Conversation with a young prostitute

WARNING:  This is nothing like anything anyone has seen on this blog before.  It is an excerpt from something I am working on and another experiment on my part,  Be aware there is some rough language and drug and sex references. It's an instant-messaging internet conversation with all the inherent typographical errors intact.

All material Copyright©Tim Jones

whaleman: one of these days i want to talk about it anyway

BetCbball: we should talk nw

BetCbball: now

whaleman: ok

whaleman: when was the first time you used meth?

whaleman: was it before or after you left home?

BetCbball: oh wow

BetCbball: err

BetCbball: first used after i left home

whaleman: do you remember where you were and the circumstance?

BetCbball: like..

whaleman: who was around, who gave it to you    was it a party or just two of you, that sort of thing

BetCbball: i was screwing around this guy

BetCbball: and he was a user

BetCbball: it was just the two of us

BetCbball: was a awesome night

BetCbball: had been doing not awesome..

BetCbball: and he offered me some

BetCbball: wasnt like...

BetCbball: he forced me

BetCbball: or sold it to me

BetCbball: just offered some

BetCbball: best high of my life

whaleman: the first one usually is  i undrstand

BetCbball: i really thought that was the light at the end of the tunnel

BetCbball: he was a cool guy in the beginning

BetCbball: like i thought this was just my new way of life

whaleman: can you tell me how that first one affected you

whaleman: physiocally, mentally?  where did this happen?

whaleman: city i mean

BetCbball: buffalo

BetCbball: i didnt do anything 'bad' until i got to buffalo

BetCbball: before al this i was really tring to just like...get outta dodge

whaleman: just curious, were yu a virgin when you got to buffalo

BetCbball: haha no

whaleman: so that happened before you left,     with that long term boyfriend?

BetCbball: a meth high is like.. on top of thw orld

BetCbball: you can do anything

BetCbball: and ya

BetCbball: i think ive told you about hi

BetCbball: m

whaleman: jsut that he existed

BetCbball: he existed

BetCbball: he was awesome

whaleman: don't need to dwell on that now

BetCbball: first love absolutely

whaleman: well, ok'

whaleman: can you say what made him awesome'

BetCbball: he was the first person that i ever felt like i could tell everything

BetCbball: havent you ever had that feeling?

whaleman: no, not really

BetCbball: and we had similar stuff going on...kinda..

whaleman: Tht sound ritht

BetCbball: but i fucked that one up

whaleman: how?

BetCbball: like...uh..i was too much....

BetCbball: wasnt fair to him

whaleman: forgive me if i seem blunt here, 

BetCbball: i was kinda starting to realize i needed to get out

whaleman: too much in what aay

whaleman: ok i can understand that

BetCbball: like i was cutting and he saw it....

BetCbball: and would call him hyperventilating wanting to be dead..

whaleman: by cutting do you mean on your arms   or cutting classes?

BetCbball: my body

BetCbball: home was a lot of stress...and i didnt know how to handle it

BetCbball: and it upset him

BetCbball: so he booked it

BetCbball: which....good for him

whaleman: do you still have scars from that?

BetCbball: ya

whaleman: i can imagine with all it seemed you had going on at home it was tough on a kid in school

BetCbball: i think thats probobly pretty normal for teenagers

BetCbball: like happens a lot

whaleman: yeah i did some reading about cutting a few years ago when i met someone else on here who was doing it

whaleman: it was new to me then

BetCbball: it gives you like a releif

BetCbball: like a high

BetCbball: small high

whaleman: yes i understood

whaleman: what i recall from what i read was that it usually is not so much about getting attention as it is about feeling something, anything

BetCbball: exactly

BetCbball: EXACTLY

whaleman: <<<<  not so out of tpuch for an old guy lol

whaleman: ok

whaleman: well tell me about th high

BetCbball: haha youre not out of trouch

BetCbball: cutting?

whaleman: yu said it was like you felt you cold do anything

BetCbball: geez that was a long time ago

whaleman: no the meth

BetCbball: oh meth

BetCbball: hahah

BetCbball: wayyy better

BetCbball: like invinsible

BetCbball: like...confident

BetCbball: on top of the world

BetCbball: NOTHING is wrong

whaleman: or can go wrong?

BetCbball: could handle anything that went wrong

BetCbball: like bad things arent so bad

whaleman: oh

BetCbball: everything is god

BetCbball: good

whaleman: does it intensify feelings?

whaleman: like is sex better with it?

BetCbball: sex is WAY better with it

BetCbball: like feels better goes better is better

BetCbball: easy to have sex with gross people

whaleman: when you were working on the street did that help you through it?

BetCbball: ya

BetCbball: totally

whaleman: HOw about other things, could you function in normal things  liek shopoping or just routine parts of life?

BetCbball: i think so...but like i wasnt sucessful

BetCbball: so maybe no

BetCbball: lol
whaleman: In the book the girl knew immediately it was bad for her, but she succumbed to the effects and went with it and she kept knowing it was bad but going back to it anyway…  did you?  think of it as bad at first, or ever, for that matter

BetCbball: haha ya like hte frist time using you knwo its bad

BetCbball: but it doesnt matter

BetCbball: like i said..

BetCbball: i was leaving a life that didnt work

whaleman: she had a good life and she knew it, no major traumas, good grades, stable family though parents divorced, but generally all right, maybe  little bored with that.  It was her real father who turned her on.  So you were quite different, you were looking for a way out, a way to find new life,  she was the opposite, had a good life, but succumbed to the rush.  Same result, differnt path

BetCbball: so i was willing to try anything that wasnt that

BetCbball: and if this was a option for a new life that i could handle

BetCbball: then it was better

BetCbball: and i just wanted something better

BetCbball: and with meth...things hurt less, for sure

AND, please, understand this is a work of total fiction.

The book referred to above is "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins.  Find it on Amazon.

Conversation with an older writer

Fair and fall

First licks at the chopping block.

The signs have been gathering, if subtly.  The nights are a little longer and cooler, but so far without that first sharp crispness in the air. Still it turns thoughts in the direction of the woodpile decimated in response to last winter's cold.

Two days ago a chickadee flitted about the garden, probably wondering why all that green was still there and where those feeders are. Yesterday one landed on the head of the scare-owl looking over the food situation.  Then today a nuthatch used the same perch to check things out.

A small flock of sandhill cranes today pecked around in the pasture just on the shoulder of the town.

So far there's no new snow on the mountain, but there has been hard frost north of here, so it is creeping southward.  The bloom has reached the top of the fireweed and so the time is ripe.

After one of the warmest summers on record, the past few weeks have been cool and rainy and last night the temperature dipped into the 30s, the first that’s been noticed this year.

Firewood delivered Friday, first splitting yesterday and another couple hours today, with a long way to go.  The sore muscles from the activity feel good. There is something invigorating about the onset of autumn and the solid smack of a maul against a thick round of sold birch wood.

I hadn't planned to go to the state fair this year.  Then the sun broke through today and with rain in the forecast, if I were to change my mind, today was the day to go.  Of course no experienced Alaskan would try the state fair on a sunny Sunday and I knew it would be crowded going in, but I have never seen this many cars in the parking lots before.  The fair today must have been as populated as some places in Alaska that call themselves cities.

It was pretty much of the same thing from previous years with one big change, at least for me.  I usually run across at least a dozen people I know wandering around there, but today not one. Honestly, almost 40 years in Alaska and in the biggest crowd I've ever seen at the fair, I didn’t see one familiar face. Of course that could have been the smarter Alaskans predicting and avoiding the huge crowd on a sunny Sunday.

Wait, I take that back.  I did see one familiar face.  It was the sullen expression of a teenaged boy whose father was dragging him through the livestock exhibits, an expression that said "I am not going to enjoy this no matter what is in here."  It was the same expression my son had when I did the same thing, dragged him to see sheep and goats and cows when less than a hundred yards away there were carnival rides and games and teenaged girls. I laughed right out loud this kid looked so much like my own son just a few short years ago.

If that boy had only known how lucky he was. Not too many years ago there were twice as many livestock exhibits as there were this day.  Year by year the numbers have dwindled, which to my mind is a shame.  I hope it doesn't signal further decline of the American family farm, but it sure seems like it.

I enjoyed my usual cheesecake ice cream cone and pork chop on a stick, looked over the exhibits and then after about three hours headed home, past some more sandhill cranes, through all the traffic, back toward the snowless mountain that only too soon will don its winter white at the peak and then the shroud will slowly creep down its sides to cleanse the world with snow once more.

Meanwhile the pile of firewood continues to beckon along with the remainder of the pork chop I didn't quite finish at the fair.

A way to go yet.

Firewood and revery

Droning on and on and ...

First of all a disclaimer.  This is not meant to take sides in the discussion of the use of drones in warfare, but a look at the other side of the issue, a side that has not been articulated in anything  I've read.

Putting the blind fear survivalists have of the their own government spying on them or coming after them, the issue seems to be the cold, impartial way an inanimate object kills innocents.  Well, conventional war kills innocents too. It doesn't make it right, but that's part of the deal.  Civilians die in wars, always have, always will, that is the nature of war.

It is also the nature of war that young people in uniform die fighting for causes a lot of them don't even understand. Look at Iraq. Bush and Cheney rushed us into war against a country based on lies  emanating  from the 9/11 attacks and intelligence, or lack of it, concerning weapons of mass destruction. It was all couched in patriotism, and the troops were made heroes fighting to protect America. What exactly they were protecting America from still remains a big question.  Iraq was no threat to Americans, unless you count oil supplies.  But that's off the subject.  Plenty of civilians died in the Iraq conflict; as a matter of fact they are still dying even though the U.S. is not fighting there any more.  As a matter of fact it is a civilian against civilian war that kills innocents by the hundreds.  But let a U.S. drone go astray and kill a noncombatant, immediately the whole thing is vile.

While that is inexcusable, look at the other side of the drone effort.  Through history the development of equipment for war has been aimed at killing as many of the enemy as possible while slowly moving your own fighters farther and farther from danger.  Long range artillery does that, beginning with catapults.  Airplanes do that, putting fighters farther removed from those they are fighting, taking them out of  hazard while still exacting a toll on the enemy.

The drone carries that to a new extreme.  The fighting man or woman now can sit relatively safely in a room somewhere, while targeting  the enemy.  More casualties on the enemy, fewer on the good guys. It keeps our guys safer and less vulnerable to the wounds of war.

The horrors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed thousands of Japanese civilians, but World War II ended RIGHT NOW without the loss of one more American serviceman's life.  What is right?  Distance from the immediate battlefield? Maybe.

And, while we condemn those wicked drones for killing bystanders, keep in mind that they also do a job that used to have to be done by troops on the ground where they would have to face enemy fire.  What began as hand to hand combat and ever since the first cave man pounded the second caveman, armies have worked to remove combatants step by step away from face-to-face confrontation.  The drone is simply the most recent step in that process and it does save lives on our side.

Of course, any weapon of war can be used for other applications and therein lies the danger of drones.  If a government uses them to spy on its own citizens or attack its own people  or they get into the hands of terrorists, it becomes a different story.  For the time being given that we have to trust our own people with every other weapon of war, we have to trust them to do the right thing with drones as well, but not without what oversight we can manage.  The enemy here isn't the drones themselves, the enemy is war itself. If the energy put into condemning or defending drones were put instead into creating peace we would all be better off, and the world would be a better place.  Given man's history there's not much chance of that.

So if we do have to fight wars, isn't it preferable we fight them employing a gamer with a joy stick to assure someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, husband or wife comes home rather than dying in combat, especially when our national motives are suspect and history may show those precious men and women died for no good reason at all?

FAA approves use of drones over Alaska oil fields

Drones in Alaska.

It's about those chores you put off until the last minute …

Well, this one's taken care of.  And, well ahead of time, I hope.

The previous story.

'The Seventymile Kid'

Last night I finished reading Tom Walker's new book "The Seventymile Kid" totally exhausted.  It was a sympathetic exhaustion after following the adventures of Harry Karstens through every gold rush in Interior Alaska and to the very summit of the continent's tallest mountain.

Over years of reading, I have been fascinated by the toughness of pioneering Americans beginning with the French voyageurs and following people like Daniel Boone, the mountain men who followed him west, Lewis and Clarke, early polar explorers and those hardy folks who came north for the gold rushes in the Klondike and Alaska.  It is not their accomplishments that are fascinating as much as the hardships they overcame to reach those heights.  This book details the life of one such wilderness man and in the process celebrates that pioneering toughness.

While today many people consider a trip of a hundred miles as arduous even in a warm automobile, the people who made those early voyages and treks over thousands of miles, often in temperatures well below freezing, enduring weather conditions that seem to defy belief, undertook them with a seemingly matter of fact attitude of nonchalance.  Seemingly, because the experienced ones who survived knew the dangers and came prepared with equipment, but also experience and the kind of determination it takes to handle those conditions and the inevitable disasters that develop from them.

Tom's book follows Karstens from his initial trip as an 18-year-old cheechako over the Chilkoot Pass and down the Yukon River to the Klondike, through years as a freighter, mail hauler, prospector, hunter and outdoorsman to just about every place in Alaska that harbored a gold rush.  In the process this man who could be on the cold interior Alaska winter trails for months at a time, made a reputation for himself as the kind of wilderness hand even the toughest of a breed of tough men could admire.

It was this reputation that led him to the summit of McKinley for the most part dragging Hudson Stuck with him. Tom Walker takes a reader on almost every agonizing step over those trails and up that mountain in a way that makes us feel at least a little of what those adventurers did, the hard work, the cold, the wind, successes and disappointments. Tom's description of the difficulties of that climb where each small success seemed to be met with a newer, greater challenge, is so vivid, the actual summit, rather than another obstacle, came as a surprise when I reached that point.

In the process he sets the record straight as to whom the responsibility for the success of the first party to reach the summit belongs.  Ask anyone who was the first to summit Mount McKinley and most will say Hudson Stuck, an Episcopal missionary known for his work throughout Alaska.  Taking nothing away from Stuck, Tom's account, based on extensive research including locating handwritten journals made by other members of the party, reveals the story of how four men made that summit and how none would have been there had it not been for Harry Karstens.

To develop that account, the word exhaustive comes to mind again, referring to the amount of research Tom did over the years.  He told me some time ago he had been working on this project for more than 20 years.  On and off it took that long to find the documentation that leads to an authoritative account of something that happened a hundred years ago.  A six-page bibliography in very small typeface is testament to the sheer volume of that research.

Tom adds a credibility of his own to the account, though subtle.  He has traveled many of those same trails, endured some of the same hardships, during his years in Alaska, trekking most of the state, most often alone, in pursuit of wildlife photographs and material for his books.  Without falling into a first person "I understand because I did the same thing" sort of addition to the story, his own experience on the trail allows him to write credible accounts of what the men in the book endured.  It all makes for a great read.

Harry Karstens was named the first superintendant of the newly formed and now-called Denali National Park and served in that position through most of the 1920s; his duty involved defending the country where he had spent so much time, often from people quite like himself.

This is a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone who claims to be an Alaskan.

Find it on Amazon

I did a rod? Really?

One of the drawbacks to editing is that you are always telling people where they are wrong.  From the simplest misspelling to a major fact, the whole job is looking for mistakes, particularly at newspapers. 

People don't like to be told they are wrong.  Sometimes you just get tired of telling people that and facing from many an argument about it. It gets old.  I am guilty of losing the edge to do that and reached a point where I would let some errors go if it didn't hurt the story rather than walk over and tell someone this or that was wrong.

One I have regretted and it still bothers me.  A fellow at the last paper where I worked wrote a story that involved the Iditarod race and in particular some of the history of the gold rush in Iditarod itself.

He described one of the original discoverers reaching the head of navigation on the Iditarod River, sticking a pole in the water and declaring it deep enough by saying "I did a rod," meaning a measure of depth.  

Now, first of all a rod is a measure of horizontal distance, not depth. Do you know the story of Mark Twain? No self respecting sailor would say that, but some leeway can be given to a man who was a miner and not a navigator.  Secondly a rod is five and a half yards, a measurement usually used by surveyors as it is a fortieth of 220 yards and a fourth of 22 yards, the two nominal side lengths of a perfect acre.

But, mostly, in my own research for two books about the Iditarod and the research of several other more credible historians, the word is anglicized from an Ingalic Indian word "haiditarod," meaning a distant place.  That group of Natives traveled from their villages on the Yukon River, some distance inland to hunt caribou.  That is why it is a distant place.

I suppose I was weary that day, and tired of arguments over trivial mistakes, but I was also not going to give this particular writer the benefit of my research, especially as he apparently made no effort to check the fact on his own.  I let it go.

So, to the folks who may have read that story and passed on that description, I apologize sincerely.  I took his mistake and made it mine as well. None of them will read this but at least it is an effort to set the record straight.

There are rescues and then there are RESCUES

Try to imagine this:  a helicopter being guided through a mountain pass in the dark and fog that has already prevented others by a C-130 aircraft dropping flares along the way.  With the crew wearing night-vision equipment, locating and picking up a man severely injured in a bear attack and again being guided through the pass by flares dropped from the fixed-wing aircraft.  Then refueling in mid-air before making it to an airport which was closed by the weather and flying to an alternate site.   All of this, in the dark in clouds and fog with a ceiling sometimes as low as 400 feet after two other attempts at the rescue had turned back because of the weather.

Here's the story the way the military tells it.  

The Anchorage Daily News version.

Poppies in the wind

Please bear with me.  This is an experiment.  I saw the slight breeze moving the poppy petals around today and made a short video with my iPhone.  What it reminded me of was the movie "American Beauty."  I read somewhere that the director had seen a plastic bag blowing around, playing if you will, in the wind and it inspired the whole movie which revolves somewhat around a boy on the edge who fills his life with video of beauty as he sees it.  This is 34 seconds and iPhone shaky.  Not exactly ready for prime time, but a learning experience.  Now a plot revolving around a lonely old man recalling the loves of his life and seeing their beauty in the flower garden he cultivates.  That sounds like a work in progress as well, though if you read the poem a couple of posts down, it might be further on its way than I thought.   Then again, maybe not.  It's tough to see the new horizon when you are surrounded by tall mountains.  I would love some feedback.

The song is "Elusive Butterfly" by Bob Lind

Waiting in the usual place

Going down to the crossroads

Gary Clark Jr., "When My Train Pulls In" Crossroads 2013. 
Give it a moment to get past the warm up.

Of the people I saw, I don't think any of them were younger than 35.  We were a small group anyway, probably fewer than 20, hard to tell in the dark and with most of them behind me.

For a while waiting for it to start I thought about young people arguing on Twitter.  Katy or Gaga?  Beliebers vs. lil Monsters. Serena vs. Demi.  Dimensioners and Swifties.  All for their own music with no idea where it came from, who influenced whom.

Then with the striking of the first note all that melted away while the music slowly immersed us.  Over it sometimes a murmur of  recognition, an understanding laugh at an insiders joke.  Sometimes a quick clap of appreciation, but mostly silence from the small crowd (hmm is that a non sequitur?) as one after another of the great blues, rock and even country, guitar players of our day came to the stage putting his particular brand on the music and the concert.

Among them were names I had never heard before.  Gary Clark Jr., Doyle Bramhill II, Quinn Sullivan, at 14, shredding with Buddy Guy.

And, the familiar names:  Eric Clapton, Guy, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Allman Brothers, every one founded in the blues and jazz origins of American popular music, some raising goose bumps they were so good.  And Booker T, oh yes, raising the memory of dancing the slop and the mashed potatoes with Doreen Pryzbos to "Green Onions" in a dance joint, circa 1962.

And, some surprises:  All I have ever heard of John Mayer was his escapades with beautiful celebrity women.  The man can bend.  An awesome performance including a duet with Keith Urban in a powerful bluesy rendition of the Beatles' "Don't Let me Down."  Now there's a new appreciation for John Mayer.  In the past we excused the excesses of the great musicians, even when those excesses killed them, but that was before social media and haters.  Mayer can play; what he does outside of that as long as no one is injured or killed, well, that's his business.  And country's Keith Urban: I always wondered what the beautiful Nicole Kidman saw in a scruffy country singer. Now I think I know.

Who hasn't heard a guitar riff that remains in memory for the rest of life?  Clapton in "Cocaine" and "Sunshine" and "Layla."   Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider."  Booker T's "Green Onions."  It's a triggered memory thing, more great riffs in mind than a listener can possibly bring to recall on demand.  Oh, yeah, Duane Eddy; "Detour" and "Rebel Rouser."  No, he wasn't there, but he is alive and still playing, now in his 70s.  And here's another one from that era: Does anyone remember Eddie Cochran's "Sumertime Blues?"

One highlight of this concert was adding a new riff. Give a good listen to Gary Clark Jr., playing "When My Train Pulls In" in the attached video.  Almost guaranteed you will have a new riff to remember. 

Clapton organizes these Crossroads concerts every three years to benefit a drug rehabilitation center he sponsors in the Caribbean.  He invites players he likes, some of them surprising. In an interview before the concert showing, Vince Gill expressed as much surprise as anyone that he was included, but once he started playing it was understandable.

There were more and more and more, exhausting, and we only saw two and a half hours of a two-day concert performed in Madison Square Garden last April.  When it ended the few of us in the audience sat and stared at credits for a long time, then slowly walked out, music ringing in our ears, but in silence ourselves.

Many, but of course not all, of the great players of today were there but, only one was really missing. 

The production carried a dedication to the memory of JJ Cale.

Waiting in the usual place

I waited for you in the usual place.

In time a small bird landed on a branch, a whistle sounded in the woods but there was no way of knowing if it was this bird.

Was that you?

Doubtful, I never heard you sing.

I waited for you in the usual place.

A moose calf meandered past, in no hurry so his mother must have been close.

Was that you?

Doubtful, there is nothing at least apparently maternal about you.

But I still waited for you in the usual place.

Clouds drifted by, occasionally blocking the sun for a moment.

Was that you?

Doubtful, though you have occasionally obscured the light.

I waited for you in the usual place.

Snow covered the higher peaks, allowing them the appearance of renewing their virginity for the ressumption of winter and hiding scars carved by their summer invaders.

Was that you?

Doubtful, there is nothing virginal about you, though I know you bear the scars.

I waited for you in the usual place.

A fish jumped and splashed in the river.

Was that you?

Doubtful, you have never been one to express much joy.

I waited for you in the usual place.

Across the way children laughed in their play.

Was that you?

Doubtful, though I have never heard your laugh.

I waited for you in the usual place.

A woman's voice called for the children.

Was that you?

Doubtful, though I have never heard your voice, unless that was you hanging up after a hesitatnt "hello" the other day.

Indoors, in the usual place, words appeared on a screen.

Was that you?

No, not your words.  And words were all we had; as I must have been to you, you were to me only words on a screen.

I remain in the usual place, but no longer waiting.

No, bb, I may be in the usual place but I'm not waiting around for you any more.

––––––
And then on that screen, was an answer posted? And though you will not wait for me
I’ll wait for you – Oct. 21, 2013