That Last Luxurious Bath

I’ve crawled through the brambles, face in the mud, getting scratches on my belly like cuts on the wrists of a depressed housewife. The sad lady who popped a few too many valiums, knocked back one too many vodkas, and laid down in a warm tub so she wouldn’t make a mess around the rest of the house. She understood her husband could deal with her death, but not with a messy house.

I knew the lady. I knew her well. She was fabulously wealthy, pockets full of haughty promises, and a head full of fantasy. She tried to buy my affection, but couldn’t accept my polite decline of the offer. She came to me in, what she thought was, my own vulnerability, but which, in fact, was really her own. She was so very terribly mistaken, interpreting my sensitivity as weakness, my silence as need. But I did not need her. Not at all, not by any measure. I required only honesty, and an ease of friendship. She’d forgotten that I carry all those scratches on my belly. They remind me not to follow fools through the brambles, or driftwood through the mill.

I knew her husband too. He was the delightful guy who held her out for scrutiny, and set her up to lose. He was the guy who directed her to me, hoping I would be, for her, what he refused to be. She was an obstacle in his world. A certain kind of liability. He thought she would be a welcome addition to mine. She might have been at one time, long ago and far away, in a place I no longer choose to reside, or even visit. She was lost to me long before that last luxurious bath.

I did not grieve the loss. Nor do I today. It was less a loss than a liberation. And she didn’t really kill herself; she just died of her own delusions.

Happiness is now, finally, within her grasp.

Seventy-Five

I like that number written out. Not so much in its numerical form. But the words look good together. And I like the way it sounds.

This is my seventy-fifth blog. And they said it wouldn’t last. Well, I’ve actually written more than seventy-five, but some of them have been left un-posted. Didn’t want to scare the little children, shatter all the monuments we build to ourselves, or hurt anybody unnecessarily. Some of them will get posted down the road. Everything in its own time. Like it’s been said before “we will serve no wine before its time.” As you may have already noticed, some of my postings are wine, and some of them are just whine. It’s good to have choices.

I want to take this opportunity to explain some things about myself, to maybe clear up some misunderstandings. God knows, just about anybody who knows me, or reads my writings, has at least a few misunderstandings with me. I’m not an easy person to relate to. I’ve always known that, but at least I know that about myself. First, let me say that, I live in two distinctly different worlds. They are not distinctly different for me, but for others. I feel that I have achieved a balance between the two, an integration of sorts that serves me well and offers a distinctive, and satisfying, worldview. For others, I am either a borderline Christian without proper dogma, or a secularist with too much religious influence. In truth, I am an admirer of Christ, not in the traditional religious, and delusional, sense of worshipping him, but in a genuine and practical way, with a tremendous respect and reverence for the example of his courage, humanity and sacrifice. I find no other figure in modern, or historical, life who’s example I am as compelled to follow as his. To put it simply, his teachings, and the example of his life, make sense to me. He makes sense to me. And, in fact, the older I get the clearer he becomes. As I have said many times before, I do not worship Jesus. I think I know him well enough to know that he would not want to be worshipped. North Korea’s Kim Jong-il wants to be worshipped. Madonna wants to be worshipped. Christ was a man of strength, humility, love and compassion. Those men do not want, or need, to be worshipped. If you’ve never read the gospels you ought to check them out. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

I do not write, and I am not here, to be loved. Being loved is no longer a concern of mine. I’m all grown up now. Some will love me, some will dislike me, and some will find me irrelevant and not care one way or another. That is how it should be. I embrace that. No, I am not here to be loved, but I am here to love.

There is no love in dishonesty, and there is only honesty in love.

My writing has the potential to offend, to feel ‘unlovely’, and I acknowledge that, but I don’t worry about it. If I rail about politicians and religious leaders it is because of the double standard with which they conduct their lives. It is not about them personally. It is about their hypocrisy. It is about their dishonesty, and it is about their cowardly leadership. I’m sure they have many good qualities as well. If I express disgust with celebrities, it is because they enjoy the privilege of fame and fortune, but eschew the responsibilities that accompany holding such an elevated position in our culture, a position that creates, and perpetuates, standards of behavior for the rest of us. As eroded as their character becomes as a result of our idol worship, I’m sure they have redeeming value also.

If I sound an alarm about a cultural trend, it is not because I sit in judgment of those involved in the trend, but to offer them a perspective other than their own, and an assessment of the repercussions, and consequences, of participating in the trend. I am perfectly willing for my assessment to be rejected. If I call out the drug culture (from which I came) for its blind indulgence, or if I emphatically denounce the lie that pot is not a dangerous drug, it is not because I think ill of drug users, find them stupid or pathetic, but, in fact, it is because I love them and am willing to tell them the truth, to stand where the cultural leaders are unwilling to stand. Many doctors (pot smokers, no doubt) call pot a harmless drug, and many users echo those comments, but they fail to take into account that marijuana erodes the spirit of a man, from the inside. It compromises his integrity, clouds his ability to reason, restricts the development of his brain, and alters the accuracy of his perception, his self-perception even. In effect, it negatively controls his development when he thinks he is in control of his own. Experts working in the field of drug rehabilitation are unanimous in stating that a pot user does not even begin to recover from the effects of its influence until a full year after he stops using. Former users say the same. Sad to say, users do not even know what they don’t know about themselves. I do not point these things out out of derision, but because the families of these users love them and want them back.

I write about myself sometimes. As you’ve already discovered, I’m a contradiction. But at least I’m a solid contradiction. I will continue to write about myself because in knowing me you will begin to know yourself better than you already do. We tend to find ourselves in the minds, and lives, of others. I am someone you may find interesting to know, but would probably not want to be around for too long at any one time. I know that about myself also.

There are many of you who read my blogs, I know that from the website numbers. Most of you read me anonymously, that is, that I don’t know who you are. That’s OK. That’s fine. I’m the writer, you’re the reader. That’s the relationship. I write, hoping that something I have to say will make a difference for you. Move you, make you smile, make you angry, make you feel something you haven’t felt in awhile, inspire you, make you laugh, validate you, or push you away from a flame. I would hope to motivate you, or enable you to see something in a different light. I would hope that you would disagree with me sometimes. I disagree with myself sometimes.

I also write because I need to write. I’m a ‘constant thinker’. I never stop thinking. Ask my wife. I even think when I’m asleep. Life is a process of movement and clarification. Writing helps with both. I hope reading what I write helps with both for you.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing, what I would ask from you is that you don’t keep me a secret any longer. Have the courage to share my writing with a friend. You can email any of the blogs, individually, by clicking on the little envelope at the bottom of the blog, or you can send the web address so they can look it up for themselves. Send it if you agree with what I have to say, and send it if you don’t.

I promise I will, eventually, offend, in one way or another, anyone you might ever send it to. Oh, and that anonymity? Come on out from under the couch sometime, and let me know you’re reading.

denes@theoldcoyote.com

Generosity

Is it just me, or did you find the recent article in Parade Magazine about the ‘Most Generous Americans’ offensive also? If you recall, in the past week or two they ran a spread about how many millions of dollars some very well known celebrities donate to charity. Actually, I think it’s great that ‘well known celebrities’ give a lot of money to causes other than themselves. Helps a good number of people, and sets an example for others. Nothing wrong with that. They ought to be applauded. And believe me, they are. I don’t have the article in front of me, but I think Oprah Winfrey gave the most, followed by people like Barbra Streisand, Brad and Angelina, Mel Gibson, Paul Newman and others. Some of these people I like, and some I don’t, but that is not the issue. The issue is that they have been celebrated as “The Most Generous Americans”.

Now, giving is giving, but let’s not pretend that giving and generosity necessarily equate. These people are so unfathomably rich, have so many millions of dollars, that, not only do they not ever even see the money that goes out in their names, but they also do not even feel an impact on their life style or personal finances from having given it. Much of it is given for tax purposes to actually improve their financial standing, and the adoration and publicity they receive from the giving actually allows them to continue making even more money than they would have had they not made the donations. It’s not like they struggle over balancing their checkbook, trying to figure out how they can give some money to a worthy cause, and still make ends meet. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling into question anybody’s motives, I’m simply stating the obvious. Why someone gives is his or her own business, and it is not to be judged. No one knows another’s heart, only their actions.

The most generous Americans are actually people you have, most likely, never even heard of. They are not celebrated for their generosity, and they are not lauded for their choice of boutique causes. They are the struggling family that gives 10% of a meager paycheck to help an Appalachian community survive a devastated economy. They are the church janitor who takes a two week leave of absence from his employment to go down to Louisiana and help rebuild housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. They are the bohemian young people in the City who struggle to pay their rent, but buy coffee for the homeless guy on the corner. They are the career businessperson who leaves a profitable job, and lifestyle, to live in less-than-desirable circumstances in an underdeveloped country to assist the poor with drilling wells, planting food or establishing education. They are the women who give their time to run the thrift shops that benefit the most needy families in any given community. They are the everyday people who struggle to get by, and still give of what they have to someone who has even less than they do. They are the guy that gives his only coat to someone else who’s cold and doesn’t have one.

These are the Most Generous Americans.
Do not be deluded by the proclamations of the Parade Magazines of the world.

He who has everything, and gives much, has given a little.
He who has little, and gives a little, has given a lot.


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We Need To Go To Confession

We need to go to confession. OK now, I know what you’re thinking, “what do you mean we?” I’ll say it again. We need to go to confession.

I’ve been thinking about this whole idea of confession. There’s something missing in our culture, which can best be exemplified by looking at a typical criminal/attorney relationship to the law. A man commits a crime. He knows he committed the crime, his attorney knows he committed the crime, and we know he committed the crime. Somebody was hurt as a consequence of the man’s actions. The attorney essentially tells him that he is innocent unless a judge, or a jury, convicts him of the crime. Then, should he be wrongly acquitted, by judgment of the system, or even on a technicality, he is regarded by the law, by his attorney, and even by himself, as innocent. He still committed the crime, and yet by virtue of his ‘innocence’ he no longer regards himself as guilty of the action. He moves away from any personal connection to its impact on others, or his culpability in visiting that impact on them. Never having had to admit his guilt to the court, or even to himself, or to deal with any consequences related to the behavior, human nature gives him permission to continue that same behavior, and as could be predicted, he hurts somebody else.

Without acknowledgement there is no regret. Without regret there is no forgiveness. Without forgiveness there is no change. Without change there is no redemption. When did the concept of ‘confession’ become passe’ in our culture? I believe it happened around the same time that sin became relative and irrelevant. Sin implies something unholy, unseemly, dishonest or hurtful. A more literal definition is “separation from God’. In our world, who wants to consider themselves, or their actions, unholy, unseemly, dishonest or hurtful? As we make everything relative we no longer need to feel any of those ‘negative’ things about ourselves. How convenient. But when we banish the concept of sin from our culture, and from our consciousness, we also rob ourselves of the opportunity for confession, which in turn deprives us of the process of forgiveness, change and, ultimately, redemption.

I was raised in the Catholic Church. I attended Catholic school from the first grade thru the ninth, when they asked me not to return for my sophomore year. That was OK with me (and here’s where I’ll probably offend somebody) because I always considered the Catholic Church to be the largest cult in the world. I don’t really have the population figures for that, so I could be wrong. Today it might be the ‘New Spirituality’ movement, whose only tenant seems to be ‘to judge no behavior, and to embrace anything, and everything’, except, of course, a conflicting point of view. But back to my original point. I think that the practice of confession is one of the things the Catholic Church got right. We were encouraged to go to the church once a week, go into the confessional, where a priest sat behind a screen, giving us a relative sense of privacy, while we kneeled on a cushion and told him everything we’d done wrong throughout the past week. Then the priest gave us absolution, gave us some prayers to say, and as we got up to leave he said to us “go now, and sin no more.” It’s an awesome concept.

One can argue that you don’t need to be forgiven by a priest in order to be forgiven, and I agree. One can argue that one can confess their sins directly to God, and I agree. One can even argue that we don’t need to confess our sins at all, and I agree with that as well. We can continue to carry them around with us for the rest of our lives if we choose, or we can pay a psychiatrist, or psychologist, for years on end, to help us discover the cause of our depression, our unhappiness, or our inability to move beyond the shame in which we have become stuck. We have those choices, and most of us avail ourselves of one or the other, or of a common alternative, to simply cloud the issue with drugs, or drown the memories with drink.
I remember engaging in an action that was very out of character for me, feeling terrible about it, and wishing it hadn’t happened. I did not hurt anybody else, but it hurt me. It compromised my character, and it flew in the face of my beliefs. I regretted it having happened. I called a friend, acknowledged the act, and asked his forgiveness. He forgave me my shortcoming, I determined that it would not happen again, and I felt a redemption that enabled me to continue on my path without a repetition of the behavior.

Redemption continually allows one to avoid self-destructive and addictive behaviors that are endemic to the practice of sin. This relativistic culture is not going to clue you in to that essential truth.

Whether you’re a politician selling a lie with a speech, a pseudo-enlightened and self-appointed spiritual guide selling a bogus stairway to nirvana, a thief posing as a businessman selling stock to a widow, or a rock star pushing drugs to young people with a song, . . . . . . you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I’ll say that again. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
We all have sin for which we ought to be ashamed.

And all of us, we need to go to confession.


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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.