Lovin' On, The Chosen Ones, Darius and Nabuchodonosor, $91 Billion, Ebola, Two-Star Generals, Fonda, and the Cunning Fennec Fox

4/5 August 2014

1222 hrs

Good Afternoon, Patient Reader

            Yeah, late start . . .  Stayed home from school today because class was cancelled . . .  turns out my girl wanted to stay with me instead of going to her god seminar this weekend.  Yeah, I’ve got it like that! 

            
      
             She went on Sunday, I guess because it was the holy Sabbath and there was a modicum of guilt involved . . . she’s a good girl, so . . .

5 August 2014

0930 hrs

(c)  Properfessor

I’ve got to say, one of my favorite things to do to mi muñequita is “pet” her.  Now please don’t send me ugly messages; it is a term of affection and there really is no other that fits quite so.  “Stroke” isn’t even wholly accurate. Petting in this context is the act of running the flat palm of my hand up and down her body.  

          I’ll stroke her cheek with my fingers, then switch to my whole hand as it travels the length of her arms and her side; across the swell of her buttocks; down the thigh and the calf.  

When she lies on her back, I apply the same tenderness to her breasts, belly, and mons veneris.

 I do this even after she falls asleep.  I asked her once if it woke her up and she told me yes, but do it anyway; she’d manage somehow . . .

            Last night she came over with two pints of Ben and Jerry’s Pistachio Pistachio ice cream,

 and after she showered the day from her skin, naked beneath the towel, I gave her a foot massage as she dug into the frozen treat.

         The rest of the evening is just between her and me, but it was spectacular.  As I said, she’s a good woman.

            Shall I get on with the rant?  Splendid!

            Hey, Israel- what the fuck?  How is it that you can go into the Palestinian territory, bulldoze or confiscate Arab property, move in your immigrant Jews, bomb hospitals and factories and power stations with your American-made ordnance and Warcraft, and justify all of this in your god-fearing hearts?  Haven’t you noticed that every time you bomb Gaza there are dead babies?  C’mon . . . It was a major Jew, I mean, the guy that led god’s folks out of bondage, who brought the commandments down from Sinai in the first place.  Remember those?  In particular I mention the one that says you can’t murder.  Think about it.


            OK, sure . . . you're Mandatory Military Chicks are pretty fucking hot-

       

-so put out a fucking calendar or something . . . give us something for all the aid we send you!

            And you all want to rebuild Solomon’s temple on the Temple Mount, or Mt. Zion 

or whatever you want to call it, and America wants to help.  The reason we want to help is that jebus won’t come back until the temple is rebuilt,

        and goddam it, we want jebus!



            Come and rapture the fuck out of us, Son of Man!  We need you to kill off all the Jews and Muslims so we can Pat Robertson the shit out of Earth and usher in the millennium.  Mmmm mm . . . You know, jebus is coming back to kick ass . . . jebus in jackboots.

            So now BBC tells us that Israel is withdrawing all troops from Gaza as part of a (temporary) peace treaty.

         That’s great.  We know how permanent those are . . .  I think Jews are forgetting that the Diaspora began after Darius conquered Nabuchodonosor, some of y’all said, “Fuck it, we ain’t going back,” and y’all went off to Europe and Africa and other points on the map.

            I’m not trying to pick on Israel; there are plenty of countries out there on the Fucker-Uppers list . . . America included, but come on . . . can’t y’all try to not be hypocritical?  Can’t we?

              According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:

A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billion—and counting . . . and we wonder where all of our tax dollars are going?  How many vets could we treat with that money?

            How many Americans could we insure with it?  How better would Obamacare be if, instead of gutting it in Congress, we applied $91 bil to the cause?

            How about if we applied it to public schools? 

            Or reforming the Penal System and work on rehabilitation and recidivism rates vs. simply locking everybody up or putting them to death?  

            Jebus, indeed.

            America is banking on the Jews to rebuild the temple (but first the Dome of the Rock shrine that currently occupies the spot must be torn down), just so jebus can come back and judge the very Jews that helped bring him back!  And the Dome of the Rock?  Just another Islamic holy site . . . what the fuck do we care, right?  We can piss anybody off as long as we have jebus on our side. 

            So keep tearing up shit, Israel; we love it.  We love unrest in the Middle East, because we can blame y’all for the destruction of the Promised Land all the while keeping our own hands from getting dirty.  Arabs vs Jews is the best thing for America.  We get to pressure the Arab countries into keeping oil prices malleable all the while making a show of acting as intermediaries to the Peace Process.  I would suggest you all wake the fuck up, but you love that $91 BILLION, don’t you?  Quit blowing up Palestinians, who have every right imaginable to that land, and wonder why they come out of the shadows with rocks.  Y’all are not that stupid.  Or Are you?

            OK, ‘nuff said on that . . .

            What do y’all think of that
  possible case of Ebola Virus Disease?  He’s being treated at Mt. Sinai with possible infection . . . 

certainly the symptoms fit, and he was in a part of West Africa where the outbreak is still occurring.

With a madness.  Since February, according to the BBC, 887 people have died in 4 West African countries, and the World Bank has given $200m to help. 

            Well, we lost an American Maj. General (two stars) in Afghanistan . . . the highest-ranking officer to fall since we invaded the country . . . jebus . . . do you know what it takes to take out a general?  Do you know what a coup that is for the enemy?  Good for their morale . . . bad for us.

            You know, I grew up in the military, and most of the career armed forces cats I talk to say the same thing:  Combat is the last thing they want to see or send their boys and girls into, but they will and do it without a moment’s hesitation.  The best leaders are not warmongers, and the Chiefs of Staff work together with civilian leadership to work out every possible solution before resorting to warfare.

  But once the President, their Commander in Chief, decides to gear up, the Chiefs are ready with a plan.  Sometimes with several.  So let’s all cut the military some slack.  Remember, it’s always the guys in suits that send our troops off to war;

it is the military leadership that tries their best to bring them home.

            I guess that’s really all I have the heart to say, today.  Everything else can just be, well, tedious and tiresome.  Check out, however, the latest Frontline special,

Losing Iraq, and see what’s what, there.  Prepare to be informed. 
Losing Iraq

So I leave y’all to it, Patient Reader and other CFFers.  Hello to Turkey and Moldova; thanks for joining the ranks.  You all are welcome, anytime. 

So.  On to part IV of Fonda's story . . .  Enjoy?

Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox

Part IV

            Fonda was old hat with the hospital scene.  Her Greek and Latin, as was mine early on, was mined from the shafts of medicine, and she could translate both like a Pope; as priceless and mysterious as ore to the alchemists.  

            That first day she read the embroidered word “Neurophysiology,” and asked me what it meant, knowing full well what it meant.  She was coy like that. 

   

         And those kids.  She made them forget they were patients in a hospital.  I simply cannot stress that enough.  As far as I am concerned, kids are just squirming bundles of noise.  At a certain point, they are very sticky, too. 

      I was there to be a neurodiagnostician.  I can get your kid repaired- I just figure out what’s wrong and send them to the appropriate people for the appropriate treatment.  They’re YOUR kids . . .  you hug them.  You give them the "there theres" and the pats on the hands.  You tell them everything is going to be OK when perhaps they won’t.  You feed their denial.  I think medicine and hospitals would be much better if we got rid of the whole Patient Thing.

       You are the ones who, when asked what medicines they are on, answer me with, “Well . . . uh . . .  the orange one . . .  and the . . .”  Your job is to be stupid, I guess.  When I am stupid then others’ quality of life plummets, and my average goes down.  That is why I am never wrong.  YOU leave your kids’ meds at home, a long four-hour drive away, even though their next dose is due in an hour.  I’ll be sure to, at the very least, make you remember you forgot.

       Yet they loved and hugged me, too.  My neck was wrung dry by many a youngster’s elbow crook.  To this day I don’t understand why. 

       The younger kids could not name the coiled, crouching darkness in the corner, patient as a statue and waiting.  But they could sense its ominous nature in their parent’s thinly-veiled horror.  The teens knew what was up.  But they watched Fonda.  They saw her live and see her twentieth birthday.  And her twenty-first.  They saw her not dying.  Each and every one of us loved her for that.

       I would watch Fonda in those moments.  Eidetically, I saw and remember the happy sadness, the melancholia of her joy, as she gazed upon her adopted brood, knowing full well her fallopian tubes were ravaged and she would never have children of her own.  If she did think about that pram forever as empty as her womb, she dared not show that to anyone but me.  And I only saw it because I am the Bodhisattva of Wisdom . . .  am I not?

       I was the Fly to her Pitcher Plant.

A hundred years earlier, Fonda would have never made it out of grade school.  Oddly, had she been a hobbled horse or a dog wrapped, caught in barbed wire, a bullet would have been fired into her brain without a second thought.  Since she was human, well, that would have just been cruel. 

       We had a standing date, she and I.  I would get to the hospital at 0400 hrs, every Monday of that third week, and I would wait for her car as I sat in the lobby, giddy as all get-out.  Yes, Patient Reader, there was a time I actually felt giddiness . . .

       I would see her beat-up Plymouth pull into the parking terrace and I would hoof it up to the mezzanine where the entrance to the covered pedestrian overpass was, welcoming as a soft and warm mouth.  I would meet her halfway, and we would stand there in the longest of embraces, suspended above the deserted street, her scalp smelling of warm apples.  No words were to be exchanged for some time.  There could be nothing said that would say more than the way we held us.

       One early afternoon she appeared in my office.  “We’re going on a field trip,” she said.  “You’re taking the rest of the day off and we’re going to spend it together.”  I looked out my window and saw a beautiful central-Alabama Spring day, and I told my secretary to reschedule my appointments.  Fonda and I were going on a field trip.

       She got a free glimpse as I changed from my scrubs to my street clothes.  Old and faded blue-jeans and a white cotton button-down.  This shirt was Fonda’s favorite; soft as angel’s breath, and she loved to rest her face against it.  Loved to hold it and my chest beneath it against her beautiful face; against the bright thunder of my pounding heart.

  

       I was sure to keep that shirt handy when she was visiting. 

       Fonda was not tall; just over five feet, she fit neatly, and rightly so, under my warm wing.  She knew no harm would befall her when she was protected so.  She knew this, allowing me my role, this role of many others that I portrayed. 

       She pretended to browse over the things in my office, the objet d’art that made that office mine, as I changed clothes.  Her presence was awkward to neither of us. 

       She looked from my bare chest to the bed I used for EEGs, and back at me as I dropped my scrub bottoms.  I saw her blush.  She did not see me see her.

        “You’re taking me to the Botanical Gardens,” she declared, explaining to me that the pollen should not be too bad and that she had her inhaler.  Her pulmonologist OK’d the excursion, and I acquiesced to her desire. 

       I remember her framed by dogwoods in front of the Yellow Lady’s Slipper display.  She was all pinks and yellows and I was in a dream.  Her back was to me, and I embraced her, her firm breasts resting on my forearms.  I dared to place a kiss gently on her neck.  Y’all know the spot; just where the neck and shoulder meet; just beneath and behind the ear; just behind the tiny blue vein that traced back to her heart.

  

       She felt right then and there, soft and warm in my strong arms, her scent more powerful than the fragrant flowers filling, like the lover she was meant to be. 

      

       For a moment, the very sweetest of moments, she was free of her bonds, turning her head and letting me place that kiss, softer than a wish. 

       In that all-too-brief instant, I learned a universe of knowledge about my Sweet Fonda:

       In the way she softened, I learned that she dreamt of, as did I, this tender dream.

       I learned from her blush that she was awakened and wanting. Her breath quickened and I felt her warmth on my lips; palpable as a heartbeat.  I learned that Fonda knew that I could be her man.

  

       She stiffened and turned to me, her eyes gazing so very deeply into mine.  For the first time I saw fear in Fonda’s eyes, and it frightened me.  I also saw sadness and desire, as I see them right now in the scribblings of my memory; on the movie screen that is my mind.  I felt a stirring so strong that my heart cracked a little and spilled warm.  Then the moment was over.

       She broke her gaze; the doorway closed.  She laid her head upon my chest and listened yet again to that bright, racing thunder that was my heartbeat.  She heard the caged tiger pacing. 

       She was searching for the same words I was, and all she could say was my sad name.  “Fox . . .  Fox . . .” 

       She would taste  my name before she said it, pleasing to her it seems, for she let it out with great reluctance.  From her mouth it was new to me, my own name, bouncing around the abyss that is my soul.  She colored it with the color of her eyes, that bright blue born of wishes. 

       After some moments, she spoke, and I listened with great care:

       “I was in love once, with a boy named Steve, back in Red Bay.  And I think he loved me . . .  Anyway, I kept waiting for him to pop the question, and when I finally worked up the courage to ask him why he was taking so long . . .”

       And here she paused, and I waited through it.  Everything Fonda told me was the most important thing I would ever hear.  Listening to her words was handling her heart.  Something most profound, something that would alter our lives was coming, and I tried in vain to prepare for it. 

       Her soft and warm lips, pink as life, trembled.  Had I been a lesser man I never would have seen it.  Had I been a greater man, I would have stopped it.  She sighed.

       “Steve said, ‘Well . . .  how much longer do you have?’”

       And then she showed to me what her broken heart looked like.  It was shattered and ugly and twisted and it hurt so much to lay my gaze upon it.  Its sickly glow was my death ray; my kryptonite.  I shuddered beneath the weight of tears, my back creaking from the burden of her sorrow.

       This horrible heart hurt her; made her weep so.  I held her as she broke apart, my arms struggling to their limits as I tried to keep the pieces of her from scattering.  They could only keep her from falling.  But they could not keep her from falling in love with me.

       Years later, Shmaren*, my wife, threw away that soft shirt in which Fonda had wept.  She did not ask me if it was okay, because she knew what I would say.  Though I never wore it again after the day at the Gardens, Shmaren felt threatened by a shirt hanging in my closet with another woman’s mascara on it.  She assumed that it was a souvenir of some passionate rendezvous . . .  a tryst I would never want to forget.  She did not know, nor did she ask, that it was Fonda’s tears that put that mascara stain there.  Those tears were all I had left of my friend.  Those tears were alive, as alive as my memory that lies beyond that bright blue door, that Sheltering Sky.  That woman, Fair as the moon; clear as the sun; terrible as an army with banners.

     

End of Part IV

And always I remain, 

The Cunning Fennec Fox