Cowboys

Bang.

America misunderstands herself. She is founded on many things but some of the important and difficult ones--like scalps and slavery--are often left off the list of building blocks of liberty and opportunity.

Liberty and Justice. That's all. Here you are free and the scales will be balanced. There is no conscience to this system of law and there never has been.

When Hulk was little he dug eating in Chinese restaurants with Cap'n, Pete and Momma who, sadly, has since passed on. The thing about Chinese restaurants (the good ones with tablecloths, no take-out joints, here) that was so cool was the Pu-Pu platter. Apart from being a great deal of fun to say, what could be better for a little kid in a pair of cowboy boots than a li'l ol' fire of his own to play with and a rack of various meat things to munch on? (Hulk is now a Vegetarian who eats fish...because he needs protein and the fish, they are dim-witted - Ed.) Plus being given permission to play with the fire and roast said snacks right there at the table. Life is good when you're a kid with a Pu-Pu platter. And as Hulk's mother used to remind him, the other thing he used to say he dug about eating this way was that it was how he imagined the cowboys ate. At the time Li'l Hulk didn't know anything about oppression, indentured servitude or how the railroads were built across the American west. Maybe Pu-Pu platters around the campfire while the dogies snooze to the tune of a heartbroken harmonica wasn't so far off the mark. Starvation wages and armed crew bosses change the picture a little bit, though. But, lucky for Hulk, there is no tragic reality and no bitter moment of injustice unmasked that is quite large enough to outwit the imagination of a precocious eight-year-old with a license to play with fire.

Cowboys have always been important to Hulk. Maybe this is a function of having a mother from the Southwest. Maybe it is a function of being born with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Hard to say.

For a long time Hulk forgot about cowboys but then he got the opportunity to take a class at TheBigScarySchoolhouse all about cowboy movies!! They call this "College".

But America, she misunderstands herself. I suppose that's however much forgivable owing simply to scale. This country imagines itself to be unbounded, which (apart from being an odd conclusion to reach considering an Ocean on each side. And what could possibly be more grand and limiting to humans than a bloody ocean?) has a lot to do with the difficulty its inhabitants have sharing and respecting space around the globe, generally. But it makes it hard for the land to know herself, as well. Alaska and suburban New Jersey are not on speaking terms. Kind of like having an elbow and a pancreas that refuse to get along.

Romantics cling to westerns. American Romantics became intimidated at the prospect of writing about the sea after Melville gave us Moby Dick. On finishing the manuscript he pushed back his chair, raised his eyebrows, threw his arms open wide and, like a gangster said to the world at large "now whassup?" "Y'all g'head and write somethin' about the ocean now....punks" And so we haven't. Instead we have the mountains and the mountain men, the desert and the desperado.

The land has forgotten to locate its own limits and mistakes grandeur for absolutism. Cowboy movies forget to recognize the limits of the masculine (mountains, phallic symbols, no oceans in sight) and err further in generally only including the feminine to the extent to which it more clearly defines the dudes.

Make some popcorn and watch some Cowboy movies. Top of the list: Unforgiven, Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Brokeback Mountain. Yes, I mean it. Buggery disclosed doesn't change all that much. And Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger aren't so many turns of the knob off of Butch and Sundance. But they seem to know a little bit about their own limitations, as they sit there holding hands under the shadow of that bloody great mountain that is so very much larger than they are.

If Clint Eastwood was a chick there would have been no war in Vietnam.
What that means to Jane Fonda I am not sure.

That's what's up.

If Baby wrote this post it would be more cogent. But she gave me a title and some sweet words on the phone across miles and miles and miles, and she scooted off into those same Western Mountains (North of the border but not so different) to swim in a big ol' pool. So tonight it's just Hulk and the Cowboys.

Cheers to our limitations. They are where we find ourselves.

-n&c-