Our Favorite Boots

Let the hammer drop. Let the clamoring stop. We've been too long drinking at the fountain of their fatal dispositions. We've been tripped up by the inquisition, which sent them first to trap us, and then to let us die, while we chewed through our own legs, like wolves caught in the deadly and vicious steel teeth left laying hidden in the autumn leaves, quietly, just beneath the surface. It's not so much the remembrance of that time that bothers us, as the fact that it never goes away. We have the scars to validate our feelings. We have the blood soaked ground laying wet beneath us every waking moment. It takes no other form. It’s always dark, and damp. We have the misplaced, but sacred, empathy given by the nurses in the head asylums, the state institutions of higher learning, the chemical lobotomy shops. The places they would take us to try and stop the bleeding. We have those memories, and those permanent marks on our records. It covers us like weeds while we’re busy sorting through the bone and sinew left protruding from these gaping wounds. We don't accept sympathy from others, we have quite enough of our very own. But we do accept their propositions. And we do reflect their pain.

It's not often that the bleeding stops, but when it does we each walk on our one good leg towards the coast, on our best crutch, with our favorite memories of our favorite boots. We stop in the bait and tackle shop along the way, and are reminded that the shoes of the fisherman's wife are really just some pretty jive-ass slippers waiting to be removed at the door of her, otherwise, vacant bedroom. Her husband doesn't know she has a thing for blood and bone.

We cannot continue to be afraid. The clowns running out of the room are scared as well, most of them anyway, but they continue to perform their act each and every day, without delay, under the scrutiny of a sea of watchful eyes, and on the ever shifting sand beneath a cloudless, and quivering, California sky. At least they never actually say they hate the people they’re trying to make laugh, even if they do. I know the distance between their face and the funny makeup is really much farther than one would ever imagine. We apply white face, and silly noses, ourselves each dawn before we fall, habitually, into line again for our own forlorn fashion shows. We’re relatively comfortable there. It feels, at times, like home.

The chill of disappointment only grows, it doesn’t ever go away. Still, we hope it will diminish, gracefully,
like the early morning darkness.

We Used To Be Alive

The wagons circle, unaware of what they really are surrounding. The camp is quiet tonight. No laughter. No singing. No fabricated stories of trashy whores, or vulnerable maidens. It's all the same anyway. Just stillness, as if it were expected. As if it were supposed to be. As if we all had been rejected for our point of view, for our flannel dispositions, our perverse personalities, our social pathologies, and our lies. Solitude breeds solitude for some. Or sorrow. Sometimes both. For others it brings relief.

All the solitary campfires, burning low, and dying out alone. Sounds like a song I once wrote. We sleep in one's, and begin our day in two's, in the morning, but only in the mirror. We wash our face of last nights lingering news. We feel a brief connection in the glass, but only for a moment, then it too reflects a chronic sadness, projecting an undefined, but familiar, grief.

This too will eventually pass.
And it does.
But an aching, nauseous, awareness sets in that nothing's really changed but the time of day. Only from p.m. to a.m. again. Only from then to now. Lingering impressions flood a vulnerable soul. Like a dam in heaven breaking wide open, or a buff tsunami racing fast across the earth. Noah must know what I’m talking about. Talk about floods? And talk about feelings? I would imagine he must have had a few of those himself.

We drag our baggage through customs after disembarking from the boat. We bring a pair of tigers with us for protection. We pass unmolested, as expected. We carry unknown promises in body cavities they decline to search. Besides, no one has enough authority to confiscate the contraband.

And it wouldn’t do them any good.

We used to be alive. Only yesterday we were feeling confident and indulgent of the life around us. Today that same life clouds our ability to reason. It challenges our agility, as it has scoffed at our optimism. It all breaks down around us when it gets around to breaking down. Turn off the television before it cuts our bloated jugular, and leaves us gasping for the air we used to breathe.

Hope doesn't give much notice, or turn to offer some pretentious resignation upon it's departure. It just walks quietly through the door with a furtive glance and is gone.
Sounds like a poem I once wrote.

A Certain Abject Consciousness

For me, freedom is innately, and inexorably, connected to standing apart from myself. I am both my own jailer and my liberator. I shudder at the thought of such control, but self-control is the welcome alternative to the imposition of control by others. I have to acknowledge its scope in my life.
I have, throughout time, identified very closely with the captives, whether they have been criminally, or psychiatrically institutionalized, or socially, or politically repressed. I have identified just as strongly with the freedom people who refuse to live by someone else's dictate, who cannot be censored in their motivation, their intention, or their style. This identification is rooted in my experience of, both, suffocating boundaries and boundless freedom. Neither fits into the mainstream of life, by choice, or circumstance. Some would die to be free of confinement. Others are just thrilled to live.

It is not the particular ideologies I identify with, but the fact that they move beyond the mainstream in one direction or another. I have always preferred the side roads to the thoroughfares. Even though the main road might be more accessible, it is also the route where I would most surely experience psychic depravation. Peace, for me, is to be found off the map, in places where the call for conformity is least pronounced, the places where individuality is least likely to sound an alarm. The environment where I can best follow my inclinations, and my Muse, without the scrutiny of the politically correct, the guardians of the status quo, the arbiters of all things acceptable and all things deemed to be reviled. Everyone who travels down that road is different to one degree or another. It is that very difference that puts them there. An inability, or refusal, to adjust, or a certain abject consciousness, determines for us the route of least conflict, of least resistance. The back roads, the alleyways, the mountaintops, the canyons.



It is there that I meet people who know me intuitively, who seem to know who I am, where I've been, and why I'm not lined up in the commuter lane.
It is there that I find the glove to fit my hand. It is where I find my ability to breathe.

If this just proves to be a glimpse into my own personal psychosis, I don't mind. There's really only one psychosis, that I know of, and we each just chew on a different piece of it.

This just happens to be mine.

No Such Thing As The Perfect Tan

Overcast sky this morning, unlike the way it’s been for about as long as I can remember now. The sun has hung hot and threatening above my head, daring me to challenge its blistering intent, to go outside without a hat if I care to measure myself against it. But I know I’d lose that confrontation. The great heat lamp plugged conspicuously into itself to tan, but shrivel, those of us who might choose the embrace of its essential, but dangerously, scorching, love.
We know the power of love, and we know the foolishness of flirting with the flame. An overcast sky can bring relief, on occasion, from its, otherwise, torrential affection, and the continuing temptation of seeking the perfect tan.

The Natural World

There is an inherent equalizer in the natural world, in the beauty of nature, and in its incomprehensible power. I think that people have forgotten that we, in fact, are very much a part of nature, not separate from it, but integrally connected. We speak of nature as if it is a place we visit, or something we live in the middle of. We speak of animals as though they are natural (part of nature), but of ourselves as a collection of intruders. Can we please put to rest, once and for all, this ridiculous division? In a divisive world, where everything and everybody is divided into ‘this and that’ or ‘them and us’, could we not at least embrace the totality of what we are? We are the embodiment of nature just as profoundly as the Grand Canyon, or an old redwood tree, is. As certainly as a black bear living in a cave, or a bird nesting in the branches. Who would consider any of these to be separate from nature?

I believe that everything in life is connected to something that has gone before it. I believe the development of most attitudes, behaviors, lifestyles, communities, politics, religions and belief systems are born of, and perpetuated by, some form of connection to an incomplete, or inadequate, premise. In this case, that we are separate from nature. History shows us that, as people, we have not co-existed equally, or peacefully with one another, except for brief moments in time, and even then, only in small groups. Could it be that, because we have failed to embrace, or even acknowledge, our own integration in the most foundational, and elemental, of all groupings, the natural world, that we now find it all-but-impossible to co-exist around a concept, or even in a world, of our own faulty design? As we all know, in building a house, if the foundation of the house is not level we cannot expect the rest of the structure to be? In living, if we deny our own inclusion in the natural world, can we also expect to co-exist with, or within, it?

If I am born into a family, but deny connection to it, and instead consider myself to be from, but not of, that family, can I expect to feel integration with them? Or even camaraderie? If I consider myself to be elevated, better than, or more important than, the others, can I find union, with, or among, them? Of course not.

And yet that is exactly what we have done in relation to nature. We are born as an element of nature, as a component of, and in union with, its totality. But we have separated ourselves from it, considering ourselves to be elevated, rather than integrated, and then we expect life, from that faulty premise, to work out in our best interest, and to our own advantage. By any degree of fundamental logic, it is easy to understand that those who show little respect for nature usually exhibit minimal respect for others, and for themselves as well, effectively validating my conviction.

We are not the commanders, or even the guardians, of nature.
We are an embodiment of it.
Does anybody get that?

New Blank Document

I love to sit down to write in the morning and open up the Word program on my computer. It’s not that I necessarily love sitting down to write, although I often do love it. And it’s not that I particularly like working on the computer, although it is a great convenience, and one I would miss if I had to give it up. But what I really love is going up to the menu bar and scrolling down to ‘New Blank Document’. I LOVE THAT. New Blank Document! NEW: ‘Something that has not been used by anyone else’. BLANK: ‘Not written on, not yet having, or showing, interest or awareness’. DOCUMENT: ‘To make a record of something by writing about it’. Damn, it speaks to me like a blank canvass might speak to a painter. What do I want this page to say today? It can say anything I want it to.

Our daily lives are New Blank Documents as well. Every day we decide what we want our lives to represent. What do we want our clothes to say? Our attitudes? Our actions? Our Words? Our Intentions? What do we want to put on the page of our lives? What do we want to record as part of our own personal historical record?

Our lives are being published, whether we push the publish button or not. We are being read by the people around us, those who know us, and many who don’t. We influence them in ways visible and invisible. Some of my clearest, and most profound, memories are of ‘moments of kindness’ by various strangers I have encountered along the way. And some of my greatest influences have been the simple lives of a few people I have grown to respect over the years, people who gave thoughtful consideration to what they put, daily, on their New Blank Document.

Myopia

There’s the growl of a chainsaw off in the distance this morning. Could be a menacing sound, or the sound of something important getting done, depending on the context, depending on perspective, depending on the way it’s framed. Could be an insensitive idiot recklessly devouring this beautiful land, but it could be someone cutting firewood to keep his family warm for the impending winter. Could be someone cutting down an old-growth redwood, but it could be a man with a plan clearing dead wood to enable new growth. Could be a developer clear-cutting land to build another strip-mall, but it could be somebody tearing down an old shack on the back 40 that had become a rat-trap and a fire hazard. Could be PG&E, or Comcast, cutting down trees for installation of another power cable, or the State building yet another road. But it could be someone clearing an overgrown deer trail to help insure safe passage for the wildlife through an increasingly populated part of this rural environment. Could be someone carving a totem pole out of a big old log in the back yard. Could be someone recording the sound of a chainsaw for a film, or for some other creative project.

I know people who view chainsaws only as weapons of destruction.
They are incapable of seeing them as tools.

The same way they tend to regard our military.
I do not share their myopic views.

A Talking Contradiction

You might ask, how can I, on the one hand, embrace a sentiment like The Prayer of St. Frances, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love. . . . . “ and on the other hand, write a scathing rant about the corporate aristocracy, spiritual pied pipers, or people willing to be rounded up and branded by the political elite? “That’s not very loving”, you might say. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical? Well, that would be a good question.
To modify a Kris Kristofferson song lyric just a bit,
I’m a talking contradiction, partly smooth, partly friction.
Y’know, anyone willing to open their mouth more than once and profess an idea, or an opinion, is probably going to contradict himself with the second thing that he has to say.

Too many people, knowing that, choose silence over humiliation or embarrassment. Personally, I don’t find anything wrong with contradiction. I find something wrong with practiced, and groomed, conformity of thought. . . . . Scientology, Cabala, if you will. In case you haven’t noticed, human beings ARE a contradiction. As embryo’s (developing people), we float, and swim around in our mothers womb, like guppies in a fish bowl, and then are born and can’t wait to get up and walk. HUH? Is that not a contradiction on the most primitive level? As children we are encouraged with “free to be you and me” kinds of cultural ideas, but trained in the path of conformity. Is that not a contradiction? And does either one really invalidate the other? Is it not a contradiction for a teen-ager to both love and hate his parents? But who’s to say that each of these feelings are not equally legitimate? Is it not a contradiction for adults to want to both protect, and encourage independence in their children? Can I not enjoy the warmth of the daytime and the mystery of the night? Do faith and doubt not co-exist for most of us at times? Or are we just too proud, or scared to admit it?

It is not a contradiction for me to rail against the narcissistic, and self-serving, Madonna’s, the Pelosi's, the Bill and Hillary’s, the Jackson’s (Jessie and Michael), or the Al Gore’s of the world, and then to also pray “Lord, where there is hatred, let me sow love”. It is, in fact, evidence of clear, and rational, thinking. These people (and many like them. You know their names.) pose and position themselves as our cultural, religious, environmental and political leaders. They use us for their own aggrandizement, pretending all the while to care about ‘our struggle’, but actually, they care about power, they care about money, they care about fame and adulation. Oh yes, and they care about writing their own versions of their place in history.

Love requires honesty, of purpose, and of practice. To remind you to not give your support to, or put your faith in, phonies such as these IS an act of love, in, and of, itself. In a world of contradictions, that certainly is not one.

You've Changed

You’ve changed! Anybody ever say that to you? I haven’t heard it recently, although I know people think that about me. But I have heard it periodically over the course of my lifetime, always delivered with a negative connotation. Like change is a bad thing? Seems like it usually comes from someone who has not changed a thing in years. Hasn’t changed a point of view, hasn’t changed a perspective, hasn’t changed an ideology, a rationale, a conclusion, a family dynamic, their taste in music, or even the route they drive to work every day. It usually comes from someone who is either stuck in the 60’s and has never changed their drugs, or stuck in a pew and has never changed their dogma.

But it seems to me that change is an essential ingredient in living. Jeez, even rocks change, becoming shaped by water, wind, and the hands of time. If rocks, in all of their stoic resistance, succumb to the inevitable without kicking and screaming, surely the rest of us could embrace change with a little more dignity and grace. As I have always said “if it don’t change, it ain’t alive.” Actually, I’ve never said that, but from now on I always will!

The minutes of the day change, the weeks, months and years do the same. The seasons change. We change our clothes, our cars, our jobs, our habits and routines. We change our circle of friends, our hobbies, our magazine subscriptions, our television interests and our address. Eventually we get gray, wrinkled, blind and stooped. We see things differently. Along the way we change everything, and everything changes. And then someone say’s “you’ve changed”. DUH!

Seriously, when people say that, they’re usually referring to their OWN inability to relate to the changes that have taken place within you, or within the dynamic of your relationship with them. They’re not really saying ‘you’ve changed’, as much as they are saying ‘WE’VE changed’. Or ‘you’ve changed, and I haven’t’. I understand that such an awakening can be painful for someone whose expectation has been that ‘things will always be the same between us’. But things can never always be the same between people. It’s like saying things will always be the same between day and night. But between day and night is dusk, and dusk comes at a different time every day. It comes with a different sky, a different color, and a different temperature. So it is with people.

Mature people will allow their friends and family members to change and grow in their own way, in their own time, and with the clumsiness that usually accompanies new movement. Immature people will do their best to try and inhibit an individual’s growth to suit their own life of guarded, and habitual, conformity.

Next time someone says “you’ve changed” I’m going to try and remember to thank them for noticing.

We Might Be A Mirage

I have been paying attention, of late, to how everything seems to happen at once. By ‘at once’ I don’t mean ‘one thing after another’. I actually mean ‘at once’, at the same time. We are accustomed to thinking of ‘time’ as linear, that is that it plays itself out moment to moment. We are born, we live a series of moments, and then we die, and are gone. Like walking on a centerline down the road and then disappearing off in the distance. Vanishing like a mirage in the desert. I am beginning to understand, and appreciate, that it might not be like that at all. That in fact we might actually be that mirage.

Throughout the course of my life I have had an inordinate number of friends die suddenly, at early ages, and from a myriad of unexpected circumstances. Most of my friends. However, it always feels like they are not really gone, but living in the invisible world, around me, beside me, with me and without me. As if they are here, and as if they were never here. All of that at once. I suppose some psychologists would call it a continuing, and prolonged, sense of grief. Others might consider it a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But I think that there is no differentiation, or separation, between when my friends were here and when they died, or between when they died and how they continue to be here. I think it is all the same. I think life really does happen all at once. All in the blink of an eye.

I am reminded of the people who have had near death experiences, who have faced their own demise in an unexpected moment. Whether the instant before a head-on collision, or when a heart suddenly stops beating. These people will invariably say that their lives flashed before their eyes in a very brief moment, like a quick glance in the mirror, revealing their entire life as if it were in a single breath. That’s it. If it only takes a nano-second to review ones life, perhaps life is actually lived in a similar nano-second. Otherwise, even on ‘fast-forward’, wouldn’t you think it would take a bit longer?
Maybe that’s how life actually is. That it all happens at once. That there really is no such thing as time after all. That the review is actually the life, and that life doesn’t really happen, it just is. It’s difficult to think in these terms, kind of strains the brain, but if we think of time, as we know it, in relation to eternity, then the span of a lifetime is so insignificant as to not even allow itself to be measured. And if eternity happens all at once, which I think it does, can that same lifetime even be considered in terms of measurement at all? There is no time. There is only now.
Ouch.

Everything happens at once.
And we might be a mirage.
Don’t ask me how I know it,
but I’m pretty sure I do.

And I’ll probably lose a lot of readers.


Something else to try and wrap our heads around:

Scientists are now saying that there are more stars in our galaxy
than there are grains of sand on the earth.
And that there are more galaxies in the universe
than there are stars in our galaxy.