ZEN AND THE ART OF RADICAL COUNTRY FOLK: Twilight Brunswick Stew at a Commune, The Revolutionary South, & Resisting Culture Wars Reconstruction

RURAL VIRGINIA (ZP) -- I have no fucking clue why she was being so secretive.

A large convenience store/fast food joint near the highway, an all-night place with old burnt coffee tormenting the air with the smell of its age, a dozen or so idle, slightly marijuana-eyed teenagers in baggy pants pacing back and forth at the entrance, a fat sheriff's deputy creeping slowly in a dark-brown cruiser as I pulled in.

Ya know... I told her we could just meet at the Huddle House down the road... I'm not fucking Batman... Good Gawd... I'm in the hometown to visit family, not to hunt down the fucking Riddler...

* * * *

I found a seat at a booth farthest from the door, stirred a cup of the worst truck-stop coffee I've ever had (and trust me, former reporters know shitty coffee), watched the door patiently, enjoyed a strip of venison jerky.

Not being able to eat any other red meat and now living in an Ohio town where eating Bambi is often frowned upon, I savored every bite of the forbidden deer flesh, like a man savors every drop of water in the desert. The coffee may have tasted like it was brewed with Lucifer's ball sweat, but I was glad I'd bought the venison treat earlier in the night at another gas station.

There are, of course, numerous things I miss about living in the Rural South - the food is one of them.

I had a good idea who I was looking for, despite never meeting my subject in person. I'd committed her photo to memory - or, at least, the online avatar she presented as an authentic, true image. One can never be too sure...

Four large white women in too-tight clothing, one Asian kid, a toothless man in a Stars & Bars adorned biker teeshirt, an elderly couple stopping by the counter to ask directions passed through the front doors as I waited.

I had my shitty coffee and my venison to keep me company. It's late at night on a Sunday, and I'm supposed to be on a family vacation. Instead, I'm alone and waiting for a complete stranger in a damned truck stop.

Kinda normal Sunday night for me, now that I think about it...

* * * *

Somehow, she managed to sneak by me. Into the booth slid a young woman, dressed in a black hooded sweat shirt, Capri-style jeans, and eco-friendly sneakers.

"Sorry I'm late. Please tell me you're Jason, because this'll be really creepy if you're not."

"That's me. You must be ________... because if you're not it's more than fucking creepy."

A few moments pass. My twilight stranger seems to be studying me, as if she's suddenly noticed some typo in a favorite book or loose thread in a favorite shirt, some flaw that she's never noticed before.

"You're really Jason? Oxford Fucking Ohio Jason? You know, you weren't kidding when you said you look like a fratboy or a cop..."

I get that a lot, for some reason. I pretend to be insulted, then grin politely. There are worse things to be mistaken for when one reaches an age over 30. Like, well, a senior citizen, for instance...

"Get that a lot. Don't sweat it. Hey... tell you what... so where are we going? This coffee -"

She nodded. This was, she explained, the rendezvous spot. She wanted to make sure I wasn't a serial killer, or psycho-rapist, or, well, a cop or fratboy, in a place with lots of witnesses.

Completely understandable. Use the same technique myself.

Frequently.

* * * *

We headed out to the parking lot, she gave me directions in case I found myself lost, and we hit the road in our separate vehicles down country roads I'd once navigated daily but, a decade later, seemed almost foreign.

I tapped on the steering wheel as I followed her late-model pickup's taillights. The regional country/bluegrass station was playing a familiar standard, the Carter Family's version of Wildwood Flower.

Down cracked gray asphalt and beneath a canopy of oaks and pines, I followed close behind, not trusting my sense of direction. Finally, we turned onto a gravel road, a driveway.

At the end, an old farmhouse, windows lit and welcoming, tucked inside a cocoon of dark treetops. A bonfire burned to one side, with six figures crouched around it, a keg of beer and a table full of homemade food glowing in the light...

Well, I'll be damned. Beer? Beats the hell out of hash browns and eggs at a diner...

FUCKING SWEET! I like these folks already.

* * * *

For the record, not my first visit to an honest-to-God anarchist commune.

First such trip, however, to one in Virginia, of all places, under the cover of darkness and maybe 30 minutes from the farm where I was raised.

Not at all shocking, in retrospect - it is, after all, the mainstream media who's made a big deal about the Old Dominion going from some mythological Red State to some equally illusionary Blue State status during the last few elections, that a governor of Virginia is the chairman of the DNC, that it's the influx of supposedly "progressive," educated-class white liberals from more civilized urban centers who've somehow changed the Commonwealth...

The mainstream media, for the record, knows absolutely jack and shit about the people of my home state, the nature of the Rural South, or the appeal it has for both the collectivist and the individualist, the philosophical socialist and ideological libertarian.

Instead, they've merely constructed an easily digestible version of what being a Virginian means, as if we're somehow not the descendants of Powhatan, General George Patton, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson and George Mason, Patrick Henry, as if we're all good ol' boys, toothless yokels, and former slaves in need of another fascist Reconstruction.

The powerful tend to do such things, after all, because it's easier to simply construct a stereotype than to acknowledge the true diversity and beauty of a group of people, or of individuals, or the dread unwashed masses that scare the living shit out of Republicans and Democrats alike.

Widgets and demographic-based stereotypes are easier to brand with the marks of conformity than reality.

Red State? Blue State? Good God, aren't we a nation of people anymore? Is this now the United Two-Color Crayola Box of America? Who the fuck came up with that dehumanizing jingoist horseshit anyway?

* * * *

The young woman's boyfriend, a big burly man with long hair and bushy beard, greeted me at the car. It was an honor to meet me in person after our communications back and forth the last few months, he said, and he was glad to welcome me to their little experiment in 21st century cooperative living and mutual aid.

A small group, sure, but nice enough and realistic in approach. They're not isolationists, not ideologues, not even professional protesters. My hosts, it turned out, represented folks from all sectors of society...

The boyfriend was a few years older than me, a former dot-com venture capitalist from the West Coast who'd developed a conscience and actually owned the land, the oldest gentleman held two post-grad degrees, the other man a self-described "professional drifter" who never finished high school and was trained as a mechanic. The women, too, were equally diverse - my escort was a trained horticulturist, the other two college drop-outs.

A few other folks drifted in and out from the house - neighbors. A couple of local guys were manning a spit above the fire, roasting a pig (friends of the college girls, my hosts explained) and smoking what smelled like homegrown tobacco from pipes. There were a few women quilting on the porch - one was the mother of the mechanic, visiting, while the rest were friends.

There was even, yes, homemade corn liquor in Mason jars. A fine vintage. I'm a bit of a connoisseur of homemade bootleg spirits...

My arrival coincided with the tail-end of what looked to be one hell of a neighborhood cook-out.

* * * *

It would be easy to write the group off, in fact, as just another midlife attempt at a hippie commune, an attempt to turn back the clock not to a simpler America but to that romanticized, failed agrarian reproach of the 1960s counterculture.

No, that would be unfair. These weren't folks who'd come out to the country to grow weed, fight the Man, or tune out of the modern world in favor of manufactured primitivism. All but the Charlie Daniels-looking owner of the property were from the South; half of the group were native Virginians.

"Out here, we're just able to be ourselves, free. And you're welcome to join us."

That was the common refrain of the night. The conversation was wonderful, the company good, and political debate intriguing. Discussing my own political philosophies online does, indeed, sometimes lead to some very interesting offline situations.

* * * *

A learning experience and, yes, a social experiment that as someone from Virginia, I can claim as evidence that "Change You Can Believe In" comes not from Blue State/Red State rhetoric, not from chest-beating politicians or their campaigns, not from power-hungry Washington or Richmond plutocrats but from individuals, from people.

And one of the benefits to a Libertarian former venture-capitalist and a Green Party - supporting plant expert falling I love, buying a farm in the middle of fucking nowhere, inviting friends willing to work for their supper a place to live rent-free?

Best homemade organic salsa and home-cooked Brunswick Stew (made with free-range chicken and mechanic-shot squirrel, vegetables from the garden) I've had in a long time.

Went well with the beer. And the White Lightning didn't hurt.

Sure beat the hell out of hanging out in the hometown alone, in a damned truck stop, drinking shitty coffee.

EPILOGUE

I made my way back to the lovely hometown at about one in the morning, swung by the Huddle House to use the WiFi and start writing again.

I hit the sack at three in the morning, curled up with a book of my father's, found on a relative's bookshelf recently, from his supposedly "conservative" college days, something I used to read in secret, as a teenager, more than his stash of Playboys...

...A book called Patterns of Anarchy, a literary anthology. Quite entertaining, actually. Especially passages underlined, back in the 1960s, well before I was born...

And to think... the Old Man, in his march towards senior-citizenship, thinks I gained my knowledge of radical political thought from "Communist" undergrad professors or, worse, "Liberals."

Please, Dad.

Heh, I learned it from you, Dad. Thanks for never throwing out books and encouraging me to read things other than the fucking Hardy Boys!

Maybe that ol' Rebel spirit the South is known for, well, maybe it's not dead after all.

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STEEL OF THE SOUTH: More Scary Virginia Stories to Blog in the Dark...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Recently, while stuck on bed rest, I had the opportunity to get some pleasure reading done. At one point, I unearthed my old high school yearbooks.

Flipping through the vulgar comments and past pictures of people I've long forgotten actually brought back some interesting memories.

I found a photograph stuck between a few pages, a photograph of this frightening brute of a kid. He had a sneer on his face that could kill weaker men, eyes full of all sorts of illicit substances, hair parted straight down the middle, bandages covering gashes over his eye and across his nose.

Man, I'd almost forgotten what a hoodlum I was when I was 17. Scared the shit out of me.

And some people wonder why I consider myself fortunate to have survived high school. But I think I turned out just fine. Wouldn't change a thing.

- Jason

* * * *

The machete was brand new, fresh from the Rose's five-and-dime, plastic shrink wrap dangling from the handle.

I heard one of the school's vice-principals shout into his two-way radio as he chased after “Muhammad,” ordering the school's receptionist tell the sheriff's deputies that the “suspect” was armed and dangerous.

Muhammad was normally a peaceful kid, a Black Muslim whose parents had sent him down to Farmville to live with his grandmother. Muhammad had spent his early childhood being instructed in the ways of the Five Percent Nation.

Though a man of peace, who had many friends of many races, he readily admitted to distrusting white people, to being convinced that the FBI had killed Brother Malcolm and Dr. King, to believing that the federal government was pushing crack in housing projects across America.

Muhammad had been suspended from school for fighting with a white kid earlier that day. The white kid had received a lighter sentence. So Muhammad was sent home, and the white kid was sent to In-School Suspension.

Muhammad had obviously gone shopping for some very mean-looking hardware, purchasing a tool to extract his pound of cracker flesh for what he apparently viewed as a racist conspiracy. As he ran past me, after the white kid who'd passed me only a few seconds earlier, I noticed his eyes were aflame with that lust, that murderous thousand-yard stare of a man consumed by his own hatred.

I learned a long time ago that one does not step in the way of a man wielding a machete, even a normally peaceful man. Machetes do not leave pretty wounds and often sever limbs.

Mr. S., a chisel-faced man in his late fifties, was the senior disciplinary administrator of the school district. He'd survived the 'Nam; he once claimed that maintaining discipline in a rural Virginia high school was nothing compared to dealing with Charlie. But despite his reputation as a harsh man, he was also known to be fair and once, according to legend, had even laughed.

Mr. S. plowed through the throngs of 13-18 year-old kids who clogged the sidewalk as they waited for their afternoon buses. He pushed students to the ground as he ran, hollering ahead for students to get out of his way or risk being run down. Some moved out of the vice-principal's path; most did not.

“Muhammad” apparently did catch up with the white kid, who'd run to the school office for shelter. The principal convinced the Five Percenter, the normally peaceful kid with many friends of many races, to put down his weapon before he ended up doing something he'd later regret.

By the time the county mounties arrived, the incident had been resolved. And "Muhammad" went to jail, never to return as a student.

Later that week, the school yearbooks were distributed to those who'd paid for them. I remember wishing that Muhammad had waited to go crazy, wishing that he'd waited until after the school year ended, so I could've gotten him to sign my freshman yearbook.

After all, he was a peaceful man, most of the time, with many friends of many different races.

* * * *

I don't know what inspired me that night.

Maybe I'd seen too many gang-related films - movies about South Central Los Angeles, Miami drug lords and New York crime kingpins were all the rage in the mid-1990s. Or maybe it was the gangsta rap or the aggressive punk music, the stuff I started to listen to the moment I hit puberty.

For whatever reason, I was inspired, after helping a "Max" jump a guy behind the Food Lion, to piss in a kid's face as he lay on the ground.

We used to call this sort of juvenile code enforcement schoolin' a motherfucker. And, as my friend put it so eloquently that night, if this motherfucker wants to steal shit, he needs to be taken to motherfuckin' school.

Nobody else wanted to help this friend of mine out. None of our mutual friends, who all talked a good game, stepped up to get his back. They were all conveniently busy, had baseball practice or dates. So “Max” and I sat alone in his beat-up yellow tank of a car for two hours, drinking forty after forty of Colt 45 and waiting for this stupid kid to leave a shopping center cineplex.

The poor bastard didn't even see it coming. Walked right out towards his car as if he owned the world.

“Max” did most of the work. It was his stolen property, his lost income. The only thing I did was hit the kid from the back while Max informed him of the charges against him, of why this milder sentence of the Court of Street Justice was better than the alternative.

As the kid lay on the ground, squirming and begging, the 160 ounces of malt liquor filling my bladder suddenly demanded a prompt exit.

It was nothing personal, really. I just had to take a leak.

As Max reminded me afterwards, when I felt guilty about it, that kid probably would've done the same to me if he'd had the chance. And if it'd been other guys jumping him, less civil individuals from Church Hill or Hampton Roads or D.C., then he probably would've endured much, much worse.

An eye for an eye, a piss for a piss.

* * * *

That motherfucker had a .22...

When he first pulled it from the front of his boxers and started waving it around, screaming about how “hard” he was, most people just laughed. And when he fired into the air, bobbing his head up and down, one hand holding up those baggy jeans and the other holding a weapon, people just stood there and stared.

Here is this 16-year-old, skinny-ass white dude, who everybody knew was crazy, save for the court-appointed dumbass who'd let him off probation early. Here's this Crazy-Ass Peckerwood, waving a gun around in a parking lot at two in the morning.

And the only thing anyone could do was laugh, then stare in amazement.

If this kid's parents hadn't been wealthy socialites, I'm fairly certain he wouldn't have been set loose by the correctional system. If he'd been poor, or a minority, or poor and a minority, he would've been rotting in a juvenile prison somewhere.

But because he came from a good family, one where the poor little thing's psychosis was easily blamed on a desire to fit in and his parents' divorce, he was set free to go all apeshit in the middle of the night without so much as an ankle bracelet.

When Mr. Crazy-Ass Peckerwood started beating that tiny handgun upon his tiny chest, screaming about how he was going to bus' a cap on someone if he did'n get respec', people finally began to back away from the scene.

The cops, surely, had been called, and nobody wanted to be around an armed nutcase when the cops showed up. As I ducked down to climb into the driver's seat of the Maroon Doom, my prize Dodge Shadow, the idiot started firing again. But this time, he wasn't firing into the air.

I remember being shoved from behind, with a friendly hand on the back of my neck. My chin caught the shifter and my shin caught the door frame as my body fell into the car. My first reaction was to start laughing. Earlier that night I'd watched a documentary on the Reagan assassination attempt - the idea that my friends would choose to play Secret Service agents to a would-be Hillbilly Hinckley was too absurd not to laugh.

I rolled over and sat up in the driver's seat, still laughing. A hand reached up from the backseat and smacked me upside my skull, with voices screaming for me to drive, motherfucker, drive.

As I started the engine and shifted down into second gear, I looked over at the crazy motherfucker. He was pointing that little pop-gun .22 towards the Maroon Doom, firing away. From the back seat, people were arguing about someone needing to see a doctor, about me needing to drive to the emergency room.

As I drove, the person who'd been grazed climbed into the passenger seat next to me, showed me what looked like a long cigarette burn, and said that, no, he didn't need to go to a doctor – our other friends were just being pussies.

He'd been shot before, so I took his word for it. He smiled and pointed out that getting grazed was a much better alternative than having me get shot in the face.

I laughed at first. And then it hit me like a cinderblock to the chin.

I spent the next few days barely sober and rarely narcotic-free, afraid to face the nature of my own mortality, the fact that, yes, a .22 pistol is a small gun that can still, if someone's shooting at you, end your life if its rounds hit you just right.

... And he just tried to fucking kill me.

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FIVE COMPLETELY BATSHIT THINGS FROM THE ZENFORMATION WORLD: Trips to the ER, Student Abandonment Issues, Etc.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's been more than three weeks since the Woeful Librarian @ The Library hit me up with a meme.

And for two weeks now, I've been trying to come up with something original, going through my usual routine of figuring out what's appropriate for an online audience, what I still need to keep private and what I'm comfortable discussing.

The problem?

I've already done this meme once in 2007. Jessica, The Cool Librarian, hit me up back in January.

The first time was way back in 2006, when I was inspired by Mizzy B's post (she didn't tag me, did it on my own). She, in her own Bohemian way, took the thing one step further, with six things.

So where do we go from here?

Oh well. Fuck it. Let's see what I've got...

5.

There's an abandoned beer pong table right outside my apartment door. It's been there for four days now, abandoned by my student neighbors. The unfinished plywood top reeks of flat Natty Light. One of its two-by-four legs, in true unskilled but educated fashion, bows inward and the table wobbles like nobody's business.

Rotten furniture lines the streets. There's busted futons clogging the curbs, busted plastic lounge chairs crumbling to dust in the gutters. Dumpsters around Oxford Fucking Ohio are packed with box springs and mattresses, busted plasma screens and junk MP3 players.

Walking about town this weekend, I found a perfectly good leather armchair left in an alley. There was one slight problem, however. The chair had been run through with what appeared to be a machete, the blade sticking out of the back. "Fuck FIJI" was carved into the upholstery by some very angry, artistic vandal.

And this is how the Academic Year ends - not with a bang but with a whimper.

4.

I spent part of Sunday night in the local emergency room.

It started last week sometime - I noticed that, well, I was having trouble taking a piss, pain and swelling in my testicles.

I called my physician Thursday to set up an appointment - the earliest available time was for a week from the time I called.

I figured I could wait. It's time for my annual physical anyway. I couldn't.

And nor should I have even considered waiting.

Testicular pain, shouldn't be ignored - ever. Men lose a ball or two all the time, as a result of trauma, infection, and illness. I've known two people in my life who've suffered from testicular torsions - one nut was saved, the other amputated as a result of a coach telling a kid to "just walk it off."

By Saturday, I was beginning to regret every "It burns when you pee..." or "I'd give my left nut..." joke I've made in the last, oh, ten years.

Fortunately, no trace of gonorrhea, chlamydia, or any other bacterial infection - the most common causes. Two separate urinalysis and culture tests were clean as a whistle. Unfortunately, neither the ER doctor nor the urologist seems to know what's causing it. No immediate evidence of hernia, either, but to be safe, again, it was recommended that I abstain from heavy lifting for a while.

To be safe, just in case, the urologist put me on antibiotics, and the ER guy slapped me with enough Motrin to make a gunshot wound feel like a pin prick.

3.

I had a confrontation with a local Radical Left blog reader a few weeks ago, over my silence on the issue of immediate troop withdrawal of "Imperialist" American forces from Iraq, why I don't use my blogging powers (ha!) for something constructive, like "raising awareness."

This young woman wanted to know - no, demanded to know - why I quit posting about politics and other things related to foreign policy. She felt the need to critique my blog's content based on my lack of "awareness raising" efforts to just about every progressive cause known to Man, only about half of which I support as, yes, an independent.

Completely batshit conversation. Nothing like an angry drunk activist.

Why oh why don't I blog about hot button political issues anymore? And what about "raising awareness" over this "immediate withdrawal" stuff?

Hmmm...

Well, it's simple, really.

First, I quit blogging about politics because, well, political blogging to "raise awareness" or to "advocate change" is a pointless exercise, a pseudointellectual circle-jerk of like-minded people reading only what they want to read, consuming opinions to merely justify their own opinions, or gloating with ideological glee at the slightest misstep of the opposition.

What's the point of blogging, really, if one just wants to scream from some bully pulpit? A personal blog should be, well, personal. And this is my personal blog. And I don't like it when people feel the need to tell me what I'm to put into this silly thing, based on their political agendas.

For the record, I don't support any of this current "immediate withdrawal" rhetoric pushed by pundits, activists, or, especially, politicians. To me, it's nothing more than the Democratic version of bread and circuses, thrown around to pacify and condition the masses, no better than the Republican posturing of the past four years. And lately, as a whole, the Democratic-controlled Congress hasn't been acting much different than the Contract with America era GOP-controlled Congress, spending more time attacking the new minority government Executive than actually moving anything past respite and petty bickering.

Ultimately, a hastily assembled retreat is nothing more than a momentary escape from ultimate responsibility. We, all Americans, bear some level of responsibility and accountability towards securing Iraq's future - there is no easy way out, no pointing fingers at the President or screaming that the opposition didn't try hard enough to stop it. We fix it, and then we can go. One does not enter another's house, burn it down, and then leave without paying for the damages done.

Most of the plans put forth seem to forget the legacy of the U.S. Civil War Reconstruction era, a time when hastily assembled, mob-rule ideas during a different sort of occupation played out as tragic comedy. While Reconstruction, in the end, did reunite the South with the Union, the far-reaching side effects still haunt this continent.

Reconstruction politicians and activists spent more time trying to figure out new and creative ways to expedite national healing with words and knee-jerk reactions than actually worrying about, well, the long-lasting ramifications. It is not mere coincidence that the bloodiest acts of genocide committed against this continent's indigenous tribes occurred during this period, that liberated former slaves earned physical freedom only to be faced with a century's worth Jim Crow terrorism and oppression, that political corruption and corporate influence blended industrialized, capitalistic expansion and influence to the concept of democracy.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Mark Twain called that period in U.S. history the Gilded Age. Lasted almost 40 years, and included the assassinations of three sitting presidents, an almost total restructuring of American diversity through waves of immigration and subsequent backlash, two economic depressions, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, massive government corruption, labor revolts, and a Centennial presidential election mess that made the 2000 election look legit.

Welcome to the Second Gilded Age. By my estimate, we entered into this era of American History sometime in the last decade, sometime before this clemency petition was released.

Getting out of Iraq by the end of the year? Not happening. Nor should it, without some sort of practical, actual solution that leaves Iraq a better place than when we invaded against international law in the first place. Immediate withdrawal by this Imperialist America? Even during the Manifest Destiny era, immediacy was measured in dead bodies and decades.

The Iraqi insurgents there, just like Al-Qaeda, are much harder to kill than those pesky Dakota or Sioux, and smallpox tainted blankets are, like, so 1872. We've modernized to suit or Nuclear Super-powered status - we just torture people in secrecy, lock them away in Cuba, and have secret military tribunals in charge of separating terrorist from patriot.

And, besides, now that the Dems are in power, they'll need at least a year's worth of preening and gleaning to give all of those defense contractors, corporate lobbyists, and little old ladies from Kansas enough time to fill the ol' campaign war chests for the 2008 Freak Show...er... Election...

See. Like I said. Simple.

2.

Last night, I dreamt that I was having sex with one of my sister's childhood best friends, a woman I haven't seen or thought about in more than a decade.

Sex at my senior prom. And it was snowing.

It wasn't as good as I remembered, at least compared to the dreams I used to have about this woman when we were both in Mr. D's fourth period journalism class.

Hell, it's been 12 years. I wonder if she's still single?

Trust me. Much more interesting than waking up and thinking about Iraq.

1.

Favorite quote of the week:

I had a cat once, but every time I tried to give him a bath, the fur stuck to my tongue.

- Howlin' Mad Murdoch (actor Dwight Schultz), The A-Team.

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