I am descended.

I have seen over the trees and above the clouds, looked beyond the horizon and cast my gaze near and far.  Now that world, that immaculate vista is ripped from me, torn beyond my ability to even remember it.  Nothing but pond scum and idiocy to occupy me.  Nothing but chimps for company.

Stick the greatest thinker in the brain of a monkey and see what happens.  Take an Aristotle or a Newton and geld his brain, pare away everything but the mammalian limbs and the reptilian stump and just watch in horror.  See how fast civilized notions and enlightened thought turn into screams of momentary pain and triumph, nothing but impulse and pain to steer.

We are all chimps, no matter how well we are educated, no matter the temperament of our minds.  Dress us up in kevlar, stick us behind the wheel of killing machines that fly and drop death on the distant chimps we hate for all of a decade.  Watch the monkeys dance and howl over their petty spoils.  This is humanity, with a little soap and polish to distinguish us not as intelligent primates but lords of all the universe.

How am I to cope with heuristics and mnemonic devices when I have pierced the veil and fog that so vexes our monkey brains?  It was as if my entire life had been spent drunk amidst a terrible clamor, a crosshatch of pitch black interwoven with lightning brightness.  And then, for so short a time, to awaken in serene sobriety and look for once upon the world as it more truly is…

I am descended.  And forever will the memory haunt this monkey body, to which I am forever bound.

White sand and white sun.

A man walks slowly through the desert, shrouded in denim and leather.  His timeless face squints beneath a beaten hat, eyes ever locked on the horizon.  Flimsy chain metal forms a loose veil, demarcates the world in rhombosoid gridlines.  Not very manly.  But it keeps the night wasps at bay for a few extra seconds.  They get as big as hummingbirds on this continent.

Rugged boots meet the sand in steady time.  No one tangos this far from the sea and it’s a long waltz across the western continent.  Used be called Nampac.  No one calls it anything except their little corners, patchwork countries with frontier in every direction.

Weathered asphalt, tilted and skewed, still pokes out of the fine grit.  Sometimes for yards at a time.

The man’s mind is not on the road, or the sand or the ever present mesh covering his head and neck.  In the distance he can see a bridge, backlit by the setting sun.  A small camp sits to the left of it.  Few hours walk, should be there before sundown.

Closer, a pair of boys sitting beneath a ramshackle shelter see the man approach.  Their eyes look drugged, unwilling to stand up from their contrived shade and risk a few seconds in the baking sun.  They just sit, sipping dirty water from dirty jugs as the man draws near.

“Anything worth lookin’ at around here?” the man asks?  His voice rasps, brittle belts dried by the sun rubbing together.

“Dry and murt, sah.” One of the boy says.  He looks twelve.  The other one looks eight.  Both look like idiots with the rotten luck to be born on a carcass instead of a planet.

“Murt,” the man echoes.  Latin roots go deep, he thinks to himself.  Only one interpretation of that.  “Thanks,” he says and walks on.

“Claps, sah?” the younger boy asks.  The man pauses and looks down at his metal-palmed gloves.  Same guy who made em made the heels and toes of his boots, back east.  Also handy for dealing with the insects.  The ones too small for a bullet anyway.

“Not atom,” the man says.  “Later.  That bridge sturdy?”

“No, sah.  Bad place.  One of them on it.”  The man needs to hear no more.  He moves on, keeping the bridge in view as he continues to walk.

Village isn’t far now.  The borders are always marked with trash piles, picked and repicked for a century.  Shells and husks of plastic and metal from the bygone world.  Dead lights, silent eyes and mysterious green slabs blistered with little metal adornments.  One such crunches under the man’s heel.  He reads ‘Biostar’ in bright silver text.

It’s all dead and scrap now.  Practically nothing survived the Cat.  Nothing except for them, he thinks.

The bridge is a pair of iron arches, braced and riveted in place.  Age has worn down parts and the whole thing creaks in the wind.  Swaying beams groan under their own weight.  Only a matter of time before they come crashing down on the wrecked autos still piled together.  Still rotting together in the relentless heat.

The man stops at the near side of the bridge and studies a heap of metal at the far end.  It’s boxy and huge, 14 feet tall at least.  Like the rest of the garbage leftover it seems lifeless, worn and spent.  Empty eye sockets and reflected sunlight.  A few birds cackle and joust just feet away.  The wind blows sand and loose plastic across the bridge and into the parched creekbed below.

Just shy of the bridge lies a blackened rut, half a finger deep in the road.  Short section appears straight.  But the man turns and sees the line continue to either side forming a circle that bleeds off into infinity.  At the center, the derelict war machine.  Still guarding some damned objective, still fighting a war that was won generations ago.

Looking at the rut and the deathly complains of the bridge gives the man pause.  He stands and looks, eyes trained and focused on the machine just a few hundred yards away.  Stooping down he brushes through the sand and finds a loose bit of road, about the size of an egg.

He notes the birds, the sand and trash blowing along, the movement and character of the decomposing bridge.  Something tells him to stop and hesitation cripples his throwing arm.  Everything is in motion around him, not just because of the heat and dehydration.  Everything goes clear for a moment, the bandages and blisters inside his boots all register, the heavy weight of his slug thrower hanging from his belt.  The terrible burden he carries under his left side throbs and aches.

The rock flies and lands about twenty feet on the other side of the rut.  Kind of a shame, the man thinks.  He grabs for his pistol.  Trained hands have the hammer cocked before it’s out of the holster, trigger pulled before the barrel is dead center.  Just a few milliseconds from hip to fire.  This time, something happens.

Not three feet away the slug explodes in mid air, rattling the entire bridge, sending birds flying in terror and a dust cloud seems to have teleported on scene.  It disperses quickly in the wind.  The war machine, still looking motionless, maintains its eternal vigil.

Nothing worth finding that way, the man thinks.  He turns to the village to see about some water.

I know.  I know.  Cigarettes are poison, they are horrible and my lungs are probably 50% charcoal.  That’s not the problem, it’s never been the problem.  I am addicted, plain and simple.  If I were forced to quit I would survive I just haven’t mustered up the will power to make it happen lately.

So I was taking a break today.  And I generally walk about 100 yards down the road to partake in my poison so it’s not like I was close to any buildings or anything.  Standing on the sidewalk, at the fringe of a road with only a single attached street that is mainly vacant lots and piles of broken concrete I lit up.

A few drags in this woman comes walking down the sidewalk.  I hear the steps but I don’t look over in time to see that she’s a lot closer than I thought.  I exhale as I notice her and the cloud of smoke comes NEAR but not quite directly in her path.

“Ugh,” she says.  I kind of sheepishly shrug and turn to the side, believing the encounter to be over at this point.  Not quite yet.

“You know,” she says loudly.   I don’t appreciate you smoking out here, it’s bad for everyone.  Don’t you know that smoking is bad for you?”

I said “So is being an asshole to strangers.” And then I walked away.

Dinner with the parents last night…

At some point the topic of religion came up, I believe you can trace the conversation back from here:

1) Auto-call from Tim D’Annunnzio ending with dad saying “screw you, asshole.”

2) Discussion of what an asshole D’Annunnzio really is.

3) Conclusion of such: even the regular crazy repubs don’t like him.

4) Conservatives are nutty about a lot of things…

5) …particularly their hypocrisy when it comes to faith.

So the old man, usually fairly quiet about such topics had this to say.

Keippernicus the Elder: I mean, there are so many religions to choose from.  How are you supposed to pick the right one?  I mean either god is good and you go to heaven or he’s not and you’re screwed no matter what.  So why bother?

Cheerful to see that some things can still bridge the generation gap.

The relentlessness of NPR had set this nagging feeling somewhere in my back brain:  I need to update my privacy settings on facebook.  All week long, every day I heard about this supposed controversy and Mr. Zuckerburg telling the world that people want strangers to know enough to steal their identities.

Sickening.  Yet for all the mental itching I did not actually take action until last night.  What happened last night?

I’m not 100% sure but I believe I stopped a burglary from taking place.

The house immediately adjacent has been empty for six weeks or so.  No one around seems to know what happened to the neighbors, they just sort of disappeared one day.  Most days I would see the dad sitting in his car, in the driveway, looking at crossword puzzles furtively.  The mom left early and came home late days when I saw her.  The daughter, maybe 17-18 snuck cigarettes with her skeazy boyfriend in the backyard and they always skulked off when I went to partake of that selfsame vice.

Nice people.  Not really interested in talking to me for whatever reason, but nice people nonetheless.

For whatever reason they left and a number of weeks went by where I did not see the dad, or any cars in the driveway, nor did the yapping of their dog grate on my nerves.  Sadly I must report it took at least two or three weeks before I myself noticed.

By then the yard was looking more like nascent jungle than anything.  Hell the only reason I noticed is because a census worker stopped by and asked me what I knew about them, where they were, and when or if they would ever return.

I almost felt guilty at the paucity of information I had gathered over the last three years.  More embarrassed than ashamed, but I got over it.  I also mowed their lawn when it started reseeding itself.  That was a pain.  Mowing knee-high grass in the southern summer heat is never pleasant.  Consolation prize: two 55 gallon drums worth of compostable biomass.

Last night I was having trouble sleeping and around 3am I stepped outside for a late night smoke and tried to relax the tension that’s been turning in my skull like coiled spring.  Being so late I let Thor come out with me off the leash and adopted my usual pose, left shoulder leaned behind the column on the front patio.  It’s a tiny thing, barely enough room for the welcome mat but I had at least partial concealment from anyone walking or driving by the front of the house.

A few drags in some movement catches my eye and what do I see but a black pickup truck creeping slowly down the road without any lights on.  I stiffened and held the cig behind the column, exhaling slowly and down to diffuse the lungful of smoke I was already regretting.  Thor was making a chocolate sundae on the lawn and I wished that I had leashed him so I could stuff him back inside if needed.

I sat and watched, slowly tucking myself as far into the alcove as I could to avoid being seen.  The truck rolled along slowly and stopped right in front of my vanished neighbors’ house.  Nothing happened for a few seconds and then the passenger side door open.  They were on the wrong side of the road.

A pretty thuggish looking dude got out, took a few looks around and then started to walk slowly toward the house.  I could tell by his face he was looking around carefully, checking for lights, windows, movement . . . anything to indicate whether or not someone was there.  He’s not ten feet up the driveway (out of 30 or so) when I make my move.

Nothing heroic or fancy I just clear my throat loudly with an exaggerated “huh hummmmmmmm.”  Instant reaction.  Dude has his right foot moving forward but instead of taking the next step just wheels it around and jogs back to the truck.  They start to drive off, moving back to the right side of the road.  I call for Thor and toss him, yes literally, inside and then sneak out to the road myself.

No license plate.  Fuck, I think to myself.  I didn’t have my phone in hand or I would have followed those shady bastards down the road but.  By the time I have my keys out and realize I could get myself into trouble following along with no way to report to the police the headlights have come on and the truck is moving quickly out of the neighborhood.  Punks didn’t even stop at the stop sign.

It was interesting, not sure how much credit I can take for the encounter but given the context and character of the black truck and its occupants I felt pretty sure something would have at least been scouted out, broken into or vandalized had I not been restless at that particular moment.

I made sure that nothing valuable was in the car, double-checked the dead bolts* and went back to try and fail at further sleep.

When I got up today I realized I better do the same for facebook as well.  Because your information and data are valuable things to be guarded whenever possible.  Nothing really incriminating there and I have so many lies about my location/character (done with privacy in mind, of course) but better safe than sorry.

It hasn’t been long enough since my car was broken into that I still don’t think about protection and privacy.  I just hope it’s not too late.

*Also I made sure that I had easy access to some 3″ 00 buck shot.  Just in case.

From Frank Herbert’s Dune:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Hearken to me now, brothers and sisters.

I must not fear
Fear is the unavoidable collision of nature and mind.  The turmoil of ice held to the flame.
Fear is the mind-killer
To fear life is to shrink from life.  It is nothing short of the death of wonder.  We must remember that no matter where we step in the dark we are all naked and alone, and wonder makes a better cloak than fear.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
To face fear is to accept risk.  In cowering from life we surrender and shrink from opportunity.  Fear is the darkness of a deep cave and hope is the candle we hold against the darkness.  When courage atrophies our candle dims, and the darkness creeps ever closer.  To risk nothing is to lose everything.  To squander even that small space illuminated by hope can lead only to despair and anguish.
I will face my fear.
As we stare into the abyss, there are always eyes to meet our gaze.  Some lonely, some hostile, some malicious and vast, beyond reckoning or sanity.  Whatever forces feed these eyes, they do not cause us fear.  They only reflect it.  Fear comes from an empty space in all of us, a wound that must be tended, or it will fester and consume us.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
Some can only face the darkness with torches and swords, barreling toward it like cavalry loosed upon the world before us.  This is a kind of courage, but also another kind of fear.  In attempting to destroy that which plagues us, troubles us most deeply, we too often destroy ourselves.  This zealotry, packed into a box called bravery or honor, is a reckless excercise of courage.  It is pulling a cancer from your belly with your bare hands, heedless of the carnage that comes with it.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
There is another sort of courage, not sung in songs or lauded by those who would label themselves brave.  It is a quiet variant, as light as smoke and as shapeless as water.  Those who possess it can use it for very little.  This type of courage has barely the strength to set down a bottle, to stay a hand from straying to knife, or rope or gun.  It can loose a clenched fist but not strike a blow, it can slow a thundering heart when to panic would be to die.
This is a courage to be cultivated in all of us, whatever else may dwell in our hearts.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
A whole once dug will fill in time.  Only after we have braced ourselves against the dark can we see this.  Do we let the world decide what we shall carry in our hearts and risk fear clawing it’s way back into us?  Or do we fill it with our mind, our convictions and our strengths, our hopes and dreams, resolve to protect and cherish this space even if only to keep it open in hopes that another will share it.
Only I will remain.
Even in company we are alone, even the anchor of home can cast us into utter isolation, when we are at our best we have the furthest to fall and the impact is never soft.  We are alone but for the sparkles in the distance, the stray light of torches miles or worlds away.
Others may only ever offer us a hand, never a torch.  For we are all alone, from birth to death and every instant in between, and we must all find our own way through the darkness.

I’m sure it won’t last long.  That’s what I keep telling myself.

Clocks are everywhere.  I count at least 7, not including my own computer and phone.  They are old clocks, ticking clocks, coo-coo and gong style tickers and bongers.  They are legion.  I am adrift in a sea of unsynchronized clicks.

Monroe.  That’s where the clock maelstrom resides.  Tucked away behind curtained glass off main street this tiny dungeon of annoyance picks me apart in perfectly regular intervals.  One just went BING.  I do not know how long I can last here.

The desk where I sit, ears braced against the cacophany, is old and solid.  It was built for paper and file folders, physical office work and not for a computer.  That the computer is dead or dying makes it all the more unbearable.  The edges are sharp against my wrists, there are no holes for cords or cable, just a violent barfing up of swag and paper.

A box of rulers, magnifying glasses and empty Altoid tins.  Enough pens to write the magna carta a million times over.  A crystal handled letter opener.  Faux wood covered staplers and tape dispensers.  Peanuts, dry roasted.  Yellow vinyl furniture that looks older than me.  Model Nascar cars and ancient automobiles fill an oak trophy case.  Beneath it lives a porcelain swan, beheaded and filled with change.  Pictures on every bookshelf, kids and grand kids, parents who lived through the great depression, children who just missed world war II, grand children waving silver spoons inside red wagons.  Macabre wood carvings of ravens, owls and…lawyers adorn the end table behind me.  Disposable baseball caps lie all around, cheap and expendable shouts for this team or that.

Good old America.

Then there are the clocks, oh the ticking tocking little bastards.  Only one seems to be dead.  An ancient edifice of wood, glass and bronze sitting dormant, supporting a slightly better made cap for the lawyer who dwells in this lair and an out of place hemp and bead necklace.  Curious amidst the ticking.

Everything is old and wood, and physical.  No place for a computer.  No place for me.  And no place to linger one second longer than I absolutely must.

We all have problems.  Today I was PLAGUED by an errant eyelash that somehow became entangled under my eyelid and poked/rubbed/brushed directly against my naked eyeballs and it irritated the shit out of me for hours.  The AC unit for the house is also apparently dead.

5 thousand dollars to replace it.

Yet, others always seem to have it worse.  I was over at the in-laws for the mothers day celebration in that particular clade of my extended family.  Ducking out to catch a smoke gave me a chance to check in with the younger brother.  He recently found out his long time ex just started dating another guy.  Shitty thing to happen.  Same hour he restarted his PC and it died on him too.

Didn’t I say everyone’s got problems.

Anyway, I helped the sibling repair his ailing pc but wanted to check in with him about it.  Everything was fine so far.  Helps to have a useful brother.

Another motivator for me to step out was that my little cousin, aged 6 or 7 just found out what the ‘dad voice’ sounds like up close and personal.  Little bastard hit me in the chest with a baseball bat, had to straighten him out a little.  Yes it was just a foam and plastic number but little man tate doesn’t have a father figure per se and sometimes tough love is the best recourse.

After he hit me I grabbed him and held him upside down.

“Next time you hit me with a baseball bat guess what happens?” I said to the struggling boy.  He squirmed but did not answer.  “Next time all I’m going to do is tell your mom.  But if I were someone else, someone less patient I might not set you down easy.  I might just drop you on your head.”

The squirming stopped.

“Now you’re going to be good and not going to hit me again are you?” I asked.

“No,” he said meekly.  I set him down, he pranced off and threw a half-hearted ‘sorry’ over his shoulder.  Not the best reaction.  Better than I expected.  I’ll take it.

Shortly after I stepped out and walked up the road a little bit.  Needed to get away from the family, clear my head.  People are so…floppy.  Computers are much cleaner to deal with.  Simpler in a lot of ways.  It’s therapeutic most times to be given a problem that’s imminently solvable.  No spare parts for humans.  No declaring them lost causes either.

Shortly before concluding the call with the brother a football smacks into my calf.  I turn around, scrawny kid about 9 years old is staring at me, looking terrified.

Fuckin’ kids these days.  I have one of those tiny flashes of thought, something that occurs to me but will never happen.  I imagine punting the football into oblivion, making the kid cry.  That’s from a part of me that remains on a very short leash.  Always.

Instead I grit my teeth, conclude the call and then turn to the boy.

“I’m very sorry about hitting you with my football.”

“Just be more careful next time,” I say.  I start to walk back into the house.

“Will you play with me?” the boy asks.  It’s the most pitiful question I have ever heard in years.  “I can’t play with my sister.  You know what she does?”

“What?” I ask.  Should have just kept walking.  The boy throws up the football and then cowers away from catching it.

“So can you play with me?”

“No, I’m here visiting the family for mothers day.  Gotta get back in…”

“So you’ll be here until tomorrow?” he asks.

“Ummm, no.”

“You said you’d be here for mother’s day,” he says.  “That’s tomorrow.”

“Celebrating today,” I correct him.  “And we’re leaving soon.”

“How soon?” he asks.  At this point I have already concluded my psych profile.  Any kid who would approach a complete stranger, on the phone, hit him with a football (and not run like hell after getting it back) and then ask him to play is pathologically dying for attention.  Instantly I pity him.  Total sucker, not the least bit concerned with how dangerous people can be in Kannapolis, NC.  Some redneck would have brained that kid with a crow bar.

“I gotta go,” I tell him.  Not three steps away he starts asking me to play again, just for a little while.

“Hey mister you wanna see how far I can kick it?” is the last thing I respond to.  I’ll humor him in that at least.

He kicks the ball on the wrong axis.  Fat side perpendicular to foot, not parallel.  He runs to grab it and tosses it…like a girl…further down the road.   I wonder if my assessment is wrong.

This kid, Justin, I soon learn is something of a mystery to me.  His compulsion for attention and company make him somewhat pathetic.  But his fearlessness in seeking it is borderline sociopathic.  I wasn’t kidding about what the wrong person would do to him.  I don’t know whether he’s oblivious or just doesn’t care.  There’s a glimpse into his future…evil genius or total wash out.

Inside the inlaws are smiling at me.  They have encountered Justin before.  I learn some back story.  Mom and Dad split up, dad was an abusive piece of shit to the mom.  Living with grandparents, bored and without friends in a weird new part of town.  Pity party with 7/11 hours.

All this got me thinking.  Two males, both lacking close-quarter male role models (and who both suck at sports, not that I’m much better) within the span of 30 minutes lashed out at me.  And I suspect neither would have done a thing if there had been a dad around to play baseball or football or just be there with open hands and open arms.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to make the world a better place, or to keep it from degenerating further into a shit storm.  You don’t have to be a hero, you don’t have to be a martyr or anything…no rescue from a burning building, no stopping a mad gunman… just being there for someone, and being good to someone can make all the difference in the world.

I know it’s mothers day, but if anyone out there happens to be a biological father and isn’t quite keeping up on the nurturing side of things I just have a small favor to ask.

Just be a Dad.

If it were within me to burden myself with something like belief in an all knowing and all powerful creator deity then I fear such belief would soon turn to nothing but abject pity.  So many feel awe or reverence, presumably because a god that knows all and can do all deserves admiration.

If a strong person crushes a paper cup and says ‘look at what I have done’ it might garner bemusement and puzzled looks.  Such a minor task, by someone of power, would seem trivial and pointless.  To an omnipotent thing, every such task must be viewed as such.  No act of power or subtlety, no matter how great and terrible it might seem to us would be no more or less difficult than any other act.

Imagine what utter boredom you would face if you had literally done everything and seen everything and knew everything from the infinite reaches of time both forwards and backwards.  What would you do, what could you do if every experience lay within easy grasp and perfect memory.  How could you care about anything that could not be taken from you, and if so you could recreate exactly as it was.

Imagine an utterly flat expanse, with no mountains to climb, no dragons to slay, nothing to chase or hunt or yearn for, nothing to catch your eye or elude your grasp…nothing to do that you hadn’t already done or knew from experience in perfect resolution, down to the quantum foam.

Imagine the unending solitude of being without peer or rival, or indeed without anything but semi-sentient apes to keep for company throughout the lifespan of this universe.

Such a being trapped in the desolation of utter perfection might not seem pitiful, but pitiable… I can’t think of another emotion to attach.  With so much left to me, and to you fellow human,  to discover, to experience and to love. Knowing the joy that this journey can bring I am left with nothing else.

Of course it’s all a moot point since god is just another superstitious phantasm.  And if god ever did exist I’m sure after a few eternities of boredom he probably killed himself.

Buddha bless you all.

So here’s the setup.  Domain F is running Exchange 2007 with users able to connect via Pop3 or IMAP accounts.

I have a Windows 7 64-bit pc running Outlook 2007 and can receive mail but not send without getting the following message:  “550 5.7.1 client does not have permissions to send as this sender not on domain.”  Mail is not being sent even though the account is setup exactly as others who have no trouble sending.

Some X factors.  My pc is not setup on the domain.  My username and exchange mailbox are both set up with adequate permissions, again like others who are not having trouble sending/receiving.  Another user is running the same model of laptop, the same version of office and is otherwise exactly the same as my setup.

The fix: I am a domain member/admin but since I had never logged into the domain or server I had not been authenticated.  By logging into the company webmail with my credentials I was able to start sending.  We also set up a test account and logging into the domain itself worked as well.

Hope someone finds this useful.  Cheers!