After the perfunctory laughs and giggles
and tea and cigarette pleasantries, I was led out into the park
where there was a huge number of clotheslines strung up, bearing
thousands of pink or blue papers advertising the lonely-hearted.
I was soon dragged into "meeting" an odd-assortment
of ladies, usually with their mothers, who eyed me suspiciously.
"HOW MUCH MONEY DOES HE MAKE?"
spat one brittle-looking, steel-toothed crone, who
squinted at me with a disdainful scowl. Her rather plain,
36-year old daughter stood by bashfully, tugging at Mama's sleeve:
let's go. The Chinese are generally very shy, especially
in such "direct" circumstances, and it was amazing
that more than HALF of all the people in attendance were mothers
and fathers doing all the footwork for their prodgeny, who were
unwilling to attend. This is classic in China, and even to this
day parents often glumly take on the responsibility of matchmaking
for their kids.
"TOO OLD!!" barked another eldery
matron at me with a dismissive wave-off. Her even plainer-looking
daughter quickly retreated, red-faced. I laughed through the
tears. Any countryside Chinese over the venerable age of about
26 is considered as dwindling on the vine; only in the cities
are women waiting until their later twenties, or even thirty, to
hitch-up. Making a baby is of critical importance here, as there's
no social security net of any kind, and you simply must have
a child to support you, (although that scheme is slowly crumbling
due to the pressures loaded onto the One-Child families. Sonny
Boy has gotta support Mom, Dad, his wife's parents, his own grandparents,
HER grandparents, and a KID. Time for flight, eh?).
The nice lady offered as a translator was very kindly to me;
if she hadn't been married already I might have actually been
interested in her, but in lieu of that she was good company
and quite helpful. A lot of people would gather around me when
I was speaking Chinese, amazed to see a Foreigner at all, much
less one dribbling clumsy Mandarin. One hardy soul approached
me and chatted me up bravely . She was about 55, and showed
every minute of it, but was quite entertaining in her directness,
admitting that you probably wouldn't be interested but here's
my card anyway. Had to give her high marks for her courage and
spunk.
As I said, a lot of parents stood
around sizing me up... one old worker guy with some kind of heavy
face problem due to disease or industrial accident or something..
he was kindly to me, especially after he saw me looking him in
the eye and not flinching at his deformity. He, like many
others, had been peering at my particular info sheet strung up
on the line, which had by then collected four pink-colored, paper
badges from potentially interested women (or more likely their
parents). All that was included was a first name and a telephone
number. I couldn't reed ANY of them, as they were all in Mandarin
characters..
One short, muscular guy approached me and
said his boss was interested in me, and before I could tell him
I wasnt gay, his "boss" arrived; an extremely homely
woman in her late forties, and I thought, GAWD, is this what
I'm up to now? I tried hard to be kindly to the gal; she was
really uncomfortably unattractive and obviously all too aware
of it. She knew the deal already and backed away gracefully.
I'll have to contact the phone numbers
on my "sheet" and see wha's up. I'm not highly optimistic
about the actual program results... However, two newspapers and
at least one TV station paid me a lot of attention, and I agreed
to do interviews with them ONLY on the condition that they publish
my e-mail.
So after a nice VIP-level lunch with the program director out
in a cool park restaurant by the river, I wandered around
with my translator for a while, before graciously letting her
go off to enjoy her own Saturday activities. One of the managers
of the project claimed she would leave my sheet up on the line
today, and forward me any messages so attached.
It's a nice day today; maybe they'll have another ten-thousand
flowers, and their mamas.
-- Greg
Circa 1970. Rural road, not a lot of cars.
Hot, dusty, summertime. My friend and I were hitchhiking. I can't
remember where we were going--maybe swimming? I can remember
that we weren't entirely kosher.
New York State Trooper pulls up. You know this man---head shaved,
those scary hats that they wear, big man, testosterone wafting
off of him in waves. He makes us come to the front of the car
and tells my friend to empty his pockets on the hood.
I'm really afraid. Shit. I'm about 15 years old, a 15 year old
American girl. I don't want to get arrested. I don't want to
go to jail. You know my thought here also--the thought is--Who
can ever imagine on God's green earth what the hell this boy
has in his pockets? We're going down.
My friend has on those big overalls we used to wear when we were
kids. Lots of pockets. So, he starts emptying them---10, 30,
100 little wooden stick matches. Pocket after pocket. 300, 1000.
Thousands. Thousands of little wooden stick matches. At one point
he says the only thing we verbally say to this officer during
the incident---"Oh, I forgot this pocket"--100, 200
more.
The cop gets this amazing look of incredulity on his face. He
gets back in his cruiser, revs the engine, nearly runs us over,
and leaves, little wooden stick matches flying all over the road.
I remember what my friend said to me, "I think it's alright
now." I remember what I said back--"not if you expect
me to help you pick up those matches."
So, if you're still with me, the question of the day: What is
it, Capn? Nature or nurture or something else? You've seen more
than most. What is it that makes some people so insistent on
enforcing the rules while others seem to create bits of
magic around themselves such that a lot of the rules become irrelevant?
-- Sandy T
*************************************
oh, it is a bit of ignorance meeting native
shamanism in a world where all things exist at the same time
sometimes in the same place
-- capn skyp
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2006
THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR THE TRUT
This is Fred. When he sez
his name, he sez Fwed. Fwed cleans pot for me. He likes the seeds.
When he runs out he taps his beak three times on something hard,
like this tray, and he gets more to clean. This is probably how
the Flintstones cleaned their pot, doyathink?
Look at that dirty beak! Fwed been workin' ha'd.
-- from an anonymous pewson
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2006
Cap'n Skyp- Let's think positive...
heh heh. Funny- This whole mysterybox story reminds me of
a real-life adventure I had long ago with one of my Afghan
friends, Mohammad Hanif. The story is a true one, and I have
never told it to anyone, though I have been itching to
for years.
Hanif has no legs. You would never know it- he rid
es motorcycles like a pro. He stepped on a land mine when he
was 19 years old and US Army doctors in Germany got him a pair
of incredibly heavy WWII vintage wooden prosthetics. He wears
them like they grew there. He can dance.
One time my wife Mica and I took Hanif camping. We
left in the evening, and as we drove in the middle of the night
through Globe, Arizona, Hanif sat in the passenger seat of my
little brown Chevi, rocking out to my collection of Pashto music
tapes, when he inadvertently kicked over a gallon of water without
knowing it (no legs- no feeling in them wooden legs!) When I
realized there was water sloshing around, I started looking for
a spot to pull over. We stopped to clean things up in what we
did not know was the parking lot of a real estate office that
had recently received some bomb threats, owing to the fact that
they were selling houses that had been foreclosed on mine workers
who had lost their jobs and everything else when Phelps-Dodge
closed the copper mines.
I had to take everything out of the car to dry it all,
and it being dark, I accidentally left my briefcase on the
ground when we drove away. Hanif called it my "bakseedastah
in Dari, a plastic AMWAY samples case containing all Hanif,s
travel papers, as well as the microphones for my band.
The next morning I discovered it was missing. We looked everywhere.
I drove back from our campsite, all along the highway miles and
miles, through Globe, Miami, Superior, and back. It was nowhere
in that parking lot where we had stopped. Finally I stopped at
the Globe Police Department, and asked if anyone had found a
black plastic AMWAY sample case along the highway. They said
they couldn,t help us, but suggested we visit the Highway Patrol
station. Actually, they sort-of insisted. They directed us there
and made sure we found it.
The Highway Patrol were courteous and helpful. They separated
the three of us into small rooms and subjected us each to several
long sessions of questioning by different officers. They never
said anything about having found my bakseedastah.
Finally an officer took me alone out to a patrol
car and we drove several miles out of town. Still no explanation
for any of this. He pulled over near a large empty piece of desert,
maybe an acre of land, completely surrounded by a 10-foot fence
topped with a Y-shaped formation of razor wire.
"Is that yours? He asked, pointing to the center of the
field.
"What? -I didn,t see anything.
Then I saw it. It was so far away, and so dwarfed by the size
of the empty field that I had missed it.
"My Briefcase!, I exclaimed.
"Go pick it up, the officer commanded.
I did as he said, and when I got to the middle of the field,
I opened it, and I could see the officer flinch from where he
stood by his car. Not a thing was missing. They had not opened
it because they had never physically touched the box. It had
been carried to that location on the end of a 16-foot pole attached
to a flatbed truck, by the Arizona HP bomb squad They were that
afraid of it.
I nervously but patiently began to explain the meaning of all
the Arabic-looking Pashto and Dari documents in my briefcase,
but he didn,t care and hadn,t seen any of it anyway.
Breathing obvious relief, the officer told me that when an employee
had arrived at the real estate office that morning, she had called
the Police to report the presence of the mysterious black plastic
object, and communicated her fears that it might contained a
bomb planted by an angry, homeless former mine employee. The
Police and Highway Patrol acted as they are trained to do when
they believe there is an explosive device present. They were
planning on blowing up my briefcase as soon as they had completed
their preparations to do so. I was just in time!
This was over a decade before "nine-eleven and the "war-on
terrorism. The HP officers and staff entertained us with fine-style
hospitality before sending us on our leisurely way with coffee
cake and other goodies. Hanif, beaming, shook hands with every
one before we left (Shaking hands is a big deal with Afghan people).
"You are my Brothers! he repeated to each, regardless of
gender (not knowing much English), and "See you later Alligator,
something else I taught him.
"Bill Sahib, I have
a very bad pain in my tooth."
Hanif stayed with us for several months, and when he had to go
home to Kabul, he gave me a phone number in Washington DC where
he said I could reach him- the home of a man named Mr. Karzai.
Khuda Hafiz! -Sky Pilot #114 Ali Bob
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2004
METEOR SHOWERS GALORE
DAWG GONE DAYS OF SUMMER
Heating up. Go to the beach, the stream, the river,
the pond, the puddle. Watch the meteor showers at night. Attend
concerts outdoors. I went to see the Floydian Slips do The Wall
outside on the Kesey Plaza in Eugene with people sitting on Kesey's
lap where he is ensconsed in metallic pose reading to his metallic
grand children. Other went to see the Dead in Camden N.J. Here's
some reports:
Hey, Cap'n Crunchie..
Gotta add my nickel into the hat. Saw The
Dead twice out East here: Haaat-fed Connecticut and Davy Jones
Beach. Ahh. Coupla' brief musings:
JERRY AIN'T THERE.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, the guys are doing a great
job of keeping The Scene alive. The parking lot flavor is definitely
more... subdued than it was in the (erp) "Good Old
Days", what with everybody all freaky-deaky about having
more than your State Quota of three beers, and tickets ain't
cheap these days, (nor anything ELSE one might wish to pay for.
Get it?). I'd say most of the fans were pretty straight, especially
at Jones Beach which turned out to be alcohol free inside [dry
croaking noises]; but there were still lots of exotic scents
in the air. Plenty of vending, both venues, and the cops seemed
surprisingly low-key and friendly at both shows I went to.
The Boys did a swell job of mixing things into a new Amalgam,
and you have to keep pinching yourself and reminding, it's a
NEW BAND. With that in mind, one is free to swing with some really
well-played music, and I blow my nose at the "I won't go
because it's not JERRY" contingency. Lesh and Weir are dragging
out a slew of oddball chestnuts that I guess Ol Jer veered away
from; Mason's Children, Golden Road, Til the Morning Comes. Yumps!
There was some guitar overkill between Warren Haynes and Jimmy
Herring at Hartford, (gotta love Herring's sound), but they seemed
to have had it nicely balanced out for the NY shows. Jones Beach
is so cool because the stage is actually IN the water of the
marshy Sound, and from the stands you can look right out over
the dark Atlantic 1/4 mile off over the spit, and far up the
bejewelled, nighttime coastline. "I wish I was a headlight,
on a Northbound Trawler!"
So anyway, Two Thumbs Up for the old duffers,
keeping IT alive. No excuses, now: Dust off that tie-dye and
get on out there when they come to town. You'll be surprised.
Greg BeamR
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Capn,
the band was in great form last night
with lots of oldies but goodies
like Cosmic Charlie and Viola Lee Blues
and Alligator. Weir's knees were found to
be "unsightly" in our eyes, and while the notes that
are in Phil Lesh seem hesitant to pass by his vocal cords, they
do eventually muster the determination, then singeth Phil doth,
the music was grand, tonight we have fourth row center and looking
for a birthday request from Hunter of Ship of Fools
apropos Hunter played our request first thing.
Deal
laughter
good music and weather
the battleship the U.S.S. New Jersey
was parked next to the theater
in clear view
I couldn't help but notice
the projection of the show on a big wall
pointed right at the ship,
also the only theater
where you could see another state (Pennsylvania)
from your seat (New Jersey)
a raging vendor village was set up
in the parking lot
but being as it still was New Jersey
a fight busted out with broken beer bottles
as weapons
and bottles flying in the air.
-- Sgt O'Reilly
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wore my Sky Pilot Club cap and t-shirt around the
parking lot at The Dead show in Camden Sunday. Must have been
a half dozen men and women stop me to talk.
Sunday night's show was a-fucking-mazing.
Them boys can still conjure.
I must admit I was having my doubts, thinking maybe them days
was over, but it all came together Sunday
and I left renewed and restored in my faith in the serendipitous
and ephemeral blessings of sychronisity.
sometimes I still need a good ass kicking reminder.
That was it.
-- Slammer Hammer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just came back from 4 days of Dead shows out east
here where, dressed in my unofficial prankster white jumpsuit
resplendent with stars, stripes and various other decorations,
I handed out colorful b-card sized flyers with the skypilot logo
and website address on one side and assorted pyscho-delik images
on the other. (is that a run-on sentence?) I'm worried because
very few of the folks I encountered knew any cosmic history regarding
the music and movement. Many people thought I was Evil Knieval
or some other guy from TV who I didn't recognize.
-- Chris #90
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cap'n, Dead show was outstanding wore the tee shirt..it
really stands out among the sea of tie dye and was able to seek
out whirling dervishes and happy smiling fans some i think were
really deep in the soup...these were the ones that got the skypilot
cards handed to them did not have to say much to any of them...don;t
know if they would have understood anyway. It was a blast the
Dead are still able to find Kosmos Groove and played for hours.
The people ranged from old to very young like months old and
up into the seasoned citizens. I of course represent the later.
What a show what a crowd and the parking lot was as weird as
ever with all sorts of tribes and vibes. Skypilot #43 Shamokin
pa. Love Never Fails. Up Up...... Now Away !!!!!
From Lance Boyle
I'm a member lots of stuff.
Some maybe more than else, but that King
Tut thing stands out.
Back in summer '76.
And the Granma Whittier thing with the shawl at Lewis and Clark.
And the immense love at Bend that time of coming together.
Them guys from Florida? In the delegate assembly at the end after
we
sang "Tis Land Is Your Land"?
Member?
When they shook their hair down and went into that angel-rap
thing?
All mine stood up at once.
There was a dude on the lawn with some kind of t-shirt with a
star,
and KenK nailed him for not being a delegate, and Joel Schatz
all
red-eyed with communion talking about computers and p2p w/o the
telcom
bottleneck.
Member?
And you played that damn trombone with Frivol
and Corky Hubbert was there.
You were doing that "Dunbar" schtick.
And Krassner being profoundly real on presence alone.
And coming out of the Rolling
Stones at the Cow Palace in '65.
Freaks at the gate with flyers.
At the dawn of the Gateful Dread.
A thing of the past to come.
Anyway.
Tell about the time he rowed over a roll of motrcycles.
still here
still not sure why exactly
but OK
From ryan in cleveland:
ok , I found the reasons for the hip-hop
problem, once again the exploitations of corporate america, creates
a rift and ignorance, exploitation of talent making streetcorner
crimies heros , when they were just doin what they felt they
had to, creating more money funneling through the court system
and the backlash is the suburban white boys that take it all
to serious, living out every word, { if america is obsessed with
these people that drive around the block and cap eachother ,
could you imagine stories about things my friends have done in
the past.} I listen to motown regularly have a couple songs on
all my mix cd's , under pain and pressure a soul does tend to
sing love songs, but now the key to being rich is pain and murder,
the difference is your friends sang for the heart , now it's
for the record deal, and those that don't are silenced. this
is an essay i'm gonna put on my webzine, { i'm GONNA have secret
decoder rings}, Jon Kerry is drivin me nuts, someone needs to
possess him or something to get through this election, open window
of opportunity , yEAH, let's talk about what I did in the war,
REAL HERO stories I know war , I know soldiers, i've had to kill
a man , I know what happened I have every right to protest, HE
DOESN"T EVEN MENTION IT, you find the stuff in the back
of the paper , but he doesn't bring it up. I wish dean and Kerry
could be merged, I'm sure kerry is a good guy and he went into
politics with good heart I can't even imagine what a life of
washington could do to a person, but he needs a jolt. but then
again with the sudden creation of electronic voting machines
, i can only imagine, he needs to shrug off the crap they throw
at him he goes for it hook , line , and sinker
what a psychedelic mess, yet it holds a
correction that no man can detest, at first glance disorder,
but at second legendary order, for those that seek such a foul
thing, but for others such a sweet young thing
the fun thing about these first years of
school, it ain't to bad for a kid that slept upon every rooftop
and in evry squat house surroundin evry perimeter of the french
quarter before I ever considered dead tour, squandered NYC ,
spent nights beneath lifeguard posts in venice beach, hitched
evrey bi-way and hi-way of america spun hill jacks beyond recognition
in the swamps of florida,{ only for them to say god dammit i'm
goin on grateful dead tour} walked every street of colorado,hi-jacked
U-HAULS L and R , ran tucson like a son of a gun and spent to
many but not enough nights in the mission, only to see the blisterin
sun, sleepin at the great highway and Judah with bon fires a
blazin, pullin kids to the rocky ledges overlookin, this must
be heavin but tonight I crossed the line to many angels out there
for one soul to find.
Here's Greg BeamR, writing from Station China who will
tell us about himself in his own writ:
A short personal description here for the
record (hi-haddya doo): mid -Forties (aaahhp, where
does it GO?)... holding a meagerly-paying-but-colorful corporate
job now, for 16 years. I've been to about 250 Dead shows, 1977-
1995.. last show: East Coast on the fateful, final tour..
Albany NY.. All Things Must Pass.
I've done a fair amount of reading; was a JRN/Lit major
in college. After that, we had our own happy-freaky
"family" unit of sorts, (not quite California style,
but a cool group of funny people anyway).. until we all eventually
succumbed to Suburban Gravity.. marriages/mortgages/kids/computers/doctors/lawyers/indian
chiefs, etc. ..like most other "Second Generation"
heads.. (YOU guys took the initial shock-wave.. we surfed
the Backwash). My band-mates and I still get IT out and
dust off the strings time to time; had a great psychedelic rock
band going for ten years... best in Rockland County... opened
up for BB King, The Band, Electric Tuna, Merle Saunders, few
others; blew the competition off the stage in a Band Battle at
Asbury Park's Stone Pony; played Wetlands in Manhattan every
week for a year. I'm one of the few in our circle who's remained
single, somehow kept a job, didn't quite "sell
out" (notably, anyway) or drift into alcoholism (but,
hey, the night is YOUNG). I managed to swing this odd, corporate
gig doing QC in China for a NY based ball-bearing plant. Okay,
well, it's a living, ..and keeps my noodle-hole
filled.
China, by the way, is EXACTLY like a Grateful Dead, heavily-dosed,
Parking-Lot scene: Lots of truly weird, semi-washed people,
mumbling in obscure languages that you can't quite decipher,
waving their arms in the air for no reason whatsoever, and shuffling
around distractedly though piles of refuse.
Well, I fit right IN here! ..a very natural progression
forward!
Slam the hatch and roar off over the Yellow
Sea... finally careening down onto the dingy, street-lit gloom
of choking ten million people in a big, rubber-chirping thud.
By now, I'm fully whacked, and it's time for yet more sleep in
a glossy Pu Dong hotel, despite the ugly fact that it's really
10am inside your head.
Next "morning", here's your 6am wake-up call, and you've
slept most of the night "pretty well". But just as
you're congratulating yourself on launching a successful, early
volley against Maximum Lag (12 hours worth, count 'em), the first
wave of sweats hits you at the Ning Bo Airport ticket counter,
and your brain begins swimming while arguing in broken Manadrin
about some mythical "baggage tax". Ha! Gotcha! Meanwhile,
as a Veteran, you have the privilege of knowing that the first
three days will be a calliope blur of nightime pacings and eye-burning,
daytime exhaustion; punctuated by whimpering bouts of teeth-grinding
constipation and humidity-induced delirium tremors.
Welcome to Shanghai, Sonny.
Okay, ..so it's a living.
MIZ ZELLANEOUS WRIT
|
unstigmatized, decriminalized participants
of human potential kick out the
jams take evolution with
their coffee free for all.
you is in free fall now
and here it is Spring
chute
hope I land on springs
makes you thirsty
--airy ace
|
A generational link, a catalyst that
is the question, how to propose and compromise, the last generation
of GD tour my closest friends that live for nothing but each
other we spend hours on the phone still, have nothing left but
our will, bored as hell saying what now, loving to entertain,
would pull off any tomfoolery, without a second thought, cus
we were heavan tossed.
-- Ryan
|
TAKE ME HOME
