So the very day I ditched Salina Valleys for its slave like laboring conditions it gets hit by an 4.4 EQ - earthquake - more excact: November 23 at 18:08:13. An EQ powerful enough to shake and destroy the ramshackle housing and trailer parks of the abovementioned working-force, thus mirroring the saddening and depressing fact that EQ`s by far has a more devastating impact in rural and developing areas and countries than EQ`s have in developed countries.
The Bam 6.6 EQ 26.12 2003 in Iran killed an estimated 32000 people, where as the 7.1 17.10 1989 Loma Prieta EQ in the heavily populated Bay Area near Santa Cruz and San Francisco, California only took out 62 lives, which again – if seen as a mere consequence of economic globalization, demographic issues and the reluctance to share basic breadwinning ideas – gives this second-rate poet another reason not to love big business, which again would be part 13.
All in all facts that lead me to the psychotic wonderland: Am I a Jinks? Did I jinks The Salinas Valley EQ?
Question nr. 1 has been racing through my head like a truck since the summer of 1976 when I attended the opening of the alleged Hærvejsmarchen in my hometown Viborg, Denmark.
I never attended the actual march which I always found stupid: most people actually walking the 90 kilometers was soldiers, scouts, dogclubs, germans and dutch, a few local and so forth. And this particular summer was the time I almost gave up playing soccer and got busy smoking. The soccer I dropped the following year, not the smokes so walking was never an issue.

The reason I was there was my dad. He was the a reporter at the local newspaper which granted me access to numerous events like this one, but also I had my fair share of liberal upbringing, and I think I was the only 12 year boy in the crowd attending, who also at a regular basic attended theater, art-shows and other cultural highlights. Although I found these only remotely interesting, it was nothing compared to when he also covered police related material, and we went out to fires, carcrashes, robbery-scenes and such. As I remember those, they always happened at night and as my mother worked nights, he had no choice but to drag me along, giving me a flavour for the nightbreed.
Bu there was I: the opening of the Hærvejsmarch, alone among 8000 spectators. My dad had dosed of to hang with some buddies from work – I didn’t mind – because what I really had great expectations for at this opening was the parasuiters

“Now look to the sky” the stadium speaker announced, as the brass-band stopped playing the out-of-tune marches as an emphasis of the hole concept and I cramped my way from the crowd at the hotdog vendor and found a free spot at the south tribune.
“6 brave daredevils will try to hit the circle at the center of the field, the hole thing sponsored by…” – names I don’t remember but one: The Sodastream.
With smokebombs attached to their legs the jumpers finally left the plane coloring the sky in blue, pink, orange, red, blue, green trying to draw a pattern but didn’t succeed although I found the random pattern similar to some of the artworks dad had presented to me.
One after one the jumpers landed to the cheers of the crowd, and for each one down I breathed easier, surprised how these jumps could spark my explicit vertigo-phobia so fierce.
With 5 jumpers out of the plane and on the ground everybody was waiting for the grande finale. Again the stadium speaker tried to catch the spectator’s attention but the minute he began to speak we all looked to the sky, and the speaker continuously rapped of different sponsors of this here event. The hotdog and the weird coke-taste of the Sodastream mixture were at unrest. The 70ties were at unrest between all and nothing.
Like Superman in the first flix with Christopher Reeve personalizing the Man of Steel saving and restoring order in and around the White House World securing that Stars and Stripes remained spotless throughout the movie, this last jumper carried The Dannebrog – our dynamite national flag, looking like a mix of an oversized boy scout impersonating the myth about how Dannebrog during a battle somewhere in Baltikum 1205 fell from the sky.
As the anthem burst from the lousy stadium speakers it very quickly became clear that the jumper was in serious trouble. He hurled to the ground, jumping from low altitude his suit should have opened crucial seconds ago. Everyone could see it. Everyone could see him twist and turn trying to get the flagpole loose of his whatever strings in his suit that could keep him alive. The stadium speaker overacting his part started commenting on the mishap in an upbeat fresh commenting style, but he was beat by a feedback he couldn’t control; then scattered screams among the audience bursted as the jumper succeeded getting free off the flag which then plummeted into some nearby trees but his parasuit though did not unfold and the jumper accelerated to the ground and the inevitably mortal impact.
Then he disappeared behind some highrise buildings. Silence. Silence then became murmur and murmur became a roar as thousands of spectators rushed to the nearest exit and ran into the streets. And I ran too.
The hunger, the panic, the stroke was complete: Traffic jammed as mobs crisscrossed the roads, jaywalking, ran through gardens, jumped fences to look for the body. Then the sirens, the police, the fire trucks, the ambulances with loud horns, people shouting, explaining, exaggerating to numb bystanders, then the dogs barking if they know whats going on but never do, the commotion.
A car honked aggressively behind me, and somebody called out my name.
“Have you seen stuff? Where is he, do you know?” It was one the photographers from dads newspaper, he apparently recognized me. Without thinking really I jumped into his car and said: “Go. I know he is over here. Go – go”. He set off without questioning me and we drove easily from the now scattered crowd and around to the direction I knew saw the jumper disappear. We hit the street just as a police car blocked the road, but let us through. “I`ll be damned” said the photographer and looked at me spooked: I was right. He was here. A little crowd and an ambulance in front of a house told it off.
“I`ll be damned” said the photographer again, “how did you know?” He stopped in front of the house and pushed me on my way.
“Shoot you little jinks. No more today”, and like the sniffing dog I felt, down the road I pissed my pants.