The Machines

Here is my first memory of the Seafair weekend in Seattle. It’s late summer and I'm on Capitol Hill volunteering at Lifelong AIDS Alliance (I loved volunteering here). We are outside breaking down boxes and shoving them into the recycle dumpster when I hear a low rumble making its way toward me. I stop, look around and see nothing.

Then, as if appearing from thin air, four Blue Angel Fighter Jets blast their way across the sky leaving nothing but smoke and ringing ears in their absence. The first thought that comes to mind is of my father and how he would nearly be jumping for joy at seeing all this flying machinery hurling through the late summer sky. My dad has always loved jets, f-16’s, f-18’s, you know, jets!

Just a few weeks ago when I was back in Georgia visiting my family I asked my father a question I already knew the answer to: what's something that you’ve never done yet always wanted to do? His answer after 2 seconds of mental deliberation: Fly in an F-16. If only you could be there to see my fathers face when he says this you would understand why I love talking to him about jets. The years of worries stored up as wrinkles fall away from his face and he is suddenly 12 years old again. His blue-green eyes flicker and his voice takes on that quality you only hear when someone is recalling a memory they very much enjoy.

But then this thought in front of the recycling dumpster is silenced by the director of Lifelong. He stands next to me glaring up at the blue sky and the planes with a look of utter disgust and says, “Oh god, the war machines have returned.”

I balk at this. I do not balk at his opinion but at the fact that what he thinks of when he sees these machines is so different from what I think of (or what my father thinks of). Where he sees a terrible machine of war designed to destroy and instill fear my father sees adventure and a sense of something beyond himself, something stronger than he is.

It’s been a few years now since I first saw the jets razing the city. My feelings are now mixed. I understand that these machines are designed for death, constructed to destroy life. But I also carry these memories of my father and his love for these machines. He doesn’t love them for any of the wrong reasons. He does not love the potential death, destruction and fear these machines are capable of. No, my father is no warmonger. He is a dreamer who talks of how alive he would feel while careening through the atmosphere at 1,000 miles per hour.

And so I stare up at the sky, waiting for my fathers dream to pass overhead well beyond the speed of sound, waiting for these horrifically beautiful machines to make their march across the mid afternoon firmament.

2 a.m.

This slate grey sky is exactly what I needed, although until it came I didn’t know it. I felt it descend sometime in the night, it woke me with a strange, eerie feeling around two or three a.m., something akin to a shadowy figure standing silently outside my bedroom window. I sat up in bed and hesitantly locked the double paned frame, as if the lock could keep out the ghosts.

Sleep came in small, fitful segments after that, strange dreams ebbing and flowing at the edges of my subconscious.

It was 8:15 and something fell onto the kitchen floor with a loud, plastic clatter. I gave up the sheets for grey slacks, the bed for black coffee. I read a short story on war and all the death it accomplishes. My thoughts turned to this country I live in and to what parts of this country live in me.

The coffee is finished and the chipped “Whistler” mug sits empty. I have to go and write; I have to prepare to face the grey.

Molly

I attended a wedding last week and in the process ran into a little friend of mine. Molly is this beautiful soul that lives in a house on Orcas Island with her mother, father and little sister. Last year while working on Orcas I lived above a wood shop just down the hill from Mollys house.

Some evenings I would walk through the grove of firs, the field full of reclining bunnies and up the hill to the warmth and light spilling from her house to sit with her family. Occasionally I would read her books and tell stories of my own. Molly loved hearing stories.

I was reminded of this relationship between Molly and I this last week when she gave me a picture drawn in January that depicts me in black pants and a black pullover standing next to her and her sister. I love receiving hand drawn pictures from kids.

Then the wedding day came and Molly was in her extroverted element as a flower girl with a basket full of petals and a headdress of faux flowers. Here is Molly just moments before she walked down the grassy aisle leaving a trail of flowers in her wake.

Something Truly Strange

Well, it may not be all that strange to you who have never read the local Seattle magazine called The Stranger. Each Thursday red metal boxes across this urban landscape are replenished with a fresh supply of juvenile, hate filled, hetero-phobic "journalism". And it's 100 percent free.

It is only because of this free status that I actually waste a few minutes of my week grazing through its shit filled pages to see if there is something actually worth reading.

To my utter surprise last weeks issue not only contained an article worth reading all the way through but was actually interesting enough for me to blog about and pass onto you. That is a truly strange happening.

The aforementioned article is titled "United States of Anxiety" by Trisha Ready. In the article Trisha tells her own story of the American mortgage and debt crisis in such a way that someone who doesn't even have debt or a mortgage (me) actually pulled quotes because of the poignancy found within them.

I'll leave you with this quote: "I am talking about being a product, a product among products, an American. It is tricky: We have been so well sold to ourselves that we consider our access to potential debt as a kind of twisted freedom. We are of money, from money, made for money."