The Great Triad

Saint Valentine's Day

2012-02-17T08:30:00.002-05:00

It absolutely sucks to be a Kurd. After surviving years of Saddam Hussein bombing their hopeful homeland with poison gas, and then finally being rid of him thanks to the unjustified intrusion of Allied Forces (it's not like we stuck our uninvited noses into the region to save the Kurds), now they have to suffer through bombs flying their way from Turkey. It is painfully clear that not only are they surrounded by people who both don't like them, and who are unwilling to concede them their own private Idaho.

I was reading about their most recent plight in the Boston Globe, and was struck by an adjacent advertisement for ice cream dishes. It was an ad from one of those hoity-toity jewelry companies that no one in existence can afford to shop at, save perhaps those one-percenters. In any event, the bargain basement price of $59.95 was touted, for a set of four. This, of course, is more than the yearly income of your average Kurd. This also explains why most people of the Middle East grow beards.

I, of course, also have a beard (well, a goatee actually), but my beard was grown for reasons of vanity, not as a symbol of my solidarity with the Kurdish people. It seems clear to me that their reasons for beard-growing, while perhaps rooted in some religious dogma, are purely economic. It should be obvious to all of you, that Gillette and Schick are also waging their own little wars against the Kurds. How else might you explain that a package of replacement cartridges for the average razor costs almost $30.00? Sort of an around-the-back version of the economic sanction. Fie! Fie! Fie!

According to CatholicOnline, Saint Valentine may have been martyred for marrying Christian couples during the persecution under Claudius II. Claudius II, of course, is not the Roman emperor who invented fisting. He was just some guy who didn't like christians. And when Valentine tried to convert him, he was rewarded for his efforts by being clubbed, stoned, and subsequently beheaded. This should explain why he is not only the patron saint of affianced and happily married couples, but also the patron saint of fainting, epilepsy and plague. So, it is entirely apropos that we celebrate his feast day on the anniversary of the very day on which he head was separated from his shoulders. This, unfortunately, is just another example of our historically misguided understanding of LOVE; for not only does it exemplify the futility of marriage, it also illustrates just how little your brain has to do with it.

In those moments when we venture out into the world in a truly open-hearted state, it should be obvious to even the moderately self aware, that we stroll through life's foibles and trials allowing love to embrace us, entirely in the absence of intellectual definition. In these moments, we do not choose who we love, only how well we love; how well we allow love to embrace us; how well we understand the reward of living.

I'm not going to pontificate on the subject any more. Life is calling...love is calling...and I have to go shave.

And thanks for all the fish...

2012-01-06T14:12:00.005-05:00

Just to follow up on my last...jumbled...nearly incoherent...but nonetheless valid and true...post...a bluefin tuna sold in Japan yesterday for $763,000!!!...or, in easier to understand terms...$1241 per pound. Far be it from me to make some specious argument regarding the inequitable distribution of wealth in the world, but in watching a video, I noted several street sweepers in Tokyo sitting down for a 12-pack of the bluefin sushi...at a mere $24 per piece. This, of course, is the direct result of the scarcity of bluefin tuna in the natural world where they live...SOOOOO...let's take it a step farther...

The bluefin tuna can swim at approximately 943MPH (1508.8kph). This does not make an adult bluefin the easiest thing in the ocean to catch. To further prove my point, a newborn bluefin weighs a measly 3 ounces, and gains, at best, a couple pounds a year...so by my calculations, yesterday's victim eluded capture for approximately 307 years. So, it would stand to logic, that there must be millions of tuna in the sea; we simply are not smart enough to catch them on a regular basis. In essence, we are overvaluing our own failure. If, per chance, the inverse is true, and we are indeed smarter than the bluefin tuna, then we are overvaluing the prescribed and proper supply of all things natural. (Do you think a tiger shark rues the shortage of tuna in the sea? It most certainly does not...and would definitely not pay extra!) (Do not check the math, or the numbers. I made them all up).

While the prior illustration should make it clear to all right thinking humans that no fish is worth all that money, it should also bring to light the dearth of all things intelligent in the Republican party. I know a fair number of republicans, and I would consider most of them fairly intelligent, so I cannot fathom how the current slate of presidential candidates in any way represents the 'best out there'. I challenge any Republican to defend any of the current choices as anything more than talking heads (though that is not entirely their fault, as the national media continues to behave as if they actually utter things of substance). If the Republican party has nothing better to offer, then the smart thing to do would let Obama run unopposed (can you imagine how grand it would be if he lost the election unopposed?) The bottom line is this: I wouldn't leave a child of mine in the same room with any of the Republican candidates, let alone imagine them as president.

But moving on. For the first time in nearly 50 years, homicide has fallen off the list of the top 15 causes of death in the US. This is surely a positive sign that we are evolving as a species. On a similar note, a young Haitian refugee, rescued under the auspices of a US charity after the island's earthquake, killed herself in Boston yesterday. One could argue that bringing an unprepared young woman to the 'safer' environment of the US, where her weekly rent undoubtedly exceeded her yearly income in Haiti, while kind, is also counter-intuitive to reasonable. You can't ask an uneducated victim to find happiness, amidst loneliness, in the dog-eat-dog world of venture capitalism. We care enough to save her, but don't care enough to help with her salvation.

It is high time to evaluate the capitalist model we accept as status quo in the US. As the lone Republican columnist of the Boston Globe pointed out today, the candidates being considered for president from the Republican ranks are not really pro-capitalism, as much as they are pro-business. This contention, at least, makes it understandable why they can condemn Romney for his time at Bain Capital, instead of condemning him for being a two-faced greedy businessman who projects himself as a fictitious do-gooder. Take it from me. He is an asshole.

But more importantly, the article goes on to discuss a major component of the capitalist idea, 'creative destruction'. This is the accepted tenet of our economic religion that states it is good for companies like Staples, or CVS, create new, more efficient outlets, while instituting the genocide of small, local stationary stores and pharmacies. It may be a wonderful life, but Mr. Gower be damned. All in the name of innovation and progress, and fatter wallets for the few.

The robber barons of the late 19th and 20th centuries certainly screwed vast numbers of Americans in pursuit of their own greed, but they also gave back, perhaps not purely altruistically, but certainly beneficially to the greater populace. There wouldn't be many free libraries, or art museums, if they hadn't, as these 'companies' can hardly be deemed profit centers. It is time to re-evaluate the capitalist model we accept blindly.

President Obama proposed combining several government agencies yesterday, in an effort to reduce the size of government. He did, however, stop short of eliminating the government all together, a policy which I have advocated on several occasions; which I guess is ok, since somebody has to keep an eye on us.

It is time for a leap of faith, a paradigm shift, regarding the economic model of this formerly great country. I will offer my ideas in the next sentence or two, but let me begin by saying that no government or corporation will in any way aid in its acceptance.

I actually have no problem with the usual supply-and-demand system per se, but it seems to me that it does not really allow for the satisfaction of those with demand that cannot afford the supply. And I believe the reasons for this are two-fold. The first problem is the general structure we have accepted as the norm; the existence of countries. Humanity initially organized into a system best described as tribal. We have obviously shifted away from this paradigm, primarily due to the specious perception that we need what we make. We have lost sight of what it means to survive comfortably. While we may be electronically entangled in a web of tenuous connection, that web does not really provide us with the connections we need. Instead, we have fallen prey to the advertised beliefs that what is offered is what will connect us all in some sort of communal consumerism. We form no meaningful connection through the iPhone, yet we let ourselves believe we do. This is further illustrated by the size of our homes. While we all need space, it is fundamentally contradictory to human need to have our children live a half mile away in the same house, disconnected by earbuds and distance. We break up the tribe even within the confines of our own homes. The second problem, of course, is our fear that we will not be able to attain something; this might be anything from a plasma TV to good health. This is the flip side of the loss of tribalism. We seek to belong to a tribe which is too large to be manageable. This is exemplified by our almost manic need to wear baseball caps, and anything with the North Face logo on it. Essentially, we have outsized ourselves, and don't know how to fix it. This is further aggravated by a system, in which we are governed by a nanopercentage of the nation's population, who are largely out of touch with reality, unless 'reality' is the further garnering of individual wealth from a privileged position. Government, if it is allowed to exist at all, has to become local, confined to overseeing a 'tribe' whose members share a common interest.

Capitalism can no longer exist as an entirely free market system, because it does not allow for the needs of the many. Given that what we have come to recognize as the primary suppliers of work in our society (read: heavy industry, manufacturing), and given that those workplaces continue to dwindle, we need to understand that there are simply not enough jobs for everyone, unless you live on the Indian subcontinent and know how to answer a phone. It is high time for the institution of benevolent capitalism, where those who can earn give the excess away to those that can't. Sure you say, we do that now, filtering millions of dollars to single mothers who don't work because they're too busy fucking...in the mistaken belief that a man can fix things. But this is where we fail, because of our almost rabid need to judge these people. Hello, there are people in this world who are too stupid to work, let alone conceive of the notion of garnering wealth. If we could only see our way...non-judgmentally...to believing that the common good, and the common wealth are indeed the right and kind alternatives, then perhaps we could create a world where kindness wins over conquest, where diplomacy wins over bullets and bombs, where everyone has the basics to survive. If we took the trillion dollars we spend on soldiering everyday, and spread the wealth to those who have naught, then perhaps envy and jealousy would not manifest as theft and murder. Ah, just the musings of a lunatic, I fear.

We insist that we live in the greatest country on earth. Wouldn't it feel better if we were able to say that we live in the greatest world on earth? If we can resolve to commit to the needed paradigm shift, and generously and non-judgmentally share our bounty, then perhaps we could create such a place. Unfortunately, the alternative is the only thing we already have.

Boxing Day

2011-12-27T14:25:00.002-05:00

I count myself among those who have no idea what Boxing Day is about, but it does appear to be the day gifts were given to the less fortunate members of society; sort of a gifting day from those who can to those that can't shop at Macy's or Williams Sonoma. But I simply cannot limit it to that, so today, I have decided to take the gloves off, as well.

We are indeed a very stupid species, and I will attempt to explain and bolster this contention. It may have beeen De Tocqueville who said, "those who learned nothing yesterday, will undoubtedly repeat the same mistakes as they did yesterday". It seems to me that, as a species, we have gone day after day making the same mistakes. I will offer a few noted examples of yesterday's lessons to illustrate my point.

Money is the root of all evil

As I'm sure you are aware, belief is the mortal enemy of all things worthwhile. Money is actually not the villain here. It is our blind belief in its use and value that is the source of all things bad. It was bad enough when money was backed by gold, but now we place our misguided faith in worthless, pretty paper, and multi-sized, metallic discs (made you might note from our most worthless metals). It is almost belly laugh funny that we have accepted these trinkets (no less worthless that the beads traded for Manhattan) as the ultimate goal. The fortunate among us work all year for 100,000+ pieces of paper, whose worth is determined by the people we work for; by the people who dictate the quality of our very existence. I'll trade you Baltic Ave for Boardwalk if you can tell me how this makes any sense. That we assign arbitrary value to the costs of anything is ludicrous. The stuff it's made of was already here; we simply have to put it together. And the notion of scarcity as the driving force of value is almost schizophrenic. Anyone whose been to western Oregon can tell you that there is no scarcity of land in the US, yet you can easily shell out a million scraps of paper for shelter, which should be a basic human right. It should be ok... if I want to build a log home on the median strip of Route 128. Where does the 'Commonwealth' of Massachusetts get off telling me that they own that land. But I digress. Let's look at money for a few minutes. We sold the 'messiah' for a few bucks, yet given the scarcity of messiahs, he should have been worth a lot more. In strictly monetary terms, you average slave from west Africa was worth a whole lot more than the son of god. Shit, we fought a war over their 'value'. And automobiles amuse me as well. We are going to run out of gas sometime. And don't bring up the Prius, or the Volt. They still need oil, or the motors seize. Yet many of us will still spend the equivalent of the GNP of many of the world's countries on something that will be obsolete in this century. We have always taught our children to defer their gratification. Unfortunately, we are not setting the best example. So I will ask...why is it that we adopted such a ridiculous economic model, while maintaining that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? While most of you don't share my belief that we should dismantle all governments, perhaps you would consider this. Make government service volunteer. I mean, it's good enough for the kids we send off to die in useless wars (unless you consider the acquisition of more money a noble cause). Let's simply start over...and make shelter, food and medical care fundamental and cost-free human rights...world fucking wide. Let's throw heat and electricity in there as well. Guarantee each and every human being a standard of housing with land... a healthy needed-caloric-intake-level diet...the most advanced medical care. There need not be any monetary outlay. Take only what we need from the earth, and leave the earth what she needs. Yes, we have to chip in some labor, but we needn't assign any monetary value to it. We could simply say that it was the right and kind thing to do.

Look at it a different way. We are running out of things to do. We don't make things anymore, and computers can take over what manufacturing we have left. We need doctors, although we could use a few more who give a shit about their patients, and care a little less about their Mercedes (and maybe a few who seek cures that don't kill you). How many could that add up to?And yes we need software engineers, and trash collectors. And that's it. If we get rid of government, we get rid of lawyers, soldiers, spies. We get rid of religion, we get rid of differences. We get rid of countries, we get rid of boundaries. Most of us will be left to create what we can, create what we want. We might even find the happiness that seems elusive to all of us disconnected by trying to make more than the next guy.

Quantum mechanics, which most of us will never understand, leads logically and mathematically, to an phenomenon known as entanglement; where two particles, no matter how distantly removed, are connected across the multiverse. If such a thing exists, and it does, at the most fundamental level of our reality, then how can anyone deny that we are connected in even broader ways. It is simple construction. I, personally, know that this entanglement thing is the real deal, and I am a much happier pauper for it. Across the vast expanse, I learned that I have something of value to say...and should say it...even if everyone else thinks I'm a fool.

Happy Boxing Day everyone!

Eed...or the trouble with OWS

2011-12-02T09:07:00.002-05:00

My oldest and dearest friend was often called Keed in our younger days, and since our bond hearkens to those days of rhymes and baseballs, it is with thoughts of him that I begin this post. I seldom tell him of my troubles because I don't believe he needs to be burdened with them, but I always remember his birthday. And while he has fallen prey to the Florida political mindset...a slow erosion due to time and family focus...I do love him, and do not begrudge him his float in the flow.

Which brings me to Occupy Wall Street...

While I am certain that I am going to paint them in incorrect colors (primarily because I don't know enough about them), and I am certain that their intentions are noble, their leap of awareness is clearly inadequate. That they embrace change within the current paradigm is, at least for me, the signpost of their downfall.

Those of you who follow my life understand that I am blessed to be a member of both 99s; the long term unemployed, and the have-nots. I am eternally grateful to those (my family, my friends; notably GB and PD, SL, DN, and the nun) who have generously sustained me with food, shelter and funds, and love. Yet, within my limited purview, I am compelled to view the root causes of humanity's woes as much larger than the currently demonized villains.

As evidenced by the pepper spraying of Walmart raiders, and the hindsight popularity of legislating that our political representatives be subject to the same investment rules as the rest of us, it should be clear to any right-minded human that the demise of capitalism should be at hand. Throwing a five dollar toy in a box does not absolve us of the guilt we should bear, for the gross and abject grEED we accept as the main necessity of living. Our economy is based entirely on offering the possibility of acquisition to the masses, while maintaining the actuality that only a small percentage acquire. We continue to insist that acquisition is the ultimate goal; acquisition of paper and coin that are as imaginary as judeo-christian principles. In a world where manufacturing and heavy industry are things of the past, we continue to believe that we can create new jobs within those sectors. If you really look at the basis of 'successful' national economies, you have to realize that they are based on creating the perception that we nEED things that we do not. Tell me. Whose need is greater...your child's need of an iPad for christmas, or a five year old African child's need for AIDS drugs that are actually effective? As a society, we offer token charity to groups in which we have, in the very least, a perceived, vested interest. We donate millions for the eradication of breast cancer because we suffer from it; we offer a pittance for the eradication of malaria because it does not occur here. Our generosity is based, at least in part, on the old adage-out of sight, out of mind (and heart). We have bought into (or perhaps, have been led like lemmings) the belief that what we produce (and hence is attainable) possesses some inherent value. We treat depression (as if on a global scale we have any right to be depressed) with for-huge-profit drugs whose main side effect is the onset of suicidal tendencies. Am I really the only one who sees the irony here? As long as we continue to perceive that we are depressed, despite only insignificant causes for our depression, we will produce anti-depression drugs that will result in profit and suicides. Americans no longer really believe that we are lucky to live in a country that offers freedom; we have become entitled. We continue to insist that our children die to protect our freedom. Our children die because we allow it. We allow the 1% to convince us, using exaggerated AND imaginary threats to the land of the free. The simple truth is that we are no longer really free, because our freedom is defined externally, by the 1% who do not really want us to think for ourselves. We have become a society that ignorantly, and blindly, believe what we are told to believe; and at the core, we believe that grEED is good.

Now I have always held that there are really no new ideas, but I am changing my mind. It is clear to me that as a species, it is time to move to an 'economy' that is based on the needs of the many. I am not advocating a communist approach, because communism has shown itself as merely another ideology that creates the same 1%. I am advocating, however, a communal approach, based on the needs of the many, actualized in small, direct-contact communities. This, of course, would require the dissolution of all nations and their governments. If nations and their governments have shown us anything, it is that the few cannot, or will not, do what is kind and right for the many; the many that they govern. There are reasons for this, primarily that humans cannot do big. Despite the popularity of facebook, and other social networks, actual connection is limited to small groups. No one, beyond people selling something, are friend-ed in large groups, and that only occurs because we foolishly believe that they have something we need. If the Senate, and the House of Representatives, have shown us anything, it is that small groups can take care of themselves.

So OWS. I like you, but it's time to bask in what you, as a small group, share. It's clear, that when you get right down to it, that you have nothing in 'common' with Goldman Sachs. Un-friend them today.

Ch...ch...ch...changes

2011-10-13T08:46:00.003-04:00

Good morning, good reader. The nun says I've changed. She says I may be a better man, but I'm not the same man I was. This gave me pause to consider if it was true, as she has a way of seeing things that other people don't see...or at least seeing things from angles that other people don't possess. So I've been spending much of the morning (and I confess...a few sleepless hours) pondering how I may have been different when we first dove into our ocean, and sadly, after resisting and self-immolating, I do believe she is right.

Life changes us in ways we don't see, mostly because we spend so much time in places we haven't gotten to yet. We forget to spend time where we are, or, at the very least, ignore where we are and fixate on where we might be going, without having any idea where we might be going. One of the truest things I know about life is that it seldom allows us to hopscotch along without an occasional baseball bat to the head. These painful disruptions to the flow of our misguided perception of direction, lead us to believe that we actually can meticulously map out our own lives. This, of course, is pure piffle, and I do believe that I have lost sight of the gift life does allow us. I've stopped moving. I've let my body forget how to progress. Perhaps it is the discouragement and disappointment of being penniless...of wanting to do things for the Little Man that I can no longer do...or of wanting to create a life that I do not have the faith to create. I think it's a little bit of all of that, but the end result is that I am stultified...immobilized...petrified...and inert.

Life really only gives us one gift. A body in which to move towards our possibilities. Eyes to keep open... to see what might be there. Ears to listen... for their echoes. Touch...to gently caress their soft tender cheeks. Taste...to savor their wonder. Smell...to perceive the pending blossom. And within that body lies the greatest of the parts...the heart and the brain. I have said it before, but failure to integrate those two organs is the source of unhappiness.

Life really only has one purpose, and that is to create. The power of the heart and mind lies in the ability to intuit the pending, and to create new from the unknown. With much regret, I realized today that I had forgotten that. And so today...right in this very moment...I can announce the end and the beginning of my life. I will be whole. I will move. It is destined that I create my own happiness. I am happy.

IRAs

2011-09-27T11:08:00.002-04:00

Yes, dear friend. I have been away for a while, but, prodded by the events of yesterday, I feel compelled to share.

It is remarkable to me how unusual connections appear at seemingly ridiculous moments. I was just sitting at South Station yesterday, having returned from Oregon, simply waiting for my train, when I was approached by two surveyors who wanted my opinion of our attitudes regarding planning for retirement. The odds of asking a homeless guy this question are phantasmagorical. Yet, I was gracious, and perhaps a bit profound (two other complete strangers approached to let me know that they agreed with everything I had said), and given that I was feeling rather sad, the optimistic nature of my answers surprised me. It also led me to offer some of it here.

There is nothing new in anything I had to say. I let them know that my basic belief is that greed is what rules the world, yet we all have a choice not to be greedy. And, as I had been sitting there simply watching the dour looks on peoples faces, I began to understand why, at least viscerally. People are simply scared shitless. And we all suffer from the same unfounded phobias; that you will arrive at old age with nowhere to go preeminent among them.

For the most part, old people are cast away in America. Gone are the days of respect for your elders, and respect for their acquired knowledge. And given how stupid most of them really are, this is somewhat justifiable. Let me explain.

Greed is simply fueled by fear, and fear itself is our greatest motivator. This of course is why the 'christian' majority in this country does not actually heed the words of Jesus H; specifically regarding our duty to care for those who have less or nothing. Fuck 'em is the synonym for laissez faire christianity, unless of course, the poverty stricken heathens convert. Be like me...or I won't help you!

Now, going back to my pollsters. I do believe that I delighted them, but I wish they had approached me after I watched Brian Williams piece on fixing education in this country. While educational advocates proffered the idea of doubling the starting salary of all teachers, out pols in Washington went straight to the party line of cutting costs. Of course, nether are correct, but the true sin here lies with the old fucks who run this country. Given the projections for job security, oil reserves, and Wall Street protests, these dinosaurs happily reside in the belief that what was education for them is good for the thieves of tomorrow. And that might very well be true, but, what of the rest. Given the specialization and specificity of our current educational model, we will either wind up with too many people studying the biological makeup of tree frog scat, or a population of very stupid people with self worth issues.

It is time to offer our children the benefit of creative thinking again; to allow the 'out of nowhere' thinking of Isaac Newton, or Albert Einstein, or Descartes, or Michel de Montaigne to flourish in the minds of our children; to teach them to understand why math works so elegantly, why the top tier of physicists almost universally accept the spiritual connectivity of the universe, and why taking care of each other should be the dominant theme of our future path.

Somewhere, in everything I have ever written, lie the solutions to all our problems. Bringing creative thinking, and kindness, back into our approach would be a good start, settling into the connectivity which actually provides happiness wouldn't be bad either. But until we do, universally, we will continue to be driven by the fear, and greedy, self protection, that consumes our current attitudes.

Holographic Reality

2011-07-25T15:01:00.003-04:00

In the continuing tradition of the Great Triad, I would like to submit the following post without the slightest understanding of the subject, and without any further research that might help clarify my confusion. Nonetheless, it is conjectured by an eminent physicist (not Stephen Hawking...it's the other guy, who used to be a plumber) that reality is merely a holographic projection from an event horizon of some extremely distant black hole. This all stems, of course, from the universally accepted Law of the Conservation of Information. Since nothing that enters a black hole can ever be retrieved, it is believed that even three-dimensional information can be stored on the event horizon of a black hole, converted to a two-dimensional data byte which is embedded within the event horizon, thereby assuring that the information is conserved within that which we perceive to be our universe, which is actually a projection from said event horizon, and therefore, nor real at all, except to us, who are also projections from the same place, I think. This theory, of course, has enormous ramifications for homophobes (after all, if our reality is merely a projection of ancient information stored at a gazillion -year-old black hole, then logically homosexuality has existed for at least a gazillion years) and right-wing christians (hence, Jesus didn't die for our sins, he died a gazillion years ago when homosexuality already existed; might have been a fag himself---rest easy all you contradicted televangelists) alike. Now clearly, the universe created for these black holes as a massive storage device. It would appear however, that it forgot to create an effective spam filter. Now I can only guess how all this information congealed itself into this thing we call our universe, but I'm guessing gamma rays. By my logic, that makes gamma rays god...so let's dispense with creationism and embrace the gamma ray (even though it has manifested as a deadly force in our hologram) as the god particle we spent billions of dollars to find with the Large Hadron collider. Enough said of the mechanism involved in the creation of the universe, and accept that finally we have a reasonable expectation of understanding reincarnation, and accept the blatantly obvious fact that we are all created equal in this illusory reality. But that really isn't the point of this post, is it?

No, the point of this post is to announce that, because I have accepted that our holographic reality is merely an illusory projection of ancient information, assembled into a chaotic data stream of conflicting bits, I have decided to secede from the human race, as, by definition, the human race is as illusory as reality. Just fly me to the moon, or to 4C +37.11, as a suspected binary black hole tandem, which must be the source of our universe, as its binary nature is the only thing that can explain why this universe is so fucked up. The data stream clearly needs some new logic gates. Perhaps logic gates that can discern between love, and slamming your newborn into a sidewalk, or maybe hanging an 8 year old boy.

Perhaps it is true that good cannot exist without evil, or that good and evil are really the same thing, but I have to believe that there are event horizons out there emitting clearer information...maybe even kinder information. Or maybe, if we look hard enough, we just might find that we have been provided the information to sort all this out. Until we do, however, I'm not coming back to humanity. I will become the stranger in a strange land. Or maybe I should just become a plumber.

Awakening

2011-06-27T14:30:00.003-04:00

I awoke this morning. It was not the sun shining in my room. It was not the sound of birds singing, or squirrels chattering. It was not my lover's gentle stroke. No earthquake, no volcanic eruption, no tornadic winds. No, it was lawnmowers. And while I awoke rested and happy, I was possessed of an almost homicidal urge to rid the world of landscapers. And I asked myself..."where have we awakened to?"

There is no doubt that many of us have reached an epiphanic turn on the evolutionary path. The pyrate believes we sit on the cusp of a global awakening; nurtured by the mother spirit guide. The nun...well, she already evolved past my imaginings; evolved without a pretending bone in her body. Yet when I opened the Boston Globe to last Monday's editorial page, I was slapped in the kisser by a piece proclaiming that by losing touch with the equinox...the rhythms of sun and moon...we have lost touch with where we belong. Think perhaps it's time to go live with the Kombai.

Anyway, the point is that even a pseudo-liberal (albeit staunchly conservative on the grand spectrum) publication like the Globe...is willing to concede that we made a wrong turn, and are, in essence fucked up, and lost. Up the proverbial creek...not only without a paddle...but without water either. For our creeks and rivers are only fed by Dasani now, and regulated by the most deluded agency of all, the Army Corps of Engineers (Hello, Minot).

The creator made a huge mistake giving us the desire to learn and explore all the things we cannot understand, while omitting a crucial amino bond on the holy double helix. I think he simply forgot a sequence on the DNA ladder which might have allowed us to remember what we know at birth; that we are simply creatures gifted this beautiful planet, whether by grand design, or serendipity. The universal humility gene. Yeah, that's what's missing.

So here we sit...unaware that technology (especially the zero turn lawnmower) is killing us; separating us from the very blood of life...the gifts of nature. Our failure is the result of a fairly simple equation, and stems from out haughty belief that we know what better is. We have created this illusion that we call perception; we constantly seek to refine our knowledge of how this universe works, and as we specialize more and more, we come to believe that we are the masters. We are not. We are simply a piece of a grand puzzle...the piece of the jigsaw which fits as it was designed...its cocks and cunts dropped in the proper place. When we try to alter our shape...change our appendages and cavities...we make it impossible for all the other pieces to lay where they belong. We corrupt the synchronicity of life by trying to improve it. If you don't believe me, check the side effects of the medications you're taking, and look and see how many 'primitive' peoples are free of cancer and heart disease. Go outside and look at your SUV, and ask yourself if bigger is really better. In fact, ask yourself if easier is really better. Ask yourself why drug companies have invested so heavily in the rain forests. It is simply so they can profit from what the earth has already given us. Yes the natural world can kill us, but it can also save us, if we can begin to view it as a gift, rather than a source of profit. And try to understand, as the light of day only begins to fade at 8:30 or 9:00, in the wake of the summer solstice...that the earth works this way so that she may provide us with what we need to thrive. She gives it. We aren't supposed to steal it, or hoard it, or use it to divide and conquer.

Alas, perhaps it is too late. There are grey whales off the coast of Israel, deadly tornadoes in Massachusetts, and floods created by mankind in North Dakota, new strains of toxic e. coli in bean sprouts...not to mention people committing crimes to gain access to health care in prison. We have made the bed we lay in as a species. So, by all means, sate yourself with Dasani, and piss on the sheets.

As we know it

2011-05-31T15:02:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to post here for a bit; actually, since I woke up a few Sundays ago and the world was still here. As you know, the Great Triad has, on occasion, offered some disparaging remarks regarding that other trinity, but I would, at this time, like to emphasize that I have no problem with Jeezum Crow whatsoever; my problem rests solely with the morons who make him more than he is. "He's just a man...and I've loved so many men before..." On that note, let me just say that I wish the rapture had arrived, because then we would be rid of all those bible-thumping pea-brains. Shit, hell on earth would be much easier to take without them around. (Aside: I have found myself enraptured many times over the last several years, and I do believe the rapture, when it arrives, will be easily recognized for the vagina that it is. And the believers will be called to it as a bright light of joy in the sky...or in my mouth...or in my hands...). Which brings me to memorial day.

It was indeed instituted to honor the fallen killed during the Civil War. However, I am not ready to honor any dead people. If they were so good and smart, they wouldn't be dead. And that can be said of any soldier, although in the absence of cause or ideal, the notion of modern day valor seems specious at best. Don't really want to run on about how greed is the only modern ideal, so I'm not going to. We fight wars simply to enlarge or preserve. War boosts the economy. But if you want to look at it with a discerning eye for a minute, you will see that war has done nothing for mankind other than limit population growth. And before you start to think that I hate soldiers...STOP. I don't have anything but respect for soldiers, as I do for any other human being. It's you I can't stand. You know who you are. You're the guy who glorifies war...the guy who believes that fighting for a glorious cause is noble. The fucking idiot who still believes his son died to protect his freedom. He didn't. Your son (or daughter) dies for the Shrub...or for Standard Oil or Smith Kline...and for their right, their freedom, to fuck you in the ass whenever and wherever they please...no lubrication.

So next year, why not try to live memorial day with memory, unclouded by the hype or spin or outright lie. Trust the way you remember that bullet flying past your ear, or your child's death. And try to remember that the fella or gal on the other side was feeling exactly the same way. And what did it get you...what did it get us...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Say it again... and again and again...........Cheeseburger anyone? Now that's heaven!

Hierarchy...Up and Down

2011-04-18T09:48:00.003-04:00

There are very few very smart people on this planet. The standard bell curve should suffice, as an example, although I would paint the peak at an an enormously great altitude, as the vast majority of humans fall squarely dead center. So, it is really no small wonder that the single most attractive human trait for most people is greed. In smaller environments, this would not present much of a problem, but this planet is not comprised of micropopulations; we have historically tended to macrogroups i.e. countries, armies, monopolies etc...

Now, we can examine this from top to bottom, or bottom to top. It really makes no difference. The motivation of greed works equally well at either end of the spectrum; which is why most of the wealth in this country (world, too) is concentrated in a very small minority. It is also why we have an inordinate number of landscapers (apologies to any master gardeners). Whether we garner wealth by subjugating, or simply taking advantage of, the unclean masses, or by mowing lawns for a living, makes no fundamental difference. The simple fact remains, in the vast majority of cases, that either an ultra-greedy minority is using loopholes and deception to acquire and retain wealth, or an ultra-stupid minority is overcharging us to maintain our most ridiculous desires (read: green lawns). So the real question that arises is 'Why are most of us so easily duped?'. The answer is no less simple. People do not really like to belong to large groups. So whether we look at the migration to cities after the industrial revolution, or the lemming-like flow into the virtual reality of the internet, it can be clearly shown that we are moving in directions contrary to our nature. In the same vein, it can also be shown that religion is the mortal enemy of the human population. In short, as a species we are always striving toward a unity...a commonality...and therefore, we join groups, be it churches or countries, to find community. However, these megagroups also come with creeds and rules that only serve to further isolate us. I listened to a sermon the other day, the thrust of which was that belief is the mortal enemy of religion. I would take that a bit farther. Belief is the mortal enemy of our very existence . Please understand that I believe this holds true for the religious majors and all those transcendentals too. There are no differences in the rigidity of beliefs, no matter what they may be. By their very nature, all belief is conjecture and guesswork; no foundation in reality. And their sole result and purpose is to divide.

So anyway, the sermon continued to say that religion should be founded on finding our way to a loving life in the absence of belief. And this made sense to me, except for the details. Seems the guy who wrote it thinks that we need to discover what love is in this life, which of course is completely wrong. Love is the one gift life gives us at birth. It is the creeds and belief systems that narrow its embrace. We are born into love (at least in most instances...this of course does not contradict my BELIEF that most people shouldn't have children). Love is there from the moment of conception, waiting to surround each child as he/she emerges into the turmoil of life. Fact is, parents teach children not to love. They teach their children what they believe love should look like. Surprise, people...the infant already knows.

Which takes me back to large social structures. Nations fight to keep what's theirs. No other reason. There is beyond any doubt a thing called national greed. All nations, based on their economics, are cursed by it. And nothing removes the hope of paradise more than 'loving' life based on economic gain. The United States foments wars in the name of preserving their national ideals (read:money). The notion that we are a generous nation is refuted constantly by our willingness to kill people to preserve our wealth. Sure, we call it democracy, but its really murder for hire.

Churches do the same thing. The Catholic church is responsible for ruining or ending more lives than all nations combined. Certainly, in their 'come back' commercials, they try to stress the good things they've done. But their good comes wrapped in spreading their restrictive creed. Pick any other religion and you'll find similar results, except for the Buddhists who seem to think they can transcend their realities; transcend suffering by relinquishing desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. We have simply misdirected it, all in the name of belief. Perhaps each of us should spend a little time today realizing we know absolutely nothing, and that our beliefs are based on an inherent lack of knowledge. It seems ludicrous to base our beliefs on what we don't know. If that is most people's view of faith, then I want no part of it. I have my own kind of faith. While it is true that each of us may possess some narrow knowledge, like the mating habits of Brazilian tree frogs, the restricted nature of what we know should feed our humility, not our egos. The truth of the matter is that no matter how much we seek, the fundamental rule of the universe is that there are lots of things we are destined not to know.

When I was a much younger man, I had thoughts of seceding from the union. I still think it's a good idea, and I am considering forming a group of people to populate my new entity. But I'm simply having a hard time finding enough people to offer citizenship. Some are too stupid, some are too cruel, some are simply clueless, and most are simply willing to let life live them. So go on believing if you want, until you find that your life is empty, and your whole life has been a lie; a lie you've told yourself. The only belief that I choose to hold onto is that I don't know anything...and I'm happier for it.

Apolitical

2011-03-31T14:47:00.003-04:00

Those of you who know me should realize that I am, for the most part, apolitical; at least in the sense that I stay away from politics. But...that being said...you should read James Carroll's piece in Monday's Boston Globe. Moving forward, if you do know me, then you know that I am always right...and way ahead of my time...and there is nothing in his article that I didn't state eloquently 20 or 30 years ago (except for some analytical shit about the Balkans). But he does use one interesting fact in support of his premise (which, by the way, is that in American foreign policy...talk is cheap, and might makes right, and not only is it an illusion, but it is wrong). Anyway, back to the fact. There are more personnel employed in a single US carrier group (and we have eleven of them) than there are in the entire diplomatic corps. Personally, this astounds me. I would have surmised that there must be more overvalued Harvard and Yale graduates than that; more men and women in blue blazers and plaid pants than in the entire US military. But there is a first time for everything. I guess in this supposition I was wrong. Also, the United States military expenditures are ten times that of our nearest competitor. Carroll is right. We are ruled by the military.

In an adjacent editorial, John Sununu contends that the press is overlooking the natural tragedy in Japan, and overemphasizing the nuclear disaster, in favor of the more fear mongering and newsworthy spectacle. And he may be right, except for the fact that the nuclear disaster in Japan is merely another example of people killing people (in the name of corporate profit). I can accept natural disasters. Nature is, despite our haughtiness, beyond our control. Killing other people is something we do, and is completely avoidable.

In a third article, somewhere else in the paper, it is illustrated that babies have an innate understanding of the laws of probabilities. Babies are born as natural quantum physicists, fully capable of intuiting the serendipity the universe throws our way. Yet we, as if we know anything, continue to believe that the best course of action is to educate their natural creativity and intuition right out of them. The sooner the better. Go read Orbiting the Giant Hairball.

Anyway, in some convoluted way, all three of these articles tie together in my mind. And I am left with a few clear thoughts (highly unusual for me). The first? That most people, in every country, never even imagine killing another person. Yet we, in America, insist on believing that if there is a problem elsewhere in the world, whether it is our 'business' or not, the best way to handle it is to blast em with military might. We don't negotiate with anyone. Second? It is time to revamp all public and private educational systems. What we know will in no way benefit our children, given the misunderstood world that is pending on their horizon. Computers are smarter than they are, and all the knowledge we possess now will be obsolete by the time we teach it to them. Third, and perhaps most important? That I would rather be creative and intuitive than credentialed and profitable. All our paradigms need to shift. We owe it to the future. We've already fully desecrated the past. And we all know it. Even Barack Obama.

Discovery

2011-03-08T14:17:00.004-05:00

Homelessness isn't all it's cracked up to be, but it does offer opportunities to discover things that were previously unlikely. For instance, I discovered that I am reluctant to apologize for things that have nothing to do with me; except that I have inadvertently burdened someone close to me with a lifelong regret. The question that arose from the experience? Am I responsible for others' perceptions of my actions or inactions? The answer is yes...although I do need to be made aware of it. It would appear that somone else's dream was affected deeply by their perception that I didn't do the right thing. Honestly, it is my recollection that I did do the right thing, but perhaps, at age 15, I wasn't sure what the right thing was, or maybe, I didn't sufficiently offer a full explanation of my actions. Bottom line--I'm not sure--my long term memory is not detailed enough. Not sure my brain is.

But more importantly, I discovered that the State of Vermont finds it necessary to dye its public toilet water, at least in the rest areas on their highways. I found a great deal of comfort from their explanation, which I read while peeing. It read, and I paraphrase..."Why is the water in this toilet dyed?(a lovely deep blue, the color of glacial lakes fresh after the onset of spring thaw). It is to let you know that the water in this toilet is non-potable." Now I may not have a place to live, but due to the kindness of family and friend alike, I do at least have a roof over my head. And certainly, I have not been reduced to drinking water from toilets. In fact, I don't need to use toilet water for anything...cooking soft boiled eggs...washing up...brushing my teeth...and, even if I did, I do believe that I would seek out toilet water in warmer climes. Three feet of snow and single digit temperatures simply conflict with the act of drinking from commodes, at least in my humble opinion.

There are other benefits to being homeless. For instance, if it indeed is true that ejaculation saps the body and spirit of vital energy (the life force, so to speak), then clearly I am more energetically charged, as my access to both flesh and porn have been severely reduced. And, jeezum crow, the coffee has been much better, and I even learned how to brew it in a french press. All in all, things are ok.

So, as spring approaches, I do hope it brings you all refreshing moist and warm, and all the colors of blooms. It is the perfect time of year for starting fresh.

Some Overdue Musings

2011-02-17T11:50:00.003-05:00

While walking into the library today, I noticed an elephant in a tree, and for whatever reason, perhaps because an elephant never forgets, I was reminded that I hadn't posted here in quite some time. There is a lot going on in the angel's life, and I feel like sputtering. So...let's leave aside for the moment my pending homelessness, and concentrate on what I have been learning. The most obvious, at least by my standards, is that my writing skills and imagination are unsurpassed. I hope, in the next few days, to be sending the first phase of my new novel to a few choice friends...just looking for a yea or nay...I would/would not be interested in reading more. Secondly, upon careful observation, I have learned that squirrels really don't do anything except run around and eat. Not a bad life. And I have also learned to be thankful...thankful from learning that I should be long dead when the singularity arrives circa 2045. Also, I have been reading the Alexandria Quartet, which has made me feel remarkably stupid but acutely aware of my own talents. I do wish I spoke another language. I do wish I had availed myself of the opportunities to live in a foreign country.

I am afraid for the life available to my children. We are so enamored of progress, and so afraid of what is present in any moment. We spend our lives in future drive when what we crave exists right now. Which also explains why wealthier people will buy anything, as long as it has the proper label attached. It also explains why I feel no need to justify anything I say.

Even though I have no philosophical bent towards organic foods, I am seriously considering woofing. It does seem to offer an opportunity to simply live life, and to live life simply...and perhaps find the hearts hidden in the flow...hopefully accompanied by some brain as well.

So, as the final half of my life flows on, I am going to dedicate myself to being the creative being that I am, in whatever circumstances present. Create for the sheer joy of it...to embrace life ineluctably...thank you, JJ...for the torment and the word. That's all, folks.

Ha Ha, fooled ya. Had to return, as in the very few moments that have passed, I learned something new. I learned that I have no objections to dogs shitting on the pavement. It's what they do. And, if you really think about it, that's all we have done, as a species, in the brief millennia of our existence. And for a change, I choose not to judge it...I choose to simply observe.

God.....Ha!

2011-01-14T14:08:00.002-05:00

As I am often inspired by the nun's blithering, it should come as no surprise that I am writing this post. Her contention is that since there exists no boundary between any quanta in the universe (read:atom to atom, muon to muon, cheek to cheek), that there is an infinite connection between all things, and since all things are connected, everything is one, and no matter what you call it, it has to be god. So, according her, we are all, we are one, we are god. Piffle, I say. In my limited perception of the universe, there may be no boundary between anything, but since the rational distance between nucleus and orbiting electron is in the same range as earth to alpha centauri, this should prove once and for all, that the basic tenet and goal of the Great Triad (the acceptance and attainment of nothing) is confirmed. While electrons may collide and bosons simply appear, these events occur in vast empty spaces, vast voids. The majority of universal space is empty. It is the emptiness, this randomness of matter, that allows for the existence of everything we perceive as real. The farther down you go on the matter chain, the less there is to see. If you were to sit on the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, you wouldn't even be aware that any electrons existed. Too far away. You would be aware only of your current stoop, and a vast void. Perhaps the universe we 'see' is yet another quantum particle in a larger 'reality', a reality so far beyond the emptiness, that it is imperceptible. Of course, this only accounts for perception in three dimensions, but in that limited purview, the vastness of the nothing is bi-directional. As realities become larger and larger, telescopes and microscopes both shatter past the limits of capability. And I'm sorry, but even if we ever evolve to the point where we are using all of our brain, we will still only be permitted to perceive the emptiness that exists beyond vision, and we will never be able to understand it.

If you can follow my reasoning, and I'm not even certain that I can, it should be obvious that the most pervasive quality of everything is nothing. And this presents the most cogent argument for denying the existence of god, and further enhances the reasoning that caused us to create god in the first place. If god were to exist within the powers of our perception, then we would be allowed to do what we, as humans, do best...absolve ourselves of any culpability...in other words...DO NOTHING.

On the softer side of all this balderdash, of all this unprovable conjecture, are the simpler realities I choose to dwell in. She offers me thought, she tickles my laughter, she ignites my heart, explodes my containers, she paints my smiles, delights my appetites, and hears my listens, she hauls away my refuse, and softens my harsh...and the most remarkable thing of all...she actually does nothing; at least nothing to animate everything she does. I do all these things. It has nothing to do with her. She is simply the great white void that reveals all my masterpieces, and I pray, that offer her the same emptiness.

So, just to reiterate one last time, nothing begets everything, and I am a very lucky man to be floating in her vast empty spaces. I have nothing, and I bless myself.

The Wrong Turn on the Evolutionary Path

2010-12-30T12:31:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-23T17:06:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-13T15:17:00.001-05:00

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

2010-12-10T15:35:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-08T16:10:00.003-05:00

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

2010-12-02T17:08:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-01T16:24:00.003-05:00

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

2010-11-29T09:57:00.003-05:00

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

2010-11-20T16:24:00.002-05:00

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

2010-11-14T11:10:00.004-05:00

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

2010-11-12T00:25:00.002-05:00

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

2010-10-30T16:34:00.004-04:00

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

2010-10-29T09:24:00.004-04:00

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

2010-10-26T09:44:00.003-04:00

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

2010-10-20T20:33:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-16T10:13:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-07T10:56:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-30T22:49:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-23T08:08:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-19T22:30:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-08T12:28:00.000-04:00

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

2010-09-01T22:21:00.000-04:00

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!

Freedom Redux

2010-08-26T10:07:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly certain that this post will piss off the masses, but for me it is just further 'proof' that myopia, at least in the US, is right up there, with cancer and heart disease, on the list of 'most debilitating diseases'.

We, as citizens of this 'great' country, are as blind and stupid as any mole or lemming has ever aspired to be. We are guided by an ideal that no longer belongs to all but a very few. So, in defense of this assertion, I give you what for me has become the most aggravating statement of all---'They are fighting to preserve my freedom'.

The men and women of our armed forces are no more fighting for my freedom, or yours, than Rush Limbaugh pumped up on amphetamines, although in order for anyone to be fighting for it, it would need to actually exist. Long ago, we gave up any right to call ourselves free, and as long as our freedom is defined and dictated by the real movers and shakers (and by this I mean oil companies, drug companies, financial markets...fuck, I guess I just mean capitalism in general), the lives we lead will continue to devolve upon the extremely narrow path that they allow us. War, beyond all its evils, is simply a profit-making machine, at least for those at the top of the economic hierarchy, and we ordinary citizens pay the piper with the lives of our sons and daughters. And we do it as though it is the most natural thing to do, believing that it is somehow right, believing fallaciously that it is for the benefit of all of us. We cling to the notion of 'common wealth' despite idly sitting by as job markets, housing markets, all markets (not to mention oil rigs) crumble into ashes.

You do have the freedom to continue to believe, but tell me...who is trying to take that away? Yes, you can continue to believe if you choose to, but take a moment, if you will, and examine what they want you to believe in...that a lottery ticket will bring you happiness...that your fat ass child might become the next American Idol...that BP is cleaning up the Gulf out of the kindness of their hearts...that whole grain Chef Boyardee ravioli is good for your kids...that Barack Obama is not just another good ol' boy.

There are only two economic classes remaining in this country...the sinful rich...and everyone else who will never quite get there. We continue to reach out for the holy grail of acquisition, as we go to work each day (at least those who have jobs), in search of the American dream, convinced by the pablum flow that we need more. We all need the same things. None of us need more. And those at the top...the sinful rich...will continue to use the power we give them, to make certain that we never get the things we really need...things like a better life, or a life at all, for our children. The lives of our sons and daughters are worth no more to BP or Smith-Kline than the dollar bill we chase after every day.

So, go on, and continue to believe, as you swallow your next anti-depressant, fully aware that chemically, you feel much better, despite knowing that it might be exploding you stomach, irritating your bowels, increasing your odds of stroking out, decreasing your urine flow, deflating your erection, rotting your liver, stealing you hope, and bringing you a giant step closer to unavoidable death. Don't worry. There's another pill for all those things. We treat symptoms, symptoms that are created for us, because as long as there are symptoms, there is always the possibility of future profits. You can count on your fingers the number of eradicated diseases, because there is no profit in eradicating them. And don't try to tell me that we are not smart enough. The choice has always been to be smart enough to be greedy enough. Go ahead...ask your doctor.

Can I give you a better way? Probably not, but there is one. I don't know what it looks like, but I do know what it contains. It contains genuine concern for every other being on this planet. It contains an altruistic devotion to the common good. It provides for the needs of every living creature on this planet. It ensures the survival of this planet. It sees a common future...a good future...for everyone.

I treated myself to a little pablum flow the other night. I watched the movie 2012. It contained this memorable quote, which I am making up: "Being human is caring about everyone else". Hold on while I laugh hysterically and roll on the floor for a while. You don't give a flying fuck about me...nor do I give a rat's ass about you. If we did, we would choose to live life caring. We would choose to care more about kids than we care about stray dogs. We would choose to cure disease instead of treating it. Who know? Maybe there's a pill for that. Or maybe a nice little war. Or maybe I just need new glasses.

The Value of Television

2010-08-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

Beyond its capacity to pass endless hours, vacating our brains of any cogent thought, television does provide a wealth of information, albeit cloaked within a subliminal, mind-numbing, devilish assumption, that being the general belief that we, as humans, cannot absorb it in any sort of orderly, logical manner, thereby serving no redeeming purpose at all.

That being said, I did watch Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story the other day, and while it did reinforce my dislike of its pedantic, bombastic director, and while it also informed me that Walmart employees are worth more dead than alive, it also provided much of the fodder for this post, and for that I am grateful.

I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but I can categorically impugn this nation for its almost universal acceptance of myth (a myth being something patently false that we have been taught or believe to be true). Foremost among these myths are the Jesus story, the greatness of America, and the nutritional guidelines of McDonald's cheeseburgers.

In the gnostic gospel according to Judas, not only was Judas' betrayal of Christ painted as the ultimate, altruistic sacrifice, but Judas himself is portrayed as the best and brightest of the disciples. Of course, this book could never be included in the New Testament, because in it, Jesus tells Judas that he is only betraying the human body of Jesus, not the son of god part, and while there were centuries of debate, under the Roman emperor Constantine's guidance, it was finally decided at the Council of Hippo which books of apostolic writing would provide the most digestible pablum for the plebeian masses, setting the foundation, still in effect to this day, of letting the fat cats decide for the rest of us. Constantine needed to figure out what to do with popular perceptions of the rogue messiah, so he figured he might as well keep his absolute power intact, and the bible seemed as good a way as any.

Which leads me to the 'melting pot' perception of America. While I truly believe that at one time we did embrace this notion, the fact remains that we are now a nation comprised of diverse, homogenized, xenophobic self-interest groups, the worst of which is the typical nuclear family. Yeah, that's right! I'm talking about that mom-dad-kids thing. Of course I believe that kids need parents, but the family itself has become representative of the single greatest retreat from truth. It has become so grossly insular, so firmly rooted in the personalization of truth, so centered around the accumulation of personal wealth, that it is destroying the very foundations of the good ol' USA. If you need further proof, take a moment to consider the aluminum baseball bat. We routinely shell out $200 or more, in the hopes that our child might become better than we were, not wanting to burden them with the cumbersome weight of wood, knowing full well that these bats have caused the deaths of countless little leaguers. You see...it's all about the family. In the preamble to our constitution, you will find the words 'to promote the general welfare'. Clearly, where family is concerned, this is not the case.

Nor is it the case with nations. In my ever so humble opinion, the abolition of all borders is the only thing that will save us...and by this I mean family, town, social and national borders. OK...that's an old post. No need to rehash.

Which leads me to the point of this entire essay. There isn't a prayer in hell that we are ever going to send humans to Mars. First of all, given our current technology, it would take over a year to get there, and over a year to get back. And that's not even considering that the planets need to be aligned just so...before we can begin the journey back. So, whether we ask a group of just men...or just women...or an equal mix of the two, the group dynamic does not bode well for success. I mean, we'd be asking these people to go two and a half years, or more...without sex. There have already been several incidents of crew mutiny in various deep space adventures, and they occurred in trips of only a few months. We're talking close quarters here, with nothing to do, and nowhere to hide, and a long, long time. So, if we send all men, they are either going to kill each other, or revamp their sexual preference...or that capsule is going to reek of that musky smell of surreptitiously disposed Kleenex. And if they send all women, they better pack a few hundred cases of chardonnay...and Kleenex. And in order to send an even mix, we either have to abandon the ridiculous notions we have about sex, or be ready for the single greatest incident of bilateral sexual harassment suits this nation has ever seen.

And that takes me back to the movie...one shining example of an employee shared company, where all the workers shared equally in the profits, and the company thrived. No ponzi schemes, no stock options, no hierarchy. Just a bunch of people, realizing they don't need everything...realizing they just need what they have...promoting the general welfare.

A Very Big Decision

2010-08-09T13:39:00.000-04:00

I reached a major decision today, one that will greatly affect my life, and, should also eradicate 99.9% of the world's problems. I found myself distracted from the grand undertakings of the chronically unemployed by a small spider climbing up my wall, googled a bit, and took a sacred oath that I will no longer masturbate. No, dear reader, this is not a tantric choice. I am not trying to retain the gobs of energy released in a self indulgent orgasm. Nor, indeed, did it arise from a most astounding declaration, offered by my best friend, that, despite my man breasts, despite my overhanging gut, despite my male pattern baldness and despite my normal sized penis, that I am the sexiest man alive. No, I am not saving myself to share the wealth, so to speak. Although, sharing the wealth is indeed at its core. It is a decision reached after several seconds of logical mindplay, as huge numbers clicked off in rarely used neurons of my brain, bringing to bear the pittance of information that I can recall from my last macroeconomics course. Yes, dear readers, if it isn't obvious by now, I based my decision entirely on the ethical and economic consequences of, what I now consider, the single biggest obstacle to a loving and equitable world...toilet paper.

Ah, you think I mock you, but let me assure you that I am not. This is serious business. For those of you living in Eritrea or Chad, where there exist no sanitary facilities of any kind, let me assure you that I can understand the doubting laughter gurgling from your diaphragms, but, if you will allow me to illustrate, I will present a compelling case in favor of 'eliminating' toilet paper entirely from the global mindset (I am not advocating a return to saturated corncobs, or arctic mosses, or even banyan leaves...it's just that I think, given that we can create computers more capable than the human brain, that we can invent a less impactful substitute). So, let's start with the numbers.

In order to keep up with world demand, we currently produce over 83 million rolls of toilet paper per day...over 30 billion rolls per year. Admit it...those numbers are staggering. In the United States alone, we spend over $6 billion per year to keep our asses clean. I think you will agree that there are better places for that kind of money. And let me digress for just a moment, and offer my hearfelt gratitude to those of you doing your share...the 60% that are folders. I myself am a quadruple folder, but I believe that triple folders are the norm (It is also interesting to note that 60% of you are also lookers).

So, let's assume that the remainder of the world in its entirety,uses half again as much toilet paper (India, for example, spends only a tenth of what the US spends, but...well, I saw Slumdog Millionaire too). That would bring annual expenditures on toilet paper to 9 0r 10 billion dollars worldwide. Over a 25 year period, that's a quarter of a trillion dollars, not enough to balance the budget, but, I am certain that whether you are a front-to-back-er, or a back-to-front-er, a folder, a looker, or a crumpler, that there are much more needed things worldwide that we could spend the money on. I leave it to you to decide where it goes.

I am only trying to do my part. I realize that this cannot happen overnight. Given the frequency of my self pleasuring, I think the savings would be huge (just think of the savings If Howard Stern would join me). Yes, it is a baby step, but it is a step in the right direction. Join me. I beg you. Rue the invention of Thomas Crapper. The waste! The waste! There is so much more to share with the unclean masses.

Evolution---Part Deux

2010-06-10T08:55:00.000-04:00

"The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid"---JD Salinger

Epiphanies often come on the heels of sadness, but that is not the case in this instance; and while today's particular revelation resulted from an examination of the failures of my life, it resided not long in the house of pain, but rather brought a joy of clarity for me, heretofore unseen.

It seems to me that the most basic failure of humanity is that we have chosen the solidity of happiness over the liquidity of joy; that we have created an image of happiness that is contradictory to actually attaining it is a secondary problem. While we embrace joy in singular, vivid moments, such as the birth of a child, or an intensely explosive orgasm, we have either never seen, or lost sight of, the fact that joy resides in a much bigger place than the insular lives we choose to live.

In my last post, I asked a simple question regarding the aspirations of humankind as a species, and while I had previously thought that our evolutionary misstep had occurred genetically, it has now been revealed as a conscious choice.

Most of you who read this blog, understand that my thoughts are often scattered, so today I am throwing you this bone, the grandest of generalizations, in an effort to appease the more linear among you.

The self-imposed path of humankind has always had, at its core, the creation of suffering, and the eradication of joy.

Of course, it all begins with that little slut, Eve. God, in a pique of delirium, told her she couldn't eat from the tree, and Eve, acting in her most 'created in his/her image' persona, went straight for holy forbidden, thirsting for the hidden joy of god's gift withheld. So, in a sense, she became the first aspirant, momentarily the first ascendant, and the first victim of his vengeful nature, banished to the commonplace suffering outside Eden. Of course, this whole story was written by a lonely, bitter man, seeking his own acquisition in the confines of creating justifying, religious dogma.

What choice did she then have? She was firmly told to be 'fruitful and multiply', directed to plant the seed for humankind. So she started fucking like the proverbial rabbit, begot Cain and Abel, and countless illegitimate children, and here we are; the descendants of a woman reduced to the joy of sex.

If this whole 'created in his self image' thing contains even a kernel of truth, then god must be one fucked up immortal; or just stupid. Because it seems to me that if, as a species, we represent the maker, then he must be one suffering and sufferable bastard. To have given us the capacity to wrap in love, and simultaneously withhold the joy and knowledge of it, seems an act of the utmost vindictiveness. He gave us the suffering, never allowing us to see that joy is standing right alongside.

Make no mistake, dear reader, that suffering alone has led us down this path we are on; this path of acquisition, this path of detachment from the whole. With the total package withheld, we were only left with the choice to suffer alone, to insulate, and to make our lives individually 'full'; full of shit, as it turns out. God, by withholding the total package, left us a path rife with the sins he forbids us to commit, especially greed and avarice...and coveting your neighbor's wife. We have adopted the path where suffering is only overcome by acquiring individual wealth, and we live our lives shrinking our worlds, smaller and smaller, protected under the false cloak of security. And then we discover, too late, that the smaller world doesn't satisfy our thirst to simply find joy. It only separates us from what we desire. Hence, we divorce by the millions, or simply seek enlightenment in a strange piece of ass, preferably younger than the first choices, always looking for Eve, before the banishment.

I'm not saying that altruism and kindness do not exist. They most certainly do. But to deny that they exist alongside the motivation to protect and secure one's own security and advantage is ludicrous. We give because we can deduct it, thereby protecting what we have acquired...protecting our false sense of happiness and security. Of course, we also get a momentary glimpse of joy when we give, but that soon fades black...and back into the expeditious and mundane. We need to learn that joy only exists when we share it, when we all live for it, when we all take a bite of the apple. The apple belongs to all of us, to the patently stupid and the arrogantly intelligent, to the haves, and the have nots, to the successes, to the failures...to those who will savor it, and to those who are unable to taste. Joy is out there, people. It cannot be found inside. It can only be found if we are inside it. God had it backwards.

Evolution

2010-05-21T14:48:00.001-04:00

Today, I seem to have fallen into questioning some of the more simplistic ways of the world (not a huge stretch for me), and yes, I'm probably going to come off as some sort of liberal, wooey wacko, but yet, the question on my mind seems worth pondering...

As a species, where does humankind aspire to go? What do we really want to become?

Of course, the more jaded me believes that the only thing we aspire to is personal wealth. One could certainly argue that humanity is driven by greed. And there are gobs of human behaviorists that will clearly state that we are driven by certain reptilian needs i.e. survival, procreation, etc., etc., but clearly, there must be some sort of evolutionary short circuit in our neural networks, as our instinctual needs have mushroomed into a pathological desire to acquire things. The net result of all this is simple. Humanity, as a tribe, couldn't save it's own ass, because, for every burning man pretender, for every celibate yogi (fucking boy or girl), for every anti-gay rights fudgepacker, for every man, woman and child...there is some specious explanation as to why they are not who they purport to be. Our political systems are entirely based on image and wealth, and the only less likely place to find the truth (outside the political arena) is within our own hearts. A huge percentage of the human species can justify murder and war on 'moral' grounds. I, personally, find it sickening that the very people who shriek about the moral turpitude of other nations...who send the young people of this country off to fight wars in the name of patriotism, or to eradicate some make-believe threat, are the same fucking people who want to help the wounded soldier, the PTSD victim, the scarred soldiers that are only scarred because of someone else's self-interest. And of course, this is gonna send me off on some unrelated tangent i.e. Why are there countries? Why do we have national interests? Isn't what's good for one good for all? I mean the entire middle east conflict comes down to who gets the water. I'm pretty sure we all need water. Is it so scarce that we need to fight over it? (OK, so this entire rant was from the jaded me).

The simple fact is, that if we judge ourselves as a species, we suck. We can't even step out of our self-interest cocoons long enough to talk to a stranger, to smile back at someone smiling at us, unless we perceive some personal benefit. We don't like each other, and we never have. We prefer the feel of dollars in our wallets over the touch of another human. We would rather engage with an excel spreadsheet than another human being. Thousands of us can hear the screams of a rape victim outside our open windows, and yet, NO ONE calls the police. 'It's not my problem', should be the mantra for humankind. We all claim to value deeds over words, yet we fail to do anything.

Now this isn't to say that there aren't people who do good things. Of course there are, but it is wrapped in the package that we have all bought into...it is part of the same system...it is the anti-self-interest movement within the self-interest movement...it is what makes the global/local slogan so farcical. By now, I'm sure there are many of you chanting, "That's the way of the world, Fallen Angel...grow up", and my response to that (after the initial 'fuck you') is that the way of the world is wrong. It may be the way it has always been, but that doesn't mean that's the way it has to be.

It seems to me that we have created a world where smaller is better. We all seem to strive toward shrinking our world. Hence, the failure of most marriages. We enter into these unions believing they are safe and secure, and oh, the heartbreak we all feel when that doesn't prove to be the case. The fact is, safe and secure doesn't exist in smaller...it exists only in bigger...more inclusive. OK, so you can look at the dynamic of friendship then. We do surround ourselves with friends. But how are they different than anyone else? The fact is that burning man folks only hug other burning man folks. They're not out hugging dyed-in-the-wool republicans, unless they're too stoned to notice. We would all be better off, as a global tribe, if, instead of hating her, we hugged the teenage girl with the dynamite strapped to her chest...if we could only understand that her sadness is the same as ours...that all the bad things that have entered her life, have entered ours in one guise or another.

There is hope. We always have hope. If we could learn that TRUTH supercedes our individual truths...that doing the RIGHT thing is always the right thing to do...that we do suck as a species and we don't have to...well, then a new day might just dawn.

Not sure what to call this one

2010-04-07T15:07:00.000-04:00

While I have no doubt that Tiger Woods was fffs (@#$%!!* for @#$96!!*'s sake), and while there seem to be other numerous ramblings regarding infidelities amongst the glitterati, I seem to have found myself mired in the pool of mud we generally accept as 'normal' human relationships. In evolutionary terms, it seems to me that we humans are nowhere near as evolved as either the wolf, or the cardinal (the bird, not the catholic), and therefore, it seems specious at best to assume that we are genetically programmed for monogamy. After all, we share 99.something% of our DNA with the bonobo (and with the ring-tailed lemur...not sure I get this one)...

So, once again, I find myself ready to blog on the subject of Love. The nun often prods me with fascinating questions, and while I don't actually believe that I am polyamorous, I also don't believe most polyamorists are either, which, of course, led me straight to Buddha and yoga. I do believe I have finally figured out what grates me so about practicioners.

It strikes me that the basic aim of buddhists and yogis is the transcendence of life, and immersion in non-duality, and attainment of oneness with the universe. And it further occurred to me that unless one is proselytizing strictly for economic gain (which seems the motivation for most modern day evolutionaries), there is a dichotomy here which merits examination. For the modern day adherent, it seems that in order to truly look inward, and transcend the ego, one must step outside himself and pay gobs of money, so that someone else can tell him how to find his true self. Now, I'm no ascetic monk or anything, but it seems to me that we all do this anyway without really trying. I mean, I look at things that make me happy, and things that make me sad, and things that fuck me up almost everyday. And I think I do this not intellectually, but rather viscerally, regularly examining the big three... head, heart and gut.

So, enough of the non sequitor, and back to the nun. She has frequently made me ponder the quality of love that we generally accept as 'normal'. I mean I've read the bible, and Carl Jung, and even Fritz Perls...I've barely paid attention to Dr.Phil and Oprah...I've watched movies, read a huge number of novels, attended the theater, and listened to great, and not so great, music...and not once have I been informed that there are different kinds of love. As the nun says,"Love just is". Yet, we, as a species, have somehow decided that we should love our friends differently than we love our children, and that the ultimate goal is to find the one... your fucking soulmate... who you will, in practice, love differently than everyone else. OK, so maybe I am the queer duck in the pond here, but the notion of differentiating love just feels like pure hogwash. And tell me, how in the world do you stop loving someone? Did I miss the on/off switch while wandering through the darkness?

Sorry, folks, but there are no rules for loving. So, from this day forward, I am just going to start from that place. I'm going to love the guy who slices my pepperoni at the supermarket, the mechanic who fixes my car, the teenage girl collecting money for the homeless...fuck it...I'm going to love the terrorist, the rapist, the burglar, the soldier, the murderer...and yes, I'm going to love my son and daughters, both my wives and the nun.You see, you either are or you aren't. You can't get there forcing your ankles to you hipbones, om-ing, dancing in a psychotic frenzy, or fucking pathologically, popping psychedelics, or worshiping the burning man. All those things are external pretending. You either are a lover, or your not. If you want to be a lover, you only need the faith to do it. You were born to it. It won't come from Jesus, or Yahweh, or Buddha, or Ram Dass. It has to come from you. And for those of you who seek to compartmentalize it, or practice it, or breathe it, or chant it...well...as the man said, "Pity the fool".

Fun

2009-05-10T16:31:00.000-04:00

While watching an infomercial for some home gym apparatus, I found myself flabbergasted by one particular hosanna offered as testimony by an attractive woman, and I quote, "I'm wearing clothes I haven't worn in over twenty years". Needless to say, I quickly searched my own wardrobe for items that old, and outside of a few pairs of underwear, I couldn't find any (thank god that boxer shorts haven't gone out of style). This led me to realize that women actually keep clothes for over twenty years, and I found myself, once again delighted by the things I do not know.

For instance, I learned the other day that it is possible, if you have gobs of money, to buy eternal life, at least it will be within the next 15-20 years. Yes, my friends, through the wonders of genetic splicing, you will be able to live forever, thereby greatly increasing your odds of having an erection that lasts for over four hours. Of course, this also means that you should have roughly three million dollars in your IRA to cover the cost of an eternal prescription for Viagra, providing you can find a woman who wants to sleep with a really old man (thank you, baby). Of course, this is what has prompted Ray Kurzweil, who hopes to last another 15 years and far exceed the lifespans of his father and grandfather, to adopt a life of green tea (8 cups a day), vitamin supplements and alkaline water, not to mention a vigorous exercise regimen. Yes. folks, the man dubbed the "Thomas Edison of the modern era" can espouse his market-driven, technological prognostications till the end of time. Unfortunately, he is missing the point.

Gobs of money can buy you lots of other things too. You can genetically engineer the offspring you desire; you can even add a few 'superpowers' if you want. And while I don't necessarily see the benefits of tasting music, or withstanding freezing cold water hour upon hour, there are some 'rabbit' traits I would consider. Dr. Sum Ting Chan is currently engineering super mice, and while I'm all for smarter mice, I also fall firmly on the side of smarter cats. But, it is his vision of a possible future that is disconcerting. He contends that it is possible that the human species could split, no longer stratified in economic terms, but rather biologically differentiated; 'super' humans and some lower subspecies. Will both be subject to military conscription? That's a question for smarter ethicists than me.

And of course, within forty years, computers will be smarter than we are. The paradigm shifts that will emerge in the next half a century are mind boggling, and it is apparent, even to a subhuman like myself, that we are not ready. I have my own vision...of a world where everyone lives forever, disease is eradicated, and 'natural' evolution leaves us with no one to pick up the garbage. Fill in your own blanks, dear reader.

Now, I'm no Arthur C. Clarke (then again, neither is he), but let's not forget where he died. For all his vision, he spent his end of days seeking a better way of life in India. And I presume, fairly or unfairly, that he came to realize that here is better than there. And that is indeed the crux of the matter. We spend our lives, individually and as a species, scarred by our past, desperately believing that we have to get 'there'; that if we can work our way past 'what was', we can arrive at a much better 'will be'. Happy, like love, just is. We cannot create it 'there'. 'Better' is right here, right now; ever facing the invisible, oncoming bus. Our vision of future is at best fallacious, and at worst, the greatest, egoic lie; the ego that 'was' projecting the ego that 'will be'.

There is wonder in the future, but magic exists only in this instant. And why does magic delight us so? The answer is quite simple. Because we don't comprehend it. Right alongside magic is where fun resides, standing next to her eternal partner, happy. So, I am going to revel in everything I don't know, or rather don't know 'there'. Because what I know 'here' is why my life is still full of magic and fun.

And so, Ray, I will "go gently into that good, good night", whenever that arrives, because 'here', I don't seem to need more, not even fifteen years of maybe.

Faith

2009-03-14T02:31:00.000-04:00

Here. She and I sit here and wonder pacific. It was not a hard climb, easier than the first, yet still filled with trepidation. I am afraid of my fall from grace. She stands here like a terran clitoris, rigid with heat long lost, a black memory of her once volcanic orgasm; unresponsive to the massage of scrambling hand and foot. Only the swirl of spray and foam offer a sign of dormant glow. It is the first time in four days that we left the house; left the comfort of blanket and scarf, belt and tie; left the trust of blindfold and candle and ice; left the delight of filled, vacant crave. Holy secrets have been revealed and shared, dancing within us, without us, whirled to ecstatic frenzy in the rhythm of hinted music and noisy smiles. There is quiet here, the quiet of goddess whispers interspersed with violent prayer and purge. The sun, nearly fallen, warms her soft curve, out beyond the edge where storms conspire; where pink, cloudy light fades to dark, favorite, twilight violet blue. It is here that god finds me, reveals to eyes closed wide.

(She is as real as real can be...allowing me...wrapping me...in all that I am...in all that I can be...in all that I want to be.....climbing volcanic spires oceanside...dancing free on the beach to music she hears in everything...in a light that outshines everything...she binds me...she frees me...she loves me, LOVES me, LOVES ME...in grander ways than I ever imagined....

I am expanding....exploding...overflowing...dissolving. I am full of grace...full of faith...filled with god...I am god)

Here. The sun sits just above the horizon, yet it still warms the wind, the rain, the sea, the earth. Her light flows out, outracing time and space, and touches all of it. Her light flows out, in directions unfathomed. It is there for all to feel. Her music flows out. We can all hear it, carried on wind and tide. She dances open, feet and arms and hair and smile flailing to her primal beat, to the symphony that she recieves in the swirl. And I, not quite as receptive, hear the same music. Sharps and flats, augmenting and suspending, flying past G-clefs on ethereal staffs, funneled through her totality to my yearning ears. And again, her light, fading to the dark of blue, reflects back to me on the lunar ascent. Her light, ablaze and darkened, cascades through long locked treasure chests, rusted locks springing open, rubies and emeralds and doubloons floating on the neap and ebb, filling my deepest pockets. As we slide down moistened crag and crevice, bruised and cut by the rough of it, joyed and pained in the salted sand and air, I lead her through the dunes, lead her on the path home, lit within.

(She is as real as real can be...and her light...her music...dancing me to skinless. She is purely here...just as the sky..the earth...the sea...the sun and moon...the spirits are here....clearly visible...visibly clear...if you just close your eyes. She is so close...close enough to see...to smell...to taste...to touch. Reach out...reach in...and she will let you find her.

And I...I am god...as god is your witness)

Here. I stand and watch as tidal surge meets ancient rock, sea crashes and towers into sprays of foam riding unseen thermals to heaven. And she calls me to come chase the fresh water rills dancing to salt through the sandy fronds and terrestrial capillaries; like the to and from of earthen heart bringing red and blue to the brackish womb, filled with kelp torn free and anchored starfish; everything where it belongs. And I stop, and know, that as sure as the earth spins, and circles the sun...as the sun circles the milky center, as the center caroms toward Andromeda at speeds driven in mystery....I know that this spot...this time...this moment...this love...is grander than I, yet not as grand yet...and that ever, existing in this instant, is never long enough, never too long...just perfectly and fleetingly caressed. And as I turn to find her, i see her dancing, eyes closed, ecstatically elated..her smile casting moonbeams and pixie dust to everything...her light washing it all...bigger than ocean and sky. There can be no other way. There can be no other shore. She is my ocean...filling you and me with the light and music of right now, right here...watching the dog star rise, zooming to the Pleiades.

(She is as real as real can be....she is the siren...the sybil...drawing me in...singing to me...kissing my sleeping eyelids to see. And I...I reveal the god that I have always been...the god she has seen...the god that she has tumbled from Olympus...and set on this shore.

I release her...as she sets me free...and we wait, in the warmth of the setting sun, in the reflection of the rising moon, for you to join us...The three wait...she...I....the unity...for you to accept the invitation.)

The Buddhist Nun Trilogy

2009-02-02T11:47:00.000-05:00

Fucking the Buddhist Nun

I wandered in here, at her invitation, into this place with no walls, no floor, no ceiling or sky. The buddhist nun, she invited me, although at the time before coming here, I did not know who she was. I had dreamed of here, painting it in my heart a thousand colors, sculpting it in the stone of my mind, tasting it, like sugar dissolving in my gut, but, in all honesty, I was never sure I could find my way here, never walked down that road, or any of the detours.

I must have left my luggage at the door, although I don't recall packing for the trip, and whatever clothes I was wearing when I got here, wore away in what seemed an instant. I am different here. I am stronger, fierce sometimes; the armor of my doubts and fears has melted away; the chain mail I wrought so exquisitely in the course of my life fell away like Puff's scales. I am naked, but I am intrepid.

I lay down, she invites me down. She coos and chants, dances and swirls. She strokes my hair, runs her fingers through it. She is not at all as I imagined at first, not at all the enlightened supplicant. She coos and chants me soft. Then she dances, and pecks at my flesh, like a meth-addicted mourning dove. She ignites me in her passion, she sleeps me in her calm. She tenderizes me with a gentle maul, tills me with unpainted nails, dips me in flour and egg, crumbs me in rye and romano, and sautes me over high heat, in butter and basil, yet I emerge raw. I am just me again. Not the me you know, ............... just me,...... playing and dancing in all my glory.

And then, of all things, I take her. Take her as my own. Take her as my guru, take her as my whore. Tear off her robes, and demand her gifts. And then, she laughs and giggles and smiles, she moans and quivers, and surrenders to me; admits and surrenders to needing me, to desiring me, to lusting for me, to loving me. Her spirit needs me to be all that, and I need her. And we embrace our needs, of the spirit and the flesh. The need is clean, it is original. Here, sinner and saint are the same, just as right and wrong are the same, happy and sad, love and hate and on and off and on and on and on and on. It's all the same in the energetic swirl, just as it started.

And the most amazing thing happened. I looked inside and found that my brain and heart and gut had just melted together in the fire. All functioning properly, offering their parts of the gift, but merged into some sort of giant organ thing, all sharing and creating and being the joy of it all. The fuck is constant, the joy is constant. The fucking joy is constant.

I am drowning with the buddhist nun in holy buddhist water, in my deepest waters and in hers. The swirl of the maelstrom is pulling us down, open to the deep, and I am going to float and dance and swirl and fuck all the way there.

Dripping Wet

I lie, naked and cold on the bathroom floor, as you emerge from the hot shower of loneliness. The steam of this room tickles my skin, goosebumps me, beckons my sweat from within. You drop your orange towel to the floor. Hotter places await your absorption. I rise to greet you. As your face finds the void between shoulder and heart, my fingers entwine in your hair, and invite your waters to drip over all of me. A trickle wraps our joined nipples, a rivulet lakes atop my cock, birthing a new river. Rain dances on my toes as the thunderhead grows, darker and mightier. Flash floods tear down your back finding my fingers dancing in the sacral temple. Your tears tease my tongue as they flow among us, between us, coursing to the salty source. Our waters mingle and merge as sweat droplets, born of my heart, pool and release at the open, breastbone door.

Lay me down, my sweet buddhist nun. Lay me down on the cold bottom. Let the hot and cold melt my ice; calve my icebergs; sever the fractal, crystalline tendrils that bind their release: free them. Watch as the thunderhead rolls o'er the fronds of desire and releases its deluge. Offer your mouth to catch its waters, and dissolve the salt I bring and offer to you. Watch as my leaves turn skyward to absorb you, dancing on the breezes of lust. Feel the unevenness of the winds, surging and ebbing as we moisten in the swirl.

Let your mouth rhumba in the suck, let cunt and tongue tango, let the arch and squirm hip-hop in the ecstasy. Let our waters merge and torrent behind the crumbling dam. Let our waters cascade and erode as they flow down to the abyss, upward to the ether, carrying our heart, and our hearts to the yearning desert. Let waves crash and typhoons rage as our brackish waters reach the welcoming ocean.

We are always here, my love, fucking, joined and unjoined, together and solitary. All the rest will jump in and bathe in our waters. We are always dripping wet.

Last Chants of Buddha

Fuck you hard, love you tender.

Fuck me tender, tend me hard.

The last responsive chant in the temple echoes between us, drumstick mallet pounding tom tom lotus, as we transform, responsively. She, dervishing radiance. I, tempering steel. We dance through the gates, gongs and didgeridoos commanding tempo and tone, her hand following my caress, my hand, firmly at the plunge, taking her to cha cha cha. Behind us, the temple mists and dissipates in our morphing wake, as salty pillars begin to tower in not looking back. We one, two, one, two, three in wanton unison, as then and now become the same. The whitecaps on the dead ahead sea beckon us to their dance floor.

She is the white squall, cycloning toward all of you in the dead calm. I am the ocean dancer, waterspouting with wind and wave, conquering and owning their power in my vacuum eye.

She appears in a moment, destroys in an instant...disappears. I am present at her emergence, the chanting birth, as I too emerge. She is as destined to appear to me as breath. I stand in awe of her raw and immense power, and then, in the same instant, I listen to my heart's delighted giggle. As she rises, she gathers and carries everything in her rogue wave; the beat and downbeat, the roll and roil, the resurrecting gasp and the final drown. All is the same in her rough and tumble. She bears the seeds of everything in her tumult- complements, dissonants, opposites undifferentiated-the slithering and the eel, the quarter note and the augmented fourth, the desired and the needed, the collide and the distant miss, the spark and the extinguish. She craves it all, as she dances and nourishes on roars drawn up from the deep. She craves it all-not just sea, but sky and moon-but crests too low or too high, the surge too frenetic or too fluid. Other times she collapses in the foam of detritus and lonely, repulsed by sandbar or shore, music silent and dischordant.

She resists me, as I leap and dart; tries to bowl me over with sheer force, or swallow me in the crashing fold, as I surf the crest of her tsunami. I push her down and smooth her in the downflow of sheering wind; I launch her skyward, pull her up in the suck of vacuum, or soar her up in the thermal vortex. Her shape and mood are mine to choose, as I lightly fandango along her cheek and neck, delicately draw the funnel cloud tip to her misting spray of tears, or take her into the dead calm of surrender.

I am the ocean dancer, the sashay forward to her backward bend, the fulcrum of her twirl, the hard tending floor for her dance.

Elementals, Shooting for the Moon

2009-01-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

I have found a place. Actually, it may have found me, but it is inviting me to dwell in it; inviting me to dwell here. It is different than you think. It has no walls, no floor, no sky, no ground. It is a place that is just here. And I am just here. She just is, here when she can be, yet always here. I have dreamed of this place often, but could never really find it. No directions will lead you here. No vehicle will bear you. It's like the place where elephants go to die. You know it's there, but you can't go there until the time is right. It is not a place you live in, like a house or a yurt, but it is a place you want to be. In fact, be is all you can do here. I am here.

While I am here, she is asking me to stay, and to go back there at the same time. Going back there is the hard part, because it feels so right here. But I am free here, so going back doesn't feel like a job; it feels more like homework you want to do, like building Nemo's submarine from papier mache. So I go back there, trying to find my first choice, chocolate or vanilla; or rather trying to find that 'back there' when it mattered which I chose, when it really mattered--before I drizzled my chocolate on my orange sherbet--before I mixed all the choices up. Back there, I made the choice. Me, the original me, before the me I became. And it really did matter back there, because if I hadn't made that original choice for the original reasons, I would never have found the here to go back there from.

You can't stay here, or rather, there's no reason to stay here, if you haven't gone back there. Because until you know why it mattered back there, and who it was that it mattered to, there's really no way to know what matters here, or, at least, become the person who knows what matters here. That original choice is the launching pad of your life, before it got carbon-ed and crispified in the exhaust gasses of your life.

So, I went back there, and then, I came back here, and she asked me why I wanted to stay here. She insisted on reminding me that she could not always be here, that we could not always be here; I could always be here, or try, but here only lasts a moment, and the forever of a moment is fleeting. Sometimes, when you're really here, you can come back here the next moment, and the moment after that. Most times, you have to find here again, but it can be hard to step in the same river twice. You can never be in the same here twice, but, as she listed some of them, I knew that there are an infinite number of heres to live in.

So, I sat in that question awhile, and found my answer.

In here is where love swirls. Only in here does love swirl, does love tumble, does love dance. In fact, here is the only place love exists; at least the kind I want, the original kind. Whether or not I can be here all the time, or whether or not we can be here all the time, or at all, here is where I want to be, swirling and tumbling and dancing.

Elementals, Branch of my River

2009-01-18T21:11:00.000-05:00

I am obsessing today, but mostly I am flowing. While, as of yet, I am not a lotus position person, I have been 'meditating' on a particular phrase, and since this phrase relates to my yesterday and my tomorrow, I'm going to share it, and then, ramble on about it.

You can't step in the same river twice

We all, myself included, like to delude ourselves into thinking that we are masters of our own destiny. Nothing is further from the truth. The very nature of the universe, not to mention the infinity of it, precludes us from having much of an effect. It's that tiny speck of sand in a vast ocean thing. Since I accept the premise that we are all connected, receptive in varying degrees to the universal swirl of energy and possibility, it follows for me that all we can really master is ourselves. If you don't accept either of these statements, there's no point in reading on.

What we do, to a certain extent, have control of is what we do with the containers we are given and their accompanying primal instincts. We can choose when to eat, when to work, when to fuck, when to shower, when to kill and when to heal, but the fallacy of caring for the container is that we will never find happiness, or even satisfaction, by caring for it. It is strictly a mechanism for surviving, but not thriving. I'm all for the pleasures of the physical world, but they don't take us where we (or, at least I) want to go. How can they? These giant fuel and waste containers we call bodies, are simply the vehicles provided for carrying around all the shit we acquire in the course of a lifetime. So we fill them up with traumas and tragedies, fears and expectations, hopes and dreams, and carry, and deal with all that baggage as if it still existed. It does not. It is all in the past, and the past is gone, just a moment ago. All it gets us is war, the rape of our planet, divorce, sadness and rage- a whole world of unhappy. You can put makeup on a trashcan, but it's still a trashcan.

What we are given, in the original uncondition, is the 'river', that turbulent and chaotic stream of mostly disconnected moments, minuscule specks of space time that we are aware of, but do not embrace. Our lives flow in this slipstream, sometimes connecting, sometimes cascading, sometimes evaporating, but the stream is dynamic, and no matter how much we want to, we can't hold it, or stop it, or own it. It just keeps changing, elusive as pure black.

So, that's all we get you ask? The chaotic slipstream of happenstance and potentials, everchanging and unpredictable with no promise of permanent or forever. Yup, that's it! That's what the universe offers us once we emerge, but we are gifted with one other thing in the original uncondition, the blank slate of the clean spirit, where love shines its own light, unfiltered and pure. Every rule, every expectation, every condition, every fear entangles and dims that light. Unless you explode that container, empty it, you will never live as you're supposed to, never find happiness or satisfaction. It is only when the box is empty, when the spirit re-emerges clean, when love is unconditional, that we are fully able to embrace each fleeting moment of our lives, to live.

Is it possible? I don't know. But I do know it's the only dream worth having, the only thing worth striving for. I have been gifted, in my recent life, with glimpses of all my moments, flashes of light, many which strung together in a shared flow, and bore me, for a time, on my original river. Eventually, the container refilled, closed the sluice, and my spirit drowned, lost consciousness, but did not die. I don't know how yet to reconcile the spirit with the life, but I am going to find my answers, and live. I want every moment, embraced by my spirit, open in light. After all, 'I' might not be here in the next.................

Elementals, Part?D

2009-01-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

I remember, when I was a boy, eating sixteen cheeseburgers at a family barbecue; I remember shooting at passing cars with my BB gun, jumping off the garage roof, hitting my only Little League home run. I remember trampolines on the beach, inflatable whales, and a cardboard spaceship, a small pink teddy bear before the cremation, my father's bicycle and stealing comic books at the Washington Park Pharmacy.

I also remember the softness of Gramps' eyes, and Nanny's sniffs, in lieu of kisses, for fear she would suck the life out of me. I remember playing under my grandparents' dining room table, trips to the G&G deli, and walks to the carousel at Franklin Park. I remember so much more.

Memories from my childhood are clean and open because I hadn't yet learned to pollute and tarnish them with the learned conditions of my life. They cannot rust in the absence of judgement. I can never see them in any light but the light in a young boy's eyes.

These memories are still vivid today, some fifty years later, because I hold on to them; hold them to remind me that my spirit was free then, unconditioned, and it jettisoned me on the natural path of play and wonder, magic and awe. Not quite. The memories are vivid because my spirit holds onto them; my spirit holds on, despite its current residence in this dark, ironclad ship that I call my life. I should have walked the plank of this ship long ago, and set myself free, floating on my endless sea.

Oddly enough, I don't remember the first time I was afraid.

Fear is the single greatest disease of humankind; a disease so covert that even House can't fix it, metastasized to the dying spirit, it slowly kills. It is ironic, given the transitory limits of the body, that we allow ourselves to be crippled out of the moment; that I allow myself to be frozen scared. Would I rather die scared or happy? That choice might present itself any time.

Play is the antidote to fear. Is there any greater joy than playing in love? I don't mean pretending, I MEAN playing--playing, laughing, smiling, imagining, creating, touching, giving--and letting your spirit run free. And I don't mean 'love', as in wife, girlfriend, significant other. I mean LOVE, the kind you were born with, the kind before you conditioned it, the kind before you made it into something else, the kind before you 'knew' what it is.

I was born with a playful spirit, and, to my detriment, my greatest fear is losing it. The greatest irony of all is that fearing loss will create loss. It will manifest the opposite. Endless pattern.

Fear is the mechanism that is supposed to warn us, to keep us safe. Fear of god, fear of failure, fear of looking foolish, fear of losing, more fears than you can shake a stick at. But the truth is, beyond the illusions, is that there is no safety, and no matter how much we yearn for it, it doesn't exist. It does not exist in life and, like the 47 virgins, it does not exist in paradise. Give up our need for safety, and we give up our fear, and the spirit can become again.

Come dance with me on the thin ice. Let's play!

Elementals, Part?C

2009-01-12T10:47:00.000-05:00

In light of recent (at least, universally speaking) revelations, that we, as humans, share close genetic code with the common sea slug, and that spirit and purpose are culled individually from an infinite swirl of chaotic, inter-universal energy, it has become clear to this writer that we, individually, and as a species, have taken the wrong fork in the road of evolution. I will endeavor to explore how we might correct this, and how I personally have made an enormous mess of it all.

It all began in a dream for me, although I'm not certain that I was actually asleep, so it might be more correctly called a revelation. It will be difficult to describe, but I will do my best with the modicum of prosaic talent I possess. In the dream, I was simply immersed in the chaotic swirl, undirected, dropped in without instruction. Tentacles of unknown colors kissed my heart, licking me with the gentleness of a flame, or the light tickle of a snowflake, gently excising layer upon layer of learned conditions from my tattered spirit. I was filled with an elemental joy, like a baby seeing his mother for the first time. I was unconstrained, in a corporeal sense, and able to intuit all the joy and sadness and possibility of the whole and the one, without benefit of the five human senses, although they were present. For the first time in my 'conscious' life, I was empty and full at the same time, at peace with my existence. But please, dear reader, don't assume that I was isolated or detached in any way. No, I was connected through the whole continuum of 'original uncondition'.

Waking, re-entering the 'alive' state, came as a shock, like a slap in the face from an angry nun; pulled unwillingly from a state of reverie, forced to face the mistakes of my life, required to take my 'first' steps, trying for the first time to live in that energy and let my spirit manifest.

What does it all mean? I can only speak for myself, but part of the answer lies in the very dichotomy of life with which I had been struggling--Is life about what you accomplish, or what you become? The answer, of course, is neither one, although it is closer to the second, but can be found through the first. For instance, take the death of a child. If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", then that child's life had no meaning--no accomplish, no become. Yet surely, no one would argue that this child's life had no value. It is in this example that the answer lies however. By simply being, being a child in any given moment, that child offered herself to the world, and her world gladly received her without judgement. This in a nutshell is the meaning of life---Offer yourself as a child would, and your world will receive you. Live, love and laugh while guided by the spirit of your 'child'.

I forgot who I am for a while, and now, my best friend won't talk to me. It is my fault. I stopped being my child, in any moment, and clung to my conditions. The 'child' never worries about losing things--they are either there, or they're not. Feel free to include 'life' as one of those things, for it is the most fleeting 'toy' of all.

So, there you have it. I offer this as a gift. You may unwrap it if you want, or send it to your aunt next Christmas. But me, I am going to embrace all the facets of my child. Love, selfishness, temper tantrums, like, play, fun and pink---every single part of my spirit, every part of my 'child' that I have denied through condition and expectation. Not all of you are going to like me, but I am going to like me. It is, after all, all about me.

I will fail, at times. I will run from my essence. I will try things, and not be able to do them, and I will cry. I will fall off my new 'bicycle' and scrape my knee. But I promise you, I will take every 'failure' and learn from it. If it is part of my child, I will try again. If it isn't, I'll discard it. But, I will continue to play.

Come play with me if you'd like. I may steal your barbie doll, but when my spirit moves me, I will give it back. The child always gives back, but not always when you want him to. After all, sometimes you're the slug, sometimes you're the boy, sometimes the bonobo, sometimes the girl. It's all part of this game of life. We are all connected--sometimes in the double helix, sometimes in the swirl. But you can't play if you're not in the game.

Elementals, Part?B

2008-12-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

My life is like a can of tuna (solid white in water), emptied into a colander. I have left my can. As Ms. Mckenna says, 'I am dripping wet with things to understand'. Well, I'm not exactly like tuna. The tuna was built for silent speed, and I am more the noisy, patient type. But I guess you can see the metaphor.

In any event, understanding is what I'm here to discuss. I'm not talking about 'understanding' when someone wrongs you, or just does something you don't like; no, I'm talking about understanding yourself. For a change, I'm not gonna linger in the jesus or the yoga thing. I want to make it a little more personal.

When I get introspective, I find myself in a giant swirling void. Oh, there's stuff in there allright, but most of it inhibits my ability to see the forest for the trees, or blindsides me into anger or sadness. I admit that sometimes when we look inside, we have to ask where the light switch is. It can get pretty dark in there if we choose to ignore the light. But there is light in there, lots and lots of light.

There's a reason that we have a head and a heart and a stomach. I don't know if it's divine or sublime. I just know that the reason is unimportant. The fact is, we are conscious, on some level, of all three; in fact, conscious enough to randomly decide which ones to ignore. But our greatest gift is that we can choose to think, feel and digest every moment we are alive.

It's called intuition, and it is the single most underutilized ability we have. It gives us the ability to drop the brain, the heart and the stomach into our giant universal blender, to pulse and puree and pulverize them into spiritual margaritas, drink and get drunk, and stumble home in perfect purposeful direction. When the three are blended, there is no chance of doing the wrong thing. That we have chosen to ignore this blending, to only think our way through life, or only feel our way through life, or only chew and swallow our way through life, is the single greatest sin against the divine plan. Intuition, this blending, is the greatest gift we will ever receive.

And what will it get you? Mayonnaise, onions and celery, that's what! A unity, and singularity--a perfect tuna sandwich. OK, maybe it's love, freedom and grace. I get confused. It's late. Somebody, grab the bread, the lettuce and tomato. I need nourishment.

Elementals, Part ?

2008-12-27T19:43:00.000-05:00

Over the past two weeks, filled with curiosity regarding the royal family's spending habits, and my banishment from Christmas morning festivities, and an eight day interlude with my favorite girl, I have found myself consumed with the questions and answers of my personal belief system, and distraught over its seeming incongruity within my normal haunts and habits. I have found myself reading Osho and Deida and channelled instructions from the mystic, and watching way too much Star Trek. It should be clear to any of my readers by now that the lotus is no more my favorite flower than the fleur-de-lis. But it should also be clear that I can dance the dance of the seven veils as easily as I can hip-hop to Mary J. Blige. In any event, I find myself the strangest of strangers in a strange land, and I find that I wish to share my newly discovered 'religion' with you, my six or seven readers. I will try to confine myself to single subjects in this, and each subsequent post.

As you all know, the main guidepost in the Great Triad is entangled enlightenment, or the aspiration to attain nothing. It was never clear to me when writing this blog, how many people are trying to find a path to this very thing. This is true, in part, because I am, in essence, an undisciplined moron, and, in part, because the attainment of something is clearly unsatisfying to me and everyone else. To continue.........

While I have been engrossed recently in everything from tantra to the natural course of the Mississippi, my epiphany really began when I realized that everything in the recognizable universe can be followed back to a singular unity. You may choose to call it God, or the One, or the Mother, or the Big Bang--it doesn't matter. The underlying truth here is that we are all seeking the path to that original horizon. The problem is that we have chosen to seek it through our personal choice of dogma, instead of just being who we are, or rather, who we were born to be.

And therein lies a greater problem. We are not, nor have we ever been, intelligent or evolved enough to ponder the nature of the universe, but wrapped in the guise of ego or dogma, we have deluded ourselves to believe we can. My whole purpose here is to give myself an alternative, and, if you so choose, you may walk along beside me on the simpler path.

In my many conversations with the squirrels and the crows, they have provided me many answers. The most important of these answers is that our quest resides on this little, blue planet, and that the quest for our individual, original horizons, is and should be confined to this 'here and now'. We all need to find our own good red road.. The earth existed long before humanity, and all that exists in the cosmic maelstrom, exists here on earth, and can be discovered here on earth. We need to shed our haughtiness that the earth was put here for us. We were put here for her. That all her sadness and scarring, the result of our meddling, is at critical levels, should be proof enough. The good earth will heal if we can learn to receive, instead of take.

The path to nothing is the same as the path to original uncondition. I do not pretend to know it, but I am certain that there are many ways to find it, none more right than the other. It is a journey only made difficult but what we have allowed. Original uncondition, that place where we can be in the absence of rules and direction, exists at the core of each of us, awaiting re-discovery, awaiting the stripping of condition and fear from our lives. And it is there that love resides; not the kind we have molded and protected, but rather the kind we were born with. It is there side by side with creativity and imagination. It is there holding the light we are supposed to shine. Whether we are good or evil, man or woman, greedy or generous, sick or healthy, it is there in each of us.

The swirls and currents of possibility that exist in the ethereal chaos also exist within each of us. But they can only be discovered when unconditional love is rediscovered. They cannot exist in the darkness of our self constructed containers. The evolutionary journey can only begin in the light.

Understand that the journey only exists within you and me. You are the teacher and the guru. You are your own god. Find your light. Wear your love like heaven. Be who you are.

Squirrel Talk, or the way to everything

2008-11-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

Having freely admitted to the pirate recently, that talking to squirrels has become a permanent part of my life, I sashayed out to the porch this morning to find White Ears. Having recently immersed in a new community, with wisdom and rules galore, I found that I had reached a place requiring answers, and I knew that she could offer me clues.

"Where is the edge?" I queried.

"The edge of what?", she wondered, while cracking an acorn and stuffing it into her cheek. Then, she blindsided her sister Lucy, and they danced in the trees for a while.

"Why my edge of course" I answered when she returned to me.

"Well, my 'dangerous thing' friend, I most genuinely pray that you do not have one".

I was dumbstruck by her wisdom. I mean, I'm not silly enough to think that we don't have boundaries, but I think for the most part, they are self-imposed. We most definitively feel safer within the confines of our self-constructed containers, but isn't it odd that all of us eventually discover, that we forgot to put something in, that we neglected to leave the door open.

"There is joy in the dance, but it does not exist for the sake of the joy......It does not exist for us, but we for it"--CS Lewis

It is not enough to push our edges, to open our doors. It is necessary to explode them.

We enter this world with nothing, and it should be our lifelong goal to stay that way. If only we could remember the joy of our first good shit. That is what life is all about. Shitting out all the waste, shitting out your edges, shitting out everything until there is nothing.

There are no instructions for this life, no manual. We emerge into this world like an unpainted canvas. We have the options, even now, to let life paint it for us, or paint it ourselves, paint it with colors waiting to emerge, never seen, never realized. Even the canvas is unrealized. Let the canvas be your boundless life, saturated in nothing, awaiting the color of everything. It was noted, when Orbiting the Giant Hairball, that by the time sixth grade rolls around, there are virtually no children willing to identify themselves as artists. We only limit our creations when we choose to let them evolve confined. My pirate says that her art emerges through her, not from her. This is unconfined creation. Is it any wonder that such a huge percentage of our greatest writers were drunks? They chose to puke themselves empty. I like the shit thing better.

Squirrels dance everyday. That is why they are here.

".....You got to dance like nobody's watching...."

I used to think those were very wise words. Now, I don't know. It seems to me that we should dance without watching ourselves, lose the self-examination, lose the image, lose the fear, lose the expectation. If you smash the bottle, they will all disappear, evaporate like gasoline on the tarmac, like the old colors of the rainbow, like squirrel piss on a sunny day.

The Wrong Side of Murdo

2008-10-27T14:53:00.000-04:00

I don't know much about Murdo, but I am sure I'm on the wrong side. It's a small place, .6 square miles, and I know it's one time on one side, another time on the other. It is amazing how such small places can carry such significance in our lives; how they form lines more divisive that all the great rivers. I mean, it isn't all that far from Murdo that you cross the Missouri, and not much farther when you cross the Mississippi, but those great rivers can't stop me. No, for me, Murdo has set itself up like the river Styx, the dividing line between light and dark, and I can't tell when I'm supposed to cross over.

A very wise man once said, "I don't know........whether we have a destiny, or whether we all just float around accidental like.......Maybe, it's both...". I clearly don't have the answer. In reality, I don't even know the question. Yet even while bathing in the absence of knowledge, I am struggling to find an answer.

Right now, my life feels a lot like trying to hear a single note in an accordion choir bellowing to nirvana. The overall chorus is delightful, awash in Myron Floren giggles, but the note I seek is lost in the maelstrom of simultaneous arpeggios and glissandos; upward and downward spirals of disguise. I am found, but I am lost, and the forward momentum of my journey feels stifled. I thought perhaps that my answer might be found in the accordion, but the instrument's secret lies shrouded in its confusing array of keys , buttons and folds. No, the accordion's sole purpose is to reveal delight in dark, unsuspecting moments. Then I thought the answer might be revealed through Myron Floren himself, the long recognized guru of polka and garbled accents. And I have found, that through him, there may indeed be clues.

For instance, he grew up in Roslyn, which is also on the wrong side of Murdo, and is also the last known hiding place of the jesus seed, but, more importantly, it is home to the International Vinegar Museum (sugar cubes provided), only 11 miles from the world's largest hairball, and driving distance from that most famous attraction of all, the Corn Palace. (Aside: Initially I was also drawn to the Smiley Face Water Tower, until I discovered that there are hundreds scattered throughout the USA). While it became clear to me that all these places hold space on my path to enlightenment and the joy of bellybuttons, it was also clear that they could not bloom my lotus.

To be sure, the space-time continuum of my journey is hickery-dickery-docking on the right side of Murdo, but it is also blub-blub-blubbing in the papier mache submarine of Captain Nemo. It does not run through the path of Adi Da, or his brothers Ladida and Budabing. My purpose (God, I hated using that word) is divided, and can only rationally be reconciled. My heart is being torn apart, caught between non-nuclear propellers, and the spasmodic, masticating, twisting, crocodilian teeth of Vern, the wisest of the cold-blooded.

I long ago cat-and-dogged in the sweat lodge, long ago painted the purple microdot, and long ago learned to trust the gut-dwelling guides of my vision quest. The choices in the yellow wood are really what life is all about, understanding that they never stop presenting themselves, understanding that we are always left with a zig or a zag, understanding that neither choice is easy.

Today has been cathartic, and has led me where my spirit resides. Every first step requires courage, and there are no second steps, only new first steps, infinitely presenting yellow possibilities and fractal dreams. I cannot be afraid of the chaos life offers. I must bathe in it and let it cleanse me. I can let the endless variations of life steer my heart, or I can let my heart navigate my possibilities through the infinite array of momentary choices, and land where I belong in the yellow hills beyond Murdo, giggling on the road to heaven, following my moon.

Quote of the Day

2008-10-23T20:42:00.000-04:00

Play for the moments yet to come

Bagger Vance

The Danger of Doorknobs

2008-10-23T18:47:00.000-04:00

I admit that I have been preoccupied with George Carlin of late, he being the smartest man who ever lived and all, but, today I am more preoccupied with religion. After all, religion serves dual purposes in society, those being to confuse and to control. And I had previously believed that western religions had the monopoly (at least, if you just ignore the hindu), until I started looking at Islam a little more closely. I was reading Mohammed's last sermon and discovered this quote, "Hurt no one, so that no one may hurt you". It is this sort of religious gibberish that really angers me. I mean, how are you supposed to make sense of that. At least the jewish bible is a little clearer, "Go to Canaan, and kill every man, woman and child in your path". Well, at least if you study such things, it affirms the contention that god is merciful.

But all this balderdash pales in comparison to the story of Fatimah, daughter of Mohammed. Aside from the fact that she was chaste, had no menstrual cycle, had no birthing pains, was born from the fruits of paradise, and was midwifed by the four, most beautiful women who ever lived, I found myself more fascinated by the story of her death. I will paraphrase, in order to make the story easier to grasp.

Umar was trying to break into her house. She had no time to find her scarf, so she hid behind the door. The intruders flung open the door, and her unborn child was killed instantly, by the doorknob. Fatimah died a few months later from the resultant complications.

After I pondered the lessons to be learned from this story (Don't worry, dear reader, I will exhibit no condescension towards you by explaining them), I found myself wondering why so many of god's gifts are not available to all. Take, for instance, the ouija board, and let's say that one of the participants suffers from tourettes syndrome. It would be nearly impossible for him to lay his fingertips gently on the planchette; too many tics and spasms for that. And it would be impossible for the poor soul to make out what was being spelled out, given the random shrieks of f-u-c-k, s-h-i-t, p-i-s-s, c-u-n-t, m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u-c-k-e-r, p-r-i-c-k and a-s-s-h-o-l-e randomly conjugating on the board. All connection to the spirit world would be inaccessible, unless of course he went to see my sister-in-law, who is regularly visited by her deceased father. And, god forbid, both seekers suffered the disease. That planchette would be flying around like a ping pong ball on an air hockey table. Yes, god works in mysterious ways.

It has been pointed out to me, by a couple of my readers, one old and one new, that I suffer from a couple of insurmountable faults. The first claims that I am rigid and absolute in my beliefs. The second claims that I have lost my irreverence and have grown soft. I feel no need to address either of these ludicrous accusations. Not now, not never.

I have been touched by the hand of a great, ethereal power, and it is pointless to resist. But I think that whatever I am becoming is for the best. I will strive in future posts to regain my irreverence, and I will attempt to be more receptive to whatever ridiculous things you may believe. In the meantime, I know that George Carlin would git it, but, just to be sure, I pulled out my ouija board. Till we meet again, I would only ask that you not hide behind any doors.

Welcome Home

2008-10-17T15:26:00.000-04:00

A young, lacy maple grows along the fence, just off the back porch. She grows too near an old pine, yet she is the first to draw morning light, bathing in it like an exhibitionist awaiting my attention. She is a young tree, yet strong enough to thrive in the shadow of her brother. She stands there, anchored in the embrace of her brother's roots, yet her limbs are still spindly new, not yet wiry even. Yet somehow, that pine knows she will someday kick him in the shins and topple him over like a drunk off a barstool. Before the cooler breezes blew, she was green but sparse, tatted like curtain lace, clothed in teddy bear lingerie. She wore her leaves differently, not like the square dance skirt of a blue spruce, not like the tinsel, stripper's wig of a weeping willow, not like the ploofy-shouldered gown of an oak, but rather like the delicate tickle of a lover's touch, like a naked woman standing half-hidden in the doorway, like dawn's first whisper. Autumn arrived, and she colored before all the others, the yellow of like, overcome with the impatience of youth, strutting in the sunlight like a runway model, maybe a tad anorexic, but blazing with wanton desirability. Now, alas, she is bare and defiant, her branches exposed like the veins of dying leaves, yet she cries out "I will endure the snow and the ice. I will grow more slowly in the freezing winter, but I will not break, I will not stop. I will stretch for the dimmer sun and the brighter moon, drink from the hardened earth, feel the warm, buttery syrup coursing through me".

Her spring will inevitably arrive, and she will reach for the sun with new greenness but, perhaps less lace. And she will wear a new dress, and be beautiful once again. Birds will nest and squirrels will scurry. Her green will change and evolve with time, and the cycle will repeat.

Yes, the cycles are as constant as doubt, and changes will come. She will wear many dresses and shed them all. Her trunk and branches will thicken with time, knotted and whorlly, protecting the magic rings of time within. She will seed and she will sow, until a time long past my final breath. And she will become someone else's favorite tree, masking her secrets and sharing her strength. And they will see a different beauty in her, different than the one I see, but that's alright, because my vision of her has and will sustain me, until I am gone.

Pinocchio Wins the Nobel Prize

2008-10-13T14:25:00.000-04:00

Not since Walt Disney passed on due to excessive opium accumulation in his lungs, has a more meaningful event occurred in the annals of newsdom. The Nobel prize for physics was awarded this past week to three Japanese gentlemen, one American, for their discovery of 'spontaneous broken symmetry'. I don't even know what it is, but I do know that it is the single most incorrect assertion ever foisted on the global public. As I'm sure you are aware, in all but the purest mathematical definitions, there is no such thing as symmetry, even though is the most sought after treasure for humanity. In any event, as I pretend to understand it, when examining anything that appears symmetrical, especially the big issues, upon closer and more detailed examination, fractalized details appear that disrupt the whole notion of reflection. It is not until we get to the really, really small issues do we find that all variant detail disappears. While it is important to note that the whole fucking universe wouldn't exist without the spontaneous break in symmetry, it is more vital to accept the irrefutable realization that we are incapable of getting that small; that we are forced to accept the tiny variances in our lives that swirl symmetry right down the emotional garbage disposal. We cannot possibly hope to find the symmetry we seek.

All this science brought me, with a little help, to Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. It was clear to me, even in 1940, that constructing a wooden marionette could never alleviate an old man's loneliness, but that, due to the ravages of time, it was the only wooden thing that could give Gepetto any hope of passing on the puppet, genetic line. The fact is that Pinocchio was much more the little boy prior to his flesh and bone transformation, that only after Gepetto's dream came true, were the donkey ear seeds truly watered and nurtured. We all are the creations of our parents, designed to perpetuate the illusion of normal. Sure, Pinocchio was a liar, but he sang and danced his way down a path that felt good to him, felt natural. There are those that would tell you that he lied because he hadn't benefited from any parental guidance. I would tell you that he lied because his innate puppet instincts told him to protect himself. Now I don't believe that lying is the best way to protect yourself, but I do believe that instinctively, we all do what is necessary to survive. Therein lies the problem. Our lives are programmed from the beginning to survive, and we all know how to do it even before the strings disappear. What we never learn to do is to live, to thrive.

We all have a Jiminy Cricket, and he is wiser than you think. I'm not talking about the devilish imp that lives in all of us. The imp is there to maintain the status quo. No, I'm talking about the cricket, rubbing his legs together to get our attention, telling us how to be better; telling us that what seems OK probably isn't; showing us how to live outside the box we are all trapped in. The imp tells how to get around the right thing. The cricket gives us a new map, with a new space to explore with only instinctual instructions to guide us.

We need, at some point in the very near future, to accept the fact that we are nothing more than talking animals. Our mother ravens have already shown us how to leave the nest and find food, but they neglected to teach us how to fly upside down. The fact is that we instinctively know how to fly upside down. We just choose not to, primarily because we feel safer flying the conventional way. But as a species, we have failed to evolve; failed to examine the evolutionary path which has confined us. As a result, we continue to navigate through greed and self interest, swallowing hook, line and sinker the notion that was has always been is working.The path of accumulation is an abysmal failure; it has failed to provide symmetry. We, as a species, are unable the see the real reflection in the mirror. We are unable to accept that we are indeed miserable.

All of our social institutions exist in order to perpetuate a clearly broken path. Gods give us fear, business gives us scarcity, governments give us specious rules, marriage gives us sediment, and all of them together give us spiritual atrophy. We have given up our instincts, quit on the dream of discovering what we might become, instead choosing a state of dormancy bordering on coma.

I don't know whether or not the aquatic ape theorists are correct (although it does explain why I have such a large penis). I don't know why the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. I don't know why there was an imbalance in matter/antimatter at the big bang. I don't know why there wasn't a PinocchioII:The Later Years. But I do know that it is time to get out the sandpaper and scissors.
And I know it is time to look in the mirror, and find the microscopic reflection of what we should become, what we have never been.

It is time for a when-you-wish-upon-a-star tap dance into a black hole, and discover what light shines on the other side. It is time to want to be boys and girls again and chart a new course. It is time for donkeyearechtomies. It is time to evolve, have lots of fun, and let Jiminy Cricket run off and fuck the shit out of the Blue Fairy.

Forest for the Trees

2008-10-05T12:08:00.000-04:00

When the sky becomes inky, as twilight quickens toward black, when the world is only illuminated by distant streetlamps and crescent moon, faces appear in the forest, born of the trees, the natural clocks of infinity. The faces, formed of leaf and shadow, are ancient and private, only visible to the ardent viewer. The regulars appear, the jolly green giant with Sprout nearby, but Pan is also present, panpiping his final autumn symphony, heralding the onset of winter and hibernation. Arcadia listens intently, searching for hints of a distant spring, a remote rebirth, when the eromenoi step out from under the loving touch of their mentors and become the most courageous men. Even the moon is seduced toward fullness, overcome with the panic of d-flat and possibility.

I have worn many faces in my life, few of them my own, most of them born in my own shadows of fear and doubt. Yet I find myself tonight believing that my circle is completing, that I am ready to wear the face I was meant to wear, that I am synchronized with my life clock. I have always let my heart rule my life, choosing that option long ago, eschewing the influence of my brain. I have chosen to distrust my intellect, believing that it would lead me into a life of stunted imagination and empty goals. I have never felt comfortable with direction, feeling more at ease in the ebbs and flows of randomness. Perhaps it was easier avoiding the pitfalls of possible successes. I don't think I've ever been afraid to try, but I have been afraid to finish. But the melding of thought and feeling has appeared to me finally, like the leafy faces in the trees.

I have always let my life be ruled by happenstance, not a victim of it, but rather a willing participant, and I believe I have always stood in the resultant consequences, with courage, perhaps, but laced with a certain impotence. As a result, my life has moved forward with an enormous lack of self control, mixed with immediacy and expedience. But I am coming to realize that I have been gifted with certain abilities and talents that perhaps deserve direction and guidance, and that I have to create my creation, that lasting gift for those who follow. There is no haughtiness in this belief, only a certainty that it must evolve in the forest time that I have been given. There really is no sense in pondering the worth of my creation, only realizing its necessity.

There are many faces visible in the shadows of the trees, and soon they will fade to sleep. The gods, or at least the powers of the life force, reside there. The demons as well. I thought I saw the face of Satan, but it turned out to be the hair lipped face of Eric Roberts. But it is not the faces of the patriarchy that I seek. It is rather the faces of the feminine, the birthing faces hiding in the canopy, only illuminated by the light of the Pleiades, more difficult for me to pull into my new reality. But I will find them, and listen to them, and their light will spark my creation.

Yes, I have seen the faces. I have even seen my own, but it is a new face, one that I have never worn. It resides in the oak, strong and rooted. I will no longer be the willow, bowing to drink but never tasting, safely grasping the dry shore. I will no longer be the elm, diseased and disappearing. The pine, the cottonwood, the linden, the ash, the chestnut, the maple. They all have their place in the woods, in my woods. It is time for my forest to thrive. It is time for eagles to sway the treetops. It is time for the crows to stand sentinel. It is time for the jays to thieve, the cardinals to be leery, the squirrels to dervish, and the chipmunks to hoard. It is time for life in my forest, time for all the natural cycles to reside in sacred grace. After all, my time is still my eternal time and, as the man said, I have 'miles to go before I sleep'.

Surprises

2008-09-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

Sometimes in life, things appear so convoluted and confusing, so completely alien, that no matter how hard you try, you cannot make sense of it, cannot rotate the rubik cube of it, cannot unmaze the topiary of it. Non sequiturs are one thing, but that thing of which I speak is way beyond the boundaries of normal, random intrusion. When it happens, you are forced to pause in disbelief, pinch yourself awake from a nightmare that you didn't even know you were dreaming, and wonder if perhaps you have stroked out and lost all ability to reason, or comprehend. You become momentarily paralyzed, but eternally impaired. It is only through the reluctant realization that it has actually occurred that you are able to inhale; have an in-with-the-good-air, out-with-the-bad-air resurrection.

These moments can appear in many different forms and have many different causes, but they share certain universal qualities. They definitely take your breath away, like an out-of-nowhere slap in the face, or a who-am-I, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing plummet of the pedestal of self reliance, or a why-is-this-woman-causing-me-to-behave-like-a-complete-moron epiphany.
These moments will also cause you to question the lucidity of of your conscious mindset, the theoretical rationality once held in your core belief system. They question your conviction that you can believe what you see, and that what you see is not altered by your observance. They make you wonder if your optic nerve is just mocking you, but these moments are fleeting, never allowing you a firm grip on your bearings.

But most importantly, these moments always have a purpose, a gift even, but it is shrouded in a secret wound up tighter than the core of a baseball. Somehow, I know that these moments don't exist to reveal their purpose, but to cause us to seek revelation. The ultimate enigma--a shrouded secret, bearing a gift, but resisting discovery, yet setting us on a path toward discovery.

I had such a moment last evening. I was stunned, paralyzed, empty minded. I don't know where it will guide me, and I don't know what I will find, perhaps nothing. But I do know that it has taken up residence in my subconscious, set on a foundation sturdier than Atlas' shoulders. I will share it with you, although I know you can offer no guidance. It was, and is, my moment alone. I am almost certain it occurred, almost positive I saw it, a subtitle, golden yellow, emblazoned across a screen of an unknown Africa, at least unknown to me; a question which, at least for now, offers no hint of an answer, really offers no possibility of solution. But it was asked, clear and bold across the TV screen,

"Mother, will you rub some ochre on the calabash?"

A Tiny Red Leaf in a Wet Green Forest

2008-09-28T18:06:00.000-04:00

Most often, it's the little things that bring us joy. While sitting on the back porch, I spied a tiny red leaf, all alone in an otherwise verdant landscape. It stood out, not so much because of its brilliance, but, more so, because of its willingness to race ahead of its brethren on its path towards resurrection. I studied it, dead on and from various perspectives, until I was satisfied that it wasn't an errant nest fragment, a piece of cardboard,or a strand of yarn, discarded by a frantic robin with a speed pass to Florida. I needed to know that it was a leaf, just a little red leaf, that had so captured my imagination. And I was grateful to the cigarette, and the cup of tea, that had carried me into my outside world. Without them, I may never have noticed it. I might never have paused to ponder its significance to me. It made me stop, and breathe, gather and collect, and wonder. It also reminded me of the movie The Red Balloon.

I don't really remember the whole movie, but I know it centered around a boy chasing a red balloon all around Paris. It's a real shame that as we grow older, we lose the desire to chase things just for the sake of chasing. I'll admit, it does seem a bit like folly, to chase something without knowing where it will lead you. But in this leaderless world in which we live, it seems like a worthwhile pastime. And let's face facts. If you really take the time to examine your life, you will find that your red balloon has led you to many unexpected places, both good and bad. You would think, that given the lifespan of Joe American, that we could figure out that planning is a futile endeavor. I mean, I can virtually guarantee you that minions of people dropped stone dead of heart attacks while reading of robber barons and bailouts over the past few weeks, and they all planned their lives, didn't they? (There is a distinct possibility of rampant stupidity having a prominent role here as well). I can also guarantee you that most of the robber barons have a couple, or three, extra millions in their soiled pockets.

I'm left to wonder why we leave so little time for being happy. My little red leaf told me the answer today. We have become a species obsessed of two things--wealth and rightness. For most of you, these are the same thing, but they are not; they are connected but not the same. I don't know why, but we have become a species intent on acquiring more than we need. We collectively amass more stuff than we will ever use. I don't begrudge some people having more than others, but I do resent all of you that take more than you need. And when did we collectively decide that "My way, or the highway" is the eleventh commandment? I was happy enough with ten, although that covet thing seems a little over the top.

No, good readers, in a world where no one is accountable, you can rest easy knowing that this is not your fault either. No, the blame rests solely on the shoulders of the biggest phony of em all--GOD.

If I was God, I never would have revealed myself. It's petty. If you're omnipotent enough to create the universe, you should be confident enough to quietly sit back and enjoy your accomplishments. Clearly, there is a little too much Donald Trump in God. A little too much self-evangelizing. And I surely would have told you what to call me. Instead, he left us stuck with yahweh, buddha, mohammed, jesus (the pretender), rama, mbutu, whatever. God clearly suffers from schizophrenia of the highest order. From here on out, I will only refer to god by his actual name, Lou Smith. So somewhere along the way, we bought into the god thing faster than we realized that Clay Aiken was gay, and then we took that giant leap of faith--that if you know god, the true god, the real god, then you are righter than all the rest. We, as a species, were so afraid of what we didn't know that we latched on to the first creator that told the Jews to head to Canaan, and kill every man, woman and child along the way (In his defence, he did give us his only son, and let us crucify him) (Like god only has one son! If I was god I'd be fucking every babe in paradise). Then, of course, he put the all-seeing eye and 'In god we trust' on the dollar bill, and the rest is history--crusades, banana republics and WMDs.

So I'm looking at the little red leaf today, all the while pondering my purpose in life, and I realized that the only purpose any of us have is to be happy. We are all here to chase red balloons, across Paris, or Boston, or Timbuktu, or Bagdhad. If we only take what we need, then most times, there will be enough for everyone. And plenty of time for the pursuit of happiness. According to legend, god plopped us down in the garden of eden, stark naked, and left us to find our own way. If only we were really brave enough to handle that free will thing. Hurry, somebody, get me some helium. I don't care how much it costs!

Preparing a Meal

2008-09-16T11:46:00.000-04:00

When preparing a meal it is essential that all preparation be mindless. I do not mean to imply that the chef shouldn't think about it; only that the preparation should not require constant intervention. The meal should be preparing itself. Less stress!

So, to begin. Unless you are preparing fish, marinating is the way to go. The choices for marinades are endless, but might I suggest that whenever possible, only the freshest herbs and spices should be used. Oils always have there place. Dry rubs are OK when your really pressed for time, but then you're just cooking, not preparing a meal. Generously coat the main course with oil, preferably extra virgin olive, but infused oils are also acceptable. Use your hands and rub the oil all over. This accomplishes two things. First, it softens and allows the absorption of whatever herbs and spices you have chosen. Second, it lets you get good and greasy, and, let's face it, it's always better when you're greasy. Lets you slide and glide all the way to the end.

Before allowing the meal to marinate, it's time to season. Your choice of herbs and spices depends on what you're cooking, but fresh is the way to go. It is critical that fresh herbs and spices be handled gently, retaining their own natural oils and flavors. Garlic, for instance, should never be smashed and minced. No, take each clove between your thumb and forefingers and roll it gently until the peel is removed.

A brief aside is required here in regard to the main course. Butterflying and/or deboning are strictly forbidden. Remember, the meal is gifting itself to you. The flesh should never be cut or pierced. When inserting garlic, say into a rump roast, you should gently explore the roast until you find a seam that will accept the clove in its entirety. This process can be time consuming, but is well worth the effort.

Some people, at this stage will choose to tie the meal, be it meat or poultry, but I assure you, this is strictly a matter of personal preference. Prepare the meal properly and I assure you, be it bound or unbound, it will give itself to you, juicy and yummy.

At this stage, the main course should be allowed to marinate for as long as it wants to. It is perfectly acceptable to reapply and/or massage the spices several additional times. When the time comes, preheat the oven. Some find that initial cooking at higher temperatures, will help retain the natural juices. Again, a matter of choice. Nevertheless, the remainder of the cooking process should be long and slow, a natural approach when trying to maximize texture and flavor.

While the main course is slow roasting, preparation of side dishes should ensue. Mash or au gratin your potatoes. Trim your string beans. But only start cooking them when the main course is nearly ready to come out of the oven, and allow the main course to stand a bit as well.

The last preparation is the gravy. Gravy should be prepared over an intense flame, constantly stirred and whipped until it thickens and realizes its full potential.

Preparing a meal, like all truly enjoyable things, is not a science. This advice is offered only as a guide. You need to adapt it, nurture it, experiment with it and make it your own. The results will be delightful and savory. Bon Appetit! I'll leave dessert up to you.

Put your hands on her hips, and let your Backbone slip, or An Open letter to All Men

2008-09-11T13:53:00.000-04:00

Early this afternoon, I was subjected to the loudest cacophony of crow caws ever vocalized in a single location. Many of you are aware that I talk to squirrels, but perhaps you are unaware of my kinship with crows. I like them, and I think they deliver the really important mail.

When I became fully aware of the fever pitch the crow symphony had reached, I ran out to the back porch, for fear that they were under attack. I was unable however, to ascertain the root cause of their distress. I did however notice one crow lying on the ground, while his friend watched over him. I don't know if he was injured, but I do know that his friend stood guard until he was awake enough to fly again. Off they went into the trees, but the music didn't stop. It went on for over an hour. Maybe the crows were just feeling noisy.

My whole life, I have been certain that there were only three related birds in the crow family; the crow, the raven, and the mystery bird that I had forgotten. So I googled crows, and found to my astonishment that the corvid family is huge--crows, ravens, rooks, jays, magpies, choughs and jackdaws--but while I was surprised, this is not the pertinent tidbit gained from today's research. No, today I learned that male ravens will fly upside down when trying to secure a lifelong mate. (I also learned that crows only start hiding their storehouses, after they've learned to be thieving pirates themselves, but that's another story, although not unrelated)

This whole episode led me to ponder the trials and tribulations of men, especially, but not exclusively, young men. Men don't get instructions. They start out their 'adult' lives without any idea how to get to where they are going, without even knowing where they are going, although there is an underlying certainty that they are supposed to be going somewhere. This, of course, is why men say and do incredibly stupid things. It is really not that they are stupid. It is more that they are floundering, making up their own rules and guidelines as they go along. And this is why men have no idea what women think or feel. They are too busy figuring out what to do with themselves; no time to unravel the feminine puzzle. If men could fly upside down, they would; but they can't, so instead they get drunk, fight and eat light bulbs in an effort to attract a woman. Once they realize the futility of these endeavors, they are only left with two options--find a career and pretend they're good at it, or think with the penis. That's all there is. Money or cock. And women, poor souls, are left with choosing the lesser of two evils. There is, of course, some ovelap here, which is why you can always find rich, stupid men, and poor hapless men who are good in the sack.

So then, I see this story on current tv, about an egyptian man who decided to become a professional belly dancer in Cairo. He said that he dances like a man; that if danced like a woman, he couldn't do it, although he does admit that he uses some, but not all, of the women's movements. He is very proud of what he does; considers himself an artist, and performs on the world stage, when he isn't dodging bullets from fundamentalists that believe he is Satan. So then, I start wondering why there aren't any male hula dancers, I mean, beside the fact of how ridiculous they would look in grass skirts. Men choose to play the ukuleles, to play the congas, and to twirl their fire batons, because that is what they do well.

And then, it struck me. The fundamental difference between men and women. I don't mean to offend the unshaven feminists, or the pablum-spewing, touchy-feely literati, but the answer is very simple. Men are good with their hands, and women are good with their hips.

Y'all should've realized by now that I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I'm not rich, but I'm not stupid. But there are some things I've managed to decipher. I know who I am, and I know who I am not, and I know that I am still open to all my possibilities. I know I'm not scared anymore. And even though I can't fly, right side up or upside down, I'm still taxiing down my runway, making another approach, and ready for takeoff. I wish you all a safe and happy flight.

A Thirty Second Tale of Life and Death

2008-09-06T14:56:00.000-04:00

The fact that I am delirious with fever should in no way detract from the value of this short, little tale.

I was sitting on the porch today, trying to cool down. My love tells me that I have incredible peripheral vision. I suppose I do. In any event, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that a small wasp/hornet had landed on my favorite, pinhead-sized, yellow spider's web. I watched as it twitched, spun its belly on an e-string thorax, and I assumed that it was done for. My tiny, yellow spider thought so too, and sprung into wrapping and desiccating action. As you know, all spiders have teeth, and my little yellow friend had hers plunged into the wasp's head. The wasp appeared to go limp, lifeless I thought, when it jabbed my little spider, and the battle renewed, but only briefly. With the new found strength of impending victory, the wasp did her in, freed himself, and carried her off to dine.

As delirious people do, I found myself absorbed, and reminded, of a newly acquired quote, "If you're in a hole, stop digging". I also found myself understanding the song title 'It takes a lot to laugh. It takes a train to cry', but that's for another day.

No today I am absorbed with struggles, and I'm trying to figure out if we (jews included) really do have crosses to bear. I think the answer is not so simple, but I am starting to believe that the super glue we crave is made from sugar and sympathy. We have such an obsession with self labeling; we want to self label to join similarly self labeled humans in sugar and sympathy labeled groups. I will not single out any group in particular, but know that it does include all religions, political dogmas, income levels, survivors and victims alike. It has something to do with shared experiences, but this alone makes it appear silly to me. I mean, don't we all share the same experience. There is certainly variance in experiences, but the variations do not separate people from the overall experience. No, belonging to churches, or political parties, or support groups only offers the chance to live in a hole with other people, and to dig until the water's over your heads.

There are, of course, other kinds of holes. Somewhere, I'm not sure where, but it's either in a land where they mutilate vaginas and sew them shut or, in a land where young boys are the primary saleable commodity, people insert larger and larger metal rings in their earlobes until their earlobes hang at roughly the same latitude as their navels. At some point today, I was amused by the possibility that these enlarged earlobes enabled people to hear what the dormant parts of their brains were trying to tell them, but instead, I was led to ponder the brass ring, longneck ladies of southeast asia. I discovered that this was done originally so that tigers would have greater difficulty snapping their necks, but I was left with the conclusion that it has more to do with sexual allure. In any event, it is a more concrete example of how we support our heads at the top of deeper holes we create. This, in turn, led me to ponder another old expression, "one man's penis is another man's doorknob".

In any event, we dig holes for lots of different reasons. Sometimes to find stuff that we perceive as valuable, sometimes to hide; sometimes we dig holes for other people, even nations; sometimes we dig them to steal; sometimes to bond. Go ahead and make up your own reasons, but I am left with only one conclusion.

Holes are empty places, not so much on their own, but more the result of our actions. They are no so much the creation of nothing as much as they are the absence of something. We dig holes, most often, because we believe something has been taken from us, or lost. But all holes are like black holes. They may suck in what we seek, but they leave it just out of reach, just beyond the event horizon.

There is hope however. Eventually, we will have dug so many holes, that they will join together, coagulate into a single giant hole, and we will be left to evolve out of it. But we are going to have to survive slightly longer than my little spider friend.

Don't Believe What You Think or, An Open Post to my Six or Seven Readers

2008-09-05T08:47:00.000-04:00

There have been many events this past week that have led me to ponder the synchronicities of the life force. We all make choices, and despite the teachings of my sister-in-law, they have nothing to do with Lesser or Glasser (or whoever he is); nothing to do with love, power, fun and freedom. (My apologies to Gail, as I know I'm treading on thin ice, and I'm not wanting to single her out).

But it has become clear to me that choices are part of a much bigger picture; they are not strictly about each of us as individuals. Choice is a collective-an interconnectivity of humanity that eludes conscious thought, or even unconscious thought.

Choice, real choice, requires truth, and truth is universal. Our inability to comprehend the universal holds us back from seeing the truth. We view everything in a very individual, narrow bandwidth. We require of ourselves the creation of a palpable frame of reference. And that space is altered by that which we carry, and that which we allow in. Just think about this often uttered phrase: "I've made it part of my truth".

Fact is, truth is not something that we can own. Truth is the single most untenable reality. Truth exists in the chaos, in pure form, but is only observable through our altering frames of reference.
My truth is not your truth, so it is by definition, not truth at all. It is the single hardest thing for us to accept-that the 'what I know' reality is internal to each of us. Truth is external, and can only be shared by the collective without our consent. We share our 'truths' with each other, but we innately carry the realization that for everyone else, our 'truths' are false.

I am not going to get on my soapbox, and pretend that I know what truth is. I don't. So, I am left, by choice, to offer up my little blurbs without rules. They are only food for thought. There is no pain in this choice. The space of this choice is filled with fun. I only offer the choice for you to love yourself through my eyes. And as for power, I only offer you the choice to seek your own powerful falsehoods, and the power to let it flow toward the universal truth. And I offer the freedom to accept or deny.

I do not mean to imply that our choices do not carry truth, but it is undetectable and unalterable, beyond our comprehension. Our first choice is to emerge, followed closely by the choice to breathe in the weakened aftermath of emergence. Our final choice is to exit, and that may come at any time. In between, I don't know. We each play the game by our own rules.

I do know one thing. That the truth that is carried in our individual choices binds us in a single unity. Each choice we make binds us together as a single entity, and resistance is futile. We choose, through our make-believe little truths, to accept the conjugation of a single human spirit. What we choose affects everyone else, and no matter how dimly we see that, we all know it.

Several people have told me that my words are powerful, and that I should use them carefully. Pshaw! It is not the words that are powerful, it is the choice to utter them, and they will affect those that read them, and those that do not, through my choice, not through their definition. We do matter in the grand scheme of things, because the choices we each make individually, bind us together in a human singularity, held together by the truth we do not comprehend, yet always seek.

My own 'truth' is no bigger or better than yours, but there are parts of it that I need to share today. Some of you may choose to depart after you read them. I don't know. But thanks for visiting.

I, like you, have constructed my own frame of reference. It's foundation is constructed of fun, and holds no space for the burden of pain. It's walls are made of paper, thin and delicate, and easily torn. It's windows however, are built with my eyes, and the light that enters and exits through them, is filled with clarity and doubt, joy and despair, love and hate, acceptance and rejection, even honesty and falsehood. Many of you accept what you see without reservation; accept others' statements at face value. I have far more filters. I look at light from many different angles, fragment my light through many different prisms, and much of what has transpired here lately shines false.

I cannot fully believe in the jenna saga. The compassionate prism is allowing her light in because her story evokes in me a shared sadness. The sympathetic prism is allowing others to buy into it, to support her and console her. But there is a certain polish and wisdom in her light that cannot pass through my other prisms. I do not believe that she is only sixteen. I entertain the possibility that this is just a game she is playing in the internet ether. I have also mulled the possibility that she is just out of her fucking mind And I have considered deeply, that she is sharing her 'truth', and allowed her light to pass through my sadness prism. But this 'big, old fart' needs a lot more of the 'skinny'.

The truth shall indeed set you free, but it will not let go easily. Until we accept, and revel in, the space given by the collective human spirit, the connectivity of all, it will be very hard to grab a hold of it.

Cottage Cheese and Cheetos

2008-09-01T13:57:00.000-04:00

Today's post could just as easily been titled 'Random Thoughts of a Very Full Week', but I just liked the one I chose more. And that is, after all, what choices are all about. Our individual journeys are all about the choices we adopt. Most times, we make a choice; other times, choices are made for us, or at least offered to us. In either situation, we each, individually, agree to the choice we make and make it our own, stand in it. And sometimes, our choices involve things that just don't seem to fit together. So here goes, fasten your seatbelts.

Life is full of choices. Mine are found in a myriad of places. An empty pyrat rum bottle full of scrolls. A future fish bowl filled with shared desires. An empty water jug filled with sand, pebbles and seashells. A bulletin board full of dreams, past, present and future. A house that no longer holds space for me. A computer filled with unwritten pages. My list is endless, has no inside or outside, and is filled with urgency and patience. Our choices are all we are given. They come without directions, and their consequences are unforeseeable, like spiders and geometry. Our webs may realize as boxes or orbs, circles or pyramids; even in moebius strips and torus, but where those webs will extend to is unknown. They are full of gifts and punishments, beginnings and ends, and possibility-filled journeys. They are held together with only spit and time; tenuous, and vulnerable to the winds of change. Oh sure, there are signposts along the way, rites of passage, but they only serve to show us where we are at the moment; never how to get to the next one. We try to make sense of the unpredictability of life, but that is an impossible task, harder than pissing in the wind on a moving freight train. And, I believe, that the frustration resultant from our inability to go with the flow, is our single greatest source of despair.

Over the last few weeks, choices were made everywhere, and in completely illogical, non-linear ways, affected my life irrevocably. A young man, who I didn't know, chose to end his own life. I don't know why, never will. But I do know it was his choice. A meteorologist chose to name a tropical storm Gustav, and set it careening toward the gulf coast. The most beautiful woman in the world chose to paint sticks. My brother and sister-in-law chose to say their final goodbye to their dog. And I. I chose the name, Morveren, for a landlocked mermaid. There is great sadness, and great joy in all of these choices, and their consequences will unfold for years to come. Initially, there was grief and rage and confusion, solace and quietude and clarity. I do not possess enough wisdom to tell you where it will all lead. I can only chronicle the things I have chosen to hold onto.

The woman saw her son become a man right before her eyes. Painted sticks became a bouquet of cherished memories. Tears were kissed away lovingly. The young man was dead, but gifts, great gifts that he chose, for all I know, were given everywhere. Cats and mermaids can now call each other by name, and sleep together in the sun. And I think the Mississippi veered slightly to the west.

My love and I chose a play day of cottage cheese and cheetos. We played with witches and pirates, walked in the oceans waters, and honored a friend by eating fried clams and scallops at Kelly's in Revere. All the other good things are hers and mine. No one else's. But there is a lesson here. Be sure to eat your cottage cheese early, and hold on tight to that bag of cheetos, or the seagulls might pirate the whole bag.

Who am I kidding? Lesson, schmesson. Do whatever you want. It's your choice. But, thanks in advance for all the good things that might come my way. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In the Name of the Fathers

2008-08-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

We all have questions that we do not want answered. There are a myriad of answers as to why, but most revolve around fear of one sort or another. In the absence of truth, we construct fables to masquerade as answers, and we even allow ourselves to buy into the folly. This is true for all of us, and for each of us. The biggest question, of course, is 'Why are we here'?

I do not pretend to know the answer. I do have my own, but I believe that our answers can all be different, yet coexist in a comity of individuals (M.W. word of the day; does not really apply here, but I like its meaning). I believe that we exist to play. For me, it is the only thing that makes sense. All the wonder of the universe exists in play, yet it is the one human attribute that we consistently deny to ourselves. I mean, think about it. If we were really meant to understand the nature of god, or births or finalities, beginnings and ends, the finite and the infinite, don't you think we would have figured it out by now. Men and women much smarter than I have tried, yet are always left with an oysterless pearl, pretty but without nourishment or substance. No, it is not meant to be. And play is the one thing we inherently do understand. We know how to play, and to bathe in the joy of it, as soon as we are born.

I often wonder, even at this stage of my life, why my father would fetch us from the playground wearing only his boxer shorts. My father was not an immodest man. He was a good man, who greeted all who came into his space, with humor and laughter. He was a good man who treated everyone with respect and dignity. I still see him as the strongest man I ever met, carrying sleeper sofas to the third deck alone. He saved a man from drowning once, returning the favor of surviving the sinking of the destroyer escort on which he served during the second World War. All kids were his to adopt, welcoming the stragglers and untended into his life. I don't mean to imply that he didn't have his faults. He was stubborn. He could be extremely impatient. He could even be cruel and self indulgent. But always, at every moment, a smile stood at the ready beside a battalion of goofy jokes. He left me his stubborn, he left my brother his goofy, and he left a lasting joy in all who knew him.

My father gave me laughter, but it was my grandfather who gave me magic. His magic was wrapped in dark shuls and Torah. The religious magic died in me when he died, but the good magic, the kind magic stayed with me. He taught me about the mystery of life, how it should be revered, and how it should be folded into gentle hands. My grandfather taught me to search for answers, and that happiness came from the seeking, not the finding. He taught me to wrap myself in loving; in a tallis or a blanket, it made no difference. He gave me the start of a journey.

Surely, if god did indeed create the world, there was a fair amount of mirth invoked. He created a playground for us, a huge combination of water park and toboggan run. He left us to sink or swim, to stand or slide, laugh or cry, live and die. If god didn't want us to paint, he would have left off the colors of the rainbow; if he didn't want us to sculpt he never would have given us clay; if he didn't want us to supply our own beauty and mirth, he would have withheld the gift of imagination. No, if god didn't want us to play, he never would have given us a perfect world in which to do it. And if god wanted us to have the answers, he never would have thrown us the apple. If god created us in his likeness, he surely gave us the gifts of love and laughter. If we are god's children, then children we should be.

We might dig a hole when we play, but it will leave no scar. We may light a fire, but it will warm, not burn. We may fight or disagree when we play, but laughter will follow quickly on the heels of tears. We might build roller coasters, but we can reuse the k'nex later. We may throw, or bounce, or jump, or wrestle, but we will not break. Children are resilient, and always want to play the day after.

We forgot how to play when we forgot that finding answers is not the important thing. Looking for them is what counts. When we stopped playing, the world skewed on its axis, about half a bumble off plumb. It's not too late to fix it. Let's make a tilt-a-whirl, or better yet, let's throw on some boxer shorts and go get the kids.

Confusion

2008-08-19T11:51:00.000-04:00

The very first time I drew a magic card, it was the weasel; and, no, the weasel is a very good and powerful card; we have given them the bad attributes that they do not deserve. So, it was fitting that one crossed my path on my drive home from Connecticut. Now, I'm using the word 'weasel' in the family/genus sense, because weasels themselves are little. So I had to google all animals in the family, and have decided that it was a fisher. Upon further investigation, I discovered that a group of weasels is called a boogle, which tickled my funny bone, or, sometimes, a confusion--a confusion of weasels. I have always liked a 'murder' of crows, and an 'ostentation' of peacocks, but this confusion thing fell right into my gut.

There are of course several monikers we could apply to groups of humans--an 'ignorance' of humans, or my current choice, and 'arrogance' of humans. However, it is inherently clear to me, that despite our arrogant claim to be atop the food chain, we do not fully buy into our own haughtiness. Otherwise, we long ago would have come up with less boring choices than the specious 'community' or 'group'. Imagine if we were really good enough to refer to ourselves as an 'uncondition' of humans, or perhaps a 'benevolence' of humans.

The question was recently posed to me, "What if animals were smarter than people?". The answer is not easy. Despite our anthropomorphic tendencies to attach 'human' qualities to animals, deep down we know that they are smarter than us. During a recent conversation with a squirrel, I learned that most animals refer to us as 'a cluster of dangerous things'.
So, I am led to posit the question, "What's it all about, Alfie"?

Today, the answer carries some clarity for me, and it all starts with the boogeyman. The boogeyman is a global phenomenon, brought on to assure that our children carry the same fears that we adults do; fear of life, fear of the unknown, fear of difference. There is clearly a monster hiding under all our beds, in all our closets, and as we grow older, we forget that he is powerless beyond the realm of our imaginations. Oh sure, in some cultures, the boogeyman eats children who are bad, but I have never read an article in the NY Times about a confirmed boogeyman attack.

Which leads me to the real point of this story-one of the differences between paths and journeys. The only surefire way to defuse the boogeyman is to follow a path. Paths always have an end, a destination. It might lead to the accumulation of wealth, spiritual enlightenment, or Ben and Jerry's. It doesn't really matter. The end of the path is the 'getting there', the place where we fearlessly headed, our nirvana and our Cherry Garcia. But the satisfaction and happiness associated with ends of paths is fleeting, a flicker in the cosmic light bulb, and it goes out faster than a birthday candle.

So, we put our children on their tricycles and send them on a path toward Jesus, or Buddha, or Allah, or Benjamin, and offer them the false promise of paradise. Go out, and do not be afraid, because (fill in the blank) is with you, protecting you, carrying you to heaven.. Well, fuck that.
Fuck that whole original sin bullshit. Children know good from bad, they are born with that knowledge. They know that good and bad are found in play and wonder, innocent and sinless. You know it, I know it--there is no hell in playing.

Journeys are all about play, and they have no final destination. Each moment is filled with its own discoveries, and you never know what the next moment will bring. Journeys are all about possibilities. We need not be afraid of unknown possibilities, because the journey will continue. Something great one moment, something bad the next, but there will always be another moment on a journey. On a journey, you always find the joy in what you never knew. You can be forever amazed. You can never really find anything unless you embark on a journey. You can't like, or love, or be afraid.

My next moment may bring the end of my life. It may not. But it will bring something I can play with, something to amaze me. My journey will eventually end, but not in this joyous moment, not right this second.

So dear reader, there are choices to be made. Two options really. Journey on, dude, or join the 'confusion' of humanity.

Place vs Space

2008-08-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

On a recent trip with my brother to the bowels of Maine, I was able to take some time to ponder the differences between place and space. I had always believed that place was the penultimate necessity for us as human beings, but while I still believe that place has important ramifications, it is now clear to me that space is what we seek.

Place, insofar as this discussion is involved, is a physical location. While it is true that places are seen through individual eyes, most things attributable to place are pre-existing. For example, the place that my nephew lives is in Maine. It is not the panoramic, fractal coast of Maine, replete with myriads of islands and coves, quaint and artsy, but rather the toothless beer belly of Maine, reserved for timber, ATVs and ignorance. People live there all right, but 'live' might not be the right word. It is a place where existence is difficult, work is scarce, and hunting is necessary. It has its own natural beauty, with forests of tall pine, does with fawns, and acre upon acre overgrown with goldenrod, but its beauty is almost invisible because of the difficulty of life. You can find silence there, but it's wallow-in-sadness silence, not ponder-the-wonder silence. It is an enigma shrouded in the natural beauty of the planet, yet plodding, like the slow steady paces toward death.

I grew up in a nice place, but this Maine was like an alien landscape; like the playground of my youth overgrown with weeds. 'Ramshackle' springs to mind. It is not a place where kids play baseball while parents smile. It is not a place where parents help their kids with their homework. It is a place of two-tone cars, mostly bondo and blue. I would never think about jumping off a bridge in this part of Maine; the rivers are too deep and fast, and the bridges are too flimsy. Just not a good jumping off place.

While places are sometimes about perception, spaces are all about emptiness; or rather fill-ability. Spaces are rife with possibilities, creativity and magic. They come in all shapes and sizes, and can be solitary or shared. They are not constrained by physical limitation, and, most often, they are not of the physical world. Spaces reside in your gut. They are best when they are open and clean, and clutter is mostly pushed aside like unwanted conversation. A space can be a place, but a place is only sometimes a space. We are a little bit into semantics here. It is a little bit like the age old argument about creeks and streams; y'know, which is bigger, or deeper, or wider. There is no clear definition, although I'm fairly certain no one can identify a rill. But, I digress.

A person can fill, or even create, his own space. You can do it alone, or you can share it. You absolutely need a space for love, but I don't think you need a place. I have found and filled spaces under a little league coach's cap, and, wrapped in a South Dakota blanket. I have even found a space of sorts in blogland.

Spaces allow you something that places do not. Oftentimes, in spaces, you learn to love yourself through someone else's eyes (I cannot take credit for this observation. It's a South Dakota blanket thing). Places are like codependency without the addiction; spaces are like the rush, the high without the alteration. Places can be the source of conflict; spaces are all about horizons, a clear vision, and resolution.

I am in the the midst of a conflict at the moment, and it's all about place. I don't know if my place should be 'take me out to the ballgame', or 'give me a home where the buffalo roam'. If I allow myself to stand in my spaces, though, an answer appears possible; a little hazy perhaps, but there is blue sky behind it, just waiting for my light to burn off the fog. Places are most often distinct and unconnectable, but spaces will often unite and grow, given time and willingness. Places often require stopping, but spaces only require patience. And, after all, good things come to those that wait.

May all your horizons, dear reader, be as bright and wonder-full.

(Coming soon to a blog near you: Paths vs Journeys)

Convolution

2008-08-10T10:47:00.000-04:00

Let me start out by saying that I still bear as much sadness regarding the events of September 11th as every other American. I just think that perhaps my perspective is a little bit different, partly because no one in my life circle was involved. However, due to certain revelations, the events of that day are beginning to represent for me a symptom of all that is wrong in the world. Let me preface the main body of this post with a statement of my perspective, which may not sit well with all concerned.

I offer my sincere, and heartfelt condolences to everyone who suffered a loss on 9/11; to the children, spouses, lovers, parents, brothers and sisters of all who died that day; and I would include the mothers, fathers, spouses, lovers, children, brothers and sisters of the perpetrators of the crime. Surely, for those who loved them, a great loss occurred, even if (and I don't know) they choose to shroud it in some stupid and misguided view of paradise. Surely, their loss doesn't hurt any less.

All this found its way into my world when I read about the USS New York, a warship created from the scrap metal retrieved form ground zero, with the express purpose of hunting down terrorists and killing them. Last time I looked, god told us that revenge belongs to him. But just like every other imperialist nation on earth, we have absorbed revenge into our dogma, and god damn it, we're gonna follow through. Has it occurred to anyone, that they flew those planes into those buildings because we force our lofty dogma down their throats? Is the world really gonna be a better place after we impose 'democracy' on nations divided by dogma as lofty as our own?

No, we are seeking revenge because someone finally mustered up the audacity to invade our shores; someone finally said "You're not the boss of me", and "Stick your self-absorbed, self righteous, self perception up your puritanical, greedy, lofty, manifest destiny ass".

Sorry, folks, god is no longer on our side, and he's holding back all his blessings. In fact, I recently heard him utter, "Just who the fuck do you think you are"? Not only have we flown the coop in god's eyes, but we have lost the respect and admiration of the rest of the world. To them, we are evil, pure evil.

The creation of a warship from the detritus of the WTC is not only a sin against god (whichever one you accept), it is a sin against the spirit of all those who died there. It is a sin against ourselves, and all the good we once stood for.

The Trouble with Us or, The Trip to Similarity

2008-08-05T18:17:00.000-04:00

"Our people knew there was yellow metal in little chunks up there; but they did not bother with it, because it was not good for anything"--------Black Elk

The problem with America, and the rest of the world for that matter, is religion. And that is really an odd thing, since they all teach basically the same thing. I include the Jews, the Catholics, the Protestants, the Sunnis, the Sikhs, the Hindu, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the Great Triad, and any I may have forgotten. I also include that vast sect that only worships gold. And I think the problem lies in the ten percent of the brain that we actually use. The brain, in its current evolutionary state, is unable to counteract the self-righteous neuron cluster. In fact, the findings from a recent neurological conference at Harvard has determined that due to sociological and biological pressures, we cannot alter the belief that we are right in whatever we do.

The actual view bears this out. Our worship of gold has led us to current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Muslim view of paradise led to flying planes into the twin towers. The Aztecs, the Incas, the Toltecs are all gone in the name of god and gold. We have beaten Native Americans into an alcoholic and drug laden blob of a nation, in the name of manifest destiny. I cannot speak of Africa, or Australia or Bosnia, but it is the same there; I just don't know the details. We, as a race, are guilty of a self-righteousness bordering on pathological, and we bear it most often in the name of god or gold.

I am all for diversity, but not at the expense of commonality. A boy or girl can longer honor the grandfather or the grandmother; the spirits of the earth are all dead; and soon enough, Santa will have no workshop--the North Pole will be gone. We plow ahead with a deadly single mindedness. And in our wake, we leave a barren landscape.

We have reached a point where we are only happy if we take way more than we need. The accumulation of wealth, or spirituality, has led us as a world to become a collection of aggressive packs. The pope evangelizes, the mullah incites to violence, the rabbi preaches cultural protection, the press proselytizes, the CEO profitizes, and the good ole US of A, well, the just jam democracy down the throats of anyone who won't listen.

Thankfully, I have a pirate in my life, and pirates can unlock writers block by thinking of one word for you. Today's word is DOGMA.

And the question of the day is "Why does dogma make us so comfortable'? I have my opinions, and I will share them, but I don't wish to sound too dogmatic.

Dogma makes us comfortable because it eliminates the need for any original thought. When we accept dogma, we no longer have to admit that we only use 10% of our brains. If Jesus, or Allah, or Yahweh says we are the chosen people, the ones who will find paradise, then we can say we adhere to dogma and our sins will all be forgiven. We can rape and pillage and steal and cheat without consequence. And please, don't throw the law in my face--that's just dogma for sale.

Dogma also makes us comfortable because it binds the pack and eliminates the need for meaningful conversation. Just say a prayer, or buy some stock, and the genocides in Germany and Bosnia and Darfur become little more than troublesome inconveniences.

And lastly, dogma eliminates the need to live your own life; you can just live the life you're supposed to live according to whichever Grand Poobah you choose. Just follow the party line.

I've made my choice. I'll accept the Golden Rule, and I'll make up the rest as I go. I honestly don't give a flying fuck if you buy anything I say. I will not belong to any pack, I will find my own red road, and I will try to help whoever stumbles across my path. To bastardize a fairly new expression, "You are right, and so is everyone else".

It is high time for us to stop caring if someone else thinks, or believes, as we do. And it is certainly time to accept that you will never change their mind. So go ahead. You take the high road, and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in paradise before you.

Random Thoughts from the Porch at Dawn

2008-08-03T10:06:00.000-04:00

It has never failed to amaze me how a male cardinal will stand guard while his mate feeds. It has never failed to amaze me how a mockingbird can sound like a squeaky clothesline either. And, it amazes me today how easy it is for a reader to completely alter what a writer intends.

Our perceptions of the world are clearly governed by our own thoughts and circumstances. Our realities are clearly fleeting and chaotic; not that they do not exist, but rather that they are altered in each moment by what we perceive. It is no small wonder that we seek a place, a permanence, in a world that is constantly changing in our own minds.

But surely there must be constants in our realities. I just don't know in this paragraph what they are. Or perhaps our constants are merely what we refuse to let go of, refuse to cast out of existence. Perhaps that is why gods exist for us, or at least for some of us; to smooth out our continuous transitions. Perhaps faith is the only constant, although it seems to me that we each adhere to our own faith. Holy shit, what a curse it is being human. At least some of the time; at those times when we are trying to comprehend.

I watched two squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of a large oak tree. I really don't know if it was mirth, or folly, or anger, or whether or not I am allowed to assign any perception to it. It was whatever it was. But I enjoyed it.

No, I think that there are no constants. Certainly not time. We can alter time in the blink of an eye (what a stupid expression--who blinks just one eye). Certainly not love. Love needs to be changing, growing for it to last. Love is constantly wavering like a mirage, but that doesn't mean the water isn't there. It only means that it is there for as many moments as we choose to perceive it and honor it. And if gods were a constant, then there wouldn't be so many different kinds. And surely life is not a constant; it is chaotic and transitory, and most definitely temporary. And not death either. There is no certainty that it is even permanent.

I thought for a moment that perhaps dogs are a constant, but sometimes dogs run away to be dogs. No, I think I am happy being a weasel, full of stealth and evolving knowledge, scampering about, popping up from time to time to share what moments and shiny things I have come to cherish. The magic cards have been dealt.

I thought for a moment that music may be a constant; a constant droning d-flat that is always there for us to hear, but not all of us have perfect pitch, and we often seek the arpeggio. Or perhaps noise, but we all seek silence from time to time (See, if time were constant, you couldn't go from time to time), and while silence is golden, it is not constant either.

Perhaps, in the context of the Great Triad, nothing is constant. But 'nothing' is incomprehensible, yet still worth striving for. After all, our moments are most holy when they are inconceivable, difficult to attain, wrapped in nothing.

But, back to words. If I might be allowed to illustrate by recounting a recent conversation with Gail.

FA: What did you do today?

G: I cleaned my house. It's clean as a whistle.

FA: Whistles are full of spit. Is spit clean? Did you spit all over your house?

G: No, I am a lady. I don't spit. You, know, you can be really cold; cold as a witch's tit.

FA: What makes you think a witch's tit is gold?

G: COLD, I said cold. What are you deaf?

FA: Deaf as a haddock.

G: I didn't even know that haddock have ears.

FA: If they had ears, they wouldn't be deaf, would they?

G: Whatever! God, I'm tired of these dog days.

FA: What is it about hot, humid, sticky and still that makes you think about dogs?

G: Jesus fuckin Christ, you are frustrating. You can be dumb as a stump.

FA: Some cultures believe that trees, and stumps ARE trees, possess all the wisdom in the world.

G: Well, you certainly don't!

FA: That's not true. I'm smart as a whip.

G: My point exactly

FA: I gotta go.

G: Me too. Talk to you soon. Goodbye

FA: Goodbye? What's good about bye?

Well, as you can see, words can be confusing, but they're fun to play with. Maybe play is a constant, or should be. Well, I'm off like a herd of turtles.

J'accuse

2008-08-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, and while I didn't know him, I'm fairly certain he wouldn't see me as dangerous. Yet, here I stand before you, recently accused of being dangerous.

Doc Holliday was dangerous. Ingesting copious amounts of whiskey and laudanum, while wearing several concealed handguns does not promote a safe environment. Mixing poker and money into the equation, bad idea. In any event, I am certainly not Doc Holliday dangerous.

I might scare people sometimes. I think Gail was genuinely afraid when she was thinking that I might be stupid enough to jump off that Ohio bridge.

Hanging around with Jesus was dangerous, but as far as I know, I am not wanted for fomenting rebellion against all things roman. There is no bounty on my head. I'm not significant enough.

I have been many things in my life. I've spent time playing several evil roles. There have been times when I was so paralyzed with insecurity that I fabricated things about myself. I am a repeat drunk driving offender, although MADD and the police remain unaware. I have had a battalion of unprotected lovers. I have ingested illegal drugs, so much so that even the flying monkeys quivered. At various points in my life, I have wrapped myself in lies, cheats and thievery. I've jumped on speeding trains, slid down mountains, jumped out of airplanes and stared down guard dogs. But all these things only heaped danger upon myself, not others, and most were born of youth or stupidity. But thankfully, I survived all my episodes, and emerged a little bit brighter. You know the old expression "I think, therefore I'm not as dumb as I used to be".

So, I have been left alone to ponder my dangerous-ness, and frankly, I am plum mystified. Perhaps I am not defining danger in the proper light. Is it possible that being kind and gentle is dangerous? What about founding a new 'religion'?, being sarcastic and irreverent?, looking for love in all the right places? Help me dear reader. I don't want to be dangerous. I mean I drive like an old lady, hold doors for people, and only flip people off when it's really called for. I don't even have a license to carry. I don't even tear that tag off my mattress.

I suppose, upon further reflection, that perhaps some of the things I believe are dangerous. For instance, I believe that the burning Bush is a fucking moron. I believe that we should have evolved already beyond any need to fight wars. I believe that most people are OK, until they show me how much they suck. And, I do believe that Lucky Charms are good for you.

Eureka!!!

I am a little afraid to reveal where my real danger lies, but it stems from such a long held belief, such a personal core value, that perhaps I am blinded to its inherent danger. I may as well just blurt it out. There's no sense hiding it anymore. Perhaps just by writing it I will undergo some sort of catharsis. So here goes:

CHINESE PEOPLE CAN'T DRIVE

Run for your lives. Don't hang around me. I can sense the danger already. It has been foreseen.

A posse of billions of chinks is hot on my trail, gunning for me with dried rice balls and thousand year old eggs, pedalling their bicycles as fast as they can. There's nowhere to hide. I'm sorry.

The Missing Years

2008-07-29T11:18:00.000-04:00

It seems, unbeknownst to me, that there is a great deal of debate regarding the whereabouts of Jesus from 18 to 30 AD. (Aside: It never really occurred to me until now that Jesus is the time we accept, at least in years, and I'm thinking that 2007 is pretty fucking old and outdated) Well, I figure he did pretty much the same things any young man does between 18 and 30--trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up, carousing a lot and chasing pussy. Sure, it's possible he took a little road trip to India, ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, smoked a little weed, did a little yoga, and sought the 'essence' of the path he was choosing, being the son of god and all. I am certain however, that this was the high time of his life, filled with the invincibility of youth and the angst of growing. Somehow, I'm sure that Jesus assumed that he'd never live past 30. It was, after all, the original Age of Aquarius. Then, of course, he got a job, became the messiah, and spent his little remaining time wondering why it paid so little, and was so temporal.

It's funny really, that we have all chosen similar paths, especially since most of us have no legitimate messianic leanings. Why is it, dear reader, that we choose to close up our aquarian shops when we hit 30, or thereabouts? Why is it that the summer of love eventually became the winter of stocks and bonds? Why is it that 30 to dead becomes a time of maintenance, of sustaining, of atrophy? Have we really gotten where we want to be?

The answers to these questions are complicated, but are all tinted by a dynamic that doesn't really enter our lives until then, namely fear. I don't know where fear hides until we grow up, but it clearly doesn't exist until then. It sneaks up on us, like a scorpion crawling up your leg in the outhouse, and initially, we swat it away and step on it, but eventually we are all bitten. I don't know about you, but for me the words 'afraid', 'boring' and 'stale' don't appear in my inner definition of 'really living'. I'm not claiming that I have been immune to these ravaging diseases, in fact, I've been crippled by them several times, but I am telling you that I am now eliminating them, evacuating them like a morning bowel movement, and releasing my 'inner adolescent' from my self-constructed prison.

As has been indicated earlier, there are two main goals in the liturgy of the Great Triad: the attainment of nothing, and entangled enlightenment. I have recently taken an enormous leap of faith, and it feels right as rain. I am as clean, as blank as I have ever been. My journey has only begun, but it is free of fear and doubt and expectation. I am like a newly plowed field, irrigated and 'dripping wet with things to understand', my bounty is freely given and possible. I do not know where I am going or how to get there, but I am going there and I will find it.

I'm not sure I know who I was before my journey began. I have always been a bit sponge, a bit thief, a bit liar. I have absorbed many experiences, not always my own, and integrated them into my life. I have stolen many moments, and made up countless more. I have loved with abandon, but I'm not certain my foundation was always real or imagined. I do know that my life has consisted of many pieces glued together by friendship, imagination, falsehood and joy, and I am proud of it.

I am sure that I have no idea who I am now. All the tiles of my mosaic have come unglued, and they are flying in spirals flowing upward and downward. The future medium of my masterpiece is undetermined, but I don't see tile as apropos any longer. Perhaps, colored sands, or maybe rocks, or even limestone. Then again, maybe oils, maybe words, maybe willow. It is still very unclear. But my slate, my canvas, my slab of granite is unblemished by my interventions. It is clean, clean, clean and waiting patiently. And my vision of my life is smoky, like fog and dry ice, and unformed and unperceived. I don't know what it will look like, only that it will come, or rather that it is coming.

In the experiments I have previously described regarding suspending light in nothing, I have mentioned that the light itself is not there, only the 'certainty' of the light. I have clearly reached my entanglement, my entwinement but my light is still the free radical, the muon, the prophecy of the oracle, and is yet certain but unrealized, there but unobservable, earthly yet ethereal. My entangled enlightenment is there, just beyond the event horizon.

While all of it floats just beyond my sight, there is one thing of which I am sure. My planet revolves around a star in South Dakota. She has helped me find my way to nowhere. She has helped create my vacuum. She has made my light certain and suspended it in the void. She has unlocked the door to my unborn universe. Our lights, and our colors, are travelling in the same beam. Our atoms are coalescing, the heat is rising and the Big Bang is imminent.

What wonders await I do not know; what nebulae and blobs will appear; what forces, facets, planes and spheres; what green and infrared giants, what brown periods, what conservation of energy, what mystic particles.

Jesus may love you, but a pirate in South Dakota works better for me. I like her, I love her, I adore her. I know it all begins there, wrapped in her blanket in the Black Hills.

For Gail

2008-07-27T14:03:00.000-04:00

I have discovered today, disturbingly, that my sister-in-law equates slapping someone with loving someone. That she is possessed of such violent tendencies is disturbing enough, but to realize that she is made of such contradictory parts is more disturbing still. I have always seen her as a very simple person, revelling in the basic simple pleasures of life and love. Now, I have always been a person who is willing to allow others to live their lives as they wish, but I am also a golden rule type of guy, and no one I have ever met wants to be slapped.

During our conversation, she also revealed to me that even the purely evil person has a place and a purpose in the grand scheme of things, and is graced with some redeeming quality. This of course is pure hooey. There are people who just plain don't deserve to live.

Now, I am not a person who believes that it is my place to straighten other people out. So, I didn't really feel any need to force my belief system upon her. Although I did tell her that if she ever slapped me, I would knock her out.

While I firmly believe that no one likes to be slapped, I also innately know that no one willingly gets nailed to a cross. This knowledge was reinforced by a myriad of entertaining Jesus radio shows airing across America. My favorite came out of Denver. Davey Detective (I can't recall his actual name, but he was clearly an incarnation of Davey, of that brilliant claymation show, Davey and Goliath). Davey is transported to the crucifixion by something akin to the wayback machine. He drizzles and drazzles into the lives of Mary, and Barabas and Herod, sasses Pontius Pilate without ramification, until he discovers why it was such a good thing that Jesus chose to die such a painful death. I'm no biblical scholar, and I was unaware that Jesus reappeared to several of his disciples and to Davey, as well as to someone named Norman, post resurrection, but I was amazed at all the nice things he told them before ascension. As much as this story filled me with laughter and ecstatic reverence, the pursuant revelation of the truth brought me more heightened reverie.

To illustrate, I will provide quotes from the Gospel according to Norman, recently discovered amongst the ancient texts of the Great Triad.

(To Peter)

"You fucking fish-fucking asshole. You were supposed to be my friend. Do thoust have any idea how much that hurt, driving nails into my hands and legs? And those fuckin thorns, they hurt like hell too. And then, instead of you sticking around to watch my back, you let them hang me out there on that sun drenched hill, for all the world to laugh at my small penis, barely peeking out from my loincloth.
And then Jesus slapped Peter and said 'I love you too'."

(To Mary)

"You fucking, sperm burping little bitch. My grail grows within your womb, if it's even my kid, you fuckin slut. You knewest that I was addicted to opium, knew that I was incapable of a rational decision, yet you let me carry on with that lunacy.

And Jesus slapped Mary and said 'I love you too, you fuckin tramp'."

(To his father)

"Fuck you, Daddy. FUCK YOU!!!!! Why have you forsaken me? Forsaken, my ass. You let them drive nails into me; you let them humiliate me. And for what? A little world domination? You're just like all the rest--a power hungry greedy little god, you impotent fuck.

And Jesus slapped God and said 'I love you too, motherfucker'."

We have all been told that Jesus is Love, and it is clear from this recently discovered Gospel, that Jesus slapped as an expression of love. I guess my sister-in-law might be on to something.

I learned during my recent vision quest, that wrestling is an effective means of getting closer to the godhead. According to the Kabballists, god exploded his all encompassing self, and fragmented himself, to allow room in the universe for his perfect creation. This was accompanied by a loud slap in the face of god himself. Who am I to argue with god? Who am I to not humble myself to the current state of grace I now find myself in? Who am I?

Go ahead, show me the love. Slap me silly, sister.

Disclaimer

2008-07-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

For those of you who now believe that I have flipped my gourd, fuck you. I still have my edge and I will slice you to ribbons if you protest. I will scare the dickens out of you.

Happy hunting,

Afraid of his Horse (I don't know the Sioux, and I probably couldn't pronounce it if I did)

Snipes and Suicide

2008-07-25T14:10:00.000-04:00

I hadn't planned on jumping from that railroad bridge in Maumee, Ohio. In, fact, I hadn't planned anything, but she drew me in like a Disney animator. As bridges go, she was pretty non-descript; not old, but not new; no ancient voice calling to me. She bore her rust and faded paint like bat guano on a cave wall, or perhaps like the papier mache concrete of a Gaudi building. But still, despite the layers of deterioration she wore, she was all steel; steeled against the wind and the water, and unyielding; steeled against uselessness and obscurity. She appeared as a respite from the erector set structures of the Midwest; the mushroom power towers with their sagging electric valances, the field sprinklers, and the pumpkin-topped silos of unknown farms. "Come and jump", she said, as I sped down the interstate, and I swallowed her invitation like the light trickle of blood from a long awaited kiss. I descended and scampered until at last, I found myself standing upon her, in her really. I could feel her strength, long obsolete, scurry up my leg like a scorpion, but she creaked and groaned and swayed with the ghosts of dreams long faded, and still unborn. A bridge, no matter how strong, has to have a little give, a little flexibility, to bend to the burden of hard work and eternity, and I could feel her dance to the music of the river below.

The Maumee flowed beneath her, caressed her hips like first love. Her water was rusty, too. She and the bridge shared the same color, the rusty orange of wisdom, not deterioration. Her waters seemed warm and inviting, like motor oil, and she pleaded with me to bathe and to lubricate. She flowed slow and easy from wherever to wherever, washing and smoothing and helping like a grandmother. Oh, she beckoned me allright. She danced and swirled and licked my thighs like a pole dancer, and I watched and listened. I closed my eyes, stood in my own skin, and fell.

The river and the bridge are separate, but are one thing. They stand in each other, are clean, and are as right as rain.

Time is what we get, be it short or long. Life is what we make.

Which brings me to the snipe, a magic and elusive bird. It is perfect black, the black of invisibility. It only emerges on the moonless nights. Darkness and speed make it nearly impossible to detect, but that has not stopped myriads of children from hunting it. It dwells in ditches and washes. One leg is shorter than the other, enabling the snipe to run like light along the edges of gullies. It has yellow eyes, the color of caution, and yes, dear reader, caution is warranted. This fanged bird is indeed dangerous like a dinosaur. Hunting the snipe requires great courage, armed only with a stick, a flashlight and a burlap sack. The hunt is fearful, yet filled with the possibility of capturing the most mythic bird of all; fear mixed with wonder, standing in each others space. Many have sought the snipe. Few have even seen it. Fewer still are those that have captured it; a cloaked and secret few, unrevealed to the masses. But all who have sought the snipe share the same imprint; the fear of wet underwear joined with the exhilaration of dangerous seeking.

I have just started a new journey, a spirit quest filled with fear and exhilaration, ease and mirth and wet underwear. The crows have flown 2000 miles to join me. The snake has also taken my journey; even the weasel. I have sought wisdom in the magic cards and cherished their revelations. I have discovered that lavender oil is the ultimate vaginal healer. I have worshipped the goddess and plundered with pirates. I have found the love of children, both the small and large varieties. I have begun to discover my earth and fire and water and wind. The herons lead me on my path and I have played with the dolphin. I am balancing my chi. I have learned more things than I will ever realize. I am the bridge and the river, and I stand in who I am. I will continue to hunt the snipe

Red Moon, Right as Rain

2008-07-10T10:49:00.000-04:00

According to Mavis Clemholler, masseuse/matriarch/scientific prognosticator, of South Dakota, the upcoming red moon will trumpet the end of days. According to the scientific evidence, for the worthy, the righteous, the chosen, armies of angels are on standby, checking and rechecking Santa's list, preening and culling the list of those that will be swooped up and taken to a better place. I, in a magnanimous gesture, have asked Gabriel to remove my name. Why, you ask, would I not want to be included? Read on.

Life is like a 1st grade recorder concert. Each note, both collectively and individually, is a beacon of possibility, and a different one for each student and each parent. For each student that successfully navigates the score, there is a student that forgets where he/she is. For each perfect D-flat, there is the atonal squeal of over-breathing. The resulting cacophony contains infinite moments, each signalling the end of days for each of us, and the ascent to paradise, the next moment.

We, as human beings, are not hardwired to comprehend the infinite changes in our lives. We cannot see the reality that arises from the undesired D-flat to A-sharp flutter. We may remember the concert, we may remember our child's smiling glance, we may remember how proud we were, or how embarrassed. But we can never process how an errant B-flat leads us, through a myriad of resultant consequences, to the best blowjob your partner has ever blessed you with.

We all tend to look at life through the big picture. But no painting is static. Paintings are dynamic, evolving, an infinite number of brush strokes from burnt umber to beyond ultraviolet; an unwanted speck of dust to a desired layering; a blending of the unforeseen and the intended. We are all a painting, and all part of each others paintings. Our masterpieces can never be foreseen or foretold. We will never know what they will look like when we finally lay down our brushes.

I sail my ship in uncharted waters. At this moment, there is a pirate ship, a sloop I think, sailing alongside. The vast, turbulent oceans of possibility are always blended by the wind and currents. Yet my pirate and I are stirring the waters with our evolving keels. I have let go of my wheel, and where the winds of my life will lead me, I do not know. I only know that the waves behind me, and the waves ahead, will change before my eyes. The future, and the past, are not here, not now, not ever.

My pirate and I will sometime find many places, undiscovered and unimagined. The canvas of our sails and our paintings is clear and clean, vibrating in the ether. The notes of our recorder concerto are unscored and undetermined. I will stand in it, own it, stay open to it until and beyond my next end of days; till my next red moon.

Sending Men to Mars

2008-07-06T11:05:00.000-04:00

Oh, I know, another essay defending space exploration, but hey, it's my blog and I'll write whatever I damn well please. I will, however, try to touch on the obvious and not so obvious.

We should send men to Mars because, at least according to popular, touchy-feely psycho-babble, that's where we (men) hail from. It makes sense, in at least one visceral sense, because Mars is red, and men are all about blood, even though Mars is more the brownish red of dried blood, not the fresh, salty red of an overly passionate kiss. Perhaps we might discover the long awaited dilithium crystals to fuel our warp engines, or uncover a virulent strain of bacteria that will re-fire our long dead imaginations. Or maybe we will just create some space for the excessively procreative. I don't know what we may find, but I'd rather spend the money on possibility than on eradicating populations of nations that don't share our national loftiness.

At the very least, we may tune our televisions away from Deal or No Deal.

Exploration and discovery are core elements of survival, although the current version of humanity could use a lot of humility mixed in. Where would we be without the man or woman who surmised that the lobster might be edible; or the oyster? Where would we be without the first traveller to be headbutted by a coconut? Or the first firestarter? or Columbus? or Fred Smoot?. We need to clear our overgrown path of discovery, and begin our journey upon it. We need to refind what we have lost, and discover the bashful, new reality. It takes more imagination for a chimp to fabricate a termite shovel than it does to sit on our collective hands.

I am too old, too nicotined, and too out of shape for the trip to Mars. But I am not too old to remember and cherish the flame that burned in my mind when I was a child and Sputnik soared and the Eagle landed. My life has always been about what I do not know; what I may never discover.

I may not be the archetypal astronaut but I am a willing one. Just ask and I will go. I am not afraid to live and I am not afraid to die. I begin my training next week in the Black Hills.

My Ego in Full Bloom, or why drugs are good for you

2008-07-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

It was reported yesterday that a study at Johns Hopkins found long term benefits from the use of psychedelic drugs. This fully explains why I turned out to be such an incredible person. The study was confined to the drug psilocybin, but I see no reason not to include peyote, LSD, and mescaline.

When I was a very young child, my mother and father sat me down and explained to me that psychedelics have been used for centuries in religious ceremonies, and that it was part of human nature to get high. My father, who frequently invited Jehovah's Witnesses in for tea and cookies, explained to me that Jesus started out as a simple pothead, but moved on to opium before deeming himself the son of god. The drug of choice at the Temple Mount was mescaline and the high priests had him crucified as a ne'er-do-well junkie. As Jews, he told me, we have been aware of this for generations. This was verified in Bill and Ted's Psychedelic Adventure, which was unfortunately lost and thus, never released. But I stray.

The study reported that many of the volunteers still felt more grounded and centered many years later; still felt ' a moderate well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic'. The study also reported 'lasting gains in being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate'. This, of course, is me in a nutshell.
Since I know that I am one of the finest human beings on the face of the earth, I now stand as a shining example, a poster boy so to speak, of the benefits of psychedelic (and occasionally, psychotropic) drug use. It is high time that all drugs be legalized, for the benefit of mankind.

(I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but I am currently reclining in a tent, no ordinary tent, one of those beautiful tents with a big centerpost with a flag on the top, orange like oranges, red like fresh blood, green like envy, purple like catholic, white like light, lined with yak and goat skins, replete with fresh figs and dates and dark coffee, somewhere near the Afghan-Pakistan border, awaiting the arrival of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden. I am here under the auspices of the United Nations and the CIA, to arbitrate an end to terrorism. I have brought boxes and boxes of 'magic mushrooms' and fully anticipate a lasting solution. I seem to be speaking fluent Arabic, even though I have no actual training. Hey, what can I tell you. I started early. Salaam Aleikum)

Mirrors, or internet dating advice for the getting older crowd

2008-07-01T14:08:00.000-04:00

I admit that when I look in the mirror each morning, I see a face not all that different than the eighteen year old version, although I wasn't balding, flabby, grey or wrinkled, and I didn't have hair growing out my ears and nose, but, I think I've aged fairly well considering all the drugs, cigarettes and scotch I have consumed. I think, however, that I represent myself fairly accurately, at least according to my mood of the moment.

Surely any idiot is aware that the internet was designed as a tool for deception, and internet dating is surely one of the symptoms. Not since we were told that tomatoes are good for you, has a lie of greater magnitude been foisted upon the public. Of course I refer to the phrase 'a few extra pounds'. This phrase would be suitably used if we were talking about a dating service for large pachyderms, but we are talking about humans here. As an example, say as a young woman you stood 5'7" tall and weighed in at 140 pounds. Normal enough, eh? Well, let's say you shrunk an inch and now weigh 275 pounds, most of it below your waist. No matter what sort of expensive mirror you now own, this cannot be represented as 'a few extra pounds'. This is FAT, HUGE, OBESE, UNSIGHTLY. This should not be squeezed into a bikini under any circumstances. I mean, you wouldn't put a bikini on an eggplant, would you? I mean, we're talking about a piano crate for a casket here.

And men, what in god's name makes you think anybody wants to see a picture of your wrinkly old cock and balls. More power to you if you haven't stressed out to the point where your erection is medicated, but come on. I mean the thing looks like Squidward at this point. You shouldn't even be looking at it, with or without a mirror, let alone taking self portraits.

Every single dating profile, male or female, says the same damn thing. 'Would prefer someone with a sense of humor'; 'Honesty is a must'; 'would like someone with similar interests'. Call me crazy, but is anyone out there looking for a fat, humorless liar with no common interests?

Last notes from home: If you want honesty, start with your self. Divorce didn't just happen to you, you had some part to play. If you're a bitch, say you're a bitch. If you're a cheating asshole, admit it. Describe what you think is funny. I mean I can make anybody laugh, but they might think I'm revolting at the same time. So, back to honest self-evaluation. I'm not talking about admitting that you have a small penis here. I'm not talking about admitting you last gave head 33 years ago. I'm just saying admit the good and the bad, describe what you like and do not like, specifically. And lastly, look outside the box. Expand your boundaries a little. South Dakota is a great place to look as far as I'm concerned.

Joey is Gay

2008-06-24T16:11:00.000-04:00

Joey is gay, a divorced man with a daughter, and quite good looking, in a gay sort of way. If I was gay I would certainly consider fucking him, but I am not, so I have chosen to see him as only a friend without benefits. I have not known Joey long, but I have known Jim for over fifteen years. Jim is not gay, but he is incredibly aggravating. Jim is touchy-feely, hyper-emotional, and prone to cry. Jim married a woman with 2 kids whose husband left her after realizing he was gay. Jim's first wife left him because he was aggravating, in an emotionally draining sort of way. Jim is the kind of man who makes you cringe when he hugs your teenage daughter. I wouldn't worry about Joey hugging anyone. I'm happy that my daughters are no longer teenagers, but I think Jim has transgender issues. If Jim were a woman, I would never consider fucking him. Jim's second wife will eventually divorce him because he is an emotional cripple, if she hasn't already. I don't know, because I don't talk to Jim anymore because he drives me up a fucking wall. They met at a Unitarian Universalist church, a gathering place for the emotionally damaged and the touchy feely, although I do like Bob, a reverend at the make believe church, a hell of a good guy and one of the most knowledgeable baseball fans I have ever met. It's hard not to like a good baseball fan. Jim doesn't know anything about baseball. I don't think Joey even likes baseball, but I don't care.
Joey took sole custody of his daughter after his separation, and has stood by his ex-wife during her drug rehab (that's right, the divorce had nothing to do with his sexuality), and continues to work toward joint custody. Jim has tried to be a part of his new found childrens' lives, but even with the emotional scars they both must bear, I'm sure that they still must hate him. Jim is inept at everything he does. He's the kind of guy who just drops in with chinese food when you're having sex with your wife for the first time in six months. Imagine how those two boys are gonna feel when Jim finally admits that he is a woman.
Jack was one of my best friends growing up. We swapped many sexual partners when he thought he might still like women. Jack was drop dead gorgeous, right up until the day he died of AIDS. He wouldn't let me in the house the day he died, but he made me laugh, and I mean out of control, gasping for air belly laugh right up until the day before that. I drank enough single malt for the both of us the day he died. Jack was always up for good scotch.
The point is Joey is a good man and may become a good friend. Jack was a good man and a great friend. Jim is more like a boil on your ass. So, here's to good friends. Bottoms up!

Feet

2008-06-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

It is fairly obvious to me that I am in the minority regarding my amusement with disembodied human feet. I'm fairly certain that there is someone, somewhere, missing, or ruing the half dozen human feet that have washed ashore in British Columbia. I am also fairly certain that those same people are not missing the shoes those feet were wearing. The story has also piqued my continuing curiosity regarding the frequency of finding single items of footwear abandoned in the streets of America.

I am a firm believer that the hokey pokey is what it's all about, but this does not explain the phenomenon of disowned feet/footwear. Surely, they haven't fallen off while 'shaking it all about'. And it seems to me that most people would rather cut off their hands than give up 1/2 a pair of their most comfortable shoes. So, I think it is relevant to examine the advantages of being monopedal.

I believe that most of the advantages lie in what we would not be able to do. For instance, it would be impossible to run an errand, or plant your feet firmly on the ground. Running around in circles would be much more difficult, but getting nowhere would be a reachable goal. Going to hell in a hand basket would be much more likely, while jumping for joy would be much more tedious. Tantrums would be made more difficult since stomping your feet would be eliminated, and clearly, Dorothy would still be in Oz, but 'there's no place like home' would be adopted by many more of us. We would, by definition, lose Runaround Sue, but Hopalong Cassidy could make a strong comeback.

Regarding more practical matters, Dancing with the Stars would become a thing of the past. All discussion of raising the basket in the NBA would come to a screeching halt. The three-legged race, which you must admit makes us look like the fools that we are, would be erased from the family reunion landscape. We could no longer run into dead ends, but running headlong into brick walls would be far more frequent. And the world would be a far safer place as well. Bicycle thefts would surely decline, running from the law is out, and prison escapes would be a thing of the past. We could get our civil liberties back as well, since no one could ever kick your door in again, with or without a warrant, and sobriety tests would be far more limited. And voting would be far more clear cut as it would be far easier to determine whether a candidate was leaning left or right of center. While toeing the line would still be possible, walking the line is out, as is walking the straight and narrow.

I think it is time to prepare. Frogs are losing limbs around the world. Can human beings be far behind? Stop running from your feelings, the past, your responsibilities; stop running period. Slow down and enjoy the music. Soon enough, you will have no choice. Soon enough, you are going to fall down, tip over, give up your flip or your flop, look down and discover it's already half gone.

Casual Observations from the Balcony On the Eve of Fathers' Day

2008-06-15T10:31:00.000-04:00

When sitting on the balcony, having already tucked your son into bed, smoking quietly with blank slate mind, it is easy to realize how little you know. On this particular evening, it would all center on the world of insectia, specifically 3 bugs previously unobserved by yours truly. Since I have no way to inform you as to their identity, I will give them names based on their behaviors: the Kamikaze beetle, the Helicopter fly, and the red and beige two-tined finger lance.

The Kamikaze beetle is large as bugs go around here, about 3/4" long and about 1/2" wide. It is a deep copper-brown, the flagship color of confusion. I have always believed that efficient feeding and sexual attraction constituted the primary behaviors off most insects, most living things in fact, but this beetle cast all that into doubt. The beetle began his night time dance by strafing me several times, then disappearing for brief moments. I was warned of his approach by a buzzing sound, not unlike a cellphone set to silent supersonic. Once he decided that I wasn't going to move, he proceeded to fly full speed into the lime-beige siding of my apartment building several dozen times without any apparent injury. Now I realize that flying headfirst into solid immovable attitude is very attractive to the human female, but I would not have thought this translated into the beetle mating dance. Since no mating partner appeared in the hour or so he continued this behavior, I assume I am correct. After his hour of concussive head banging, he eventually took up residence on my lawn chair, paralyzed by frustration, or perhaps by a headache of Lyman alpha blob proportion. Of course it is also possible that this was one pissed off female, angry over the poor quality of her most recent color job, but I'm thinking no. This resounded with testosterone, not Lady Clairol. In any event, the Kamikaze beetle is now enshrined in the Mamou hall of fame.

It is often said that what one observes is altered inherently by the fact that it is being observed. This is pure hooey. That beetle didn't give a rat's ass that I was there, and even though he is only a beetle, the sound I made when uttering 'What the fuck' was clearly audible to those not around to hear it.

The Helicopter fly is the prima ballerina of the insect world. My initial observations led me to believe that this specimen was female, although it easily could be construed as a gay male. While my vision is not what it used to be, I do believe I may have seen a codpiece in the area of the thorax.. In any event, the dance was elegant and should not be diminished in any way by our perception of sexual bent. This multiwinged fly, reminiscent of a mayfly, although much larger, danced with such grace that it was almost ethereal. Her wings sort of rotated, like a slow motion hummingbird; their movement was non linear, nothing like the dragonfly. Her four wings caused her to rise like a double helix of cigarette smoke, twirling and pirouetting like a psychedelic kite tail on the winds of whimsy. She had a great deal of difficulty landing, as if her delicate legs were never meant to touch solid ground. It would be impossible to envision the sexual pairing of this fly occurring anywhere but midair, like two hawks, talons locked, spiralling on the updrafts with no fear of falling. I watched her closely as she finally perched on the frame of my slider. Her antennae looked like miniature bottle brushes, multi-tined receptors, furling and unfurling like coiled clock springs, searching for a signal from insect subspace bringing her the transmission that love would soon appear. She eventually swirled away upward, beyond my sight line, hopefully headed for her penultimate dance of death.

The red and beige two-tined finger lance was an odd creature indeed. Reminiscent of that torturous device used in junior high school self blood-testing experiments, I initially observed it crawling for about 2 millimeters, but then it stopped and just lay there, like a disinterested, self-loathing hooker. It is far too small to infer any sexual identity, although it could be described as pretty. I was most intrigued by the color of it; the red of fresh blood coexisting with the grey-beige of the newly dead. It may in fact be dead, as it has not moved in over 13 hours, but I am loath to disturb it, to prod it to movement. I have grown used to having it there, glued to its own little microdot. It is now part of where I reside, like wall paint, and I will leave it undisturbed until it flies away, or blows away in a cold, rainy gust of eternity.

I had every intention of taking this essay into some non sequitur connection of human logic, but I have decided, that since they outnumber us a millionfold, that I would leave it as a paean to bugs and only bugs. Draw whatever conclusions you like.

Corralling the Free Range Chicken

2008-06-11T07:37:00.000-04:00

Many of you are under the impression that you can believe what you read, especially when it comes to labels, but in the interest of the general public, I feel it is my duty to dispel one of the great myths of the modern era--the health benefits of the free range chicken.

The chicken, like its close relative, the pigeon, will eat anything. This includes used condoms, radioactive waste, thumbtacks and, on the odd occasion, the black mamba. Therefore, it should be obvious to all right thinking humans that it is imperative that we confine the chicken to a safe area where it will be forced to consume the chemically altered hormones and the vitamin water that are best for them. It might benefit the reader to learn a little bit about the day-to-day life of the free range chicken to illuminate the inherent dangers. Approximately 99.27% of all free range chickens eat, romp and play in the vast acreage of the Alamagordo testing grounds in New Mexico. The remainder are scatterd about in the ebola breeding grounds in Gabon, and in the NYC subway system where they are allowed to ride free of charge and are often noted mating at ground zero. The free range chicken, not noted for its herding behavior, are often observed, however, in a modified phalanx akin to a duckpin bowling setup. They are most often led by the dominant mamba assasin. They are rounded up by specially trained Mexican free-tailed bats, who utilize their highly evolved sonar guidance systems to chase the scatterbrained, and often herky jerky chickens to the beheading chambers.

I was immediately struck, as I'm sure you were, by the striking similarities with the internet dating behaviors of the the free range vagina, whether or not it is being used for good or evil.

I recently went on my first date with the Demure One, and I accidently discovered several tactics that might prove useful to others traversing the terrain of the FRV, especially if you are well over the typical dating age, as I am. I will list them below.

1. Roses still work, especially when you want to send them.
2. Birthday presents, especially when having considered the likes of your prospective date, still work.
3. Pretending to be normal, even if you are not, is useful initially, although in the long run, the truth shall set you free.
4. Listen attentively. While this is a difficult task for most men, it is important. You never know when the words 'blue' and 'subway' will pop up
5. Pass out at dinner. I know, I never would have thought of this one either. It is especially important to try to pick a day when temperatures will exceed 100F. Long walks and lack of hydration are vital. Museums are also a great take. The little collections of ancient knick knacks seem to elevate a woman's libido. Besides, you will be protected by countless Polynesian fetishes.
Anyway, passing out, sweating profusely, and lying prone on the sidewalks of NYC seemed to work especially well for me. As an added bonus, I wound up so enamored of the Demure One that my brain has failed to jumpstart nearly a week later.

I'm feeling like I just ate a free range, radioactive, hormone-laden 12-egg omelette filled with salmonella tomatoes and bat guano, my brain synapses are misfiring like an overheated B.A.R., and my chest is puffed out like a mating woodpecker. Golly jeez, I never felt so good.

The Problem with Love

2008-06-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

The problem with love is that nobody, and I mean nobody, knows what it is. And if you make the mistake of thinking you know, it runs away like a tie-dyed tee shirt. So today, in the context of the Great Triad, I will attempt to examine love, and maybe even try to define it.

It seems to me that all love starts in the genitals. I know, many of you are already thinking that I am being facetious or glib. Let me assure you that I am not. Sex is the seed of love. The Mamou in all of us is always striving to achieve a state of perfect chaos. What, may I ask, is more chaotic than multiorgasmic, empty-your-brain-of-any-coherent-thought, sex?. The answer, and I'm sure you will agree, is nothing. The Whole Shebang, the domain of 'love', injected the concept into our collective psyche, to get our brains working again. Unfortunately, he/she left the concept a little too vague, thus enabling us to become even more stupid. There are many of you who will maintain that Jesus is love, but let me assure you, you may as well be searching for it through Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Women as a rule are far more guilty of confusing the concepts of love and sex. The prevalent thing goes something like this: "Well, he wanted to, and I let him get into my panties, so we are going to have to fall in love. We can get married and he can keep my closet full of shoes that I hardly ever wear." Men, however, are equally stupid. "It's worth 5000 pairs of shoes if she keeps it up". Unfortunately, an old pussy isn't like an old dog. The old dog keeps on loving you no matter how much you beat it.

Lest I obsess about sex alone, let's examine the other commonly held concepts of love: trust, honesty and affection. Unfortunately, trust is an unattainable goal for most of us. To truly trust someone requires a fairly strong sense of self worth. Oh, I know, all the gods say we are born pure and righteous, but for most of us, surviving an upbringing riddled with maternal guilt lashing sprinkled with good ol' garden of eden temptation leaves us with a sense of self-uselessness akin to a broken condom. It's hard to lay your heart in the hands of a partner when you know you don't deserve it. As for honesty, we all possess it. The only times dishonesty comes into play is when we are afraid. We only lie when we know our partner will beat the living crap out of us if we tell the truth. And don't lie to me and tell me that's not true. And affection, that's something we freely give; to our spouses, our partners, our friends and the people we cheat on them with.

So, where does that leave us on the subject of love. Nowhere. Our failure at love results from striving for something we don't inately understand. To attain something, you have to know what it is, and, quite frankly, it's different for each of us. The best you can really hope for is a whole lot of like, copiously laced with pheromones, sprinkled with magic and awe. It is the chaos of the seeking that gets us there. Embrace the chaos, lovingly nurture it, and don't leave out the magic.

Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo.

Dandelions

2008-05-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

As I said before, I drove through Vermont last weekend to see my daughter graduate from college, and I was struck by the outright beauty of dandelion fields. Yellow was always my mother's favorite color, but never mine. I always took after my father, and adopted green as my color choice ("God made the earth green because it's the easiest color on the eyes"). My dad was more of an oak-leaf green kind of guy, while I lean more toward lobster tamale, or infectious discharge.

After driving miles and miles past green fields peppered with the yellow of dandelions, I realized how much I owe my parents for my outlook on the world. My father could spend an entire weekend, snake tongue trowel in hand, plunging it deep into the earth to excise the full dandelion root. Most often, he did this while only clad in boxer shorts ("What's the difference between boxers and a bathing suit"? That he would fetch me from the playground without dressing further proved to be an endless source of embarrassment for me, but that's another story). Then he would gather the entire pile of dandelion corpses and throw them in the trash, but like our savior, they would reappear, reanimated, for the following weekend's fun.

My father apparently never realized the benefits of dandelions. Their deep root system aerates the soil far better than any spiked roller ever could. And they apparently attract a wide variety of beneficial insects as well. In fact, a recent study at the University of Wisconsin found that there is a twofold increase in ladybug population in acreage where dandelions are allowed to grow (I have decided to let them grow in my yard in the hope that the millions of ladybugs inhabiting my front hall will evacuate to the backyard). They serve many medicinal purposes, removing warts, and providing increased liver function. One serving of dandelion greens, cooked or uncooked, provides twice the daily requirement of vitamins A and C, as well as beta carotene (I myself would prefer to dine on dogshit washed down with my own urine, but I don't speak for everyone). In fact, the dandelion is cultivated in many parts of the world.

I confess, that after discovering the benefits of dandelions, I was certain of a conspiracy of lawncare product manufacturers to eradicate the pretty dandelion, but apparently they have been held in low standing for millennia.

I have never had a problem with the mixture of yellow and green on the lawns of the world, but I apparently stand with the minority, and I, admittedly, am a little odd. But for those of you that are so sure that the dandelion is a pest, might I suggest a drive through Vermont.

It is clear to me that we all do not like the same things. There is enough religious intolerance and sexual deviation among us to fill more pages than I will ever pen. One man's pleasure is another mans pest. There is a little dandelion in all of us. Let's hope that we, as a species turn out to be as hardy as Taraxacum officinale.

Forward Thinking

2008-05-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

"Don't believe everything you think"

I took a little road trip this weekend for my daughter's graduation and was struck by how many drivers never turn their heads left or right--just stare straight ahead. That you can drive that way through the Green mountains of Vermont without taking in the scenery is bad enough, but not the point. We all spend too much time just looking straight ahead, like there's no other choice.

I arrived at my daughter's apartment, and after a very pleasant visit, off we went to the ceremonies. It was a beautiful, sunny day, I was the proud dad, and all seemed right with the world. Then the commencement speaker came out, some hippie relic filmmaker with a famous last name but not the famous filmmaker, and starts spouting off that the 'probable presidential candidate' represents a real opportunity for change, and that how today's youth has to pick up the baton that the 60's relay team dropped, and carry us into the new democratic paradise. After my initial urge to strangle him passed, I began to calmly dissect his call to arms. If I were still a youth I would have to ask myself why I would listen to a man who believes that any current political candidate can represent change. I mean, you can change the skin on your cell phone, but it's still a cellphone. To pretend that any candidate is not firmly entrenched in the old guard is ludicrous. To fail to realize that any of the big three presidential hopefuls hasn't been salivating over their ascent to office since the days when they were still fondling their barbie dolls, is almost criminal. Change cannot come from within the establishment. It can only come from a candidate who doesn't want to be president. Therefore, I rescind my candidacy (the really intelligent amongst my readers will realize that by rescinding my candidacy, I am actually declaring that I want to be president, thereby declaring that I am not a candidate for change, even though I actually am, so you better not vote for me anyway).

We drive looking forward because we are afraid of the unpaved path; we are afraid to not know where we are going. It's like getting married a second time. You already know that you suck at it, but you follow the known road anyway. Change cannot be implemented for the whole of society until the individual is willing to glance sideways. It cannot come slowly, it cannot come through revolution, it cannot come through terrorism. It has to emanate from each of us individually. We, each of us, need to explore the possibility that the righteous path may be rife with better lefts and rights, maybe even u-turns.

"It's not hard to grow, when you know that you just don't know".

Ice cream

2008-05-15T11:43:00.000-04:00

I was all ready this morning to instigate a national protest regarding the size reduction of ice cream containers. I mean it costs the same, but its got less ice cream. Edy's even went so far as to change the dimensions of the container, undoubtedly in an attempt to deceive us. But I can't be mad about it anymore. The world is full of great news today.

A heinous terrorist plot was uncovered in Pennsylvania yesterday. Authorities are still trying to tie up all the loose ends, but I will tell you what I know. The plot is definitively of national scope and scale. We should all put our hands together for the postal employees of Mohnton, PA..

National security authorities have long suspected that the current ant infestation in Houston was linked to a terrorist cell in Taiwan. Through the use of cellphone monitoring, and other really cool high tech gizmos, authorities have long known that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have given up on more traditional activities i.e. flying planes into buildings, suitcase nuclear devices and biological water contamination, and have determined that the proper path to follow involves disrupting the US economy.

It all begins in Houston in 2002. Early that September, The Hashish of the American Infidel, a cargo ship of Liberian registry, docked at pier 37c at the port of Houston. A crew member, later identified as Abdul el Bulbul Amir, left the ship with three large breeding colonies of 'crazy, rasberry ants' concealed in his suitcase. He released the first colony at the airport, a hub for many major airlines. The second colony was released near NASA. The third, concealed in a plastic water bottle (red, I think) and accidentally dropped by Amir, was picked up by a travelling Mariachi band who threw it out the car window when they discovered it was full of ants. The 'crazy rasberry ants', like all other ants, are drawn to high tech electrical wiring. It was believed that if they could infiltrate the electronic systems at the Houston airport, that the travel industry would be disabled. The theory of the NASA infestation was that if they could disable the electronics there, then what little is left of the american imagination could be eradicated. The third accidental release bore consequences so dire that they must be left for later.

The 'crazy rasberry ants' have not accomplished their mission as of yet. However, they have created collateral problems. The ants, which now number in the billions, have managed to shut down several sewage treatment plants, disable numerous home electrical meters, and disrupted satellite TV reception in a five county area. Since, as of yet, there is no known way to eliminate the pests, NASA and the airlines are extremely worried about future problems. They have also inflicted great damage to the regions agriculture, eating everything in their path. The unfortunate consequence of the accidental release, is that the ants devour the offspring of the beloved, and already endangered, state bird of east Texas, the Attwater's prairie chicken. The survival of the species is in grave doubt.

The second part of the plot was stopped dead in its tracks by alert postal workers in Pennsylvania, when they interrupted the shipment of several packages containing 26 mating pairs of rhinoceros, Goliath and Hercules beetles. These beetles, 5-6 inches across, can be devastating to fruit and vegetable crops, as well as turf grasses. They have also been known to devour small children. Part of the original plan was to denude the playing fields of Pennsylvania, thereby interrupting the quarterback crop for the NFL for generations to come.

It is unknown at this time whether the third segment of the plot came to fruition. The plan was to salt preying mantis grounds in New England and the midwest with fertility drugs. It remains a mystery as to what was intended here, but I can tell you categorically that I, for one, am terrified by the praying mantis.

So, rest easy, america, your hard earned tax dollars, and the bureaucracies they support, have ensured once again that our great country, and our great people will survive for years to come.
Maybe I don't need to seek the presidency after all.