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