Please Read These Words

There’s the eating time, the sleeping time, the talking time, the listening time, the sitting time, the driving time…  So many times.  What are we gonna do next?  Are we ever going to run out of times?  The first time I did anything, I don’t even remember.  I guess it was crying time.  The little person comes out, and we wait for that first joyful wail–at least joyful for the waiters…  We come out ready or not–for time.  Life moves along with time.  We stop it with our perception.  We slow it or speed it up; but it presses on no matter or with matter.  People say we invented time, and maybe it’s true, maybe not.  I just know it takes time to come up with such ideas.  Our cells continue to divide or die or mutate with every breath.  Time ticks with each inhale and exhale.  Are we witnessing this, or do we march along out of our heads–never pausing long enough to enjoy our time?  Our heads are often wrapped around the back thens and if onlys.  The one day we shoulds, or the some day maybe we coulds…  if only once agains.  Around and around we go.  Ruled by the thoughts of history, or parents, grandparents, wives, husbands, children, TV personalities, rock stars, authors, etc.  Original thought may depend on slight twists of what has come before, but what a joy to maximize our ability to break new ground.  When we shed the confines of our assumptions, the canvas seems to get bigger.  Time seems to expand as we see ourselves as more than the sum of our individual experience.  We connect to something transcending the world of cause and effect, taking leaps toward unknowns for the sake of the leaping.

Today it arrived.  The man swore on The Good Book before 1.5 million joyful souls, their hearts warming one another with not a frown to be found in the midst of well below freezing air.  I watched a TV in California, tears welling… tears streaming, voice quaking every time I tried to comment on the moments as they unfolded in sound and scene.  He IS the man of this hour.  Never in my 37 years aboard this ride of life have I heard such truth.  Such courage.  Such wisdom, candor, humility…  The spirit within us all seems to be reflected back upon us from this man.  He is tall and graceful.  His wife is tall and graceful.  Their children, well-mannered yet possessing the precocious spark that is the child’s right to possess.  They are the “First Family.”  It will not just be a man leading us for the next four years.  We are subject to the influences of his day to day life as defined by his most important relationships.  The intelligence in mind and heart that has brought this man to lead have been nurtured by his willingness to connect to his family every day.  President Barack Obama is a man who called his daughters from the campaign trail nightly, and it is this action, that makes us believe in him.  He walks the talk of personal responsibility.  When he and Michelle join hands, there seems to be true teamwork at play.  They look at one another like they are proud to have one another, and to be the parents of two healthy girls.  This man and woman’s demeanor, as well as their words, seem to tell us that anything called success beyond the love of having a family together is just gravy.  President Barack Obama speaks like a statesman, like a scholar, like a preacher…  But mostly I just hear an honest man, a father who has experienced life’s ups and downs like all of us, and has found in his heart a space of infinite possibility.   It is a place of faith not always found in the book that he pledged upon this morning, but found on the sea of faces looking up at him.  We are human yes, but we are extentions of something greater.  History is full of the supposedly impossible.   He spoke today to remind us that our legacy–although subject to tarnish–is one not to be bet against.

Betrayal is the worst.  You trust someone, then they leave.  Maybe they leave with words–retracting previous promise–or maybe they leave without explanation.  What do you do?  What can you do to get on the mend?  If a love or friend or brother sister mother father priest bishop rabbi teammate or teacher lets you down, where do you go to replace that lost trust?

Betryal kills us a little bit, or sometimes a lot.  It can take away what connects us to life; we can’t know we are alive without a relationship context.  This context comes from who we know, and what we know about what these other humans think of us.  We are all a little codependent.  We need people to tell us we matter; and when people who have told us we matter suddenly split, we wonder if we were responsible for raising the axe.

The mending always comes, and will always be there ready and waiting–whether quick or seemingly forever.  As far as how people are, and how the world works, people can either “love it or leave it”…  Leaving it betrays life itself; and when we’re on the run, we betray our true selves.  We lose all hope for the mend, forgetting all earlier moments of fortitude.   I heard a guy say today, “Love it…  or love it!”   Unconditional love and acceptance for the terms of right now is IT.  A person can leave, they can disappoint, they can cheat lie and steal…  and we don’t ever have to feel betrayed if enough of us doesn’t want to feel betrayed. 

Feeling dissed is a reversable state of mind.  We forget what we’ve gone through before, we forget that hope returned way back when.  We forget to see that our choice to not take ANYTHING personally, is like the choice a person made to move on to something or someone else.  People get to do what they want to, and there is really not much you can do to stop them.  You can even lock people up for betraying someone’s trust;  even that doesn’t stop the forces of nature from finding a new connection, or from severing the world when the door clanks shut.

Dammit.  I lost it.  I had it right there….  Right There! in the back of my mind.  Now it’s gone.  It had something to do with posterity…  Plans to minimize regret.  I had a momentary triumph over mortality.  I had it, and then it left.  The vampires came and stole it away.  They brought it to the land of no sleep and no dreams, and used it up for themselves when the famine rain came down, spoiling the dark streets of their fun.

I can think of times when I wanted blood too.  It’s so easy to imagine wanting to knock someone’s head off in certain instants.  We’ve been there.  We are there.  We are in the wanting of the knocking off of heads in many places.  We don’t even care if children get in the way.  We want blood during that instant moment of faith when we are right.  That moment we deserve.  We fight off regret with more instants of faith built from nothing really, except maybe ashes.  We burn people alive, tear off fingers and toes.  We lob shells of explosives towards little arms no longer than pretzel rods. 

We are blood.  We’re scared no one will save us, so we do anything they say will save us. We scream at the vampires, vainly pleading they leave us alone.  We want our own immortality blend; and the search goes on.  The search goes on, and on, and on some more; continuing at the expense of little feet pattering after us, little fava bean lungs breathlessly crying out to us, telling us we’ve been immortal all along.

Try the soup.  It’s full of vitamins…  and some love too.  Go climb up the hillside afterward,  and look down the other end of the canyon.  There you’ll see another soup-eater scrambling vigorously to get his hand over the ledge.  Don’t be afraid to help out.  Don’t be afraid to jump boulder to boulder, working your way closer to the struggling arm and shoulder.  The sweat drips off both of you, the sun glinting off the canteens and ascention hooks.  You’ll see the eyes of gratitude.  You’ll see a chance for more soup after the rescue.  There’ll be plenty at the banquet in the rolling grassy valley–like a Swiss postcard.  You’ll both hike down hand in hand and stroll up the cobblestone walk, entering the cozy A-frame for the cocoa and hearty soup.  Suddenly you’ll realize that the answer was there all along.  The secret to all of life’s little or bigger dilemmas.  The solution was in your willingness to try the soup.

As he rubbed his face and sighed, he thought again.  No.  Not now.  Not ever.  The latest batch of that crap is gonna be the end of it all.  The lightbulbs are all going out.  The cows are coming home to roost, and the goose is right around the corner–she didn’t see her shadow after all.  Sorry Bill, three more years of frozen pizza. 

He just couldn’t get back to the basics.  The sheep were there, the leather straps, the large Asian woman with the tiny feet and the Vegas showgirl smile.  How in the heck was he supposed to finish the little woodcarvings of 1950′s tennis stars at such a tiny desk?  She didn’t know, Mr. Farfel didn’t know, and the large Asian showgirl was way too busy practicing her Leno impersonation to care.  Goddamnit.   Nitpickers.  Everyone always getting in the way of his little inventions. 

The first set was such a playful bunch.  Bunny rabbits and crickets being chased by rhinos and Masai hunters.  Later, we watched them sit quietly next to a Honda generator, next to a Magnavox on the savannah watching Melrose Place in French.  Jane had just freaked out on Sydney…  Why?  Well, Michael of course.  The fulcrum character.  The evil charming doctor whose antics pitted all the attractive borderline personality disorders against one another.  No one cared about a thing in the world except what would happen to Joe’s baby. 

In the end, the birds would take flight in the peace of dusk, their soaring reflected in the pools where the hippos waded in the rising moonlight.  The hunters turned the generator off, laid their spears and heads on the cracked earth, and settled in for gentle dreams of American breasts and swinging Pantene Pro V hairstyles.

Alright.  Here it goes.  The Muslims and the Jews and my ancestral Catholic Baptist Protestant Christians are a bunch of fucking assholes.  Sometimes.  People who call themselves devout followers are following a path leading to destruction.  History continues to repeat itself as buildings and children burn in the wake of obnoxious egotism masked as holy righteousness.  I renounced watching the news, reading most national newspapers, and most widely published magazines; yet I still victimize myself with a “yahoo homepage” that shoots me in the face with the days latest carnage.  What a fitting title for an internet engine facilitating and tracking the goings on of human beings–yahoo… for a bunch of fucking yahoos. 

These words are indeed scathing and judgemental, and I hope my message is read in context.  I do not want to come across as merely glib or cute–like many parts of Bill Mahr’s indictment of world religions in his film, Religulous.  I occassionally try to get messages across that are more than just “personal therapy.”  I know I get self-indulgent and plenty self-righteous, but as Henry Miller said, “Fuck-a-duck.”   

What is great about Bill Mahr’s message is that it is one of non-violence, cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and love.  And I’m not talking about love–the nebulous concept of poems and Hallmark, Inc.  I speak of the love in actions.  I speak of service to others.  I speak of Martin Luther King’s and Gandi’s love.  Love with boundaries so wide that unspeakable acts of violence and human viciousness could not remove the forgiveness from their hearts.  They saw God, Jehovah, the One And Only, The Enlightened Voice, Whatever…  and acted accordingly to uphold the truth that is life itself.  They knew that love was not a state of being.  Love is in what happens between people and countries and cultures when life is affirmed.  It happens when we see what joins us rather than what divides us.  Wow, that sounded so Obama!

We all need to feel safe, eat, drink the water of life, and play in the dirts, sands and streams of this mysterious creation.  No one has it right, and our insecurity about life’s unpredictable turns too often turns to a fear and suspicion that kills.  I’m sure I’ll be accused of  oversimplifying current matters, but it seems that world conflict is rooted in the generational need to pass down suspicion and fear of the other, of the neighbor, of THAT religion, or OTHER culture…  Of course this fear is often rooted in very real experiences of being totally fucked over by this OTHER, but maybe we could take some time to learn about the other OTHERS!  Peoples who don’t teach their people about other people–who don’t communicate in a world where the miracle of instant communication is real–are destined to help destroy the souls of ”their” people, and the souls of “other” people to whom they’ve closed their eyes and ears. 

Lay down your guns, or condemn your offspring to insanity.

Teh.  Teh heh.  Teh heh heh.  The worst day of your life might never happen.  Mark Twain wrote that most of his troubles in life never came true.  How true that is.  We’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Waiting for the branches to snap and come crashing through the window.  Why?  Who the hell cares why.  Asking why too many times is part of this whole problem we’ve got going on.  So and so asks why, and then whatchamacallit thinks he has an answer, and then what’s his name comes up with something different that so and so likes more…  Now we have a problem.  What’s his name is now winning some race to no where, and whatchamacallit is jealous of something, based on nothing, that got no where way before the race began.  The first thing to remember is that being clever with language is perhaps the biggest copout ever.  The next thing to remember is to not care what people think, and say it anyway.  You were meant to; otherwise your lips wouldn’t have moved, or your fingers would have fallen off long ago.  Long before the ice age, bronze age, and that favored time of Disney–feudalism.  Serfdom and maidens.  Coned hats with lace flowing from their apex, leaning from the stone tower window, above the moat containinig a dragon.  Then the eighties arrived and the dragon was defeated by a Transformer driving a monster truck.  Boy George was singing Karma Chameleon,  Prince licked Purple raindrops off himself, Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwold had careers, and we passed the time buying cigarettes from vending machines in diners at the tender age of thirteen.

Hakadaka.  The first cut is sometimes the deepest, and sometimes you don’t even scratch the surface.  Charlie came back into our lives that summer and just about blew it out of the water.  He tripped and fell over every chain draped across his path.  He ate so much cheese, and threw up so much alcohol, that it was a miracle he ever woke up most mornings.  The birthday party was a mess.  Chocolate cake everywhere.  Jack Daniels wrappers all over the place.  Charlie’s girlfriend was collecting the wrappers and had a pretty big pile assembled until the neighbors’ wolfhound came in and shredded all her hard work.  The neighbors.  Now there was something to scream about.  Shelly and Frank Cellini were the real deal.  Caddy in the brick driveway, not one, but four wolfhounds protecting the premises along with state of the art fencing and silent alarm systems.  If only they could remember to shut the fucking gate during gin and tonic long island iced tea afternoon patio time.  How the hell were Charlie and his girl Denise gonna write any goddamn hits again if these 150 pound smelly mutts didn’t stop barging in on their brainstorming parties?  They were gathering material.  They had Shaun in the corner nodding out…  Nancy was cleaning furiously and when the stuff finally wore off she would realize once again that Bob and Shit Brains Dennis make a mess faster than she and a 1000 strong cleaning crew–all on meth like Nancy–could ever keep up with.  Jesus.  Shit Brains Dennis.  Charlie was so close to finishing that refrain, and Dennis had to start in again with the “whoa is me speech” involving–you guessed it–Natalie Portman…  and how she’ll never see eye to eye with his plans.  Her star power, even after standing face-to-face with Luke Skywalker as the writers completely destroyed the Star Wars series with four words…  “but… I…  I love You!”–was utterly beyond Shit Brains Dennis’s belief.  He got winded talking about her.  Her small breasts.  Her frail yet wirey “I’ll fuck you up” frame–further confirmed by her rap performance on Saturday Night Live…  Her caustic sense of humor was something guys like Shit Brains Dennis just eat the fuck up.  The guy had a pretty loose grip–or an extra tight one depending on how you see it– and he needed a brilliant movie star with severe bone structure, and those dark, mysterious softly psychotic–but definitely psychotic eyes.  He needed a victim for his obsession.

I don’t wanna scare you.  No.  I would surely give you the time of day anytime.  You keep telling me all you need is love…  To be listened to closely.  To be held in my arms all night.  Well I’ll tell ya something…  If there’s anything worth a smile in this world, it’s you.  I’ll give you a chance again.  I’ll give you a pepperoni pizza carafe of burgandy moment if you need it.  We’ll sit at the red and white checked candlelight and talk in whispers.  We’ll ride the trolley up the hill and I’ll hang off the side with arm outstretched waving a hat at the crowd–showtunes blaring in our ears.  Or maybe Motown.  Something with blaring horns.  Some music of enthusiastic optimism and a more hopeful blues riff.  I wanna hear  that  music of youth, rebirth, the frontier spirit.  Yes.  I’ll show you a good time if you’ll let me in that heart of yours.