money that is not going to other things in the show, it will be going to you. Fifty percent. Of outside business also.”
“Fifty percent is fine for the add-ons but the outside business – these are people that will never come to the circus, Gorno. I’ll think about ten percent on that stuff – it’s just not going to happen that often. But you fix my teeth by the end of the summer for free, and we’ll re-negotiate the up-market trade. That’s the deal and I understand if it doesn’t work for you – you can drop me off at the next exit ramp,” I said. Gorno didn’t say anything. Just sat there and looked at me. As if he had never seen me before. Then he smiled and it segued into a laughed. More like a bark, but not without warmth.
“Okay, but you buy the silver from me,” he countered.
“That’s fine, but done by the end of June, then.”

Gorno laughed again and offered his hand. We shook. He got up and, as he passed by me on his way to join his brother in the front of the motor home, he squeezed my shoulder. The wallet and the bills lay on the table. What else was I going to do? Job prospects were scarce right now and I thought I could use a change. I counted the money. Five hundred Euro. Okay. Two days, maybe three. We’ll see how things go here. I took one hundred and put money it in my wallet. The rest I put in a money belt I dug out of the bottom of my carry-all. I put the money belt on and sat back down at the table. The weather had turned wet again and I watched the scenery go by as we made our way in the early morning, into the sun. The edges of the motorway were cut right back to the brush in the rural parts but there weren’t very many of those. The towns ran into each other like the weather. Small concrete buildings backing on old crumbling pavement on the other side of the ditch, punctuated by the service roads and bypasses of the little hamlets. The light rain fell in bands that we drove through giving the illusion of starting and stopping. The villages appeared and disappeared like old fashioned movies and it felt as though I were on a train - maybe because I was facing backwards. I wedged myself into the corner and let my temple touch the cool glass.

We must have pulled into Grigy at about ten. I woke with a start and my head felt thick. The view out the window was now of the side of a trailer, the kind we call a semi-trailer. Less than two feet away. I felt claustrophobic. A patina of oil and road dust covered the corrugated aluminum. I stood up and stretched. A flash of a dream came back but I couldn’t chase it – it disappeared, chased by voices and movement from somewhere else in the same caravan. I felt the floor shift and a man and women speaking as they left the vehicle. I hadn’t realized that it was that big. I didn’t recognize the voices. I dug around in my bag for my sunglasses but I came up with a pair of big black fashonista wrap-arounds that looked familiar. I turned them and saw a designer label on the temple. Shaking my head, I looked through the rest of the bag but nothing else seemed to be missing. Or substituted. There wasn’t much in there to begin with. I sighed and stepped outside. I walked through the maze of parked trucks and trailers, stepping over cables and guys until I came through a gap between the rear of a trailer and a temporary ramp that led up to a stage. A brilliant blue sky and a light breeze trailed across me and the momentary claustrophobia that I felt upon waking in the trailer dried up, disappearing in the sunshine.

Our spot for the next two nights was an outdoor sports arena. A dusty infield with some yellowed grass was surrounded by wooden bleachers in faded whitewash along the four sides. When I stepped out of the caravan a group of riggers were wrapping the outer limits of the infield in posts and 8-foot-high canvas. The walls of the keep in heavily trussed and guyed beige. The rides, going up at the noisy urgings of other groups of two or three men and the occasional woman, speaking French, Italian, and something that sounded like Hungarian or Romani, were arrayed along the perimeter of the field inside the canvas barrier forming an oval interspersed by a couple of covered stages. Looking to my right, what looked like the entrance that the public would come through was being framed by booths with glass fronts. Just inside of that was a kind of raceway made of steel railings. I turned my head to my left and saw a large tent covering an amphitheatre made of seats rising in tiers from the centre. In front of me, in the centre of the oval, another smaller ring of small structures in various states of assembly backed up on a central common space. I could see a shooting gallery and something that looked like a ticket booth – perhaps for the rides. They faced outward, and in the very middle, behind the ring, a second story of canvas tenting was rising. I saw Gorno talking to some men who looked like riggers – the body language was serious and the riggers looked at Gorno and then down at the ground, nodding their heads. He looked up and saw me then pointed at me while speaking quickly to the riggers. I felt something tense in me and I catalogued it as a reaction to the new - Mrs. Little’s little boy had joined the circus.

More intense movement caught my eye through the lens of a scaffolding-clogged alley between two rides where a woman, dressed in jeans tucked into boots and a black motorcycle jacket slapped one of the a blond-haired man hard across the face. The man flared then laughed and reached out for her arm. She easily dodged the grab, her left arm circling outwards then twisting in a tiny orbit with his upper sleeve in her fist. I could see that the rigger was off balance and tilting toward her as she stepped back with her right leg sinking deep, drawing his upper body farther and farther away from his feet. Her right arm was cocked tight and the rigger’s left arm flailed as he stumbled. I turned more fully toward the pair and then a huge man, well over six feet tall with a body builder’s physique stepped around the corner and struck the rigger with one massive open hand in the chest, knocking him against the side of a trailer. The rigger slid to the ground, stunned. Everyone froze. A slick citrus breeze eased across the stadium, tainted with the smell of motor oil from two world wars buried in the soil and the note of diesel topping it carried from the highway where invisible drivers passed an invisible tableaux. A millisecond. Then Glad was walking up to the scene in long strides, making a repetitive palm-down motion with his hand, calming. He stood in front of the rigger who was still on the ground. Motorcycle-jacket woman turned on her heel walked away with her head held high. Glad stayed focused on the two men, but the body builder hurried after the woman, not quite catching up to her. The woman ignored him and once they were clear of the trailers she took a hard right turn leaving the body builder standing stranded in the midway. He said something that I couldn’t hear but she kept going. Glad stood in front of the man on the ground. He said a few words to the rigger that I couldn’t hear and then the rigger wiped his mouth, inspected the back of his hand, and then spat at Glad’s feet. Glad moved a little and I felt a pressure in my ears as the rigger’s head banged hard against the side of a truck a second time. Glad had barely moved. He crouched in front of the prostrate rigger, wagging his finger back and forth, giving the international sign for don’t be stupid. I took a step towards them thinking absurdly for a moment that Glad might need defending when Gorno’s voice was in my ear.
“We have a mostly family operation here – except…” He gestured toward his brother and the rigger as he put his arm around my shoulders and steered me away, back towards the big top. “He has been trouble for a while, that boy. He will leave tonight, I think. Come. I’ll show you your tent and where you will sleep. I like the sunglasses. I think you should wear them when you are working, no?”
I just looked at him.

Gorno and I walked toward a red tent about ten or twelve feet on a side that was in the last stages of being erected. The two riggers that I had seen Gorno speaking to were driving the last pegs and getting ready to pull the lines taught. The canvas was worn, painted many times with various shades of red and different panels showed different eras in the tent’s life. Stars and moons in white highway marker paint fluoresced around the entrance. A scaffold on wheels was set up at the side of the entrance and three cans of paint were stacked on the platform at the top. Gorno threw back the entrance awning which hadn’t been lofted on poles yet and ushered me inside. I followed into a musty gloom. I took of my sunglasses to see. One of the riggers followed us with a work light and the his partner with a hand truck piled with boarding - that started to become the floor and we moved around the riggers as the place was transformed. Gorno walked around the small room, showing me the back door, where the table would go and then he turned to me.
“There is the question of your name,” he said.
“My name…?” Then I realized what he meant. Obviously.
“Yes. Do you have a stage name?” he asked.
“Ah, no,” I said. Several possibilities flitted through my head, all ridiculous.
“Dr Infinito. We will try that. Unless we find a better one. Come.”

We walked out the back of the tent and I slipped the sunglasses back on as we stepped into the private warren of passageways formed by trailers and vehicles organized at the very back of the oval, farthest from where the public would enter, out of their sight and close to where I had navigated out of the caravan a few minutes earlier. Somehow, it looked different now, - less abstracted as the idea of a circus maybe. In the diminishing light I found that I was looking at everything differently, assigning more importance to various things that I stepped over, around. Cables, coils of rope, a generator, quietly rumbling under a heavy cover. While I couldn’t explain the purpose of every object, I could sense the essentialness of them. I followed Gorno as he turned a corner and the light brightened ten-fold. Under a tarpaulin roof a forest of bare bulbs hovered over tables grouped in three rows. The dining-hall. There were about twenty-five people sitting and standing in the space, some solitary with space around them, others talking in groups. Except for one small group of people everyone looked different from everybody else. Clothing, mannerism, language, brought cacophony to my ears. Gorno cleared his throat. The dining hall became silent with the liquid focus of everyone being directed at us. I could hear the highway and the occasional far-off shout from one of the riggers. A gas stove hissing faintly was underscored by the smell of paprika and garlic.

“Good. It looks like we are all here. I would like to present the latest additon to our little family. This is Thomas.” He pronounced my name Tomaz with a long buzz on the end. Nobody said anything. They just looked. Gorno snapped his fingers and an old woman handed him a mug.
“Coffee,” Gorno said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Tomaz was brought to us by Lana.”

Someone scoffed, and then someone else cleared their throat.
“Is he blind?” The woman in the motorcycle jacket.
I took off the sunglasses and looked back at her. I tried to give her my best smile. Gorno turned and gave me a considering look.
“No, not this one. Most definitely not blind, our Tomaz.”

In Two Hundred Rail Cars To The Sea

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:57:00 +0000

In Two Hundred Rail Cars To The Sea

The corporations that employ the citizenry telling
The government what would be best for the citizenry
Telling the government what would be best for them
The government that would be re-elected thought that
It was about toilets and doctors and lies

The corporations that select the government telling
The people what would be best for the government
Telling the people that they can have what
They most want is new and shiny and love
And is not the inevitable that waits
It was just another opportunity

The government not telling the people
The corporations not telling the people
Not telling the people that what stands
Between them and death is distraction
The people not telling the people what is
The real blood, vomit, and snot, of truth, death

A new death distracting from an older more persistent truth
A life promised and never delivered-death
Wrapped up in a death-denial, a death paid
Pro-rated death the soul amortized a breath at a time
And snatched life, a message delivered in two hundred rail cars to the sea

Nothing is ever true nothing is ever
The way it is it becomes something else
The moment it happens something that serves
Something else that can never be
Satisfied they died thinking that
It was something else

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 10

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:12:00 +0000

In my early twenties I lost a tooth to stupidity - I was talking when I should have been listening - as the saying goes, and a little guy who I wasn't tracking very well buried a beer bottle in my mouth. I made it his last act for the evening but I was still down a tooth. I lost two more during the stretch in La Sante. The diet was well, forget it - rotting food just fucks you up. I seemed to take to it acceptably - the trots for a couple of days then everything tightened up. Except my teeth. After the first year, when I started doing readings for the warden's wife in exchange for fresh fruit, that seemed to improve things. I still ended up with a molar gone and the other upper front tooth next to my lesson-tooth. I had a bridge for the one that I lost years ago but the new loss was a black rectangle of space in an otherwise reasonable mouth. So one of the first things I did after getting out was to see a dentist. Mayor had given me the name of a off-cost in the Romani quarter and suggested that I start with German. That was his way of asserting his, and thus France’s, superiority in that cell.

Dr. Lana Nutiu was gentle and polite as she probed and prodded and then she offered me a referral to a denturist. Someone who could add to my existing bridge to deal with the new gap. I couldn't afford it, I told her, and for some reason, I said that I could give a Tarot reading in lieu of cash. Or several. She laughed out loud. "He has no use for magic, he needs money," she said, smiling. "Lots of money," she laughed again. It was a nice laugh. I nodded. I don't explain the "it's not magic" part any more so I just spread my hands and shrugged. Something was nagging at the back of my brain but before I could register it, Lana walked to an old Steelcase desk that was backed diagonally into a nook that served as an office. She rummaged around in the top drawer for a while, not really looking where her hands were going so I knew it was a delaying action. She stopped with both her hands braced on the top of the desk, raised her head and looked me in the eye. Her hair was kind of a dark copper with burgundy in it. Like bell wire. She asked me where I had been for the last two years. I looked right back at her and told her "La Maison." She smiled and said, "Yes. I think so. You have the smell." She allowed me my momentary embarrassment by looking back down at the desk. Then she stood up and nodded to herself. "This Tarot business, are you good at it?" she asked. I told her I was very good. She looked down at her desk again for a moment and seemed to come to some kind of decision. She tore a piece of paper from her desk calendar and wrote an address on it. I thought of "the smell" - I would have the "smell" until I'd flushed it from my system. I didn't know how long that would take but I mentally assigned myself a run for the afternoon. She handed me the slip. I looked at it and must have looked lost. "I can help you find that," she said. I asked her about her other patients and she inclined her head to the waiting room. It was empty. "You are the last man, today," she said in Romany-accented French. Okay. The last man. I could be that. I shook my head, clearing cobwebs of an older life.

She took a few minutes to close up her office, locking cabinets, shuttering windows, hanging up her white coat on a coat rack behind her desk and unlacing the boots with the open heels and toes, exchanging them for a set of pumps with a couple of inches of lift. As she stood up she looked at me again and gave me a quick smile. I took the dark gray, almost charcoal three-quarter-length cloth coat she handed me after pulling it from the same rack. She stepped around her desk and checked her hair in a mirror just inside the consulting room and stepped back into the office and allowed me to help her with the coat. "Very gallant," she said. I didn't say anything. She had a small back pack, not good for much more than a book bag, and I hefted my carry-all as we stepped into the hallway and she locked the door. Three stories down the worn marble stairs and then we were on the street. We walked toward the corner and I tried to be sensitive to the wind direction. She laughed as I changed sides a few times on our way down the hill toward the high street of the neighborhood. The sound of our steps echoed up above us and the sky shone with the late afternoon sun. The street was narrow and cobbled and we were in shadow but I kept looking up to see the sky. Everything seemed richer on the outside. Even the stench of the dumpsters behind restaurants was reassuring to my liberty.

"This smell, ah, what is it? I mean, what does it smell like?" I asked.
"Oh," she said, looking down and away. "You can relax. It is more like the faint scent of cooking oil and with maybe sulphur. But very faint. I could only tell when I was working on your mouth. When you sweat."

I thought about this as we walked down the hill and arrived in the high street. I became aware of hunger. On an impulse, I asked her if she would join me at a cafe. There was a good place near where we were going, she told me, and we could eat there, if I liked. I liked I was sweating slightly with the pace she was putting up - I really needed that run - I tried to sense the odor that she had described. We both fell into the quiet of our own thoughts as we turned off the avenue of shops and I hadn't been paying attention to where we were going until we came around a corner and nearly bowled over a man who looked to be in his late fifties. A rapid exchange between Lana and the older man, not without some warmth, indicated that he had to rush off. Lana said, "He will be back in an hour. Here is the cafe." She gestured to the few miss-matched tables on a patio bordered by a wrought-iron railing and shaded by a tattered white sun-bleached awning.

Who was that, I wanted to know. She shrugged her shoulders and said,
"Glad, he is Gorno's brother."
"Okay, who is Gorno?" I was smiling and she was looking over her shoulder for a waiter.
"Umm...Gorno is...." The waiter spotted Lana and made his way over to our table. She greeted him by name. Emanoil was a young man in his very early twenties, but with a confidence of someone older, who has seen more of the world than their high-school parking lot and the various routes home to avoid the bullies. While Lana was ordering in Romany, I noticed his ears. The swirl of the cartilaginous parts of his ear lobe were very distinctive. I'd read somewhere that the shape of the outer ear is nearly as distinctive as a fingerprint and I wondered what else you could glean from the shape. That was probably bordering on phrenology or one of the other pseudo-sciences from the last two centuries. I ordered soup and coffee. I followed with my eyes as the young waiter went to the counter and ordered up the food. When the counterman came forward, I saw that he had exactly the same ears, only thirty years older. The father. Uncle maybe. He was balding and despite a slight paunch which revealed itself as he came around the corner of the bar he was built like a gymnast. He came out to the patio and sat down backwards on a chair from the next table. He folded his arms across the back and shook my hand when Lana introduced us. He spent the next few minutes speaking in Romany and I was a spectator without a program. I tried to piece together the general flow of the conversation but I couldn't quite get a fix on what they were talking about. He was almost haranguing her as he periodically lifted his fashionable wire rims and pinched the bridge of his nose with his right hand while gesturing with his left. Lana gave him her full attention. She was interested rather than defensive, and even as the counterman punctuated his discourse with chopping motions that stopped just before the table top, she leaned into the conversation and lit a cigarette. She put the pack down on the table. Her lighter slid off the table and landed on my carry-all. I bent down beside the table, retrieved the lighter and offered it to her. She took it from me and as our eyes met there were two changes. The first was that I was there and the second, a faint shade of guilt that I took for her contrition at having focused so intently on the counterman. I was definitely on someone else’s turf. Had been for a long time, when I thought about it.
"This will be just a few minutes, I am sorry. Please,” she said, and turned back to the conversation.

The conversation resumed, rising and falling in intensity and for a few seconds I thought that I had detected incredulity on the part of the counterman and then some kind of provisional acceptance. Every once in a while, they would both stop and stare at me for a few seconds. After a few more minutes the food arrived, brought out by Emanoil. The counterman stood up and bowed to me and offered me his hand. I shook his, feeling a little confused. Lana had stubbed out her cigarette and was unfolding her napkin. She brought a single escargot to her mouth and paused. More Romany to the counterman/gymnast and he gave her a monosyllabic answer. They both stared at me. Emanoil disappeared into the café. I looked back and forth and that moment came where to break their gaze would be as rude as to hold it any longer. I addressed Lana in French.
“The food will get cold,” I said.
“Guten appetit,” Uncle counterman said. In German.
“You will please read Emanoil’s cards after dinner?” said Lana. In French.
“Sure. Ah, why?”
“He wishes to know.”
“Who wishes to know what? Emanoil?” The sensation of being on a different planet was more intense.
“After dinner,” she said. Butter from the escargot dribbled down her chin. She mopped at it with a napkin. “These were not like at home. Not the good ones.” She sighed, half with pleasure and the rest something else. Sadness or nostalgia, maybe. The subject had been changed.

The soup was excellent and Emanoil cleared the plates. Lana was surveying me over the rim of her coffee as I put a cube of sugar into my espresso. I smiled and decided on the charming diplomat’s approach.
“So, Lana. What’s going on?” I said. She sighed and gathered herself
“I don’t want – here is Emanoil..”

Emanoil and his maybe-uncle-or-father arrived at the table and Lana got up from her spot across from me and sat at my left, her back to the railing and the square. Emanoil sat across from me with an open look as if to say ‘don’t worry, this is just…a ‘thing’. Roll with it…’ Just what exactly was what was the question here, but apart from the awareness that I was being tested I wasn’t sure what was going on. Everyone was polite and considerate and apart from the fact that the agenda was being driven by everyone except for me I could just get my finger on the edge of the thing here. But I couldn’t pull it out from under the table. Lana didn’t look at me and uncle-with-the-earlobes looked straight at Lana. I finished my espresso and reached into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out the cards. The counterman sat at my right in his backward-chair and folded his apron in his lap. As I started to shuffle the cards, I got it. Not like a bolt of lightning – more of a slow recognition of where you are when you wake up in a hotel room and it takes a minute to place the hotel, the city, how you got there. I smiled and raised my eyes to Emanoil, who was now looking at the cards and a little distant. Most people look either distant - or they get enthusiastic. Nerves, I guess. Doesn’t matter. It will get at the same truths because the process of the reading doesn’t respect ego. I shuffled the cards some more and explained in French what I was going to do. I looked at Emanoil’s hands. They were clean and dry. He sat erect in his black vest and white shirt. He had taken off his apron and left it somewhere inside.

Three cards, I tell Emanoil. Past present and future. We’ll start there. The sun has set and the table is glowing in the reflected light from the electric lanterns under the awning. The square is dark and I notice a few men in their thirties standing a step or two back from the railing that boundaries the patio. I look at Uncle and he makes that shrugging head-shake that means that they are not a threat. Continue, he indicated with a casual hand gesture. I understood that I was under his protection.

The cut was unremarkable – wands and cups indicating flight, choice and some trepidation. I worked slowly through them in the French and at the end Emanoil surprises me by thanking me in very natural English. American accent, from the Dakotas.
“Where did you learn to speak English?” I ask.
“Oh, I grew up on a farm near Bismarck. I went to school – the U - there but…” He shrugged without breaking eye contact.
“You’re here now.”
“Yeah. My parents… are related to… all this. To my uncle.”
“Okay. Romany in the home, French in school?”
He laughed. “Sort of. Sure. Leave it at that. Thanks for the reading.”

He got up and shook my hand and I felt the calluses along the bottom edge of his hand. He gave me a soft smile and went back in, picking up his apron off of the counter inside. There were no other customers. Uncle went inside and came back in less than a minute with a tray of what looked like miniature wine glasses made out of metal. He placed one in front of Lana and one in front of me. In heavily accented English he toasted.
“I am Georges. Ad astra!”

I smiled at the Latin and followed the lead of my hosts and downed the liquor. A burst of Romany followed and then Lana took my left hand and looked straight at me.
“Welcome to the circus,” she said.
“Hang on…”
“Georges is to have you to work in it,” she said.
I stopped and thought for a while. Glad and, judging by his appearance, Gorno emerged from the darkness of the square and sat down at the table, pulling up chairs from the other tables. Georges brought drinks. After a few rounds and introductions, I was in that peculiar headspace I get when I’m working two or three different languages. Only this was slightly different. Not too much alcohol inside prison. It’s there but.. Things started to clang in my ears and then my head became an echo chamber. A band was setting up and Glad was teaching me some steps. He handed me off to Lana who rehearsed the steps with me as the band warmed up. The light from the lanterns was beautiful and it shined off of her wine-colored hair. The smell of her.
“What are the terms?” I asked.
She just shook her head. Not now. That’s a bad thing in any deal – talking about the money later. But I couldn’t tell whether I was speaking French or German. She had been teaching me some words in Romany. Then the band kicked in and we danced. Gorno and Glad, at least twenty years older than me, formed a chorus line and got me through some more moves and then I was with Lana again. I learned the word for kick, and another for woman. And another for man. One more for friend. I did a couple of three-card readings for some people and I watched myself watching myself vaguely surprised that I could in the state that I was in and Georges caught my eye and held up my bag to show me that he was putting it behind the bar. I heard Lana say - I think it was to me, “it was a good trade,” and then I didn’t remember anything anymore.

Above right: Ian & Claire - ©Shane T. Adams 2007

Editorial - The Ventured Adventure

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:47:00 +0000

Let us get this straight. After a near century of subscription to the maxim "let the market sort it out" the ex-CEO of one of the companies that will benefit from the bailout is advocating, under the flag of state no less, that the American taxpayer bail out institutions that are failing. Failing because the very owners of those operations begged and pleaded for the deregulation that allowed them to conduct business so foolishly. So foolishly that it brought down the very organizations that deregulation was to benefit. And now the taxpayer is going to be the engine of salvation. In a solution that has markedly socialist characteristics, the benefit will go to...? Ah, the owners of the banks, not the American taxpayer.

As if the diversion of wealth during day-to-day business as usual and the rape of the public coffers wasn't injury enough, without equity in exchange for this massive input of cash, this mock-socialist insult by the Bush government has stocks reeling and the administration's cronies quietly glowing with delight as they wait for the dust to settle. They will watch and, in the interval before the institutions that actually have value climb out of the power-dive, buy those institutions at pennies on the dollar. Democrats and Republicans alike are howling outrage at the meltdown and cries of "how could this happen" echo through the upper and lower houses. How indeed. How ironic that the loudest for reform and safeguards are coming from the very people who dismantled the regulatory environment. In an era where poor investments using borrowed money still reaps the CEOs and Fund Managers huge recompense, it is once again the people who actually generate value in a society that will feel the pain. For shame. For calumny aforethought. How did it happen indeed?

It would appear deliberate. Anybody with high school maths and a knowledge of history could see that if you conducted yourself like the markets did in the late 1920s, brought various organizations to their knees and then resurrected them causing a massive reordering with takeovers and buyouts in the interim, the last man standing would be all the wealthier for it. And that would have been fine. Let fools who bought things that they could not afford lose them. Let the market place demolish those institutions that were not fit to survive. But add the deliberate de-regulation on one end, and add the impending bailout package on the other, which amounts to around 10,000 dollars per household, and you have the coup of the century. With no equity and all the risk to the lender - the American people.. You can be assured that if this funding were obtained from the Bush family, the Cheneys, the other scions of the ruling class of corporate America, they would have obtained equity - it is simply good business sense. In a striking parallel, this investment in very shaky debt paper by the taxpayer, with all the benefit to the owners of these institutions, mirrors many of the decisions made that led up to this crisis. The fact that the principles in all of this, the CEOs, the Secretary of the Treasury, and sundry law makers did not resign in disgrace signifies one or both of two possible conditions: that, a) they really did not know that this would happen, or b) they did, and they stood by abetting the eventual outcome. Incompetence or criminality, take your pick.

In the husbandry of a nation, chance should play the smallest part. This doesn't have the markings of luck, but if it was simply bad luck and the proposed bailout goes through with no change to the regulatory structure, this latest excursion, this adventuring into the savings accounts of the taxpayer, this pillaging of the middle class and the working poor, will go down in history as one of the most savage blows the smallest, most privileged portion of the population, has struck against the largest and least.

Alex Majoli's New Work from Pakistan

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Alex Majoli, one of the finest modern photographers working, has some new work up on the Magnum Blog. I don't find the Magnum site that reliably navigable, so although you can link and search from the eponymous sidebar link, to get to his latest work, go here. The picture on the right? Not his.

Right: Somewhere north of the 49th. © 2008 Shane T. Adams

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 9

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:20:00 +0000

La Sante. Shit. Anyone tells you the French are on the cutting edge of human-rights, ask them about La Sante. I was there around the time the doctor published her book about the place. I didn't get raped, but it took a pre-emptory strike. You haven't seen violence until you've been in a French prison. Showers once a week if we were lucky. Four guys in a room about 4 feet by 7 and a solid steel door with a peephole. Enough room for one man. But you have to share it with two or three others. Think about that. Think solitary but with cellmates. The guards can see in if they look through the peephole but they aren't disposed to. The door muffles most things. Conversation, laughter, rape, murder. The sound of the rest of the prison. Two sets of bunks with about a foot-and-a-half feet of floor space between them. A hole to shit in on the outside wall and next to it a bucket of water. The top bunks were less than two feet from the ceiling and the mattresses were ridden with lice. Good reason to shave your head. It gets hot up there but you're less exposed to attack when someone decides you are their enemy. Or has just snapped in the 35-degree heat. We were on some kind of progressive routine and the bastards let us spend an hour in the yard each day. and an hour-and-a-half across three meals in the canteen and, once a week, twenty minutes in the shower. Apparently Dr. V. fought hard for that. The rest of the time we were in that box. There was a inmate-run library that didn't have space - just books circulated by the trusties when we were locked in.

Down-bunk on my side, a wiry little Berber who called himself Ziri was doing hard time for murder and the cat opposite him was the ex-mayor of a town down south doing a couple of years for corruption. He was halfway through his stretch when I showed up and greeted me with a deference I came to recognize later in the prison system. Physically he was a towering pile of flab that wouldn't fit on the upper bunk. But he was well-educated and after a while he relaxed determining that what ever he had heard I was no threat to him. He was polite almost to a fault and when the system stuck a gay little sylph of a man in the fourth bunk, Mayor, as we took to calling the fallen offical, was courtly and gallant in the presence of the little cross-dresser. Jules was in his early twenties and had negotiated his peace with various men in D-block. Almost a caricature, he minced, and pranced, simpering when we laughed at the humorous results when attempts at drama were thwarted by the lack of room.

Our normal routine was fairly well set. We shared books and because my eyes were better and I read faster than Mayor, except in the French, I would read in the afternoons. Before noon I would use the tiny t-shaped floor space between the bottom bunks to work out, pushups, Hindu squats, crunches, and pull ups while Ziri read the Qur'an. After my workout, which lasted an hour, Ziri and I played chess and Mayor would read. Jules "...call me Julie..", having been parachuted into the cell after the basic dynamic had been established, discovered Mayor's good manners prohibited him from ignoring a direct question. He would swing upside down from the top bunk and present his inverted face to Mayor who sat at the end of his bunk reading by the combined light of the east-facing window and the bare bulb. "I love the Pet Shop Boys, don't you? Why do you read that book over and over again," demanded an answer and Mayor would dog-ear the page, put his book down, and respond. Then Julie would launch into a discussion, a monologue that didn't really require anything of Mayor other than a nod or shake of the head at the appropriate interval. Julie would hold forth to Mayor on fashion and the lives of celebrities as he had gleaned them from the magazines brought to him by the trusties. Mayor was very patient.

We understood Julie's presence to be a function of my arrival in the cell. The brooch that Frank had given me was hot - I knew that - and it had been used to build a charge of receiving stolen goods. When I walked into Gare Saint Lazare, and the arms of the law, they had already tossed my room in the hotel. They hadn't found the brooch right away, but they were competent and eventually found the loose floorboard. They hadn't found anything else - Frank had all that - and they finally gave up. It was obvious to me that they knew that the brooch connected me to Frank because it wasn't from the Venice gig. That they were looking for the brooch... They played it clumsily and gave away their side so I played dumb and stum. I was concerned that they would hold me forever without charge - that can be done - but they eventually settled on the swag conviction and sent me to La Sante and at least I had an end date to look forward to. Julie was a last ditch effort to see if I would talk about the Venice thing. His last attempt on me was when Ziri was reading the cards for me. He sidled over to my perch on Ziri's bunk and watched for a while as Ziri turned the cards. When I pulled The Tower covering The Empress, Julie made an "oohh" sound. I ignored him. Then Julie reached out to pick up one of the cards. Ziri hissed. I grabbed Julie's wrist and applied some gentle sankyo before he got to the card. I looked at Julie, my face a few inches from his. "Ziri murdered a man who acted carelessly about his wife," I said looking straight into his eyes. "Thank you for saving my life," the sylph said sarcastically, but he withdrew his hand. Ziri looked at me and smiled. "You know, I killed him. I am a killer, not a murderer. There's a difference," he said. I put my hand over my heart and apologized - my French was still poor and my Tamazight worse. Ziri laughed and waved it away. We returned to the cards. But I remained standoffish to Julie and eventually he was moved out of our cell and presumably to another project. Mayor was relieved to be able to get back to his reading.

That was where I really learned how to read the Tarot - in prison. My mother had exposed me to it when I was a child but it was just one of those things that was part of my childhood atmosphere. Under the Amazigh's tutelage in D-block with nothing else to do, I picked it up fast. In school I had focused on the sciences and along the way learned a few other things. There aren't many bibles in there, and I'm not an avid bible-reader. I prefer books of greater technical and aesthetic depth and so inside, I read the Qur'an. These days, it's probably the most popular book in French prisons. Programming and game theory stood me in good stead when I approached the Tarot. Ziri knew nothing of game theory but he had read Freud and Jung and studied the Kaballah, among other things. He was an excellent teacher.

Some years later, killing time in an airport, I read this thriller where the hero uses the Tarot as a way of helping him think outside the box. Half there. I wonder if he ever studied Case. Turns out, I should have been a psychoanalyst. Watching people's reactions to the cards I pulled for them is like looking inside a clock - oh, so that's what's going on. No thanks. Spending all that time inside other people's heads is bad enough on a job - it's a requirement for survival in stir - but I can't see getting paid to do it on a regular basis. But inside it was respect and currency because I seemed to get it right. For most people. Some people didn't like it though and once or twice it got a little hairy. In retrospect I suppose I was just getting it too right for those people. Personal myths are lovely and the truth can be a bitch. Who knew the cards could foretell a death? But not the way you think.
The perks, I guess. As they say, if you want to build a better criminal, send them to prison.

After I got out of La Sante, I wandered for a while. I did a lot of reading. I read the cards for people to keep body and soul together and a nice lady took me to a tailor. Then the circus came to town. That's how I met Gorno.

Above: Delivery, Venice 2007

Editorial - The Religious Right & The Presumption of Capital

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:09:00 +0000

Observed today in traffic: a bumper sticker that read, "Keep the faith! Just not to yourself!" This bumper sticker's message very clearly highlights the issue with the religious right and the rest of the evangelical community in their highly successful takeover of the legislative arenas on the North American continent. Simply put, it is the height of presumption to inform someone of your religious position or belief for the purpose of converting that person - without obtaining that person's informed consent. This has been a glaring offense, a failure, even, in the eyes of the rest of the world for a long time, but perhaps a different perspective gives it the measure of success in a less savory light - the benefits of good organization.

The right to display the bumper sticker is a given. It is just text and people are allowed to make their own decisions about what to do - to read it, or not to read it, agree or disagree, and so on. The right to seek out and obtain information is inherent as is the right to give that information to someone who is seeking it. The free exchange of ideas, amongst consenting individuals is enshrined in several documents that outline the acceptable conduct of society and restrains government from interfering. Where the situation changes and becomes far more serious is when government substitutes religious conviction for intelligent policy. It is absurd to presume in an open society with many creeds, cultures, and philosophies, that one individual's spiritual devotion, used as a central guiding theme in decisions affecting many, will be acceptable to the majority. This is the basis for the separation of church and state. If the church-state separation is not the real issue then, what is? Is it a diversion for a far more sinister attack on liberty? If so, it requires the urgent attention of the electorate.

Informed consent, here used to describe the willingness of the people to be subjected to campaign propaganda, requires that all the facts and possible outcomes be presented. When the religious right supports platforms based on morality and accountability when in reality they are fronts for economic pillage the concept of informed consent regarding religion in politics cannot even be raised. It would be to miss the point. The conduct of various political and religious leaders in North America speaks for itself. This is clearly not about separation of church and the state. Nor is it about hypocrisy. Nor is it about tolerance for other faiths or creeds. Nor, especially, is it about good governance.

Capital is using the religious right to hijack the electoral process by supporting candidates on platforms appealing to the status quo of the religious right's constituency - a group noted for excellent organization if not original thinking. Religious conviction on the part of the candidate is held to be "personal belief" while somehow elevating their character. The fact that the religious right only becomes a majority when the voter turnout is low is not lost on the center of power in our society. The deliberate disenfranchisement of voters who do not support capital's position, particularly those voters who hold the view that wealth should be distributed, is accomplished by various tactics. These include intimidation, and administrative "errors". Meanwhile, the mobilization of the well organized religious right through fear-mongering and outright lying ensures it becomes a majority sufficient to carry a candidate. It is essentially the transformation of the electorate into a special interest group. That special interest group is being manipulated to produce the apparent mandate for a puppet leadership. Subjected to a rigorous review of the results of their policies and initiatives, that leadership appears to have as their sole interest the diversion and consolidation of wealth to an ever-smaller group of individuals - the same group that dictates the actions of our policy makers. The same group which funds their candidates. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that this is not about religion, God, or excessive morality. It is about money.

Right now in the United States of America, 1% of the population has more wealth - that is to say, owns more, than 95% of the rest of the population combined - a definition used in the 1980s to define a military dictatorship or banana republic . That migration of wealth has been steady since the Reagan years and shows no sign of slowing. Combined with the fact that the lesser educated component of the religious right, the "true believers" has been bilked as well, enriching their leadership with sub-prime mortgages and unsupportable credit debt, we can only assume that the battle cry "God is on our side!" is a cynical shill game designed to return us the economic state of the pre-democratic feudal societies we worked so hard to climb out of.

People have the right to think what they will and even, under certain circumstances, to attempt to influence the thinking of others. The height of arrogance is when earnest debate is used as a smoke screen for something far more sinister - the plundering of the public coffers in what amounts to out and out class war. For a public official to participate in this is the ultimate betrayal of the public trust and no focus on personal religious conviction or other testament to putative character endorsment should distract from that.

Quite apart from the betrayal of trust, taken at face value, the assertions of the evangelical right beg examination for the most basic levels of competence. Should a person who claims to listen to a deity for policy guidance be allowed authority over others? Should a person who cannot process the scientific fact that there is human history which predates the most liberal interpretations of the creation myth be allowed control of education budgets? Should a person who subscribes to the concept of Armageddon on this earth, be given access to the most powerful material weapons in the world? Should a person, so obviously serving the mandate of an invisible constituency of 1% be eligible for any office in the land?

Make up your own mind. Do your own research. Become your own expert on the issues.

Vote.

Editorial - Church, State, and The Great Duplicity

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:38:00 +0000

And now we know that Ms. Palin has declared a very specific deity to be her guiding and motivating force. More importantly, we know that she believes that same deity to be the legal and righteous mandate behind legislation and policy and, ultimately, that "he" is on her side. Woe be to anyone not under the same umbrella. For the American electorate, this should be, at the very least, an embarrassment.

While the personal right to any god, and any creed, is absolute, Palin's right to govern is a mandate from a more earthly source: the people. But nearly half of the people are silent. Should she be elected with her running-mate, Senator McCain, in an election with anything similar to the voter turnout of previous races, we can look forward to more of the insanity that we have experienced in recent years from the gorrilla-with-a-9.7-trillion-USD-debt whose corpus lies mostly to the south of the 49th parallel. Essentially profligate and misogynistic, their espousal of policy doctrine derived from the same masters that directed the overt persecution of Joyce, Levi, Copernicus, and Galileo, can only be seen as the height of chauvinism in its purest sense and cannot be seen as the will of the people articulated through legitimate representation. It will be the voice of the religious right wearing the disguise of populism. Criminally bereft of ethics, the church-in-league-with-corrupt-government in its emperor's clothes, has deceived populations and arrested the development of entire continents, destroying intellectual and cultural wealth while amassing private material fortunes behind its walls of privilege, sending its children out to be murdered and denying half of the Earth's population control over their own bodies. And it is our own fault.

The height of this macabre irony is that while most fundamentalist zealots are willing to live off the benefits of basic and advanced research: electricity, electromagnetism, medicine, etc. ("God wants us to have nice things," the worst of them bleat), they refute and often seek to repress access by others not only to the benefits but to the basic process which brought those benefits: basic research, critical thinking, and data-based question and response. This is to say nothing of their hypocritical approach to the terror, blood, and vomit that is life for most on this planet. And we stand aside and let them persist.

How then, is the religious-right in the Americas any different than the Taliban? Banning music is the other side of the same coin that mandates the teaching of hearsay - creationism as espoused in the bible, which the very antithesis of observable data, as science. How does a fundamentalist so-called Christian church differ from a fundamentalist branch of any other faith or philosophy when it refutes human exploration and a search for the truth, the basic expressions of the sentient being? It is as if to say, 'Peace be upon you, brothers and sisters, but only if you see things our way.' A literal way. A way that only requires a 250-word vocabulary. And no critical faculty. Only rhetoric and polemic.

"Beware of false prophets" we were warned. Too late. They are here and we are aiding and abetting them by giving credence and legitimacy through the electoral process to indefensible positions and institutions. This is the great duplicity of neglect in our society. It is an old duplicity with the forces of oppression seeking to silence all but the chorus of dogma on one side and the natural search for answers on the other. It is the disguise of the systemic rape of the world and arrogation with the spoils while cynically declaring bringing democracy to be the mission. It is the camouflage of class oppression and gender persecution while falsely professing fellowship . It is the mask of racism and greed while speaking platitudes of equality and fairness out of the side of the mouth. It has raged to the detriment of all as long as there has been a division of labour and a concentration of power. By virtue of its age, it may be seen as unimportant or anachronistic. The opposite is true. The greatest shame is that we allow it to persist by not insisting on better. Better from ourselves and better from those that we would have represent us.

Find yourself. Find God, if you must. But leave your neighbors out of it. In matters of the soul they will have to find their own way. We must find our leaders first. In finding our leaders and assuring governance, we must come together and not leave anyone out. In choosing our leaders, we must be leaders ourselves and not leave the business of public affairs to the so-called experts - the people who will tell you that you don't understand all the issues 'in play'. There is a separation of church and state, and of certain powers within the state, to ensure that we are not governed by corporations masquerading as individuals or churches and churches masquerading as governments. These separations, these checks and balances, these concepts, are fragile, susceptible to the tinkering of well-organized ethical bankrupts, working without citizen oversight and posing as leaders in our communities while vigorously dismantling the pillars of democracy. These concepts are in danger of failing. The pillars will crumble without the earnest participation of every one of us.

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato said that. America, vote. In the face of the evidence since the Reagan years, it can no longer be considered a privilege. It is now an obligation. Turn away from the intoxication of conspicuous distraction, turn toward the duty, without the exercise of which, will result in the complete failure of our mission: a just, tolerant, and compassionate society.

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 8

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:49:00 +0000

Helen ate a cheeseburger while I picked at a salad, stretching it out to fill the time it took her to eat her meal. Bacon and cheese and the oils of those things moistened her lips and she ducked her head in mock embarrassment as she mopped continuously at the glistening trails around her mouth. It was a pretty mouth and she used it to ask her fair share of questions in response to the little ones that I asked her. I learned little about her except that she never stopped smiling while I told her little inconsequential stories about America. Then she asked me how I'd met her father. The fabulous Frankie. I told her she should ask her father. She looked at me and didn't say anything. But she stopped chewing for a second and her eyes focused about ten feet inside my head. She smiled even wider then and swallowed a mouthful of burger.
When the food was gone we paused. I drank the last of my coffee and put the tiny cup down on the tiny saucer. I signaled the waitress for a refill. The sun was bright, and where it touched my skin it was warm. There was a slight breeze and occasionally I caught the scent of her warm skin, just at the edge of imagination. We sat there looking at each other. She reached over and I suppressed the natural flinch and counter mechanism as she grabbed my wrist, twisting it so she could read my watch.

"I've got to go," she said. I stood up with her and looked around for the waitress. "It's on me," she said and leaned forward and gave me a quick bus on each cheek.

"I guess they're doing that in better schools these days," I said.

"Yeah, everybody's doing it. It's an affectation. I did it just so I could smell you."

"How do I smell?" I asked, hoping she'd take the bait.

"With your nose."

I smiled at her and we promised to meet "in the ashes of tomorrow - the budding of the day after". I liked her just fine, her lineage notwithstanding, and then I was filled with a profound sensation. I had to keep my face neutral to avoid giving it away. At first I thought it was lust, desire. It had been a long time since. Then I recognized it. The same feeling I had when I was in France and realized what our little Frankie had done with his and my cut. The recriminations had grown thinner and more acidic, washing me as it drew me into the center of it, and its light highlighted every feature of my soul, leaving no crevasse without the harsh illumination of truth. It definitely didn't involve an orphanage and it certainly didn't involve The Hague. Mostly it involved Frankie and his little retinue of bidunistas. I wondered if any of them would have him on their 'must-chat' list.

I smelled musk as she turned and walked out the door. The waitress brought another espresso and I sat down in the seat that Helen had occupied, facing the sun. Helen came out the front door and waved. On her wrist I could see a watchband. The sensation, identified only just then by name, swelled in my chest. Guilt. I pulled the deck out of my jacket and cut the cards. The Tower.

I put a sugar cube in my teeth and slowly sucked the rich schiuma through it. I focused on the sweet oil of life trickling down my throat.

Re-webbing the novel....

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:51:00 +0000

To make it easier to read, especially for those of you who have just picked it up, and with the intent of eventually presenting it as a downloadable document, I've decided to re-format (only slightly) my novel Rates Of Exchange which I have been delivering here a chapter at a time. I've linked it to the directory in the sidebar and after I've driven it around a bit I'll put the tweaks on the navigation. Let me know what you think.

I've nearly finalized the reshaping of the galleries for the photography section and those revisions should be coming soon as well.

Above left: False Prometheus Confined 2008

Rates of Exchange, Chapter 7

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:47:00 +0000

I decided to go outside and stretch my legs, get some fresh air. I took the stairs outside my room and crossed the courtyard. On a whim I walked through the lobby area, entering via a glass door that has stickers for various agencies giving approvals of Frank's efforts as a gracious host. It's amazing what credentials you can buy. If you have money.

I didn't see Frankie but the desk girl looked at me oddly and then looked away as if she hadn't seen me. The main doors were open and wedged and the cool morning air was freshening the lobby. I walked up to the desk and asked the girl if Frank was in. She stammered for a second and at first I thought of a speech impediment, but then I realized that she didn't know what to say. She eventually got out that Frank wasn't around today and wasn't taking calls anyway. I just looked at her for a second hoping that she would think about that last piece of information. She blushed and rearranged some papers on her desk. I thanked her and walked to the main doors and stood in the opening, in the shade of the breezeway but feeling the growing warmth of the air that would heave the day into the blaze of the sun by noon. I thought about going back for a jacket but changed my mind when a little Honda pulled in to a stall to my left. I turned to look at it and out of the corner of my eye I saw the desk girl looking at me out of the corner of her eye while she spoke quietly into the phone. She didn't have the cheery falseness that people who are speaking to customers have, just the forced deadpan of the amateur. She looked away from me and the terminator of the breezeway's shadow crept a little to the left. She sneaked a look back at me and shook her head as she spoke. I couldn't hear the words but I turned slightly so that I was looking more directly at her. She blushed and turned her back to me. I smiled, more inside than out, and turned back to the little Honda. Frank's daughter, Helen, fresh out of university, fresh out of her little car, looked at me and smiled. She was wearing jeans, a jean jacket over a dark blue blouse with what looked like a thousand tiny vines of grey flowers in the print. Her hair was dark, that kind of black that is almost blue.
She stopped in front of me.
I smiled back.

"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I said.
"It's a beautiful morning."
"Yeah. It is. No contest, though."
"Thank you. Um..."
"I was thinking about breakfast."
She paused. "What are we talking about here?"
"Protein, carbs, maybe some fat. Basic biology." I said.
"Oh," she said.
"There's a problem, though,"
"What's that?"
"I don't know what's good in town. Have you eaten yet?"
We still hadn't broken each other's gaze.
"My father says I should stay away from you."
When she said that, her head tilted slightly, to the side. Regarding.
"You always do what your daddy tells you?" I winked. "Come on, I'll buy you breakfast somewhere in public. It oughta reduce your risk."

She smiled. Toothy bright. I let my eyes fall to her mouth. Just for a second.

"I won," she said, smiling more now.
"What are we talking about here?"
"You'll see," she said as she took me by my arm and we started walking out of the parking lot.

The sun was in our eyes as we reached the road and turned left. Helen still had my arm and I liked that. I felt good muscle under her jean jacket as we walked.
I looked back at her car and happened to see Frank at the window of his office next to the lobby glass. Well, well. He was holding a phone to his ear and he put it down at the same time the desk girl put her phone down. Just before the angle blocked my view, the desk girl looked out the open doors and caught my eye. She turned around quickly and disappeared through the door to Frank's office. Frank shut his curtains. I continued down the street with his daughter on my arm.

Portrait - Whiskey in the Bar

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:01:00 +0000

Group Captain Grahame "W" Wilson - Convair 580, Alberta Canada 2008

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:07:00 +0000

Cameron McCulloch - CL 215 captain. Alberta, Canada.

Portraits - Restaurateur

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:56:00 +0000

Sergio - General Factotum, Rigoletto's. Edmonton, Canada

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:20:00 +0000

Engineers Steve Copeland and Sean Jensen replace a wingtip. Southern Alberta.

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:11:00 +0000

Air Attack Officer Greg Boyachuk in front of his ride. Northern Alberta

Portraits - Aerial Fire Fighting

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Fueler, loaderman, and a pilot wait for the next forest fire call. Air tanker base, northern Alberta.

Mr. President, please....

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Chicken Little, come in, over.

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Chicken Little, do you read? Over.

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:24:00 +0000

Intersection Set # 52

sta@mettamind.com (STA) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:19:00 +0000