Jackspace

Today while finally putting up Desert Storm Pictures I was overcome with the feeling of grief for my friend Aaron who was killed by friendly fire. He and I were in different units stationed in the same post in Bamberg, Germany. So we ran into each other since we tended to chase after the same group of frauleins at an out of the way “alternative/independent” dance club.

So the story goes that one night during the ground war, his vehicle was summoned forward to check up on a group of Iraqi soldiers who were apparently surrendering. Some of the more forward units saw the vehicle and thought it was non-Coalition Force and opened fire on it. Aaron was the driver of the M113 Armored Personel Carrier. I remember reading the report that said there was a huge explosion that had hit the driver’s side and one of his squad members checked and found Aaron lifeless. They evacuated the vehicle and were immediately pinned down by friendly fire. The conditions were dark and visibility was limited. They were stuck there for hours before anyone could come to their aid.

Some people from the unit who initiated the firing on Aaron’s vehicle said they thought the approaching group of Iraqis on foot was an attacking column escorted by an armored vehicle so they opened fire.

This all happened before I was twenty-three. Aaron was a year younger. The government first told his mother that he had been killed in the line of duty by enemy missile fire. Word soon got out among his friends whose families relayed the information to his mother, who felt uneasy about the line she had been given by the Department of Defense. She came to Germany, where we were stationed, to find out for herself what had killed her son.

I used to think this happened in other wars, to other people, just in movies. Here I find myself as a friend of someone who was killed and the Army was handing his mother an American flag in a neat triangle fold and a line of bullshit.

Aaron’s mother found out the truth and the Department of Defense later took back its story and admitted that indeed, friendly fire had killed her son.

Comparatively, there weren’t that many Americans killed in Desert Storm. There shouldn’t have been any. There also shouldn’t have been any Iraqis, or Kuwaitis, or Saudis, or anyone from anywhere killed. Not for oil!!!! NOT FOR OIL!!!!

We live in one of the most developed nations in the world and yet we remain quaintly retro in regards to our fuel-drug-of-choice. Something as inefficient as fossil fuels is what moves us around. Computer technology doubles every so many months yet our vehicles burn pretty much the same fuel as vehicles made fifty years ago. Let’s pull the wool over our OWN eyes!??

If you happen to know of any links that alternative energy resources would be one of the themes, please send them my way.

peace to all! Jack PS – I wish to offer my most sincere of apologies to the families, friends, and neighbors of those souls we killed or injured. I was in circumstances beyond my control as were most everyone on all sides. I feel I had more in common with even the “opposition” troops than I do with most of the governments’ “leaders.”

Please forgive us we were young
forgive us for what we’ve done
this story has long been told
yet the ground still is quakin’
this isn’t my kind of world
so cheap is peace easily forsaken.

One dollar
Two Dollars
Three DOLLARS MORE!?
What the hell are we fightin’ for?
Paramilitary-industrial-complex
you’d swear they think it’s better than sex.
Four dollars
Five dollars
Six dollars spent
Away the aircraft carriers are sent
Auto industry assemblies the governments do rent
tanks, missiles, munitions are sent,
HELLBENT:
Through the eighth,
the ninth
the tenth fucking dollar
Man those gas prices got us by the collar

. . . bring the dawn in. SSSSLLLLLAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!! My closet door, for no apparent reason bursts open at 5:26am, Miles the cat is totally freaked out by it. I was in the middle of a dream where I was visiting Anne and I think in the dream we were on some hillside looking up and there was something weird about the moon. OK, so not to worry, I get up and check my email and phone just in case there are any weird messages or anything of the sort. I don’t know why, but usually when these sort of things happen it involves either birth, death, or sex. Or all three. (They are all related of course)

Back to sleep.

The phone rings, I get up to answer it and it’s Jasmine who wants me to come over with coffee. It took us probably half an hour to hatch our plan on how I was going to get there without spilling the morning fuel everywhere. Despite PLAN A being my taking the number 3 bus from the Square at 10:29am, I finally decide to take her bike, stop by the Co-op and get the much sought-after caffeine along with some other chow.

The air is brisk but not cold. The sun is out and I pedal along with a huge ear-to-ear on my face. There’s almost a ridiculous air to all this. It’s nice to be outside and getting away from downtown. Stop by the co-op, I somehow manage to not only stuff the baguette into my backpack (bread folds ya know) but also wrap the cups of coffee in enough plastic bags (and the Co-op loves that plastic, gotta have it!) to keep it from spilling. Back outside and once on this 27″ Girl’s Schwinn, I pedal pedal pedal my way . . .

Down Willy Street

Up the bike path.

I notice for the first time, an old mural painting on the Blue Plate Diner. It’s of a little kid and a huge hamburger. Mostly faded. Well done. I laugh at the fact that I’ve been past here a thousand times and I just now noticed it. What else?

The streets are mostly quiet.
I’m about to cut across just as some idiot pulls up behind me and slows and won’t pass me so I can make a guilt-free crossing. I shake my head, smile back at the car, and cut right onto Jasmine’s street. Down past the quaint east side houses. Past the bricks and flower beds and yard ornaments and tricycles, into the driveway, bring the bike up through the doorway, up the stairs and there is Jasmine.

She’s just finishing up getting the house tidied. Her Mom was coming up from Chi-town to pick her up.

Coffee time! We slip into the LET’S REINVENT THE AGES mode and somewhere along the way I find out her father passed on to the Other Side on September 14th. My Mom died on September 15th. I guess there are only 365 days in a year (except leap years).

Frannie is gone already. She flew to Boston(?) to meet up with Chaz, her darling. Chaz if you’re reading this, you are fortunate to have the admiration of such an incredible lass.

OK, so Frannie took her guitar with her and there’s none in the house. So I can’t play the song I wrote yesterday. That’s OK. No, it’s OK. Seriously, it’s OK. Alright, it sort of sucks . . . I should have posted it on the net so I could play it on their computer. That’s OK, it’s still rough.

Jasmine’s Mom arrives with her boyfriend and we head out. Such wonderful people! Since she’s German I managed to get a few coherent sentences auf Deutsch out. Jeez I need to practice! So many languages so little time!

Off to the Dew Drop Inn. The place is pretty happening. We’re waited on by a familiar woman who Jasmine later tells me is joining the Peace Corps and heading to Africa.

Jasmine and I slip into our Dew Drop Margarita mode. “It’s not just for breakfast any more.” Her mom is tres cool. Quite in tune and open. Very very wonderful people!!!!

We part ways. I’m a little sad to see yet another friend leave for a week. But I’m happy she gets to have a week off.

Home, home again. (Sometimes) I like to be here when I can.

Liz had called. She’s still a bit sick. In fact everyone is either busy, gone, sick, or not in the mood. Won’t anyone come out to play? hehehehehehe

nap time

Still nothing really to do. Oh I take that back, there’s plenty to do. But sometimes it’s nice to be around people. This is one of those days. The neighbors have some tunes on that sound more like a shop vac. No, it’s not a Fishman solo, it’s actually sounding like a shop vacuum. OK, I guess it IS a shop vac. Hehehehehehe, the beat was coming from the other side of the house.

Are we bored yet?

Grey clouds overhead
raise the ceilings
raise the dead
midnight overture slams open doors
dripping sweat from my pores

Have we been dreaming of being alive?
or living in a dream?
all times are the same
all places are one
you feel what is real
until you reel from what you feel.

Two sax players, a hollow-body guitarist who could take it over the top, another percussionist and a flute joined the fray and then it became so much the walls started shaking and booty started waggin’. Monday well on its way, we darted out fairly soon since this was contagious and it was going to be a long night if we let it grow on us too much.

Snow in the middle of the night. Not cold. Night large wandering snowflakes more dancing than falling to the ground. Half life in the seconds upon contact with the ground, it was a crystalline night under the reddish haze of the sodium street lamps.

Well I finally got around to posting pictures from Sailing Lake Mendota last summer. Actually I went a few times but this was the one time I managed to take a camera.

Thursday – arise to the cold March morning,
weather’s back to normal
I had my warning.

On the bus to work I started Timothy Leary’s Design For Dying. I’ve always enjoyed his sing-song prose and his visionary verbage. He had his critics, but I still enjoy the energy he put forth while he was still kickin’.

Apparently there’s a place up in the Wisconsin Dells called The Cheese Factory which is all vegetarian. The menu is full and creative and supposedly can outflank even the most diehard meat-eater, at least rendering them unable to bash vegetarian food as bland and without texture. Sounds like a good tip. Thanks Don!

Ran into my friend Susan on ICQ about an hour ago. She wanted to see what’s happening at Steve’s Bar. So here in a few her and Candleman are going to pick me up and we’ll see what’s shakin’. I think I might bring my Tarot Deck and leverage my televisionary powers for drinks. Hehehehe. No, I’m just determined to not let a little cold weather drive me back indoors. Hell the other day everyone was lounging out at James Madison Park.

MEDIA does not have to be MEDIOCRE
One thing I think I learned from Noam Chomsky is that you can and should throw the media/medium back at itself. Halo mentioned today how much time he spends reading the news on the Internet. No doubt one could spend lifetimes absorbing what others have to say. However, I don’t want to become a passive receptor of this externalized culture. Maybe it’s not the most high quality, or the most poetic, or even useful, but I am TRYING to add my two cents to this swirling mass maelstrom of information. If nothing else it causes me to touch base with my own thoughts.

Sin-dictated TV baby
without CNN you’d all go crazy
Dan Rather tells us what’s the matter
Our spirits become weak as our asses grow fatter
What were once protestors out on the streets
Are now MTV kids in air-conditioned seats.

OK, so cynicism isn’t as sexy as Tommy Hilfiger, or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, or even South Park . . . the Simpsons!!! But have you ever noticed that when you think or express yourself outside the hive, you are branded egotistic, or crazy, or dangerous or irrelevant? Have you noticed the TV junkies aren’t so much interested in what they’re watching as they are just keeping up? Cable television is like a noose that slowly drags ‘modern’ society to its death.

“When everybody thinks the same, thinking has stopped.”

Don’t believe a thing I say.