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.