The Wrong Turn on the Evolutionary Path

It would seem that Sir Ken Robinson has picked up the gauntlet of my educational rants, in a much more kind and cogent way (he probably started his thing long before me), so I think it's time to move on to a new subject, albeit a frequent favorite, and look at why, after thousands of years, we are still fucked up.

Whether Jew or Christian, Hindu of Buddhist, Muslim or Zoroastrian, the one thing that pervades all of our philosophical outlooks is fear. It might be argued that not all religions are based on fear, but it cannot be argued that they don't all use it as a tool for advancing their particular slant. I'm sure that the psychologists and anthropologists out there include fear in their handful of basic human traits, but I think that fear trumps hunger and sex just by its sheer pervasiveness. And I am not saying that fear is unfounded, as I'm fairly certain that even Conan would quake in the presence of a saber-toothed tiger. There undoubtedly was a time when we, as a species, were ill equipped to handle the dangers in this world. I mean even the first witnessed natural death of a human must have raised a few hairs on the neck of his peers. "I don't know. He was breathing a minute ago". But just as consciousness is responsible for seeding the fears in us, it is also potentially the vehicle to eradicate it. We have sufficiently advanced technologically to cope with nearly everything that frightens us (with the noted exception of those dangers we ourselves created). Yet, as a result of millennia of simply accepting fear, and allowing it to guide our progress, we have created a universal fear culture that we simply accept as status quo.

I guess it all seems to start with the boogity-boo of god yelling at Adam and Eve, maybe the Noah thing, and certainly the saber-toothed tiger, but it strikes me that these stories are merely recollections of man's earliest fears of mortality. And the simple fact remains, that way back then, when we had a choice between embracing life or fearing death, we decided to take the wrong fork; we chose to walk the trail blazed by all the other animals before us (yeah, that's right...the one's without 'consciousness'). Now I don't know if apes cry, or if elephants remember, but I do know that early humans were terrified of their own awareness, and they began to make up some pretty good stories to lay their own culpability aside.

So, we took the chimp path (still think we should have taken Bonobo Road), and, whether consciously or concessionally, we let the alpha male take the point. But alas, even alpha males die, or fall to a younger successor, so we needed to adopt something a little more fantastic. So we invent gods. And truthfully, gods made a lot of sense. We could tie immortality to the vengeance of nature, and bring ourselves to adopt the old standby...'gods work in mysterious ways'. But we did just a little too good of a job, and then we started having to be afraid of the gods.

So, at this point, most of us (the orientals and indians apparently evolved from a remote region of Pangaea) arrived at the altar of Aslan, where honest Abe was asked to cleave his son in half with Paul Bunyan's ax, and we wind up with two halves of the same kid, one based on fear of suffering in the desert; the other on being afraid of being chosen; both on being afraid of the same god, and each other. And it was then that the alpha males really kicked into gear, wearing great hats and robes, and standing on towering altars, telling us to be afraid, be very afraid (of course, it was also at this time that Leonard Cohen wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic).

So we daven-ed and hora-ed our way past golden calves and babelfish, passed go, and arrived at the shattered tablets, where we were instructed by the god of burning bushes in all the things we should and shouldn't do (apparently, ten was way too many). But the flip side of Commandments is, of course, divine retribution. We were already afraid enough of dying without having to withstand the knowledge that there would be hell to pay in the afterlife. So along comes the issue of the holy trinity (Amon Ra, Baal, and Y-Yah) and let's us know that those who accept him shall dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven, which as far as I know, is somewhere near Flatbush. And the believers quaked holy indeed when the 'son of gods' got railroad-spiked to the ties. Of course, while the throngs were realizing what a mean motherfucker that trinity guy was, Jesus resurrected and lammed it to India, where the masses, upset over his treatment by Roman and Jew alike, cattled up under the flags of Suleiman and Attila, while the 714 gods of the Mahabharata rode shotgun, and unleashed the scimitar and hookah on the unsuspecting, heathen paleface.

Well, with all those gods running around loose, all of them offering something to be afraid of (even sex...hahaha...who could be afraid of sex!), alphas of every persuasion decided that we should be afraid of everyone who doesn't believe the way they believe, and we've been killing off Hutus and Tutsis ever since.

Apparently, gods simply were not enough to help us discern who we should be afraid of, so we expanded into ideologies, and we got the commies, the fascists, the martinets and dictators, the banana republics, and the fleur-de-lis, not to mention merry old England and her particular brand of thuggery. And we arrived at the world as we know it, where everyone is feared and everyone is afraid. And here, in the good ol' land of reds, whites and blues, even the greatest god of all...Benjamin Franklin...can no longer save us, and we get to be afraid whether we have or don't have his blessing. We got so afraid of everything, we forgot to be afraid when we elected Barack Obamalamadingdong.

We are smart enough. Just too damn afraid to know it. Too damn afraid to succeed.

I got the pedal to the metal...careening down Bonobo Road...I'll grab your ass on the way by...when I turn left or right or inbetween...Happy New Year.

Christmas Truth

Well, ho, ho, ho, it's christmas time, and radio stations everywhere are playing one version or another of every carol ever written pour La Nuit du Noel, and it reminded me that the other night I actually followed a band of carolers around the neighborhood, and as I stood, quite impressed by the music, I also felt that cancerous gnaw in my gut reminding me that they didn't mean a single word of any of it. As proof of this, let it be known that this jew knows the words to every fucking one of them. I've been singing about peace on earth since I can't remember. Haven't seen it yet! And you might as well stick any wishes you have for joy to the world right up your proverbial asses. No, I think that jesu christo has done more to ruin our illusions of hope than stretch pants have done to defray the illusion of the camel toe. There is no longer any mystery, or joy, or silent nights in our interpretation of the message of Year One's Tzaddik ha Dor.

In fact, if one were to use the small sample of people in my current coffee shop, one could infer that the world is more miserable than it has ever previously been, although several grizzled old war veterans that frequent the place have exhibited a genuine outward friendliness. Yet, despite whatever jade I may possess, I do think that they would continue to seek my company even if they knew that I stand against nearly everything they believe they fought for. But sadly, they are the exception to the rule. The remainder, the balance, of the dour-faced, just move drearily along in line, double dipping at the free sample tray, and treat the counter people with the same undiscriminating contempt they hold for those out in the cold. Only in very rare instances does a smile or a thank you cross any of their christian lips.

So, I offer you my wish for this christmas season. I think that god should send us another ambassador, maybe a Bing Crosby lookalike, perhaps some illegitimate issue or aborted fetus, who will live his entire pre-crucifix life shining the joy of the uncorrupted child, and not try to fix this world for the undeserving 'adults'. Perhaps he could deliver a message, letting everyone over the age of 5 know with certainty that there is no fucking paradise, unless you live it...and when you die, the worms and pill bugs will simply devour eyeball and flesh. No virgins waiting in heaven. Barely any here. And perhaps he could demonstrate that 'good', and 'kind', and 'generous' are much grander concepts than we believe. And perhaps he could convince us that 'joy', 'ecstasy', 'love', are not confusing concepts. We can spend our lives wrapped in them, if we would only exit the boxes and walls we build around ourselves.

"And he walked in the desert, for forty days and forty nights, and when he emerged, he walked right past the stonings, beheadings, female circumcisions, child conscriptions, rapes, sucker punches and false haughtiness...right past brazen greed and all the other christmas presents...and walked straight toward the youngest child in the whole world, hugged him and kissed him, and they smiled and giggled together. And as they rolled in the mud, and ate potato chips with extra cholesterol, candy with extra white sugar, hot dogs with extra cow lips, he was heard to say to his friend, 'They worry about everything, are afraid of everything, desire everything, and accumulate everything, yet they cannot see the simplest truth, so eloquently imparted by the holiest of prophets, Bill and Ted. They cannot see that their message is all they need to have what they really want. Be Good to each other'."

And if you have to send a messiah, could you make it a girl?

Making It a Quartet

I am the wellspring, the aquifer, lying hidden beneath layers of jade and granite; the lode of antimatter possibilities waiting for the string of my theory; waiting for my oaken bucket to descend and draw my waters to light. I am the creation, long awaiting happening, as the tum-de-dum-bump draws salt to shoulder and cheek, off the cuff, where the blind and the shuttered can taste the sight of it. I am both painter and painting, swirling palette with brush, blending the checkmate toward the color unseen; enamel never touching canvas with anything but the fading rainbow. I am the needle, plunged into subterranean and subcutaneous darkness, filled with cure, culled from the venom of the mythical serpent, and yet, I am also the fable.

And, though she cannot see it…she is. She is the diviner, the dowser who walks and bends to the edge of what only she can see; the rainmaker, the Abenaki, the whirling dervish that dances and chants on the promise and floor of buried nourishment. She is the prairie grass reborn, cured of the evils of man. She waves in the breezes that no longer bring dust. She has rebirthed the wild buffalo and illuminated the red road. She is the quark, the gluon, the undiscovered particle that offers protons to my weak force swirl. She has slain the bear with only the imagined arrow and the bow of faith, and I have fallen into my own waters. She is the final decimal of my pi; the missing piece of every circle. She is the kindness I know but never find.

As waves break near the closing shore, and breezes twirl foam in cotton candy funnels, I float alongside awaiting the rogue emergence; awaiting the pending eye, when wave and funnel lay flat in the footprint, and sea and shore join again in the natural convergence. And then I may alight on her shore, and bring razor shell and lucre and sand once more to melt and blend in the burning star, and witness the boiling chamber surface the flow of hot birthing, and pray to the unknown that she may yet again stand and climb as the sea cools the ejection of my creativity; as wind whistle and gull screech and silent light notate on the natural staff.

And as drill and derrick descend and pump, I am learning to swim; kicking to my surface; stroking to my shore; diving to my oyster. No longer can I tread my waters yet no longer can I drown. I need to swim to standing; land to kind; live as I have never allowed.

Random Thoughts from the Coffee Shop

Breaking away from the flavor of recent posts, and just scribing a few observations from recent days.

I watched a woman today alternately screaming at and ignoring her daughter. From what I could gather, the little girl was hungry and her mom wouldn't buy her what she wanted. So she stormed off to another table and cried. Anyway, her mom left her there until it was time to leave, at which point, apparently unexpectedly on the part of mom, the child erupted into a tantrum of volcanic proportions, rife with 'I hate you s' and sudden onset polio syndrome. So as mom dragged her out, I got to thinking, and coined my phrase du jour. "When you're ignoring or yelling at your brat, please try to remember that you grew it". It came right on the heels of reinforcement of my belief that most people simply should not bear children, because bearing them is mostly what they do.

Anyway, later on I was picking up my Little Man at school, and ran into a friend of mine. He is primarily my friend for three reasons. He is a poker buddy, he has kids the same age as LM, and he uses the word 'cunt' almost as frequently as I do. Anyway, we were discussing his friend, the fallen alcoholic, and he was telling me that despite the advice of AA, he was in a relationship with a woman; that is if you can consider a woman with her talons in a man a relationship. Then, the conversation moved forward to how all the mom cunts picking up their kids at school were either parked in the fire lane (closer to the school) or blocking the crosswalks. Small wonder kids in this town are entitled. Their moms won't even allow one raindrop to dampen their little bleached heads. In any event, the main focus of our talk was about people blocking crosswalks.

Anyway, after homework and chores, I drive to the coffee shop for my fair trade organic coffee, and listen in (ok, eavesdrop) on a conversation between the over eager, yet inherently stupid, young salesman, and his dour faced ex-marine, though inherently stupid sales life trainer. OK, I promised not to go where I've already been, but talk about how and what we teach causes us to carom wildly backwards.

In any event, as this is my blog, and is essentially about me, let me leave you with a slightly blurry drawing of where I'm at. I feel like I'm blocking a crosswalk, in an emotionally entitled sort of way, and instead, I should just be letting the brats wander where they want to, and stop trying to sell them anything, because clearly, what I believe is completely useless, except for me. Looking forward to Soup Night. Maybe I'll burn my tongue.

Vespers

It seems appropriate, given that this is Pearl Harbor Day, and given that the nun is not really a nun, that I should spend some time in the silent drone of evening prayers. And although it may seem contrived, it would seem that the universe has instructed me to meditate on the nature of love. Now long before the nun and I toured some ancient Christian ruins of a church in France (and took in a bonus alpenhorn concert), she was always chanting on about how love just is, and I truly do believe she is right about that, as you can hear the echoes of that chant in nearly any belfry. Love does just seem to creep up on you, tap you on the shoulder, and, bam...before you can turn around you're smiling...and your body recalls just how good it feels to be wrapped...and rapt. So for the better part of two years, I have been smiling big, and that is a very good thing; to understand that despite our efforts to lock our doors against the world, there are cracks where the light gets in. I'm not here today to ramble on about how grand it feels to love the nun. I do that enough...well, maybe not enough, but anyway...

In any event, the last two years have taught me one, new thing. That there is lots of room under the blanket, and when you love someone, there is room for even the things you never thought you'd learn, so it was with eager anticipation that I listened as she recounted a conversation she'd had with her newest friend (a celibate, buddha/jesus flavored, self-healing, financial analyst monk gardener) who had asked her if she's ever been 'in love'. She responded that she had not; ok, actually with a gaping hesitation of no. Needless to say that all ten of my pins were bowled over and reset, but, as you can see from the metaphor, I was still standing tall. Despite the revelation, I was still wrapped, still standing and still talking. And I learned that there is room under the blanket for letting go. Now the nun says I'm forward casting, but it seems to me that any notion of a future is, even her assertions that she doesn't know what will come for us; even the notion of allowing for all the possibilities; that to hold to what may happen is no different than holding on to what you want to happen. Meditate on that some, and you may come to understand even Nostradamus couldn't see the moments.

Anyway, in the world according to the nun, there is apparently a separate wrapping station, kind of the christmas stocking of love just is, where you are not only in love, but IN LOVE. Must be in a separate room, which I am locked out of, probably due to the fact that my next perspective domicile may have no doors at all, and likely because I stopped loving with my brain a long time ago (the nun loves developed brains). The nun thinks I'm sort of edgy, but I think not. I am simply the culmination of how I have chosen to live and grow, and the truth is, that let us share a very grand love affair. You can never regret the grand times, unless you choose to repaint them, and I am no revisionist. It was and is the best of times, and I learned how huge love can be. This a perfect example of why you can smile while you're crying. Because love just is.

Stop blubbering now. The nun still loves me, even if she is afraid of me. It's hard to say whether my arrogance, or her greater desire, brought this strange quark moment to actuality, but clearly, we managed to dab the easel, no matter how lightly, and now, there are new colors there. And,as I'm sure you are aware, paint, be it water color or enamel, perforates the bubble and opaques the passage of time...and to all, a good night.

Slippery when Wet

I think I'm beginning to understand why the Buddhists have a thing about transcending desire, and I'll get to that, but I also need to point out, that despite my new understanding, I have to go along with the nun on this one. She is very fond of saying, "Why would you want to?"

So anyway, desire is a funny thing. For one thing, it's very pervasive. It seems to crop up no matter what else you have to think about, or have to do. And it's impossible to ignore, or get rid of. You can talk to yourself all day about how it's stupid, or unrequited, or unsolicited, and maybe even unwanted, but logic doesn't seem to have any effect upon it. It's as determined as a chicken running from the butcher. Clearly, desire runs for its life from the cleaver, and then turns around and looks at you, laughs, flaps its wings, scratches a bit, and makes a mad dash for freedom.

So that whole thought begged many other questions. I mean, how can what you feel be deemed a burden to be freed from? I mean, maybe, the whole point is that it is going to find you anyway. The universe is like that. Is it desire that's leads you to hell in handbasket? Nope, I don't think so.

So, after looking at all my questions, I simply decided that the whole notion of transcending desire is silly. I believe that what those Buddhists actually achieve is an ultimate state of pretend. The whole notion is purely mental. It may be true that the chains of desire are what ultimately bind you to disappointment, and anguish...you know, basic human conflicts...but they also connect you to pleasure and joy. I'll take the good with the bad. It seems to me that's what living is all about...finding the pleasure and joy in spite of the bad...choosing the pleasure and the joy. Maybe this entire thought process stems from my aversion to rigid, mental discipline.In my world, discipline only belongs in prison and the bedroom, and I'm not so sure about prison.

Anyway, the point is that the way we treat desire is indeed what brings misery, but it is not desire's fault. It is simply not enough for most of us to enjoy the desire, or even the resultant joy. We attach things to it, and that is where the problem lies; that is where the vagina becomes an instrument for both good and evil, which leads me straight to one of the Pirate's best quotes ever. "If your stuck in a hole, stop digging." The problem with the vagina is not inherent to the vagina. We have turned it into something akin to one of those Chinese finger traps. You can't get out of it until you learn how, push in even harder until it relaxes; whereas, in its natural state, the vagina is built for ease of entry and exit. No danger of going in too deep, and the benefit is debatable too. It is nice and cozy in there though.

And all of this leads me straight back to where I have always been. Life is about feeling, not thinking, and what I feel is desire and joy. And I am happy for that, and my fingers are dancing free.

So, no offense to the Buddhists. They can chant and Om their way to whatever state of mind they seek. I'm sticking to the body, though it may be temporal. There's a whole lot less convolution in there.

A Slap in the Face

On the question regarding the nature of truth, posed by the eminent phrenologist, Vingar Inyurred, I think a bit of stream of consciousness prose is in order. So, dear reader, let your consciousness flow as free as lightning, as booming as thunder, and as gratefully surprised as waking eyes, because I have no intention of trying to make any sense.

It seems to me that truth resides somewhere between the walking stick and the common aphid (is there such a thing as a common aphid? Methinks aphids are pretty common anyway); somewhere between auditory hallucinations and the rhythmic toms of the Zen drummer; somewhere between gang rape and The Gong Show. Yet, throughout history, from the famous Allegory of the Cave right through Hunter Thompson, we seem to be obsessed with the search for it. Which only proves the point that we are indeed a pathetically stupid species. The truth is before us like the nose on our face, like pre-ejaculatory sensations, like the burn of infection, like the acute pain of passing kidney stones. It is right there. Truth is not universal. It is not expedient or opportunistic. It is not good or bad. But I think what perhaps we are really obsessed with is the notion that truth holds some sort of legacy, when in fact, it only lasts as long as you can see it. We are obsessed with the notion that truth transcends our mealy lives; that truth defines right and wrong. The truth is perceivable, but only when we perceive. There is truth in every moment, but that is as long as it lasts. So, perhaps a little exercise is order. Stretch your hand out in front of you. Now, with your eyes open, open yourself to seeing your hand. Is it there? Yes? Then that is the truth. Now, close your eyes. Can you still see your hand? No? Then, that is the truth. It should be clear by now that truth exists in each moment, whether our eyes are open or closed. The question as to whether your hand is there when your eyes are closed further illustrates our desire to complicate the truth. If it is or it isn't, if you know or don't know, makes no difference, because truth is not determined by outcome, proved all the more potently by my feelings for the nun.

I love the nun, in every way that you might currently be defining it. This has never happened to me before. I try to retreat into the constrictive world of expectations, but it simply will not go away. Eyes open, eyes shut, exactly the same. Love pulls me out of all my maelstroms and all my doldrums. It is true because I constantly perceive it; constantly find it sitting quietly, patiently in my psyche. I know it's true because it is always sitting there on the edge of the mushroom, 'closer to my face than the water in my eyes'. And speaking of tears...

Nothing lets me break my heart with more power than the taste of her tears. They desiccate me like spider venom, dehydrate me like sahara sun, raisin me in salty folds. But loving her is my sprinkler, my soaker hose, my mosquito hatching puddle. And just to be clear, I will never drink my own urine. Sterile, my ass!

So anyway, the truth is just sitting there. There is absolutely no fucking need to ponder it. The walrus doesn't muse over the enormity of his penis; over the truth of giant cockness. Humans do (and understand that you'd better have a walrus sized cock when trying to fuck the largest of pinnipeds). Swarms of insects do not mentally masticate upon the truth of windshields. They are flying. That is the truth. That truth serves them all they need. Bats with blind, haddocks with deaf, oxen with dumb. Flying, lying on the bottom, shitting methane. The truth. No need for expansion or parsing. Porn stars with implants. The truth is called big tits (that they don't bounce is aesthetically unpleasing, if not a little creepy).

No lesson here. Maybe a plea, a simple request to open your eyes and ears, your hearts and vaginas, and sense, with whatever each tool provides, what is sitting, criss cross applesauce, on the edge of your floating floor, but don't look down. No telling what you might see.

Grey

I like grey. I like that there's an 'e' and 'a' for it, although I think I am much more of an 'e' kind of guy. I like the quote, "it's not black or white, it's just shades of grey". In fact, while I have been recently accused of being way too grey, I truly believe that is what life has to offer. I have to believe that each moment is what we are offered; that yes, life is a series of moments, but they are generally unrelated, except within the boxes we create. We may choose to link our moments into grand love or grand tragedy, but the fact remains that everything lasts but an instant. It is true that we may be offered the opportunity to recreate things in the next moment, and sometimes it works, but in each new moment, we are covered with grey. As a group, we humans like continuity, along with its life partner, stability, and I would be a fool to exclude myself from that pattern, yet when I examine my life, and the choices I've made, I can look back and see the black and the white offered in each moment; there has to be black and white in every moment, and what do you get when black and white are mixed on the easel?. Grey, that's what!

Now the nun has always been a grey kind of girl. Very little color drapes her. She is, of course, full of color. She just chooses not to wear them. Yet somehow, that grey covering allows a man to see all the colors inside. And right now, she is choosing the clarity, and accompanying levity, that reside in black and white. My grey is just too hard, so I can't really blame her. My life is fucked up. And right now, I want her to find the stillness, in whatever color it inhabits.

Anyway, it's tough to tell anything about a moment when you look at the grey of it. Actually, it's not exactly tough, it more like indecisive, or undecidable. It's not easy to judge grey. It's the anti-judgement color; it presents the moment without judgement, and somehow, that helps a person, or at least me, to enter each moment gut-influenced, intuition-enhanced, truth-overflowing.

I am at a moment in my life where black and white might bring clarity and direction, but they keep blending to grey. The other good thing about grey is that it offers no outcome, and while, given my current circumstances, you may not think that is a good thing...but it is. There are lots of outcomes on the horizon. Some good, some bad. The world works. The universe provides. It all right there in the grey dawn, the birth of new days. You just need to look, and grey just doesn't hurt the eyes.

Cunts and Truth

I’m reading Tropic of Cancer, which was banned as obscene once upon a time, and while I am fascinated by his use of the cunt as an art form, I was more enamored of a brief description he offered regarding a view of the future back in the olden days; a view of a world where almost no one has to work, where intellectual pursuit and carnal knowledge is more the order of the day. In other words, a world where much of the mundane side of life is done by machines and humans get to lie around thinking and eating.

Now, hard as it is to believe, Henry Miller was far more jaded than I am, but nonetheless, his prosaic talents did lead me straight back to my view, that human beings are innately stupid. He also led me straight back to the past, that place where I believe we made all the necessary evolutionary mistakes to lead us straight to the idiocracy.

As of late, I have felt compelled to write about politics and education, primarily because I don’t think it’s too late to fix those things, but having read Mr. Miller’s somewhat anachronistic revelations regarding life and the future, I find that I am firmly entrenched in a doomsday mentality. So I think I will begin this story with a sketch of medieval life, and move on to the industrial revolution, and then to the present day.

Now given that walking down the street in a medieval town was at best an adventure, given that one would by necessity be looking up all the time in order to elude the chamber pot missiles launched from the second stories, I would surmise that life back then consisted of stiff necks and dim outlooks. I think life must have sucked, but I also think, that since so very few people could read and books were scarce, most people didn’t fully realize how much life sucked until they got to church for the Sunday sermon, when they were thoroughly instructed on how much more the fire-and-brimstone afterlife would suck, if they didn’t but into that Jesus/God thing about paradise on earth. So I will forgive my ancestors for buying into that horseshit; they simply didn’t know any better. In any event, the fear of shit coming your way from above began here.

Moving on to the industrial revolution. This was the era from our past when a few remarkably creative humans decided that enslaving the rest of the population for their personal gain was a grand idea indeed. It was also the time when the phrase “I did what I had to do” entered the popular lexicon, as desperate people sent their daughters off to work in the mills, in hazardous conditions, and for a mere pittance of a wage. We, of course, have carried on this tradition, by moving menial labor to sweatshops in the Far East, where, at least, we no longer have to look at it. In any event, it was a grand time indeed, when the very few rose to the top, and the America Cup was given to the peons. Now, you may choose to argue with me about this arrangement. I don’t actually have a huge problem with it beyond the inequity. What I do have a problem with is that we, as humans, have placidly come to accept that this is the way it should be, while bemoaning the right of Hells Angels and street-corner drug dealers to spit in the face of it. This of course was the time when we just accepted our fate; to get up early every morning, grab a coffee, and spend the day being taken advantage of. We came to accept that shit flows downhill.

And now we arrive at now, and because I am an American, I will, by necessity, offer a particular American slant. We have bought into the past, and we are shaped by it. We continue to cling to the greatness of America, as we watch it disintegrate. It is not the inevitable disintegration that bothers me. It is the ennui, the blind acceptance, and our almost pathological need to believe that it must be preserved. The evidence of this is almost too vast to enumerate here, so I will just offer a few examples. For instance, the entire American populace (read conservatives, liberals, progressives, communists, hippies, Hell’s Angels, street-corner drug dealers, etc.) still believes that their vote counts (yes, I voted). And the more intelligent among us (you decide if I belong) listen to debates, and read the political pundits, to make an informed decision; yet, we absolutely refuse to see that one cannot make an informed decision in the absence of truth. There is not now, and perhaps there has never been, a politician who offers even a kernel of truth. And we listen to the vagaries and generalities, the lies and the spins, the incomplete formulae, the anti the other guy rhetoric, and accept that this is what we get to base our decisions on. It would seem that we no longer need the truth; in fact, it seems that, in order to preserve that which we hold dear, no matter how archaic, we will willingly give up the truth. So, we hold onto our political views, our political system, our economic system, and plop it straight into the middle of our hearts; a legacy to pass down. And then there’s the god thing. We continue to cling to the belief that to be a Christian, or a Jew, is a good thing, as our religious leaders secretly plunge their cocks into everything they preach disdain for. Ministers in public bathrooms, priests in confessionals, rabbis in whorehouses, gurus fucking their throngs. If the truth lies in god, this believer wants no part of him or her. We have become a nation of pretenders; pretending that we have anything of value to pass along as a legacy for our children. While it may be, that our first, and most critical mistake, was our awareness of our future and inevitable death; believing that there is value in life beyond living it to the fullest. And this is the time when we came to accept that we should cherish shit, like a beautiful plastic flower, and pass it on to the kids and grandkids.

There may come a time, when work is a thing of the past, and holding on to the ideals of truth and learning is valued; when love and kindness rule our lives without condition; when we realize that happiness comes from within, and is enhanced in sharing it with the world, not just a select few; that the world is bigger than the tenuous box we choose to live in; when we learn that we are citizens of the universe, not citizens of our manicured lawns and Boxsters and fatboys (for the dissatisfied). But in order for that to happen, we will have to understand that out children will create their own future, and that we, as the shit tenders, are handicapping their efforts. And this will be the time when we come to accept that we can still dream.

.

I Have Seen the Future...in Idaho

I'm thinking in advance that this post may be more political than I am usually inclined to write, but as I came to believe today that Jon Stewart is far more humble than I would have imagined, I guess any subject is fair game. And while the word 'liberal' carries no negative connotations for me, I do think it is time to remove it from the lexicon. Mr.Stewart, in an interview repeatedly stated that he doesn't believe that the greatest division in our society is between liberals and conservatives, and, quite frankly, I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, he goes on to emphasize that the differences between people, on either side, are not as great as we are led to believe, and I would also offer my total assent to this conjecture. And this led me to think that the real problem is that none of us really understand the english language. So, I think it is time to rename our political parties, and take a nostalgic trip back to merry old England, where they laugh about politics (albeit in a stodgy sort of way) far more than we do. As I'm sure you are all aware, one of the major parties in the English government is the Conservative party, aka the Tories (you need to decide if this is true as I am very unclear about it). Utilizing this model, I think it is time that we, as americans, simply lump the democrats and republicans into a single party, henceforth known as the Conservatives. It should be clear, to even the most dense, that, at the core of both political parties, is the desire to 'conserve' the status quo, and by this, I mean, that their single greatest desire is to keep their own pockets lined with gobs of cash. OK, OK! On a more relevant note, the real goal of both parties is to 'conserve' a constitution written over 200 years ago, immediately following a war of independence in which bumpkin farmers and ranchers, and wealthy slave owners, fought side by side in order to attain the representation they desired. Well, last time I looked, one would be hard pressed to actually know a farmer in modern america, and, while you can actually find real ranchers in South Dakota, they tend to keep to themselves; and I don't think you can find any slave owners anymore, unless you view the general populace as I do.

Now Mr.Stewart also stated that as a 'screamer in the grandstands', he doesn't believe that he is actually on the playing field; that his only real role is to utilize sarcasm, hyperbole, and humor to illustrate the truth; and that in his role as a critical observer, he lacks the involvement to effect any real change. I accept the truth of this, and since I fall in the same general category, I feel it is time to offer concrete alternatives. So...

It is time to bring back true representative government. In this vein, I believe that the federal government should seize the state of Idaho, by eminent domain, and establish it as the seat of government. Now I don't think we can fit every voter in Idaho, but I do think that we could fit enough people to decrease the current ratio of one senator for every 300,000 people. For instance, if we were to elect a senator for every 20 people in the US, we would have far greater true representation, and I do think that with slight alteration, we could fit all of the fifteen million senators in Coeur D'Alene, or perhaps Pocatello. This would serve two greatly needed steps forward; one, I would personally feel more represented, and two, the vast sums of money generated by political graft and gladhanding would be more equitably distributed to a far greater percentage of the population. I also happen to believe that companies, such as BP, would be far more afraid of an angry mob of fifteen million senators in Idaho than they are of the hundred, alcohol-sedated lawyers currently residing in D.C.. On a more positive note, I would guess that the long-awaited, and overdue, legalization of marijuana, would stand a much greater chance of passage. It will also greatly reduce traffic on the beltway.

Now, as any true american knows, we cannot thrive in a one party system, so I would now like to establish our new, second political party-the Progressives (yeah, I know this word elicits almost a much vitriol as 'liberal', but as 'progress' sits at the root of it, it's ok with me), and I think the basic platform of this new party would be to shift our outdated political paradigms firmly into the 21st century. For instance, we could vote for the president over the internet (this would also aid in eliminating the electoral college, certainly our most confusing political entity; it would also increase the actual number of Americans who vote, as you wouldn't have to leave the house), and it also might serve to actualize the long-held american dream of 'a chicken in every pot' (this would, of course, require a lot more chickens, and a lot more pots, and thereby create an enormous boost to our economy).

As I am unemployed (a 99er, in fact), I have the time to garner the support of twenty of my friends, so I think I'll be moving to Idaho in the very near future. It may also afford me the luxury of realizing a constant dream of mine-to become the minority whip. I have always wanted to be a whip (not sure why, but it does make me laugh). So, I would ask all my fellow Progressives to join me, and support me (I think twenty dollars should do the trick), in my campaign.

I don't want any of you to read this post, and view it as farce. I think, that given the current state of national bankruptcy worldwide (read Ireland and Greece), and our current american deficit in the trillions (my personal debt barely approaches this figure), that it is high time we realized that bigger IS better, and that the national electorate should walk beside me on this progressive path to Idaho. And with all due respect to Jon Stewart, let it be known, that unlike him, I am an agent for change. Although, come to think of it, I could use a speech writer.

Requiem

I'm fairly certain that I am the only American that's sick and tired of Veterans Day, and it's not so much the barely ambulatory WWII geezers, but more the whole notion of what having a military means to begin with. If I hear one more person say "Thank god that they do what they do, so the rest of us can do what we do", I'm just gonna puke. Our freedom is no more threatened from beyond our borders than it is within them, and I, for one, am angered that we still insist on glorifying our aggression in the name of freedom.

Now don't get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against soldiers. It's the leaders I have a problem with. And clearly, it is in those leaders' best interest to perpetuate the freedom myth; a myth that certainly should have died after the second World War. No soldier since has done anything to preserve my freedom, but they certainly have killed and been killed in the name of something American. My take is the economic interests of high echelon american capitalists. So I guess that George W. and his cronies should bow down and kiss the asses of every soldier they send off, but sorry, it is not my job to do it. My job is simply to criticize those people willing to send our children off to die for nothing.

And it also seems to me, that if we are going to honor soldiers every November 11th, then we ought to honor every soldier, both ally and enemy, because they are certainly fighting for similar, heartfelt beliefs. It is foolish to assume that the German soldier fought just for the fuck of it. He believed in what he was doing in the same way the American GI does. So let's include the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Somalians, the Bosnians, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as well. I can see how this suggestion might seem ludicrous, but it is not. The fact of the matter is that all nations fight for what they believe to be true, which only illuminates the fact that we long ago lost sight of what the truth really is. As Americans, we have bought into the notion that we have some god given insight into the truth, but we have molded and shaped our own truth to justify our actions. If we really stood for truth, justice and the american way, then we would have sent troops into Darfur, but then again, there's no oil in the Sudan, no american economic interest, no dollar value on our children's lives. But we can thank Christ for the wars we are fighting, because now GM can boast of its highest quarterly profits in decades, on our dime.

God is not on our side anymore, and truth be told, neither are we. If God (pick whichever one you choose) was worth anything, then we would be drowning in the tears he shed for every child who dies in war. And if humanity was worth anything, then we would be drowning in the tears of every mother and father who has felt the same pain. Yet we insist that because they died for a 'cause' then it's ok. It's not ok. We should be past this as a species, but instead, we cling to those beliefs formed in the past that have no bearing on today's world. Somebody always has to be wrong in our equations, but, truth be told, we are all wrong. Thou shalt not kill. There is no religion on earth that doesn't bear this credo, so if you accept what God hath given as the truth, then we all live in defiance, or at least denial, of that truth, and we are all going to hell in a handbasket.

I saw a cartoon the other day, where Moses was carrying the first draft of the ten commandments, which simply read 'Don't do bad things'. Think how much farther along we would be, how much more evolved we would be, as a species, if we followed that simple rule.

So today, this November 11th, I watched Avatar for the first time (yeah I know I'm a few years late), and was awestruck and saddened at the same time. Awestruck by the technical and colorful creativity of the movie, and saddened that we are choosing to pass along the same, insidiously stupid notion to our children; that war, fought in name of right and truth, is the only way to settle our problems.

And today, I am going to shed a tear for every soldier that has died in battle, for every soldier injured or maimed, for every soldier that has chosen suicide, for every soldier's nightmares, and may we all drown in the salt of it, for it is we who have given our children the story, the fable, the madness and stupidity. And I will pray that the next generation of children heed the lesson of Lot, and never look back.

Saving the Canaries

As I sat here today, contemplating the construction of a hay bale hogan, as well as several post-apocalyptic scenarios, I was struck by several thoughts. The first...that if man is forced to live underground in the post-nuclear apocalyptic world, then the canary might just be the most important thing to keep around. I mean, given the continued deterioration of human intuitive intellect, it might be a good idea to have the invisible-gas-detecting canary around. No sense heaping apocalypse on top of apocalypse (Yeah, I understand that it's not such a good deal for the canary). The second is a little more unusual. Given the value we place on time, it seems to me that we should finally get a grip on it. I'm ok with seeing time strictly as a perception, but since we all seem to perceive it, perhaps it really does possess some sort of physical form. Anyway, what really caught my attention was the thought, that if light and sound travel at vastly different speed, how can we really be sure that the lightning and the thunder don't happen at the same time. Anyway, that brings me to the point of this post.

I was helping Little Man with his vocabulary yesterday, and I realized that certain words held his interest while others didn't. And I think there is a valid reason for this. I did some soul searching and realized that for me, the time when I became excited by the word 'floccinaucinihilipilificaton' had already arrived, yet my excitement over 'esoteric' might never (to this day I resist using that word). I have been fortunate over the last several years to observe (albeit from a distance) the intellectual and emotional growth patterns of kids with super high IQs. The simple fact is that the specific elements, within the broad spectrum of human development, evolve asynchronously. This might appear as an ability to conceptualize higher order calculus before they can add and subtract; or perhaps, in a more illustrative example, while they may fully understand human sexual conduct as toddlers, in their mid-teen years, when they might set about exploring, they are highly resistant of learning to drive, thereby denying themselves the possibility of enjoying their first blowjob in the privacy of their mother's van (their mother's sexual behavior in vans is a subject for an entirely different post). It may be true that on an intellectual level, these profoundly-gifted kids reside well outside the bell curve of measurable intellect, but it is also true that throughout human history we have examined the extreme to understand the median. It is in this vein that I have arrived at my recent epiphany; that all learning is asynchronous. A.S. Neill and Summerhill aside, we have continued to insist that our children who sit under the mushroom cap learn the same things at the same time. It could certainly be argued that AE possessed an intellect far outside the curve, but it can also be reasonably argued the The General Theory of Relativity was posited by an impoverished, womanizing patent clerk. Asynchronicity in a nutshell.

Which brings me to quantum physics. While it is true that there are several aspects, several quanta, that we have not as yet verified, there remain a significant number of theorists that believe that upcoming experiments at the Cern super collider will bring the Higgs to light. While there is much mathematical support for this belief, it still must be viewed as a leap of faith and intuition. And it is this very thing that we deny our children. Education has eradicated both the leap of faith and intuition. The world of academia reinforces this. The current trends in both primary and secondary education emphasize what we already believe we know, at the cost of ignoring what we don't know, and higher education, for the most part, proceeds forward in the delusion that what comes next will come from what we believe is. There is a world where one plus one does not equal two. There is a world where music is not based on the western chromatic scale. There is a world where one can make sense of a Jackson Pollock painting. There is a world where dance reveals wisdom. Indeed, there is a world where' q's are not followed by 'u's. I, for one, don't give a flying fuck if my son knows when the Magna Carta was signed. I would rather that he intuit that the path from the Code of Hammurabi led us straight to the bible which led us straight to the broken legal system we have today, where personal accountablilty means absolutely nothing. I would rather he see a world where an 'eye for an eye' is outdated; or more to the point, I would rather he see his world, which looks nothing like mine; a world that is not created from the rigidity of my knowledge; a world that is not restricted, not bound by the chains of my future, but rather set free with the unforeseen possibilities of his. It is time to teach them that being wrong carries no shame; that the wrong we burden them with is our wrong, not theirs; that the shame we force upon them is founded in our inability to consider that they may be right.

Perhaps it truly is time to let the canary go, and inhale the toxic fumes of our own inertia. Perhaps it is time to try to remember that we have been wrong before, will be wrong again, and that the truth is much simpler than we paint it. If there is a paradise to come, it will not come from god. It will not come from us. It will arrive on the wings of angels, our children, if we let them fly, ungrounded in our haughtiness and arrogance. We need to let them fly free, that they might see what we cannot, soaring in the realm of unencumbered imagination. There is no such thing as gravity.

Bicycles

I do believe that my father's simple act of retrieving me from the playgrounds of my youth, clad only in his boxer shorts, represents a sterling example of humanity's self-defeated aspirations to move beyond the stultifying, self-imposed restraints that we place upon ourselves, as we continue to walk the snail-paced, evolutionary path enclosed in the boxes of our past. Of course, to put it in perspective, this occurred at a time when swimming laps at the YMCA, for old and young alike, was done clad only in the speedo that god gave you. (to be clear...read 'stark fucking naked'). And, as I witnessed yesterday, there is no clearer example of the faulty, tenuous foundations of our current evolutionary path than fat women on bicycles, sauntering along on their way to foregone obesity, and unavoidable death; clearly displaying our desire to cling to what we are not; a clear vision of our dissatisfaction with what we are.

And while I have had several sexual dalliances with fat women, it is not my preference (I prefer light at the beginning of the tunnel). I believe my attitude results from the understanding that fat people have fat kids, rather than from some innate aesthetic preference. And, as usual, this entire bit of writing has nothing to do with where I'm headed.

So, let me continue by saying that stupid people have stupid kids, or rather raise stupid kids, and that, as a species, we are locked in the stupidity of what we believe (and yes, I am going to pick on god); and, once again, allow me to assert that our firm handhold on what we have accomplished locks our children's ability to proceed creatively in a vise of binding haughtiness.

As it would be unfair of me to present this argument without concrete examples, let me begin with a story; a story of a woman, a mother, so self-centeredly immersed in a cell phone conversation with her significant other, trying to decide whether to buy the Sunday morning doughnuts at Honeydew or Dunkin', who ran over a young girl on a bicycle while exiting the church parking lot. Clearly, her habitual, hour-long communion with god didn't bring her any closer to a state of grace, to a place of communion with both the divine and the earthly, than the sugar high of a cruller would. She clearly exited the the parking lot at Saint Edward of the Creme-filled wrapped in the tiny, limited awareness of her own life, rather than in the expansive domain of divine universality.

If we accept the free will part of the free will vs determinism thing, then why do we insist on determining our children's lives? Why do we insist on passing on our ineffectual belief in whatever god, when it should be clear that our children possess, at birth, a much clearer, wonder-filled vision of divinity? We were all kids once. We all once saw a world filled with infinite, divine possibility. Yet we choose to give up that wunderkind vision, and instead wrap ourselves in the shroud of dogmatic religiosity. God is not only holding us back, he is killing our children's future. There will never be a second coming, never be a messiah riding a white horse, because we are locked in the ancient hope of it, rather than creating it, and we choose to lock our children into our inertia. Our children are born with the vision and capability of creating something much closer to paradise, yet we kill their creative possibilities; kill them dead, for only in death do we ascend.

And the same can be said about government. It may very well be true that the democratic model our forefathers penned was as good as it could get when it was written. Yet, rather than choosing to help it evolve, we have chosen to take that which we accept on faith (our right to freedom), and amend it with restrictions to what it may have accomplished. If we truly aspired to greatness, then long ago we would have ceased killing the innocence.

And the same can be said of of education. Our blind faith in pi (as inexact a godhead as one can find) is no less injurious than our belief in any other higher power.

I would never deny your right to believe what you want. That is your choice, but please understand that what you believe has nothing to do with the truth. We have lost sight of the truth. Our children's future does not belong to us. It belongs to them. We are simply the hosts. We should provide them with the tools for survival. We should not, however, fuck with their dreams. Our dreams have no relevance to their future; only theirs do. Our manic belief, that we have a legacy to pass along, is a false belief. Our only real gift is allowing our children to become. What we have wrought, let every child put asunder. Put on you boxer shorts, and walk alongside them, as they learn to move forward on their own two wheels.

Bleak House

I probably stand alone in this, but it disturbs me greatly that all of our current cyberpunk visions of the future seem to involve military resolution, and i guess that's because I see no real value to the military today, let alone a hundred years from now. And it also disturbs me that our creative imaginations seem to build all these stories using weapons that currently exist. Imagine ending a battle utilizing a weapon that causes all the opposing forces to have simultaneous orgasms; thousands of soldiers surrendering in the throes of booming, echoing "oh my god" s. But I digress.

With election day approaching, it is interesting to note (at least, to me), that we have no real coherent vision of the future. We simply cannot see beyond next Tuesday, and I believe that is because the human brain has not evolved as quickly as human accomplishment, or the human wallet. I would support this with two observations. First, the economy will continue to worsen; not because there are not jobs out there, but rather because the unemployed are not qualified to fill them. The baby boomers, once so enamored of a better vision of the world, have found that they are only qualified to bilk the masses, and delight in the stupor of knowing that we gave our children the same world we started out with. We have insisted on educating them in the same recidivist methods that led us to the great disparity in wealth in which we currently reside; that led us to the same world in which violent resolution is the happily accepted answer. We have stolen our children's imagination, and we delight in the false belief that they are any better prepared than we were. Second, although not unrelated, is the current thought, that within the next 30-40 years, the knowledge gained, in the first year or two of a college education, will be obsolete by graduation time. While, on it's face, this disturbs me, my perturbation is more greatly enhanced in the understanding that we in no way have thought about how to change it. I think the simple answer is that we need to change our educational methods now, in order that our children can actualize their own dreams, instead of actualizing ours (which are already outdated). We cannot fire their imaginations by having them read The Last of the Mohicans, when the only remaining Mohican is a casino in Connecticut. In the most optimistic light, the above observations may be painted as poor planning; in the dire and actual light, it may be painted as debilitating haughtiness. It actually doesn't matter if they can spell 'nihilipilification'; it matters more that we can translate 'fml'.

I have read recently, that it is probable that we may indeed choose to create an upper strata of genetically enhanced humans; that we will be able to design our unborn child, making him or her much 'better' than the natural result. Of course, this will only occur for those parents that can afford it; those parents still blind enough to believe that fucking with nature is a good idea. I, or course, believe that this is unnecessary. I can envision a future where an intellectually and cognitively superior subset of our progeny...those naturally able to stay ahead of rapidly shifting paradigms...will rule the world, leaving 99.9% of the remainder drooling in front of their televisions watching the World's Got Talent.

Of course, part of my vision also includes salvation, provided perhaps by some unborn human, who refuses to let us kill his/her creativity, who sits outside the box, resplendent in his/her own oddity, who sees a better way, who somehow embraces the wherewithal to understand what I'm saying.

The Octopus and the Cockroach

I learned a few things this week, which will probably impact greatly the remaining time I have left in this short, happy life. The sudden realization that the octopus is the smartest creature on earth filled me with a science fiction dread of Kraven proportion. It was difficult enough to accept that the octopus not only has a main brain, but a sub-brain in each of his arms. And to top it all off, his cock sits at the end of one of those arms. Now I know that it is fairly well accepted that a man thinks with his penis, but as far as I know, there isn't an actual brain there. Furthermore, I also learned that the octopus' camouflage is not an instinctual response; it is an act of will. The octopus observes his surroundings, and changes his color, color pattern, and texture almost instantaneously...by willing it. There have been several trysts in my life where this ability would have been greatly beneficial, but, alas, I am not as smart as an octopus.

I also learned this week that a cockroach can live for up to a week after being decapitated. While I am not certain which OCD scientist discovered this glorious fact, it clearly demonstrated to me that the head is not all that important. Since I have lived most of my life trying not to use my brain, this revelation had a certain calming effect on me. Clearly, it's not about what you know. It's all about what you don't know.

It was at this point that it all became very serious. The octopus' mom dies very soon after the emergence of her offspring. The little octopi never get the opportunity to learn anything from mom. She teaches them nothing, and they flip-flop-zoom off into the big blue ocean with only the wits they were born with. While I'm not advocating that human mothers should die after childbirth (or fathers, for that matter), I am suggesting that our children don't really need us to teach them anything; in fact, as I stated in my last post, by teaching our children what we think we know, we are doing them an evolutionary disservice. I mean they seem to come with the basics. They know where the milk is, they evacuate waste in most prolific displays, they smile when they're happy...and cry when they need. And in my own neonatal world, I learned all on my own that sticking your finger in a wall socket is a bad idea. Now the boys will learn everything they need to know about sex in a gooey, REM ejaculation...and, as is evidenced in today's world, girls don't really need to learn to spread their legs. And god knows, they all learn quickly enough that the food is in the refrigerator.

Now don't get me wrong. Passing along your legacy is probably an innate need. So I did teach my kids to hit a baseball, although my son surpassed me in that area a long time ago...at least age appropriately. And I do build a pretty good campfire, and generally, use power tools without injury, and there are some who rave about my cooking, in a comfort sort of way. But it all became clearer to me when I started thinking about how and why I write.

I write because it is important to me; it is important to me to express how I see the world and the people in it. But it is important to note that I write from within my own perspective (as does any other writer), and that perspective is shaped by what I 'learn'. And while I truly believe that what I 'learn' has value, it only has value within the 'time' the universe has given me...my time. My knowledge has relevance in my timeframe, not in the timeframe of my children. That I also believe that what I know and believe may offer valuable lessons to others, may carry some universal truth, is merely testament to my ego. That I believe that I think 'outside the box' may be true, but I have simply learned to live outside of MY box, shaped by my history, my present, and my hint of the future, and my future has nothing to do with the future of my children. I can't write computer code. Fuck, I can barely type. I cannot truly perceive a computer that is 'smarter' than I am, yet it will likely arrive before I perish. There are myriads of things that will emerge in my son's life of which I cannot conceive. Yet I am not afraid of his future. I just don't know anything about it. I am certain, however, that the 'box' of my life will not serve him. If I simply offer my 'box' as my legacy, he will not imagine how his world might become. My 'box' only offers him my limits, and he is limitless. We need to understand, in our own lives and in what we teach out children, that the mind that creates a problem cannot discover the solution, at least not without some kind of paradigm shift. The solutions exist in the undefined areas of our 'circles', and it is those blurry spaces that terrify us...that limit our ability to leap...that limit our willingness to do. This, of course, fully explains why the cures we create carry the unfortunate side effect of killing us as well.

It should be easy to see, for all but the completely blind, that our continued efforts to preserve our boxes, and to pass them along, erases their imagined possibilities; that by educating our children in the rote of what was...as opposed to the wonder of what could be...the wonder of what hasn't even been seen yet...is failing them completely. After thousand of years, all our science cannot account for two-thirds of the mass of the universe (although we did discover the Lyman-Alpha Blob, a triadic favorite), yet we insist on believing that our dark matter forms a foundation for what they might imagine and create. We insist they start from what we cannot see, but think we know. It seems to me that they are better served if, like the octopus mom, we let them 'see' with our eyes closed.

Passing it Forward

A friend of mine recently posted something called 'Improved Communication:Improved Outcome', and it suddenly struck me how much I adore generalizing, which of course, led me to see that this very specious notion, that of desired improvement in communication, is exactly what is wrong with the human species.

How, you ask, can improved communication be a bad thing? Let me answer that for you.

The basic problem is that we are inherently stupid, yet choose to believe that we are smarter than dogs, which is clearly not the case. We perceive ourselves to be more intelligent than every other creature, yet we describe our world as dog-eat-dog. I'm thinking that if we ate everyone we killed, we might be closer to who we are actually supposed to be. Imagine if we asked our soldiers to survive on Afghan-kebabs. Seems and feels just! And they could survive on GI Bourguignon. But I digress, as this post is supposed to be about general stupidity; not my own.

As I have clearly stated before, our prolonged state of stupidity is evidenced by several of our chosen beliefs; i.e. that alien abductions only occur in the Ozarks, that the virgin Mary only appears in western European towns beginning with 'f', and that we continue to learn and grow after the age of five. This was clearly shown in the classic book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, in which the author demonstrates our insistence of extricating every shred of creativity from our children's minds. There are several reasons for this phenomenon. The first, that creativity has never served the parent in any useful way, and the second, that most parents are completely unable to envision where the world is headed. I proved this to myself recently, as I tried to impart the wonder of Fibonacci numbers to my 12-year old son, knowing full well that I could no longer see the wonder in them myself.

Passing along our genes is a primal human requisite, but no more powerful than our need to pass along what we think we know; but what we think we know in no way serves our children. Let me illustrate. It was the contention of some famous guy that if we fail to learn from history, then we are doomed to repeat it. Well clearly, we have not learned anything from history, as we continue to engage in 'dooming' behaviors. We demand that our children excel in a series of standardized tests, designed to insure that they get the facts straight, but the truth is that those 'facts' that we deem important excise any creative solutions from their little minds and bodies. They prohibit them from growing forward, retard them into a vision of life that is no different than our own, and hence, we fail to evolve.

Sir Ken Robinson tells a telling story in one of his talks on TED. A young girl is drawing a picture during class, and the teacher asks her what she is doing.

"I'm drawing a picture of God"

"But no one knows what God looks like"

"They will in a minute"

Children see the world wide open, as we did before we were taught to 'know' things. They imagine things, intuit things, uncorrupted with 'knowledge'. And they actually know how to love. We teach love right out of them, trying to shape it in our own failed image. Wives are always asking for better communication, but what they are really asking for is some sort of reinforcement for what they think they know. (OK, they probably DO know more, but they also are firmly resistant to what they don't know). What they are really asking for is connection, but that is taught out of us very early on. We can no longer imagine connection. Children don't need to imagine it. It is simply a part of being a child. Yet we choose to teach them a static world, while they would simply continue to live in a dynamic world.

It's time to admit that you are not smarter than a fifth grader; to understand that what you 'know' should not be taught. You should teach what you learn...not back then...but right now. Our role should be to allow. If you learn nothing else from this post, learn this. Your children were born better...than what you have become; that what we 'communicate' is actually 'communicable', like a disease.

On a More Personal Note

I seem to be fascinated with whoever finds their way to my blog recently, and I spend an inordinate amount of time in Google analytics, trying to discern why anyone would read what I write. I am indeed read internationally (although it would appear that most visitors don't waste much time reading), and although I must admit that most visitors seem to be of the 'western' ilk, I get enough from the Asian subcontinent to constitute a sizable percentage of the minuscule sampling. And the most notable trend among my readers leads me to a rather disturbing conclusion. NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE.

The vast majority of my readers (not including the three or four that are my friends) arrive at the Great Triad via various search engines, and all seem to be concerned with the difference between 'space' and 'place'. I would have thought, that after millennia of exploratory angst, we might have found something approaching an answer. This is damning evidence indeed of the snail's pace of both our intellectual and spiritual evolution. So it seems that it is up to me to provide humanity with the answer. It's really quite simple...in a forest-for-the-trees sort of way...WE ARE HERE.

Now the Pirate has her version of the struggle. She flies her skull-and-crossbones while alternately sailing the choppy seas of reality, and the unnavigable oceans of the ethereal, but it is clear to this writer that she is right where she belongs; landlocked in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota, talking to bullsnakes and chipmunks; failing to see that myriads of gypsies and cartoon characters delight in sailing alongside. Yet she is happily aware, that as the crone of sea captains, she is leading pirate fledglings on the righteous path of looting and plunder.

And Gail. Well, her course is different. She alternates between the stairclimber of simple joys, and the crutches of ancient pain. But she's OK...as long as her storehouse of frozen hotdogs, and the occasional icepack are at the ready. And she is, for the most part, happy and satisfied...settled into where she belongs...content with the simplicity of home and hearth.

Now the Nun is a rather convoluted story. Too many self realized facets. She stands very strong as the mother bear, falls down a lot as the girl, and is as blind to herself as any mexican freetail. While she is perhaps the most embodied human I know, she can't quite figure out who should take the point on her path through the moss covered woods...alternating between Mr. Head, Mrs. Heart, and Mademoiselle Snatch. But when she finds her moments, she finds them wrapped in unbridled joy...and she finds them often...or maybe they find her. Either way, I'm certain that all of her will find her way...once she remembers...once she figures out that it's OK that everyone loves her...even if they don't understand why they do.

And what do they have in common you ask. They have all suffered a mighty blow to the head...two literally, one metaphorically...and all have realized that no matter how hard the hit, you can't get knocked out of an infinite space. It's all there...and you're right smack dab in the middle...wrapped in love...with all direction and choice there for the stepping...no matter how much your head hurts...

So, as the sun reveals for the first time in several days, I guess it's time to offer a little of myself. As I erase the lines of my life...some drawn with the momentary twitch of thumb and forefinger...some drawn with the powerful drag of heels...I find myself dropped into the middle of the great unknown...and I suspect that this is where I have always belonged. My blows to the head are too innumerable to recount here, but I have followed my own advice. You can't sleep when concussed, and you simply need to stay awake to see that you are here. You can't paint a blank whole. You shouldn't. It is perfect...simply waiting for you to withstand the blow...get back on your feet....maybe bleed a little...and to stand within.

They say you make your own luck. I'm feeling very lucky today.

Relativity

Space-time is a fabric, or at least that's what smarter people than me would have you believe, and every object in the universe rests upon it, and bends it (picture that yellow funnel thing at the science museum that you drop a coin in...or a really fat guy standing on a trampoline). And we wind up with the most misunderstood force of all, gravity. And the contention is that the more massive an object, the bigger the dip. Now follow my logic here. They say a black hole is created when a star, much more massive than our own sun, collapses post-supernova, and bends space-time so deep that even light cannot escape its gravity. What I cannot fathom is why the collapsed star is more massive that the original. I mean, they're both made of the same stuff. So why could light escape the dip before the star collapsed? Maybe I missed understanding mass in Physics I, but shouldn't both the pre- and post-star have the same mass, despite the size difference. OK, so maybe it doesn't matter that I understand it. But then they go on to theorize that the big bang sprung out of one of these dips in space-time, from nothing. How much mass can nothing have? So we are left to ponder why that dip, the very deepest dip, was there to begin with. And, of course, the answer has to be anti-gravity; some even more mysterious force causing the dip...from the other side?...from the anti-universe? Perhaps in the anti-universe, objects bend time into spikes, rather than dips. I've never been there, so I can't say for sure. Maybe there really are 248 dimensions.

And from there, an even more mysterious force grabbed a hold of me...my imagination...and I began to think about the phrase "crossing a line"...as in "you crossed a line"...and I realized that as far as cognizant species go, it is not opposable thumbs that make us unique...not even our linguistic abilities. It is indeed the almost infinite number of lines we draw. When we let vicious dogs nip at the balls of naked prisoners at Abu Graib (not sure how...and don't care how to spell it), we consider that a humane form of interrogation, but once we move on to waterboarding, we've 'crossed the line' into torture. And when we converse with someone about their personal problems, that's ok, but when they ask about ours, of course, they've 'crossed a line'. And it's fine if someone loves us, but, god forbid they 'cross the line' and love someone else. We are overly enamored of drawing lines in the sand, and somewhere along the line, as our intelligence evolved, we forgot to embody the notion that there are two vast areas on either side of those lines; but, more importantly, that those vast areas are still there when our line is erased at high tide, and what once was two is now one, and it is virtually impossible to tell what belonged where, or what it was, or rather, what they were. What this all means? I have no idea, but I think it all depends on whether you live in this universe or the anti-universe, and whether you bend the fabric up or down (or in any other unperceived dimension). What it all boils down to though, is that we don't actually know anything, because there are no lines.

Which brought me right to RIGHT (insert truth if you'd rather). Right just is. It is not relative. We seem to be obsessed with creating observable differences, rather than creating, or understanding, an uninterrupted shoreline of clean, white sand. When we arbitrarily draw a line, and say this side is right, and this side is wrong, it is simply our line. But once you erase that line, you're right back standing in the middle of a vast, infinite space, bending the fabric; bending it in the four observable dimensions, and in the 244 most of us can't begin to conceive; ready for brand new bang.

So, in conclusion, your right has to be wrong too. Every time you make your child eat his peas, you are drawing a line for him, and creating a cruel and arbitrary space; an illusory space you created by bisecting his original uncondition. And now there are two of him, destined to fight as brothers are wont to do, when there was no fight in him to begin with. And now he needs to decipher what belongs to him...and what belongs to the other him.

There is no evil in the newborn child; no such thing as a bad seed. We put it there, the very moment we draw the first line. We put it there the moment we decide for him. When I was a kid, I stuck my finger in the latch of our refrigerator. Nearly electrocuted myself, and I figured out it was a bad idea all on my own. I didn't need my mother to tell me. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to instruct your children of the dangers in this world. It's a dangerous world. What I am saying is that when we draw lines for them, we create in them what never existed within, before we drew it. The very notion of original sin. Phooey, I say...piffle. Fuck your sin, and fuck your god. Fuck your heaven and hell, your good and evil, your right and wrong. I wasn't born with it and neither were you. But after all is said and done, after all the lines are drawn, we choose to create the space for them to flourish; we create the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, the thieves, because we create in every child the space for them to exist, by simply drawing lines. Find me a straight line, naturally occurring, anywhere in the fabric of the continuum. Go ahead, I dare you. You can't...because they are no more real than gravity.

It is undoubtedly true that each of us bends the fabric...has an effect on the whole...and whether it turns out to be a spike or a dip depends entirely on the spaces we choose to create on the blank, clean curvature. It's time we learned that.

Government

I have decided not to look up any formal definitions of the word, but I am going to break it down. I guess you could say that I am becoming an anarchist, as I am becoming enamored of the word's usage as a 'limiter', re: governor as a limit to power, as in a race car engine. And it seems to me that this metaphor is as incongruent to current political reality, as my life is to what dreams I still hold dear. We want to be led, and we are willing to cede any and all of our personal freedom to attain that goal. As a species, our lives continue to be dominated by fear, and quite frankly, I am unsure what we are afraid of. But have no doubt, dear reader, that hidden in our blind worship of constitution and flag, is our dominant desire to be controlled...to be protected...to let others keep us 'safe'. There is no other light to shine on it. Government is no longer a power limiter. It represents only access to power, and we have chosen to give that power to an elected collection of illusory liars; a coven of fabulists spinning tales of the common good, while masking their insatiable thirst.

While I am old, I was not around for the framing of the constitution, but I am fairly certain that one of the founding fathers' greatest concerns, as evidenced by those basic checks and balances, was the centralized consolidation of power in the hands of the few. Perhaps one of you might explain to me how the current cabal of absolutists is any different than the reign of King George. Is King 'Washington' really any different? Is it really any different, solely because we continue to believe that we elect the power mongers? We seem to fervently believe that each individual vote counts for something, when, in reality, we have been selling those votes for a long, long time...to only the highest bidders.

And let us not forget that the framers wrote the constitution from the ongoing perspective that the common man is inherently untrustable. The bottom line is that we simply do not trust ourselves. I am fairly sure that there is no prerequisite for election to the federal government beyond age and citizenship. I don't think that the framers insisted that our elected officials be drawn from the very small pool of the graduates of Harvard and Yale law schools. Pretty sure a law degree is not even an essential. Truth is, the law, like government, has run away from us. I'm not any more sure than you are, that I want Joe the Plumber chairing the senate Armed Forces committee, but I am sure that I no longer want the committee to even exist. And I am certain that I want to trust Joe the Plumber; that I want to trust you; that I want to place my trust in anyone who is willing to let truth and benevolence shape their outlook and course. It is a sin against humanity that we have allowed 'politician' to become a career choice; public servant, perhaps...but c'mon. Please remember that we allowed Ted Kennedy, a man more concerned with his single malt than the common good, to reign in perpetuity.

I am not fomenting revolution. Granted, this may be only my opinion. But I do think it is time to dissolve the federal government, and eradicate all national borders, and maybe slide the constitution into the proverbial shredder. Public safety, and indeed, public welfare, was long ago extracted from the federal realm. Our welfare has always resided locally, and continues to. It is true that we deserve protection from the malevolent factions of our species, but that can be accomplished locally, without trillions of dollars in deficit spending.

OK, so this is not really a political post. It is really just me screaming at all of you; to find the faith in yourselves to stop giving it all away; to trust your next door neighbor. Stop being afraid, and rule your own world. Be your own kings and queens. Give up your pawn. Salaam aleikum.

Continuum

I can no more grasp the concept of string theory than I can grasp the concept of string cheese, but I am fairly certain that I can intuit that the space-time continuum is the one real constant in our lives. And I'm certainly not here to take on St. Augustine and the whole free will vs determinism thing, but I am here to categorically state that it is our inability to find the truth in that argument which causes nearly every iota of emotional angst we suffer through daily. So let me back up a bit and define my views on non-dual philosophies.

When I step into the quiet recesses of my mind, which I have a hard time finding, I can see the possibility that our lives only exist as we perceive them. It's that whole 'Cogito, ergo sum' thing; that if I didn't think I was then I wouldn't be, but if I'm not then how can I be thinking that I am. And god, if you add in that whole 'if a tree falls in the woods' thing, then you come to the inevitable conclusion that we have no actual idea what existing means at all. By way of example, let me state that Garrett Lisi never would have conceptualized his theory of everything if I had never started this blog. It is fairly certain that if I had not posited, in a prior post, that the universe has to be a torus, Lisi never would have found his 248 dimensions. So it seems to follow logically, that if I didn't think, then Garrett Lisi wouldn't exist either. Let me just add, by way of a disclaimer, that if Garrett Lisi didn't think, then, despite the fact that I majored in mathematics for a short time, I would be completely unaware that Lie groups even existed. So (and I am shortening the 'If A and B, then C argument), it is sufficient to conclude that the universe would not exist at all if Mr. Lisi and I both didn't think it did. Perhaps I am the self-centered narcissist that my sister-in-law proclaims me to be, but, even if I am, it should still be obvious that she wouldn't exist if I didn't think so.

My take on the non-dual nature of reality should be fairly clear to you at this point, so let me continue. There is no such thing as endings. Endings are simply our arbitrary little carets inserted in the sentences of our thoughts (ergo, our lives) to try to make sense of the fact that the space-time continuum exists beyond our control. We live in the delusion that somehow, we can control...nay, alter even...the passage of time, when in fact the passage of time is merely an illusion that we perceive. This of course is proven by the statement, and I am quoting the only famous man who's autograph I actually possess, "could you make it a CHEESE burger."

Which proves beyond all reasonable doubt, supported with rock solid logic, that Garrett should surf the big waves of Hawaii to his heart's content. It is hard enough to live in the four dimensions we currently accept, without trying to live in 248 of them, and I'm not even sure yet if I think they exist. And furthermore, it should also prove that there is no such thing as productive time. Time, like love, just is. Today I am willing to include gravity and the Higgs on my list of things that simply are. So, before I float away, into my next moment, content with everything I do no know, let me just say that writing this post was as much as I thought I might produce today, and that I am fine with what I might imagine next...I love you...in all my multiverses.

White

Not since Burning Man was referenced on Phineas and Ferb has any discovery earthquaked me like what I saw (in my mind's eye) today.

First off, I was awakened today by a most glorious thunderstorm, perhaps a precursor to the remainder of my morning. Once I got past the sad possibility that Little Man's baseball game might get cancelled, I coffeed and smoked my way to a much happier spot.


Now, many of my three or four readers may realize that I don't necessarily view the world in any light resembling normal, but that does not in any way invalidate my viewpoint. I do that all by myself, yet despite the fact that I swim frequently in the cesspool of my conflicting thoughts and emotions, I still am often overwhelmed by my desire to share my thoughts.


(Aside: Curious to know if a person can just be 'whelmed'. I know you can be overwhelmed, and even underwhelmed, but somebody please answer this question for me. What would simply being whelmed look like?)


Back to my babbling now. As you may remember, the nun has always preached that 'love just is', and I am also an adherent of that particular philosophy, but today I would like to take it a bit further. It is my contention of the day that 'love always is'.


Yes, dear reader, I believe that you currently love however many exes you may have. Whether they cheated on you, abused you, walked out on you, or simply faded away...betrayed your trust, lied to you, gave you herpes or any other venereal disease...or whether they simply changed...or you simply changed...it seems to me that love is indestructible no matter how hard we may try to interrupt its breath.


And while I am sitting here, alternately embracing it with trying to paint a revisionist tale of what it could or could not have been, I am coming to see that our biggest mistake as humans is that we choose to believe that we can make love fit into whatever guise we choose...when really, we fit into it. We paint pictures of how it once looked...of how we once saw it...and, no matter which new colored contacts we choose to view through, the undeniable fact is that love did wrap us, and we engaged, and we cannot change that. And whether or not we choose to go back and rewrap the gift...wrap it in the grey of naivete...or the pink of innocence...or the brown of stupid...or the swirling spectral rainbow of bad timing, we insist on filing it away in the black paper of regret. We seem incapable of realizing that its original offering was delivered wrapped in the perfect, blank white of want, need, desire, passion, and yes, lust. It arrived wrapped in that perfect white, reflecting all the colors of possibility, yet it is only our insistence on staining it with only the colors we choose that taints it; that leads us toward the inevitable, undesired path of invisible absorption.

Have I gotten it right yet? Not a chance, but I am learning, slowly but surely, that love doesn't break my heart...I do...and I, for one, will continue to reject the notion that my heart is broken at all. It must be so because it continues to beat...to all the rhythms it is destined to dance in...ever.......

Cassoulet for everyone...on me

It can be difficult being revisionist, when considering human history over the last 1.3 billion years, but this is my blog and I can do whatever I want. Having said that, let me just add that it is remarkable how little of the big picture we actually see. I'm thinking that the reason for our narrow focus is that we don't really like to dwell on past mistakes.

So, my friend from Alberta posted this excerpt from Ted's, and while I found the whole thing a little narrow in scope, it did convince me that we are actually wired to be empathic. Whoever the speaker was seemed to restrict this talent to our ability to detect distress in others, but methinks its much bigger. But I don't really want to dwell on this. I only brought it up because I found it interesting.

On a far grander scale, I want to address the subject of cooking. Around 1.3 billion years ago, after giving up the simian ridge once and for all, and having discovered that erectus worked for the spine and legs as well, we made an evolutionary departure from the norm; one that would differentiate us from all the other creatures on this earth. Yes, my fellow humans, we learned to cook what we eat. You may have noticed at some point, that we are the only species on this planet that practices this particular artform. Of course, it became far more advanced once Joseph Frigidaire invented the icebox, and despite the fact that we no longer needed salt and the other spices to mask the flavor of rancid meat, we, being creatures of habit, decided we liked all the spicy stuff, and liked washing it down with a nice cold cerveza, or perhaps a nice oaky chardonnay. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for cooked food, especially since our metabolism and busy work schedules have long since adapted beyond any ability to process raw food. There is simply no longer enough time in our days to consume the vast quantities of raw carrots and spinach needed to maintain the energy required to scheme ponzi-lly, or macro-economize. Hell, we barely have enough time for our trips to Walmart. And god knows, we certainly don't have the time needed for the far more frequent evacuation of our bowels that raw food consumption would necessitate. No, it is obvious that we are far better than all other lifeforms on this planet, and far less likely to discard our cargo shorts and shit where we walk. Thank you, Messieurs Crapper and Charmin.

Which brings me to oil. We diverted, and continue to divert the Mississippi river so that jazz musicians and the finest of corrupt politicians have a place to live, and despite the obvious, self-created drawbacks exposed pre- and post-Katrina, we choose to think that living below sea level is a good idea. I mean, we all need a place to get a good po' boy or hoppin' john. But it does make me wonder if, given the superior geologic knowledge that our higher, empathy-killing education systems have provided us, anyone has asked the question...are all those oil deposits there for any reason except to provide for human ease and comfort. Maybe the earth has some use for a little 10W40 now and again. Maybe the tectonic plates shift a little more smoothly. Maybe the yellowstone super-volcano doesn't erupt next week. Maybe it just helps fuel the planets oven. I don't know, and even those of you who know me well, probably don't see how all these things tie together in this LSD-saturated mind of mine, but they do. And now, I'm going to wrap it all up in a nice little package for you.

It's really quite simple. Everything, if it hasn't already, is going to happen. And we are a fragile species because we refuse to see that...refuse to accept it...refuse to be subjected to the whim of it all. We are better...better off...no? I mean...we are smart enough to see the whole picture. Bon apetit!