philippines

Philippines Fill-Up

"Mail Order Brides, Postage Due"

OR...

I have discovered that all evil comes from this, man being unable to sit still in his room. Blaise Pascal

nitai,digesting vegetarian

    I was perfectly happy, bobbing on the waves without, well, quite getting anywhere.
     After all, where was there to go? It had all been done--a thousand times before. There was nothing new under the sun. All was vanity. Then my first sailboat, "The Stinky," had exploded into a fabulous fireball off the Sausalito waterfront. "The Log," San Francisco Bay's paper of record, said "the skipper swam to get help for his crew, lit pipe still clenched between his teeth."
      Inertia defeated by disaster, I asked my friend Brook what I should do next.
     "Head for the hills."
      The "two wheel revolution" website was born, making the fabulous promise of "a Jeff Chase biketrip around the world." We all know that there's no lying allowed on the Internet, either!
      Revolutionizing through the western United States, at least some of them, Canada, and Mexico, two wheels had made it to San Vicente, Baja, Mexico when Gulf War 2--This Time it's for Reals--began its engines.
     If the War Protestors had one more person to throw between the Gears of the War Machine, It Could Be Stopped! I fed two wheels some WD-40 and rushed back.

abreast of baja, mexico

Market Street in San Francisco had been a war zone ever since the first bombs fell on Baghdad. Hundred of thousands gathered in the streets, led by gallant bicyclists waving giant blue earth flags. "Two wheels" whirred under me like a soulful machine, cheered on by the sounds of her compatriots flying down the pavement towards a freer dawn. What had taken the Vietnam War resisters years to organize, mass action and civil disobediance, was accomplished now in days and hours.
     Then I heard the monstrous truth.
     In the midst of a meeting to plan strategy for our next march and bike ride, the speaker suddenly stopped, brought out two bottles of shampoo and began asking us questions.
     "Which aroma would you like your hair to smell of--piney forest or herbal garden?"
     "Is it more important to have bounce or manageability?"
     "Do split ends...."
     "Wait just a second here, ma'am!," I interrupted. " What's going on? Don't we have a war to stop?"
     "Don't be silly," she told me. "We're just a focus group, doncha know? And our focus right know is hair care. So if you want to participate and get your twenty-five dollars...."
     I couldn't listen to another word, bolting from the room. And the next day, when President Bush told the world press that all the millions allegedly marching "against" the war were also focus groups too, I knew that he had the real information.
     Thank you, George Bush! Though I'm not certain the Diebold machine at my precinct will tally my vote, I know who I'm pulling the lever for.
     The Truthteller!

Strange Interlude

    Trying to repair a broken heart is never easy. Time is recommended by many. For others, it's finding another love. Some, perhaps the wisest, use duct tape and baling wire.
     When all seems dark and dreary, when even your own dog growls at you, when the silver lining in the cumulo-nimbus isn't a lining but a lightning bolt aiming to cut you down...
     That's when Nitai arrived, the Cupid of California.
     I had not been overwhelmed by first impressions. After my friend Pablo had been felled by a stroke, we continued to share the same mailbox. Nitai worked as a clerk there.
     "Do you have a package from Z?" I asked him one afternoon, desperate for a letter from a lady.
     "First of all, we don't go by initials in the postal business. Secondly, you can't share a box with someone in a hospital. If something did come for you, we sent it back."
     So when Nitai, who had married a Filipina he met on the Internet, began asking me to correspond with one too, I refused. Isn't love about fate and chance and synchronicity?
     "But look at this," he said, and unloaded a box of mail from a dozen Filipinas at my feet a week later.   .
     Looked like I was going around the world again.

member of focus group, blowing smoke

One Stop Shopping with the California Cupid

to be continued...