A PET AUCTION: PART II

    Flying into Detroit Metro Airport reminds me of the sonnet “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley: “`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless  and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away." 
    “Once upon a time,” as all fairy tales begin, the American auto industry was thriving, and so Detroit, once the fourth largest city in the U.S. was king of kings, rivaling the major American cities, not just those in the Midwest but those on the coasts too.  My grandpa grew up in that Detroit, and like the rest in his generation, “the Greatest Generation,” the generation that grew out of the Great Depression and World War II, he embraced the realization of the American Dream.   
    Now Detroit is a dead statue of a city, like Ozymandias, a shell of the past.  The American auto industry has crumbled under both internal and external stresses, under a domestic healthcare system where industries must spend billions of dollars providing health insurance for their employees, and under a global system where countries on the other side of the world can afford cheap labor.  Downtown Detroit is a wasteland of abandoned skyscrapers, new Tiger Stadium, Ford Field, and, of course, the occasional casino, where the downtrodden pray for better luck. 
    As Laurence Gonzales notes in “Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things,” the casino serves as a metaphor for our modern condition, maybe even for the rise and fall of the Great American City:  "The games in a casino are designed to give the house a statistical advantage, so that over a vast number of plays, the house will inevitably win.  Even when you win, someone else in the casino is losing.  They’re losing more than you’re winning.  If you play long enough, you’ll always lose at least as much as the percentage known as the house edge.  So we can view our world – the universe – as a casino, in which we pay a price to play the game.  We can build order here and appear to win.  But the price for reducing entropy in our little corner is that we create even more entropy everywhere             else."
    I can’t help but see this metaphor in Detroit, where the house has made it clear that with winning comes losing, where entropy – the measure of how much of the energy that was available to do work has been rendered unable to do work – is a reality.  A man in India lands a job on an assembly line modeled after Ford’s, where he inspects microprocessors that are used in some blackberries.  The Indian man buys a car made on an assembly line in Korea, which creates toxic waste dumps in Ghana (but that is not part of this story).  The Indian man’s product, a new blackberry, is used by a loan officer in Detroit, who has given Joe, despite the fact he was laid off, a loan for a subprime mortgage.  Joe eventually forecloses on his house (unleashing another chain of events), all because of the assembly line his former employer Ford, modeled for posterity.  Joe gambled, hoping he would be the exception to the rule, but his gamble was the result of the entropy - useless energy, the departure of utility and hope - created by the rise of technology, outsourcing and a failing American city.  A man in India and a car company in Korea are winning, but Joe is losing, and for the time being, so is Detroit. 
    The average price for a house in Detroit is now hovering around $12,000.  Detroit Tigers tickets are cheap too, maybe $10 for bleacher seats.  This brings me back to my grandpa, a man, who like most of the Ketais, stayed in Detroit, through the riots in the Sixties and “white flight,” and through the bankruptcy of the American auto industry.
    My grandpa always saw the silver lining in things no matter how bleak the surroundings, and he loved the Detroit Tigers.  I spent many of my childhood summers in Michigan, visiting my grandparents.   It was in Detroit that I learned to appreciate baseball, the game of patience and inches, where if one is patient enough things will invariably change, the pitcher from the away team will miss his spot by inches and the home team will hit a single, maybe even a homerun. 
    Before a game at old Tiger Stadium (before Magglio, Pudge and the Tigers’ world series run and before the new stadium), my grandpa took me out for lunch and a baseball game.  We went to a steakhouse in Downtown Detroit, a hole in the wall kind of place tucked beneath the shadows of the abandoned skyscrapers.  They had a deal where you could park your car in their fenced lot, eat lunch and afterward would give you a ride to the game in a 15 passenger van – all of which was done for convenience but also probably safety.  Inside, the owner of the establishment, another Detroit old-timer who knew my grandpa, greeted us as if he knew we were coming.  He suggested the prime rib, so that’s what we had.  Before the game my grandpa insisted he leave our leftovers in the parked car, despite the 100 degree heat, and later to my astonishment, despite the hygiene of actually eating those leftovers.  I guess he just didn’t want to waste anything, something my generation knows little about.  Truth be told, I don’t remember if the Tigers won or not, but one thing is certain, we stayed for the whole game, and in those moments Detroit was alive for me.  The small things in life - love, baseball, cold prime rib, spending time with my grandfather - persevere, shoving a small measure of entropy out of sight. That old broken city was once again winning.      

Pet Auction in the U.S.: A Prelude

Dear Potential Customer,
When the going gets weird, (naturally) the weird turn pro. Of course I know this. I am a student of Dr. Thompson. He smoked, and drank, and imbibed, and of course, purged every once and awhile, before swallowing shells from a .12 gauge. Those purges were as grotesque, as cowardly as his demise, but as Perez Hilton knows, the cowardly grotesque, however ephemeral, is popular, and popular is kind of cute these days. Stories are cute like puppies and kittens rolling around in a shallow bubble bath, and I am giving them away. (Don't fret, they will not drown, we will draw a lukewarm bath and make sure it is shallow enough for the cuteness to breathe, and frolic). I will call this a prelude to the grotesque, or more aptly a pet auction. As I'm sure you know, the cuteness is almost unbearable. After all you would have to be an asshole, a real Bukowski or Salinger, to give away so many of those little guys, even if you are a severely allergic. Why not sit on the porch, sipping an Arnold Palmer, admiring those cute stories, thinking to yourself (even if you are a sickly, lecherous old man, full of pith and sardonic zest), "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." Show some gratitude between the sneezes and through those red eyes, show some appreciation for all these stories. A Doctor of poetry once said something like, "the mystic chords of our memories, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." How refreshing, "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." I am saying this because the better angels would absolutely insist upon it, of this I am certain.
Here is the first item for auction. A few days ago, a Major in the U.S. army walks into a clinic at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas and shoots his patients. The Major is an Arab American (Muslim, born in Jordan), and that morning, donning his hajib, bought his usual breakfast at the local diner - hash, eggs, bacon - and stomach full, still saw no way out. His lawyers had not deferred his deployment to the middle east, to the real war, where his patients diagnoses were written. He felt responsible for his patients, and the busted hands they were dealt. They murdered people of his faith and felt sorry about it later. He listened to them with cold professionalism. Still cold, he took two handguns, and shot indiscriminately, killing, despite his oath to the safeguard the citizens protected by constitution, despite his oath to the medical practice and Hippocrates. But unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, in Killeen this was a rampage, mass murder, capitol murder, a death sentence. Thus far, he has survived, and he is and always will be an American until his fatalistic sentence is served.
Before 1991, Killeen was best known for its proximity to this now infamous Fort Hood, a bastion of American might protecting America from enemies within and without. But on October 16th, 1991, at 12:45 p.m., 35-year-old George Hennard of nearby Belton drove his pickup truck through a window at the Killeen Luby's and killed 24 people. He was an American too. Where are the better angels of our nature, where is the swelling of the chorus of our Union? I am tired of the blood baths in Killeen.
There used to be a Luby's in my hometown, a town which also housed a National Guard Armory and an Airforce base. During Desert Storm, my AYSO soccer games would halt as we watched B-2 stealth bombers fly over the field like geometric renderings of California Condors (the species on the verge of extinction kept in tall webbed cages at the city zoo). After the half-time treats of Capri Sun and sliced oranges, and the post game rice krispie treats provided by the rotating cohort of soccer moms, my family would go to Luby's for an early dinner or a late lunch. One afternoon, my mother asked her friend, another soccer mom, if she'd heard about the awful, just so awful, massacre at the Luby's in Texas. I stopped scooping up my instant mashed potatoes with my buttered roll, and listened. "Can you imagine. He must have had a screw loose." This is what my mother's friend said. "A Screw loose." Luby's continued to be my favorite childhood cafeteria-style diner, long after the 1991. Why would something in a state so far away affect my love for Luby's mashed potatoes and buttered rolls, "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." We continued our post-game ritual until Luby's began to close locations across the country, and eventually the one in our town. I think it is a Shoney's now, the same really, but much different. More fried food - chicken fried steak, fried popcorn shrimp and okra - and no key lime pie or warm buttered rolls.
I doubt the killings have anything to do with anything. We are so far away. But I have a palpable craving for that nostalgia, for that simple routine, where loose screws meant nothing to me. Where Killeen, Texas was just another small town that I couldn't even imagine (and as a child, I could imagine just about anything). Where I didn't feel like we had so much to give away, so much life to lose. Speaking of giving things away, I will end this auction by giving you one of my favorite jokes. It is from the great American novel and takes place in a time when the U.S. has ended all war. A clown, renowned for his wit and humor, named Paggliaci, is coming to town and the tickets are bought in minutes, maybe seconds, much like a Lakers versus Celtics game, or a Jonas Brothers concert. The night before the much anticipated event, a man walks into a psychiatrist's office and demands to be seen. He is on the verge of a nervous break down and can no longer see any cuteness, anything nice in the world around him. The psychiatrist obliges and sits the man down on a reclining leather chair. "What is the problem sir." The man tells the psychiatrist his life story, while the psychiatrist take diligent notes, coldly calculating a diagnosis. After an hour of banter, the psychiatrist writes his presciption, "Ah, I have the perfect solution! There is a clown coming to town tomorrow night. I can wrangle up some tickets. Have you ever heard of him? He is called Paggliaci." The patient frantically runs his hands through his hair and stands up suddenly. "But Doctor, I am Paggliaci." And so it goes...

Good Out There

The Coast Guard floatplane lurched with the swells as they rolled beneath its tin pontoons. Boggs slouched in the copilot seat. A North wind carried the plane’s metallic creaking and the slapping of waves towards the rocky shore, filling the cabin with cold silence. “That there’s the Devil’s thumb,” Boggs said nodding his head towards the jagged horizon. The outline of a lone gnarled peak rose out of the pale blue haze. “Abomination must be the single loneliest place in all God’s creation. Snow slides right off it.” Boggs sat up, reaching for a pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. “Much obliged. You know these here,” he said shaking the pack, “these here is the one thing I missed. Nobody. Not a thing otherwise.” Boggs took a lighter out of his shirt pocket. “Shit, you the first Man I’ve shared a word with in months.” He struck a match and held it to the cigarette dangling between his pursed lips. “Alaska. This no man’s land. And you find me.” He squinted as he took a drag and turned to the pilot. “Thing is,” he exhaled the smoke, “Boggs don’t need to be saved.” The rising tide carried the rescue plane up the narrows, away from home.
* * *
He had grown accustomed to the easy rhythms of life in the Alaskan wilderness, a routine of simple necessity. He unzipped his tent and stumbled into the fog. The sun was out, it had neither risen nor fallen, but he knew it was time for breakfast. He unzipped his boat bag and removed his empty water tins. He had found the river was least salty at breakfast tide, low tide, when the Ocean water was ebbing out of the inlet. He filled the tins, watching for fish jumping in the bay. The pink belly of a salmon shot out of the water, glistening in the sun before it splashed back into the water. He took an armful of kindling out of his tent. The pinkies were beginning their run, and would be swimming up the river at dinner tide. He took one of the lighters out of his dry bag. The prospect of fresh meat wasn’t completely unreasonable. The humpies had run earlier in the summer; He’d waded into the cold water and watched hundreds of salmon swim right by his feet, but they wouldn’t bite his hand line. When he had finally trapped one in an eddy and tried to grab it, his fingers sunk right into its soft flesh. They were rotting. They hadn’t come to the river for food but to lay their eggs and die. He set one of the water tins in the fire to boil. He had to get the pinkies early, before they began eating themselves.
* * *
That morning he woke to a sound he’d grown to fear more than any animal. The choking mechanical drone interrupted the morning’s sleepy cadence. Planes had passed overhead before. He would hear the slight buzzing as the speck grew into something faintly recognizable, and would watch as it shrunk back into silence. But this plane swooped in closer with each pass, like a murder of crows closing in on carrion. It landed in his bay, skiing to a halt a few hundred yards from his home. He sprung into the woods, feeling the loathing at his back. He peered into the bay from behind a thicket, towards the hissing voices that encouraged his habits, the addictions he’d tried to escape. The whooshing propellers sliced through the air in sardonic whispers – a sinner amongst the civilized. The gurgling engines echoed throughout the bay in a fat man’s chortle – bleed? He ran his calloused fingers through his hair. The pilot cut the engines, and for a moment silence had won. “Men come to Alaska to save themselves,” he choked, staring at the plane and the pilot’s neck, his Adam’s apple. his distended jugular veins. The pilot hung out of the plane’s open door, and drew a radio to his pursed mouth. “Fuck them all, please, fuck them all,” he pleaded helplessly as he rose from the shadows. “For that which I do, I know not,” he replied, sauntering out of the forest towards the beach. “’But what I hate,’” he snickered, “’that I do.’” He began to paddle towards the rescue plane. “Ain’t Boggs’ fault.”
* * *
The fish slapped its body on the rocky shore, like it was trying to put itself out of its misery. This was the first pinkie he’d caught - a solid block of muscle, with gray and pink sequins running from the tale to its beaked mouth. The trapped salmon slowed its convulsions. He knelt over the fish. Dirt was beginning to stick to the scales, muddying its color. He put one hand over the fish’s pulsating gills, and grabbed a baseball-sized rock with the other. He pinned it on its side, and for a moment it stopped struggling, staring at him with one glassy eye. The fish jerked, almost like it was trying to look away. He brought the rock down and felt it crush bone. It was still, its crushed eye tilted into its head like an off-kilter saucer. He began to clean and fillet the fish. He threw the guts and orange roe into the water, and carried the pink slabs of meat to the smoldering fire pit. .
* * *
Boggs took another cigarette out of the crumpled pack. He paused for a moment, despondently staring into emptiness of the metal cabin. He smoked the last cigarette, gazing up the narrows, knowing that Petersburg lay waiting at the end. He looked at the pilot slumped over in his seat. “Hey there, boss man,” Boggs reached for the VHF radio at the body’s feet, covered in a viscous layer of dark red blood. “That’s right. How ‘bout we get us rescued boss…man.” He tossed the empty pack of cigarettes out of the window into the calm, dark water. The rising moon hovered above the Alaskan pan-handle. Resigned, Boggs let out a laugh, bitter as lemon grass trying to survive in the tundra, “Ain’t much good out there no how.”