SANDANISTA!

The third rock cranks it down on the diurnal spit, the traffic flows by the window across Stone boulevard, through the circle from Black Jack onto Oktoc, the no-nothing rebels on the local talk radio pitch and roll with a long overdue and welcome tide. I watch the election returns with bemused detatchment while the lady who shares my bed tunes in with insomnial intensity. Seeing Daniel Ortega emerge victorious warms the heart and brings back memories. I wish I could say that the Clash reunion tour cannot be far behind. I remember the shanties on the quad in front of Wilson Library, the Berlin Wall erected by the College Republicans in response, the Trendinista Dale McKinly waiting tables at the Carolina Coffee Shop, where I was the dishwasher, and how it pissed me off that he treated me with the same disdain held by all the other waitstaff. Did he not realize that, as a proper communist, he owed the lowliest cog in Byron’s capitalist venture his due respect? Bereft as we are now of the spectre of his Russian overlords, Ortega will never again rise to the prominance he once held in the lefty imagination or any colonial powers to come. I note a slight spasm of regret as I recall my behavior when I attented a speech by contra leader Aldofo Colero at Duke University back in those heady times. In my own defense, I was an impressionable lad, and had been told that Colero was essentially the devil himself. Most of us in the audience wore black, and stood through the entire lecture with our backs to the speaker. I’m still down with wearing black, but feel now that those who take the stage to make their case, no matter how obscene, are due some measure of respect, just as was I at the Coffee Shop earnestly engaged with my copy of Autobiography of A Yogi as the dishes piled up. Riding home with some hippies I recall someone pointing out that Calero’s aura was pink! Damn! Having spent the entire time with my back to him, I had not even bothered really to check out his aura!
So what am I up to? Registering for classes, doing laundry, buying groceries, making castles with blocks. Yes I am going to be taking some classes next semester, so soon you will hear all about my new life as college boy. I can’t wait to be part of campus life again. I fully anticipate taking over the administration building at some point, chaining myself to the president’s leg, chanting “Si se puede!” from an upper story window...Going to art openings, submitting my hackneyed doggerel to the literary magazine, stealing the Ole Miss mascot, which I believe is a young rebel soldier, sixteen years of age or so, and painting him maroon before the big game...