DEATH

Tales of Southern Hootchy-Coo, Part VI, any negativity in your views on death purely of your own creation I just reports what I sees.

When I was 10 or 12 or 13, I forget, I suddenly become confronted with that intangible that I was going to die someday. I thought it was a joke. I didn't even know how to live and already I knew I was going to die. I knew what dying was before then but I hadn't really thought of the void before. I mean I was supposed to believe in the hereafter and all that but it wasn't even on faith it was only because I was supposed to. And it never got any more defined after that date. All of us have faith when you draw out the intangibles. Atheists, fundamentalists, avowed agnostics all have "faith" that their world view is the best they can come to grips with. No one is sure that when they die they're dead dead dead. And no one is sure that they'll live after it all comes down. If you were ever 100% sure of anything it would fade from importance.

I was drugged from lack of sleep best drug in the world scariest at least makes you laugh when you shouldn't. Driving out on the freeway bound toward Kansas City it being 4 AM too late to get a room too early to get a room either need some grass can't find it just drive. As I merge into 435 I am listening to Lush at high volume, spooky in fact, no "Spooky" the name of the album, and it's spooky no one on the freeway not California. I see it in the headlights what is it? It's red it's large it's the dead meat of a dead deer in the center lane a deer makes a lot of mess on a freeway must've killed a truck along with it.

At the wedding I was thinking that the strongest commitment you can make to somebody is that "I will bury this person." I guess that was the not so subtle point of the old til death do us part thing. That means your love has gone over the top, over that dam. Point being that if you can actually stand the thought of living alone after giving your all the all must really be the all, that it's so goddam frightening that you end up together not so much out of the strength of your attraction, but out of not being able to imagine you apart. It just all is and you accept whatever comes. Most would run. Most do, I guess. And then I thought if it weren't for the death, the love
wouldn't have any significance. You could just chalk it up to experience. Death isn't frightening; it's the only thing that gives real importance and consequence to the things we do.

Cemeteries are great time killers you can just sit there and lay in the grass underneath a big old oak. No one bugs you since you could be mourning actually just need some space. I had time to kill on a sunny morning in downstate Illinois so I toured an old cemetery, mostly empty rusted gate lots of trim creaked even. Women driving their kids to school waved at me. Truckers hauling feed waved at me. Everybody
waves in downstate Illinois. They figure no one ever visits you must a local must be related to somebody and they'd sure hate to cause a stir by ignoring you, I suppose. And everyone has this weird reverence to cemeteries when all they are is parks really if I die and have to be buried I hope some kids are able to play touch football or fly a kite or something else the ground gets bored.

Driving through mid Tennessee I crossed the interstate and found a Tennessee visitor's station run by a gray haired gentleman by the name of Lee but everybody is named Lee in the South not many named Sherman I can tell you. The man told me that the ground I stood on was the battle of Parker's Crossroads where Nathan Bedford Forrest, famous
confederate cavalry general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan routed a set of Union cavalry. Apparently he was surrounded and when asked what to do said "charge them both ways." Forrest knew how to run a set of horses even being an asshole hisself horses ain't the best judges in character.

A battle that Forrest also attended was Shiloh. Shiloh is located in extreme southern Tennessee, just north of Mississippi. Located on the Tennessee river, the battle was named after the small church of that name about 2 miles west. "Shiloh" means "Peace" in Hebrew, God and the devil sure do love their plays on words and I capitalized one on purpose and didn't the other. Shiloh was the first ferocious battle of the war, the one that made war lose all charm, the one that brought 24,000 men to the end and brought reality home, needed to, I suppose, but we always mess it up and forget that it ain't a way to settle an argument. After you've lost all passion for everything except life war seems about as damn silly you almost have to laugh sitting there
staring at all the ghosts.

The numbers are staggering for such a small piece of wooded property, a battle that you could walk across. There are a number of strange images of death amid the air. The peach orchard, site of one of the more intense battles, was in bloom. The bullets cutting the peach blossoms looked like falling snow might've even been pretty. A pond where both sides came to die was turned red with blood no one killed there only drippings. When it was all over and boths sides read their morning papers over tea, war didn't seem nearly as dignified. Which is a good thing chalk it up to learning experience too bad some had to die to learn it. Shiloh was such a mess cause neither knew how to fight, if you don't know what you're doing I guess you'll learn but it'll fuck you up in the meantime.

As bloody as Shiloh was, it didn't have a hopeless aspect (even if it were really hopeless). Both sides had the option of maneuver and the illusion of victory. Of course since they didn't know what they were doing it was all Fate and that omnipotent always-winner had already decided the Union would win. This was the beginning of war and the possibility of being devious enough to close a trap and mercilessly destroy an enemy hadn't yet dawned on either side. No strategy, just guts and guts don't mean much in this life, most of the time.

The battle of Vicksburg, about 200 miles south on the Mississippi is a study in hopeless death and by the time it became obviously hopeless there wasn't nothing left to do but wait it out for the honor factor. Over 6 weeks, the Union bombed, shot, shelled, set fire, name-called a holed up contingent of confederate troops losing food losing ammo losing sleep. No relief would ever come it was obvious that defeat was there. Morale was so low the confederate commander recommended surrender not to avoid more senseless death, but to prevent the shameless defection of a once proud army. This was a siege, and like Leningrad Corregidor Sarajevo hopeless case, who is that patron Saint - we all need that number.

The organ tone signals blue line swinger I'm pacing on the levee road at 30 mph halted now it's sunny outside the white church stands there its lot full a policeman stops us all the procession begins black with lights on one more one more one more all in a row gravel spits as the cars turn onto the blacktop one more one more one more music continues the one dead has many friends the music keeps coming the tone keeps humming the climax reaches the last car spits out and the silence begins and I follow. Out of town the cop peels off for beignets and I take his place bringing up the rear daytime running lights force me into respect for the dead.

If you love cemeteries Lousiana is for you. All the tombs sit there on the ground you don't visit the earth you visit some great big tomb of marble and the patchwork on marble and concrete white redolent coffins forms a little city in each small town a mirror of the community around it. It seems they used to bury them like normal cept the water tables would rise and the coffins would rise up out of the ground poking through the earth even after the rains stopped on a good old sunny day because the water was soaked just 2 feet below and the sight of all those wooden blocks jumping and creaking out of the ground freaked everybody out so much that they still continue to bury them in the tombs even though the levees have been made stronger and it doesn't flood like it used to. The larger cemeteries in N'Orleans look like peaceful versions of the violent neighborhoods they abut. One of the more dangerous cemeteries is also one of the most patchwork and interesting: St. Louis Cemetery #1. It's where many of the jazz greats are buried next to their former haunts on the edge of the Vieux Carre. Louis Armstrong wanted to be buried here, instead he was buried in St. Louis, Missouri I sure hope someone didn't screw up reading that will. If I have to be buried in a coffin I'd like it to be N'Orelans. The white crosses so block-like a big set of legos. No big deal with a name but a cool looking box can't beat that.

The 50 or so miles from Selma to Montgomery Alabama were a key piece of the civil rights movement. Selma was a cornerstone of the voter registration movement and Montgomery is the capital of Alabama. Dr. King organized a rally in 1965 to march from one to the other along the US highway to draw attention to the voting rights bill of 1965. Johnson was getting pressure to scrap it, and the demonstration was meant to push it to fruition. Except that Selma happens to sit on a river, the Edmund Pettus Bridge big old curved steel very modern looking for the South kind of sinister Blade Runner like, a big obstacle.

Each time they tried to cross they were met with Bama troopers and tear gas and billy clubs and fists and hicks in pickup trucks. One photo I saw (from the other side welcoming people into Selma) had a cop beating the crap out of someone under a billboard saying "Welcome to Selma: Town of 100% Human Interest - Selma National Bank" There`s that irony again like 10,000 spoons. But that was the great thing about the bridge; the troopers, the authority thought it was great that the bridge was such an obstacle, but the very fact that it was an obstacle made it important to cross. They could've gone round but the point was to cross that bridge, and finally they did with 4,000 escorts from the US military. But 3 people were killed on that march. Taken as stragglers and shot in the back. But they made it to Montgomery.

Oak Ridge, TN helped build the bomb but hates talking about it. A woman there complained that all those protesters don't realize "we don't build bombs." She even said something like "we didn't build it anyway; we just helped design it." (That is an interesting mindset, I thought.) I don't have a problem with the bomb; we'll always find new and fascinating ways to get rid of each other. Getting rid of each other doesn't scare me. Ruining life scares me a hell of lot more than facing death. Maybe that's the part about the bomb that's scary; it's psychological; it's not understood, no one know what the hell goes on with radiation. People like to see what's going to kill them "I don't want to fuse with no economy seat/Fuel some fireball at 30,000 feet/I just want to see/What kills me" (Cowboy Junkies) Some of us will never be able to handle what we can't see or understand, though the understanding is very thinly tied to reality in the first place. Anyone who understands it all has no use in this world. Probably another good reason for us to die; if we were left to live forever, we
might not have anything to figure out. And if you've actually read this far, email me and I'll give you a $1.