I, Nate Tucker

I’m reading the classic called Catch-22. It’s a satire, and a very funny one. Here are a few thoughts about it:

The cover of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22

Yossarian is a bombadier pilot. He has to fly 55 missions before he can go home. It used to be 45 missions, and then 35–it keeps changing as he approaches it. But there’s an alternate route: If a pilot is crazy, he can go home. “Well,” says Yossarian, “so-and-so is crazy. Why doesn’t he get out?” “Because he hasn’t asked.” “Well, what if he does?” “He won’t.” “Why not?” “Because he’d have to be sane to want to not fly through the air with people trying to kill him.” And that’s the catch. Catch-22, that is. Catch-22 says that if a pilot asks to get out, clearly he is not insane.

The book is full of these logical circles. (Another character thinks he has flies in his eyes. But, of course, if you have flies in your eyes, you can’t see clearly enough to tell whether you’ve got them or not. So nobody really knows.) It’s almost like it was written by someone who was crazy.

It reminds me of a peeve I had in the 10th grade. On the math tests, there would be a really hard problem at the end. And if you got it correct, you got extra credit. The funny thing though: the kids who were smart enough to solve the problem had high enough grades not to need extra credit. The kids who did need it were never smart enough to get it. Catch-22.

She, my wife, was about to enter our house through the downstairs window. I’m not sure why. But we were coming back from a party. I think my wife was Lisa. I’m not sure about that either. I suddenly had this fear. And I thought someone was in the house. I told her to stop and step back. I climbed in. The basement was empty. In a rush I grabbed a giant screwdriver from the floor and headed around the corner to the stairs. At that moment I thought to myself, “I should have listened to Tev’s, Zod’s, and Hyrum’s advice and bought a gun. This is just what they were talking about.” A kind of rage filled me, and I charged around the corner. As I leaped onto the second stair, a dark figure came around the corner at the top of the stair. It jumped, obviously startled, and as it jumped it raised its arms. The shot made my ears ring, and the bullet hit me square in the chest. I was still conscious of her presence, and my last thoughts were, “I hope she has the sense to run.” And then I fell over backwards, and I was laying in my bed.

feck (fek) (slang, has no sexual connotations)
n., 1. explicit nominative
[e.g., It's not just switching a vowel, ya twisted feck.]
2. one who fecks
[e.g., You mean that arseways fecker?]

v., 1. to steal
[e.g., "They had fecked cash" (James Joyce, Portrait
of the Artist).]
2. to throw
[e.g., He's a rude gobshite--I asked him for a drink and
he fecked the glass at me.]

adj. 1. expletive [e.g., Bloody feckin' 'ell.]
Commonly used by religious authorities and school teachers.
May be combined for added effect (e.g., I asked that feck to explain, but the fecker just fecked a feckin’ rock at me or, more concisely, Feck the feckin’ fecker).

*   *   *

Hope you have a wonderful day. And watch out for the fecking leprechauns.

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(Some strange things pop into your head, when you’re halfway between here and the neverland.)

It was dark. There were charcoal-gray bars on the windows. It didn’t look like a whorehouse. They all hung their heads down, their long ratted hair hiding their faces. One sat on the top of an upright piano to my right. The cell—the room—was too small for a piano. She looked at me.

“Lauren?”

She slid off the piano, and gingerly stepped, leaning forward.

“Oh, God no. Not you.”

“It wasn’t. I didn’t.”

She walked toward me, and I cradled her greasy head in my arms. She shook as she cried. The hint of a tear gleamed in my eye.

“It ends tonight. Either he or I will die tonight,” I said, clenching my teeth. My hands on her head were leathery, and oil stained.

She tipped her head upward, and I saw one eye through the ratty hair. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

“Funny,” I replied. “That’s what I say too.”

I kissed her on the head and then let go. She curled her knees close as she crouched into the corner.

With grit on my chin, I stepped to the door. I rested my palms on the butts of two silver, flint-lock pistols tucked at my side. Then I kicked the door open with my boot and stepped outside.

I have an idea in my head: I want to say “wheat flour,” but I can’t. Our bread isn’t like that. It’s not white bread, it’s __. It’s different. It’s not white bread. I’m not saying anything. And so I might as well not talk at all.

This was yesterday. Today, when I ran into one of these walls, I ran up the stairs, my feet tapping on the second and fourth wooden steps. I grabbed my journal; it’s orange with black text; and I went back. Es de trigo. Nuestro pan, hecho de mí mamá, es de trigo. She still didn’t get it though: this bread is made out of wheat too. I know, but it’s white flour. Así the language isn’t necessarily the problem. Lack of knowledge in general can be a problem. And it separates us—we people—from each other. Very frustrating.

* * *

Mike told me that it’s better to live with a Chilean family than on your own. He’s about my height, with dark hair, but longer than mine. And he has a soul patch—just a bit of scruff under his lip. He said there’s just one down side: you can’t have sexual relations. Well, you can, he told me; you just can’t at home. I had this friend, he brought this girl home, and he was ******* ***. His family got all mad. But he was like, I thought I lived here. But they didn’t think it was cool.

Mike’s from Hawaii. He surfs. He told me my white tennies and my hoodie are just screaming gringo. I’ll try and fix that, I said. But he said there no problem, except that people might try to screw you over. Mike was here for a semester in 2005. Since then he changed his major to Spanish. Now he’s back. I wasn’t planning on bringing any girls home anyway.

Mí mamá, Ana Maria, thought I was lost this afternoon. I went with Mike down to the street Valparaiso. I was looking for a wall adapter, so I can plug in this laptop. I still haven’t plugged it in. Mike says I don’t need a converter, just an adapter. That’s what the little black box is for. I guess I should just trust him. But I didn’t get back to the universidad until 2:00. Her daughter, Kati, said I should be done around one. But I thought she wasn’t going to come until I called. That’s why she gave me her number. But she just came anyway. Then she had the school call Mike, but he said he’d left me a while ago. That’s because I went to look for an alarm clock. When I plugged mine in, with my other adapter (the one without a ground wire), it sped up. My alarm went of at 7:00, like it was supposed to. But it wasn’t really 7:00; it was 3:00 a.m. Nice. But I was pretty tired, so I fell right back to sleep. So mamá told me about seven times how I was supposed to get from the school to the bus station. It’s just a simple U, she said. Seven times. I think she thought I’d get lost again.

For lunch, we had spaghetti, but they didn’t call it that, with bread. I also had a way good pear and some bread. I had the same thing for dinner, but with jam on the bread. I ate the same meal twice yesterday too, but that’s because they asked if I preferred more fish and rice or some bread. It’s good food though. So far Mocteczuma hasn’t had his revenge on this Anglo.

If I don’t write tomorrow, it’s because Shanghai II got fried when I plugged it in.

Today, as the world completed
a revolution, I traveled from
winter into summer, from
the eye of Polaris to
the watch of Chiron.