Ooooooops!!!!

 OK, folks, you may not hear from me for awhile. Open heart surgery tomorrow morning. Back atcha ASAP. Let's do this!!

Stephen

Gombe'/The Hunter

 Gombe’ the Hunter

I’m not sure when I heard his name for the first time, but I know it was shortly after I reached the island. He was already legendary and had been for as long as the island had memory. Gombe’ hunted before the dawn of time. His was prehistory. Gombe’ the Hunter kill wild boar with cutlass. Gombe’ the Hunter run fast like jumbie through forest. Gombe’ the Hunter go where no one go…which is exactly, existentially, where I was headed at that time. Where no one go.

I had to meet this man.

He was solitary, not part of a tribe, but in every true sense of the word a hunter-gatherer in that he followed the seasons hunting and gathering most everything he needed to live as it became available. Gombe’s terrain was not at all vast, a remote island, but he could spend weeks in the forest without surfacing because, every few miles, he’d plant a “garden” so he’d always have something to eat -  callaloo, yams, papaya, wild onion, berries, stashed rice. A little West Indian nosh. If he weren’t hunting boar he’d trap agouti or iguana, or create a weir and trap fish, and concoct a simple stew. Simple and hot. Cook fires were started with a substance oozing from a certain tree. He didn’t need American Express. Unlimited credit out there for his taking. But here, to me, is the truly astonishing part: Gombe’ was also famous for the bread he baked - plump, brown, mound shaped loaves the girth of bowling balls; not pastry sweet but sweet enough when dipped in hot, sugared tea. 

I had to meet this man.

Gombe’ lived in a wood hut on the edge of the forest. What did I expect? What would you expect? Stay tuned. Three dogs charged out of the hut to greet me. One was blind. PETA would have consented to off these three. They were…curs…unattractive mongrels with tattered coats and battered muzzles, but friendly, dancing friendly, so happy to see me, whoever I was. These were the famous boar hunting dogs? One of ‘em couldn’t even see! A man with rootbeer colored complexion followed them out, tossed each a piece of bread, and smiled at me.

 

Gombe’.

Gombe’?

An old man, shrunken, tiny, toothless, smiling. A Chesterfield cigarette - no filter -  dangled from his lips. A dirty tan fedora perched on a tightly kinked, close to the skull thatch of gray hair. An ancient Cornell sweatshirt draped his frame. Patched khakis completed the look - too large in the waist, too short at the calf. Tied with rope. His feet were bare, toenails thick, reptilian. Was this the man you expected to meet? Could’ve fooled me, too, but there he was, smiling, smoking, saying, “oui, oui” to everything. Wow, does he smile a lot! This is the man who hunted wild boar with a cutlass? I’m game. 

But then there were his eyes, black as BB’s, fixed on everything, missing nothing, flitting, landing, taking measure, flitting, not hostile, curious - a hunter’s eyes. He always seemed to hear what I did not. I thought, “If a tree fell in the forest, who would hear it? This guy would.” 

We shared a cup of tea and a loaf of bread before heading into the forest early morning. Now, get this. True. Gombe’ carried a battered old suitcase wrapped and tied with an old belt. Into the jungle. With him. By its handle (which he had replaced with rope). His cutlass he carried in his right. Before setting foot he took a pair of black ballet slippers from the suitcase, put them on, and took off running. Running. The man could move. I was half his age - at least - and in decent shape, but could barely keep up. He moved easily through very rugged terrain clotted with vegetation. That night we made camp at one of his gardens where he had trapped an agouti he cooked with rice, fresh peppers, and too much salt. Ain’t half bad. We cooked, ate, and slept under a lean-to Gombe' constructed from broad leaves and saplings. It rained buckets, but we stayed dry. Next morning, before dawn, bread and tea, the dogs, sensing sunlight, took off on their own. We made certain the cook fire was out, then took off after the dogs.

The only thing that saved me was that I was in fairly decent shape at the time, or else I’d’ve lost Gombe’ within minutes. He probably wouldn’t have cared. I’d’ve been humiliated. As it was, we had embarked on a marathon of fording, climbing, tracking, sloshing, slashing, whacking and all ‘round general, non-stop grunt. Until the hounds began yowling. Gombe’ took off his fedora and waved me on. I lost him in seconds but saw where he went, whacked through some brush into a clearing where an enormous boar was backed into a tree by Gombe’s dogs and fighting back. Three hundred pounds, at least. Fighting back. I should have moved out of the boar’s path should it break free, but I was as fixed as a bug pierced by a collector’s pin. Gombe’ was there, too, eyeing things, cutlass poised, jockeying for position. I don’t know how long the boar’s tusks were, but they glistened from his jaws like stilettos. One of the dogs was already bleeding from a gash in its side. The blind one had the boar by its hind leg. The third kept dodging in and out keeping the furious animal off balance, slashing at air. Each animal had its own guttural death chant, a fearsome howling and screaming. I’d read Dante’s Inferno. Now I was observing it. Somehow Gombe’ was behind the boar. Somehow Gombe’ leapt high above his blind dog and came down hard, his cutlass tearing through the pig, nearly severing its head. It dropped to its side where Gombe’ the Hunter stood and finished it. Silence fell like an avalanche. It felt as if the jungle had been swallowed by a giant maw. 

An idea occurred to me.

    Maybe it's happened to you. You're out in the woods poking along, enjoying the day, driven by no particular goal when, suddenly, you realize the forest has become as quiet as death row. You stop. You listen carefully. You wish your ears were as powerful as those receivers deployed to pick up transmissions from deep space. Silence in the woods is heard only rarely during the cycle of a natural day. Dawn and dusk  -- rather, the hour preceding light and that preceding darkness -- are two times you can depend upon. These are the hours when the beasts of the day and the beasts of the night take each other's place – some to prowl, some to sleep. One can sense the creatures passing each other through a kind of cease-fire zone as they exchange positions in the forest, so it is nearly, but not absolutely, a silence.  There is still movement. Time goes by. The second silence is death. You may never be caught by this silence, yet, in the woods, its presence is undeniable. Many of us have watched predators stalk their prey. They carry the possibility of death -- death on the way, death to come -- and so they carry it with them in silence. Animals desert the area or stay still. This silence has a palpable presence of its own, one that takes a sense beyond the other six to detect. It is how a man can feel (though he might never see) an animal watching him. Downed prey is death-in-fact, and this final silence, this third silence, is deeper than any. Suddenly, there is an absence of a life in the forest. The void will be filled eventually, even quickly, but, while it is there, every being in its presence is commanded by it. Neither is this final silence one of peace. There is an edge to it, an air of uneasiness, a sense of mortality and danger. Peace obtains only when the woods is filled with the commotion of its creatures as they go about their lives. This "noise" is what most people love about the woods, and what they accept as silence.

The places I seek out and the characters I meet in those places help me to realize these things. I've eaten lobster and steak at the Palm. I actually even told the maitre’d at a 4 star in Paris to please order for us. I’ve eaten crabs from the Chesapeake Bay, biscuits and gravy in Montana. Extraordinary meals from gourmet friends. All wonderful.  Not one better than another. As was roast boar that night in that jungle with Gombe’ and his blind dog. Now, I ask myself, what is it like to go through life never having to worry about a meal or the IRS, never having to fend off credit card merchants,  never having to worry about snow tires or any tires, never having to find your damn phone? I don’t know what Gombe’s worries were because he didn’t speak English, just that patois of his made even more intelligible by lack of teeth. I do know mine, and they aren’t his.

A good friend, fine writer, and deadly critic, Dyanne Asimow, wrote to me recently: 

“...when you say that your stories are the characters that are in them, it’s not as precise as it should be…”

K.

Re-def.

The characters I meet tell my stories. The worlds they take me through! Their thoughts at what they see.  Skills that are foreign to me. Colorful language. Unusual aromas. Strange food. Where else would I get this stuff? Remember Willie Lee? I wrote about him once - an eleven year old, Black kid, retarded but capable. It was when I was a social worker, and Willie Lee was my client. We were talking about God one day. Willie Lee got real pensive, looked off, then told me, “God be the man who take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.” The same with my characters. They take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.

Isaiah John. Mr. Isaiah John

March 27, 2002

Isaiah John.
Mr. Isaiah John


Skin night black as a raven’s wing. Luminous. His teeth were like polished tombstones in a military cemetery - sturdy, gleaming, evenly spaced with a slight gap between each one, his smile, wide as the back row of an angels’ choir, wide as Buccament Gorge, the ancient geological rift through which one passed to reach the tip of the island where Mr. Isaiah John's rum shop - specializing in chicken wings, sea moss, and politics - stood off road in a clearing on a bluff overlooking a bay where incoming waves exploded against the rocks below. Listening to that thunder, I understood why our collective subconscious harbors all sorts of imps and omens. Mr. Isaiah John greeted everyone with, literally, wide open arms and a "Welcome, Brother." Even me. He’d rarely had a white man in his shop before - Caucasians were a mini-minority on this island - but he was an amiable and gracious host: “Welcome, Bru-tha’!” Plus a fascinating one. Conversations we had were a combination of chess and checkers - thoughtful yet filled with unexpected jumps. He knew his history. He knew Marcuse and Fannon. Not a conversation I’d’ve had at a Bris on Park Heights Avenue. Not a judgment. Just a difference.

I was on the island working with an expedition funded both by the Smithsonian and a wonderful organization, Earthwatch, fronted by a charming PR woman, Blue Magruder. Great name, huh? We had lunch at the Algonquin and agreed I’d do an article for them. Said article has since become a book, although no one’s seen it, yet. It’s called, Siserou, the native term for a rare parrot that’s dying out of existence because, somewhere in evolution, it lost the ability, the will, to defend its young. A woman named Holly Nichols had been successful breeding rare birds in captivity. She was funded to develop a captive breeding program in order to save Siserou from extinction, and I had signed up to work with her. We bushwhacked through near impenetrable mountain rain forest through hostile Dread territory, but that’s another story. Read the book…if I ever finish it.

Mr. Isaiah John’s trade took place outside his rickety, rooms-tacked-on wooden hutch set on a cinder block foundation. His wings were divine, kettles of them frying on two tables made of old doors laid on top of scavenged oil drums. His home-made sea moss with island rum let you down slowly and kept you there, gurgling, giggling, innocent as a baby. He was a wonderful host, a gregarious man…However. However. However. In actuality, Mr. Isaiah John was an island radical, a kind of West Indian Samuel Adams, a bit like Tom Paine, only more deft - a firebrand served softly. Aside from his political influence, it was known on the island that he was in touch with the jumbie, the spirits of the jungle. Fascinating guy.

I’d spent the past two weeks trekking up a mountain rain forest where the mud was so thick it sucked your boots off if your mind wandered. It was difficult terrain complicated with the tension caused by knowing we were in rebel territory and could expect a confrontation at any time - a confrontation, by the way, that never happened. Mr. Isaiah John had offered me a sofa for the night. “Yes, yes, yes,” I said, looking forward to sleeping on something other than the ground.

It was late at night. More like three am. All his customers were gone. Between his sea moss and his homegrown, we were open and mellow, laid back on a sofa with a history. Outside the jungle was awake. Awake or not, seed pods dropped from great heights and landed in the mud with a thwop ‘n’ a thud. Mr. Isaiah John pushed himself out of his seat and crossed the room to an old bureau.

“Come. Look,” he said, taking something from the bottom bureau drawer, reverently, holding it out to me as if it were a reliquary containing the remnants of a saint. It was a package of some sort swaddled in rags, saran wrap, and cardboard.

“Open it,” he said.

I undid the rags first, then the plastic wrap, then the cardboard. All of these had kept pristine and precious a book - Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver.

Eldridge Cleaver was a famous, Black radical from the 60’s who escaped the United States for Africa rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. Mr. Isaiah John’s Rum Shop was one of his “stations” along Cleaver’s “underground” trek to freedom. Cleaver’s scrawled inscription thanked Mr. John and wished him well.

When I was a kid and first realized I wanted to be a writer, I thought, “What the hell does a Jewish boy from the Golden Ghetto of Baltimore, Maryland have to write about?” Phillip Roth had already done it and a lot better than I ever could. Later on, Barry Levinson managed to do it, too, but not me. So. I set about the world looking for stories. Siserou was one of them. Like I said, Mr. Isaiah John was not someone I’d’ve met at a Bar Mitzvah. Now, please do not mistake me, I have met lots of interesting folks at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, weddings, shiva houses, bris (what’s the plural?), and the like, but Mr. Isaiah John would never have been one of them.

My stories are the characters that are in them.

MUDVILLE - 03/13/2022

MUDVILLE

“There is no joy in Mudville

  Mighty Casey has struck out.”

A thundering silence. The swing of a bat. Whistling air. The gasps. The moans. The awful groans. Strike Three. So finishes “Casey at The Bat.” So begins Spring in the northern Catskills. 

Mud. Lots of it. Mud that sucks at the soles of your shoes. Mudville. Patches of snow remain like tufts of hair on a cartoon character’s bald pate. It’s ooze. It’s ick. Sludge, muck, and mire. Gray and brown and sometimes black. It seems ugly and it is compared to Glorious Summer, Breathtaking Fall, and a fierce Winter snow storm that forces the spruce trees to bow down in silence. But. Spring. There is mystery here, mystery missing from the other seasons. What they are doing (those other three seasons) is right smack before our eyes. We can see it happening, see growth to fullness, see palettes bloom then rage, breathe in what after a year of changes has become exotic. But. Spring. In the northern Catskills.

Mudville. 

We cannot see what’s going on. We don’t know how or exactly where whatever’s happening is happening. What we know and all we know is: Stuff happens. Sometimes it’s warm; Mostly it’s not. Heavy winds. Power goes out. Buzzards circle the creek. Some drowned thing will carry down, and those birds will be there. It might snow. It’s snowing now. It’s going to snow tomorrow. The bear is out looking for carrion, too. At some point, white tail will crib and coyotes will hunt them. Breezes carry the freshwater creek, now muddy from the rain. It’s Birth, but nobody’s screaming, nobody’s being told to push, no cesareans being performed, just ooze, sticky, sloppy, impenetrable ooze. Mukluk ooze. Take-’em-off-before-you-go-back-inside ooze. 

That’s when you begin to see other stuff. 

You begin to see where that back meadow is no longer absorbing run-off and is carving out its own stream. You begin to think about what to plant to absorb that run-off. Native species? Check ‘em out. Call the county conservation people. That very smart woman. The one with the dark gray, Great Northern baseball cap. You begin to think about those two concrete urns out front that had been flush with ivy eaten by the goats last summer. Lavender would be beautiful there as well as surrounding the weeping cherry out back that once again made it through Winter, although the same damn goats (now long gone) snacked on it last Fall. You begin to contemplate another serious garden and maybe going in on a beef cow with a neighbor who also recently finished putting a new roof on our house. Venison’s again a thought. It’s been years, but you begin wondering where and how. You also begin thinking about next winter's firewood and this year’s plan to take down a half dozen six - eight inch diameter ash trees because they’re going to die by disease anyway. A green, carapaced creature, smaller than a pea, the Emerald Ash Borer, has been inseminating them for years with the poisons that are killing them now. By next winter they’ll be dry. Very hard wood. A long burn. Wasn’t Babe Ruth’s bat - his Louisville Slugger - made of ash?

There’s a rectangle of mud - seven feet long, three feet wide - from where some roofing lay on our front lawn for more than a year. More than a year without sunlight. More than a year without oxygen. It’s now a perfectly symmetrical slab of mud smack in the center of our front lawn. It was just a slab of mud. It still might be to most of us, but I bent down close to it today with my daughter, and there is actually stuff growing. I don’t know what it is - something native, my guess - but there it is. It’s scraggly and ugly, but stuff’s growing. It’s coming back. It never died. If that rectangle of mud could speak it’d say, “Move it out, Bub! My turn.”

Ooze. Yet, everything comes out of it.

Canaries by Dyanne Asimow

CANARIES by Dyanne Asimow

Canaries can also be bought on-line, of course: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Canaries-Dyanne-Asimow/dp/0985952210

Canaries, an extraordinary piece of writing by an old pal, Dyanne Asimow. Recently published. Read it. And check out the following: 

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Redeem the one-time use code below at https://www.audible.co.uk/acx-promo AX8DR8B6PCDJ7 

 “No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.” Isaac Babel, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel

02/27/2022 - Random Thoughts - Not Necessarily To Be Taken Seriously

 02/27/2022 

Trigger Warning - Random Thoughts - Take 'Em Or Leave 'Em

God is in the details? So said Albert Einstein, a sly way of not having to explain things. I get it…if…if you believe in God, but suppose, just suppose, you don’t believe in God? In the current vernacular: you simply don’t go there. Your call, of course - I’m not sayin’ - however, that doesn’t mean there are no details. The details are there regardless. Believe. Don’t believe. So what? Doesn’t change a thing.

Now

What about those details?

Most flowers have up to five stamens. That’s their male fertility organ. Slender and graceful. It trembles. Buttercups have between thirty and seventy. Anemones of the meadows. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for them. Focus on one stamen, focus on every stamen and time goes away, grief goes away, pain fades to black, comfort calls, a down pillow, a distant tingle, stamens, look, their curls, their furls, the colors of dreams, pleasure remains, simple, soft, unguarded, open. Time flies. Where does it go? What replaces time when suddenly it’s no longer there? Nothing. It’s in that instant we realize eternity. It’s where we are. It’s where we’ve always been, where we’ll always be. But, it’s in that instant that we actually know it - where we are - know it - and it will stay that way and we will stay that way because it just is, and we are in it. Forever. Or for what “forever” really is. And, anyway, who’s going to define it?

SPRING? 02/20/2022

Spring is out there today causing some seasonal commotion, but it's a fraud, a cosmic, meteorological con job. It's never the most pleasant season, but it is the most interesting. Life is underway. Stuff is beginning to ooze. Higher temps mean lots of melt, meaning lots of mud - deer daintily nibbling winter worn, bruise tinted apples under the stunted old tree, skinny black squirrels already scampering, four fat black crows like cannon balls chasing bald eagles across the creek, 40 degrees, thin river ice. However, like I said, it's one big con. We're not through February and could still have a blizzard into April.

And yet.

We had a full moon over new snow only days ago, so bright you could actually see animal tracks imprinted in the virgin meadows. That's what I look for when I see a fresh snowed field - what crossed it? How long ago? Why did it stop? Where did it go? Deer. Turkey. Coyotes, Rabbits. Black squirrels. Raccoons. Mice. Fishers. Weasels. I once actually saw a kangaroo rat hop across my garden, but they're a desert breed, not even supposed to live here. Well, as least, one does. Did. I'm sure something got it. It always does.

I don't always recognize the tracks, especially when the weather warms, when the edges of the snow and ice melt and run. Coyote? Dog? CoyDog? CoyWolf? I don't know, yet something was there that isn't there now, but will be again. It's like any other mystery, isn't it? Awe and wonder waiting to be solved except you can't solve it, never will, and you know it. Still, here you are, somewhere in the mix of it, not worrying about the tracks at all. Yours are there, too.

I once tracked a bear in Montana. I knew he was there, had even seen him once, but this time I decided to follow him to see, well, to see why he went over the mountain. There's another story here, but this one comes first.

Bears have always fascinated me - a huge, muscular, lumbering powerhouse that bounds like a greyhound, fast as a race horse for thirty yards (all it needs), shreds stumps because it wants to, flips boulders like tiddly-winks, swallows a bleating sheep wool and all. Deranged humans who believe they are soul mates with wild predators risk getting disemboweled when they croon lovingly and open wide for a hug.

I've seen both black bear and grizzly, but never arms length close and never more than seconds - a quick flash through brush, a ramble at fifty yards, back hair on a barbed wire fence, piles of poop the size of hubcaps. Remember I said I had never seen one up close? Still true. Never seen one up close. But, I did hear one. Up close. Real close. So close he could have removed my head from my shoulders without my ever having seen him. I've never killed one nor do I expect to. For the squeamish, ease up. That's not what this is about. I had a shotgun with me, but only because I had hunted grouse for dinner, and, anyway, that bear would brush off those tiny pellets of birdshot like a horse tail flicking nits.

It was an unusually warm fall. Dusk was maybe an hour away. I went down to a spot in the creek where I'd seen him pass. He wasn't there, but his paw print was, not the biggest one, but, still, who cares. That's a bear track, and it's fresh, and wider than my foot, and that bear is up there somewhere and I'm gonna find him. There is no other focus.

It'd been dry, and the creek was really shallow. so I simply followed it, slowly, softly, step by step. No toe to heel or heel to toe but the whole foot set down at once. Evenly. You don't want anything to crack underfoot. You want the wind in your face.

It grew darker as I moved but not too dark to spot a clear print with water seeping into it. He had just been here! Right there! Here! He's out there. I knew that grizzlies are known to circle back and come up behind you, but this guy was a black bear with a much less aggressive attitude, at least, the years I'm talking. Nowadays, they've become more unpredictable. Just last summer one charged up a creek bank towards a horseman on the trail, and, yet, I've stood and watched a sow

with three cubs peacefully wander east along the same creek bank hoovering blueberries.

I stood and watched water seep into the print and tried to picture the creature that left it there. I just wanted to see him. So, I started up the creek again then - I'm not sure why - I climbed a hill and crossed a clearing. It would be dark soon, but I wasn't worried about getting home. I just wanted to see what I could see.

There was barely light to see when I stopped next to a large clump of brush, maybe a low hung evergreen, I'm not sure, but what I am sure of is the ghastly, carrion yawl that lacerated the air and drove tracers of ice through my veins. That bear, hidden in that patch, was close enough to kill me. Afraid to move. Afraid to stay still. Slowly, very slowly, I stepped backwards until I was out of critical distance. I never saw him, never heard the chomping of jaws or any nother warning. He faded quietly back into the night.

I once thought of buying an ancient bearskin coat at some roadside junk yard when I taught at UConn, way before my wild west coast days. It hung from the limb of a scrubby tree, a bum's coat in need of serious repair and probably a bucket of disinfectant, but it intrigued me, so I tried it on. The heft of it was an unexpected shock. Let me explain.

Put on a trench coat, any good looking top coat - Saville Row, Macy’s, Brooks Brothers, Burlington - you're wearing a coat, looking snappy but, still, you’re a guy wearing a coat and proud of it. Why not? You earned it. You’re a well dressed guy in a shirt and tie. Ready to join forces. Go for it. No slouch there.

But

A Bearskin Coat

Sleeves to slip on, bone toggles as clasps, encasing its bearer in the beast itself, the weight of it overtaking the body, hunching with power, the power of the beast. Put on a bearskin coat, and you become the bear. News Flash. Think what you will, but you will never have the power of that beast because you are not that beast, and you are not akin to that beast. Why not a gorilla suit? No telephone booth needed. Try to hug one. It’s breath is awful, and it will kill you. I do, however, believe in Halloween. Have fun. I mean it.