g_d - the sonnet

On Casey's birthday i write about g_d
and think about great painters born today
who do not have brothers with the name Todd.
Does g_d just see meaning in another way?

Why do we rename high-holy feeling
with a word used for killing others?
To love my brother, i'd give him healing
hoping g_d brings mending to all brothers.

Could g_d be her, our mothers and sisters
and we have lost our way from what is near?
Is blindness why our eyes are filled with tears,
or do we lack love enough love to quell fear?

G_d may not know we are in existence,
or know just of our loving increments .  .  .

satan

Well this aught to be fun - fucking Beelzebub, how many wet dreams have you fucked up? Believe not that I write of your evil with disrespect or regard for its capacity to wreak havoc - rather like those lords and ladies dooming our world in service of filth lucre, I choose to peer into the abyss with laughter as my only backup - that and a little liquid courage (no irony there). “Hallelujah” now plays moments after my laughter metaphor and I persist with a mouth full of medicinal plant matter - what could go wrong? Bruce Lee says to fight effectively you must become one with your enemy; how am I doing, or more importantly, what exactly is there to fight? Is it for me: whiskey/beer, herbs leavened with lime? That would seem to be a pretty picayune enemy, a little like taking candy from a baby .  . when what I ache for is justice against wrong, or a little clarity with which to vanquish bullshit - are they equivalent struggles? Believe it or not - Bob Dylan is now singing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”; am I once again, “a dollar short, hour late and going in the wrong direction”? Or are timing and luck just like any other human constructs - g_d, love, death - anything which when unexplainable by language, tradition or agreement is ascribed your valance of “evil”? Being thoroughly afflicted by Bob Dylan’s “Disease of Conceit,” I want to convince myself that this written artifice upon which I glue my tenuous hold on meaning, filtered or not through media distortion is a little like expecting you the reader to recognize the arcane description of “9x9” - a meaning for good signal strength from the arcane CB Radios. What is a more reasonable expectation would be that you the great deceiver is working his, or her magic through my once pristine now mangled awareness sullied by age, substance and defeat such that those from which I seek understanding simply scratch their heads muttering imprecations like “jesus christ, holy shit” or the ever useful “what the fuck is he talking about?”

Can this chaos for which Bob Dylan professes no fear, or possibly points right at, be scarier than fuck, rendering us warriors against disorder and danger outflanked and mission compromised? Does our fear of evil cede the field of engagement to you satan, where when what as crusaders we really desire is to be that good “American Marine - the most dangerous human agent ever conceived against the power of evil” instinctively running toward danger rather than away from it? - that is a question . . . yeah, sign up to fight for “your country” .  . so you can go to college . . . and it only gets deeper. How did eating “Mr. Goodbar”s with pop ever become the rape of Africa and child labor abuse?” More importantly, exactly who fucked with something so good as chocolate, and where are you just now? we gonna have a talk; .  . don’t be afraid - I only want to understand. If you reader find between those lines a menacing tone - what about this, “Mr. Executive, you have something I want, leave it on the table and go in peace . . “, too demanding . ? . Is there any way to confront evil and retain kindness? Is evil only that part of us which is frustrated in our desire to have our way. Me, I like chocolate - lots of chocolate, and some corporate person has fucked with my happiness creating tension where there had been joy; is that evil? What about you who look to fb, diaspora or any virtual community for some connection, distraction or reinforcement of belief which oh so thoughtful social engineers struggle to provide herein the church of social networking, only to find this conjured controversy - for g_d’s sake a screed about satan - things demonic, am I evil? We’ve pretty well established that fact .  . .

So why resort to such lengths to deny what is so obvious to all - this evil so clear to each of my ex-wives? Is a semi-comic journey on my oh-so-slow-train-of-thought just another inroad by you - satan - the all powerful demon-of-doom into civilization’s well-armored walls of goodness which I have voluntarily absented myself from by having so thoroughly participated in : where shall I begin? non-compliance, non-affiliation, non-denomination, non-compos-mentis .  . . there really is no end - save “the” end. One of my favorite movies as a young mind was “Damn Yankees,” (yeah, no irony there); but get this you monstrous justification for all that is fucked on our planet - he Dr Faustus caught the ball .  . and there is fuck-all you can do about that; it will be the same for every hit you make into the human outfield. Just because our species wants what is beyond its grasp and is willing to bargain for it, does not constitute the “darkness” Buddha averred or justify the excrement your corporate team fields instead of skill. Just so we’re clear about the concept, you or any one of your pissant minions of wrong shit cannot buy the human soul. The human team is sanctified; “we” invented Baseball, you only perverted it with your venal seduction and illusion of commerce where fun can be the only conceivable outcome. The game damn sure isn’t to become young or old, good looking or not as . . . after 61 + years, I got no clue, save for these sad little paragraphs between emptiness and more emptiness. . . the only joy I have is knowing your 3rd base coach got no clue, and I’m on my way home. Despair not prince of darkness; try this on for size - what if just as Professor Einstein posited “we cannot fix problems with the same thinking with which we created them” and for all my posing and railing against your apparent perfidy this essay only serves to draw in high relief fears that are entirely my own, irrespective of your ambitions - ambitions which may simply be beyond my limited understanding? . . . and I like every other spiritual energy on our planet employ any argument accessible to seal my eyes from what I cannot see? Oh you are so evil, mah bruddah .  .  . 

Was it your hand - Diablo - which prodded me to commence this essay for understanding evil one day prior to the auspicious 19th of January? Did your fallen-angel powers foretell my weakness and picture my too-soon-committed punch into air; is it not self-inflicted exhaustion from substance but a metaphysical demonstration of your enormous will which poured evil down my gullet? I can smell my own fear keystroke by keystroke . . is it like Peggy Lee’s “Is that All There Is?” and my puny existence is too eager for that grunt communicating your falling scythe and my loss of awareness? Is that all you got? I’m running on fumes, and still ready to mix it up literally - or like the scene in Star Wars where Luke loses his hand, this scab on my twice frozen fuck-you-finger will soon become the beginning of my Borg assimilation. Ese, I gotta tell ya’ - you be fucking weak, wait .  . . not weak; try this - fragile. I’m getting a sense in this substance fog, that shitty affront you affect for effect is just that - a front. Is it possible that you found at some point in your quest for existential power when you could not achieve love, you sought attention? I ask this because often when I find myself trying to understand what seems to be an evil - there is nothing but echo. Problems have dimension, they can be gauged, marveled at, even sold for profit; whereas evil, shrinks from the light as though it lacks mass - like the whereabouts of all the corporate hater’s booty. No one knows where it sits - a lot like that power you claim to possess over my fate. I gotta tell you friend, I’m not getting it, and I’ve been sort of high now for, what 2, no 3 hours.

I’ll give you my dissipated youth, but between you and me Bub - you were messing with a kid. That my friend is chicken-weak ass-shit - like digitally branding pre-schoolers, sad. Now I’m closer to your river Styx in age, close enough to smell the fear on your breath when you declare me - servant. Anyone who has connived to undermine the sovereignty of another as you foreswear is your prerogative must by that same higher light know how much understanding that involves. Understand this, I die each night of my life only to wake with you once again as my brother, my sister - my soul, my love; we be one and as much as you thwart, you can only expect to be thwarted; correct me if I’m wrong, for I know I do correct you at every opportunity. Between us as friends, I heed not the ruling class economy and change the only exchanges over which I have any control - my self. Don’t panic friend, I can’t live without your weakness, that is my evil, not yours. G_d knows how hard it is for you to find anywhere lower than you have gotten thus far; you damn sure don’t need my heretical notion of your effete degeneration holding you up, when clearly there are so many ways to be more abased - you and I friend are in a “target rich environment” of vileness into which that same good soldier rushed. I promise, as much as my word can be trusted, to distance my self from you where my admitted weaknesses allow so that you may fully further sink into that ether of emptiness of which you seem so full .  . 

courage - the sonnet

What is it to be unafraid of fear?

What is the last thing you did without it?

Was it without fear that your arrived here?

Did love wash your tears when you found the tit?

When you love without self, is terror gone?

Can others be honored before the self?

Without love is there a reason to live on?

Has any light ever been lit by pelf?

Is it valor to be ready to die?

Is it valor to be ready to live?

Can one see into one's heart and not lie?

Can one see into one's heart and still give?

Do you know why you move from task to task?

If there is no answer, will you still ask?

fear

fear

ˈfir/

noun

1. 1.
   an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
2. verb

1. 1.
   be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.

By this definition, I am afraid of everything, or nearly everything. It may be easier to describe what I am not afraid of: I’d say ice cream, but like whiskey and beer, I like ice cream an awful lot, enough so that not eating it is sometimes more difficult than eating it - a lot like drinking beer and whiskey. Flowers? yes I’m very much not afraid of flowers, though that hasn’t always been the case. I remember being in a field with a pretty young woman who also liked flowers, but she got a bee in her hair and became a screaming frightened human being so much so the memory is still vivid in my mind 45 years later. If I remember correctly, she was so frightened that she frightened me. How can I discuss fear without generating anxiety and greater fear? It may require a great deal of creativity, perhaps even courage. An essay I recently wrote but did not publish was about alcohol; I am afraid of alcohol, or more correctly I am afraid of the effect which alcohol has on me. Not in the sense of becoming someone other than myself, but more the contempt I see in the faces of others when I’m “in my cups” - I am afraid of contempt whether I am drunk or not. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself,” so like the brave heart I yearn to become I drink to face my fears - a fatuous argument to be sure, if for no other reason than any contempt one sees in others is most likely projection - the same for most emotions found on the faces of others be they love, anger or hate; Mahatma Gandhi - “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it fear.”

I choose to write about fear because it has become a “hot button” issue used to sell weapons, war, cars, computers, etc. Nearly every hook the shills of our consumer culture use to separate you from your hard-earned resources has its roots in some spoken or unspoken threat - “buy this to protect yourself from _______”; “if you don’t buy this _______ .  .  .”. While the veiled threat found in most advertising likely divulges more of the precarious conditions under which the professional “hawkers” function, it comes nowhere near explaining the extent to which fear permeates our world or how to find more constructive palliatives than altered states, lethal instincts or religious indoctrination. As a child my mind balked at the incomprehensible dimensions of the universe, or more expressly the limits of time - lifetime. So I began to construct edifices behind which the ignorance of my ego could cower - parents, family, school, television. I clung to anything which appeared as light against my own feelings of doubt - looking outward to assuage the darkness inside. Psychiatry - boon or boondoggle helped me to reorient the light back into self for answers to doubt. However grounding self-knowledge is, perspective is no balm to the pernicious solitude of fear, nor does the illusion of mental health answer why or of what to be afraid: parents, death, love, success, evil .  .  . fear?

Am I less afraid by writing this down? Logic says information is power, yet I voluntarily expose myself to you the reader - an unknown (or myself the writer depending on one’s road). Will disclosing my vulnerability to you make me more secure or exculpate any sins of existence? stay tuned .  . Were I guided by the “venal chart” of Leonard Cohen’s cautionary “Villanelle for Our Time”, my remark “stay tuned” could easily be a pointed prompt for anyone anxious to realize the power of confession - Catholics and Alcoholics - or those wanting to exculpate sins - drunks, capitalists and other guilty parties amongst us. Am I menacing you, if so to what end? Is it possible that like myself, I do not want you to be afraid - that rather than soothing my own doubt, if I were able to help you, if not be less afraid, then at least be more aware of possible thorns so much a part of the rose-colored glasses of our culture’s media saturation? Anyone who has ever been gored by a thorn of any kind will likely not be so thoroughly gored a second time; is that caution due to fear, or wisdom? Is it possible to learn one’s way out from under fear? If I close myself off from the reality of being gored by thorns, do I lose the ineffable wonder of roses? Are the words of this essay no more than a different edifice behind which the ignorance of my ego retreats? That you have read this far says you understand something of fear, enough to grapple with someone else’s fear. You are braver than I. The easy access to hate which fear spawns is to me repulsive - a threat I struggle to attenuate by gaining a better understanding of fear. However, I often feel as though I am treading water in a sea of hate, so like the thorn and not wishing to gored, I shrink from other’s fear and hope somehow essaying about fear helps us all learn to swim. This disclosure does very little to lessen my fear, so why share?

I really like to drink beer, whiskey and lemon, almost as much as wandering in the garden of sex, though nothing compares to the release found in another’s eyes who has been seen while sharing flesh. Does that make being seeing important or help us to fear less? Does the answer lie in  finding more feelings like alcohol, ice cream and being seen in this world; are these the keys to that doorway out of a world full or fear? While this existential bandaid does not explain the vastness of what can never be explained intellectually, it certainly serves to make for a more pleasurable journey, far more than murdering others with the latest lethal accoutrement or shifting yet another pile of accumulated wealth from one location to another, but what do I know, “mais ce que je sais” - Michel de Montaigne. Mark Twain has said “Against laughter, nothing can stand.” If I had a choice, which I do near as I can tell - I would much prefer laughter; drinking beer and whiskey; eating ice cream and loving sex, than sinking into a miasma of terror - be that of my own or other’s making. Is frolic enough, or simply the vehicle which we might choose to convey ourselves through that “valley in the shadow of death? Does all of our ceaseless existential fear stem from the intractable reality of cessation of awareness in this vale of tears? After this much human development, could we not have found a more clear and effective response to fear than that of creating more - fear? As much as I like drinking beer and whiskey; eating ice cream and pussy - I fear there is more to life .  . .

“The great spiritual geniuses, whether it was Moses, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Jesus or Emerson have taught man to look within himself to find God.” - Ernest Holmes. Are we just dancing around about naming death for what it is: the “great spirit”, “g_d”, “yahwah”, “mohammad”, “jesus”, “barong”, “brahma” etc. What if our inevitable end has always been just that - a returning to our origins - and our fear is merely about the continuity or lack thereof of that thread? Common frames of reference suggest 1) we are comprised of stardust, 2) matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Would not the same behavior be expected from consciousness; is our panic to attribute characteristics of existence beyond that which is readily recognizable e.g., ice cream and flowers that much different than searching for alternatives to the excoriating pernicious damage done by fear. Small wonder we have saddled ourselves with gods who, while satisfying our fear of change, have never returned to confirm the truth of that much sought after eternal constancy. So it is with most, if not all, of our strategies for fighting fear - altered states may shed light on our evanescence, though not explain our impermanence; just as succumbing to fear through hate quells the aching pain of existential terror, but leaves us more hateful - the ultimate hangover. I find greater comfort considering the pleasures of whiskey and sex than cowering to some state of socialization wherein I am unconscious and numb to my anxiety, but clean, sober and sanctimonious. Do I defile all that is holy in me by saying this? Do I subordinate myself to baser instincts by this surrender, rather than struggling for that “higher plane of existence” Lao Tzu advocates, or is it possible that the happiness the Dalai Lama advocates is the only tonic to fear we can know, and that by any means possible is simply heeding the logic of Master Shakespeare’s “all's fair in love and war,” on this mortal plane?   

comfort - the sonnet

I worked hard today, and I am sober,
however high - could even say unclean.
But I write for me - not you the reader 
- easier that way to say what I mean.

Poetry helps me find what that might be
- to learn at the end of a day helps
give reason to responsibility
and purpose for questions we had as whelps.

I look forward to my next drink, not for
comfort - I work for that, but to enjoy.
I may then no longer be sober, or
clean, but much less likely to have much ploy

Comfort and joy is what I have found here
may you each find such with so much to hear.

pain

As with death, on you my kind reader I’d rather inflict joy, love, even confusion - pretty much any other worldly plight than the scurrilous topic of pain; that I apologize only serves to point out my pain, not yours. Betty Davis, a mid-20th century American actress said “write about what you know, and for whatever reason, pain is what the universe wanted me to know. I won’t list my expert credentials, except to confirm my bone fides: out of the gate (so to speak) I was ass-first - “Frank Breech;” pneumonia before 12 months; eardrum broken by vandals - age of 13; this after stepping on a sting ray in Guyamas - age 7. I like to think of this time as the kindness of training-wheels from the universe, an acclimation rather than the whole-immersion suffering with which far too many in our world live daily - nor is my discomfort special compared to what many of who read this endure - I share so you may feel more comfortable laughing at my meager efforts for solidarity - what does that mean? If friendship can be defined by one who’d “divide the grief and double the joy,” I would become your friend. While on my magic carpet at keyboard central, I am listening to “Against the Wind” sung by no less than the infamous Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson of outlaw history - and I am weeping - for you, not me. I first heard this song during a time in my life when our species was balanced on the precipice between love and hate (yes as a matter of fact I had complete faith without question that love would, excuse the expression, trump all . . . like the angels of lore, we have fallen into the abyss of hate - my pain is pale compared to what fear I can only picture in most hearts - all I have to share is, “you are not alone.” .  . we may be, but you are not .  .

Pema Chodron, Thich Nacht Hahn; Dalai Lama, Pope Francis (G_d bless your recovering Catholic soul) amongst many other sages throughout our churlish history say we can make it if we would just .  . . Nor are their manifold imprecations all that different, each from the other. The common thread seems to be a moral courage I’ve yet to find, for they are far more brave, more correct and better people than I. Listen to them, please - don’t just listen, help them to achieve those ideas for which they have struggled and often sacrificed their lives during crucial times in our collective history - ideas which permeate our existing literature, religion, music and pretty much every decent thing we puny humans have ever created; but ideas with which we’ve never seemed able to cross the “goal line.” We have never faced such complete human finality especially of this magnitude even though roughly a quarter million people die daily - that for me is pain, and/or fear - emotions I often confuse. I feel faced with the Sisyphean impossibility of outrunning not only my own ignorance and blindness but the united and disciplined efforts of an army of highly financed - well trained and largely unconscious functionaries. Think Maginot line prior to WWII; at that time such a defense of France seemed like a good idea, not unlike the venal demand for fossil fuel give credence to poisoning our water tables by fracking gas out of mother earth. However, picture for a moment the surprise of those authorities trumpeting the security of the Maginot line precisely when Hitler’s storm troopers romped across the border 15 kilometers, north and 15 kilometers south of that impenetrable border; or what about the indestructible Titanic and her coterie of staunch supporters listening to increasingly dire reports while the death toll mounted. I picture a similar sort of pain for old people watching our world slip into death (yes as a matter of fact I am old). Old people know more about death if for no other reason than we are closer. This doesn’t mean we understand it better or have a better sense of its meaning, only that we are closer - old people are not your enemy - haters are.

Haters throughout history have seen your pain and found ways for that pain to profit them - that is wrong. We as a species are about to confront an epoch never before experienced in our history its twisted cavalcade of leadership. We would do well to learn how to recognize our leaders as those people sitting, standing or lying dead next to us, for as each day passes - passing days will become the only constant out of the tumult of our coming world. Our survival may depend on making each of those days a blessing though they be increasingly filled with carnage, unimaginable death and destruction. World leaders, our pampered pretties will continue to point their fingers at all but themselves - a dull rant which will fade with the electricity wherein civilization will once again depend on more than words for what it means to be “civilized.” Fuck thugs, fuck hate, fuck greed - be only present for any sense which provides you and yours comfort and some measure of love. Any other competing declaration is to nullify the immeasurable discomfort of death and disease; by nullify, I mean subscribe to the shrill screech of the omnipresent screen and its cowardly relationship with your pocket and its hard-earned anything. Nearly all monies created today are funneled to the human genome’s greatest traitor - the fucking capitalist. As I see our future, these pissant yutzes have made an industry out of sickness once they - the ruling class - saw money could be extracted from dying flesh or human suffering and commandeered by force of language your time, innovation and labor to pour the greatest measure of your souls into that beast they named “the economy.” Now as the oceans die, trees wilt - agriculture soaks up poison - these same “masters of the universe” are arranging their escape as though there was one. Humanity has/had a chance to create beauty and paradise on an oxygenated orb hurtling through space - we did not; that is pain.

Black/white, rich/poor, smart/stupid, even alive and dead are empty words we have developed to describe the hideous discomfort of what we have not yet learned about loneliness and fear. It doesn’t mean we are predestined to any outcome - especially an end based on profit which more and more is the exclusive purview of a handful of .  . . what’s the word I’m looking for . ? . . empty-suit-pencil-neck-geek-wannabe “Early Roman Kings” - Bob Dylan. We are an athletic species born of running game to ground because we lived amongst competitors with greater speed, strength and power where mental acuity provided an edge - not unlike the haters we live amongst today. It may again be a sort of intelligence which provides our species survival’s edge. What if emotional intelligence was used to recognize a path through the labyrinth of illusion created by our emotionally retarded ruling class? Rather than us being stuck in some planetary cave-in, a cave-in which we absolutely have the capacity determination and spirit to dig ourselves out from, we instead turn away from the same effete emotional ciphers who have reigned over our species’ demise and who now direct our excavation of what gets dug where while charging sips of water for the privilege of using “their” shovel. Quaint notions of mine, yours, ours, we, them no longer contribute to a more precise awareness of the singular reality we face - extinction, a very painful extinction unless we radically reevaluate what it means to peacefully coexist within our fragile oxygen bubble in the midst of much, much dark matter.

Were I wise, I’d figure out how to make you laugh at my pain - for any other’s joy seems to be the only medicine with any effect on what I’ve come to believe is a sickness of the heart rather than that of any single physical calamity. Do not misunderstand me - mangled flesh does ache. However, reality suggests our minds mostly comprehend pain in a linear fashion; another way to conceive of this principal is from an apocryphal, however gruesome workplace adage which states, “if you don’t like the pain of your injury, slam your hand in a door - you will soon forget.” Just now sojourners of the hostel where I stay are singing beautifully in the patio and I want to weep - not from pain, but joy; why is that? How can music so easily penetrate a wounded heart? What are tears and how can they inform our struggle to survive the onrushing existential pandemonium we face - “ready or not, here it comes”? What is it to endure pain, or more importantly transform it into some use, be that solidarity with suffering or pursuit of healing? Pain is not an imaginary condition, nor is there anything one can do to avoid that pain which is a part of living short of creating more for ourselves or those around us; I don’t know how to achieve this quixotic end. Writing seems to help, if only to create an illusion of understanding; altered states can be useful so long as they are not the track or your locomotion, just fuel for the fire. Mindfulness is more than a hipster-doofis euphemism to create meaning in a careless world - mindfulness seems to be the key for living with hideous discomfort; if one is able to accept pain for just an instant longer without qualifying it as evil, or an affront, or punishment, rather find ways to experience pain as a single facet within a ceaselessly changing environment. If we can begin to peer into pain’s darkness and learn what there is to know from discomfort, our susceptibility to hopeful influences may be lessened. By any account, if we do not throw off this yoke of hope, this “carrot on a stick” used to harness our kind to the depraved demands of those financial predators in our ranks by turning enslavement into insights about the fragility of our human condition, we may be unable to avert the digitized last gasp of a once promising species - that is pain.

my christmas heart .

.  .  . at 61 I’m supposed to set straight some punk fuck who arbitrarily throttled my account rendering me precariously vulnerable in a foreign land - fuck you. sitting there in your easy chair evaluating whether you are more real than I am is bullshit .  .  .  .

The beginning of my last essay “fucking banks” - lo it is Christmas 2015 and this essay is more interesting than anything I might elicit from such an easy target - like shooting ducks in a barrel. I’ve seen a woman who scares me, and considering my mother - that says a lot. I am not afraid in the sense of danger but how much love she might pull from my fragile existence. Laugh if you must but I am sitting in a room at the end of Christmas day in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador without my luggage, home or family - you are not. What I imagine of those readers infected by the “Santa” virus; you are surrounded by the wise constructs of a safe existence, and I am happy for you, even envious. I am, however, just now conjuring an imaginary future with a much younger woman whose voice I can hear as I write - other people collect imaginary friends, I hunt a fictional love to be found at the intersection of Mutual Feeling Blvd. and Reality Road. My room is in a hostel transformed from a villa which has been in her (she who would be Queen’s) family for 300 some years. My small room well suits my purpose but more resembles a monk’s cell rather than any manor house more suitable for such a lady as I am conjuring in my mind’s eye. It is now closing in on the end of Christmas Day - a full moon Christmas - however much obscured by clouds; my second day in this foreign nation; my backpack missed its flight - a backpack which is my home of record; estranged from family for reasons unclear to me, but from reasons obviously my own. Here I sit fabricating nonexistent relations based on conjecture and fantasy - this not only describes a fragile existence, it is “diagnosable.” Still you laugh . . ho . ho . the fucking ho .  .  .

What you don’t see is the earlier conversation with Gabriel, a peripatetic intellectual who shared his sparse fare on Christmas day when he himself had little to nothing, or the chaperone to my love interest who sits where I’d like to, but with whom she will more likely wed - a more practical solution - still I pursue love which is real to me, and which ignites the reserve of passion enough to spirit me through the end of this existence. Did I mention the day before I left for this leg of my existential sojourn, I had a precancerous tumor frozen off my “fuck you” finger at the knuckle? Yet my travails are minuscule compared to the real suffering of those from war torn lands seeking a world not run by avaricious sociopaths. It is an odd feeling to find that compassion for another’s suffering serves to blunt my own much less severe but no less real concerns. It is odder still that sharing might somehow provide common cause and aid with which to diminish isolation and/or pain. There is an aphorism which states: “a friend can divide the grief and double the joy,” the simple logic of which I revere. In the days we are living it seems the only interests served by enmity and division amongst people are those of the ruling class. It is now the day after Christmas and my luggage has arrived from one of my actual longest nights after a 36 hour airline cluster fuck, $250 penalty, two missed flights and a flat tire in the car I hired to drive me 3 hours to my destination - praise g_d - she loves me. Again my difficulties are nothing compared to the cab driver and his palsied arm who because of my own inept planning had no address for the hostel, only a JPEG of the location relative to two major cross streets which proved inadequate. I want to believe our shared experience changing the tire on a darkened harried holiday road generated fraternity enough to ease some of the tension found only in the company of a half/deranged gringo. It is that chasm between belief and reality which I hope to bridge throughout the year and not become some vignette of a tormented holiday bandied about as entertainment for the world’s hungry strangers who have become “my family.”

Nor is unrequited love the horns of my dilemma vis-a-vis Christmas - I love the idea of people becoming radiant with others. My greatest regret not being “filthy rich” is being unable to lavish material gifts upon others - a frustration which has calcified into an existentially Byzantium balance sheet upon which certainty struggles. I try to buy more than I take, but again with the paradox which Bob Dylan states so succinctly, however left-handedly . “ . the more I take, the more I give / the more I die, the more I live . “ . My human defect seems to point through the hole in my heart when it clenches to know “how much” when there is nothing more - that exact instant where knowing for certain claims on material objects are insane but yet I still prop myself up from fear and hunger - no shelter for a Christmas heart. While on my Byzantium balance sheet, my soul is filled with shame for being less than philosophical .  . ideas , anyone - please share; I’m not all that good at suffering and would really much rather, live in and and propagate love; social engineers seem to have their own ideas about “things” which usually involves some fee or another - which way the flow or as Leonard Cohen describes when it, “crosses the threshold and overturns the order of the soul. “ . meanwhile back on hwy 61, our world sizzles for little more than our silly sense of importance .  . .

As much as pain can serve to inform one who cares of the suffering of others and encourage the root of compassion, so it would seem we must learn to take as well as our corporate overlords - those who through no fault of their own are little more than amoral emotional ciphers lacking empathy or any capacity for compassion. The predatory positions which these less unfortunate of the ruling class have commandeered for purely venal intent in our feudal economy has been made so much easier by our new “lord and savior” the silicon chip - g_d of Leonard Cohen’s “hopeless little screen.” Thank g_d Christmas is far more than a gift exchange used to goose the economy of these handful of haters, and much deeper than the religious orthodoxy used to substantiate the murder and mayhem of our soulless but very wealthy demi-gods of war. The kind stranger who shared his meal and enlightened my narrow self interest on Christmas day used an expression which has sadly become passe, “brotherhood.” Somehow this concept has been hijacked and parsed into some hideously exclusive designation which is defined by algorithm coded mostly based on the linear limitations of our new “Lord and Master,” and its ministers. The priest class cluster like their predecessors in Chaucer’s “Priest Tale” in similar pockets pockets of the body politic not unlike their brothers in Chaucer’s story, only now they congregate in the fallen angel citadels of Redmond, Menlo Park and very shortly San Francisco. 

Like all spiritual upheavals, after the initial brush with awareness come rites necessary for each to recognize the other. In our era of enlightenment this can be seen by flailing fingers and waltzing digits, either signifying the enormous power of faith - which cannot be known, but which is now laminated amongst substrates - in some cases down to the atomic level. Is binary technology evil, and Christmas sacred - how fucking stupid would that be? For me, the act of giving , sits paramount - so I write. My fear does not necessarily abate with this futile but way weird fun responsibility, and thus far there is no indication that what I say has any bearing - lucky me. So I occupy the very middle of our human rut - smack dab in the middle between the tracks of what may become our sole contribution to the cogent DNA of this remarkable h2O infested superheated orb (90%)* comprised of Iron 36%, Oxygen 30%, Silicon 15% and Magnesium 13%. *(fucking “Lord and Savior ‘xptr’ ” says 90% but divulges 94% - go figure .  . ?) What is not discussed g_d knows why, how does the puny human composition of which we are comprised 98.7% - Oxygen 65%, Carbon 18.5%, Hydrogen 9.5%, Nitrogen 3.2%, Calcium 1.5%, Phosphorous 1% best interact with its closest neighbor, planet Earth. This question is as close to the fundamentals as any of us has gotten or will get - and one in 1,000 will give a fuck what that easy logic might yield - oh fucking well .  . 

¶ 6 : heretical, (or ¶ 7 depending on ALS), in some languages - hollywood thug - i’d be banished as boring - tonight, new year’s eve , new friends showed me how they celebrate new year in Cuenca - (conservative slug that I am, I sipped my provincial crudeness - not slowly enough) though I found the heart is not so much different wherever we be - each of us wants hope , love respect and care - we each of us have this capacity to provide each other - and soon there will be little choice. Our leaders have failed us to the extent that what is in place as civilization or common agreement will not suffice as a path to any future - our only hope is to forsake the horror and dishonor of our commonly held myths - “we are doing good” - WE ARE NOT - “hate is in retreat” - IT IS NOT and the must be stifled - “buy more and you’ll be complete” - BUY NO MORE; give what you make to those who care in exchange for what they can share - make much. We are now 1/6 into the new century - know this, SHIT moves fast and however much you may want to make way for your future to arrive - “toomany” who care not a whit for you or yours are, and have been, making decisions decisive to your future - decisions which as a dynamic rational human you would naturally wish to counter either vigorously or with the formerly quaint euphemism of “extreme prejudice. Lo, we all be distracted by the chatter of other broadcasts (hollywood thug, well-meaning hipster doofus or even la tres popular “i’m a chump and i hate everything”) we are loosing our life + charge as i speak and we are less and less viable as a species with each breath. Be it to no avail mi precioso amigos - revolt , rise up , love without reason - for it has become our only reason in this - perhaps the last of our seasons - ? - live long and prosper . Vulcan A. Nonymous