Green Hell has been redesigned yet again. The new layout, in my opinion, is less cluttered and far "friendlier" to the reader. Have a look fer yerself.

An' stop scratchin' in public. It's rude. 

"Aaagh!" screams the gentle reader, leaping to his feet and brandishing an axe-handle at my dapper, onscreen image, "You're not gonna regale us with more of that horrid, gruesome Scottish poetry you love so much, are you? So help me, Bean! If you don't knock that shit off, I'll ram yer friggin' Un-Reconstructed CD's up yer poop chute sideways!"

"It's a risk I'm willing to take", says I, "and today's offering on Green Hell is especially morbid!"

Enjoy.

MySpace really is a cowardly forum. The blog categories are restricted to the safe, the politically correct, and the inoffensive.

Wow!

Color me impressed. NOT!

It is, however, free, so I don't suppose it would be proper of me to bitch too loudly hereupon.

My latest post in on Green Hell, and is as likely to piss off neocon Jacobins as it is "new left" jack-offs, so read it at your own risk.

Adolf Hitler once said: "There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us. I have therefore ordered that all former communists be admitted to the party without delay."

Have yerself a peach of a nice fucking day.

David Jefferson Bean

New blog is up on Green Hell. It's a fun-filled look at "White trash" from the first century AD to the present. 

"What we need at this point is a somewhat more precise meaning of the term 'barbarian'. The origin of the term stems from the old Greek conviction that anyone who didn't speak Hellenistic Greek was less-than-human...Later, it meant 'Any people whose culture and way of life I disapprove of --that is, anyone who doesn't live The Only Right Way -- my way!'...To a very large extent, the  term 'barbarian ' is used today in precisely that way; it has no precise meaning and is solely a term of disparagement, a term of insult."
             
--John W. Campbell,"The Barbarian Menace", Analog, August, 1964

Affectionately dedicated to Margarita

I-85, one of the Southeastern United States' major traffic arteries, is ribbon of highway that begins in Montgomery, Alabama, snakes its way through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and ends in Petersburg, Virginia. Like a river, it carries a stream of men and machines to and from the "islands" that are the region's major cities: Montgomery; Auburn; Greenville; Spartanburg; Charlotte; and others. Among these others, the two most significant to me are Atlanta, Georgia, and Greensboro, North Carolina.

In a story I once heard (a story that may very well have been apocryphal), I was told that Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots was en route to a gig here in Atlanta, when his vehicle became stuck one of the semi-notorious traffic jams on 85. According to the tale, he penned the lyrics to "Interstate Love Song" -- my favorite STP tune, for the record -- while waiting for the snarl to clear. If the story was true, then the truth thereof is strangely appropriate, to my way of thinking. The very first time I heard the song -- back in 1994, I believe -- I was immediately reminded of that very highway, and my own "interstate love song", as it were.

Five years before, I'd rented a car and driven from Atlanta to Greensboro, in a desperate attempt to win back my high-school girlfriend and first love, "Moose". I've related the story in detail elsewhere, but in a nutshell, I summed up my feelings for her in a multi-page, handwritten letter, and delivered it to her myself. In my youthful naivete, I foolishly believed the old "love conquers all" line, and was certain that if I still loved her as much as I did after so much time apart, then surely we were meant to be together, and she'd realize it.

To say that my effort -- probably the most painfully sincere and gut-wrenching thing I've ever done -- was less-than-successful is to understate to the point of mockery. If I may be so bold (and crude) as to employ a "Southernism", Moose "done stomped a mudhole in my ass an' walked that sucker dry", emotionally speaking. Not content merely to rebuff and reject, she condescended and patronized with a vengeance, as if she fully intended to see that I quit the field without so much as a shred of dignity or self-respect left to me. As I'd buried my only brother a little over half a year before, and had had a friend murdered not long before that, I was on rather shaky ground, psychologically speaking. Owing to my condition, she succeeded beyond her "most sanguine expectation", if I may purloin a line from a 19th century Abolitionist pamphlet.

The wounds she sought to inflict went deep, and -- owing in part, I'm sure, to my cyclothymic/manic-depressive tendencies -- were slow in healing. At times, I wonder if some of them haven't left permanent scars, but that's really neither here nor there. At the conclusion of the affair, I said only: "Be that as it may, I love you." I then turned on my heel and walked back to the car. I never saw her again, and didn't even speak to her again until last November. Sadly, nothing had really changed, so the less said of that exchange, the better.

After a few miserable hours aimlessly wandering around Greensboro and trying to make sense of things, I cast myself back into that stream of asphalt and concrete, and washed ashore in Atlanta again, during the wee hours of St. Paddy's Day, 1989, crushed, dispirited, and quite literally insane. An infinitesimal fraction of the experiences I had between then and now have been related elsewhere, and more will be related in the future, both here and elsewhere, for as long as I care to relate them. For now, though, we'll let this narrative raft come to rest at a metaphoric sandbar.

I've likened the highway to a river, as it carries men and cargoes from place to place. Time, and fate --or providence, or karma, or Divine will (however the gentle reader cares to refer to it) -- may also be likened to rivers, as they, too carry people and cargoes from place to place. In this respect, both are even more like rivers than is a highway, as one never knows what the current will bring one's way. I've likened them to rivers, but in my wilder flights of fancy, I wonder if it isn't more appropriate to liken them to the wind in Chesterton's Manalive.

"We shall see", as a very dear, very wise friend of mine is fond of saying.

For now, let's let this wind -- this "good wind that blows nobody harm", in Chesterton's words -- pick us up and deposit us "like a flying wheel of legs" on the riverbank, beside a distraught, disconsolate and quite demented boy. To be sure, he was twenty-one years of age when the stream of asphalt and anguish disgorged him upon its concrete banks, but at the age of thirty-nine, I can't help but think of him -- or of anyone his age -- as anything but a boy.

Looking at him, I'm reminded of a line spoken/sung by Early Williams on a child's record I owned years and years ago, a "Russian doll", of sorts; a capsule version of the movie musical version of Twain's Tom Sawyer. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the song, but two lyrical passages will resonate in my heart, my soul, and my mind (and may God see that they do so forever), for however long I may live:

"River runs warm
In the summer sun
River runs cold
When the summer's done

But a boy's just a dreamer
By the riverside
'Cause the water's too fast
And the water's too wide"

and;

"Then the world turns around
And the boy grows tall
He hears the song
Of the river call

River song sings:
'Travel on! Travel on!'
You blink away a tear
And the boy is gone."

I don't suppose it's entirely accurate to say that he's "gone", per se, only that he buried himself in music and madness, politics and pornography, anarchy and apathy, writing and rebellion, and then called down a hailstorm of martial arts, philosophy, survivalism, gardening, history, and many, many other things to form a cairn above him. When he managed to dig his way from beneath it all, he was still very much in existence, but somewhat changed by his experiences.

He/I began blogging not quite a year ago, at which point the river began bringing all manner of strange and wonderful things his/my way. My way led to my friend Barry Eisler, and thence to MySpace, whereupon Barry suggested I might increase the size of my readership. Other websites have promised that should I choose to purchase the products they sell, I might increase the size of something else, but I digress...

I write for the sake of writing alone -- because I love writing. In order to make a living at it though, a writer (however devoted to his craft he may be) needs an audience, and MySpace seemed a good place to find one. As I'm not a "mainstream" writer by any stretch of the imagination, finding an audience has proven to be an exercise in "looting" my friends' pages, doing keyword searches, and trying to locate individual readers with whom I share common interests.

In the hacker- and spammer-ridden wasteland that is MySpace, this has proven rather challenging, and I've had to learn an entirely different form of "Cyber etiquette"(if you will) when approaching such prospective readers. At present, my preferred method is to send a letter of introduction in which I explain who I am, what I hope to accomplish, and what element of a given person's profile leads me to believe that he or she might be interested in reading what I have to say. In the past, though, I'd simply pick likely "targets" from my friends' pages, hoping that they'd check my profile and say: "Oh, he's a friend of So-and-So's. He must be OK." As the Friends Lists become ever longer, though, this method becomes increasingly difficult to employ.

As I've essentially abandoned said method, the gentle reader is probably wondering why the hell I mentioned it.

"Why the hell did you mention it, Bean?", screeches he/she. "I have fifty bucks riding on the outcome of tonight's episode of American Crack-Whore, so this better be good!"

It is. And so is that which came of it.

Not long ago, while "looting" Barry Eisler's friends list, I spotted a woman's face. Upon said face was the most irritatingly cocky and insouciant expression I'd seen in ages.

"OK", says I, slapping the blue paint onto my face, "Who's this chick? I reckon I'll go give her page a look see!"
"Where are you goin'?", asked Ma Bean, who'd entered the room quietly and unannounced.
"Ta pick a fight!", said I, with a wicked grin. "Now put that baseball bat down. I saw yer reflection in the monitor."
"You shouldn't end sentences with prepositions, Mr. English Major", she said, slapping me upside the head before she left the room. "And do something about those empty beer cans! You weren't raised in a barn!"
"But Ma", I hollered over my shoulder, "they're a tribute to --"
"Don't give me that Andy Warhol bullshit again, sonny boy. I wasn't born yesterday. Besides, not even a week ago, you spent three hours ranting and raving about what a pretentious fuckwit Warhol was, remember?"

"Be careful! Your face might freeze that way!", she said, poking her head back into the doorway.I ignored her, proffered my middle finger (the splint came off yesterday, for all that a dainty work-boot and a part of the chair in which I was sitting have yet to work their way out of my ass), and clicked on the woman's face. I noticed that she actually posted blogs, and decided to read one.

"Hmm", said I, "This is interesting. I sure as hell don't agree with all of it, but I can't resist commenting!" Having said this, I sent a friends request, and posted a comment. Not long afterward, we began IM conversations, during which we got to know each other as best we could, given the inherent dangers and difficulties posed by internet communication.

For the life of me, I don't know what got into her, but one day in March, she suggested that perhaps she should come and visit me. I was rather taken aback by the suggestion, but consented, nonetheless.

And so the arrangements were made.

Fast-forward to Saint Paddy's Day, 2007. She was scheduled to arrive that day, and had taken out a room in a nearby hotel. I was (pardon the cliche) as nervous as John Holmes laying carpet nekkid in a roomful of rocking chairs, and so, as it seems, was she. Her friends were completely against the idea of her coming to see me, as they were sure I was a latter-day Ed Gein, or worse. I myself entertained the notion that perhaps she was some sort of "black widow" killer, so I suppose we were on a level "playing field", in that respect.

Needless to say, Murphy's Law was both the law of the land, and in full force that day. I was late getting out of work. I hadn't had anything but a one-night stand in over ten years, so I couldn't remember the mechanics of dating. Shit! What should I do? I know I'm forgetting something! Ah! Of course, Bean, you dipshit! Flowers! I bought her a bouquet from the floral department in the store at which I work, and drove home to shower and change clothes.

I then realized that my car was a regular hog-wallow. Shit! I spent twenty minutes scooping assorted detritus into a Hefty bag, emptying the ashtray, vacuuming the interior, and spraying the seats, floor-mats, and damn-near everything else with an almost certainly toxic mix of Renuzit, Lysol, and Neutra-Air. I then cranked the vehicle up and backed down the driveway.

Only to realize that I'd left both the flowers and my camera in the house. I pulled back up the driveway, ran inside, grabbed the bouquet, and leapt into my car again.

Only to realize that I'd left my keys on the kitchen table when I'd retrieved the bouquet.

I raced back into the house, seized my keys (by this time, Ma Bean was loading tranquilizer darts into a Cap-Chur gun), started the car, and backed down the driveway.

Only to realize that I'd forgotten the camera.

I burst through the door, raced to my bedroom (Ma Bean having eschewed the dart gun for an .08 gauge elephant gun by now), shoved the camera into my pocket, and backed down the driveway at half the speed of sound. Apologies to the jogger, by the way. I suppose the experience will teach him that wearing a walkman while jogging is a very bad idea.

Ripping down the road at slightly above the posted speed limit, the Chieftains blaring over the car's stereo, I made a beeline for her hotel.

Only to realize that I hadn't bought us a bottle of wine. Turning around and heading back in the direction from which I'd come (apologies to the day-laborers. Stay out of my blind spot and use the fucking crosswalks, willya?), I hied me to a nearby package store.

Wine and roses are "traditional" gifts, as I suppose, but today was Saint Paddy's, after all, so I settled for a bottle of Carolan's, instead, and hit the road. (Apologies to the guy who was standing in front of me in the checkout line. I only punched one kidney, after all -- that's why the Good Lord gave ya two, right? -- and the last thing I want to hear when I'm late for a St. Paddy's Day date is a mind-numbing disquisition over the relative merits of various and sundry brands of overpriced horse-piss. It's booze, dickhead. Ethanol. Meditate while you recuperate.) 

Finally, I made it to the hotel. I asked the desk clerk to ring her, to let me know I was there, and after a bit of confusion (I haven't gone by "Jeff" in years), I was given a key and directions. I have no idea what manner of figure I cut as I let myself into the room. Faded jeans, a Kelly-green sweatshirt, Celtic cross necklace, black leather jacket, thinning, overlong, red-brown hair, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bottle of Carolan's (in a brown, paper bag, no less!) in the other.

As I've said, I have no idea. But neither do I care. Standing in front of me was the woman upon whose picture I'd clicked just a few days before. She wasn't "dolled up", which was an immediate relief, as odd as that may sound. I gave her the flowers and the bottle of Irish Cream Liquor, and she gave me much, much more in return.

I've mentioned that I-85 is a river of sorts, have I not? As it happens, one of its tributary streams is US Highway 52, which leads to Winston-Salem, a city that lies a mere stone's throw from Greensboro. Eighteen years before, I'd paddled up the river, as it were, to declare my sincere, heartfelt, and undying love to a woman who thought me the lowest form of life on earth. I'd returned to Atlanta on the morning of Saint Paddy's Day of the same year, thinking of myself as she thought of me.

On this day, though, a woman who'd never even so much as met me had taken to the same stream and driven three-hundred miles, for the sole purpose of meeting me.

Just to see if the man behind the stories and the photos was real.

"Internet stalker!", snorts the gentle reader.

"Git ta fuck", snorts the not-so-gentle Bean. The woman in question is a professional and published author. I, on the other hand, am an amateur, and a "swearblogger", at that. She writes for magazines. I write for the hell of it. She does readings. I do rants. She's "out of my league", but for some reason, she wanted to meet me. The guts it took for her to do what she did impressed me beyond my ability to express myself, and her desire to become better acquainted with me left me similarly humbled, honored, touched, and flattered.

As I've said before, we chatted quite a bit before she took to the road, and in the course of our conversations, she somehow divined that I was of Irish and Scottish stock. As the "Blood of Emeralds" (apologies to Gary Moore) does indeed flow through my veins, courtesy of my Mother, and as I'm damned proud of the fact, my heart was in my throat when this woman -- Italian/Mexican herself -- handed me a sweet and precious gift, one which I keep in a secret place, alongside a strip of tartan given me by a clanswoman on my father's side some years ago: A set of hand-sewn, linen dinner napkins; White, but printed with tiny green shamrocks.

As if this weren't enough, she'd brought me a jar (yes, you read that correctly! A jar!) of my favorite whiskey. The whitest of white lightning, with a special touch added thereunto. Upon receiving it, I suppose I sported as much of a "blush" as did it! This was true, Southern, corn whiskey. Distilled by a true artist, a master of his craft, it went down as smoothly as pudding, without even a hint of bitterness or "burn". Nary a trace of fusel oil was in evidence, and for all its glorious, Homeric ("...dawn, with her fingertips of rose...) blush, was clearly -- as clearly as it was clear! -- the work of a Hillbilly, Highlander "Musashi of mash". It looked like vodka, but went down like the best of bourbons.

And yet we had to fill our glasses with more than this! Time was short, after all!

This woman had taken a gander at the pictures I'd posted, and had expressed a desire to see the covered bridge I'd put on my page, so without further ado, I took her to see it. As per the terms of an agreement I'll not relate, we crossed it hand-in-hand, and then repaired to the north shore of the stream, whence we wandered the woods until we came upon waterfalls and ruins. Photographs were taken.

And then the battery-light in the camera began blinking!

By this time, night was falling upon Roswell, GA, USA, and an unseasonable chill was whistling its way through the quiet streets, as well. We sought higher ground -- Founders' Cemetery, to be exact -- wandered among the stones for a while, and spoke respectfully of the dead, both those beneath us -- whom we did not know -- and those who'd preceded us into "death's other kingdom" -- many of whom we did know.

We repaired to the car -- it was chilly, after all -- and she being Italian/Mexican and I Scottish/Irish, had a non-argument over where to pack our craws, during which exchange (held in the relative warmth of the vehicle) I did my level best to show her that not only the man she'd come to see, but the town which had shaped him in so many ways were real.

We took our evening meal at a Chinese buffet, wherein we both told each other more about ourselves and of our lives, "had eyes bigger than our stomachs", and wherein we both laughed when I became the only man in the entire history of the state of Georgia ever to have been "attacked" by a dead, dismembered crab.

Dusk saw us returning to the hotel (and the bastard probably took photos of us, as well!), at which point the both of us bade the outside world a fond "Piss off!", and faced yet another set of catastrophes and inconveniences with Aurelian stoicism and Irish logic and humor.

The rest, as I suppose, is no one's business. Ergo, I'll leave it to the gentle reader's imagination, however chaste or unchaste the work of said faculty may be. I will say, though, that if we awoke in each other's arms and kissed before parting, she can no more be faulted for having slept and awakened always smiling than can I for having sped off -- late for work, as usual -- with the words of my fellow Celt's "Brown Eyed Girl" echoing in my head.

The tale is far from being told in its entirety. More to come.

Te amo, Margarita.

"How ye' feelin', Bill?"
"Like a mean motherfucker, Dave-O! Like a good ol' rebel!"
"As well ye' should, Billy-O! There's always trouble waitin' when ye' leave yer own backyard, after all!"
"Incoming!" he screeched.
"Don't sweat the small stuff! Do you smell that?"
"What?"
"Bullshit, Bill! Nothing else in the world smells like that!  I love the smell of bullshit in the morning!" I roared. "That smell. That tripe smell. It smells like -- dodging another bullet!"

"It wasn't just insanity and murder, there was enough of that to go around!", squawked a bystander.
"So who are you, the social conscience of America?" snarled Bill, seizing his lapel.
"No! God, no! I'm a saucier!"
"Un sorcier? Merde alors! Heathen!" screamed Bill, as he pulled his lighter from his pocket, "I'll fuckin' well burn ye' at the steak!"
"Execrable pun, Billy-O! Wretched! But seein' as we've both split from the whole fuckin' program, I'll forgive it!" I said.

"Forgive and forget?" he asked, roughly shoving his almost-victim away.
"Absolutely right!" I replied. "Forgive the offense and forget that the offender ever existed."
"You are clearly agitated, Dave!" said he, driving a powerful roundhouse kick into my lower thigh. "What is the cause of your distress?"
"Lack of spontaneity! Ow! Mind my nuts, you fuckwit!" I replied, as he hoisted me upon his shoulders in a "fireman's carry". "Predictability and patternistic behavior offend me beyond my ability to relate -- or to retaliate!" I sank my teeth into his deltoid and pulled his hair.

"Hey, asshole! How dare you dash me to the unforgiving pavement?" I squalled in indignation.
"Ye' bit me and pulled my hair, fucker, and it ain't like ye' hit it directly!"
"Ain't like you didn't have it comin'" I said. "Now help me up. My leg is still numb."
I extended a hand, and he reached out with his own.
"Uh-uh! Like so!" said I, shaking my head and closing my hand, save for the index finger.
Bill rolled his eyes and made to pull me to my feet by the extended digit. I broke wind loudly, and for a full two-and-a-half seconds. The little old lady upon whom I had landed convulsed violently for a moment, and then lay still.

"She's fallen, and she can't get up" Bill noted.
"Stroke or heart condition" I said. "Once they reach that age, they commence to dropping like flies. And speaking of that: Zip up, Bill. You're 'losing altitude'."
We continued along Thunderbird Road in silence for some moments, passing a bottle of Thunderbird.
"Dave, are you sure we're going in the right direction? I haven't seen a single white rabbit, nor a rabbit hole anywhere around here" said Bill.
"Ah!" There's one, directly ahead!" I exclaimed, pointing. "And speaking of that, how doth the little crocodile, anyway?"
"Feisty little bastard!", said Bill, patting the squirming burlap sack he had thrust through his belt. Say, Dave-O? I don't think this is a rabbit hole at all. It looks more like a canal of some sort."
"Let me have a closer look" said I, removing my 3D glasses. "Well fuck me dead! So indeed it is!"  
I shrugged.  
"I suppose it's as good a place as any."

Bill pulled the sack from his belt and upended it. The reptile hurtled thrashing through space for a fraction of a second, and then hit the water with a splash. Bill and I placed our hands over our hearts.
"Booooorn free/ As free as the wind blows", we sang, with genuine feeling.
"So what's next on the agenda?" Bill asked.
"Canadian raw milk Cheddar", I said. "For some inexplicable reason, I crave it whenever there's a series of school shootings."
"I'm kinda the same way about Belgian waffles", said Bill.  "And did you ever notice that school shootings pick up anytime a Clinton gets anywhere near the Whitehouse?"
"I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but I suppose you're right. I gather that if she wins the election, her inauguration will be met with a veritable St. Valentine's Day Massacre in every tax-funded educational facility in the country."
"What if Giuliani is elected?"
"He'll outlaw guns, panhandling and prostate glands, Bill."
"And McCain?"
"On the 22nd of August, he'll give a speech on the site of the World Trade Center, in which he says: 'I have given orders to my Freedom Squads to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women and children belonging to the Farsi-speaking race. It is only in this manner that we can acquire the vital territory which we need since the open-borders policies I favor have led to this country becoming rather crowded. After all, who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians'?"

"Isn't it illegal to deny that in Europe?"
"Of course not, Bill. Not all genocides are created equal. Just ask any descendant of the surviving Kulaks. People don't give a shit about any group but their own. Human nature, don'tchaknow. See why I'm glad not to be human? They're an inattentive and inconsiderate bunch."
"Indeed they are, rather like those blithering schmucks back at McDonald's. You'd think elementary consideration would demand learning the language of one's host country."
"Indeed. We can ill afford this rock'n'roll lifestyle, Bill" I said. "Look, night is falling, both literally and metaphorically."
He raised his head and cast his eyes skyward. The sun was sinking in the west and stars punched pinpricks of light through the deepening cerulean canopy of evening.
"That was a pretty, if somewhat cliche description of twilight, Dave", said Bill.
"Blame the narrator, not me. My point is: Soon it will be dark."
"Doesn't the sun also rise?"
"Not here, it doesn't. Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars. And what is the sun but a nearby star? No, dear Billy-O, the sun will not rise once is sets. Ra strikes the reef of night and sinks. Osiris and his pecker are forever separated. And there is no Phoenix, Bill. Just three hundred-million dodos. They can't rise from their dead asses, let alone their own ashes."  
"Glum, if somewhat poetic", said he.

"I feel rather poetic this evening, Bill. Let me lay one on you. This one flowed from the pen of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovski, before he 'pulled the plug' and let his life flow from him":

'It's after one.
      You must have gone to bed.
The milky way runs like a silvery river through the night.'

"That it does indeed" said Bill, looking skyward again. I continued my recitation:

'I'm in no hurry
       and with lightning telegrams
there's no need to wake and worry you.
As they say
      the incident is closed.
The love boat
       has smashed upon convention'

"Oh! How I hated that fucking show!"
"Quit interrupting me, Bill. It's inconsiderate and boorish."

'Now you and I are through
         No need then
To count over the mutual hurts, harms and slights.
Just see how quiet the world is!
Night has laid a heavy tax of stars upon the sky.
In hours like these you get up and you speak
To the ages, to history, and to the universe.'
 
"Sometimes" said Bill, "you'd imagine they were actually listening."

"That", I said, "is just your imagination. Only this, and nothing more."

A raven croaked and flew off into the last glowing smudge of day -- the "twilight's last gleaming" -- which lay upon the horizon like a band of hot iron on a smith's anvil.

"Nevermore" whispered Bill, shivering and zipping his jacket.

"Nevermore."