SQUAWK BACK: Just a Little Bête Noire...

SQUAWK BACK: Just a Little Bête Noire...: "a short short story by Ehren William Borg I was splattered on the walls and soaked into the carpet. I felt like a worm in a compost heap in..."

SQUAWK BACK: The Cinematographer's Aboulia

SQUAWK BACK: The Cinematographer's Aboulia: "by Ehren William Borg Format: flash fiction Length: 241 words May 25, 2011 Cobwebs in the corners of the room mimic flags hanging limply in..."

SQUAWK BACK: A Field Guide to My Neighbor's Handlebar Moustache...

SQUAWK BACK:  A Field Guide to My Neighbor's Handlebar Moustache: "by Ehren William Borg Format: flash fiction Length: 637 words May 25, 2011 I slither back toward consciousness as my eyes adjust to the pu..."

Excerpt from WORKING POOR FAMILIES PROJECT brief

The Working Poor Families Project policy brief: winter 2010-2011


Key Findings from 2009:

  1)  There were more than 10 million
low-income working
families in the United States,
an increase of nearly a quarter
million from the previous year.

  2)  Forty-five million people,
including 22 million children,
lived in low-income working
families, an increase of 1.7
million people from 2008.

3)  Forty-three percent of working
families with at least one
minority parent were low-
income, nearly twice the
proportion of white working
families (22 percent).

4)  Income inequality continued to
grow with the richest 20
percent of working families
taking home 47 percent of all
income and earning 10 times
that of low-income working
families.

FICTION: The Dog-Leg

I see now that it is story time. Very well, then. Here we go: a story. A sort of “once upon a time” thing. Right.

So, I suppose it needs, if not deserves, a title, don’t you? Let us see…how about something with the name of an animal in it? OK. The story about to be told during story time today is called this: A Visit to the Doctor.

Wait, there’s no animal name there. Yes, this story is entitled simply, The Dog-Leg. Enjoy. The story, that is, which is so very aptly named because…

Once upon a time –

He simply had no choice. That was all, what recourse did he have?
Oh, such grave misfortune, thought Hyde. Why? he asked himself as he hobbled awkwardly down Burnside Boulevard, his trench coat wrapped tightly around his beleaguered, sulky body. In his thoughts, he repeated the major events of his life -- or as his memory had preserved them, anyway. But they all seemed to him major events only insofar as they were all, down to the last, catastrophes.

He rounded the corner onto the broad, bleak patch of park; he considered this a shortcut only because he avoided the streetlights. His leg certainly was not feeling right. That was for rotting sure. Of course, who would not feel a pang of indignant confusion at being in such a state as that of our poor Hyde?

“I just hope it remains asleep until we get into the office,” said Hyde to no one in particular, limping doggedly through the snowy path through Windsor Park. His nose was nearly frozen, as it was very cold, and even windier than usual. He spotted the door to the medical office as he emerged onto Evans Street, and looking carefully both left and right, Hyde ambled as quickly as he could, and with great effort to be gentle, proceeded across the street and threw open the door to Doctor Craven’s office.

He was dismayed when he closed the street door behind him and turned to look upon a long, steep staircase leading, presumably, to Dr. Craven’s practice. Hyde became suddenly aware of the stuffiness and oppressive heat of the foyer. He realized that he was still clutching his trench coat over his chest, and opened the front and took off his scarf. His poor nose was stinging like an angry jellyfish as it thawed, and as he gingerly touched it with a gloved finger, he muttered all sorts of unmentionable imprecations, which are surely not fit for story time.

Hyde began the arduous ascent up the mountain of steps, barely breathing for fear of his dog-leg acting up suddenly. After a few dozen steps, which carried him barely even one-third of the way up, Hyde decided that he was faint and sat down heavily upon the twenty-fifth step. He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket,wiped his damp forehead, and replaced it to said pocket, which had a large hole in it. The handkerchief poked stupidly out of the bottom of the faulty pocket, but Hyde did not notice that. He was, at that moment, staring tenuously at his right leg, eyes full of dread and animal fear.

The Disco Bus: DIY Travels in Laos

We were heading south out of Vientiane on a long ride to Savannakhet.  We needed to get back to Vietnam pretty soon, and Savannakhet seemed a good staging point.  It's situated on the western edge of Laos about halfway down the "boot."  And everyone knows: you gotta get up to get down.  So let's climb aboard the Disco Bus.

Oh, we'll not soon forget you, Disco Bus.  Marvel at the multi-colored siren-lights mounted above the seats on both sides of the bus from front to back.  But the thing about Lao is that the bus will almost certainly break down (which it did), but meticulous care is paid to the maintenance of colored lights in the coach and to the upkeep of the 1,000-decibel sound system.

Of course, it wasn't air-conditioned and swarms of mosquitoes divebombed us incessantly, but, hey, it's AUTHENTIC, damn it.  Sure, the bus only traveled 200 yards before stopping again -- to be repeated ad nauseam -- but, hey, it's AUTHENTIC, right?  And who could complain about the ear-splitting Lao pop music which sounds, unbelievably, even more formulaic and predictably lame than even American top 40?

But the music video accompaniment was the real treat.  Every music video, and I mean every one, featured a girl weeping.  The entire time.  Throughout the video. Broken up by moments of relatively mild domestic abuse such as shaking, pushing, and especially slapping.  And the highlight was

Pitchfork

You're a robot with a flattop like a copper with a pork chop

Sold to the state, you're a Hollywood date, and you've got blistering head shots

Dripping down the runway, the blacktop, you bellhop

You're jealous and grim, you're all shadowed and thin, and you're ducking in doorways

There's a gun under your pillow it's warm scotch and cold blood

Dying alone, disconnecting the phone, but the crowd's still screaming!

Bloodless lips curling into cruelty & I race straight for them

Fat little devil with a tiny plastic pitchfork

He's laughing again, the wall are closing in, and he's dancing with your girlfriend

Where you've been pacing back and forth the sulphur still lingers

A smokescreen, a crime scene, and the people crowd around to see

Feeling like a strip of bacon, smelling like a rotten egg

Concrete fields full of rebar trees, you're like a board with a nail through it

--a pitchfork might do it

Bloodless lips curling into cruelty & I race straight for them

They're coming for you, another skeleton crew

No sense of direction, you're a lethal injection, I got a voodoo doll that looks like you

Blacked out windows like some semiconscious eyes

Unblinking, unthinking, they're forcing you inside

And now you're surrounded

Pitchforks raised, pineappled in the face – it's a tropical mace,

it puts you in your place, you're like a board with a nail through it – a pitchfork might do it

you're like a board with a nail through it – a pitchfork might do it

you're like a board with a nail through it

Bloodless lips curling into cruelty & I race straight for them

The problem is all over the sidewalk now.

Copyright 2010

E.W. Borg

The Goat Bus: DIY Travels in Laos

The Goat Bus

So.

Our trip is nearly over.  We've actually been on a beach north of Nha Trang, Vietnam for a week just zoning out and being peaceful.   We needed time to convalesce after our trip from Savannakhet, Laos to the Vietnam border.  That trip is a story worth telling as it was by far the most fun I had on a local bus anywhere in Southeast Asia.  

Picture this:

 
My girlfriend and I rise before dawn in Savannakhet, bleary-eyed but ready for what we know will be a challenging do-it-yourself-to-the-border kind of marathon day.  We get a tuk-tuk to the bus station as the sun is rising and get on a rickety, aged bus full of sacks of rice.  And I mean FULL.  We sit there for awhile, contentedly watching them load rice, shaking off the sleepiness -- but then a feeling of wrongness descends over us.  Is this the right bus?

Nope.

Luckily, we abandon the rice-bus and hop on the correct bus just in time for it to
...sit there for awhile.  And then, eventually, like all local buses, it shrieks into life, shudders, farts a cloud of noxious black smoke, and we trundle out of the dirt lot called a bus station on our way to the border.  Gradually.

We almost immediately have to stop to fill up the tank with petrol, and the driver has to jaw with his buddies hanging out at the petrol station, then we continue on again -- for about twenty more minutes.  Then, just a few miles outside of town, we're pulling over to the WRONG SIDE of the highway, lazily drifting into oncoming traffic (which are mostly motos whose drivers know to get the hell out of the way of an oncoming bus with bad brakes) and stopping for what looks like...an extended stay.
We look around.  What could we be loading onto the bus NOW? we think, as the bus is already quite full of sacks of rice, various musty boxes and containers, children, the elderly, etc.

WHAT, then?

Well, I'll tell you:  GOATS.

FICTION: Back to the Trees

Is this a day? Has time passed? What changes, some infinitesimal flow of variations, have conspired to create the idea of moments? Memory. Deceiver! We recall things from the past, all but dreams – did they have life, reality? Only through memory. “Now” is the wake produced by our lives, always dragging just behind us the instant of their birth; instantly it is called the past. A backward future, fond memories, an acceptable mixture of how things seem and how they are not…but there is finally sunlight, and truth is unnecessary in good weather.

(Twenty-three)

Today is the anniversary. The one-year anniversary, the temporary punchline to a joke that just keeps going. Time lacks purpose. It lacks a teleology of its own. It is nothing; it is an interminable three hundred and sixty-five notches, each indicating a dark blue sunrise, each carved with an old, broken Phillips screwdriver by my own hand, etched in the life-preserving skin of this, the largest tree in the world. Which is my world. Which is, for all practical purposes, the whole world, bounded on all sides by the promise of agony and the certitude of death.

And now, on this solemn occasion, I recognize my inevitable fate. For I am the last one. So happy anniversary to me and my screwdriver.

I think I’ll celebrate with some fresh-picked plantains. And perhaps for dessert, a rare and tasty mantis popper, which I've saved for weeks for just this occasion. You can’t get better protein than praying mantis, and that’s a fact.

(Twenty-two)

We started out ten strong a year ago. I remember old Mrs. Goldblatt, nearly bald and always complaining of cataracts: she just couldn’t hang on to those slick, well-worn branches. Her fingers were gnarled. She couldn't hang on. Her frail husband Lou, in a moment of ultimate decisiveness, followed her down silently, as if he was chasing after her; only a heartbeat separated them in their plunge to oblivion.

But Dutch was the one in control. He orchestrated ingenious feats of engineering, all with an unshakable will to survive. Damn fool, I can only hope he made it somewhere habitable in his flying contraption. I watched him go until the fog swallowed him up.

Then there was little Sven, what a plump young lad. A little too plump: he fell to his death with an eye-melting scream, broken branch-sticks in his marshmallow fingers. Sven’s two sisters, Mina and Joan, were old enough to understand death. But they eventually went mad, all at once, and at the same moment, laughing a most chilling laugh as they joined hands and leapt from this very tree, the tallest one and the stoutest. Just crashed down through the canopy, and then they too were gone.

That was not long ago, according to my calendar of notches. But there’s plenty of room to move around nowadays.

(Twenty-one)

After the Catastrophe, most of the world’s foliage and forests were dead. Vast tracts flattened, twigs and berries ground under the heel of darkness and poison. Thankfully I was in relatively the right place to weather the storm, though I couldn't conceive of a right time. I should’ve been a Portuguese explorer or a famous German poet, or anything at any other time. Let me take my chances.

But I’m here now, and for some reason I persist. At least as long as this pen holds ink – it’s the last one on earth, as far as I'm concerned.

The Switch: A Farcical Journey

      Trapped inside the nicotine-stained skin of a hobo. Looking out at the world with my one good eye, shaking all over from the D.T.’s. Fact is, I woke up in this boxcar this morning, disoriented and smelling of wine coolers. I seem to be in bad need of a shave and my clothes reek of cat litter and axle grease. Strange that just yesterday I was a productive member of society, with family and friends and a home full of hard-earned belongings, all collected with thoughtfulness and kept with care. And my darling Jane, who must be frantic by now, wondering what’s become of me.

      I imagine soon there’ll be a missing persons report filed, probably by Jane or my mother. Alas, what good will it do? The police will never suspect that I’ve become prisoner inside a hobo! And even if I went to the authorities, they would take me for a mad, drunken beggar (which, it would seem, is just the problem) and thrash me with their nightsticks. No, I can’t try to contact my loved ones either. With all these teeth missing, I can hardly form words, much less convince a grieving mother that her son is alive and well and riding the rails in another man’s body for kicks. I’ll just have to figure out something more clever…

      My God! I’ve just had a terrible thought! What if – no, it’s too much…but supposing that the hobo and I have somehow switched places…oh, what kind of gypsy curse has befallen me!

      I can just see him now, the rascal, masquerading around as me, enjoying all the amenities due to me – and Jane! Surely she will realize that it’s not me, that something is horribly wrong, and perhaps she will figure it all out and come looking for me. Oh, but this is all just madness, pure folly! What will the Director of my Department think?

      I must get a hold of myself here. I’ve got to focus on the problem at hand. Which isn’t easy with the deafening clatter of the train echoing through this empty freight car.

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