Late Night Strange

I know it's been quite a while since I've posted some fresh, original content. Here's a little taste of something I'm working on, ever so slowly. Let me know what you think.      -MK

     I said goodnight to my friends and began the uphill stumble towards home. Walking on the paved trails of campus, the going was easy. Even for a drunk. It became a challenge when I had to cross the practice field that separated Adult Student Housing from the campus-proper. Like every other day in Hilo, it had rained and, like every time it rained in Hilo, the ground couldn't absorb all of the water. The field was flooded.

     At first, I set about crossing the hundred-yard span like I usually would—if it were light and I were sober—by trying to hop from one drier patch to another. But, when you're drunk and it's dark, mistakes are bound to be made.

     Splash! One of my hops found me not on a dry crest, but eight inches deep in a hole. I was soaked clear up to my knees.

     “Fuck it,” I said aloud and kept going. Now that I was wet, there was no use trying to keep my feet dry. Instead I stumbled along, indifferent to anymore dry patches. By the time I reached the edge of the field, my pants were completely saturated up to my belt and my boots might as well have been wet sponges laced to my feet.

     Ahead of me there was a short trail of dirt and rock left to negotiate before I was on the paved walkways of ASH. While this route was the one taken daily by almost everyone living in A.S.H., it was a guerrilla road and therefore sanctioned by neither ASH or the University. It was fifteen yards of semi-vertical peril that clear-minded students negotiated with ease during the day, but could be a little tricky to stumble up after a few drinks at an on-campus party.

     I only took a few steps up the trail before the moist ground put its finishing move on me. My foot slipped on a wet chunk of lava rock and down I went, sliding five or six feet in the red Hawaiian mud. I laid where I came to rest for a moment. Instead of being upset, I let out a chuckle which turned into an audible laugh.

     “Just my luck,” I mused. “Drunk and worthless.”

     I pulled myself up. In the faint light I could see that the front of my pants and shirt were now a reddish shade of brown. I brushed myself off and headed back up the slope. This time I was more cautious of my footing. There was no trouble and I soon found myself on the paved path that would take me home.

     As I was nearing my unit, I saw a small, dark shape on the path ahead. I stopped for a minute and tried to discern what it was through my alcoholic haze. The shape began to move towards me and when it passed into the stream of one of the walkway lights I knew what it was.

     “Hi kitty,” I said.

     “Meow,” it calmly replied and continued moving towards me.

     I leaned forward and called to it in a soft tone. The cat was soon standing under me, brushing its face and sides on my ankles.

     “Well, aren't you the cutest little thing?” I jokingly asked the cat.

     It let out a half-a-meow, as if to say, “Duh!”

     Slowly, I bent forward and reached down. The cat immediately started brushing its face against my hand. I reached down with my other hand and picked it up. I held it to my chest and it began to purr.

     “You're a little sweetheart, aren't you?”

     Her reply came in the form of louder purring. She brought her face close to mine, then began rubbing her cheek against the side of my face.

     “Well, I like you too,” I said.

     As wet, cold, filthy and drunk as I was; this affection instantly gave me a sense of warmth and joy. It cut through the agony and loneliness I was feeling. In that drunken haze, it make me feel loved. I carried the cat back to my apartment.

     After I let us in, I set the cat down and did what any good drunk does at two in the morning—I went looking for food. I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There wasn't much to be found there: some milk, a half-eaten bowl of noodles, some eggs.

     “You hungry? Thirsty?”

     “Meow.”

     “Well, let's get you something.”

     I pulled the carton of milk out of the fridge and grabbed a bowl from the cupboard. When I poured the milk into the bowl, I immediately saw that it had spoiled. I checked the expiration date.

     “A week ago? Thought this was newer than that.”

     I looked back at the cat. She was sitting up and staring at me.

     “Meow.”

     “I don't think you want this kitty,” I said as I turned the faucet on and began dumping the milk down the sink. When the milk was gone, I threw the carton away, rinsed and filled the bowl with water, then set it down in front of the cat. She lapped a drink out of the bowl and then looked up at me.

     “Meow.”

     “Hungry, huh?”

     “Meow.”

     Reaching into the cupboard again, I found a can of tuna. I opened the lid and then used it to mash the excess water from the can and into the sink. Then, I grabbed another bowl and dumped the tuna into it.

     “Here you go girl.”

     The cat began to eat. Content that the cat would not starve or die of thirst in the middle of the night, I headed for bed. The floor of my room was a typical college mess. Clothes and books littered the floor to the point that once would be hard pressed to know the floor was covered in beige carpeting.

     I took off my filthy clothes and crawled into bed in a pair of boxer shorts. It wasn't long after my head hit the pillow that I snapped upright with a frightening though: What if the cat takes a shit on the floor?

     “I need a fucking kitty-litter box!”

     I jumped from the bed and sprang out into the hallway and started rummaging around. Somewhere there had to be something that would resemble a litter box. Eventually, I found my improvised cat-shitter laying on the lanai—It was a cardboard flat that once held a case of soda.

     “Okay, I've got the box. Where do I find the litter?”
     I was much too drunk to drive to the store. Whatever media I was going to use would have to be acquired nearby. Suddenly, I remembered a place where I had seen some loose dirt and sand on the other side of the parking lot. Without thinking picked up the box, kicked on my flip-flops, and ran out the front door in nothing more than my underwear.

     It was pretty dark outside, I figured no one would notice my drunk and half-naked ass in my quick quest to find dirt. Running in flip-flops was always a precarious idea, more so when drunk. However, a poor choice in footwear would not be my undoing. I made it across the parking lot; towards point where a small dirt access road led off behind the campus. It was there where I remembered seeing some loose black sand.

     I took my first running stride onto the dirt and all of a sudden I was upside down and airborne. Shortly thereafter, I was landing on my head in the patch of black sand. An excruciating pain emanated from my upper thighs. I had forgotten about the thin steel cable stretched across to road to keep unauthorized vehicles out.

     “Fuck!” was the only sound I was capable of uttering. For the second time that night, I found myself face down in the dirt. I pulled myself up to my knees, found the box and began scooping dirt into it with my bare hands. Once the box was full, I stood up and quickly brushed myself off. Not all of the dirt came off. Bits of sand and rock were imbedded in my knees and hands. I picked the box up and hobbled back to my apartment.

     “Here you go kitty,” I announced as I set the box down.

     “Meow,” came the reply from the cat. She was no longer eating and had posted up on the couch for the night.

     The pain was really beginning to set in. I noticed that there was an inch-wide line of abrasion across my thighs where I had ran into the cable at full stride. A bruise was beginning to develop below the skin. It hurt like hell.

     One more time I went to the cupboard, this time I was looking for something for myself. There was a bottle of very cheap vodka that I planned to dull the pain with. I took a couple of big pulls, straight from the bottle and went to bed.

     I awoke the next morning to the sound of someone running up the stairs. Key's jingled on the landing, then the lock clicked open. It was Danielle. She was making her usual morning appearance to grab a bite and change her clothes before going to class. The door opened.

     “What the fuck?” I heard her say in a slightly confused voice. She had seen the two bowls and the kitty-litter box.

     “Meow.”

     “Uhh... Hi kitty. Where did you come from?”

     Footsteps made their way down the hall and the door opened.

     “Dude, where did this cat come from?” she asked me.

     “I, um, found it last night on the way home. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

     I was feeling a bit embarrassed. Bringing a stray cat back to the apartment we shared without even telling her seemed to reinforce in my mind the low opinion of myself I'd been having.

     “I know you're going through a rough time, but this was not what I meant when I told you that you needed to go out and find some strange pussy!”

From The Black Cliffs of Kona

From the Black Cliffs of Kona

    The old man was enjoying his lazy afternoon fishing with his grandson. He had chosen to take the boy to a very special place on the island, South Point. It was the place the old man went to when he wanted solace. Today, he was sharing that solace with someone very dear to him.

    The two of them had driven all the way from their home in Kailua-Kona. They had gone South down the coast, past the famous Kona Coffee plantations, past the quiet town of Captain Cook, and down the lonely ten mile stretch of road that led to South Point.

    The road from the highway to South Point is one of a kind in the Hawaiian Islands. It feels more like a trip across Midwestern farm country, with the exception that the horizon is graced with blue ocean on one side, and Mauna Loa volcano on the other. It's slowly rolling hills, covered in grassy cattle pastures.

    The boy pointed as they drove past one field, "What are those grandpa?" he asked.

    "Windmills. The government put them here a long time ago, when Jimmy Carter was president," the old man answered, not taking his gaze from the road.

    "Who's Jimmy Carter?" the boy quietly thought aloud, his grandfather not hearing him.

    The two drove on, the old man's 1980's Nissan compact pickup creaking and groaning as they made their wave up and over and down the endless rolling hills. Soon they were pulling up to the parking area by the cliffs.  The old man looked at the boy.

    "Stay close to me son. Don't go near the cliff until I have everything ready. If you fall in, it will be very bad," he cautioned his only grandchild.

    "Okay grandpa. I won't," the boy replied.

    "This is stupid," I quietly mumbled to myself as I looked sixty feet down at the cobalt blue waters of the Pacific ocean. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and heard the groaning of the wooden platform I was standing on. I pondered the age of the platform.

    The creaking and groaning made it seem as if the platform was going to detach itself from the top of the cliff. While cliff jumping was my reason for being here, I certainly didn't want to do a tandem jump with a couple thousand pounds of decades-old lumber. That would certainly be a recipe for disaster.

    I imagined myself falling foreword, with a white knuckle grip on archway on the ocean side of the platform. Falling face down towards my fate, eyes and mouth agape. It's a vision that immediately reminds me of the Nazi going over the cliff in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade , a head and shoulders poking out of the top of a tank as it falls to its fiery end at the bottom of the cliff.

    The image makes me chuckle. "If this thing's been here this long, it'll hold long enough for me," I once again mumble.

    "Huh?" Bracken asks me.   

    He's standing ten feet to my left at the lip of the cliff. His look is one of confidence. He's been here many times, made this jump countless times. Not that he needs experience to look confident. Bracken's a gym-rat. He's the type of guy that gets up in the morning and puts in two hours at the gym before the sun comes up. The visible result of that dedication is something which, deep-down, I'm a little envious of.

    "Nothing," I say. "Just thinking out loud."

    As the two of them set about removing their fishing tackle, the boy surveyed the new surroundings. He could tell that, to one side of him, there was a massive set of cliffs which dropped off into the water. To the other side, there was rolling grasslands, with some dirt trails cutting their way across the landscape. He could see a peak rising in the distance next to the coast in that direction.

    "What's over there grandpa?" the boy asked while pointing at the peak.

    "The Green Sand Beach," the old man said. "It's almost a mile from here."

    "Green Sand? I thought sand was black or white," the boy half asked, half stated to his grandfather.

    The old man pointed way up the coastline to a black sand beach. "You remember how I told you a black sand beach is made?"

    "Yes grandpa. When lava flows into the sea it cools down super-fast. When it does that it hardens and breaks real quick," the junior geologist stated.

    "Very good. I'm so proud of how smart you are," he doted on his grandson. "The Green Sand beach was made the same way, except the lava that made it contained a lot of olivine."

    "Olivine? How do olives get in the lava?"

    "Not olives, olivine. It's a mineral, a rock. But it's typically an olive-green color…"

    "So, it shatters when it hits the water as lava, and becomes green sand?" the boy interjected.

    "You are too smart!" the old man said, reaching down to pat the boy on the head. "Now lets go fishing."

    The two anglers grabbed their long surfcasting rods and the rather large tackle boxes that the old man had kept in his shed for years. They contained the tackle that would only be used for this particular fishing spot. They walked to within ten feet of the ledge, and the old man nodded to the boy. He was to place his gear on the ground there.

    "I'll set this up, you just sit here and watch. Okay?" the old man instructed.

    "Okay grandpa," the boy acknowledged.

    The old man started pulling tackle from the boxes and laying it out on the ground before them. As he was doing this, a white Jeep pulled up and three men in their early twenties got out and walked to the cliff, about fifty yards away from the old man and the boy.

    "Tell me the story about your grandpa again, please," the boy asked his grandfather.   

    "The one about the barracuda?"

    "Yeah."

    "Well, my grandfather used to come out here and fish out of a small boat…"

    "How did he get it down there?" the boy interrupted.

    The old man pointed over to where the three young men stood.

    "Do you see that platform?"

    The boy nodded.

    "You see the pulley on the arch on the ocean side?"

    Again, the boy nodded.

    "He would lower the boat down using that pulley, then climb down the ladder to it."

    The man continued working as he started in on the story. His fingers working delicately to bait hooks onto yard-long leaders.

    "My grandpa would then paddle out just a little ways and tap his oar on the bottom of the boat three times. Sometimes he would have to do this a few times, but eventually a six-foot barracuda would show up.

    "Grandpa would throw a little bit of steak or chicken into the water, and the barracuda would eat it. Then the barracuda would kill fish for Grandpa. They would float to the surface, and he would put them in his boat.

    "When he had enough, he'd throw another bite to the barracuda, tap the bottom of the boat three times, and head back to the ladder and pull his boat out."

    The little boy was wide eyed imagining the tale his grandfather was telling him. He thought it would be amazing to have a barracuda for a friend.

    The boy's daydream was cut short when he heard a loud scream coming from down the cliff.

    "Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" From behind me, I hear what can best be described as the noise Private Joker makes when Sargent Hartman asks him to "show me your war-face!" upon arriving at boot camp in Full Metal Jacket . It's Kevin. He's running at a full sprint across the basalt plateau, running straight for the edge. It's almost a comical picture he paints. Short, awkward, a bit nerdy; his image is nothing like the near-Adonis Bracken. He runs right past Bracken, and I watch as he glides out into the void.

    "Gerrrrrrronimo!"

    I watch as he flails his arms and legs on the way down and at the last minute tucks his arms around his chest, brings his feet together, and looks up with closed eyes as he enters the water below.

    Bracken and I wait a moment, and sure enough, Kevin's head emerges from the calm waters below.

    "Wahoo! That was awesome!" Kevin screams back up. Soon he is swimming towards the old rusty iron ladder hanging off the side of the cliff. It is the only means of escape from the water below.

    I take a few steps back, off the platform and onto the ground. Bracken turns and faces me, his back to the ocean.

    "See you down there," he says, jumping backwards. His head snaps back, he grabs his knees to his chest and does a complete back-flip, suspended in mid-air. It's almost like a cartoon, as soon as he is right-side-up and vertical again, he plummets to the water below. I cautiously rush to the ledge and am relieved to see his smiling face looking up at me.

    "Your turn," he says up to me, and makes a quick swim to the ladder.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" the shortest of the young men was screaming  and running for the ledge.

    The boy cupped his hands over his cheeks and looked in shock as the young man soared over the ledge and down towards the water below.

    "Gerrrrrrronimo!" the young man cried, right before he hit the water.

    "Oh my gosh! What if the barracuda is down there? Will he hurt him?" the boy asked his grandfather as he turned to him frantically.

   I have one of those paralyzing moments. I want to go, but my feet don't want to move. It's a fight in my head: my conscious mind wants to do this, but my subconscious is holding me back. The human inclination towards self preservation is putting up a fight against an action which seems downright suicidal.

    I look to my left and see Kevin cresting the lip of the cliff on the ladder.

    "Dude, you gotta do the run and jump the first time. It's the only way you can keep from pulling back," he encourages.

    I walk back from the ledge about thirty feet. My heart is racing, my palms sweating. I am about to jump off a sixty foot cliff into forty feet of deep blue Pacific Ocean. Aside from the rickety old ladder, the next nearest place to safely get out of the water is the beach a mile up the coast. I'd never make it if something went wrong with the ladder, and this weighs on my mind.

    "Come on Matt, you can do it!" Kevin forcefully encourages.

    I put one foot in front of the other, then another, and another. I'm  at full speed when I step off the ledge into the air.

    His grandfather didn't even look up from his job fixing his tackle.

    "I wouldn't worry about a barracuda. That was just a fishing tale my grandfather liked to tell when I was a boy. It's not true. I don't know anyone who's ever seen a barracuda around here, " the old man said to the boy, trying to calm him.

    "But don't we have barracuda in the water outside Kailua? Why wouldn't they be here? It's not far."

    "Because, if a barracuda came down here, it would get eaten pretty fast," the old man chuckled.

    The fall is amazing. In an instant, I have tunnel vision. My focus is on the ocean below, and the spot where I will break into the blue. As I fall, my stomach finds a new home somewhere around my Adam's Apple, in the middle of my throat .

    Surprisingly, the fall was not one of those adrenaline-fueled moments that seems to last forever. It was quick. So quick that I almost don't have the presence of mind to prepare myself for the force which will overcome me when I break the surface tension of the water. At the last possible fraction of a second, I bring my arms in close to my body, bring my feet together, close my eyes and tilt my head back.

    I feel my body enter the water violently. The resistance of the water, coupled with the position I entered the water in makes me shudder back and forth somewhat violently. When I finally come to rest, fifteen or so feet deep in the water, I'm almost flat on my back and looking up. I start swimming for the surface, exhaling air as I pull myself up. Soon I am rewarded with the sensation of broaching the surface, and take a gigantic breath of air.

    Turning my gaze back up from whence I came, I see Kevin's smiling face peering over the lip at me. I see him raise his hand and give me a thumbs-up.  A salute for my successful jump.

    To my right, I see Bracken, climbing the ladder to safety. He looks down over his shoulder at me.

    "Was that fun?"

    "You know it!" I exclaim. "Get your ass up that ladder, I'm right behind you and I want to go again!"

The boy's eyes widen once again.

    "Eaten? What could eat a barracuda?" the boy asked, completely bewildered.

    "Well, Grandson, the waters off South Point are the biggest shark breeding ground in the entire State of Hawaii."  

What Can I Say? I Am My Father's Son

     Like most boys, I grew up idolizing my father. Strike that, I grew up idolizing what my father did for a living. I would revel in awe when he told me stories of the places he had been to, the things he had built, and the experiences he had. The people in his stories became legendary characters to me.
     Most kids would be impressed by another's father who was a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, etc. Those professions are pretty impressive, but to me, nothing could top what my Daddy did for a living. In the wintertime, he would spend month building ice roads over the frozen Arctic Ocean. In the summer time, he would construct gravel pads on the barren tundra. In my mind, my father was a great Arcitc adventurer like Richard Byrd, Ernest Shackleton, Robert Peary, and Roald Amundsen. He was always out on the edge of the world performing some sort of spectacular feat.
     As young idol-worshipers do, I imitated my hero. My mother's garden became my frontier. My army of Tonka toys set about bringing progress to the wilds of the turnip patch. Rows were widened and smoothed into roads. Mounds became impromptu drill sites.
     When the snows came, my fleet was out making sure the trail to the dog kennel was open. I was determined that mother nature would not impede my dog McD from traversing the backyard. I spent many long hours braving the cold and dark to fight back the drifting snow with a one-foot dozer blade.
     As my childhood turned into my adolescence, the Tonkas gave way to footballs, hockey skates, and books. I stopped dreaming of being a pioneer on the last great frontier and longed for the "professional" life.
      The one genetic trait my father hoped I would never realize brought my "professional" pursuits to a halt in my original senior year of college. A drunken mess, I found myself bouncing around from one worthless job to another. When things finally started to straighten out, I found myself driving big trucks and working with construction machinery.
      When I started truck driving, my imagination came back to me. When I was hauling beer, I was always imagining it was something else, something more important. I started moving rental equipment around the Phoenix area, and soon imagined that I was hauling my Dad's gigantic machinery around the Arctic Slope.
      In the Fall of 2008, my world came to a halt alongside the U.S. economy. With no houses to build, builders quit renting equipment from my company. With the loss of business came the loss of employees, and I was one of them.
     My Dad made some phone calls. Two months later I was living my childhood dream, for real. I may not be doing the same things Dad did, but I'm definitely in the same ballgame. Just like me, I doubt my son's friends have fathers who have driven 300,000 pound trucks across frozen oceans, watched the Northern Lights illuminate the largest drilling rigs on the planet, or seen 4000 caribou in a single hour.

49. Selling Storyboards

Author's Note:
This posting is a bit of a two-for deal. I wrote the office dialog in an airport lounge two days ago, while the personal narrative came up today while I was writing my Writer's Journal entries and staring at snowdrifts this afternoon.

     "Look, I just don't know what to make of this," the agent said.
     "What can't you make of it? It's my memoirs," I replied.
     "It's just… this doesn't really fit into any category that I'm comfortable dealing with," the agent said, running his hand across his bald head.
     I looked around the office. After months of sending out my pseudo-manuscript, I'd finally been given an audience with a literary agent, only to have him tell me he was unsure of my work.
     What is this guy doing? If he doesn't think he can sell this, why the hell did he call me down here?
   

      I began to think that perhaps I should just call it quits. I'd been trying to get my story out there forever. I started my quest with a screenplay. It received a couple of interested nods from the movie making crowd, and I'd had some meetings to discuss it. As part of the process, I needed to develop my tale into storyboards: rough, cartoon-like sketches to represent different scenes. I spent quite a lot of time coming up with my storyboards, but I just couldn't close the deal.
     "Your work doesn't seem all that visual," was a theme that seemed to come up constantly when producers would turn my storyboards down. "It all seems like something that would be better represented in a book than a movie."
     Every time, in the end, I wound up at home, staring at my storyboards. I'd spent so much of my time over the past few years trying to relate my unique life story to be represented in film. Now I was being told that my representation was not visual enough for Hollywood. Soon, after a  healthy dose of marijuana and the movie 300, I got the notion that I would shop them around to literary agents, hoping that I could get them published as a "graphic novel".

    

     "Ever since that damned swords and sandals movie with all the man-ass and dudes running around looking like cut-up show cats, everyone's been thinking they can pass anything off as a 'graphic novel' and make millions of dollars publishing it," the agent started in.
     "Truth is, graphic novels are a niche item that tries to bridge two worlds and ends up as little more than a series of cartoon notes. It's like Kurt Vonnegut once said about semicolons, 'They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing'," the smartly-dressed agent said, his voice rising.
     "You might be wondering, why have I brought you here if I'm not interested your graphic novel? Well, because I think your story has promise. I think your sketches are worth something, but not the use you think they are worth," the agent was talking and walking across the room towards my large drawings set upon an easel in the corner.
     "I think you need to decide which way you are going to go with this. The way I see it, you've got three options. First, you can focus on your drawing skills, and learn to create works of visual are that stand on their own. Second, you can carry on making cartoons, like you're doing here, and find sub-moderate success working a niche market. Third, you can focus on developing your story from the boards and beyond the mere guttural sounds that the captions of this form afford you and really write something," the agent was looking at me with pure excitement in his face.
     "I like your story, I really do. I just think that this form of expression doesn't allow you to truly convey a message with any strong significance. You're limited in both the amount of visual and written expression you can convey in each cell. I think you would be better served to write your story, and perhaps, use an image here or there to show a more difficult to describe concept."
     I was starting to feel what the agent was telling me. I think I had been more excited about being able to put "graphic novelist" by my name than anything else. In reality, all I was trying to do was sell my old storyboards. If I came to see things his way, that the graphic novel tries to bridge a gap, but falls short, leaving the reading stuck in the middle wishing he was on either side, anywhere but the middle.

--------------------

"Graphic novels" make me feel like I am being cheated out of something. What is that something? It's the experience of soaking up pages of words that describe something. It is something I must visualize in my mind. It is the joy of reading

I can see why this form of expression has become popular. It's just a part of our overall culture of instant gratification. The journey is no longer what's appreciated, only the destination.

When I read line after line of prose, my mind imagines real people and real scenarios, vividly. When denied this beautiful process,  I will always imagine the two-dimensional world of the childish drawings that are presented to me.

Like text message shorthand and expressions limited to one-hundred and forty character "Tweets", graphic novels represent a laziness that is leading to a wholesale erosion of the written word.

45. Over the Road OCD

     Truck driving taught me compulsion. For the most part, my private and professional lives have always been a scattered mess. There was very little, if any, organization or structure in my world. One look at the pile of clothes scattered on my bed would be an indication of things. I had enough presence of mind to wash my garments, but lacked the discipline motivation to put them away properly.
      All that changed when I was granted a Class A Commercial Drivers License. There may be some truth in the stereotypes about the people that operate the biggest vehicles on the road, but one thing they aren't is disorganized. Lazy disorganization in this particular line of would, at best, result in an incorrect delivery or a fine from the DOT. In the worst case scenario, it could lead to a catastrophic accident, possibly resulting in death. People that can't keep organized don't keep jobs driving trucks very long.
      I learned the attention to detail at my first driving job, delivering beer for a Phoenix-based distributor. Everything had to be accounted for, right down to the plastic pallets the product was stacked on. Coming up short or making paperwork errors meant losing out on bonus incentives, losing money. When the base salary is only twelve hundred dollars every two weeks, the added four hundred a month in possible bonuses is more than just a luxury, it's a necessity. Say what you will about the inherent unfairness of taking food off someone's table based on just one clerical error, it's still legal in Arizona. I had to learn really quick to make sure my paperwork was in order after every shift.
     Paperwork doesn't just apply to cargo, there's also a strong regulatory element. Show up at a scale house with the wrong set of permits, registration, or insurance cards; have a nice fine. Forget to fill out a pre-trip inspection, enjoy watching the DOT man fill out a ticket. Make a mistake on your hours of service logs, enjoy getting shut down for a few days and pay more money in fines. Carrying hazardous materials, better have the right manifests and placards on your vehicle. Not only will you face a big fine, but if you truck runs off the road and spills a mislabeled load, people could get hurt or killed responding in the wrong manner.
     When I left the world of nice and neat palletized goods, I was introduced to a whole new world of compulsion: flatbedding. Where the man or woman pulling a box trailer or a tanker has the fortune of having their load secured by the vehicle itself, the flatbedder has to come up with a acceptable means on the spot. Chains, binders, straps, tarps, decking; these are the flatbedder's paint, brushes, chisels, canvas, and marble by which he conducts his art.
     It is a compulsive art trying to finagle one's way through a sea of codes to make sure something as simple as a warehouse forklift is correctly secured to a deck. What's the weight of said forklift? If it's under ten thousand pounds, it only needs to be secured with two chains, otherwise it's four. But wait, what grade are those chains? Grade 70 three-eights inch? No problem then. Anything in a lower grade or size, and it's gonna be a lot more than four. Are the forks strapped down? If not, that's a ticket. Are my binders the proper grade for the chain? Nope, well that's a ticket too.
     Compulsion, attention to detail, these are things no commercial vehicle operator can do without.
     

Reflections of A Once and Former Randian

       This last hitch at work,  I saw a combination of two items that alarmed me quite a bit. On one of the bulletin boards for general communication in a BP camp, there was a piece of pure propaganda from that company's "Team Alaska". The flyer essentially said that BP and other oil companies were seeking to develop new resources in places where oil companies received more tax incentives and lower rates to produce. They flyer then encouraged employees to contact their elected representatives to lower tax rates and provide incentives to BP or else face the specter of more lay-offs. Essentially, BP would be taking it's ball and going somewhere else if the State of Alaska didn't stop taxing them so much.
       All of this wouldn't have struck me so much, had it not been for the second piece of the combination. On a white sheet of letter sized paper were the four words that have become synonimous to me with Elitism, Narcissism, and all around Assholiness: "Who is John Galt?"


      When I was a younger man, I became enamored with the philosophical views that espoused the ideals of merit, and that reward should always be payed to those who were able to achieve the most. I bought into the American illusion of upward mobility based upon hard work, skill, dedication, sacrifice, etc. Like Mom, apple pie, and all the other pieces of Americana; the rags to riches stories of the talented and dedicated insert random lowly position here who possessed some great skill that led him to take his rightful place among America's powerful elite, are second nature to those of us who grew up in this land.
      I found this ideal played out best in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. While most of the main players in the book are established members of the nation's industrial elite, the question "Who is John Galt?" lingers over the first half of the book, until he's finally revealed.
      In John Galt, I found figure that encompassed all of the ideals of the meritorious American man, who takes his place among the natural aristocracy of elites.. Galt is born the son of a mechanic, who through talent and hard work, goes on to "better" himself through an elite education, making friends with very powerful young men of the industrial aristocracy, finally becoming a great inventor.
      This could be any one of the Great American Success stories, except it doesn't end there. Galt leads a revolt of the modern bourgeoisie against the masses who they see as parasites, unfairly feasting off their success through taxes and the like. Instead of choosing to contribute a greater share of their disproportionately high wealth, Galt's followers instead go on strike and disappear. Like any good piece of elitist propaganda, the world falls apart without them.
      I bought this line of reasoning hook, line and sinker for many years. It lead me to believe actions which were against my interests and favored rich elites were right and fair. I praised George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy because they eased the "punishing of productivity".
      "Why champion actions that are against your interests?" one might ask. Simply put, because the illustrations presented to me of people like John Galt, coupled with a healthy dose of narcissism, led me to believe that I too would someday be ultra-rich and would like to have the benefit of keeping my hard-earned wealth.
      When the illusions started to unravel with the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, my perceptions of Galt changed. As I watched the über-rich of this country line up for handouts from the government, I began to see that it was they who were the parasites, not the unwashed masses.  Through all their so-called "free trade", they had devised a system in which all of the wealth could be sucked up into the hands of few. When that wasn't enough, they created games to invent wealth to exploit. Finally, when the game couldn't be prolonged anymore, it was they who came begging to the public for more corporate welfare. All the while, they maintained an air of arrogance about how they were "too big to fail" and if they were allowed to fail, the country would collapse. Just like Galt and his followers, our modern day equivalents thought the world needed them more than they needed the world.

29-A: Reckless Youth at South Point (Read First)

Author's Note:

      Here's the first-person perspective on my experience. It takes place on the cliffs of South Point, on the Big Island of Hawaii, sometime during my original Sophomore Year in college, when I attended the University of Hawaii. There's a youtube video at the the end that I found for a little perspective. It's the same exact place where this even took place, but I have no idea who the people in the video are, nor who took it.

    "This is stupid," I quietly mumbled to myself as I looked sixty feet down at the cobalt blue waters of the Pacific ocean. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and heard the groaning of the wooden platform I was standing on. I pondered the age of the platform.
    The creaking and groaning made it seem as if the platform was going to detach itself from the top of the cliff. While cliff jumping was my reason for being here, I certainly didn't want to do a tandem jump with a couple thousand pounds of decades-old lumber. That would certainly be a recipe for disaster.
    I imagined myself falling foreword, with a white knuckle grip on archway on the ocean side of the platform. Falling face down towards my fate, eyes and mouth agape. It's a vision that immediately reminds me of the Nazi going over the cliff in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, a head and shoulders poking out of the top of a tank as it does a Thelma and Louise to it's fiery end at the bottom of the cliff.
    The image makes me chuckle. "If this thing's been here this long, it'll hold long enough for me," I once again mumble.
    "Huh?" Bracken asks me.   
    He's standing ten feet to my left at the lip of the cliff. His look is one of confidence. He's been here many times, made this jump countless times. Not that he needs experience to look confident. Bracken's a gym-rat. He's the type of guy that gets up in the morning and puts in two hours at the gym before the sun comes up. The visible result of that dedication is something which, deep-down, I'm a little envious of.
    "Nothing," I say. "Just thinking out loud."
    "Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" From behind me, I hear what can best be described as the noise Private Joker makes when Sargent Hartman asks him to "show me your war-face!" upon arriving at boot camp in Full Metal Jacket. It's Kevin. He's running at a full sprint across the basalt plateau, running straight for the edge. It's almost a comical picture he paints. Short, awkward, a bit nerdy; his image is nothing like the near-Adonis Bracken. He runs right past Bracken, and I watch as he glides out into the void.
    "Gerrrrrrronimo!"
    I watch as he flails his arms and legs on the way down and at the last minute tucks his arms around his chest, brings his feet together, and looks up with closed eyes as he enters the water below.
    Bracken and I wait a moment, and sure enough, Kevin's head emerges from the calm waters below.
    "Wahoo! That was awesome!" Kevin screams back up. Soon he is swimming towards the old rusty iron ladder hanging off the side of the cliff. It is the only means of escape from the water below.
    I take a few steps back, off the platform and onto the ground. Bracken turns and faces me, his back to the ocean.
    "See you down there," he says, jumping backwards. His head snaps back, he grabs his knees to his chest and does a complete back-flip, suspended in mid-air. It's almost like a cartoon, as soon as he is right-side-up and vertical again, he plummets to the water below. I cautiously rush to the ledge and am relieved to see his smiling face looking up at me.
    "Your turn," he says up to me, and makes a quick swim to the ladder.
    I have one of those paralyzing moments. I want to go, but my feet don't want to move. It's a fight in my head: my conscious mind wants to do this, but my subconscious is holding me back. The human inclination towards self preservation is putting up a fight against this action that seems downright suicidal.
    I look to my left and see Kevin cresting the lip of the cliff on the ladder.
    "Dude, you gotta do the run and jump the first time. It's the only way you can keep from pulling back," he encourages.
    I walk back from the ledge about thirty feet. My heart is racing, my palms sweating. I am about to jump off a sixty foot cliff into forty feet of deep blue Pacific Ocean. Aside from the rickety old ladder, the next nearest place to safely get out of the water is the beach a mile up the coast. I'd never make it if something went wrong with the ladder, and this weighs on my mind.
    "Come on Matt, you can do it!" Kevin forcefully encourages.
    I put one foot in front of the other, then another, and another. I'm  at full speed when I step off the ledge into the air.
    The fall is amazing. In an instant, I have tunnel vision. My focus is on the ocean below, and the spot where I will break into the blue. As I fall, my stomach finds a new home somewhere around my Adam's Apple, in the middle of my throat .
    Surprisingly, the fall was not one of those adrenaline-fueled moments that seems to last forever. It was quick. So quick that I almost don't have the presence of mind to prepare myself for the force which will overcome me when I break the surface tension of the water. At the last possible fraction of a second, I bring my arms in close to my body, bring my feet together, close my eyes and tilt my head back.
    I feel my body enter the water violently. The resistance of the water, coupled with the position I entered the water in makes me shudder back and forth somewhat violently. When I finally come to rest, fifteen or so feet deep in the water, I'm almost flat on my back and looking up. I start swimming for the surface, exhaling air as I pull myself up. Soon I am rewarded with the sensation of broaching the surface, and take a gigantic breath of air.
    Turning my gaze back up from whence I came, I see Kevin's smiling face peering over the lip at me. I see him raise his hand and give me a thumbs-up.  A salute for my successful jump.
    To my right, I see Bracken, climbing the ladder to safety. He looks down over his shoulder at me.
    "Was that fun?"
    "You know it!" I exclaim. "Get your ass up that ladder, I'm right behind you and I want to go again!"

29-B. The Old Man, The Boy, and The Sea (Read Second)

Author's Note: This is the third-person imagining of my scene.

    The old man was enjoying his lazy afternoon fishing with his grandson. He had chosen to take the boy to a very special place on the island, South Point. A place very much dear to him, South Point was the place the old man went to when he wanted solace. Today, he was sharing that solace with someone very dear to him.
    The two of them had driven all the way from their home in Kailua-Kona. They past South down the coast past the famous Kona Coffee plantations, past the quiet town of Captain Cook, and down the lonely ten mile stretch of road that led to South Point.
    The road from the highway to South Point is one of a kind in the Hawaiian Islands. It feels more like a trip across Midwestern farm country, with the exception that the horizon is graced with blue ocean on one side, and Mauna Loa volcano on the other. It's slowly rolling hills, covered in grassy cattle pastures.
    The boy pointed as they drove past one field, "What are those grandpa?" he asked.
    "Windmills. The government put them here a long time ago, when Jimmy Carter was president," the old man answered, not taking his gaze from the road.
    "Who's Jimmy Carter?" the boy quietly thought aloud, his grandfather not hearing him.
    The two drove on, the old man's 1980's Nissan compact pickup creaking and groaning as they made their wave up, over, and down the endless rolling hills. Soon they were pulling up to the parking area by the cliffs.  The old man looked at the boy.
    "Stay close to me son. Don't go near the cliff until I have everything ready. If you fall in, it will be very bad," he cautioned his only grandchild.
    "Okay grandpa. I won't," the boy complied.
    As the two of them sat about removing their fishing tackle, the boy surveyed the new surroundings. He could tell that to one side of him was a massive set of cliffs that dropped off into the water. To the other side, there was rolling grasslands, with some dirt trails cutting their way across the landscape. He could see a peak rising in the distance next to the coast in that direction.
    "What's over there grandpa?" the boy asked while pointing at the peak.
    "The Green Sand Beach," the old man said. "It's almost a mile from here."
    "Green Sand? I thought sand was black or white," the boy half asked, half stated to his grandfather.
    The old man pointed way up the coastline to a black sand beach. "You remember how I told you a black sand beach is made?"
    "Yes grandpa. When lava flows into the sea it cools down super-fast. When it does that it be hardens and breaks real quick," the junior geologist stated.
    "Very good. I'm so proud of how smart you are," he doted on his grandson, "The Green Sand beach was made the same way, except the lava that made it contained a lot of olivine."
    "Olivine? How do olives get in the lava?"
    "Not olives, olivine. It's a mineral, a rock. But it's typically an olive-green color…"
    "So, it shatters when it hits the water as lava, and becomes green sand?" the boy interjected.
    "You are too smart!" the old man said, reaching down to pat the boy on the head. "Now lets go fishing."
    The two anglers grabbed their long surfcasting rods, along with the rather large tackle boxes that the old man had kept in his shed for years. They contained the tackle that would only be used for this particular fishing spot. They walked to within ten feet of the ledge, and the old man nodded to the boy to place his gear on the ground there.
    "I'll set this up, you just sit here and watch. Okay?" the old man instructed.
    "Okay grandpa," the boy acknowledged.
    The old man started pulling tackle from the boxes, and laying out on the ground before them. As he was doing this, a white Jeep pulled up and three men in their early twenties got out and walked to the cliff, about fifty yards away from the old man and the boy.
    "Tell me the story about your grandpa again, please," the boy asked his grandfather.   
    "The one about the barracuda?"
    "Yeah."
    "Well, my grandfather used to come out here and fish out of a small boat…"
    "How did he get it down there?" the boy interrupted.
    The old man pointed over to where the three young men stood.
    "Do you see that platform?"
    The boy nodded.
    "You see the pulley on the arch on the ocean side?"
    Again, the boy nodded.
    "He would lower the boat down using that pulley, then climb down the ladder to it."
    The man continued working as he started in on the story. His fingers working delicately to bait hooks onto yard-long leaders.
    "My grandpa would then paddle out just a little ways and tap his oar on the bottom of the boat three times. Sometimes he would have to do this a few times, but eventually a six-foot barracuda would show up.
    "Grandpa would throw a little bit of steak or chicken into the water, and the barracuda would eat it. Then the barracuda would kill fish for Grandpa. They would float to the surface, and he would put them in his boat.
    "When he had enough, he'd throw another bite to the barracuda, tap the bottom of the boat three times, and head back to the ladder and pull his boat out."
    The little boy was wide eyed imagining this tale his grandfather was telling him. He thought it would be amazing to have a barracuda for a friend.
    The boy's daydream was cut short when he heard a loud scream coming from down the cliff.
    "AAAAHHHH!" the shortest of the young men was screaming  and running for the ledge.
    The boy cupped his hands over his cheeks and looked in shock as the young man soared over the ledge and down towards the water below.
    "Geronimo!" the young man cried, right before he hit the water.
    "Oh my gosh! What if the barracuda is down there? Will he hurt him?" the boy asked his grandfather as he turned to him frantically.
    His grandfather didn't even look up from his job fixing his tackle.
    "I wouldn't worry about a barracuda. That was just a fishing tale my grandfather liked to tell when I was a boy. It's not true. I don't know anyone who's ever seen a barracuda around here, " the old man said to the boy, trying to calm him.
    "But don't we have barracuda in the water outside Kailua? Why wouldn't they be here? It's not far."
    "Because, if a barracuda came down here, it would get eaten pretty fast," the old man chuckled.
    The boy's eyes widened once again.
    "Eaten? What could eat a barracuda?" the boy asked, completely bewildered.
    "Well, Grandson, the waters off South Point are the biggest shark breeding ground in the entire State of Hawaii."