textfiles/magazines/UXU/uxu-547.txt

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                         Underground eXperts United

                                 Presents...

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         [ Song Of A Bird Perched On A Rusty Gear ] [ By Eric Chaet ]


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    ____________________________________________________________________



SONG OF A BIRD PERCHED ON A RUSTY GEAR
by Eric Chaet

     The orange sun, going down, was approaching the wooded horizon.

     I'd begun to shiver in cold gusts, where I stood along a deserted
highway, on a high ridge over-looking sloping, snow-covered fields.  A black
pick-up truck, hauling a uniquely-designed, chrome-glinting trailer,
stopped.

     I ran, not wanting to give the driver a chance to get impatient - &
climbed into the cab, panting, "Thanks for stopping for me."

     The big, dark, broad-chested driver - in clean western-style work
clothes - brilliant smile under black mustache - shifted into gear, pulled
back onto the road, & stuck out a huge right hand - keeping a firm grip on
the wheel with the left.  I shook it.

     "Manuel Fabricante," he said, & told me he'd just completed a big
materials-handling job - whatever that was - & that he'd made a lot of
money.

     He drove us, with complete confidence, thru a terrible blizzard that
engulfed us, immediately - at the same time the night - that I had dreaded
having to stand or walk or find somewhere to sleep thru - fell.

     He said he'd welded the trailer together from scrap he'd accepted as
partial payment for one of his jobs; & that it was full of steel spans,
girders, nuts, & bolts - partial payment from this most recent job - & an
air-compressor, impact wrenches, drills & bits, saws, t-squares, levels,
cans of lubricating oil & spray paint he'd accumulated job by job, purchase
by purchase, starting out with exactly nothing & no prospects.

     That on 5 acres of land, outside Minneapolis-St.Paul, he had a small
fleet of old & new trucks & cars, stored in 3 pole-buildings he'd built
behind his house.  That he also had accumulated a wide assortment of hand &
power tools & small machines, & scrap metal & wood, even pails of used nails
he'd scavenged from jobs over 20 years.

     Snow poured thru the head-light beams, isolating us from the parked,
sheltered, & sleeping remainder of humanity.

     As he drove, Manuel talked & talked - while I, on the verge of an
asthma attack, tried to catch my breath without engaging his attention.

     I'd been hitchhiking most of two weeks, had eaten only a couple of
cheap-peanut-butter-on- cheapest-white-bread sandwiches in the last few
days, had not had water for most of this day, & had $6 in my pocket - & no
more available anywhere else.  (My girl-friend, Annie, to whose apartment I
was trying to return, was able to pay rent & food, from her wages, but
nothing else.)

     "My father came to Detroit from Guadalajara," Manuel said.  "He was a
barber - never learned to speak English.  My mother cut meat at the A & P, &
drank up whatever money came into the house, at a tavern in the
neighborhood.  She didn't notice that we didn't have anything to eat.  I was
WEAK.

     "About when I turned 14, I found some big rusty gears, & used them for
weights, lifting them - & doing push-ups - every day, after school, all
afternoon, all evening - for months.  I remember when I first felt STRENGTH,
instead of FEAR.

     "Then, I took buses as far as they went, to the edge of the city, &
walked as far as I could - & found work on the estate of the widow of a
banker - Mrs. Irene Urbanski.  She always greeted me with a sandwich & a
glass of milk.  I mowed lawns, trimmed bushes, painted walls, fixed gutters,
siding, fences, plumbing, windows, the roof.  I cleaned up the basement &
attic.

     "When I asked for materials, she said she wouldn't know how to go about
getting what I needed.  I told her I'd find what I needed, if she'd pay for
it.  I worked for her 3 years.  First time in my life I had enough to eat.

     "You want some coffee, Partner?"

     "Yes," I said.

     He handed me a cup & a thermos.

     "Pour a cup for me, too," he said.

     I did, & handed it to him, then poured mine, re-sealed the thermos, &
drank.

     He took a couple of deep swallows, too, & continued.

     "I used my earnings - & a football scholarship - to go to Alexander
Hamilton College - but I couldn't stand any more sitting in classes.  I
joined the Army.  They were training me to go behind enemy lines."

     "Vietnam? Green Berets?" I asked, shaking off the beginning of sleep.
The heat was on in the cab of the pick-up, I was breathing easier,
relaxing...I wasn't going to freeze to death.

     "That's on the bead, Partner.  I set the all-time Army push-up record.
I was doing the same with sit-ups, when I busted a gut, & spent 6 months in
the hospital.  They botched the operation, & I got infected - bad.  I lay
there for months, watching, while they wheeled in the wounded - &, when they
died, wheeled them away.  By the time I was discharged, I'd been in that
hospital longer than any other patient.  It was an education.

     "I was weak.  I had only a few dollars.  My clothes were way too big.
I had a medical discharge, no experience, no degree.  Nothing had changed at
home.  I walked the streets - from one plant to another, asking for a job.

     "At one place, they tried me out doing some book-keeping tests.  I
figured out enough as I was going along to impress the boss.

     "'How come no stripes on your sleeve?' he asked.

     "My uniform was all I had to wear.  I explained as best I could.  I got
the job - but I had no place to live.  There was a woman who worked in the
office - she took me home...."

     Manuel paused, considering - I guess - whether to do some sexual
bragging at this point.

     I looked straight ahead thru the wind-shield, too close to fearing for
my survival to be in the mood to share with him any sexual triumph he might
have had, if that was what he was going to talk about, but in no position or
mood to suggest that he say anything other than what he wanted to.

     Manuel gave a quick glance at me out of the corners of his eyes,
re-grouped, & continued.

     "I did the best job I could," he said.  "I wasn't just trying to slide
by & get my pay-check - I had to make something of myself....   The office
needed painting, & I volunteered to do the job on my own time.  The boss
liked that.  And I got to be a good book-keeper, pretty quick.

     "I bought myself some decent clothes, & rented an apartment.  I figured
out that what the company wanted most was to collect old debts.

     "Our biggest customer, a defense contractor, owed us $340,000.  They'd
owed it for 3 years.  There was a dispute about missing paper-work.  I
called the company in Rhode Island, sweet-talked the receptionist; she
transferred me to a woman who told me what paper-work was necessary, & what
was missing.

     "I located the papers, & took them with me, to the customer company's
headquarters.  I was 'on vacation' - a reward for painting the walls of the
office - all expenses paid.

     "I went to the guy's office who needed to okay writing us out the
check.  When I sat down to wait, my pants split.

     "The guy saw me sitting there, but he let me wait - & wait - & wait.
When, finally, he let me in, he gave me a lecture.  He said he had no
intention of paying us.  The paper-work had never been right.  As far as he
was concerned, it was a false claim.

     "'End of discussion,' he said.

     "I acted as humble as I could.  I asked him to explain what had gone
wrong, what papers would have been necessary for him to decide our claim was
justified.  He kind of took me under his wing, explained things step by
step.  When he finished, I said, 'I have those papers with me' - & showed
him.

     "Was he surprised!  He looked them over, looked me over, looked the
papers over again, sat back in his chair, & said, 'Well, I'll be damned!'
Right then & there, he wrote the check, bang, for $340,000!

     "When I got back to Detroit, they made me Assistant to the Vice
President of Operations, with a $10,000 a year raise.

     "My first assignment was turning around a printing plant we'd bought,
in Cleveland - it was losing a lot of money.  I interviewed everyone there -
from janitor on up.  I asked each man, 'What can I do to help you do your
job better?'

     "Everyone had an idea about how to make his station more efficient -
higher platform, sharper blade, different angle, better conveyor - how to
make the documents more efficient, how to improve communications....

     "I fought off a gang of union men who cornered me with steel bars.  I
had to beat a couple up.  By the time I left, those union guys were telling
my bosses that I was the only management guy they'd talk to.

     "Next thing, they sent me to headquarters in Minneapolis.  I knew I was
doing a good job, & they kept on telling me I was doing a good job.  I was
looking for a house.  But that's when they told me I'd better start thinking
about what I was going to do next - they didn't know what to do with me.  So
I started selling..."

     "Selling what?" I asked.

     "Components, storage systems, conveyor, cabinets....  Then I started
drawing up designs, & installing rack...."

     I later found out that Manuel was referring to huge rows of crude steel
framework cubes, each cube about 8 by 8 by 8 feet - into which fork-lifts
insert wooden pallets on which materials, components, & finished products
are stacked - in just about every factory in just about every industry.

     "I diversified into conveyors.  Advantage with conveyors is, I could
install 'em myself, if it was a small enough job.

     "I just finished a big job installing 50 steel tool cabinets - I've got
an exclusive deal with Pritzer" - the cabinet manufacturer - "for
installation everywhere east of Denver.  I had a dozen guys working.  What
are you DOING, Partner?"

     Manuel had noticed that I was writing, furiously, in the little
notebook I try always to carry in my shirt pocket.

     "I'm writing this down," I said, wide-awake, now, my breathing shallow,
but under control.

      A happy little grin fought thru Manuel's macho cool & thick mustache -
while I printed very small & rapidly, trying to fit all he'd been telling me
onto the few little pages I had left to work with.

     "What I REALLY want to do," Manuel resumed - for the record, now - "is
to stop INSTALLING, & to get paid for SURVEYING plants' operations, &
telling 'em what they need to do to operate most efficiently."

     "And not just efficient," I said, "but really EFFECTIVE...."

     "What do you mean?" Manuel asked.

     "Doing something REALLY USEFUL, efficiently."

     "Yeah, I guess that's on the level, Partner," Manuel said, "if you
could get people to think about it."

     "And do it in a way that everybody involved benefits..."

     "Level," Manuel said.  "But people don't want to do what's really in
their best interest."

     "And not just for a while - but...."

     "But what?"

     "For good.  From now on."

     "Sure, that'd be good.  How ya gonna do that?"

     "On purpose."

     Manuel threw his head back & roared with pleasure - then, immediately,
sobered up, & gathered himself, navigating the slippery road - barely
visible, thru the dense, rapidly-shifting descent & gusting of snow-flakes,
in the head beams.

     Manuel had now identified himself the way he wanted me to perceive him,
sufficiently, & was enough interested, to ask me where I was coming from &
what I was doing.

     I was exhausted, & disheartened with what I was doing, & had, by now,
explained it to so many people, that I was pretty sick of the whole damn
story, but I summarized for him as best I could:

     I had been trying to record an album of songs I had written & learned
to play on the guitar & to sing just so.   (There was no point in claiming
that I was an excellent guitarist, singer, writer, & arranger.  No one ever

believed it - & why should they, without evidence - when so many were saying
such outstanding things about themselves, in resumes?)

     The songs were all 3 minutes long, which is the length of almost every
song played on commercial radio, & in the commercially acceptable styles -
rock & country - but with serious lyrics.

     The songs were about the way it really was in America, rather than the
way we were always being told it was.   But I didn't bother to mention this
to Manuel, as it was more likely to alienate him, than to endear me to him.

     I'd spent 5 years in L.A., trying to get the record made, the songs
into influential circulation, & myself paid - & had gone broke - tho I had
worked as a research supervisor for a big law firm for about 6 months, &
taught the rudiments of book-keeping at a business "college" for a year
during the 5 years.  (I didn't bother to mention these jobs to Manuel: they
seemed to be more detail than was necessary.  Likewise, I didn't mention
several university teaching positions I had held, previously, nor that I had
been a very good teacher; nor that I had published books, nor that they were
very good books.)

     And had recently taken up silk-screening posters with an indignant male
face & sayings such as YOU'RE LIKE ME IN THIS RESPECT, WHAT YOU DO HAS ITS
EFFECT - & hitchhiking & posting them on utility poles across the country -
most recently back in L.A.

     It was L.A. I was returning from when Manuel picked me up, I said -
glad to be done with the abbreviated version of the explanation.  (It was
all so outrageous - since everyone was scrambling so hard just to find some
kind of niche - unless I had succeeded.)

     Manuel drove all night, drinking the rest of the coffee in the thermos,
to his enormous old house north of St. Paul.

     "Fabricante World Headquarters!" he announced, cheerfully, at the end
of the snow-covered, birch-lined drive-way.

     We entered thru the basement library:  industrial manuals, equipment
catalogs, old hard-bound novels, philosophy & theology books - & piles of
pornographic magazines.

     And hand tools & small power tools everywhere - immaculate & neatly
arranged.  On every wall & on tables with potent black vises clamped on the
ends.  Coils of bright orange nylon rope, & also silvery wire rope & cable.
Work clothes on hooks - ready to go, like in a fire station.  Pairs of
steel-toed boots of many sizes.  Looped chains with big hooks....

     Manuel set me up with used work clothes - he had nearly every size, in
a big closet - jeans on a row of hooks, shirts on another row of hooks, tool
aprons....

     My own clothes were badly frayed.

     As I tried on clothes & shoes, saying, "Thank you! Thank you!" - Manuel
said he had been trying unsuccessfully to find a reliable leader, to accept
supervisory responsibility, & do a job in his absence - without wrecking
tools & equipment, or putting racks or conveyors in askew, or otherwise not
according to spec or schedule.

     I had a career already, for decades - tho almost no one realized it, &
tho I had grown tired of trying to get anyone either to understand or
cooperate - & had no intention of giving it up.

     But I WAS looking for a way to make some money, again - & there were
not many jobs open in the late 1980's, & approximately none that I qualified
for.

     "My ex screwed up the books," Manuel was saying, "just before filing
for divorce.  She marked down a big payment that came December 31, when
she'd already finished the books, as having been received AFTER January 1.

     "I earned $196,000 that year - DOUBLE my best til then.  I had the
world by the tail!

     "Her little error - damn!  I should have done the books myself, but I
didn't dare let my crews work unsupervised.  Her little error - & the
goddamn fucking stupid insane Infernal Revenue - has cost me $100,000 in
fines & interest, so far.

     "My guts are just CHURNING!"

     I was dimly aware of another Manuel Fabricante beginning to peak thru,
as tho from behind the mask of the one about whom I had been writing so
furiously in my little notebook.

     Manuel put me up in a room full of dolls & stuffed animals - his
daughter's room from before the divorce - & kept right on talking while I
unpacked my back-pack.

     I wanted to sleep!  I didn't want to listen any more!

     "I told my wife, 'If you take the house, & I have to move all of my
equipment, & let everyone know where I am, & why, you'll be killing the
goose that lays the golden eggs.'  Cause I still have to pay for her &
Tiffany's health insurance, & Tiffany's education & food & clothes."

     I started to object to an arrangement so unfair to him - Mr.
Know-It-All to the rescue - but caught myself, just in time, made myself
keep quiet, & actually started climbing into bed, while he kept on talking.

     I guess he left before I actually got into bed, & almost immediately
fell into a deep sleep, but I remember his saying that he still owed the
Infernal Revenue $80,000, & it just GRATED on him.  How his guts were just
CHURNING.

     "You can't possibly be in compliance with all the rules.  They
CONTRADICT each other...!"

     Tell me something I don't know, I said, but, I think, in a dream that
faded to black.


     I WOKE GRINDING MY TEETH, thinking, Every opportunity I get to earn
money, I'm supposed to quit MY work to do it!

     Over breakfast, Manuel said, "With a little experience, you could
become the supervisor I'm looking for" - while I tried to get him to think
about efficiency & effectiveness, & about putting together a book on the
subject, using his experience, & my writing ability.

     "We could begin by producing one chapter at a time, in brochure
form...."

     He seemed interested.  But, meanwhile, he needed my help as a member of
one of his crews....  So I figured, What the hell, it was a short-term gig,
it was time to put long-term projects on hold, I was out of money, & there
were no OTHER prospects....  But I entered, beginning, already, to back
out....

     On our way to the first job of several I was to do for Manuel - Manuel
was driving & talking again, & I took out my notebook, to continue the saga.
  But now he was complaining about a salesman, Jensen, who lined up jobs
using Manuel's prowess as a selling point - then demanded a cut of Manuel's
earnings - & insisted that Manuel use inferior components.

     I paused.

     Next, he was complaining about a contractor who'd screwed him, & a
general manager....

     I put my notebook away.  There's no shortage of complaints, however
justified.

     The general manager had not understood what a wonderful system Manuel
had been trying to put in place for him.

     Then, Manuel wandered off onto the glories - beautiful, sexy, etc. - of
a former member of the Houston Oilers (a professional football team)
cheer-leading squad, Thalma, whom Manuel had taken up with while doing a job
in Houston.

     One of the billion most beautiful women in the world, I thought, but
restrained myself from saying.

     Then he was talking about a truck-loading device he'd invented, but
didn't know how to get to market.

    Manuel seemed to be trying to get me to see him in a certain favorable
way.  I felt that he was trying to impress me....  It was more subtle.  It
was as tho one part of him was trying to convince another part of him, & me,
that he was who he wished he was, & that, if only the part of himself & I
believed it, it would be so....

     Manuel was such a mish-mosh of extraordinarily clever, persevering, &
bold - &, at the same time, so normally simple-minded, unenlightened,
retarded....

     I'm like that, too, I thought, unhappily.

     He drove us to Shirleyville, Iowa - a complex of huge factories, one
after another, that produced parts for Ayiwaka cars - windshields, gaskets,
exhausts, axles, pistons, cam-shafts, carburetors, trim, lug-nuts, etc.

     Having failed to make my place in the world on my terms, I had fallen,
not into the dawning Age of Electronics, but a hundred years back, into the
Electro-Mechanical Age.  I had always assumed that I would be able to pay
others to make & maintain whatever few machines, the temporary use of which
I might require.  I knew next to nothing about engines or motors.  I didn't
have a driver's license, or a car.

     Years of prancing & kicking for crowds, & ass-wagging in high heels -
in case someone was a big-shot - led to years of ankle trouble for Thalma,
Manuel was cheerfully informing me.  When Manuel suggested Thalma stop
wearing high heels, she said, "But what about the LOOKS?"

     Now a personnel agency executive, Thalma had lined up members of the
crew for the job in Houston that Manuel was returning from, when he had
picked me up.

     Now Manuel was telling me her way of baby-talking, turn-ons....

     I was looking out the window at the gray sky, bare fields, huge
one-storey mills, enormous lots full of workers' many-colored cars.

     "She's a knock-out," Manuel was saying.

     He began to tell me about sex with Thalma, how she squealed with
delight when he...bragging like my college room-mates used to, half a life
ago....

     He glanced into my face, as I was considering that he had got as far
ahead as he had, economically, at the price of taking the time to grow up -
that he was masquerading as someone in control of his situation....

     He immediately sobered up.

     "We're going to be married in May," he concluded, deflated.


     We checked into an expensive motel outside Shirleyville, & Manuel
ordered 2 huge pizzas - $20, the young fellow who brought them to the door
asked for.

     $20!  I couldn't believe it.  But I lit into one.

     "Gandhi," the film, which I'd never seen, about one of my heroes, was
beginning on the cable TV.  I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the
huge screen, stuffing the point of a slice of pizza into my mouth....

     But, then, Manuel realized he'd left his blue-prints back in the Twin
Cities - so back to the truck, in which I now slept, Manuel driving again,
all night.  Then he ran in, grabbed the blue-prints from his desk, & drove
us back to Shirleyville, without stopping to rest.

     It was morning, now.  We went into the motel, where he showered, put on
a jacket & tie, & went for a meeting at the plant with the big-wigs - after
putting me to assembling a cart on little swiveled wheels - casters, he
called them....

     I put a caster on the end of a steel leg this way, then turned it that
way; tried this screw, then that; this screw-driver, then that; this nut,
then that....  There were only so many false moves you could make.

     I got the cart up & going - & Manuel told me I'd done a good job, & to
take a break - during which, he bought me a sandwich & a cup of coffee from
vending machines.

     (He was a considerate boss, a considerate person; so I wanted to serve
him well.  He had picked me up, given me clothes & an opportunity.  He was
as kind as he knew how to be to me.  I wanted him to thrive.)

     Then set me to putting parts in drawers of big steel cabinets.

     I broke the drawers up into sections with metal dividers that fit into
slots in the sides of the drawers - as Manuel showed me....

     Manuel took off, & I didn't see him again for a week.


     I made sections, by fitting little plastic dividers at right angles,
into slots in the longer, metal dividers.

     Besides putting parts into compartments, I kept a running tally on
sheets of paper on a clip-board.  I made labels, & attached them to the
fronts of the drawers.

     It was tedious, but, It's work, I told myself.  No one pays you to do
what would be fun for them to do themselves.

     I worked in the weak fluourescent light of the high-ceilinged
cement-floor plant, crowded with bins of materials, with aisles between
goggled men & women operating slamming punch presses, drills, cutters, &
shapers.

     I hadn't succeeded - but I had done what I had done.  There would be
consequences, intended & unintended - & lack of many hoped-for consequences.
But, anyway, I was earning money again, I had a future!

     The world would do what the world would do - as it had before my birth
& thru-out my youth - while I did this, which I needed to do.


     Into drawers & compartments of various size, I put punches, jigs,
guides, vises, clamps, saw-blades, chisels, gouges, handles, planes,
routers, scrapers, hammers, pincers, pliers, braces, augers, drills,
screw-drivers, sanders, rasps, files, snips, shears, wrenches, cams - all
sizes & shapes, spur & helical & planetary & differential gears & gear
trains, sets of linkages in plastic bags tied up with delicate wires,
various color & diameter wires, wheels & axles, belts & chains, couplings,
clutch plates, brake shoes, calipers, motor rotors, ball bearings, rods,
crankshafts, cotter pins, allen wrenches, planers, drilling & milling
attachments, grinders, power saws, presses, gear cutters, lappers, honers,
boring & broaching equipment - & labeled them.

     After work that day, I called Annie to tell her that she should let
people at the Mall-Mart - where she worked at a cash-register - know she'd
be working part-time, & going back to school.

     She went effusive.

     "Good," I said.  "I love you, too."

     The job lasted 4 months, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, $12 an hour.


     The three regulars, Jim, Bob, & Emil - young rough-neck buddies, who
didn't seem to read or cipher - all small, but with tattoed muscles
displayed under cut-off t-shirts, & blond, brown, & black hair & mustaches -
were inclined to listen to country music on boom-boxes they lugged around,
to guzzle cans of caffeine-laced soda by day & beer by night, to come to
work in the morning with blood-shot eyes.  To fall from steel perches -
where we tightened bolts thru holes in the ends of steel spans, into nuts,
with twists of torque wrenches.  They had to be tended to at the local
hospital emergency room, tangled cords of impact wrenches, & ran over &
shredded - driving fork-lifts "borrowed" from other contractors' crews - the
long orange extension cables that had been looped & hung so carefully from
hooks in Manuel's basement.

     Besides paying me $12 an hour - I would have taken the job for half
that - Manuel also paid for a motel room which I shared with Charlie, a 6
foot 10 inch gun-repair hobbyist.  He said he hoped, soon, to land a job in
his home town, supervising an assembly line along which wooden doors were
finished.

     He said he loved to hunt.  He like killing crows especially.  They ate
other birds' eggs, he told me, indignantly, over a breakfast of eggs &
sausage, potatoes, toast, juice, milk, & coffee.

     At night, Charlie watched movies on the TV atop a dresser against a
wall - war & adventure, non-stop explosions, misunderstood martial arts
heroes saving - from totally reprehensible disrupters of the status quo -
helpless, uncomplicatedly sexy, young women....

     "Wouldn't you PORK her?" Charlie invited me, lascivious, from across
the little table with the alarm clock on it, between the 2 beds.

     I put a pillow over my head, & struggled into troubled dreams.

     I'd lost track of what was going on in the world according to the
papers & networks.  I only caught glimpses of other people at meals, tending
to machines in the plant, & going to & from meals & work & the neon-accented
Calcut Motel; & of the minimal activity on the endless-winter- khaki ground
on either side of the road between town & the motel....  Once, for an
instant, a brown, foot-long weasel, darted across the road, & down into a
ditch....

     The dreams - my own darting among indifferent & hostile forces, in
search of what I could not even clearly conceive - were vivid & disturbing -
& I always woke dissatisfied & aching.


     THEN, ONE MORNING, I WOKE CLEAR - if I'd been dreaming, I didn't
remember, & wasn't disturbed - & thought, DON'T go back to sleep until the
very last moment, until you feel you HAVE to get up, to be strong, to
compete, to survive.

     In the first light, I went out from among the cars & pick-ups parked in
the lot of the motel, walking along a narrow asphalt road, away from
Shirleyville, among threatened & failing family farms, & traces of the
forces overwhelming them:  beer cans; 2 thick, rusty, discarded spur gears;
the bottom halves of 2 plastic gallon bottles full of used motor oil; a
paper cup with 3 wavey blue stripes printed on it; a cigarette package....

     A little black & brown & white flecked bird (what kind I didn't & still
don't know), abruptly turning its head, cocking one eye, then the other -
flew from the branch of one of the few trees growing in the strip of grass
between the crumbling asphalt edge of the road & a field of big dry
red-brown clods of clay, to the branch of another tree.

     And suddenly the little bird burst out, singing into the sky - the
volume was surprising - a beautiful, flute-like melody.

     The notes were grouped like this: 1-2-3, 1-2-3,
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-NINE!-10.  Tho far more subtle, trills of crystalline tones
nearly running together, yet perfectly separated by the briefest of
intervals, pure pitches varied & so BRIGHT, the resolution of the up-&-down
harmonic progression so perfectly satisfying....

     The glowing red rim of the sun - which the bird had already spotted
from its higher vantage point - broke above the far horizon.

     There were weather-bleached posts - some standing, some lying
horizontal - among strands of rusty barbed-wire, & last years' long grass -
now straw-colored - matted in standing clumps or lying like a rude carpet,
with new green blades - life! (so modest) poking up & thru here & there.

     Little pendant flower bunches - delicate brown-pink catkins - dangled
from branches of leafless trees - several with broken branches hanging down
- some of the hanging branches dead, some full of buds & catkins.

     The sky was as vibrant a blue & wide open as ever.

     As before the world wars, Holocaust, Industrial Revolution, Middle
Passage & Black slavery, disruption & driving out of the aboriginal tribes,
universal adult voting for governments bound nevertheless to favor owners of
property; before soil, water, seeds, & human effort & purposefulness were
treated like manufactured commodities, property, to be used for whatever
purpose maximized return on investment....

    In an instant, the bird brought me - washed clean - back from defeat,
from history, from being overwhelmed.

     Again - flitting now onto a stubby sprocket of one of the rusty old
discarded gears - the little bird triumphantly saluted the morning: 1-2-3,
1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-NINE!-10.

     Beethoven wasn't better!  Bach wasn't better!   No CEO, emperor, pope,
mulla, president, prime minister, secretary-general; no heir who had never
had to face deprivation - no one had ever known greater joy, or its more
perfect expression!

     What I had done so far had had the effects it had had.  These effects
would have other effects.  The human situation was as it was, my personal
situation was as it was.  I was starting again, in no more difficult a
situation than when I had started previously.  And:

     1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-NINE!-10.


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 uXu #547              Underground eXperts United 2000              uXu #547
                     ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/uXu/
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