monkeyplus1

DEADY-DEAD, DEADY-DEAD.
BOUGHT THE FARM.
SAILED FOR THE WESTERN LANDS.
KICKED THE BUCKET.
ATE THE BULLET.
SHUFFLED OFF THIS MORTAL COIL.
TOOK A DIRT NAP.
PUSHING UP DAISIES.
THE BIG SLEEP.
RETURNED TO THE SOURCE.
PUT THE GODDAMNED YIN TO THE MOTHERFUCKING YANG.

“Don’t be afraid of dying. Think of it happening every night. You go to sleep, you die for a day.” A couple of bong-hits, and Jack was feeling philosophical.

“Yah, but you wake up the next day, same person. How’s that death?” asks Mick, wry smile, half-serious. Devil’s advocate.

Jack repeats the quote, sticking his chest out and raising his finger for dramatic effect, “the Adept dies every night.”

The Adept. The one who has passed the Fear test, and continued onward. Downward, upward, who is to say? Onward, nonetheless. No need to mention it out loud.

“Dies every night…and wakes up every next morning as the same person,” adds Mick, now laughing to himself in sarcasm, seeing as to how Jack was taking it serious, and probably fighting the urge to grin.

“No, not the same person. If you have enough pieces, you can build something completely different,” notes Jack.

Mick smirks, and hefts a half-full beer bottle in his hand, thinking of his next (sarcastic) move.

Finally, “if you have enough pieces, the harder it is to pull them together, get your shit together, get something done that day. Get paid.”

Jack says nothing, shifts weight on his other foot. Yeah, he’s right. Looks off to the side.

“Got to be a citizen in the morning,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, then takes a deep breath.

Gritty’s been sitting in the sidelines, a little too faded to have added to the volley, but after a pause of ten or so strange seconds adds…

“..Wakka.”

Wakka = I understand. Ok. 10-4.

Wakka, Wakka = right on, man.

Wakka, Wakka, Wakka = OMGFAWKYES!!11!!ONE!!

I was walking by a coffee and pastry shop today. Groups of housewives, a few babies-in-arms, were sitting there in the mid-afternoon, having coffee and talking while their husbands were out making the money.

One handsome woman was holding a full D-cup breast in her hand, waving the wide, brownish-nipple in the face of a hungry baby, all the while undistracted from the conversation with a friend.

I wasn’t a breast-fed child. The site of a plump nursing breast juicy-full of milk, a nipple begging for soft-chewing and suckling, just does something for me.

It begs an unanswered question.

No, I’ve tried to answer the question. I enjoy trying.

But I’m careful to balance the desire with satisfaction. When you get what you want, you no longer want it. I want just enough to keep on wanting it, and not a bit more.

WAKKA.mp1 to earth, you read me? over.
(you have to say “over”)

some people shouldn’t be left alone with a pen.

you are the psychologist. YOU interpret my drawing…
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

WHAT?!

so, one thing did end up turning my day around for the better.

I decided to stop in at a local Thai restaurant to pick up some dinner. I sat down at the take-out counter, and plopped my book down. “Pak Six” by Lt.Col. G.I. Basel, an F-105 Thunderchief (”Thud”) pilot who flew out of Thailand to bomb targets in the route packs of North Vietnam in 1967. Route pack six contained Hanoi, the capitol of North Vietnam, and unquestionably the most heavily defended airspace in history.

Sure, I’ve read a few books of this sort. Ed Cobleigh’s “War for the Hell of it”, Jack Broughton’s “Thud Ridge”, Ed Rasimus’ “When Thunder Rolled”, Ken Bell’s “100 Missions North”, all written by F-105 pilots who tell the story first-hand.

The book is on the counter, face up, showing a painting of the author’s F-105 on fire after taking fire, climbing out into the skies above North Vietnam. (The pilot of this particular book was shot down before completing his 100 missions, was grievously wounded, but escaped capture and subsequent torture at the hands of very angry NVA forces).

A man in his early 60s walks in to pick up his order, immediately eyes the book, and says “F-105 Thunderchief”. My jaw drops and I turn to look at this guy. No glasses, and a keen, sharp-eyed focus to his clear blue eyes. Friendly looking guy.

Eyeing the picture, he reverently names the engine type, the unique kind of afterburner. He says he didn’t know there were books written by Thud pilots, and I happily name off the half-dozen I’ve read.

There is a look of nostalgia in his eyes while he talks about how beautiful and powerful those “birds” were, how tall they were. He even called it a “century series” fighter, a rarely-used designation for the 1950s era fighters, including the Thud, that were designed to fight the cold-war before Vietnam flared up.

“You fly?” I ventured.

“Yup,” he nods, “EC-135s and KC-135s.”

I’ve been in a KC-135, spent four hours aloft in one during an “incentive ride” when I was in rotc and still considering a career as an Air Force pilot (I know… how geeky can you get?)

“A tanker!” I say, and he beams a smile back at me. “Well, EC-135s, too. Ten years in the service.” I understood he implied long ago, too.

The KC-135 has been around a while, and they still fly them out of Portland International airport. Their job is to carry a scary amount of fuel, and pump it in mid-air to fighter jets while turning in a race-track pattern. I don’t know much about the EC-135, I think they’ve been retired. Both are militarized Boeing 707s. Some kind of airborne command post, probably replaced with a more current aircraft.

I cracked him up telling him about my “incentive ride” experience in a KC-135, sitting in a web-seat (the inside of a tanker is like an completely stripped-down airliner), as the pilots gunned the engines and we rolled for what seemed like FOREVER before rotating for take-off. “Won’t this thing ever get off the ground!!!”.

He laughed, and named the model number the engines probably were. He said the new engines the kc-135s are outfitted with now have power to spare.

I laid on my belly next to the boom operator as he passed fuel to a flight of F-16s over New Mexico. They flew over Oklahoma, and then down across Dallas, practicing solar naviation, back to Bergstrom AFB in Austin (which is now Austin’s commercial airport).

“You serve overseas?” I ask.

“Okinawa.”

I think for a minute. “Kadena?”. He corrects my pronunciation, and nods affirmatively. Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan.

“I wanted to fly so bad, I almost joined the air force,” I admit.

He raises his eyebrows and smiles, “that’s how they got me.”

Did the Buddha have bad days now and then?

I must have dude-PMS today or something, waking up irritable today. I’m just going to stew in my crabby juices until I get home.

Then, I’m going to boot up my 360, climb into a jet or two, bore some holes in the virtual sky, replacing today’s frustrations with smoking craters of what was bothering me, and patting myself on the back for textbook approaches and greased touchdowns.

Come tomorrow, I’ll be glowing with happiness. Now THAT’s therapy.

You HAVE to check this out!