8216. JUST ANOTHER DENIZEN OF THE DEEP

JUST ANOTHER 

DENIZEN OF 

THE DEEP

That's who I am, lost and roiling, waves

at my head. I can see the sea floor, but it's

up ahead? How I make these things happen,

I'll never know. Wherever I am, there I go.

-

Like a dream, my consciousness generates

energy than it can contain - and cannot be

expressed by just interacting with a physical

realm. Each 'spark' running out causes

additional experiences that will not fit the

present. But by then, the present is already the

past. All my responses continue to operate. 

-

I know the beginnings and the ends 

of everything? Can that really be?

I'm just a denizen of the deep, this

sea floor coming up at me.

8215. THE WIREY WALL

THE WIREY WALL

If y'all just'd take me serious we could

have listened better. There were secrets

in that college of the mind we overlooked.

Blind Stephen and Happy Ralph, Lovely

Jane and Mary Ellen. So modest now are

we about these things. I have a hymnal

from the days of yore : Ralph Nader and

Marshall McLuhan, both together as one.

In his car, in fact, some crazy logisitic.

I went home by way of the field I took

in. Saved fifteen minutes, but lost it

all in the end. We married the weather,

and it was married to Father Time.

Don't you see how things connect?

8214. I OUT FOXED THE FOX?

I OUT FOXED THE FOX?

When I was 10, I kept things to

myself : sly and evasive was I.

Even a schoolbook became a

secret world. The watch I got

for Confirmation, at 12? Was

that it? I never spoke a word

to anyone about a thing. 

Nothing had a security to 

me, nothing to really believe

in, or watch develop. I disliked

most of the things around me.

-

One time, again about 10, I 

went to the circus. I cannot

recall where it was, but it was

three-rings, lions and tigers and

elephants too. I met the tallest

man in the world, as he was 

billed. Yes, though I looked 

up to him, I didn't think he

was much. Kind of dumb.

He gave me a ring. The idea

was to show how large even

his fingers were. The ring 

was more like a round, gold 

plumbing washer. Probably 

cost then 10 cents, speaking 

of tens. I took it home and

showed it to my mother.

She laughed.

8213. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW #67

67. RESTORING

I didn't always know 

where to turn, and a 

few times I was quite

on my own. There 

were features of life that 

were constant variables 

to me, and in those years 

everything was still so 

close together that it all

sometimes frightened me. 

Just think, still young, in 

about 10 years all sorts

of things had been 

'smushed' together for 

me in making up my 

growth years. Resulting

in one, long, strange 

moment. Like unending, 

slowly unreeling change.

At just 8, a train wreck

that nearly killed me; a 

long recuperation when 

everything was all mixed 

up; then seminary years; 

than the end-misery of

that last period of trying 

to finish my local high 

school, to where I'd been 

dumped unceremoniously 

after seminary; then my 

epic and life-changing again

jaunt throughout the streets 

of NYC, basically as a bum 

and an art student combined; 

and then this almost fantasy 

escape to another world and 

way, in Columbia Crossroads, 

PA, and then Elmira, NY. 

And I wasn't yet quite 26.

It was a lot to assemble. To

deal with, I guess could be

said as well, but I liked to

call it 'assemble'. Life is

just a mash of raw material,

thrown and jagged, put

before you. It's then up to

that 'you' to build your wagon,

so to speak, from it all and go.

I always also used to think how

dreadfully wrong things could

get, how mistakes that were

made would haunt. Again, that

Destiny banging up against

Fate thing would trip me up

solid. It's much like today, in a

way  -  looking at humankind

and a computer keyboard; the

'backspace' key is suspiciously

close to the 'delete' key  -  the

simplest swift error and you've

hit the wrong one. But at least

they ask you  -  a message bloc

pops up, to 'affirm' it a second

time, and then approve. Would

only that life were so, or mine.

Sometimes I not only rue the

flashlight, but the batteries that

keep it running as well. A great

and grand suicide wouldn't

necessarily be out of the

question  -  but it's just too

messy and too much noise and

-  as I've always put it  -  I do

want to see how this thing

ends up. (I've a mission in

mind and it fills my cup).

-

Back when I was in New York

City, in the very beginning, I

simply lived on the streets. It

was very hot out, the kind of

hot that ripples those streets and

makes all the bottle caps, when

there used to be bottle caps, sink

into the tar  -  along with pennies

and all sorts of other odd things.

There was a complete archaeology of

tar, always underway. Everything

was hanging open, doors, 

windows, passageways. Air

conditioning was still pretty 

rare. In fact, for most of the 

lower east side it was non-existent. 

People just went outside, or sat 

in what they considered some 

sort of airflow that cooled them. 

High-floor kids five stories up, 

camped out on fire escapes. Big 

old adults, on rickety chairs out

front of tenements, with wet

towels around their necks. For

myself, and as it turned out,

amazingly characteristic, my 

first periods of time there were

spent sleeping, fitfully, but 

sleeping, either on a bench or 

on the grass-ground at Tompkins 

Square Park. It didn't rain, or I 

don't recall any bad weather,

at all. There was an old rest-room

building at the northeast end of 

the park, and it had running water 

and a sink too. I don' remember 

a spray fountain anywhere out 

in the park, but there may have 

been. This would have been 

Summer '67, right after school 

was done; I considered it as

graduation, but certainly not 

from school, more like, fortunately,

from one allowable world straight

out to another. There were old

old people around  -  a hundred 

sad, old, dazed Jews, leftover 

from all those days of pograms 

and concentration camps and 

death mills. Hitler, Stalin,

at some point they all crossed. 

These people were, at this time, 

still plentiful and all still stunned. 

They'd just sit in this park, and 

other parks too, wherever they 

could. Broadway also, uptown, 

had a center bench-lane island,

and there would be swarms of 

them there as well. All heavily

dressed, some with canes. Hats.

Ladies in clunky shoes, and 

shawls. It was amazing, and 

a sad, really sad sight. A 

brutality that sizzled and 

lived on all around them  -  

not to be communicated 

to others. They only spoke

to one another, it seemed,

immersed as each was, yet,

in their own nightmare 

still running. They filled in 

each other's sentences and 

pauses. There was always, in

the air around them all, some 

bizarre combination of 

resignation, surrender, regret 

and disgust. Something like

living on, in a gray overtime 

of too much seen and too 

much recalled. It was a

silence that spoke volumes.

-

You have to think of this 

through my eyes : I was just

a kid, an outside-land kid, 

untested and with no 

exposure, walking in to, 

and reacting naturally to,

sights and sounds unknown

to me  -  unexpected as well, 

and often demanding full

explanations : The guy 

behind the counter in the 

little eatery at the corner,

what were those numbers 

on his arm, exactly, and 

why was his one eye always

tearing. He ran the place alone,

tirelessly. At 11th Street and

Second Ave, coffee and a corn 

muffin, with butter, 25 cents. He  

never spoke. His face was always 

red and his eyes, almost pink,

appeared to have no lashes,

just the barest of pink lids.

I too was lost, in a fire so

vastly different from his,

from all theirs, but lost

nonetheless. This all

threw me, for a big loop,

and for a long time  - I had 

to find ways, new ways, of 

thinking and understanding. All 

of what had gone before me,

everything presented to me, and
which I once saw as real and

commonplace, I suddenly realized

had been both false and

exceptional too. I needed

to find a way of combining

that false past with this

new present.

-

I found, much later, a

Japanese concept, with

a word 'kintsukuroi'. It

means 'golden repair'. It

is the art of restoring 

broken pottery with gold

so that the fractures are

literally illuminated  -  a

kind of physical expression

of the spirit. It celebrates

imperfection as an integral

part of the story. Something

not to be disguised. The

artists believe that when 

something has suffered

damage and has a history,

it becomes more beautiful.

8212. I WANT TO BE STANDING WHERE YOU JUST WERE

I WANT TO BE STANDING

WHERE YOU JUST WERE

In the courtyard of MOMA, whatever

it's called  -  garden, courtyard, plaza,

mall  -  there are always things with a

grandeur I do not know.  Like the

newest ringtone of a bell I hear, or the

listen-to of some music, new, the

simple-peculiar is what catches the

eye. And brings me here to know.

One million guardians in time, and 

you, like a walking Picasso stroll by.

I recognize the angled face, those

planes, and the triangle that is your

eye. There is a human attribute about

it, but I don't know how or why. The

Blue Period is never mentioned, and

pure classicism is from here gone.

-

Two of us. Skeletons in flesh, and

hardly breathing, we deign to try to

talk of Art  -  my long ellipses, your

Sister Wendy brightness. That outdoor

sculpture of a long-stemmed rose; it

really must be a joke since it's thirty

feet tall. We can't talk of anything else.

8211. JUNGLEMANIA

JUNGLEMANIA

Juice House on 11th Avenue.

I am peeling out from the

carborundum beneath me.

They advertise so many 

weird things, and it all 

makes me leery and 

faint. Horses once

came here. Now

there are none.

8210. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #66

66. THE FAIRGROUNDS

One time, in the really small town

of Troy, PA, at the Troy Fairgrounds,

a carnival traveled through and set up

camp for a few days. Everyone knows 

how they go  -  southern-state license

plates, cars and trucks all noisy and

filled, rumbling into small town after

small town along the way as they follow

the good weather and the new season

north. 5-days here, 7-days there. These

traveling crews are good; they set-up

and later break-down the equipment  -

things like ferris wheels and roller 

coaster set-ups, mystery tunnels, 

whips, bumper cars, all that stuff  -  

plus the little stands and things for 

ticket-takers, cashiers, food and 

popcorn and cotton-candy, etc.

Sometimes tunnels of love, other

times, freak shows and animals.

They're usually down and dirty, 

these folk. Up here, in New Jersey, 

now when I see them they really 

stand out  -  throwbacks to another

era, sleeping in cars and vans, or

tents on the ground, cooking over

little barbecues, their accents and

attitudes reeking of other places 

and times. But, that's up here and

now. These guys, in 70's Pennsylvania

countryland, they sort of just added to

the mix, fit right in, got drunk and

brawled with the locals. It's kind of

a defining difference, to this day. We

still get traveling circuses, and these

carnivals, blowing through up here 

now, on parking lots or grassy, 

corporate fields. But nothing ever

matches anything else. A bunch of

fools on tar, sleeping around and

probably not even allowed to sleep

on their premises, instead having to 

go to one of those motel places or

hotels. Same junk all the corporate

queers frequent. There's just no

place left in this modern world for

renegades, and no one understands 

the word anyway. You know how, a

long time ago, milk was 'homogenized'

and became a product? Same thing 

is now everywhere with people.

-

In this Troy  -  not the Troy of

Greece fable, not Troy, New York  -

this little Rt. 6 whistle-stop pass-by

place, everything different was

immediately noticed. People were

like hawks, noticing and getting

set to dive upon, new license plates,

different faces, wanderers or travelers

all of a sudden around. There were

people like Mrs. DuBois, an in-town

self-appointed bigwig whose husband

ran the Troy Baptist Church. And his

name really was 'Chauncey'. She was

all righteous and unforgiving and just

felt that she owned and controlled

everything of others. In her own

head anyway  -  most other people

were just onto to her as a 1940's

leftover and out-of-date fairly useless

buffoon. Female buffoon, whatever

that's called. She'd know and notice

everything, about who did what and

with whom. These new carnival

people drove her plum crazy. (A

sidelight to this, I always thought, was

the idea that it must be completely and

annoyingly difficult to be a town-Minister,

to whom many looked up, and listened

to, yet to have a wife of whom everyone

else thought only the worst things about.

How difficult it must have been to break

through, to stop people from 'niceties'

and from the small lies that go into

pretending things are OK). These guys

were anything  -  and their companion

women too  -  anything but the church

social types. The only other going

enterprise in town  -  for nastiness, I

mean  -  was the Troy Hotel. It was a

four-story, looming white, old rooming

house, resembling an old mansion. I

knew of it firsthand, from staying there

on my first few solo trips in, and once

others too. It was 'Men Only', by policy,

unless you were one of the working girls

who had tendencies there. That was

overlooked. It was filled, usually at the

bar with roustabouts, roundabouts, losers,

drunks, local itinerants, travelers on the

road, and  -  during the times of the

seasons  -  hunters. Hunters loved the

place. It was like a men's club, a stag-bar

with local babes for the picking if needed

and enough passable jungle-grill food to

keep the alcohol sopped up in your belly.

I'd gotten a bunch of stitches in my head

there once, well, not the stitches, that was

the next morning, but the need for getting

them. The hospital in this dump of a town

was right next door and behind, but it didn't

open for 'stitches' until 10am. Damndest

thing, that was. I just had to wait around

like 8 hours with a rag wrapped around

my head. The police station was right

nearby too  -  also found that out.

-

As it was, this carnival week, as far as I

knew, went uneventful. It wasn't actually

a week. I don't think the Troy area had

enough to carry it for more than a Friday

through a Tuesday, for breakdown and

travel. Farmers are always busy, and/or

tired too. They don't get out much. It's

the wives and the kids that do. The kids

get wild, the teen ones I mean. This is a

new Nirvana for them  -  unfettered and

wild. The wives just keep along with the

tinier tots and little kids. For them it's

just fun. All around, the place was, in a

Troy sense, rockin'and a'reelin'.  It came

and went  -  lights and crowd, flirty kids,

flaming tryouts for liust and love, all

that stuff, things to talk about for a

long time later, memory book and

diary stuff. There really wasn't much,

but for these country folk thereabouts,

it was big-time lights and action.

-

The carnival guys, they all just shut 

down when finished for the night and 

went and got drunk enough at the Troy 

Hotel to tell each story of the night over 

and again a few times  -  what they'd seen,

how this or that one looked at them, where

they went off to. It was ritual. Then they'd

go to wherever it was they went for the

night. From the fairgrounds (now a sewer

treatment plant, that old, field) to the

hotel, and back, was walkable. When sober

anyway, maybe ten or twelve minutes off.

Now, by contrast, up in Elmira, at the

beginning of each August, there was

the Chemung County Fair, at the 

fairgrounds by Eldridge Park. It was

often combined, at the same time, with

the traveling circus  -  they'd come 

through, from the rail siding nearby,

with their elephants and lions and tigers,

all from their Wintering grounds in

Florida, and set up in conjunction with

the carnival people too. It was a little

bit redundant, yes, since Eldridge park

always and already had smaller-scale

versions of those rides and things, but

this was a full, week-long, Two weekends

included party, for the whole surrounding 

area.  They get big-time music acts too, 

big-enough anyway. One year they had 

both Tanya Tucker, then a young and 

upcoming female country singer, and 

Glen Campbell. One year, in a rock

music vein, I recall, something called

'Black Oak, Arkansas  - which was a

raggedy, rough and raw 70's rock group.

It was all bigger-time by far than the

piddling Troy Fair, and it drew all

different people, a whole other mix.

Bikers, brawlers, stevedores, bums 

and pikers too.  It was, like, if you

were shopping career options, or

trying to decide on what to do for

the rest of your life, you'd go there

for it to help you make a decision.

8209. STARTING THE PHRASE

STARTING THE PHRASE

I started some phrase of wonder, like

Alice, in that book. People started 

reminding me of it and repeating my

phrase  -  soon it swept the land and

I'd hear it everywhere. No one ever

knew it had started with me. Damn.

8208. IRASCIBLE COWBOY

IRASCIBLE COWBOY

Here's the mundane : belt buckle, turquoise,

some turtle-shell concoction on a snake-skin

boot. Firepower enough for a country. All

as stupid as punch and more labored too.

-

Here's the land that made the land that

kept the land that made the stand. The 

Alamo. Fort Worth. Dallas. And

Galveston too.

8207. CHEMISTRY DIDDLE

COUNTRY CHEMISTRY DIDDLE

I want to decide. I need to decide.

This country cornflake is comfortable.

The dour waitress is eating a lime. I

do not know why  -  she explains to

the lady nearby that her 'chemistry

is off, and this puts it right.'

8206. FREAK SHOW IN LINEN

FREAK SHOW IN LINEN

That was the day I went wide.

You had your mis-shapen shovel and

cavalier shoes on, and the green guy 

was carrying his designer watch: made

in Geneva, a new Bourishard, the latest

one. He wore all nine pounds of it, around

his neck. Isn't it funny how men who hate

women design for them, clothing, and men

who hate time make watches. The line-lane

of photographers waited. I sat with my dog

in the receiving line, and told everyoner I 

was the son of Truman Capote.

8205. CROSSING THE EQUATOR

CROSSING THE EQUATOR

As soon as I crossed the Equator, I took

a lover  -  someone very new from a faraway

land, to accompany me on all these new travels.

We decided we would be equals. The 'equater'

after all, equates : Me to her and her to me,

She was the better, and that I could see.

-

We tumbled in madness each night we could,

over roiling hot seas and river passages  -  all

that stuff of legend. She told me things about

myself that only I could know; I told her of

her families and distant forebears and destinies 

from long before; stories of men and monsters.

I'd made it all up as I went, but she wasn't

the type to take notice.

-

One night, she pointed, there were five rings

around the moon  -  a very bad omen for

her tribe. Each ring meant ten would die, 

that night. She was fearful, whether rebels

or animals or poison, she feared for them,

and wept. As it turned out, her loyalty to

me was far greater than her loyalty to them.

She stayed, and I heard never no more of

that moon and those omens, nor what,

if anything, had really occurred.

8204. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #65

65.  'JUST HELPING 

THE HELPLESS'

There never was any politics

in Pennsylvania, at least none that

I ever saw  -  no 'lawn' signs or

bumper stickers or any of that. All

things always seemed in isolation  -

any of the turmoil and tumult

outside of their Bradford County

concerns seemed not to bother

anyone. Maybe politics was all

just kept in the family. The lineage

just went as 'that's how we always

have voted, no changing it now.' I

really never remember anything

special being discussed as a topic

or a point to be argued over. Nixon,

war, what used to be called 'guns

and butter.' As I said earlier, in

another chapter way back, a lot of

the real old timers would still

remember the dire poverty of the

Depression and the way Govt.

and Roosevelt stepped up and

got everyone through it. I guess

that was Democrat activism, to

them. A few people had sons in

Vietnam, but nothing was ever

mentioned. That all went for

Elmira too  -  no activism of any

sort, no signs there either, that

I recall. No issues. Up at Cornell,

it was all different, people were

clanking around, screaming and

shooting over things, but even that

tumult went nowhere. I remember

the funniest thing, or the oddest

was at Elmira College. I never got

to the bottom of it, as to a how or

why, but each day in their little

student post-office mailroom, a

glass-fronted room of postal boxes

and mail slots and a table or to

for writing, there'd be 20 or 30

copies of the Cuban Communist

Party newspaper, entitled 'Granma'.

That was the name of the boat on

which Castro's successful armed

invasion's landing party came to

shore to win the Cuban Revolution.

Always just looked like 'Grandma'

to me. The paper somehow got there

every day, and I never knew how many

copies were taken, or left. I managed

to grab one most every day as I could.

Mostly, it was always filled with the

usual Party prattle  -  freedom and 

rights, labor and working people, and

like any of that stuff, USA or there or

Moscow, all BS. Every bit of going

through the motions of talking about

rights and freedoms was done while 

at the time the Party was rounding 

people up and torturing, imprisoning 

or executing them for the very same

stuff. It was all an amazing piece of

resourceful claptrap  -  the end result,

the finish line, for the sorts of the

high-minded prattle liberal-minded

and academic sorts always strive for.

No one believed a word of it, and it 

was all a crock of shit, but I think 

whoever was behind this thought 

the mush-headed kids of Elmira 

and its college were yet stupid 

and pliable enough to fall for it.

Even up in Cornell, where things 

were at least a bit different, and 

people were hot-headed and still 

fighting and fuming over issues 

and protesting that damned endless 

war, over and over, guns and butter, 

the kind of old political issue that 

used to rile the old class-strivers. 

No one says guns and butter anymore,

but back until Lyndon Johnson that

was a hot phrase, a point of real

contention; how the expense and 

the running costs of a war AND 

a greedy and hungry military could 

not possibly be sustained while on 

the homefront things remained the 

same  -  food and butter and plenty. 

The point then was there had to be a

choice, you couldn't have both  - and

so if a nation committed itself to 

'War' (like of the sort Vietnam never 

was committed to) there had to 

instead to be a new Wartime 

footing instituted for the country  

-  austerity, extra taxes for the cause, 

etc., which back then was sure to kill

all of LBJ's 'Great Society' programs

and stuff. That's what people were

fighting over in the streets, and that's

why, in March of '68, old LBJ just gave

it all up, and refused to run. Humphrey

ran, and got laughed out of court, again

over the war, by Nixon. As in 'the bastard

we don't know has to be better than the

bastard we now have.' Up in Cornell,

they still battled over this, shooting and

rioting too. The place at least took up

the cause, and joined it with Black Power

crap too. A total jumble. But in Elmira 

and, as I said, certainly my part of 

Pennsylvania, everyone was pretty 

much comatose. The real old timers,

as I said, and they'd tell you over and  

over, they were still raving over Roosevelt

and how he broke them out of the

hard-time Depression poverty with his

road-building work and WPA 

programs and all that. I guess to 

them that was Democrat activism.

-

There was a guy at Whitehall, where I

worked. His name was Bob  -  a regular 

cool fellow. I got to know him a little 

bit. A few of the guys there, they'd get 

together, I found out later, in the evenings 

sometimes. The shop foreman, Ron, 

had a key, and the one part of the 

printing shop, which was large,

had a tall, white, cinder block wall, 

and a ramp, where you could sit at

the bottom and look straight out 

at the wall. The place had once been a

car dealership, and this ramp was a

car entry for repair work or the

showroom or something. As it 

turned out  -  I only heard of it later,

as they all started making their 

comments and stuff about the 

night before  - they'd all get together, 

on like Tuesday nights or something,

and show porno flicks projected large,

onto that wall. This was early days of

anything, remember  -  no video, no

phone-movies or internet stuff. They

were still called 'blue movies' and

were still projected and on film  -  just

like an old movie house. Getting far

enough away from the projected wall, 

the image could be made pretty large.

These guys would sit there, whoopin'

and a'hollerin' over what they were

watching. The talk about it all the

next morning was how I found out.

Old Floyd White, he never had a

clue  -  leastways I don't think he

did. This Bob guy had a brand-new

Chevy pickup truck. A large one. 

As an example here of Elmira 

bumper-sticker activism, he had a

bumper-sticker affixed. It read, 'Bees

are good - eat your honey.' The har-har

of this was that Bob also raised bees 

and sold honey, but the point of the

double-entendre messaged sticker

was the sexual nature of the phrase,

not the bees  -  though it also then

advertised his honey-sales. I guess.

It was a big joke among the Tuesday

night porno club guys.

-

Bob also had recently gotten a new

girlfriend (he was divorced), and her

name was Robin. There was a current

song out, back then, something about

'Fly, Robin, fly...way up to the sky.'

That's all he was ever walking around

singing. I hated that song, and I hated

his singing of it even more. Whitehall

at this time also had a guy working there,

his name I can't recall, who was a charity

case, if anything. He was maybe 28 or 30,

had no teeth, and was dumb as a brick;

and I mean a really dumb brick. He was

a backwoodsman, for sure, something that

somehow managed to struggle back into

Elmira each day. Floyd used him for 

wrapping shipments, preparing UPS

stuff, and, occasionally, making 

deliveries. Trouble there was, no 

one really wanted to see him 

representing the company at the 

big-deal places we delivered too, 

so it didn't happen that often. Mostly, 

Mr. White would make all his weekly 

business rounds and bring the finished 

jobs with him, for their people to take

out of his big Chrysler. He bought a new

one each year  -  always green, and always

about as ugly as a flat-chested nun in a

leper-colony mission (which is a really

bad allegory, but one we used to make 

fun of the million things we made fun 

of.  We had this really, really fat woman

who worked for us, collating and stuff.

She was about 500 pounds and could 

hardly walk. In point of fact, when 

she sat she needed TWO folding 

chairs. Her name was Barbara Beach. 

We called her Barbara Beached Whale. 

A real bunch of guys we were). Anyway, 

this toothless guy, we were all friends 

and such with, he was OK, had fairly 

normal tastes and things. He had 8

kids already, and was always busy

having more. They lived in a trailer

somewhere in Heavesville (made up

name, but that's the sort of names that

were all around up there. Dumbest,

wackiest-sounding place names ever).

The car he somehow drove  -  and you'd

occasionaly see these sorts of wrecks  -

was so out of alignment, or the frame

twisted, or something, that when he 

driving straight, the car seemed to 

be trying to turn, or twisting or as if it

was going sideways. The tire-wear

was so outrageously uneven that it

was laughable. And, sure, we laughed.

We used to joke, if he was asking

directions to somewhere you'd never

have to tell him to make a right at the

light, because the damed car was

always trying to make a turn anyway.

We all swore Floyd must be getting

money to 'hire the losers' or something,

from a Govt. organization or a welfare

agency somewhere.