The bellowing sound of Rush Limbaugh changed all of this
when van pulled up to next to me at the park and the groaning voice came
wafting out the passenger side window.
I had been enjoying a bright spring day at the old, wooded, So Cal park
a few miles back from the ocean. Little
birds tweeted—a white owl flew out from the branches of a tree after being
harassed by crows. A fluffy, barking Pekingese was
playing with a squirrel it had chased up a tree. I was reading words of Krishna written down
from a distant millennium and feeling tranquil.
The intrusion of the “limbago” came like a muscle spasm and caused me to
gasp. But what could I do? This is after all, America very early in the
21 century.
Suddenly, an inspiration bloomed. Perhaps it was my current placement to the
mythical—some say real—Krishna, who was known for playing a flute so
melodiously that the vibratory patterns would instantly change and charge the
atmosphere with a wondrous spirituality.
In an instant I knew that I should take up the flute-like recorder that
was tucked behind my driver’s seat and resume my practice of the instrument
best known for producing the opening element in Led Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven.
The problem was that my own playing—despite having the
instrument for several decades—wa nowhere near as nice as that from the famous
recording. One might even say that my
own playing was about as bad as the legendary performances of Krishna were good. I did have a nice melody to try and play
however. It came from a song I had
written, recorded and recently published.
Breath control is obviously the key to play such a wind instrument. In fact, developing some mastery of the
breath is the original reason I bought the recorder.
My playing was rough and shrieking as I tried to find the
notes of the melody. I did notice they
pierced right through the horrid bellowing of the latest Limbaugh…I don’t want
to say “dumb fest”…but that about sums it up!
In the van next to me, two men were talking now. With the wailing attempt at music pouring
from my recorder and cutting through the equally disturbing sound of Rush Limbaugh,
I couldn’t make out just what the men were saying. I did hear one of the men talking about,
“protestors who made themselves out as martyrs” after being pepper sprayed at
one of those OWS outings. Then I heard
something about, “we should have taken them out”.
Soon, the two men were outside of the van and over next to
me on the passenger side of my SUV. Both
were wearing red t-shirts and jeans and seemed to be dressed in uniform. But they didn’t seem to have arrived
together. The younger of the men was
thanking the other for a sandwich and was taking a few bottles of water. We locked eyes through my rear view
mirror. He seemed to glance for a moment
at my license plate and was maybe pretending to memorize the number. This man looked familiar to me. I realized it was very likely the same guy I
had seen a couple weeks back who had pulled up right next to me at another
point in the park. He had come out of
his own van screaming madly about having lost some folder and asked me if I had
seen anything like that. His van had
scrolled on it something I remember as Learn
What Really Happened to John
Lennon at WWW.LennonComspiracy.com.
The man was soon gone.
He taken the bottle of water and headed off into the park. The other, older man, went back inside the
van to listen to more from Rush Limbaugh.
I continued to try and get a single, decent stream of notes out of the
recorder. Mercifully, the man in the van
rolled up the passenger side window and I was able to bring my hellish-sounding
practice to a close. Eventually the little
birds came back into the trees near me and resumed their spring song.
But I was thinking now of the two men in the red shirts—and
about writing this diary. Back about 10
or more years ago I heard a rumor of a clan of hard-right wingers that called
itself P.W.E. (I never learned what this stood for). This P.W.E was alleged to be from Cincinnati,
Ohio where they would go out as a group through different parts of the city
carrying a pro-wingnut message. They
dressed in thick, red t-shirts with the P.W.E lettering sown across the chest. They completed their distinct attire with Bermuda
shorts, dark socks, and brightly polished wingtips shoes. The guy that told me of this group joked that
these P.W.E. were suffering from
“conservawarts” brought on by “the Rush Limbaugh virus” which was also known as
“Rushbees”. I’d always thought the story
was made up in entirety by my left-learning, creative friend. But he insisted the P.W.E. was real and never
let on otherwise.
So, seeing these two men with red
shirts kind of made me think of that.
Could they possibly have been remnants of this P.W.E. that had ended up
out west? I thought for a moment of
trying to find the website I’d seen written on the van of the younger man I
from a few weeks earlier. But I’m just
not into all of that stuff.
I don’t need
to go looking for these types of people—especially when they show up next to me
all on their own at the park! I don’t prefer practicing my recorder either and
disturbing the wild life. And really, I
don’t prefer spending time writing about Rush Limbaugh. But, maybe, it might all have some small
untold effect in keeping a certain amount of nuisance in check. Really, I’d rather just enjoy the Spring and
read the old worlds of Krishna and try and imagine what the wondrous sound of
his flute was like. Certainly not to be
confused with that are my more successful attempts at producing melody and
harmony which you can hear at: https://fandalism.com/wej7/cRuR
