All Hallow's Even or Dog-eared Paperback

I woke up with a bug of some kind in my beard. It took my a while to become aware of it because I had to run over to where I had my phone plugged into the charger. I picked up the phone and talked for a moment, listening, without much interest, to the details of another P.C. alert system test. After I hung up I brought my hand up to my face to wipe away what felt like some encrusted drool in the corner of my mouth and when I brought my hand away it was holding a bug, a little guy who’d probably spent the night curled up on my face, either that or it was one of those kissing bugs that spread horrible diseases. As the nights continue to get colder I can’t help but wonder how many other bugs will be seeking refuge on my body throughout the winter and I wonder how many scorpions are still in my room.
The weekend before Hallowe’en I had a party for my students as an excuse to do something at least somewhat ostentatious for my favorite holiday. My planning was a little lax and I kind of threw everything together at the last minute. Paige, another volunteer who lives nearby actually did most of the work by getting some pumpkins together and even going so far as to make brownies. I provided some kind of entertainment by sitting at the front of a table and “lecturing” on hallowe’en for about 20 minutes by flailing my hands all over the place and mispronouncing dia de los meurtos (probably misspelling it too). I don’t know if the students were actually listening to my excited babble about pumpkins and ghosts or if they were just staring at me, wondering how I could be such a lunatic as I punctuated my lecture with spooky sounds.
“So then the festival of Samhain became All Hallows’ Even…oooohhhhwww.”
When I finished my incomprehensible lecture we all brainstormed spooky topics for awhile, which the students seemed to do pretty well with, despite the fact that it was a relatively unstructured activity and those usually don’t go too well. Then I had two of my forth year students recite the Raven, as they had just read it for an after school club with me. I think everyone else stopped paying much attention by the third stanza or so, finding the antiquated (and beautiful) language of the poem too difficult to understand. I stood by beaming with pride while the rest of the students began to glance out the window or toy with their cell phones. I made spooky noises throughout the reading of the poem as well, occasionally bellowing out “Lenore” or banging on the table ever time a rapping sound was mentioned. I also rustled the hell out of the “silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain,” much to my students’ chagrin, I think they probably frequently feel embarrassed by what probably looks to them like a serious lack of restraint. I tried to punctuate the end of the poem by ducking out of the room and running back in with a sheet draped over me waving my arms around and emitting more ghostly howls. When I pulled back the sheet I saw the most of them were smiling at me, “alright,” I thought, “now we’ll get somewhere.”
Everyone had been excited from the beginning about the pumpkins on the table and when I announced that it was time to begin carving them the students quickly got into groups and took their pumpkins. After a brief explanation of pumpkin carving and the clatter of everyone sorting through the pile of knifes, the party had really begun. Initially I was afraid that the students would follow what they do so often in class and copy each other. Sometimes the most interesting question, “what makes you unique” for example, elicits a uniform response. Of course, it could be, and probably is, true that they just don’t know what I’m asking them so they all say the same thing.
So shortly after we had begun the carving a student came up to me and asked for the picture of a Jack O’ Lantern I had showed earlier, a child’s coloring book drawing with the usual triangular eyes and nose and blank, expressionless mouth. For a moment I had a vision in my head of them all carving the same pumpkin design, 5 pumpkins looking exactly the same. I couldn’t bear the thought so I told the student I didn’t know what I did with the picture, but she didn’t need it anyway. “Design your own pumpkin,” I said, with probably way too much enthusiasm, because she looked at me with one eyebrow almost up to her hair line.
In the end, I practically had tears in my eyes. Every Jack O’ Lantern beamed at me through a different set of eyes and smiled at me through a unique twisted grin. One had a cigarette shoved between some unruly pumpkin teeth, another had make-up accents and earrings. We took about 1,000 pictures after that. Some of which I guess I’ll try and put up here when I find a computer that will allow it. I was indifferent to the picture taking, waltzing around with a bed sheet still half-wrapped around me and asking to see every pumpkin up close, it was about as close to motherhood as I think I’ll ever get, and I was happy as hell.
About an hour later we shuffled out of the hall after the students had left and sat down at a nearby café for a few coffees. Keep in mind when I say ‘café’ I mean a few plastic chairs and tables by the sidewalk and an option of coffee or tea also most of them host half-starved stray cats. Anyway I smoked about 8 cigarettes in about half an hour and discussed my wonderful class that I had probably been vehemently complaining about the day before. C’est La Vie, huh?
Later I’m taking a suicide cab up to Jermook, a mountain resort with supposed healing (or at least salubrious) waters. I spent the night up there talking to two very literate guys and our conversation bounced all over the place, like the kinds of conversations I used to have back home.
You know how certain images just strike you sometimes? Like, you end up with pictures in your mind that you don’t remember taking? I’ve stared so hard into so many text books trying to memorize charts and table for various reasons, but it seems like the only images I’m able to retain are the ones that I scarcely remember seeing. From the 6th floor of this apartment building there was a very into a mostly empty courtyard. Just across this open area there was a little store that kept its lights on all night. Anytime I want I can close my eyes and see that little place, glowing against a night so dark there was no horizon line and everything seemed to float.
The next night we went camping. Just outside my village there’s a little picturesque spot next to a waterfall. I thought we’d make it down there but, due to an early sunset, we ended up camping further up the river bank. It was actually the first time I ever went camping with no tent and I’d like to tell you that I fell asleep with my face pointed toward the bright mess of stars overhead, but it was far too cold and though I made a point to glance skyward before drifting off, I actually fell asleep with my head buried under my sleeping bag. The next morning I woke up early after rolling into the damn river. I remember lying there thinking “why the hell are my feet so cold when everything else is warm?” I tired to ignore it and go back to sleep but eventually the feeling stirred me awake and I came out of my bag to find half my person submerged in the river. I can’t help but to wonder what it would’ve been like if I had fallen back asleep, no doubt I would’ve rolled in the rest of the way which would’ve been really funny.
One more remotely newsworthy item, I went to Yerevan, the capital a few weeks ago and was laughed at by the police. It was early in the morning and I was taking the Metro back to where I catch my marshrutni (marshutka) by home. After I had been on for a few seconds when I began to feel a burdensome stare weighing on me. As this is pretty normal, even in the capital, I didn’t bother to look up and see who was gawking this time. Then I began to hear the unreserved, explosive laughter that usually accompanies this feeling. After a few seconds had passed and the laughter hadn’t tapered off I decided to look up and confront the bastards, in hopes that maybe a dead cold stare would make them shut up (this never works, though.) I almost laughed myself when I saw the culprits were a bunch of yahoos in police costumes. They were all having a blast pointing and laughing at the goofy-looking American who dared to be caught in public without a knock-off Armani shirt and elf shoes. This sort of thing is usually tolerable when it’s coming from teenage boys who seem to need some sort of rube to laugh at wherever they are, but from the cops it was just annoying, and worse yet it was making me really damn angry. By the third stop or so I was starting to get worried I was going to walk up to them and knock one of their damn hats right off their head. Every second that went by the idea was becoming more and more tempting, and the train rattled down the tracks, the people stared blankly ahead and I just kept staring at the hyena-faced cops.
Luckily, I think I’ve got a lot more sense than to go up and knock off a cop’s hat no matter where I am, still I remember a friend of mine once telling me that pointing and laughing was one of the most hurtful things that one could do to a person. We experimented with it after that (I think we were in 3rd grade.) First, we laughed at each other, then we pointed and laughed. He was right, the effect of that added “yes, YOU!” of the finger makes it so much more intense. And sometimes, standing on a subway, on the other side of the world from home, its hard to care so much about the repercussions, if for the moment you can just safe face and stop being humiliated.

The day before the presidential election I was invited to lecture on Animal Farm at a university in the capital. To much of Yerevan’s chagrin I brought my skateboard with me and had a great time reminding myself of the small things that make life worth living.
Both lectures I had went incredibly well and the students were absolutely amazing. If only I could spend the rest of my time here teaching literature to such eager minds, I might decide to stay, marry and never leave because I don’t know if I could expect better students anywhere else. After both alacritous lectures blurred by I found myself out in the street wondering what to do with the rest of the night. I called my pal Reza and let him decide for me and within an hour or two we were sitting around a kitchen table with some wine, some bread and some rad people to talk with. I nearly forgot about the election until I was just about to go to sleep. I checked out the updates, which at that early hour were still completely uncertain, steeled myself for the feeling the next day of a great chance come and gone and went to bed.
It felt nice to be congratulated the next day, to wake up just in time to watch Obama give his acceptance speech in Chicago in a park I remember strolling through frequently in a time that seems like decades ago.

The Peel of Ragged Mountain Bells, or The Case of the Disappering Desert

I.
It’s difficult to feel lost when you’ve got no destination and feel content to walk until you’ve come to one. Once in a while, out in the middle of a national park, crowded city or mountain range, I’ll look around at what appears to be endless unfamiliar scenery, consider it for a moment, and continue walking in the direction I was heading. Within a few moments of my renewed task I forget that I don’t know how to get home.
Yesterday, I walked up into the mountain range that boarders this town on what I think is the east side. I had a half-cocked plan to visit a monastery that I heard was up there. I had no idea where it was, but I felt sure I’d be able to find it eventually and after I clambered over enough mountains I did.
I started off on the wrong path though. After walking for a few hours I came to an area of shacks, clustered around a river, the inhabitants, either wearily staring into the distance or motioning for me to come over.
Sometimes Armenia feels like it doesn’t need the Peace Corps, or at least the traditional, romanticized image of the PC, that is, a group of ambitious, indefatigable college graduates that help to weave palm fronds together and dig wells. Over here when we talk about PC policies I notice a lot of us frequently say things like “oh, maybe in Africa, but not here.” We’ve all got this notion that we’re completely divorced from this traditional PC model. Sure, most of live, or have lived, in villages with little running water, outhouses, oxcarts and old ladies toting huge burdens on their backs. But a lot of other volunteers live in places with two TVs, a working shower, maybe a piano, things that are usually associated with wealth. The level of affluence here seems to swell in small pockets, especially when contrasted with the immense poverty surrounding it. When you see a flashy car drive by a guy in rags herding sheep up a street in the dusk, sometimes it’s hard to figure out what’s out of place. Is the shepherd some ancient, wandering anachronism? Or is the 2008 model car a rude intrusion of the occidental world? A battering ram of “progress.” In Armenia both parties seem to accept each other without much complaint, the car swerves around the sheep and the shepherd calls them back into formation, neither party so much as glancing at one another.
I walked up to the first shack I was invited into. It was a one-room affair with a gas burner placed between the make-shift beds, and a little table. With the dwarfing and isolation-inducing feel of the mountains and the lowing of nearby cows this home almost seemed to tremble in its existence. The home at once looked to be out of place and a natural part of the scenery, like the first barnacle on a brand new boat. I was given a seat on what looked to be a milking stool. The couple asking me questions about my origins and such for a while. The woman, apparently very alarmed by my solo adventure through the mountains tried to get me to turn around. She wanted to know why I was alone. I explained that I didn’t really know anybody in my town to go cavorting around the mountains with. She seemed saddened by this and offered me food and coffee, perhaps to mollify what she could only see as loneliness.
We had been sitting outside the shack up until this point. The coffee and food were inside so we went in. I was seated on a chair and watched the couple struggle with matches and a propane cylinder. While the coffee was on I spoke a little more with the old couple and looked around the austere furnishings. I remember there was a can of rennet on one of the cross beams of the place and a candle or two, two single beds, the man sitting on one, the woman on the other and the pleasant musty smell of a cool concrete basement in the summer. I ate some bread and even a little of the cheese paste in a proffered bowl, which obviously came from one of the goats (or sheep) that was wondering around the premises. The woman tried again to persuade me to go back and, as it was getting late in the day, I began to agree that perhaps it was the best idea. The man, who seemed almost as the spokesperson for adventure, kept turning the conversation to the road that lay ahead, while his wife looked on and frowned, clearly annoyed at his encouragement. After the modest meal he and I went out (under the pretense of directions back home) and I listened while he waved his hands around and spoke in a torrent of words, few of which could I understand. [Keep in mind this is all in Armenian.]
“There’s a church?” I asked after he said something about a church.
“(indecipherable) go right (inaudible) (indecipherable) straight.”
“is it far?”
“far (indecipherable) near …”
“but it’s far, right?”
“(inaudible) far (indecipherable) but…near”
All the while the woman was standing in the doorway of the house making a dismissive gesture and saying “not good, alone not good” over and over. With this information I decided to cross the next mountain, at least to see what was ahead. I could always turn around, right?
The problem with people like me is that we can never turn around. I never have any idea what I expect to find but the only thing I can be sure of is that whatever it is I won’t find it without going to look for it and staying in one place does not constitute “looking.”
As I slowly climbed the mountain I thought about everyone here, and presumably elsewhere, calling the PC program in Armenia ‘posh corps’ since we’ve got a capital like Yerevan that looks like it could be an American city (but is probably one of the few cities left in the world with a population higher than 1 million with no McDonald’s) and many sites with running water and accessible transportation. But as I left this couple in their ramshackle shack, waving me away, I thought about the other side of the country that they seemed to represent, the side that lives in places like this all summer long to allow the animals to graze, so they can harvest what they will need from them for the winter, spending the afternoon lugging cans of water up from the river and singing quietly to themselves in the mountain sun.
I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the mountains. I did eventually make it over to the monastery, where three old women and their large dog helped me get some water as I probably had the appearance of a Sergio Leoni-era, Clint Eastwood by the time I reached the damn thing: lips charred and shrunken, face sun-burnt and dust-caked, beard stubble chocked full of burrs and seeming to hold up my hollow, jaundiced cheeks. After I gulped down the water I answered their questions about being in Armenia, and, again, why I was in the mountains alone.
After I declined going to their homes to eat (it was getting late and I wanted to get back) I decided to lay down on the cool stone floor of the monastery for a while. Hewn from immense stone blocks, even in the dead of August heat, Armenian monasteries remain late-autumn-cool. One doesn’t do much in the monasteries, say a few prayers, light a few of the ubiquitous thin, yellow candles that are available in a self serve box by the door, and bow before the alter when you walk backward out the door. Since I had come so far I decided to fully prostrate myself, in the form of a napping penitent on the floor, where I listened to the lizards skitter across the apse and the relic piles.
Walking home in the fading sunlight my thoughts tumbled out of me and rolled, unattended, down the craggy mountain. I couldn’t seem to keep up with any of them so I finally just stopped trying and put my headphones on. The sunlight felt closer to the mountains now and my sunburn began to stick to me, like a hot ichor that steamed out of my reddened skin. Dehydrated and tired I approached the village.
When I finally arrived at my home, night was falling, and there was a black coffin lid propped up outside the door, people were milling around everywhere, all looking at me with curiosity and, in some cases, what looked to be suspicion. Armenian coffins are not your sterilized, rectangular American coffins either, they are of the classic shape, with a large cross emblazoned on the front, to see one of these outside my door seemed at first to be a pronouncement that Dracula would be dining with us that evening. I glanced at the lid in the failing light, it was the most tangible form of death I think I’ve ever seen. A black coffin lid in the summer twilight, undisturbed by the gentle breeze blowing around it.
The beggar’s shroud of ripped and informal clothing that seemed to fit my countenance so well in the arid, lifeless mountains, seemed out of place here, at the funeral. I felt like a ghoul at a scene where everyone was dressed up and there was a body on display. Quietly I snuck up to me room, hoping not to be seen. I remained there until the next evening when the body was finally taken to be interred. Somehow it just seemed rude to come out of my room. My host family seemed to appreciate this deference.

II.

A few days later I’m waiting to return to work at the university. I seem to expect to be entertained today. I can’t quite describe the feeling, I guess it’s impetuousness, or the remnants of California hedonism. Some days, from the moment I wake up I feel some kind of happy restlessness. Perhaps these occasions are brought on by certain dreams or sleeping positions, I don’t know. I think it would be fairer, in this case, to say that a phone call cheered me to the point of inattention on this particular morning. I had passed the night as usual, nearly falling asleep with a book propped up on my lap, lying in the sweltering funk of my room, panting despite the fact that I was lying completely still, probably panting even in my sleep. At 7 am my phone begins to rattle across the floor from its place in my pants’ pocket. I stumbled over to the desk, unawake, thinking it there. I was dumfounded for a minute until I realized where the sound was actually coming from. I dug the tiny thing out of a denim wad on the floor. “Private Caller,” the ID read when I finally got it out. For an instant my mind raced back to all the damn “Private Callers” I used to talk to at 7 am back in SF and even Arcata, asking me if Gavin Newsome had my vote. “Arrggh, If he ever did he’s sure as hell lost it now!” I used to drone/roar into the phone, after the fashion of an angered sleepwalker, before hanging up. “Had the Newsome people tracked me down in Armenia?” I wondered to myself for a moment. “Were they calling at 7 PM California time just so they’d still get me at 7 AM here?” Shit! What wouldn’t they do to badger me into a vote. I answered the phone, ready with a quip, or trying to get one ready. “Who calls someone else at 7 in the morning?” I said answering the phone. The voice at the other end laughed, that was a good sign. “Jon,” the voice continued, “it’s me.” I had never talked to anyone from the Newsome election offices with the name “Me;” I was safe.
After the first, non-mother, call that I gotten from the US I jangled my way down the morning stairs to the shower. When I came back up I was feeling even better and decided I was going to watch the one movie I brought to Armenia with me. I popped in the copy of Children of Man that Mikey burned for me a while back into my laptop and waited. Nothing. I cleaned off the disk, went into My Computer to drag the contents out myself, nothing. I was about to call the whole thing off when I remembered a burned disk of the second season of that show Weeds, that had somehow ended up with me. I was planning on giving it to someone ’cause I hate those kinds of shows, and by “those kinds” I mean anything that’s not a cartoon, or something I remember watching before I turned 14..
“Whatever,” I thought to myself, “I’ve got a full cup of coffee, it’s 8 o’clock and I’m wide awake, I might as well try an episode, It’s not like I’ve got anything to do today.”
It was noon by the time I turned the thing off, even then I had to force my hand. The vivid and vapid outpouring of American culture had finally hypnotized me, not with it’s glamorous entreaties to join an impossible lifestyle, but with it’s character development and needling plot twists. Damn, it was just like the US version of The Office, which my friend Jay had back at the training site. The viewer just settles right into vicarious existence, attentively hanging on to plot developments, alternately loving and despising certain characters. I wanted to stay with the show all day, I didn’t want to be outside of its wonderful walls. When I realized that this was my feeling I decided to shut the thing off before I became a complete hypocrite. (I once had a roommate who actually watched 6-8 hours of TV a day. I remember being appalled when she admitted this to me and telling her so.)
With the infernal entertainment behind me I set off for, where else, the internet café. I strode out 30 minutes later, practically reeling with happiness, I couldn’t believe my luck, a call, a TV marathon and an e-mail in the same day! Where the hell was I, America? I gloated down the street to a café to study up on my teaching methodology when it finally hit me. I wasn’t going to be able to get a damn thing done. I had squandered a week’s worth of entertainment in one morning, as far as my endorphins were concerned, I was either back home with my friends or on crystal meth. no one can get anything done when they feel like that, and sure enough, the book I sat down to read faded into the music that bounced around in my head, the letter I tried to write came off confused and apathetic. I wildly contemplated going home and watching still more TV! but somehow I made it through the afternoon and even succeeded in giving a vague tutoring session later. One phone call and, ahh, the world suddenly becomes so valuable and disruptive.

III.

Imagine one of the hardest days of work you’ve ever had. A day when your co-workers are dogging you, the boss is scowling, you’re tired and your feet ache like bastards. Imagine walking home from this day contemplating the work you’ll have to do at home before you can return to work the next day. You’re literally weighed down with books and papers. The sun is beating down on you and there’s construction everywhere. Cars are honking incessantly. Imagine all this but at the end of this harrowing journey you do not have, a household to walk into. No spouse to greet you and listen to your complaints. No snot-nosed kids running around that vaguely resemble you. No dog, no parakeet not even an empty apartment to greet you with open arms of solicitude, but a household full of strangers that speak a different language and seem to look at you with uncertainty, as if you’d walked into the wrong house. A TV that blares uncertain things in Russian.
(I don’t want to be negative here, this family of strangers is actually very nice to me, Russian television affords some quality entertainment options, whether or not you can understand the language and I’m sure many people with spouses, kids or parakeets to come home to could do just as good a job bitching about those things as I do about the situation here. Still, I’m writing about my experience in the Peace Corps, and I’ve got to include both the good and bad here in order to depict the situation as a whole. After living on my own for 8 years I occasionally find it difficult to come home to a crowded house of people I sometimes feel like I’m just a burden to. This is a singularly American viewpoint, entirely removed from the notion of family security that’s predominate in the rest of the world, I recognize that, however being American I could not help but to include it.)


IV.

God, I thought I wrote about this. I was about to finally post this damn thing, when I realized I’ve left off the most important part.
A week or so ago I went for a walk in the evening as the winds were picking up, blowing down from the mountains. It had been a long and hot couple of days and the breeze felt beautiful. To hear this ever-still world actually rustle, actually stir was like someone finally turning over something on a grill that’s just about to burn.
The birds sing in brighter cords, the world seems to renew itself, the old men that occupy all the obscure corners of town rouse themselves and speak with the passion of young men, the young men fall into the reverie of the old men and anyone still inside comes finds an open seat on the crumbling soviet balconies, or between the cardboard seat covers laid over the hard concrete curbs, mashed up by all the towns asses at one point or another.
So there I am, skipping out of my house, down the rock and dust road that leads down the hill and past the cemetery that clings to it. I cross the town, the trees move slightly and change the shadows on the streets. I don’t have an idea where I’m going, at this late hour I’ve got a few options, there are some areas of town where I don’t have all the open manhole positions memorized, with no streetlights it’s not good to be in one of those places after it gets dark, unless you want to break something. Which never actually deters me, but I thought I’d at least note it here.
I decide to walk out across the highway, down the road to a nearby village that looks like something straight out of a coyote and roadrunner cartoon, where the high desert bounces up and down on the horizon like an electrocardiogram sketch.
Beginning this road there’s a gas station that looks exactly like what it is, the last outpost before nowhere. The cool wind in the still warm night is blowing a cloud of desert dust all over it. The halogen lights sparkle, coruscate even, in the tawny fog. There is something at once so beautiful and lonely about the place, like that painting of the 50s Diner (I think the painter’s name was Hooper or Hoper) bright as day on the inside but surrounded by darkness. I continued walking until I was far away from these lights, alone looking down into a ravine, a dog howls up near one of the mountains and I begin to feel like I’m never going to be heard from again, like that smoky-bright gas station a few miles back will be the last witness to my life leading up until that point. As the dark fully descends from the mountains the wind gets colder and eventually even the bulky outlines of the mountains cannot be discerned from the sky. The stars seem to be out in every direction now, over my head and beneath my feet and the wind continues to pour across the road that I can longer see.

I'm pretty sure those were plums, or, the echo of your own broken voice.

Among the multitudes of my readership there are bound to be a few of you that remember a certain Sunny Delight commercial from, maybe, ten or eleven years ago. For kids like myself who watched inordinate amounts of TV everyday after school this particular commercial always struck a cord. For one reason they showed the damn thing about 100 times an hour, but back then that was some kind of market stratagem: thorough saturation, so looking back there were a lot of commercials that I saw way too many times. What makes this particular commercial so important is that I think it rent my generation into two very salient schools of thought. There were two very distinct ways to receive this commercial, and since we had all seen it, in all probability, millions of times, it was inevitable that one day we would begin to discuss it.
The gist of this particular Sunny “D” spot was not too different from many other commercials. It opens with two thirsty kids rooting around in a refrigerator. The point of view is from inside the ’fridge so the viewer is looking out at these sweaty brats from behind pickle jars, open boxes of baking soda and general refrigerator effluvia. One of these kids seems to feel at home in this particular ’fridge, as he is listing off the present supply of drinkables therein for the other kid. As he does so the rooting continues and new bottles are continually brought into view. I don’t remember everything he mentions, I’m sure some kind of generic cola was in there, I don’t think Proctor and Gamble would have the balls to include water, as, keep in mind, the kids eventually choose Sunny “D” over all other options. Also, I’m sure the dairy council’s Gestapo would’ve been torching offices if milk was included so, to soothe the myriad corporate egos of the day Sunny “D” essentially just made up a bunch of drinks. Oh sure, they had a cola, but again, I’m pretty sure they just said “soda” as the kids shoved a brown bottle with a red label aside, maybe with the whole cola wars thing going on Sunny “D“ thought they‘d step in to the ring and sock a punch as long as the contenders were busy blasting each other. Anyway, I’m getting way off track here. The main point I wish to harp on here was that one of the made up beverages was dubbed “Purple Stuff,” and it was this enigmatic liquid that split the generation that followed Generation X right down the middle (possibly even some of the Gen Xers as well, shit knows THEY watched enough TV too.)
So there we all were, day after day, cartoon after cartoon. Watching these incredibly eager and ruffled kids sliding drinks around in a refrigerator. After a period of time, many of us began to wonder, “hey, wait, what IS that purple stuff?” I know that for me it was after the first viewing, others eventually came to the “Purple Stuff” way of thinking after finally trying Sunny “D” for the first time and assuming that there’s no way the “Purple Stuff” coulda’ been worse. Others didn’t even need to try the “D” (that’s right, Sunny Delight and Detroit now share the same nickname as far as I’m concerned,) they knew from the beginning that the “Purple Stuff” didn’t really exist, and that was enough to make it the most enticing drink by far. Rumors abounded about the supposed flavor of this wild purple concoction. Some named fruits they had never tasted, but had seen in upscale grocery stores, others made up incredible and multifarious mixes of existing flavors, while still others invented completely new flavors, all of which I have unfortunately forgotten now. Of course there was the school that claimed the “Purple Stuff” was grape flavored, but they were only a sort of fifth column from the Sunny “D” lovers faction. They were the ones who were incapable of dreaming up wondrous possibilities for the “Purple Stuff” and they clung, stubbornly to old traditions and hackneyed flavors.

“If the stuff was supposed to be grape why didn’t Proctor and Gamble just say ‘Grape Stuff?’”

The advertising goons who came up with this commercial underestimated the creativity of their audience. They apparently figured, as a bunch of mindless consumers, tainted by years of myriad entertainment options and brand name identity associations that we would all buy into the idea that the unknown was inferior to the well-established, tried and true product. Of course they forgot one very important detail, Sunny “D” tastes like barf. So naturally when kids saw the glee on these gangly adolescents faces they knew they were being duped. No one likes Sunny “D” that much, and by contrast the mystery of the “Purple Stuff” became that much more exciting. This Phenomena would later be repeated with the Sprite commercials that invented a rival in something called Jukie or Juky, which again we all lusted after, having long since developed an antipathy for the absolute tastelessness of Sprite.
After a significant period of time had passed and the Sunny “D” commercial was still being played I remember trying to examine the “Purple Stuff” more closely. It was sorta’ opaque, and had a multi-toned quality to it, like some wines do. The packaging was fairly innocuous, as, I think the line of thinking was that we would not want something that came in a lackluster package. On the contrary, this seemed to attest to the indisputable value of the product itself. “Purple Stuff” didn’t need a flashy package or even a flashy name. It was fine promoting itself as some half drunk bottle inside Billy’s ’fridge. It didn’t even mind being spurned by two snot-nosed brats in favor of some other uncertainly flavored sludge. “Purple Stuff” eventually came to represent, not the freedom of choice that capitalism so badly wanted us to accept, but rather freedom to not care at all, or better yet, freedom to make or imagine your own after-soccer-practice cooler. In the manufacturing of a fake drink the corporate world demonstrated just how easy it was to turn anything into a product. We fast began to realize that the quest for the enigmatic “Purple Stuff” was revolutionary because it brought us into our own minds. We didn’t turn to the grocery stores looking for “Purple Stuff” on the shelves because we knew it was too singular to be there. “Purple Stuff” became a way of life, sorta’. Those of us who took to “Purple Stuff” over Sunny “D” dreamt of what was unavailable anywhere outside our own hearts. “Purple Stuff” was in every individual that had bothered to think about what “Purple Stuff” might be, or how it might be made, or what it might taste like.
So quite unwittingly, the corporate world let slip the secret that individuality does not lie between the selection of product A or B. A and B cease to matter when you become capable of imagining XRQ17. From that point on I knew that A and B contests would never be worthwhile again.
*[Originally, I brought in a bunch of political points here, but after reading what I wrote I realized there is nothing political about this, the concept of “Purple Stuff” stems far deeper than the realms of what candidates have to offer and I’m not trying to make a political point here. I only wish to give voice to what I remember as the zeitgeist of the mid-nineties playgrounds and living rooms of America.]
It took ten years or so but I finally got to try “Purple Stuff” I know you’re probably thinking it’s antithetical for me to even attempt to define the great purple nectar at this point, but, again I think the beauty of the “Purple Stuff” mythos was that it was always within our grasp. I think anyone of us was ready to taste it at anytime, we just had to be ready, had to believe that what we were imbibing was the actual “Purple Stuff” and not just something we were willing to accept as “Purple Stuff.”
I moved to Armenia a few months ago from the US, the village were I live is down in a valley in an area that resembles the American southwest. It’s in the mid to upper 80s or 90s here everyday. The valley itself is lush and green and bears some beautiful fruit in the summer. Outside the valley grapes can be cultivated but not much else will grow in the arid soil. The other day I was walking up into the mountains. I was thirsty as hell following a trail that was supposed to lead to a lake someplace. I never found that lake but on the way back I came across a tree that literally had fruit falling off from it. I didn’t know what the fruit was, let alone if it was edible but I decided to try one anyway. With the first bite I nearly lost my balance, completely enervated by deliciousness. I ate another, my head swooned, I rocked back on my heels. It was almost 100 damn degrees outside and somehow this stuff was cold! I ate a few more and eventually came to the decision that this fruit was really too good to keep eating. Like I didn’t want to satiate myself with something that was this good. I didn’t want to worry about getting sick from eating too much, so I left the tree behind with it’s miraculous fruit. It wasn’t until the next day that I made the comparison between the color of this fruit and a commercial from ten or eleven years ago.
Friends, I have found my “Purple Stuff,” let me know when you find yours.


2.
Wow! I really don’t know how to begin to convey the excitement and gratitude I’m feeling right now. I guess the best way would be to begin with a feeling of disappointment, ya’ know to sorta’ offset the happiness.
The disappointment came as a result of a bum cell phone. I didn’t really even want a cell phone and told myself from the beginning of my Armenian odyssey that I wasn’t going to get one. I mean I assumed in a country like this cell phones would be expensive as hell and probably wouldn’t work very well. It only took me about a day or so to realize how wrong my presumption had been. We arrived in Yerevan early in the evening, jet-lagged and haggard we gradually made our way out of the airport to encounter a parking lot full of people talking on cell phones, “Whoa,” I thought. “developing country my ass.” Anyway, I guess it’s the norm these days, no matter where you are you can get cell phones and reception to boot.
As the weeks of Peace Corps training progressed everyone began buying phones and calling home, calling each other, calling the Armenian operator, just randomly mashing keys until someone began to talk on the other line etc. etc. The point is calls where being made. I took no part and held up my stalwart commitment to not buy a phone. After all, it worked so well for years in college. My resistance was eventually worn down when I heard that a phone was to be given away along with the piles of other junk departing volunteers were leaving behind. We had this monopoly money doled out to us to buy this stuff and somehow I decided the phone was probably the best thing to get, although earlier tonight I was thinking maybe I shoulda’ gone with the udon noodles and soy sauce.
Anyway, I had the winning bid and I took this crazy phone home after buying a sim card for it so that it would actually work and not just beep at me when I tired to turn it on. I tried it out a few times. Everyone calling me and me calling them to exchange numbers without actually having to type anything into the phone. Well, it felt good at first to connect with everyone and when I got back home I decided to be considerate and call my mother, as the country to the north of us (about 4 hours by car) just went to war and she tends to worry. I found myself a good spot, got a cigarette going and made the first call on my new phone. My dad answers sounding kinda’ mad. “Hello?”
“Heya, dad how’re ya’ do…”
“Hello!?” He sounds madder.
“Hey dad, what’s…”
“HELLO?” It becomes clear at this point that he can’t hear me. I try a few more times before he hangs up.
“Hmm” I think to myself. “Must be a bad connection or something. Seems odd though as I’ve got all five bars indicated here. Whatever, I’ll try somebody else.” And the same process repeats.
“Maybe it’s only America, I’ll try someone here in Armenia.” Again I go through the agonizing process of being able to hear someone answer the phone but not being able to respond. There’s something oddly Sartre-esque about that, like the inverse of being-in-doing. You act but only get a isolated reaction, the other party has no idea who they’re talking to. You’ve committed the action of calling but they’re the ones who end up alone, speaking into a dead line.
I can’t help but to be kinda’ bummed at this point. I had gotten pretty excited about making a few calls. Hearing some familiar voices and familiar stories, but no I was back under an increasingly turgid American evening sky, the wind blowing over the chaparral, sounding like the voice of loneliness. And then I started thinking that they must’ve given me a bum phone on purpose, how could they have not known the damn receiver didn’t work? And now at the end of training there was nothing I could do to try and give it back. Fuming thusly I went over to my pal Jay’s to tinker with it while I tried calling his phone. As usual Jay was very obliging and I screwed around with my phone getting madder and madder while he tried to console me, probably thinking that I was being too dramatic as usual. I finally gave up on the damn thing and went home to tell my host mother that the number I gave her did not work, and that she should delete it from her phone. Being the angel that she is she asked if I would mind if she called a friend who fixed phones. Huh? What kinda’ luck is this? “Ok, sure,” I said. Yeah why not. Maybe he can even fix it. So while she made the call I was thinking this guy must live in one of the cities nearby, he certainly doesn’t live here in the village. When she hung up she told me that this guy lived next door and was coming over. Huh, ok, wow that’s pretty cool. Still, I was convinced my phone was a hopeless cause and didn’t get too excited.
About five minutes later this guy comes walking across the valley near our house. We greet each other, and quite business-like, he takes a look at my phone, pressing all the buttons I had already tired. I began to feel bad for even calling this guy over thinking, “damn, he’s just going to do all the stuff I already tried, if only my Armenia was better I could explain to him that it’s a lost cause, maybe we could chuck the phone into the garbage ravine together and have a good laugh about the benefits of technology while the cows low as they saunter home for the evening. But this was not to be the case, the guy used his phone to call mine, listened on his phone and blew into mine. “Here it comes,” I thought. He going to realize this is some sort of mechanical problem and give up. Instead he tells my host mother the Sony needs a new microphone, he’s going to take it back to his place and fix it. “Huh?” I’m thinking, “this guy has cell phone microphones in his house?” I’m telling you everything about this process kept getting better, it was like being on some sort of succor elevator.
The guy’s back in a few minutes. My phone works, here it is, try it. I do, it does, and I’m happy. We all sit down and eat watermelon and drink coffee and he tells me how he’s unemployed because there’s no work in this country. This guy fixed my busted phone in a village where there’s more cows than people, and I think the sheep might even have their own political party, now there are places like that in America too, but damn! How many of them are going to have cell phone microphones?
“No, I’d reckon you’d have to go to down to Boise for summut like that.”
“Huh?, Cell phone, ain’t nobody got no microphone and a cell phone, which one you want? Misself I only got that ol’ beta player for sale, I guess I could let it go for, oh maybe 100 dollars. What? Oh yeah, it’s got a microphone to it, sure!”
The whole scenario was like some kind of soft mafia, phone’s broke, huh? Lemme’ call my friend. Hey I hear your phone’s busted oh, give me a second, here ya’ go., it’s fixed. No, of course you can’t pay me, whatta’ ya’ nuts? And to think I was all set to pitch it in the garbage ravine, only now that I’ve got a working phone I can’t get a hold of anybody. Oh a quick note about the garbage ravine, it’s exactly what it sounds like, if you can imagine a hot summer rainbow of stench, you’re on the right track to picturing, or rather, smelling what I’m talking about. Seriously, I didn’t know that steel could become putrescent until I made the mistake of looking down there one day, whew! I’ll have to tell you more about it someday, oh hey you could always call me we could talk about stink all day!