Barbara Stoner's Blog, page 6

Uncle Buck

[Being the last character sketch left to me by my friend Bill. A Blue Moon story.]

“Oil containing garlic can cause botulism if not kept refrigerated.”

"How the hell does he know this stuff?" [we asked] Dan Brown: creator of Uncle Buck, who lived and reigned for three months, then vanished. Buck knew all, but lied when drunk. It was hard to use him as a source. Dan relied on his testimony.

“You all know, or have seen, those cannons that were on ships where the balls were linked together by a chain. Those were fired from two different cannons, the chain hung between them. Had to be perfect timing, both touch holes had to be lit simultaneously. When it worked, the masts of the target ship would be torn to toothpicks. The chain would ruin everything in its path. The French tried it with three cannons. But it was a failure. The balls and chains whipped around their own boats killing entire crews. Stupid frogs. How could anybody take a Frenchman seriously?”

“How the hell do you know that?” someone asked.

“I read a lot. I think I got that out of the ‘C’ volume of the Harpers Encyclopedia. I’ve only read to ‘J’, so I’m missing a little over half of what I ought to know.”

Dan Brown tells the truth as he sees it.

Buck was a raspy guy with a scruffy beard. He wore checkered flannel shirts. Fifty eight years old. Drove an old pick-up truck with no spare tire. Buck drank a bit, and his face was always itchy. He was a movie star, but he always got killed before the end of the film. You know Buck, hell everybody knows Buck.

Dan loved Buck.

The Road to Ephesus, Part I

Searching for a goddess in the land of the gods

There is a story that Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, tried to take the city of Byzantium by digging under the walls on a dark night. As the night progressed, the crescent moon appeared, and by its light the watchmen on the walls were able to see Philip’s men digging below. They sounded the alarm, and the city was saved. The crescent moon was the symbol of the goddess Artemis, and henceforth, she became the city’s guardian. The crescent moon was her symbol. When the city became Constantinople and embraced Christianity, the star was added as a symbol of the Virgin Mary.

Another story tells that when Mehmet the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1448, a reflection of the moon occulting a star appeared in pools of blood after the battle. He kept the symbols of the city, appropriating them for the new city of Istanbul.

When Barbara Stoner invaded the city on the last day of February in 2004, she soon found herself sitting on the curb in the Street of the Satellite Dishes in the Beyoglu under Galata Tower, nursing a severely sprained right ankle and casting baleful glances at the pile of old banana peels in the gutter that had been her downfall. I felt curiously akin to Phillip of Macedon. Meanwhile, behind me, two Turks had dragged a stool out of their shop and were insisting that I sit on it. When I resisted leaving the comfy curb, they became very insistent and explained to my sister, she told me later, that they feared “she might get sick through her – excuse me – rear.” Turks apparently believe that sitting on cold stone makes one ill. You can even get – excuse me – diarrhea.

As I sat on that curb, I could almost hear the thought way back somewhere in my head that all was lost, the trip was ruined, I was toast. I banished the thought. I had places to go, goddesses to find. If Artemis was putting me to a test, I was going to pass it. We hobbled down the hill and found a cab.

The day had begun auspiciously enough the morning before when I boarded a plane from Seattle for Chicago to meet my sister and travel on to Istanbul. My sister, Joan, is married to a Turk. One family adage for years was that Joan only bought imports, and married them as well. Her first husband was German. But the Turk, Mete, was a keeper. He is a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, and goes around the world after earthquakes to tell folks why their buildings fell down. My take on it is – you had an earthquake, your house fell down. Mete tells me there is more to the story.

Mete isn’t with us on this trip. It is Joan and I, two sisters off on an adventure. You know what they say about adventures.

I spend one day seeing the sights in my sister’s genuine old Turkish apartment, filled with an assortment of old family furniture and found antiques. My ankle has reduced in size from that of a Persian prune (a peach) to that of an Armenian prune (an apricot), and Joan has bought me a new red cane, replacing the red-handled mop with which I have been hobbling about the apartment. We have only one more day in Istanbul.

Aya Sofia, the Great Church, was built by Justinian between 532 and 537 A.D. It incorporates eight pillars taken from the Artemesian, the temple to Artemis at Ephesus, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was converted to a mosque by Mehmet the Conqueror on the very day he conquered Istanbul in 1453. Today it is a museum.

I caress a pillar, black stone beneath my hand, polished by more than 2000 years of hands. The marble ripples like a living thing, flexing the muscle that upholds the dome. A golden mihrab along one wall indicates the direction of Mecca. High above, clerestory windows light a mosaic of the Madonna and Child. There are layers upon layers of belief in this building. I want to press my forehead to one of the ancient pillars and mind meld. Aya Sofia, Sancta Sophia, Holy Wisdom. She is here.

Within hobbling distance of the Great Church is the Blue Mosque, the Mavi Cami, in Turkish, wherein “c’s” are pronounced as “j’s”. So Joan and I process across the boulevard in the rain to the Mavi “Jahmee.” Just as we entered the courtyard, the Muslim call to prayer arose from all six minarets, and from the hundreds if not thousands of other minarets in this city of 12 million people. The effect was amazing. Powerful energy filled the air. Allahu akbar. Allah is great. I turned around and looked back toward Aya Sofia, lifting my face to the rain, and remembered that this is the city of Artemis. For the moment, it all becomes one. Bismillah.

August

August

When my eyes are weeds,

And my lips are petals, spinning

Down the wind that has beginning

Where the crumpled beeches start

In a fringe of salty reeds;

When my arms are elder-bushes,

And the rangy lilac pushes

Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!

Light your tinsel moon, and call on

Your performing stars to fall on

Headlong through your paper sky;

Nevermore shall I be cursed

By a flushed and amorous slattern,

With her dusty laces' pattern

Trailing, as she straggles by.

Dorothy Parker

Tags: Poetry

Robert E Lee

I remember someone asking him if people ever called him "Bob." He said, "No." Short and to the point. I used to own at least 20 Robert E. Lee candles. The best advice he ever gave me was pointing out that the man I was dating wasn't the right man for me. "How do you know?" I asked. "I've seen you dance," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Another piece from my old friend, the late Bill Heintzelman.

"Rumor has it he was an art professor in the U. Cal system. It's hard to imagine him with a schedule and a syllabus, he's a pretty unlikely candidate for that position. The man of a thousand candles, barrels of candles, some made to order. Ships at sea, a gull on a piling, and scenes from The Hobbit are live in wax. They're works of art made by a man named Robert E. Lee, and are sold to the public for the price of a bottle of wine. [I usually got mine for $5.00]

"Once in a Blue Moon," "The Grateful Dead," "Pink Floyd," he works the ticket lines at rock concerts. Somewhere there may be old candles of Bill Haley and the Comets or James Brown and the Famous Flames that never sold. Robert e. Lee is a master with a Xerox machine and fifty pounds of paraffin.

"He enters the tavern with his box of wares in front of him like a cigarette girl from the forties, his assistant shuffles along behind him watching hopefully. He stops at the bar; "Let me borrow your flashlight." They need a drink. Robert moves to the tables, people peer into the box. "Which one do you like the best," he asks the prettiest woman at the table. She points. It's as good as sold. He holds the flashlight over the wick and the logo takes on the glow of sunset. Life is breathed into the Dead. His gaze shifts to her date. "What do you think?" "It's neat," she says. "How much?" her date mumbles. "Usually I get about ten bucks for this one, but I need a drink. How about seven fifty and you buy me a glass of wine?" It's a deal.

"The wine is drunk in one big gulp. He gives his helper two fifty; "Why don't you get us a drink, I'll go talk to these people over here."

"Everybody's happy."

I went with my friend Sheelah to his funeral and kissed him goodbye. I should put him in a story some time. He'd like that.

Dead Night at the Moon

From the point of view of my old friend, Bill, who was definitely not a Deadhead, but the dearest of friends anyway. He wonders why we all came and stayed until closing on a Sunday night. I could have told him. We called it "Church."

"Grateful Dead Night at the Blue Moon. People you never see in real life arrived in droves to listen to eight uninterrupted hours of tapes of old Grateful Dead concerts. It's Sunday, you'd think they'd have to go to work in the morning. The men who don't have beards are all sporting six days of growth on their faces. Is there some wild party after 2:00 when the bar closes where everybody that's going to shave that week is shaven?

"Terry, a guy who does sidewalk chalk drawings spreads himself out on the floor to draw God giving life to Adam in the style of the Sistine chapel, except Adam is a skeleton and God is a trifle arthritic. No matter, all night long people will step over it with all the reverence pieces of art should enjoy. Eventually, it will become the victim of its environment, a beer will fall, someone will apologize, and the Dead will drone on.

"Another guy sells tie-dye T-shirts with pictures of George Jetson or The Cat in the Hat printed on them. How does he do that? Can you Xerox a t-shirt?

"Other people bring their wares; small braided bracelets, earrings of beads and metal, knit hats, little pouches for carrying vials of patchouli, or whatever that odor is, and crystals abound. A piece of graffiti in the men's room reads: "Crystals are the pet rocks of the eighties." The place is packed, far beyond its legal capacity. There's a magic in the room.

"A little fat guy walks around with a paper bag giving out mushrooms, perhaps contributing to the magic. He's got to go before the crowd turns into stroganoff.

"A tall man with a large head, called "Hat size", dances crazily, arms flailing under the casablanca fan. We fear for his hands which are in imminent peril. Somehow he and everyone else survive.

"At two A.M., the Dead grind to a standstill, cases of Beer-to-go are sold and presumably the shaving party is held."

Editor's note: I was usually there, dancing.

He doesn't mention Maggie's habit of shouting, "Have you no homes? Have you no stereos?" and clearing out the bar with Stars and Stripes Forever, played loud and strong, which we Deadheads eventually adopted as our own as we danced out of the Moon.

Bartender to my boyfriend, Richard: My god, he even knows all the words.

Richard: Well, somebody has to. They never do.

Driving Them Cars

I recently joined a conversation in The New York Times about driving, the hazards thereof, and the forgiveness of sins. So to speak.

This response of mine was published:

I have a housemate who often needs rides to meetings and appointments, and I'm usually glad to help. However, she is very judgmental about other drivers and often insists they "don't know how to drive." I, on the other hand, have been driving for years and can usually come up with all kinds of reasons someone might not have put on a turn signal or changed lanes suddenly (and safely) or driven too slow or too fast, because I have also done those things. So I like to suggest to her that maybe they are late for an appointment or had forgotten where the turn was or realized that they had just missed their exit. As long as people get through the ordeal of traffic without hurting themselves or others, I'm fine with it.

I read a piece some time ago (in your paper, I believe) about how our driving habits are a proof of civilization. Yes, there are accidents and yes there are bad/drunk/crazy drivers. But they are a small minority. Most of us out there in our heavy machines driving anywhere from 25 to 70 mph do so safely and courteously. We stop at stop signs in the middle of nowhere. We let people into our lane when we can see that their lane will end. We don't bump slow drivers from behind to hurry them up. We pull over to let ambulances drive by.

I think of driving as a dance of the road. We learn the steps and weave in and out and past each other with all the grace we can muster. We're civilized folk.

Maggie

I have my own Maggie stories, but they will have to wait. For now, I have one of the my friend Bill's. Maggie was who every bartender wanted to be when she grew up. Sheelah told me she was taking bitch lessons from her.

Here's Bill:

Bat Bitch, she always wears black. Maggie Colie's the bartender, and she's saving up for motorcycle leathers. The sign on the tip jar reads "MAGGIE'S LEATHER FUND ...TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY."

"How much you need?"

"I need all you big spenders can stuff in there. I'm getting a Harley if there's enough left over. Just fill up that jar with some of that quiet kind of money and I'll be one happy bartenderloin this May 12th. Otherwise, shut up, sit down, and drink your stinking beer."

Maggie's a mistress of tact. She just plays a little hard.

"How old are you?" [asks a customer]

"You from the census bureau? Jesus Christ."

"Come on, how old?"

"What'll it be...You want a beer or not?"

"Pint of Grant's?"

"Grants is a brewery, not a beer. I think you're going to have to do a little reading before you're informed enough to place an intelligent order." She nods toward a bill-board sized sign behind the bar. "That's the bill of fare."

Undaunted, he points to a tap. "I'll have the yellow one, says Grants on it."

"That's $2.25. You want to get your money out, so we can get on with our lives?"

"Ok, ok."

"Jesus Christ!" says Maggie Colie.

[Editor's note: Remember when a tap beer was $2.25?]

Springtime on Camano

In the spring of 1970, Steven Jerrick and I moved to Camano Island, WA. It is a time that remains somewhat out of time. Even the house has burned down. It's as if we were never even there. But I wrote most of it down. And here we are:

April: Partly cloudy today – Steven says it’s cold out – I can see the wind in the trees, but the sun looks good coming down from somewhere above the deck eaves and making the cement apron of the lower deck and the bottom of the derelict dinghy out there look like warm places to sit down on. Steve will not be going into work today. He got up and dressed, but the car won’t start, and he’s off to walk the 3 miles to the store to call work and call about phones and mail and pick up toilet paper and tissues and whatever else, and then to walk the three miles back again. He feels pretty good about it.

May: We watched the sun come up this morning. At first the sky and bay were all pink and blue and then suddenly the sun appeared out of a depression in the mountains as if it were being squeezed up into the sky, and then it rose so fast I could almost feel myself on the planet hurtling around to face it while the first long glow on the water made an upside down exclamation point with the sun an emphatic period above the mountains.

Am having usual trouble with stories – conversation and action. I wonder if people like Robert Penn Warren do too, the writers who are so good at evoking a place and a mood and a personality and all of the metaphorical evocations that go into making all of those things – do their bits of “he said” and “she said” sound as stilted and unmoving to them on the page as mine do to me?

Have found old journals from 1977 – last good year on the farm – how strange that all seems, when I lived by the Old Farmers Almanac and was involved with NOW and Chris was in karate classes and Caroline was a wee little girl. I was married and Steve was engaged to someone else, and the future, if any had told us, a thing that could never happen as it did, did indeed, happen. No wonder I have little faith in a planned future. Because the future never stops being there, even when you think you have reached your future, it is still out there, if you survive, and utterly unknowable.

Have been to the store and bought out the place - $85 worth of steaks and chicken and hamburger and all that. It was very warm riding in the car, but there’s a chilly wind yet. Was leaving town, when I saw a lone biker headed into town and I knew right away it was a Harley hog chopper, even coming straight on, and the biker hunkered down in the seat with his legs stretched out on the pegs and his gear strapped on behind. I waited for him to pass, and he did, not looking at me or at anything but the road ahead, and then he pulled into the gas station and wiped the band back from his forehead and started to take off his goggles – I saw that much, and I saw he had a good face, a real good face, and I remembered Steve and me on the bike and I couldn’t wait to get back on the road so I drove home singing Bobbie McGee and Desperado in my cracked emphysema throat (my emphysema was imaginary) and feeling happy as a clam.

The day is thinly overcast, with the sun coming through, a cool and half-bright day, with Steve working in the garden and me working on myself. We went for a walk on the beach last night, while it was getting dark, and I had chili waiting, simmering on the stove. We walked down through the woods and down to where the sand has washed down the stairs, so that they end abruptly on a little platform, like those unfinished expressways that seem to have been left purposely ramping out into thin air for all of us car-driving suicides out there. But we didn’t ramp off into thin air, and it would have been a short drop if we had - we just slid down the sand pile that was blown up against the side of the stair, down to the beach, and climbed up on the big logs that are there and watched the water and the sky and the fishermen partying on their boat out there and listened to the continent rattle down behind us into the sea.

June: The days of childhood rise up from the past like bits of poetry long remembered, snatches of rhyme, a few lines from a song, evoking a time you no longer remember the way you remember last year, a time that is no longer a memory in itself, but only a memory of memories, from stories told and retold, from old snapshots, and the ragged flotsam of evidence that drifts up now and again out of long-unopened drawers and closets and old boxes, that cries silently and insistently not to be forgotten. There are no years of childhood. There is only one long delicious day and one terrifying night, although the deliciousness of the day can include the soft, sweet, warm nights, and the terrors of the night invade the delicious day with the sharp, cold taste of fear and the armies of nightmare.

Writing today, I sometimes have to wonder if I ever really loved anyone at all. But then I came across this birthday card I wrote for Steven that June of 1970.

Steven – If I could, I would give you

A pair of chrome-plated triple-trees

A front wheel that always rides straight even when all the bolts fall out

A phenomenology department

A mountain

A river

An ocean

A field of waving yellow grasses

5 sunny days, one misty day and one thunderstorm per week

A case of Jack Daniels

A pile of stop signs and a torch

A pile of cops and a torch

A million dollars

A magic flute

A silver spoon

A sun barge on a lake of light

A key to everlasting night

And much, much more than that.

But all I’ve got is a half-jar of pennies, and me, ten major inconsistencies, one hundred manic/depressive tantrums, 1,000 unfufilled promises, a million kisses, and a few moments of happiness. So will you take that instead? I love you, with all my heart.

Almost Down and Out in Seattle

Friday September 21, 1979

The first day of fall and we are falling fast. Steven cannot find work and he is obsessed with failure. We expected a check from Green Bay today that has not arrived. We are down to about $4.00, but we have been that low before. Traveler’s Aid is our last hope tonight to cash a check for the weekend.

The principle of being down and out has often haunted me. I have been (and still am) obsessed by fear of destitution, of having nowhere to live – nowhere to be alive in, no shelter at all, of having nothing to eat, of knowing no one and having no money, no means of exchange, nothing of value that can be exchanged for anything to promote life. We are far from that. We have a place to come home to where it is warm and dry and there are carpets on the floors, if there are no chairs, and there is a bed and covers, if there are no pillows, and there is salad and eggs and cereal and milk. And there is money. Somewhere there is money that I can say is mine. Therefore, I have validation. There is also a college diploma. That is further validation. This is all nonsense, of course, because neither validation is validating anything at the moment but my state of mind.

Instead of the money we had yesterday, we have woven place mats and white plastic cups and red plastic bowls and a blue ceramic ashtray, and they are sitting on the floor in the afternoon sun on a burnt orange rug in company with a red and white box of Marlboros, a red lighter and an empty carton of Yoplait raspberry yogurt, yogourt avec des framboises. The floor is strewn with papers and books and playing cards and an empty can of Coors. It is not raining. We are not lying in the cover of bare autumn bushes with our faces in wet leaves, cold and sick and dying. With the rent paid as it is of now, we will not be there until November. I’ll worry in November.

Westward Ho 1985

The trip out was an odyssey of remembering and experiencing. We crossed by the same route that Steve and I took on the bike six years ago. I didn’t do it out of nostalgia. It is the best route across that section of country that I know. The Badlands, the Black Hills, Yellowstone. Chris had never been through there, so it was great to top a rise and point out the next mountain range – each one getting bigger, taller, wilder, with more promise of a vast remoteness. Mountain Magic. Home of storms. Places where the wild things live. Visible but beyond reach. The Black Hills – long sacred and over-civilized. The Bighorns. And then the Absaroka Range of the Rockies.

We came down through South Dakota. Fields of sunflowers. Brown hills of the Missouri. Pierre and the Grassland Highway down to I-90. I put the car on cruise control at 55 - slow but safe. No danger from local gendarmes. Lots of construction. The construction people would funnel you down into a one-land passage with movable concrete barricades, and I would make a game of leaving the car on cruise and maneuvering it into the narrow shaft and out again. They were always on a downhill slope.

The Badlands were cold and windy. Chris scrambled up a couple of slopes with his camera and tripod, but the wind and the chill were enough to drive us back to the heated car. We stopped at the info center and pigged out on books. Not an Indian in sight. This was the land of vision quests. I wonder if the weather affects the vision or the vision the weather. There are no visions for us today.