Day Four--Underground Freeway--Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Four, May 25, 2009
By Pi Kielty

Day Four started at 5 AM. I slept well on Sir Thom’s couch and took the morning with vigor, a little uncertain about the “real” post-dramatic trip beginning this day. I sat on the front step adoring the cool morning wrapped in my fleece blanket waiting for the sun to extend over the hill due east on the apartment house’s road. I did morning things, reading, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. On occasion I walked back upstairs to the second floor to check email and post the day three note.

At 9 AM, Sir Thom woke, since this day the Memorial, was a holiday. Memorial Day, as it progressed transformed into the theme itself for Day Four of the Underground Freeway. When clean and I dressed for the day, in blue T-shirt under a long-sleeve lime green cotton T, jeans and slip on shoes, Sir Thom drove us to the City of Falling Waters’ Riverine Park. With the camera out the passenger window, the unextended tripod snug under my arm, I filmed the drive over the several blocks. Near the main entrance, just before The Brewery, we hit a traffic backup of big trucks and mid-range cars flowing in to the gate. Sir Thom dodged around the block-long line trying to turn left, and up the hill we climbed in the golden minivan to the high, smaller entrance. In the park, we drove further onward and we noticed one of our spirit sisters, Alice, pushing her 2 year-old son’s stroller. Sir Thom honked and we parked in the nearest lot. While the other three visited, I walked and rambled with the cam-corder. Within an amphitheater of a half-circle embankment, groving on it a cluster of trees, a crowd of families listened before a ceremony of honor, spoken from a white pillared gazebo under a circle roof of red clay tiles. Honoring the brave protectors of our values and our virtues, who died in their service, or lived longer to die with their secrets, today the roster rang the call of those passed away in the last year.

The solemn recitation told of recent old soldiers now joined with their comrades and their enemies no longer in heavenly fields of peace. The wars of youth spoke of history: World War II and Korea; and of more recent flanders of springs unrequited: Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Persian Gulf again. The honored included the peacetime sacrificers to defend, preventing other wars from the sickeling unripe blossoms of human wheat.

No poet, not Shakespeare himself, could verse such ironclad image or prosaic lyric than the simple power of cemetery interred, names of the brave unconquered and their war they survived in body and remain epic endurance in spirit after death. Today, we memorial them.

The drive back to Sir Thom’s took us roundabout, as I grabbed more footage. The thought came as Sir Thom and I prepared for parting. Servicemen and women serve, because the world makes it unavoidable. There can be only honor for that sacrifice of youth, time, family, and innocence. This draws us out to the question of why does the world, its people, its leaders of states make men and women of arms necessary? Some malice tries to possess the brother and sister under the god in slavery; steal their lands; thieve their goods and trade. Arms in woman and men demands protection, and proves right to save those within God, family and country from the evil that others do. But what malice does this bad damage the good of the human spirit? We birth as children of the god and the Nature through which it works, do we not?

Governments make wars, not people. The rich and highly educated give the orders of nations. The poor convicted fight and die. Defending oneself, and their loved ones, friends, neighbors and countryfellows, carries no blame, no dishonor, no shaming by us who do not understand. The Nature proves it right that humanity defends its own survival, by means measured in response to an aggressor. Either way, it still calculates lives weighed like so much commodity of chattel, so many ounces of silver paid for the kiss to crucify. At least one side, but never both or more sides in war, possess righteous justice for their cause. Sometimes, all sides fight in the wrong. The problem of war pervades all recorded history. No re-ordering from the top by leaders of government will change that. Only people as people, in community to community across the earth, can refuse to fight the unjust cause. People need only unite and rebel against the rich man’s wars; the wars never righteous.

We hold this demi-truth to not be so self-evident, that wars come by a vain mix of the powerful or the many holding fear as a shield, envy (as in greed) for the spear. And the powerful convince the ignorant and apathetic to build the lie to fight for the leadership’s reasons; for the young, the dispossessed, or the drafted, or drugged, to execute the “national” will.

Sir Thom and I formed the most significant “Question” on the tour’s Day Four. We do not at all mean disgrace to anyone, but in honor of those who fought so others may live long enough to achieve peace. Sir Thom hopes one day the world may get an answer to the “Question” in honor of those servicemen and women who fought wars not of their choosing, and followed orders unto heaven’s calm. For they might want us to ask for what we are all accountable to Nature in the end; for serving our brothers and sisters in the god’s world: “Why is it alright to kill anyone else if our government says its okay?”

I left Sir Thom’s twenty minutes before schedule, at 12:40 PM. I stopped on the connection highway back south to D. City to photo the largest flag I ever viewed, as big as a pole barn roof, on a pole at least 100 feet high. I pictured it from a ½ mile away, and it loomed as big. It flapped snapped in the strong May east wind to full expansion, a star-spangled red, white and blue sail on a white mainmast taller than any ship ever plied the oceans. The flag could not be set half-mast, as I could tell, from the engineering to keep it secured at all. I like to think as the Optimist that if possible, the owner of the factory before which the flag flew would have put it in the honor position if possible–in honor of those who fought and died, or fought and lived to die–on Memorial Day 2009.


I stopped in town on the way to the day’s destination, a by way town, an O-ville. I found the Central Park, which set, well, in the center of town, next to the village hall and police station, all overshadowed by the water tower–and a flag as big as a small, humble home, snap flapping a gentle, subtle taps to the emptiness of the park and town on the “extra day off” holiday.

Picnicking under the shade of a tree, and lone witness to the flag’s loud music of solitude, I questioned politely, “Do we serve our flag, its country, our heroes, or do we only take their service and better our lives with a ‘free’ holiday?”

I drove to the Orange bull, further down the interstate. I found a ready emptying campground, with a nice private site. I passed the day filming the setting of my camp, reading, writing, walking, and in thought. Nothing more of consequence could have happened after the Memorial Day I possessed, or the thoughts of peace in humanity for humanity, in a war-heavy era of our lives. The only exception to the comment was that I drafted a letter to my parents on the writing desk in my tent, and told them I loved them.