Bhikkuaciana

 Wandering through brilliant-lit suburban night streets, jet engines on stands roaring in the maintenance sheds across the widest avenue waiting for the call to Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, the War Over There, the perpetual War Over There, tramping one foot after another through unknown, sharp-edged, shallow angle suburban night streets. Where is he?

Lost, hard to say, hard to fathom, hard to imagine, wandering long curving arcs, rose and jasmine scented, fresh grass mown that day, piles of yard rakings placed neatly by the curb. It's another slightly sinister world. Bhikkhu on the road, not quite a dharma bum but on the way. Toward the sounds of furious jet engines screaming in the night. Is this what they hear Over There when they're trying to sleep to tend their rice paddies, when they're combing their young girl hair? Is this what it sounds like when the fighter jets swoop overhead and the B-52s come with their endless bombsupply of jasmine and rosepetals?

Jasmine and rosepetals. 

Closer wandering to the sounds of the furious jets roar. A sharp angled house by the corner, long and low and lean, shallow angled roof projecting beams, fireplace prominent on the lowslung frontporch. Remember the Jeepster in the driveway. Dark blue undercarriage, off gray-white above. He's seen it before, somewhere, perhaps by the highschool to pick up one of his student friends, he doesn't quite remember, but he's seen this dark-night below Jeepster before.

Hello, he nods in recognition that isn't recognition at all, hands folded in front of him, bhikku-ic.

He'll have a Buick one day and he'll drive it to Big Sur.

The sea breeze isn't strong enough to blow away all the daytime heat, and he sweats some through the striped cotton longsleeve shirt he wears. White and blue stripes. 

In the end, as lost as he is, he finds an exit and walk-stumbles back from this strange neighborhood to his own, barely noticing the railroad tracks and the pedestrian overpass that he negotiates on his way toward curling up on the backdeck of his slightly more pretentious suburban house with his dog Sindy.