The Covered Virgin Of Guadalupe
It was 1998.
The circuits had been crossed in my little luxury condo the same way they had been crossed in our little green plantation house. The electrical intensity was less. Instead of the bristling anger caused by the high voltage, the atmosphere was subdued, like a narcotic drip into an intravenous needle into the arm.
I was sluggish and thick-lidded.
I felt depressed.
But I wasn’t alone.
There was the incessant clatter of other voices congregating around the refrigerator and toaster.
David Wang, the playwright best known for his Ms. Saigon, described a similar situation in "1000 Airplanes on the Roof." "The Bee Hive” in his libretto for the Philip Glass opera or multi-media event was a similar conundrun of voices buzzing bee-like in his honey comb brain.
In my review of the opera, I went to great lengths in what is probably the worst lead of my career to describe a person hanging out by the cement pond , Beverly Hillbilly's like, (I said) as a spinning, neon threaded disc descended. There was no time to gee-gaw. It kidnapped him.
“1,000 Airplanes” is the best play on PTSD or trauma I’ve ever seen.
It deals with the dilemma of telling other people what has happened to you, an event so overwelming that you can barely describe it to yourself. I've talked about it before
I'm not sure how.
All I knew was that I was going to Federal Court with my issues, neon and all.
I was aware that judges are seldom poets in thier black gowns. They are not therapists. They are into the tittles of how a train jumps tracks, in what place and manner, and to what consequences.
It was not about one train anymore. The terminal had been kidnapped by aliens. It was raining trains.
My police officer friends were much the same as the judge.
They were not interested in commentary.
When I wore the name tag in my profession, I was a community member in a respectable position. I accessed crisis needs for the police. In a small town like Wai’anae, their biggest problems were things like prisoner transports of the mentally unstable and in cooling domestic violence situations after the event.
When I wore the name tag I dealt with cocaine and ice smoking rage addicts with shotguns. I picked-up teens that were just released from jail after letters of apprehension were served or who were found with guns in thier pajamas, dugs, or stolen objects.
Those exchanges were predictable. You got the beep. You did the call.
You did what you were asked to do and winged the rest.
Without an embossed tag, I was just another person with a crazy story.
I lacked a role to hide behind.
Instead of responding I was seeking response.
By then I wasn’t dressing as well.
I needed a haircut and I wasn’t doing the police department any favors by calling them.
I looked like every other crime victim, stunned stupid by events.
In a stunned state I was easy to deceive. Most people are after a trauma.
My apartment telephone was on a closed circuit.
My 911 call was intercepted. An operator from what was identified as Frontier Communications answered the phone and directed it.
I had a fake cop respond on 911 call.
He had a faded uniform and needed a haircut. He had sideburns from the late 70s and it was 1998.
He actually had fingerprint powder in his car. He left me to go get it. When he returned he had what looked like an olive jar.
It said, “Finger Print” powder on it in big black letters. It was generic, not brand Fingerprint powder. It said what it did on a plain white label.
It had fingerprints all over it.
He dumped the powder all over the tile counter and left the jar in a pile of gunpowder when he left.
Before he sauntered out the door, I finally got him to take a sample of what ever I was dosed with from the refrigerator. It was a Coke with some kind of narcotic in it.
It had smelled funny. I took two tiny sips to identify it and ended up going down like a roller coaster into sleep.
It had knocked me out for about 48 hours, in which time my former fiancée was assaulted.
I didn’t find that out until later.
Her apartment was trashed when I came looking for her.
She was gone.
The place smelled like gym.
The Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall was covered with a thrown sheet.
The man who played cops and robbers was probably a security guard or private investigator. I had seen them before. They hired people to do the parts. The fake detectives were also guilty of sexually assualting people on the highway or beach.
This one actually turned in the sample to the police department.
It was heavy with the sweet smell of codeine. Two small sips were enough to knock me out.
If one of the kids or I had taken a bigger sip or drank half a can we'd be dead.
I was aware that there were a series of pharmacy robberies reported in the previous months.
The primary goal of the robberies had been codiene and morphene, though perscription electrical brain stimulators were also stolen.
This hooked into several other crimes I had become aware of. The problem with being disabled was you hung out all day. With time on your hands you became more aware of where you lived and what wa s going on around you.
I prefered working all day and coming home exaughsted.
My situation got worse.
Someone had tried to run me off the road. My car was shot at while it was at the beach. To taop it all off, I had been poisoned at least nine times. I was beginning to get the hang of things.
Someone was trying to tell me something.
I had become very careful with things that could be poisoned.
The drugs were of various kinds.
Someone, evidently trying to help me, had left three coke cans neatly lined up in the refrigerator in the previous month.
The first was closed.
The second had the tab pushed back.
The third had the tab replaced so it looked normal.
I had been tipped off about a way to make an open can look new and unopened.
I sipped and smelled things before I drank them.
I followed my pharmacist’s advice to the letter.
“When in doubt, throw it out.”
The chili in my apartment was also laced with codeine as was the chili in my fiancée’s apartment.
She had three kids, two of them disabled. If a child had drank the entire coke he or she would be dead.
I knew it. I worried.
All notions of a friendly dispute resolved in court were gone. I was in a lunatic situation. There was noone to talk to about it.
All of a sudden it was espionage and organized crime tactics.
I didn’t know where it was coming from.
I did know that initial problems occurred because my girlfriend was Latina and of mixed racial heritage.
There were some that did not approve and they let us know.
She was Indian, French, Italian and African though her skin tone was whiter than mine.
I am Italian-American.
When we first started dating she wore a lot of white powder on her face like a mime so we’d be the same color. She was a good deal lighter with the white pancake flake on.
It bothered me.
In bed one night I said, “Honey, look” comparing thighs, “You are whiter than I am.”
It took her a long time to accept the fact.
She had a wonderfully dense accent and worked hard on her vocabulary. She read voluminously in English and Spanish and always had her dictionary with her.
Like me, she was late in learning to speak. She was silent until about age 5. She was hearing impaired. Her mom, a school teacher, taught her to talk with marbles in her mouth so she’d speak clearly.
I never fully understood that one.
When I did it to learn to speak clearly again I sounded like I had marbles in my mouth.
She spoke very well and was always my best teacher.
But it took her awhile to get this simple fact. She knew a lot more about racism than I did.
With her I had discovered certain attitudes towards Latina that I never knew existed. I noted it.
In 1998, things were as strange as they could be, in attitude and danger and in culture.
I was learning as fast as I could.
Like in “1,000 Airplanes on the roof” I was having to talk about UFO like events to people concerned about fresh fish and poi.
I had to communicate.
Poisoned with toxins, anthrax and poverty O kept things to myself, feeling more and more distant from my community and neighbors. My brain was fudge.
I didn’t know what to do.
Thank God people did.
One officer on another 9-11 called subdued his disgust and sat down at the kitchen table with me.
“When you are in doubt about the legitimacy of an officer in the field” he said, “ask him or her if they are on or off duty. Look at the uniform and the grooming. Look especially at the belt and what has been issued. Look at the name tag.”
He pointed to the gun, the ammo cartridge, baton and gun.
If doubt continues call the supervisor.
In Los Angeles the previous week, someone, pretending to be a police officer was shooting people on the interstate and exchange.
The Chief of Police there had suggested slowing down, putting the blinkers on and proceeding to the nearest police station as a suggestion.
Nothing was as it seemed. Thought before action were required. Stepping away from conditioned responses was highly recommended.
I had to regroup.
As the Firesign Theatre used to sasy, “Everything you know is wrong.”
It was 1998.
The circuits had been crossed in my little luxury condo the same way they had been crossed in our little green plantation house. The electrical intensity was less. Instead of the bristling anger caused by the high voltage, the atmosphere was subdued, like a narcotic drip into an intravenous needle into the arm.
I was sluggish and thick-lidded.
I felt depressed.
But I wasn’t alone.
There was the incessant clatter of other voices congregating around the refrigerator and toaster.
David Wang, the playwright best known for his Ms. Saigon, described a similar situation in "1000 Airplanes on the Roof." "The Bee Hive” in his libretto for the Philip Glass opera or multi-media event was a similar conundrun of voices buzzing bee-like in his honey comb brain.
In my review of the opera, I went to great lengths in what is probably the worst lead of my career to describe a person hanging out by the cement pond , Beverly Hillbilly's like, (I said) as a spinning, neon threaded disc descended. There was no time to gee-gaw. It kidnapped him.
“1,000 Airplanes” is the best play on PTSD or trauma I’ve ever seen.
It deals with the dilemma of telling other people what has happened to you, an event so overwelming that you can barely describe it to yourself. I've talked about it before
I'm not sure how.
All I knew was that I was going to Federal Court with my issues, neon and all.
I was aware that judges are seldom poets in thier black gowns. They are not therapists. They are into the tittles of how a train jumps tracks, in what place and manner, and to what consequences.
It was not about one train anymore. The terminal had been kidnapped by aliens. It was raining trains.
My police officer friends were much the same as the judge.
They were not interested in commentary.
When I wore the name tag in my profession, I was a community member in a respectable position. I accessed crisis needs for the police. In a small town like Wai’anae, their biggest problems were things like prisoner transports of the mentally unstable and in cooling domestic violence situations after the event.
When I wore the name tag I dealt with cocaine and ice smoking rage addicts with shotguns. I picked-up teens that were just released from jail after letters of apprehension were served or who were found with guns in thier pajamas, dugs, or stolen objects.
Those exchanges were predictable. You got the beep. You did the call.
You did what you were asked to do and winged the rest.
Without an embossed tag, I was just another person with a crazy story.
I lacked a role to hide behind.
Instead of responding I was seeking response.
By then I wasn’t dressing as well.
I needed a haircut and I wasn’t doing the police department any favors by calling them.
I looked like every other crime victim, stunned stupid by events.
In a stunned state I was easy to deceive. Most people are after a trauma.
My apartment telephone was on a closed circuit.
My 911 call was intercepted. An operator from what was identified as Frontier Communications answered the phone and directed it.
I had a fake cop respond on 911 call.
He had a faded uniform and needed a haircut. He had sideburns from the late 70s and it was 1998.
He actually had fingerprint powder in his car. He left me to go get it. When he returned he had what looked like an olive jar.
It said, “Finger Print” powder on it in big black letters. It was generic, not brand Fingerprint powder. It said what it did on a plain white label.
It had fingerprints all over it.
He dumped the powder all over the tile counter and left the jar in a pile of gunpowder when he left.
Before he sauntered out the door, I finally got him to take a sample of what ever I was dosed with from the refrigerator. It was a Coke with some kind of narcotic in it.
It had smelled funny. I took two tiny sips to identify it and ended up going down like a roller coaster into sleep.
It had knocked me out for about 48 hours, in which time my former fiancée was assaulted.
I didn’t find that out until later.
Her apartment was trashed when I came looking for her.
She was gone.
The place smelled like gym.
The Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall was covered with a thrown sheet.
The man who played cops and robbers was probably a security guard or private investigator. I had seen them before. They hired people to do the parts. The fake detectives were also guilty of sexually assualting people on the highway or beach.
This one actually turned in the sample to the police department.
It was heavy with the sweet smell of codeine. Two small sips were enough to knock me out.
If one of the kids or I had taken a bigger sip or drank half a can we'd be dead.
I was aware that there were a series of pharmacy robberies reported in the previous months.
The primary goal of the robberies had been codiene and morphene, though perscription electrical brain stimulators were also stolen.
This hooked into several other crimes I had become aware of. The problem with being disabled was you hung out all day. With time on your hands you became more aware of where you lived and what wa s going on around you.
I prefered working all day and coming home exaughsted.
My situation got worse.
Someone had tried to run me off the road. My car was shot at while it was at the beach. To taop it all off, I had been poisoned at least nine times. I was beginning to get the hang of things.
Someone was trying to tell me something.
I had become very careful with things that could be poisoned.
The drugs were of various kinds.
Someone, evidently trying to help me, had left three coke cans neatly lined up in the refrigerator in the previous month.
The first was closed.
The second had the tab pushed back.
The third had the tab replaced so it looked normal.
I had been tipped off about a way to make an open can look new and unopened.
I sipped and smelled things before I drank them.
I followed my pharmacist’s advice to the letter.
“When in doubt, throw it out.”
The chili in my apartment was also laced with codeine as was the chili in my fiancée’s apartment.
She had three kids, two of them disabled. If a child had drank the entire coke he or she would be dead.
I knew it. I worried.
All notions of a friendly dispute resolved in court were gone. I was in a lunatic situation. There was noone to talk to about it.
All of a sudden it was espionage and organized crime tactics.
I didn’t know where it was coming from.
I did know that initial problems occurred because my girlfriend was Latina and of mixed racial heritage.
There were some that did not approve and they let us know.
She was Indian, French, Italian and African though her skin tone was whiter than mine.
I am Italian-American.
When we first started dating she wore a lot of white powder on her face like a mime so we’d be the same color. She was a good deal lighter with the white pancake flake on.
It bothered me.
In bed one night I said, “Honey, look” comparing thighs, “You are whiter than I am.”
It took her a long time to accept the fact.
She had a wonderfully dense accent and worked hard on her vocabulary. She read voluminously in English and Spanish and always had her dictionary with her.
Like me, she was late in learning to speak. She was silent until about age 5. She was hearing impaired. Her mom, a school teacher, taught her to talk with marbles in her mouth so she’d speak clearly.
I never fully understood that one.
When I did it to learn to speak clearly again I sounded like I had marbles in my mouth.
She spoke very well and was always my best teacher.
But it took her awhile to get this simple fact. She knew a lot more about racism than I did.
With her I had discovered certain attitudes towards Latina that I never knew existed. I noted it.
In 1998, things were as strange as they could be, in attitude and danger and in culture.
I was learning as fast as I could.
Like in “1,000 Airplanes on the roof” I was having to talk about UFO like events to people concerned about fresh fish and poi.
I had to communicate.
Poisoned with toxins, anthrax and poverty O kept things to myself, feeling more and more distant from my community and neighbors. My brain was fudge.
I didn’t know what to do.
Thank God people did.
One officer on another 9-11 called subdued his disgust and sat down at the kitchen table with me.
“When you are in doubt about the legitimacy of an officer in the field” he said, “ask him or her if they are on or off duty. Look at the uniform and the grooming. Look especially at the belt and what has been issued. Look at the name tag.”
He pointed to the gun, the ammo cartridge, baton and gun.
If doubt continues call the supervisor.
In Los Angeles the previous week, someone, pretending to be a police officer was shooting people on the interstate and exchange.
The Chief of Police there had suggested slowing down, putting the blinkers on and proceeding to the nearest police station as a suggestion.
Nothing was as it seemed. Thought before action were required. Stepping away from conditioned responses was highly recommended.
I had to regroup.
As the Firesign Theatre used to sasy, “Everything you know is wrong.”
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