Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 19 April, 2003: Gandhi said that poverty is the cruelest form of violence. Can I get an "Amen"?. I know that better than most, having endured poverty for more years of my half-century life than abundance. My friend, Raoul Tesla , out in California says that I don't make decisions, I make choices. He considers that a noble attribute, I say it makes me the King of Pain

As you read this, I am becoming a Spirit of the Air again. I have lost my Hobbit Hole of an apartment and am couch-surfing. Maybe I should join the "movement" of urban squatters. I told you I was so poor I couldn't pay attention. During this chronicle you will learn exactly what I meant. But I also need to talk to you, my love, about a world falling apart that is not part of my own personal tribulation. We will go to Zimbabwe and to Iraq, among other troubled places.

As I rush to get this edition out, before BellSouth takes out my telephone and DSL, before the Sheriff appears at the doot with an eviction notice, before I decamp and disappear into the night again, my love, there are many things we must discuss. That is why I am composing this Glass House epistle first, rather than work on the rest of the magazine, as is my usual practice.

I have so much to tell you and so little time. I shall be moving back into the depths of the French Quarter once again and then...?

---

SO I AM IN WARRIOR MODE AGAIN. Matt will store most of belongings over the next ten days as I flail around for the next place to be. I shall sleep on the floor again in the heart of darkness and listen to the revelers stroll down the street. I shall try to put together Internet operations, design a new Web site for a popular local band and hope they can throw some more gigs my way. It's Crunch Time. Time to pull the entrepreneurial impulse out of my ass and pull ducats out of thin air. Pray for your Butterfly Soul.

---

WHILE YOU WERE FOCUSING ON THE WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION IN IRAQ, my love, Robert Mugabe, the tyrant in Harare, Zimbabwe, was disappearing and torturing his opposition in one of the greatest, mass-wholesale atrocities on earth. That bastard -- I've given up on mincing words here -- figured that most Western journalists would miss what he was perpetrating because they were busy doing mugshots as in bed journalists for the Pentagon.

It seems he was correct. I've seen scant ink wasted on the thousand people disappeared and tortured by his regime during Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Maybe that's why I'm here.

Listen:

Robert Muchago, a water engineer who is now in South Africa, has first-hand experience of brutality. Mr Muchago, 32, was in a nightclub in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town near Harare, 10 days ago when army soldiers stormed the club. The soldiers randomly paired every man with a woman. Mr Muchago said many of the women were prostitutes. They forced them to undress and engage in unprotected public sex. "With the high prevalence of HIV-Aids, it was like being asked to sign your death warrant," Mr Muchago said. Two men who tried to plead were savagely beaten and left for dead. Fearing for their lives, the rest of the "couples" complied. Scores of young women have been rounded up and raped by the Green Bombers. "Jane", 16, said she was beaten and raped by eight different militia commanders in a 12-hour ordeal. Her crime, she was told, was her father's suspected support for the MDC [Opposition party Movement for Democratic Change - RA].

And then there is this:

Many Zimbabweans who would not have supported the Iraqi war are talking of a "Bush solution". "Mr Bush, when are you coming to liberate us?" has become a catchphrase among unemployed youths.

[Both quotes taken from "Under Cover of War, Mugabe Unleashes New Terror" by Basildon Peta, the Independent. - RA]

Much to their disrepute, African governments, including South Africa, have been shielding Mr. Mugabe from international sanction in the United Nations, believing (foolishly) that they can bring pressure on his regime. In my view, the events of the pass three weeks have proven what a feeble and naive hope that was. Mugabe has joined Milosevic, Amin and Bush in the infamous club of monsters, as far as we are concerned in this quarter, and must be deposed.

---

WHAT COMES WITH EMPIRE, my love? The destruction of truth. And the best way to destroy truth is by destroying history. It happened in Yugoslavia. The Taliban did it in Afghanistan. That is what the Bush regime has done in Iraq. Nothing troubled me more this past week, nothing saddened me more, than the news that both the library and the museum of antiquities in Baghdad were sacked, looted and burned. Why? Go back to my two opening sentences in this passage.

And let me say something heretical right away: Anyone making the argument that the looting of Baghdad was as natural as a chemical reaction is arguing from either cynicism or extreme naiveté. It was planned! Just as Reichmarshal Goerring ended up with the wealth of Europe, someone, somewhere, will run his plump and sweaty hands over the treasures of ancient Sumeria. Read Robert Fisk's article in the Independent on the "looting squads" bussed into and out of Baghdad if you doubt me.

We are dealing with monsters. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Those familiar with my fiction writing know that I named the protagonist of my escape artist novel Khorsa, after Khorsabad, the ancient Iraqi city where the first lock known to man was created. Those who followed my most recent tour of Europe know that I was set on seeing Romuliana, the city built in Yugoslavia by the emperor Galerius. I know that we cannot appreciate our humanity if we don't know what was needed to reach our present malais. It is the goal of conquerors, of course, to separate us from that humanity harbored in our history and our race memory. Black people suffered that conqueroring impulse tragically when dragged across a vast ocean to America and subjugated. So perhaps we feel that most poignantly. But everyone should feel it. The Romans burned the library of Alexandria to erase the memory of the world before their New World Order. America has burned the library of Baghdad. Some call it liberation.

---

NOW THAT I'M OUT OF THE BAR BUSINESS, who should suddenly go into it but Fashionable. Yeah, she's taken a job at a chi-chi joint in the Central Business District (CBD), hard on the warehouse district, called Loa. She expects to make a lot of money there. I'm happy for her and sharing the recipes for various cocktails with her.

Ran into Elusive on the street the other day. She disappeared the night we went down to Bourbon Street with this sports writer from Milwaukee and his fiance. As we left the first club and made our way through the throngs to another, Elusive disappears. Poof! I asked what had happened. She said she had gotten too drunk and crawled to a friend's place nearby. "Thanks for letting me know," I said.

Elusive and I have a very twisted relationship. She doesn't actually like men. That makes it strange that she is so physically intimate with me. I don't get it. She says that I have to be patient. She gets rabid when another man even touches her on the shoulder. She calls upon me to defend her. I take the gentleman aside and explain that she is uncomfortable with familiarity. She kisses me and hugs me closely for my chivalry. I don't get it.

Other people think that she and I will become biblically intimate and I explain to them that that is not in her realm. She may never be capable of that. Like the proverbial "old maid school marm" she has no interest in sex.

20 April, 2003: I AM MOVING TODAY. I don't have the wherewithal for rent, as I've said. Jak, the former bartender, who I basically replaced at the Cat, came over with a six pack yesterday and convinced me to go to Armstrong Park to hear live music. Kermit Ruffins was the closing act. Then he convinced me to go to the Cat, the first time I have since I quit, for drinks. It was all downhill from there. I ran into some of my old customers who were all-too-willing to buy me cocktails. I awakened late today, of course. I am very behind and Matt is coming over in a few minutes expecting me to be ready to move. It's too early, I think. I have a whole day's worth of Internet connection left and shouldn't waste it while I can finish working for you.

21 April, 2003: But this is New Orleans. Who was I kidding except myself. I did decamp, as planned. But that's the only part of the day that went according to plan. What do they do in New Orleans when you are most down and out? They fete you, meaning that all of my friends were dead set on getting me as drunk as possible. Ian and Mary started it at Molly's, Corey picked up the ball at The Abbey, and then Matt and Jo had rum and cokes waiting at their place. By the time I finally got to lie down and sleep, I would sleep for almost eleven hours. Between the emotions of the move and the actual physical exertion I was spent. I still feel dazed today.

I have nine days to find a new place to be. Again I am in pieces, part of my stuff in the Bywater, clothes and toiletries in my temporary crash and Victoria, of course. She is the only constant in this vagabond life. She and you, my love. Pray for your Butterfly Soul.

Things I Need This Week

1. Cold, hard cash.

2. A new place to live.

3. The roadmap to my Separate Country.

---

Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

Search www.g21.net [ ] Our Link Partners the Web for

ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Last year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has left the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. He's decided that maybe it's time to be an entrepreneur again. Working with "employees" and Bosses doesn't suit his temperament. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

---

| HOME | THE PREVIOUS GLASS HOUSE | THE NEXT GLASS HOUSE |

CREDITS || AWARDS || SEARCH ENGINES || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!

Search our Site:

sitemap

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE

---

Our Editor does listen!

© 2003, GENERATOR 21.

E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.