BAGUIO TO MANILA BY BUS (AND BACK AGAIN) IN FIFTEEN HOURS

You can learn a lot, travelling by bus from Baguio to Manila and back again.

A few things I learned:

- Since Baguio is up in the mountains, it takes about forty, forty-five minutes to descend to a somewhat more level layer of land. You go from being up in the clouds, watching the white, wispy mist slice through the hurtling path of the bus, and then, suddenly, you are in a lower place, and the white is gone, and the sky is blue once again. The sun is brighter. You step out into the first rest stop and suddenly the air is hot, and thick, almost stifling. A sudden desire to step back up into the clouds comes over you.

- Apparently The Scorpions are still big in the Philippines. Or at least they are with the bus driver I had in Manila, who saw the puzzlement on my face as I tried to make out who the elderly rockers were on the TV at the front of the bus. "The Scorpions!" he said, nodding his head in time to the music. "Live from Romania." Ah. I guess the Scorpions are still big in Romania, too. (It was only at the end of the DVD that I saw that the concert was actually taped in Portugal, not Romania. Whatever. Far from the Philippines, in any case.)

- From the windows of a bus most places are beautiful, even the ugly ones. You pass by quickly, seeing slums and barefoot children and random shacks aligned alongside random roads, and then suddenly there is a Pizza Hut, and a KFC, and a McDonald's, and then moments later you are once again plunged into the evergreen fields of a Filipino summer. The swaying palm trees look just like the ones did in Platoon and Apocalypse Now (both filmed in the Philippines), and the sky becomes more vast. Because everything moves quickly, you don't get to dwell on the deficiencies; the bright spots stick out like diamonds and lodge in your memory.

- Some taxi drivers will rip you off and others will not. Taxi drivers in the Philippines are supposed to work by the meter system, something they always do here in Baguio, but once you hit Manila, and are recognized to be that most valuable of commodities -- a white foreigner -- many taxi drivers mysteriously decide that bargaining is a better bet than a meter. The first taxi I spotted at the bus station in Manila wanted two hundred pesos for the short ride to the Canadian Embassy; I haggled with him, but he wouldn't budge, and I was hot, and in a hurry, so I said 'fuck it' and took the cab anyway. Thirty minutes later, on the way back from the embassy to the bus station, the first cab I got in had a meter, and I asked him to use it, and he did, no questions asked, no problem. He was an older driver. (Maybe more moral?)

- Reading the travel advisories offered by the Canadian government at the Canadian embassy for Canadian citizens in the Philippines is not recommended. It's kind of scary, actually, warning of kidnappings and robberies and walking at night and the threat of terrorism. (The only amusing part was its poker-faced description of Filipino drivers: "Drivers here are undisciplined." Um, yeah. Slightly.) If I had read one of these Canadian-advisory-pamphlet- thingees before I left for the Philippines (or Cambodia, for that matter), I never would have gotten off the plane. Ignorance is not always bliss, but it's often a necessary evil in life. Otherwise we would be too afraid to do anything but stay in our living rooms and watch The Price Is Right for a good forty, fifty years.

- Spending fourteen out of fifteen hours on two different buses is an interesting way to spend a day. You ride for seven hours one way; stay in one of Asia's biggest cities for less than an hour; then hop back on another bus and go back from where you came from. It was windy and rainy and dark in the morning, and then Manila was hot and sultry and sticky and clear in the afternoon, and by evening, back in Baguio, it was windy and rainy and dark once more. A cycle had been completed, and within that cycle there were even smaller cycles, life simplified and rotated. You stop at the same rest stops six different times, and you see the same sights, but the people are different, which changes everything. At one of the rest stops, a small store bracketed by outdoor vendors cooking up Filipino food for weary travellers, I watched a skinny old man selling snacks sigh in frustration as he watched the bus he was supposed to be on pull away without him. I wondered how much he made for his daily wares: hopping on various buses, walking up and down the aisles hawking candy and fruit, then stepping off again ten, fifteen minutes later. Was it enough to live on? Did he ever eat his own candy? Was he his own boss? Did he sleep well, or were his dreams constantly interrupted by the roll-and-shake of the bus rides that determined his daily life?

- True Lies, the James Cameron film from the mid-nineties starring Governor Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold, and watched by me on the bus ride back, is actually a bizarre, subversive comedy about relationships and modern moral values stuck inside of a conventional Arnold action flick. I saw it in the theater over a decade ago but didn't think much of it, but this time around I was surprised at what an entertaining, unusual film it is. How did this get made? It's funny, and violent, and nominally what an Arnold film is (or was) supposed to be, but it has a lot of troubling, perceptive, possibly misogynist ideas about modern relationships. Deeper than it looks.

- In Canada or America or even Japan you often see people, homeless people, living under the highway bridges, but I've never seen whole communities, entire neighborhoods set up under bridges like they do in Manila. Small stone houses, tin shacks, clotheslines, the whole deals.

- The buses here (unless you pony up for a deluxe one) don't have bathrooms, which means I can barely drink anything on the bus. Two bathroom breaks in seven hours won't do it for me, otherwise. Who are these people (meaning, the rest of humanity) who guzzle drink after drink and never need to pee?

- After fourteen hours of bus rides, your butt hurts.

- Baguio is a long way from Manila, but everything's relative. The Philippines is a long way from Japan, and Japan is a long way from Cambodia, and Cambodia is a long way from Canada, but I've managed to make my way. If the world is getting smaller, perhaps we can become bigger.

LEE HARVEY OSWALD, J.F.K., AND THE LINGERING QUESTION OF THE DR.PEPPER MACHINE ON THE FIRST FLOOR

To understand how completely comprehensive, thorough and exhausting Reclaiming History -- Vincent Bugliosi's book on the Kennedy assassination -- ultimately is, one need only to reflect upon the fact that Bugliosi, the famed Los Angeles prosecutor and the man who put Charles Manson away forever, over forty years after the president's killing, phoned one of Lee Harvey Oswald's co-workers at the Texas School Book Depository to ascertain whether or not there was a soft drink machine on the first floor lunchroom of the Depository building, and whether that particular soda machine was, in fact, a Dr.Pepper one.

Oswald told police that he was having lunch in the first floor lunchroom at the time of Kennedy's killing, and had gone up to the second floor to get a Coke from the Coca-Cola machine located there. This was where he was spotted by a policeman and Oswald's boss, Mr.Truly, only ninety seconds after the killing. Conspiracy theorists have long maintained that Oswald couldn't have possibly raced down from his supposed sniper's spot on the sixth floor and reached the second floor in time. Besides, he was there to buy a Coke, just like he said. Was even holding it in his hands.

But Bugliosi noticed that throughout the testimonies contained in the Warren Commission's mammoth report there remained a consistent, though seemingly insignificant thread: Oswald liked to drink Dr.Pepper. His wife, his temporary housemates, his co-workers -- many of them, at some point in their testimony, in passing, would mention how Oswald would be drinking a Dr.Pepper, or had gone out for a Dr.Pepper, or whatever. Not to highlight the fact -- only as part of a larger point.

This triggered something in Bugliosi's mind.

So he contacted Gary Mack, who runs the Assassination Museum now located on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository. Bugliosi asked: Was there a soda machine on the first floor, where Oswald said he was having lunch, in November of 1963? Mack said that he didn't think so. Bugliosi, undaunted, telephoned one of Oswald's old co-workers -- a young man then, an old man now -- who said that there sure was a soda machine in that lunchroom. And what kind was it? Bugliosi wondered. It was a Dr.Pepper machine, the co-worker answered.

Aha!

If Oswald was in the first-floor lunchroom having lunch (though nobody credible recalled him eating there at that time), and if there was a Dr.Pepper machine in that same room, and if Dr.Pepper was his favorite drink, as had been readily established through various witness accounts, why would Oswald then walk up to the second floor to buy a Coke, when Dr.Pepper, his favorite soda, was only a few feet away from where he said he was on the first floor? Was that likely? Possible, yes, but given what we know about Oswald, and his consistent drinking habits, was it likely? It's more likely, then, that Oswald raced down the stairs and stopped at the second floor lunchroom when he heard the policeman and his boss heading up from the first floor.

Reclaiming History is built up upon a thousand and one details like that, and for the interested reader, the one who makes it all the way through its 1,500 pages of small print, any sane person can only come to one conclusion: Oswald killed Kennedy. Alone. End of story.

As a long-time conspiracy buff, I'm more than a little, well, saddened to come to that conclusion, odd as it sounds. Bulgliosi's case is so solid, his reasoning so sound, his evidence so overwhelming, that a reasonable, rational person can only conclude, after reading this valuable tome, that Oswald did it. Fired the shots. Killed the dream. Changed the world.

"Yes, but what about --"

That's what everyone always says, (and what I always say, too) and, believe me, you can insert any aspect of the case into this equation, and rest assured that Bugliosi has the answer.

"Yes, but what about the mob?the Russians? the C.I.A.?Castro? Jack Ruby?Jimmy Hoffa?the Second Oswalds?the F.B.I.?the military-industrial-complex?the K.G.B.?the magic-bullet?the bungled autopsy?"

Bugliosi goes into it all. At length. Exhaustively, almost ridiculously.

The first part of the book takes us through those four horrible days in Dallas, from Kennedy's killing to Oswald's execution by Jack Ruby; the second part focuses on the physical evidence against Oswald; the third part is a lengthy biography of Oswald; the fourth is an intensive examination of every major conspiracy theory -- and even many minor, not to mention loony ones.

What tipped the scales for me is the evidence against Oswald, which Bugliosi assembles with the meticulous, careful craft emblematic of the masterful prosecutor that he is. I'd long believed that Oswald played a part, but that he was the victim of larger forces, that he was in concert with others more able and capable than himself: the C.I.A., perhaps; the mob, more likely.

But when we examine Oswald's actions in the weeks and months leading up to the assassination, when we truly examine what an odd, disturbed individual he most certainly was, we realize that he would be nobody's idea of a 'patsy'. He could barely hold down a minimum wage job. He was a bright young man who became enamored of an alternative way of life early one. He was, in essence, a loser who could do nothing right.

The biography section of the book is brilliant in its own right, especially its damning conclusion: Oswald fits the profile of a presidential assassin to a tee. This misguided, Marxist sympathizer was not an identity created by the Warren Commission -- it's who he was, who he had been, who he longed to be, as evidenced by his friends and families and employers. We come to understand Oswald. (A little. He is certainly one of American history's most oddball characters. And so young, too! Only twenty-four at the time of his death.)

And Ruby. Jack Ruby, Oswald's own assassin. Another mentally unstable character, one who, in essence, was in the right place at the right time to fire the shots that he did. It's really that simple.

"Yes, but..."

This is the essence, the mantra, the lifeblood of the conspiracy arguments, but Bugliosi goes into all aspects of the case, ad infinitum. No stone is left unturned. No trail is left unexplored. He even admits some troubling loopholes in the case, and examines where they lead, or don't lead, and why.

And what I asked myself while reading this absorbing work was: If I was on a jury, and the evidence against Oswald was presented to me, would I, in good conscience, beyond a reasonable doubt, be able to convict him?

The answer is unquestionably yes.

And that's what Bugliosi does best: He presents the evidence. He says, in essence: "Look. Here's the case against this guy. It's so solid that the case was essentially solved within five hours by the Dallas police on November 22, 1963, but the past thirty, forty years have muddied the waters so much that we can't see clearly or think clearly anymore. But look at the evidence against Oswald. It's unquestionable. And look at the evidence FOR conspiracy: there isn't any. There, is, NOTHING. There are possibilities, probabilities, grudges, vendettas, but where is the evidence? It's not there. Where's the evidence against Oswald? It's EVERYWHERE."

And that's that.

A truly remarkable work of detection and investigation, this book is, a compilation of everything that's intrigued me about this case for the past fifteen years. (It even features a brief interview Bugliosi has with Oswald's Russian widow, Marina, still living in Dallas, who now believes that her husband was part of a conspiracy.)

In essence, it's a book about logic, and rationality, and common-sense. Let's look at what's before us, Bugliosi is saying. Not what we hear, or feel, or believe, but what's right here, before our eyes. Directly in front of us. Which is more believable: what we see or what we feel? Let's put aside our own pet-theories, and let's look at this case as a criminal case, and then let's see what we find.

What we find is Oswald, and Oswald alone, the sad, dark heart of this American mystery.

And, just to make sure, we'll double-check about that Dr.Pepper machine.

WHY?

In 1991, forty-six year old Frenchman Gerard D'Aboville rowed a boat from Japan to Washington State. By himself. Across the entire Pacific Ocean. He rowed ten to twelve hours a day, 7000 strokes a day, and the entire voyage took him 134 days. Over four months. By himself. In a rowboat. On the water.

The urge to do senseless things to find some kind of sense in life seems, on the surface, nonsensical. What kind be learned from acts that, by their very nature, reek of excess and indulgence? (Not to mention irrationality, and, quite possibly, death.)

We are raised, if we are lucky, to enjoy comfort. To seek out success as the ultimate prize, as if life were nothing but an endless game of hide-and-go-seek where the treasured prize is found only by a lucky few. (As long as you keep playing the game, of course. If you think it's boring, or the game's rigged, or the whole thing is a foolish means of passing the time, fine. You can quit. But everybody else will still be playing the game, most likely.) Nobody willingly embraces a life of deprivation (except for the treasured few, usually monks, who are most often impoverished to begin with), and seeking to step outside of that which has nurtured us and nourished us is often met with skepticism, if not perplexity.

But everything's relative. (Even relatives.) Let us imagine that you were a young person from a conservative Muslim family in the heart of Pakistan who decided that Christianity was the answer that you were looking for. One could hardly imagine a more cataclysmic decision in such a place, amongst such beliefs. You would be eradicating an entire world-view with one simple choice. Indeed, you would, in essence, be destroying not only a 'view', which sounds quaintly like the opinions expressed on your local newspaper's editorial page, in between the used-car ads and tucked beneath the wedding photos and obituary notices. No, you would be destroying your world itself, the world you grew up in, the world your parents had so carefully cultivated for you. An eradication would begin.

Another analogy: Not owning a t.v. (Assuming you're middle-class, well-groomed, a regular watcher of American Idol, etc.) Perhaps not as radical as changing your religion, no, but let's extrapolate the consequences. Guests invited over for dinner would consider it odd that no television rests comfortably in the centre of the living room. Questions would be asked. Any answer, in our day and age, would sound slightly unreasonable, if not irrational. No T.V.? How...strange. Not, you know, freakish, but definitely within rifle-range of eccentricity's target.

Let's up the ante even more: No t.v., no computer, no Internet. Only the local paper, hand delivered early each morning by a chubby little boy who would rather be sleeping but desperately wants the new Nintendo Wii. No t.v., no computer, no Internet. You would be considered out of step with society. You would be accused of marching to the beat of a different drummer, except that, most likely, you don't even have a drum you're beating. You're tapping air with imaginary sticks.

It takes so little to throw us for a loop, and we are all so quick to condemn anything that exists outside of our own familiar orbit.

Let's consider anothe completely random and unrelated idea: the notion of the Iraqi parliament taking a vacation for the month of August, an act that has been routinely condemned by the American Congress as the highest level of audacity. American soldiers are dying, while Iraqi government workers are having their fun in the sun. (Or so they make it sound.)

Well, yes. It does sound somewhat unreasonable. People are being killed, daily, Irai and American alike. Blood on the streets. Smoke in the sky. But consider: What is the daily life of an Iraqi parlimentarian actually like? Think how stressful your job gets, and now multiply that by Baghdad.

I would imagine it's quite stressful, being in the Iraqi parliament. Trusting noone. Wondering if they'll be killed that night. I'm sure their security details are lightyears ahead of the average Iraqi, who has none, but I would also think that these same security details are susceptible to a certain amount of suspicion. Have they been bought off? Will they kill me on the way to work? Will my car be blown up on the road to my office? Will my family be kidnapped and held for ransom while I try to figure out who to bribe first? The western media daily details how Iraq goes to hell in a handbasket, but when the government decides that it needs a break, we act as if they are seeking an outrageous indulgence, when it might be nothing more than a chance to catch their breath in between the booms and bombings.

Vacations are okay for us over here, politicians seem to be saying, even though over there American and Iraqi lives are being lost, and even though we started this whole bloody war in the first place, but it's not okay for the Iraqis, who are actually living there, risking their lives on the way to work, when American politicians are risking, at most, a little gridock in D.C. traffic on the way to the Capitol.

Which brings me back to that brave (or foolish) Frenchman, alone, rowing across the Pacific.

"Why would he do that?" we ask. "What is he looking for?"

For me, questions like these are merely larger ones that mirror the smaller ones we ask everyday. ("Why would a Muslim become a Christian? Why wouldn't you want a TV or Internet connection? Why would Iraqi politicians take a summer break? Why would he write a book like that? Why would she dye her hair that colour? Why did you overcook the pizza? Why would he date a chick like that? Why do you think that movie's good when it so obviously blows?)

We can never really know why anybody else does anything at all. (Let alone why we, ourselves, do the things that we do.) All we can do is ask, and infer, and observe, and wonder, until we come to a conclusion that is probably false but that at the very least eases our anxiety and allows us to gain another night's sleep.

We are all trying to make our way through this world the best we can, and, occasionally, we look to acts of irrationality to affirm our own sense of purpose. To help us reach the transcendent, if only for a moment. (Or at least to liven things up a little bit.)

But let's leave the last word to Gerard D'Aboville, that determined, demented rower, who conquered the Pacific with a boat and some oars and a slightly superior, if not enlightened, outlook on life, who expresses some of what I'm getting at far better than I ever could:

Why do some human beings desire with such urgency to do such things: regardless of the consequences, conscripted by noone but themselves? No one knows. There is a strong urge to conquer the dreadful forces of nature, and perhaps to get consciousness of ourselves, of life, and of the shadowy workings of our human minds. Physical capacity is the only limit. I have tried to tell how, and when, and where. But why? That is a mystery...

Only an animal does useful things. An animal gets food, finds a place to sleep, tries to keep comfortable. But I wanted to do something that was not useful -- not like an animal at all. Something only a human would do.

ALMOST A DIFFERENT PLANET

When you see naked kids bathing on the sidewalk, it's a good sign you're not in Japan anymore.

You would think that regularly commuting -- for lack of a better word -- between the Philippines and Japan would be a lesson in contrasts: Japan (the rich and powerful) contrasted with the Philippines (the poor and desperate).

Yes and no.

Yes, because it's quite obvious that Japan, being the world's second largest economy, has a leg or two (or three, or thirty-seven) up on the Philippines. For starters, you don't see nude, grimy children dunking buckets of dirty water over their head in the middle of a summer afternoon. Besides that rather simple and startling fact, things are efficient in Japan; things are shiny in Japan; things are smooth in Japan. The Philippines has a lived-in feel to it, or perhaps it's better to say a living-in feel to it -- everything's happening, at once, and it's messy and dirty and as chaotic as Japan is antiseptic.

But about a month ago on a cool Sunday morning in downtown Tokyo I was heading towards Takashimaya Times Square, home to the best bookstore in Tokyo, Kinokuniya, with a sixth-floor selection of English books and magazines that can't be beat. Up beside me came a shabbily dressed man, slightly dirty, pushing sixty.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked. (In Japanese, of course.)

"A little," I said.

"I didn't have any food today, and I'm feeling a little bit hungry, so..."

He left the rest unsaid. (In Japan, in the Japanese language, almost everything is left unsaid. Even the down-and-out don't waste words.)

I gave him a buck, feeling guilty for being so cheap, and guilty for being so rich.

An hour later, as I left the bookstore, the same man wandered by, and he approached me again, using the same spiel, but I saw no glint in his eyes that recognized me from our previous encounter. (Do all foreigners look alike? I wondered.)

Tokyo is very rich and very modern and it isn't very often that you encounter anybody down and out. They're there, yes, but you have to somewhat search for them, and most people don't do that -- search for the down-and-out.

In Philippines, in Manila, even in Baguio, where I live, you don't have to search too hard.

Manila is a big and throbbing city, reminding me of Bangkok, but it's also a city of contrasts. The downtown district has its share of bright and shiny buildings, but if you cock your head a certain way as you drive on by in your taxi you can see entire communities, if not generations, of families perched under the endless bridges, living in shacks. At night, on the sidewalks, groups of kids lay sprawled out, shirtless, some pantless, on flattened cardboard sidewalks. Poverty is such a part of life that it becomes to seem just like that -- a part -- and you learn to slot it into its appropriate mental box inside of your skull.

And then sometimes it comes walking up beside you, in small and not-so-subtle ways.

Walking down the road the other day, a shoeless man in a grubby black top walked past me, walking fast, walking sure. He seemed in a hurry. Suddenly he bent down, picked up something off the gravel, brought it to his lips and kept on walking, all in one certain, seamless motion. It took me a moment or two to realize that he had grabbed the remaining butt of a slightly-lit cigarette. He took one, two, three drags, then chucked it back to the ground. It had served its purpose. Nothing was wasted.

I watched him walk ahead of me, shoeless, on the sticky July pavement of the side of a highway in the northern Philippines in this small and cozy corner of our planet.

A week ago I was in Tokyo.

Now I'm in Baguio.

Sooner than not, I'll be back in Japan. (My head somewhat spinning.)

Tonight, a group of kids in the heart of Manila will sleep under the stars, inside of the heat, on a spread of cardboard on the sidewalk.

Tonight, that homeless man in Tokyo will find a corner of concrete to rest his head upon.

Seems like only a few weeks ago I was marvelling over the differences between my hometown, St.Catharines, and the hometown of my parents, Fort Erie. So far away, those two towns are. Almost, what, forty minutes by car. Almost a different planet, it seemed.

Almost.

MY MUSIC REVIEW

I can't get that song 'When The Stars Go Blue' out of my head.

Is it me, or is it one of the strangest, most poignant songs you've ever heard?

(Then again, I hear about two new songs a year, but still...)

THAT DREADFUL DAY IN DALLAS, FOREVER

Vincent Bugliosi's new book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy seeks to set the record straight, once and for all and forever, regarding the greatest enduring mystery of the twentieth century: Who killed J.F.K.?

If this is not the mother of all assassination books, then I don't know what is.

How can I be so sure?

Well, leaving aside the fact that it's 1500 small-print pages, the equivalent of thirteen regular-font books, how about this:

I've read the first two hundred pages, and there's already over one thousand footnotes, and, get this, he's only finished describing a single fucking day.

That's right: two hundred pages on November 22, 1963. Minute by minute. Hour by hour. In exhaustive, almost irrelevant detail. (Did you know, for example, that Oswald's older brother, Robert, ate a ham sandwich in his hotel's cafeteria late that night? Not just any sandwich -- a ham sandwich. Talk about details.)

Mama mia.

Of course, for assassination-nuts like me, it's pennies from heaven, this book is.

A year or so ago I wrote on this blog about my own mild obsession with the Kennedy assassination, one that started with my father's teenage scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings about Kennedy's death, and fueled into overdrive by Oliver Stone's brilliant film J.F.K. I've read all the conspiracy books I can get my hands on, doubted most of them, been intrigued by a few. As Bugliosi makes clear in his forceful, blistering introduction, this is, quite simply, the greatest story of the past hundred years. No way in hell a novelist could create this kooky cast of characters, with so many diverting and delusionary subplots. Reality trumps fantasy yet again.

But the J.F.K. case is fantasy, or at least much of it is, anyway. Who shot from where at what time and for what reason? Madness lies down these precarious paths, me thinks. For if you start to delve too long into this hyopnotic funnel, you begin to see the entire course of the twentieth century reflected in its myriad depths. Communism, socialism, the military-industrial complex, craven political leaders and two-bit mafia hoods, lonely Marxists and frightened wives, all of them mixed together in a maddening stew of inneuendo and grief, vengeance and lunacy. You can get lost in it. (Some of us want to get lost in it.)

Bugliosi's intent, though, is crystal clear: to prove that Oswald, and Oswald alone, did it. Pulled the gun. Fired the shots. End of story. Case closed.

And, as I've said before, I have no doubt that I'll come to the end of this massive motherfucker of a book absolutely convinced of Oswald's guilt. Beyond a doubt. Without hesitation.

And yet.

In the J.F.K. case, there's always an 'and yet...'

Bugliosi states in his introduction that he ultimately had to finally put the book to bed and send his baby to the printers earlier this year, so there's no possible way he could respond within the text to any subsequent revelations, accusations, hyperbolations (?) that might pop up in the press regarding other theories.

A sensible statement, on his part, because as the foremost assassination researcher he simply knew that alternative ideas would pop up on a regular basis.

And boy, have they.

A few weeks back an Italian company that manufactured the rifle Oswald supposedly used to kill Kennedy conducted some tests and concluded: Impossible -- nobody could have fired three shots in that amount of time from that particular rifle.

The bullet fragments used to indict Oswald were found by some recent researchers to indicate that they all might not have come from a single bullet.

E.Howard Hunt, convicted White House burglar and lifetime C.I.A. spook, is recorded on his deathbed, by his son, stating that he, himself, and the C.I.A. did, indeed, have something to do with Kennedy's death. (Despite his own denials in his recent autobiography, where he states that he didn't have anything to with J.F.K.'s murder, but he couldn't deny that somebody out there might have helped Oswald out.)

And here we have, on the heels of Bugliosi's book, David Talbott's Brothers, which explores the relationship between J.F.K. and R.F.K., and the suspicions the younger brother had regarding the possible conspiracy surrounding Jack Kennedy's death.

And on and on and on.

The assassination of J.F.K. remains a vortex into which we channel our own beliefs and observations and obsessions about the very nature of humanity and history. Is fate changed by one man with a rifle? Can kings be cut down by peasants? Is there a secret cabal plotting and planning who lives and who dies? Can we trust those in authority? Can we trust our own eyes and ears?

There's something mysterious, almost celestial, at the core of this entire case, as if reality somehow sidestepped the regular course of human events that terrible day and led us down another, darker path. The twentieth century truly began to head downhill after that day in Dallas, and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I cannot believe that one simple, lonely, troubled man was at the heart of it.

For no matter how much evidence is presented against Oswald, something in the deepest place within thinks, almost insists: There's something else. There's something else. There's something else.

It's the place where logic and rationality can't reach. The part of our humanoid core that refuses to acknowledge the obvious in favor of the ephemeral. Because even logic has its own limits. Bugliosis states that it's not logical to believe that the heads of the Mafia and the F.B.I. and the military-industrial complex sat down at a big brown table to plot the president's death. Puh-leeze, he practically writes.

Well, wait a minute. ("Hold the phone, Chuck," as Michael Keaton tells Henry Winkler in Night Shift.) We know for a fact that the C.I.A. worked with the Mafia to assassinate Castro. That they helped undermine the Diem regime in Vietnam. That they funded the contras in El Salvador to disrupt its corrupt government. That in the past few months they quietly helped Ethiopia overtake the Islamic warlords terrorizing Somalia. Is it not then logical, if not inevitable, to assume that they, or some other 'they' went further on that dreadful day in Dallas in the fall of 1963?

It is to me. If anything, the past thirty years of American intelligence has proven once and for all and forever that some nasty, nefarious deeds are being enacted, continually, daily, while most of the country is choosing their next American Idol. And my exposure to rotten-to-the-fucking-core regimes in Cambodia and the Philippines over the past few years has made me decidedly skeptical of governments in general, and especially those constantly proclaim that all is hunky-dory, folks. "Just believe what we tell you," the say. "Believe what we report," they write. "We're looking out for you."

But this is what I mean about logic: it takes a vacation when it comes to J.F.K's death. Because most people need proof, and the proof points to Oswald, yes, but, but, but, but. There's some much other, well, stuff reverberating through the ensuing decades to dismiss. We can dismiss it logically, yes, but logic has no place in the hearts of humans. Just because there's no direct, credible evidence pointing to the intelligence community's involvement doesn't mean it didn't happen. We infer, hypothesize, connect dots that aren't there but make pretty little diagrams nevertheless.

The case has become its own, monstrous supernova. In his introduction, Bugliosi wonders why, after all the years that have passed, there have been no deathbed confessions, given the supposed size of the alleged conspiracy. And no sooner has he typed those words than out comes E.Howard Hunt's son with his old man's recorded ramblings regarding the C.I.A.'s, and his own, personal involvement in the killing.

It's neverending, this thing is.

I sometimes wonder if the Kennedy assassination is a metaphor for life, or life is a metaphor for the Kennedy assasination: We study one day in infinite detail, and examine all the players, and look for answers, and look for reasons, and look for understanding, and look for a purpose, and nobody but nobody can agree on anything except that we don't agree.

But I'm rambling.

Besides, there's no time to waste. I have to get back to Bugliosi's book.

There is, after all, another thirteen hundred or so pages to sift through. (I mean, shit, I've only made it through the first fucking day of the case...)

Oh, and did I mention the complimentary CD-ROM that's included at the back of the book, one that includes an additional one thousand pages of endnotes?

Not to mention David Talbott's new work, Brothers, focusing on Bobby Kennedy and his own conspiracy theories, which is next on my shopping list.

I told you: It's neverending.

Thank God.

WHERE THE ROOM IS WARM AND THE LIGHTS ARE BRIGHT

I can state with supreme, complete confidence that I'm supremely, completely tired of reading warm and moving and inspiring memoirs written by famous people who have come down with cancer, not because the books are bad, because they're not, but rather because they're good, and inspiring, and invigorating, and yet most of their authors passed away the same year that their works reached the shelves. They didn't make it. They lost. The cancer got them. (Cancer does that. It gets people.)

Gilda's Radner, the Saturday Night Live star, wrote a book called It's Always Something, and it was published posthumously after her death from ovarian cancer. It's sad and funny and full of life, and it came out after her death.

Liz Tilberis, former editor of British Vogue, wrote a book called No Time To Die: Living With Ovarian Cancer, and it's sad and funny and full of life, and it came out a year before her death.

Evan Hunter, the brilliant mainstream novelist and screenwriter (under his own name the author of The Blackboard Jungle and the screenplay of Hitchcock's classic The Birds) and even more brilliant crime novelist (under the name 'Ed McBain') wrote a book called Let's Talk: A Story of Cancer and Love, detailing his struggles with cancer of the larynx. It's sad and funny and full of life, and it was released only months before his death.

You see the pattern.

I'm not the one with the cancer, and it's something I rarely blog about because, really, who wants to read a blog about cancer? I mean, shit, I sure as hell don't, so why would you? But considering cancer is pretty much most of what I've been thinking about for the past two years, I figured, fuck it, let `er rip.

The thing is, these books lie. Not the books themselves, but the effect of the books, the ripple effect, the concentric rings that seem to indicate that anyone and everyone with cancer will slip through the water and keep on falling.

That's the point: They lie because they're so warm and wonderful and infused with the delicate tapestry of life, and yet their authors' ultimate fates makes one think that the cancer was waiting, waiting, waiting until the most ironic, opportune moment to strike hardest and strike last, but that can't be the case, because how many people have cancer, and are living with cancer, and surviving with cancer?

In the States, about 1, 300, 000 people will be diagnosed with cancer every year. That's not a typo. That's a hell of a lot of people. (Or, as Burgess Meredith would say in Rocky II: "A hell of a lot.") And that's just in America. How many people in the world have it? Glad you asked. Over 24, 000, 000. Twenty-four million. With more being diagnosed every, single, day.

So I realized: the books lie, in the sense that their authors' outcomes are both tragic and anomalous. Because the writers of those wise and moving books died, quite soon after, or before, their books were published -- but so what? There's 24, 000, 000 people living with the disease around the world. (And I stress 'living'.) Hardly any of them have ever, or will ever, write books about it. And they're still here. I just don't see them, and I don't read their stories.

Most people don't think about death every day, I don't think, but cancer forces you to, and it telescopes life, and it makes you realize that a lot of the nonsense we strive for and look for and long for is somewhat redundant and random. When you think about death a lot, life becomes all the more vivid. The good and the bad. The messy and the sleek.

I wish for once the bookstores were flooded with books by people with cancer who are still here, alive, working and shopping and trying to figure out how to work the remote control, because that's what people with cancer do: they live their lives like everybody else. And maybe there are a lot of books like that; I don't know. It just seems like the celebrities get all the press, and their books seem to be the ones that are eerily timed to coincide with their own deaths.

Sometimes I'm on a train, and I'll see somebody, anybody, a random person, and I'll wonder: Do they have cancer? They might. Or their sister does. Or their brother. Or their grandfather. I mean, damn, 24, 000, 000 people in the world got some form or another of the disease. And every day more and more folks are joining this not-at-all-exclusive club. ("Come on in! The more the gloomier!") So I look at the businessman or the schoolgirl and think: Maybe they've got it. Maybe it's there, growing inside of them, but they don't know it.

A morbid thought, but shit, if cancer isn't morbid, what the hell is?

And yet it's not. Not really. Because, if you think about it, what does cancer make us fear? The big 'd', death. And why do we have that fear? Because cancer makes it seem as if death is closer. Approaching. Gathering speed like a bullet train.

But death is all around us, all the time, and we start dying the moment we start breathing, and so why do we forget that? Life marches on, and we pretend that it's not going where we all know where it's going.

So what we're really talking about here is truly a matter of momentum. Cancer tends to accelerate our own fears of mortality. That's all. It makes the hey-everything's-going-good-I've-got-it-all-figured-out-pass-the-chips certainty of life come grinding, screeching, shrieking to a halt. (Cancer's momentum can do that.)

But I think that there's something, if not exactly good, at the very least mildly illuminating this sudden, almost debilitating paralysis. You're forced to reconsider life, and its values, and how you should start to prioritize your own do's and don't's. You see that life can turn on a dime, and that to think otherwise is to hold onto the blessed ignorance of a child. You begin to understand the absurdity of a world where American Idol's Simon Cowell can make thirty million dollars (U.S.) a year simply by entertainingly putting other people down. (Not counting the other thirty-eight million dollars (U.S.) he makes from doing a similar job on Britain's X-Factor talent show.)

The question remains: How can Simon Cowell, and all of his his fortune, and cancer, and all of its horrors, exist in the same world? (Science-Fiction writer Philip K.Dick once wondered a similar thing while reading the children's classic The Wind in the Willows and hearing that John Lennon had been shot -- how can those two events possibly coincide? But they do.) Grappling with these nonsensical things, you can better understand, dimly, that life sometimes has its own erratic plans, both absurd and alarming, and that yours, in turn, must change. Now. Immediately.

As 24, 000, 000 people around the world realize.

(I don't, of course. Not really. Again, I'm not the one with the cancer, and I feel somewhat silly writing about it. You can't understand what you haven't got. Take everything with a grain and a shaker full of salt. These thoughts are simply those of somebody who has been around the disease a bit in the past two years. I'm extrapolating, basically, trying to get a handle on the slippery unhandable nature of the beast. I'm failing miserably to do so, I think, but I will keep trying.)

So, in summary, these are the thoughts that sometimes swirl in my head: a lot of people have cancer; this is not right; Simon Cowell makes too much money, despite his undeniable entertainment value; and the fact that cancer and Cowell exist, together, is absurd and ridiculous. It's proof of the universe's madness. The untimely deaths of numerous writers only months after their books are published detailing their disease is another sign that something is askew in the fabric of the cosmos. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I don't, understand, anything. (Which you might have guessed by now.)

And yet the fact that millions around the world live with the disease, live with it, live with it, and deal with the disease, deal with it, deal with it, refuse to give in to its persistent advances, gives me a glimmer of hope, which is more than enough.

For cancer is but a microcosm and distillation of the fears that ground us all. As I said, it's life, speeded up and shoved in our face. And if one can live with that ultimate fear, that impending rush, and grapple with it, gripping it in a headlock as best as one can (and possibly even giving it a noogie), and then even move forward, step by cautious step, than perhaps that says something about us as humans, about us as a species. Life is fucked and the world is unfair and cancer arrives with a random, vicious glee, but we go to work and pay the bills and do what has to be done and thus tellingly, in our own small way, inform our ultimate maker that no, no, no, we will meet another day, certainly, but not today, motherfucker. Get out. I'm shutting the door to you. Go away. Not today. Not today. Not today. There's somebody else at the door, so step aside. There's a cake waiting to be baked. There's a book waiting to be read. There's a lesson that needs to be taught. The humdrum bullshit of life, humming its glorious hum. Perhaps it's enough.

So step aside, you cold and heartless beast. It is chilly outside, almost frigid, and there are friends ringing the doorbell, and we must answer it, now, before it's too late, before night falls and the dusk descends. We must invite them inside, where the room is warm and the lights are bright.