Coming soon, an essay on 'Our Friend,' John "POW" McCain by editor Hosho McCreesh.
[image courtesy of Father Luke]
30 October 2008
From The Editor
Coming soon, an essay on 'Our Friend,' John "POW" McCain by editor Hosho McCreesh.
[image courtesy of Father Luke]
27 October 2008
The Dream
by justin.barrett
Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His assassination touched off a wave of riots across the United States, and decades of bitterness amongst the civil rights movement, activists and supporters alike. An official day of mourning was declared three days later by President Lyndon Johnson. Dr. King’s legacy and words still reverberate in our collective consciousness to this day.
The most remarkable thing about King’s assassination, however, isn’t the location, or the timing, or the myriad reasons for it, but the fact that he knew it was the inevitable outcome of the life he chose. King chose to be on the side of the poor, the mistreated, the abused, the discriminated against; he chose to be against war, against injustice, against racism; he chose to be for tolerance, and non-violence, and equality – all admirable, yet, during that time, dangerous, principles to hold. But, King didn’t just believe in these principles, he fought for them – demanded their observance, even – with powerful rhetoric and civil disobedience. And, he did all of these in the Jim Crow South, when a black man, no matter how intelligent or charismatic or eloquent, was considered inferior to his white counterparts, no matter how ignorant or uneducated.
Dr. King knew his stature would inevitably lead to his death. Despite this knowledge, though, he continued on, preaching and disobeying. He did what was necessary regardless of the dangers to his life. Imagine this sense of purpose. Imagine Coretta Scott King, his wife, knowing she would likely be a widow, left to raise her four children alone, and still encouraging her husband in his duties. Imagine the remarkable sense of responsibility King saddled himself with, knowing he was the right man, with the right ideas, at the right time. Not the wrong man at the wrong time, but the right man. He never lamented his fate, but owned it. He didn’t shy away from his responsibilities, but embraced them. King knew the country needed a man like him, and he was willing to become a martyr for truth, equality, and righteousness.
Had Dr. King the ability to do it all over again, I doubt much would change in regards to his participation in the civil rights movement. Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson, Edward Brooke, Alexander Lucius Twilight, and others who’ve broken the color barrier, undoubtedly felt the same sense of responsibility. And each persevered, each welcomed history.
All of this leads me to current Democratic Party candidate for President, Barack Obama. As you know, should Senator Obama be elected, he will be the first black President of the United States of America. As it is, he is the first to receive the nomination from one of the two major parties, and he is the sole African-American serving in the U.S. Senate (and only the fifth to be elected into the Senate in U.S. history). Mr. Obama, too, undoubtedly understands the importance of his historic campaign, and the possible threats he faces should he win the election. And, like Dr. King, he continues on, knowing he is the right man, with the right ideas, at the right time. Should his fate turn out similar to King’s, I doubt he or his wife, Michelle, would regret it much, because he is doing what he feels is right, what he feels needs to be done; and, undoubtedly, he knows the country will be better for it. He feels the sacrifice is worth it.
I envy this sense of self; this driven purpose of history and righteousness. Most of us possess neither. We move through our lives with little to fear and offer the world little in terms of anything new. But, we all owe great men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama much. Each of them put their life at risk for the advancement of humankind. Let’s just hope Mr. Obama’s similarities to Dr. King’s ends there. Let’s hope we, as a people, as a country, have moved beyond our grotesque history and can accept change, can start a new chapter where tolerance and coexistence and hope are the significant themes.
Our past is filled with despicable and ugly acts of hatred, cowardice and intolerance. From time to time, that ugliness, even now, bubbles to the surface. With the racial epithets and outcries of Obama's murder recently heard at McCain's rallies, no matter how one tries to attribute them to mob mentality, the reality of an assassination attempt appears to grow. And, with the fomenting of hatred, the race-baiting, the exploitation of passionate fears, with the renaming of Obama as an "outsider" and as an "other" McCain's campaign has engaged in, there is bound to be a bitter and potentially angry mood among the McCain supporters should Obama prevail—picture the raucous crowd of villagers raising torches and pitchforks, and volleying epithets, at Frankenstein's monster before moving in for the kill; except trade sniper rifles and handguns for the torches and pitchforks. This scene can very easily come true, should overwrought zealots decide that the country is in danger with Obama as president, something right-wing blogs and the McCain smear ads have either alluded to or outright posited. Just recently, a McCain operative claimed to have been sexually assaulted at an ATM by a “big, black man,” who then proceeded to carve a “B” in her cheek after he saw her McCain bumper sticker. This horrible event turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by the operative; a desperate attempt by a desperate volunteer working for an increasingly desperate campaign. And, we all know, desperation leads to frustration; and frustration can lead to the worst kind of behavior, especially when coupled with fear.
The simple fact is, America has insufficiently dealt with its ugly, racist past; but it’s not the past this campaign is about; it’s the future. On March 18, 2008, Obama said, in a speech on race hailed as one of his finest, “I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren.” It’s this sense of change and righting the course our nation is taking that has allowed Obama to run despite the risks.
In the same speech, he said that “what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.” History. It’s what Dr. King envisioned and what Obama is striving for: to realize the dream; for his race, for America, and for the children who come after us, black or white.
[Editor's note: H E R E are some folks j.b mentions above. McCain/Palin the candidacy has morphed into some hideous beast-thing, some freakish, slouching, grinning, conniving, horrible, soul-less creature of its own demented power-lust, concerned only with crushing and destroying the hated Other. It's Golem-Smeagol willing to forgo any chance at personal redemption to clench the illusory ring in its diseased claws. It's the witch in Wizard, sending deranged flying monkeys out across the landscape to do its gruesome bidding, racist fangs glinting in the dull sunlight, ignorance crawling across their pasty faces like lice over the skin of rabid, feral cats, warriors for a jesus of their own imperfect design...shameless bigots with bloodlust curling their sneering lips.
Like it or not, this is the huge white elephant in the country right now. We've seen enough glory-minded armed psychopaths in America that we need not imagine much to imagine someone plotting this very second. The startling, dangerous, and irresponsibly incendiary rhetoric adopted by the McCain camp in attack ads, the unwillingness to publically own them, and the inability/unwillingness to stop a speech mid-sentence and quickly, publically correct these "supporters" when they scream things the candidates find inappropriate or unfair...to focus not on what is, perhaps, a legitimate complaint in re: Senator Obama (inexperience), and instead focus on what is outlandishly out of bounds (terrorist, arab, etc.) is a terrifying and sad thing to behold. Some very basic pre-requisites to even run for president in the United States seem to escape this slavering and vicious mass...not the least of which is "you cannot run for President of the U.S. unless you are a US CITIZEN-- and not a NATURALIZED one." He is not an Arab. Senator Obama is an American,born in Hawaii, which is still the 50th state in the Union. To attack an opponent for anything but his ideas has been the downfall of American politics: it's seen the electorate grow ever more weary, and what's become more acceptable, what's chalk up as "just politics," become more insulting to a nation starved for real political debate.
But, again, of what value are IDEAS? They are nothing short of political currency. After all, isn't it that what killed MLK, Jr., JFK and RFK--ideas? Specifically, it was some crackpot trying to destroy IDEAS by destroying the men behind them. It didn't work, of course, as evidenced by Obama's historic nomination and potential presidency...but, probably, there seems little left when your own campaign has no ideas, while your opponent is flush with them. -- Eds]
Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His assassination touched off a wave of riots across the United States, and decades of bitterness amongst the civil rights movement, activists and supporters alike. An official day of mourning was declared three days later by President Lyndon Johnson. Dr. King’s legacy and words still reverberate in our collective consciousness to this day.
The most remarkable thing about King’s assassination, however, isn’t the location, or the timing, or the myriad reasons for it, but the fact that he knew it was the inevitable outcome of the life he chose. King chose to be on the side of the poor, the mistreated, the abused, the discriminated against; he chose to be against war, against injustice, against racism; he chose to be for tolerance, and non-violence, and equality – all admirable, yet, during that time, dangerous, principles to hold. But, King didn’t just believe in these principles, he fought for them – demanded their observance, even – with powerful rhetoric and civil disobedience. And, he did all of these in the Jim Crow South, when a black man, no matter how intelligent or charismatic or eloquent, was considered inferior to his white counterparts, no matter how ignorant or uneducated.
Dr. King knew his stature would inevitably lead to his death. Despite this knowledge, though, he continued on, preaching and disobeying. He did what was necessary regardless of the dangers to his life. Imagine this sense of purpose. Imagine Coretta Scott King, his wife, knowing she would likely be a widow, left to raise her four children alone, and still encouraging her husband in his duties. Imagine the remarkable sense of responsibility King saddled himself with, knowing he was the right man, with the right ideas, at the right time. Not the wrong man at the wrong time, but the right man. He never lamented his fate, but owned it. He didn’t shy away from his responsibilities, but embraced them. King knew the country needed a man like him, and he was willing to become a martyr for truth, equality, and righteousness.
Had Dr. King the ability to do it all over again, I doubt much would change in regards to his participation in the civil rights movement. Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson, Edward Brooke, Alexander Lucius Twilight, and others who’ve broken the color barrier, undoubtedly felt the same sense of responsibility. And each persevered, each welcomed history.
All of this leads me to current Democratic Party candidate for President, Barack Obama. As you know, should Senator Obama be elected, he will be the first black President of the United States of America. As it is, he is the first to receive the nomination from one of the two major parties, and he is the sole African-American serving in the U.S. Senate (and only the fifth to be elected into the Senate in U.S. history). Mr. Obama, too, undoubtedly understands the importance of his historic campaign, and the possible threats he faces should he win the election. And, like Dr. King, he continues on, knowing he is the right man, with the right ideas, at the right time. Should his fate turn out similar to King’s, I doubt he or his wife, Michelle, would regret it much, because he is doing what he feels is right, what he feels needs to be done; and, undoubtedly, he knows the country will be better for it. He feels the sacrifice is worth it.
I envy this sense of self; this driven purpose of history and righteousness. Most of us possess neither. We move through our lives with little to fear and offer the world little in terms of anything new. But, we all owe great men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama much. Each of them put their life at risk for the advancement of humankind. Let’s just hope Mr. Obama’s similarities to Dr. King’s ends there. Let’s hope we, as a people, as a country, have moved beyond our grotesque history and can accept change, can start a new chapter where tolerance and coexistence and hope are the significant themes.
Our past is filled with despicable and ugly acts of hatred, cowardice and intolerance. From time to time, that ugliness, even now, bubbles to the surface. With the racial epithets and outcries of Obama's murder recently heard at McCain's rallies, no matter how one tries to attribute them to mob mentality, the reality of an assassination attempt appears to grow. And, with the fomenting of hatred, the race-baiting, the exploitation of passionate fears, with the renaming of Obama as an "outsider" and as an "other" McCain's campaign has engaged in, there is bound to be a bitter and potentially angry mood among the McCain supporters should Obama prevail—picture the raucous crowd of villagers raising torches and pitchforks, and volleying epithets, at Frankenstein's monster before moving in for the kill; except trade sniper rifles and handguns for the torches and pitchforks. This scene can very easily come true, should overwrought zealots decide that the country is in danger with Obama as president, something right-wing blogs and the McCain smear ads have either alluded to or outright posited. Just recently, a McCain operative claimed to have been sexually assaulted at an ATM by a “big, black man,” who then proceeded to carve a “B” in her cheek after he saw her McCain bumper sticker. This horrible event turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by the operative; a desperate attempt by a desperate volunteer working for an increasingly desperate campaign. And, we all know, desperation leads to frustration; and frustration can lead to the worst kind of behavior, especially when coupled with fear.
The simple fact is, America has insufficiently dealt with its ugly, racist past; but it’s not the past this campaign is about; it’s the future. On March 18, 2008, Obama said, in a speech on race hailed as one of his finest, “I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together, unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren.” It’s this sense of change and righting the course our nation is taking that has allowed Obama to run despite the risks.
In the same speech, he said that “what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.” History. It’s what Dr. King envisioned and what Obama is striving for: to realize the dream; for his race, for America, and for the children who come after us, black or white.
[Editor's note: H E R E are some folks j.b mentions above. McCain/Palin the candidacy has morphed into some hideous beast-thing, some freakish, slouching, grinning, conniving, horrible, soul-less creature of its own demented power-lust, concerned only with crushing and destroying the hated Other. It's Golem-Smeagol willing to forgo any chance at personal redemption to clench the illusory ring in its diseased claws. It's the witch in Wizard, sending deranged flying monkeys out across the landscape to do its gruesome bidding, racist fangs glinting in the dull sunlight, ignorance crawling across their pasty faces like lice over the skin of rabid, feral cats, warriors for a jesus of their own imperfect design...shameless bigots with bloodlust curling their sneering lips.
Like it or not, this is the huge white elephant in the country right now. We've seen enough glory-minded armed psychopaths in America that we need not imagine much to imagine someone plotting this very second. The startling, dangerous, and irresponsibly incendiary rhetoric adopted by the McCain camp in attack ads, the unwillingness to publically own them, and the inability/unwillingness to stop a speech mid-sentence and quickly, publically correct these "supporters" when they scream things the candidates find inappropriate or unfair...to focus not on what is, perhaps, a legitimate complaint in re: Senator Obama (inexperience), and instead focus on what is outlandishly out of bounds (terrorist, arab, etc.) is a terrifying and sad thing to behold. Some very basic pre-requisites to even run for president in the United States seem to escape this slavering and vicious mass...not the least of which is "you cannot run for President of the U.S. unless you are a US CITIZEN-- and not a NATURALIZED one." He is not an Arab. Senator Obama is an American,born in Hawaii, which is still the 50th state in the Union. To attack an opponent for anything but his ideas has been the downfall of American politics: it's seen the electorate grow ever more weary, and what's become more acceptable, what's chalk up as "just politics," become more insulting to a nation starved for real political debate.
But, again, of what value are IDEAS? They are nothing short of political currency. After all, isn't it that what killed MLK, Jr., JFK and RFK--ideas? Specifically, it was some crackpot trying to destroy IDEAS by destroying the men behind them. It didn't work, of course, as evidenced by Obama's historic nomination and potential presidency...but, probably, there seems little left when your own campaign has no ideas, while your opponent is flush with them. -- Eds]
Letter to A Young Tortured Genius
by Christopher Cunningham
so you want to be the greatest writer ever huh?
first of all: love, the maintaining of an intense, meaningful relationship where two people have each other's back, and can trust each other no matter what, are willing to go to Room 101 for the other and have rats strapped to their heads, this is the essential connection that all writing seeks to make; like the saxophone seeks to mimic the human voice singing, the breath from the heart and soul translated into musical notes that transcend the limits of puny speech and mere language, so does writing attempt a Great Connection, a Great Communication, the forging of a link between writer and reader that is so like love that it is, at its finest, capable of drawing out the deepest emotions, causing weeping and laughter, sorrow, pain, soaring freedoms, the Pure Understanding. this is also the goal of love. it is the goal of ALL GREAT ART in the end: connection to the ethereral, the intangible, the impossible.
listen: you must shed this "DESIRE" that will, in the end, cripple you. this DESIRE to "be the greatest *blank*" is an illusion. you will never be the GREATEST WRITER, because there will ALWAYS be someone coming up behind you who will do something that will make YOU, the "greatest writer" (by whomever's standards...yours? hardly a capable judge. an editor? fallible as all hell. jesus? good fucking luck...) shudder in your skin and sweat blood and finally grab for the ol' Hemingway shotgun. this is the path of your desire to be the greatest. believe me. I've lived it. finally, you won't be able to outdo your OWN PAST WRITING, no matter how great, and it will kill you.
here brother: learn to be the GREATEST HUMAN first. learn to suffer the misery of COMPASSION, that is, the SUFFERING WITH another that draws GREAT WRITING out of you. throw yourself into love, the FULLNESS OF IT, and LET THE WRITING COME AS IT WILL. this desire will make you FORCE the words, and trust me, it will show. no matter how good you get at the TRICK of writing (that's all it is, really, a magic trick: a conjuring, an illusion like a house of mirrors that reflects the world back upon the reader thru his own eyes, allowing the writer to disappear, leaving only the mysterious puff of fog down a dark midnight alley glinting in the dim streetlights of Prague or St. Louis or Mexico City) you will always be forced to BE A HUMAN LIVING A LIFE.
man, you have to understand most of all that you will WRITE no matter what. you will carve hours out of the night that you never knew existed, all the while living your life with your women, your jobs, your hurts and your triumphs. if this girl means as much to you as you say, there is no need to sacrifice EITHER ONE. one is tangible and real, and one is a beautiful dream that you will never achieve except in the ABSTRACT. I've writ some shit that has made folks stare at me in amazement at how CLOSE TO THE BONE I'VE GOTTEN, and in the end, it's my relationship with my woman for twenty fucking years that matters. the TRUST AND PURE HONESTY OF LOVE. I used to think I had to sacrifice for my art. and I do. and so do you. but the sacrifice comes with the LIVING OF A LIFE IN THE TRAGEDY OF OUR MORTALITY, and doing it WELL. to leave a shining mark on the cave wall for others to find. to make a CONNECTION with another human being that is something done out of selflessness and compassion and the will to give, to sacrifice in a way that isn't negative but rather a positive expression of the best humanity can offer.
getting the artform down is the most important thing in the world to me. but the art lies in the connection generated by the CREATION. and you don't always need the creation to make that connection. the two are not mutually exclusive my man. take it from me. I've spent my LIFE, every waking moment in pursuit of exactly the dream you have, and it has brought me to this place where I can clearly see that the dream is not something attainable, but rather a DRIVING MOTIVATION to make a LIFE THAT IS ART. like Henry Miller said, something about how eventually he will get his life just right and then will never need to write another word, having acheived the PURPOSE OF THE WRITING.
Buk wanted to be the greatest, to kick Hem's ass, and even if he managed, in some ways, to do just that, he still sought LOVE FIRST OF ALL. it was PRIMARY in terms of motivation. the isolated loner puts pen to paper and sends it out into the world hoping for CONNECTION, for someone to say I HEAR YOU SCREAMING. this is literature, my man. get the words down, get them down down down, until the pages cry out, but never forget that by giving up your HUMANITY, you lessen the power of the art.
now having said all this, your partner MUST UNDERSTAND that SOMETIMES we cannot be bothered, that when they hear the MACHINE RUNNING they must find SOMETHING ELSE TO DO. there has to be COMMON GROUND, and if you feel like you are being hampered, you might try a deep examination of motivation, of purpose, of desire, of respect, etc. my lady would NEVER interrupt me or dissuade me from my art but likewise I have to FIND THE BALANCE and respect that there are TIMES WHEN I MUST SIMPLY BE A MAN living a hard human life, mowing the grass, growing some veggies in the garden, cleaning up dogshit, saying I love you, etc. it is ALL PART OF IT: THE MAKING OF ART. it all translates. leave nothing out. make nothing up.
TELL THE TRUTH FIRST. if you do that it will all fall into place. and brother: RELAX. burning up in a furious pyre does NOBODY ANY GOOD, especially you. tell the truth and get it down. be a GREAT WRITER. AND BE A GREAT HUMAN. be kind, be honest, gamble with class and dignity, crush the typewriter with lines like sledgehammers and doom, drink black coffee, sleep late and laugh when you can. this is all you can hope for brother. all else is gravy.
so you want to be the greatest writer ever huh?
first of all: love, the maintaining of an intense, meaningful relationship where two people have each other's back, and can trust each other no matter what, are willing to go to Room 101 for the other and have rats strapped to their heads, this is the essential connection that all writing seeks to make; like the saxophone seeks to mimic the human voice singing, the breath from the heart and soul translated into musical notes that transcend the limits of puny speech and mere language, so does writing attempt a Great Connection, a Great Communication, the forging of a link between writer and reader that is so like love that it is, at its finest, capable of drawing out the deepest emotions, causing weeping and laughter, sorrow, pain, soaring freedoms, the Pure Understanding. this is also the goal of love. it is the goal of ALL GREAT ART in the end: connection to the ethereral, the intangible, the impossible.
listen: you must shed this "DESIRE" that will, in the end, cripple you. this DESIRE to "be the greatest *blank*" is an illusion. you will never be the GREATEST WRITER, because there will ALWAYS be someone coming up behind you who will do something that will make YOU, the "greatest writer" (by whomever's standards...yours? hardly a capable judge. an editor? fallible as all hell. jesus? good fucking luck...) shudder in your skin and sweat blood and finally grab for the ol' Hemingway shotgun. this is the path of your desire to be the greatest. believe me. I've lived it. finally, you won't be able to outdo your OWN PAST WRITING, no matter how great, and it will kill you.
here brother: learn to be the GREATEST HUMAN first. learn to suffer the misery of COMPASSION, that is, the SUFFERING WITH another that draws GREAT WRITING out of you. throw yourself into love, the FULLNESS OF IT, and LET THE WRITING COME AS IT WILL. this desire will make you FORCE the words, and trust me, it will show. no matter how good you get at the TRICK of writing (that's all it is, really, a magic trick: a conjuring, an illusion like a house of mirrors that reflects the world back upon the reader thru his own eyes, allowing the writer to disappear, leaving only the mysterious puff of fog down a dark midnight alley glinting in the dim streetlights of Prague or St. Louis or Mexico City) you will always be forced to BE A HUMAN LIVING A LIFE.
man, you have to understand most of all that you will WRITE no matter what. you will carve hours out of the night that you never knew existed, all the while living your life with your women, your jobs, your hurts and your triumphs. if this girl means as much to you as you say, there is no need to sacrifice EITHER ONE. one is tangible and real, and one is a beautiful dream that you will never achieve except in the ABSTRACT. I've writ some shit that has made folks stare at me in amazement at how CLOSE TO THE BONE I'VE GOTTEN, and in the end, it's my relationship with my woman for twenty fucking years that matters. the TRUST AND PURE HONESTY OF LOVE. I used to think I had to sacrifice for my art. and I do. and so do you. but the sacrifice comes with the LIVING OF A LIFE IN THE TRAGEDY OF OUR MORTALITY, and doing it WELL. to leave a shining mark on the cave wall for others to find. to make a CONNECTION with another human being that is something done out of selflessness and compassion and the will to give, to sacrifice in a way that isn't negative but rather a positive expression of the best humanity can offer.
getting the artform down is the most important thing in the world to me. but the art lies in the connection generated by the CREATION. and you don't always need the creation to make that connection. the two are not mutually exclusive my man. take it from me. I've spent my LIFE, every waking moment in pursuit of exactly the dream you have, and it has brought me to this place where I can clearly see that the dream is not something attainable, but rather a DRIVING MOTIVATION to make a LIFE THAT IS ART. like Henry Miller said, something about how eventually he will get his life just right and then will never need to write another word, having acheived the PURPOSE OF THE WRITING.
Buk wanted to be the greatest, to kick Hem's ass, and even if he managed, in some ways, to do just that, he still sought LOVE FIRST OF ALL. it was PRIMARY in terms of motivation. the isolated loner puts pen to paper and sends it out into the world hoping for CONNECTION, for someone to say I HEAR YOU SCREAMING. this is literature, my man. get the words down, get them down down down, until the pages cry out, but never forget that by giving up your HUMANITY, you lessen the power of the art.
now having said all this, your partner MUST UNDERSTAND that SOMETIMES we cannot be bothered, that when they hear the MACHINE RUNNING they must find SOMETHING ELSE TO DO. there has to be COMMON GROUND, and if you feel like you are being hampered, you might try a deep examination of motivation, of purpose, of desire, of respect, etc. my lady would NEVER interrupt me or dissuade me from my art but likewise I have to FIND THE BALANCE and respect that there are TIMES WHEN I MUST SIMPLY BE A MAN living a hard human life, mowing the grass, growing some veggies in the garden, cleaning up dogshit, saying I love you, etc. it is ALL PART OF IT: THE MAKING OF ART. it all translates. leave nothing out. make nothing up.
TELL THE TRUTH FIRST. if you do that it will all fall into place. and brother: RELAX. burning up in a furious pyre does NOBODY ANY GOOD, especially you. tell the truth and get it down. be a GREAT WRITER. AND BE A GREAT HUMAN. be kind, be honest, gamble with class and dignity, crush the typewriter with lines like sledgehammers and doom, drink black coffee, sleep late and laugh when you can. this is all you can hope for brother. all else is gravy.
True Terror
by Father Luke
Despite what the television and radio talk shows may present, growing up in a violent and alcoholic home is not romantic, it’s not something with easy solutions brought about by swift decisions. It’s not debatable, and it’s not something that has an easy solution, because the problem is not obvious. It’s truly something akin to actual terrorism.
Imagine this. Imagine being barely old enough to talk gibberish, wearing a full and wet diaper, your face dotted with food from this morning’s wrestling match with breakfast. Then imagine the people you love most fighting each other with voices so loud you want to cover your ears and cry. Then the beatings begin. The people you are turning to for trust and security, are hurting one another, and all you want is to let them know your diaper needs changing. What is that if not terror? Who does a baby turn to to begin to seek solace? Is it the Church? How about a City Council member or the Television news? What does a baby do?
Well, you’re a baby, so you cry.
But big kids don’t cry, now do they? Oh yes we do. I do. I cry for my lost youth. I cry about the children still in homes where there is violence. I cry for the alcoholics, still trapped in a situation they cannot win, and who feel they have no way out. Not unless making someone else to blame is a way out. It’s still popular, you know. Blaming someone else for your actions is still making the rounds, even today. I cry for violence in the home, and for the children too scared to cry.
When I was young, I lived in a house where I saw violence; I saw plenty of violence. By the time I was 16, I was a pants shitting drunk, pissing myself in school, and daring anyone to fight who looked at me. I hadn’t yet found drugs. That came when I entered the work world. At home, my Father would disappear for days at a time. There would be a peace in the house with his disappearance. Nerves would settle, like bubbles in soda rising to the surface, popping letting the soda go flat. There would be calm. My Mother’s bruises would have time to heal. The purple welts on my brothers and I would begin turning yellow, and start to fade.
Then it would happen.
The brakes on my Father’s vehicle were old, and they made a sound like someone screaming in pain. That’s very appropriate, as I look back. Because when he would come back home we could hear his brakes a block away. My four brothers and I would look to my mom. She would look to the door and say: He’s here. We knew what to do. We would become petrified. Absolute horror came to live where the calm serenity had lain down for a nap, and we would all prepare ourselves for the worst we could possibly imagine.
But how do you prepare yourself for the worst? Imagination is a funny thing. It can heal, and it can hurt, but a hyper vigilance sets in which allows for suspicion, and keeps one keen to be able to survive in any circumstance. So, you wait. You wait for the worst of it. You wait to see what you will need to do to survive. And, if you haven’t given up, then you also hope. But you learn not to hope too much. For in hope lies hopelessness. You certainly can’t trust those who are in charge. But, you make it. Somehow you make it. You always do.
Despite what the television and radio talk shows may present, growing up in a violent and alcoholic home is not romantic, it’s not something with easy solutions brought about by swift decisions. It’s not debatable, and it’s not something that has an easy solution, because the problem is not obvious. It’s truly something akin to actual terrorism.
Imagine this. Imagine being barely old enough to talk gibberish, wearing a full and wet diaper, your face dotted with food from this morning’s wrestling match with breakfast. Then imagine the people you love most fighting each other with voices so loud you want to cover your ears and cry. Then the beatings begin. The people you are turning to for trust and security, are hurting one another, and all you want is to let them know your diaper needs changing. What is that if not terror? Who does a baby turn to to begin to seek solace? Is it the Church? How about a City Council member or the Television news? What does a baby do?
Well, you’re a baby, so you cry.
But big kids don’t cry, now do they? Oh yes we do. I do. I cry for my lost youth. I cry about the children still in homes where there is violence. I cry for the alcoholics, still trapped in a situation they cannot win, and who feel they have no way out. Not unless making someone else to blame is a way out. It’s still popular, you know. Blaming someone else for your actions is still making the rounds, even today. I cry for violence in the home, and for the children too scared to cry.
When I was young, I lived in a house where I saw violence; I saw plenty of violence. By the time I was 16, I was a pants shitting drunk, pissing myself in school, and daring anyone to fight who looked at me. I hadn’t yet found drugs. That came when I entered the work world. At home, my Father would disappear for days at a time. There would be a peace in the house with his disappearance. Nerves would settle, like bubbles in soda rising to the surface, popping letting the soda go flat. There would be calm. My Mother’s bruises would have time to heal. The purple welts on my brothers and I would begin turning yellow, and start to fade.
Then it would happen.
The brakes on my Father’s vehicle were old, and they made a sound like someone screaming in pain. That’s very appropriate, as I look back. Because when he would come back home we could hear his brakes a block away. My four brothers and I would look to my mom. She would look to the door and say: He’s here. We knew what to do. We would become petrified. Absolute horror came to live where the calm serenity had lain down for a nap, and we would all prepare ourselves for the worst we could possibly imagine.
But how do you prepare yourself for the worst? Imagination is a funny thing. It can heal, and it can hurt, but a hyper vigilance sets in which allows for suspicion, and keeps one keen to be able to survive in any circumstance. So, you wait. You wait for the worst of it. You wait to see what you will need to do to survive. And, if you haven’t given up, then you also hope. But you learn not to hope too much. For in hope lies hopelessness. You certainly can’t trust those who are in charge. But, you make it. Somehow you make it. You always do.
25 October 2008
Letter to the Apartment Thieves
by Jordan Hurder
Dear Person/People who Robbed my Apartment,
I hope you enjoyed the time you spent at my apartment yesterday. The following things came up as I inspected the place after you left:
1. How much did you get for my bike? It was worth about $5000, but I'd imagine you hocked it for a couple hundred, at best. Congrats on that one- quite a score.
2. Why did you take my change? Seriously, there weren't any quarters in there, since I use them to do laundry. How much change could there have really been? $10? You must have been busy after you left, what with trying to hock my bike, getting rid of my electronics, and THEN having to hit up a Coinstar machine!
3. I couldn't help but notice that you took my alarm clock, but left 3 big binders of CD's that were next to it. This was an $8 alarm clock I got at Walgreens. After my car got broken into a while back, I assumed that CD's were hot property on the thievery circuit. Well, in any case, I hope you know what time it is from now on and that you have no trouble waking up at pre-specified times.
4. I want to extend a special thanks to you for stealing my cell phone charger. I suppose that a $15 thingy gets big bucks on the electronics gray market, but it was a huge pain in the ass trying to squeeze in as many calls as I could before my phone died.
5. Okay, I'm back on the alarm clock again... You looked through the carrying case of my high-tech bike light, but took the alarm clock and left the light? I'm kinda confused, but maybe it was just a nicer alarm clock than I thought.
6. That backpack that you took from my living room (thanks for leaving my DVD player, TV, and guitar, by the way. I guess you just went in there to see if there was a bag that was suitably strong to carry that awesomely amazing alarm clock you found)... I was selling it on eBay, and I had to cancel the auction... And the high bidder was kind of pissed. So just know that you not only hurt me, you hurt "swiftskier16" as well.
7. You are unbelievably messy. I hope you don't leave hotel rooms like that when you go on vacation. I assume you've never had the pleasure, but coming home to a room that has been "ransacked" sucks as much as you'd imagine it would suck.
8. Would you mind telling me what happened that caused you to flee so quickly? I mean, you already had my computer monitor in a duffel bag that you left on the ground outside my building... and you left my computer tower outside my kitchen window... and my subwoofer on the kitchen floor in front of the window. Maybe you took more than you could carry... I've been there before- one time at this vegan restaurant, I ordered so much food that I convinced myself I would stuff it all into my face, just because I went to the trouble of ordering it (just as you went to the trouble of breaking into my window)... although the difference between you and I is that I DID finish it, because I'm not a QUITTER.
9. Please explain this logic... you took every electronic appliance in my bedroom, including the AC adapter for my cable modem and my ethernet cable... but you left my cable modem on my desk, along with my old cable modem that you found when you dumped my desk drawers out on my bed. ???
10. Here's a treat you may or may not have discovered yet: in the top pocket of the backpack you stole, there are some sticks of "Terrapin" brand lip balm- positively the best lip balm ever made... and now totally off the market. The warehouse where I work has literally the only remaining stock of Terrapin lip balm in the world, and you now have a few sticks of it. You know, for if your lips get chapped from all that burglarizing. It's no alarm clock, I know, but what're ya gonna do?
Okay, that about sums up my thoughts on the matter. Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you in hell.
Love,
Jordan
Dear Person/People who Robbed my Apartment,
I hope you enjoyed the time you spent at my apartment yesterday. The following things came up as I inspected the place after you left:
1. How much did you get for my bike? It was worth about $5000, but I'd imagine you hocked it for a couple hundred, at best. Congrats on that one- quite a score.
2. Why did you take my change? Seriously, there weren't any quarters in there, since I use them to do laundry. How much change could there have really been? $10? You must have been busy after you left, what with trying to hock my bike, getting rid of my electronics, and THEN having to hit up a Coinstar machine!
3. I couldn't help but notice that you took my alarm clock, but left 3 big binders of CD's that were next to it. This was an $8 alarm clock I got at Walgreens. After my car got broken into a while back, I assumed that CD's were hot property on the thievery circuit. Well, in any case, I hope you know what time it is from now on and that you have no trouble waking up at pre-specified times.
4. I want to extend a special thanks to you for stealing my cell phone charger. I suppose that a $15 thingy gets big bucks on the electronics gray market, but it was a huge pain in the ass trying to squeeze in as many calls as I could before my phone died.
5. Okay, I'm back on the alarm clock again... You looked through the carrying case of my high-tech bike light, but took the alarm clock and left the light? I'm kinda confused, but maybe it was just a nicer alarm clock than I thought.
6. That backpack that you took from my living room (thanks for leaving my DVD player, TV, and guitar, by the way. I guess you just went in there to see if there was a bag that was suitably strong to carry that awesomely amazing alarm clock you found)... I was selling it on eBay, and I had to cancel the auction... And the high bidder was kind of pissed. So just know that you not only hurt me, you hurt "swiftskier16" as well.
7. You are unbelievably messy. I hope you don't leave hotel rooms like that when you go on vacation. I assume you've never had the pleasure, but coming home to a room that has been "ransacked" sucks as much as you'd imagine it would suck.
8. Would you mind telling me what happened that caused you to flee so quickly? I mean, you already had my computer monitor in a duffel bag that you left on the ground outside my building... and you left my computer tower outside my kitchen window... and my subwoofer on the kitchen floor in front of the window. Maybe you took more than you could carry... I've been there before- one time at this vegan restaurant, I ordered so much food that I convinced myself I would stuff it all into my face, just because I went to the trouble of ordering it (just as you went to the trouble of breaking into my window)... although the difference between you and I is that I DID finish it, because I'm not a QUITTER.
9. Please explain this logic... you took every electronic appliance in my bedroom, including the AC adapter for my cable modem and my ethernet cable... but you left my cable modem on my desk, along with my old cable modem that you found when you dumped my desk drawers out on my bed. ???
10. Here's a treat you may or may not have discovered yet: in the top pocket of the backpack you stole, there are some sticks of "Terrapin" brand lip balm- positively the best lip balm ever made... and now totally off the market. The warehouse where I work has literally the only remaining stock of Terrapin lip balm in the world, and you now have a few sticks of it. You know, for if your lips get chapped from all that burglarizing. It's no alarm clock, I know, but what're ya gonna do?
Okay, that about sums up my thoughts on the matter. Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you in hell.
Love,
Jordan
The Election 'Oh Eight
by Father Luke
[The editors may or may not disagree in re: the efficacy of voting, but that won't stop us from publishing this or from strapping on our dancing shoes. - Eds]
[The editors may or may not disagree in re: the efficacy of voting, but that won't stop us from publishing this or from strapping on our dancing shoes. - Eds]
I’m dancing with my arms in the air. My shirt is off, and my hairy belly is bouncing in rhythm with some shit-kicker music I’m listening to that is streaming over an internet radio station. Maybe it’s The Blasters. I don’t exactly know who‘s singing. I really don’t care. Eventually the airwaves will be owned by thieves. People owning air, it seems unspeakable, doesn’t it? But there are those who will control the very air which surrounds me.
I have never voted in a Presidential election. I will be 49 years old in November, and I have never voted, not once in my entire life. I am dancing half naked in the privacy of an old hotel room which I call home. I’m wearing work boots with laces tied in knots because the laces broke long ago, and I’m alive during a time in which the economy of my country has driven our privileged class to frantically rush toward insane solutions as if they were crazy housewives calling Psychics on a pay by minute telephone line looking for a plan they hope will stop their financial lives from crumbling like a flaky pie crust at the touch of an infant’s finger.
I am lunatic happy. Too bad I don’t drink anymore, this would be fun. What the hell, maybe I’ll start again?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy that the landed gentry are going insane with worry. No, no. That’s not it. Not it at all. No, I am not happy that my fellow Americans are losing everything they have. I’m simply happy. I’m happy because I have no other choice left for me. I have no choice as to where to work. There is no place to work. I have no choice as to where to live. Without money, there are no places to live.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was in the news today trumpeting this news:
"Given the financial damage to date, I cannot see how we can avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment" – Alan Greenspan
I don’t know what paper you read, but the facts are in, unemployment is up in America 44% over last year. But not to worry, Ladies and Gentlemen, according to the experts it’s only going to get worse. Alan Greenspan has declared a depression. Ah well, easy dot com, easy dot go. Let me turn the music up just a bit.
So, then how will we live? Where will we live? Family homes are being brushed away like so many crumbs off the lapel of a fat man’s dark business suit. Ah, but the streets are open, aren’t they? The streets are always open. The streets are open twenty four hours a day. If you don’t believe there is vacancy on the streets of America, take a stroll through downtown Los Angeles. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be Los Angeles. It doesn’t need to be downtown! Former New York City Mayor John Lindsay called the crimes of the homeless and poverty stricken in this country a slow motion riot. Well, disaster is headed for your front door, Amos. Like dead zombies walking with their arms out in front of them, wanting to eat your brains. Slowly they creep, step, by step . . . inch by inch. . .
So where do the homeless live? Well, that’s just it. They’re homeless. They don’t have anywhere to live. Maybe they’ll shit on your front lawn while you are bathing your children, or look in the restaurant window as you leisurely eat, and pick their nose. Maybe they’ll steal your new car, and kidnap your children. Not likely, however. Besides not having any money for fuel, the poor truth is that you may very well have bought your car from these homeless people. Maybe you also bought your home from them. Maybe John McCain or Barack Obama may come by to ask you if you have any odd jobs, so they might have shelter for the night.
Does this sound farfetched: Political candidates with “Will Work for Food” signs? Well, think about it. It’s not exactly that wild, now is it? It’s precisely what is being asked of us at this very moment.
Vote for me, and put me in The White House.
John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, in Grapes of Wrath, during the depths of a depression, never stooped to such lickspittle measures. Grapes of Wrath told about hard working, depression dust bowl people looking for an honest day’s work. Yet our country’s highest Politicians engage in cockamamie posturing, ridiculous charades, and manipulative crap slinging every four years. One of these lying bastards will end up with the most powerful position on the planet. Goons; Smear Pundits; Deviants, Pick Pockets, all of them vying for the same thing: The Office of President of The United States. If you miss it, the festive parade repeats itself every four years. Hitch a ride, hayseed. It’s all in fun. We’re going to Fresno to look for work! Hoorah!
Oh, quite a stretch from Grapes of Wrath, Father Luke. Well, not really. But, it crosses my imagination that Tom Joad, with a car full of weary and hungry family members, was more honest than any of these manipulative bastards. Ha Haw! Has it really been four years?
BOHICA, Buster: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.
Servant of the American People
Of The People, By The People, and For The People, that’s the paradigm. And this new collection of power hungry manipulators will have become the trusted public servants held on high, and put forth to preserve the American Dream; servants who will again have been elected on their word, and who will again double cross the American public. I’m certain of it. It’s the torch they carry. Like the Summer Olympics, the shenanigans happen regularly every four years. It’s nice work if you can get it. But please note: The official in charge of building Beijing's Olympic Games venues worth about $55 billion was recently sentenced to death for taking $1.45 million in bribes. If we were moths, you would see us flying into the lights bulbs above the heads of these screwballs each time they come up with another harebrained idea during the dark night of our depression. America’s Presidential Candidates are gumball machines dispensing stupid every four years at the twist of a wrist, and we chew it up like the sugar craving idiot children we have become.
What is the meaning of this?
So, where does this all end? Where do all roads lead? What is the meaning of this? What am I talking about? I don’t even vote, and so by all rights I don’t even get any say in the matter. The truth is that nearly 5 million, or 1 in 43 Americans, are not entitled to vote. So why don’t I just shut up? Well, as I dance in my little hotel room to music which moves me to smile my lopsided smile, I have full knowledge that Now More Than Ever, and Four More Years is still only four more years, and that this is still the only moment there is, and the only choice I have is for happiness. Happiness is at a premium in a world gone foamy mouthed rabid with money sickness, in a world grown weary of Political lies which are increasingly more confusing than the Religious beliefs we turn to in our places of worship during our times of soul sickness.
Happiness is wisdom. Wisdom comes with a price. It’s paid with a grinding, and gnashing of teeth when the things we want aren’t the things we get, and the chasm between the upset of what we have is balanced with the expectations of that which we didn’t get. Happiness does not depend upon a political outcome. Happiness does not depend upon a Religious belief. Happiness depends entirely upon whether we choose to be happy. Come Election Day, I will be happy. I’m practicing my dance steps for the inaugural ball. As AC/DC said:
We’ve got the biggest balls of them all!
We do! We put up with this horse shit every four years. Let’s ask the poor how to be happy. They’ve had lots of practice, and they’ve suffered the storms of injustice we are only now beginning to prepare for. Let’s go find them, and ask them to dance.
24 October 2008
Letter to The Editors
by justin.barrett
editors,
here is something i think might interest you: the first instance of an attack ad in a Presidential Campaign, from the very first presidential campaign where little known Luther Standish Treaty ran an unsuccessful campaign against George Washington. thought you might be interested in it...
The First Negative Advertisement in a Presidential Campaign; a Handbill Circulated in 1788 by George Washington's Opponent, Luther Standish Treaty, in the First U.S. Presidential Election
-- courtesy of Stuart Collection of Oldentime Stuff and Archives
editors,
here is something i think might interest you: the first instance of an attack ad in a Presidential Campaign, from the very first presidential campaign where little known Luther Standish Treaty ran an unsuccessful campaign against George Washington. thought you might be interested in it...
The First Negative Advertisement in a Presidential Campaign; a Handbill Circulated in 1788 by George Washington's Opponent, Luther Standish Treaty, in the First U.S. Presidential Election
-- courtesy of Stuart Collection of Oldentime Stuff and Archives
23 October 2008
Dear Senator McCain
by justin.barrett
[please address all hate mail to Fritz -Eds.]
20 October 2008
Dear Senator McCain,
My name is Fritz Miller and I'm the Executive Vice-President of a fairly large waste disposal company. I make over $250,000 a year ($2.5 million to be exact) and will receive a tax increase under Senator Barack Hussein Obama's proposed tax plan. NOTE: unlike your Vice-President choice, I am capable in my duties and deserved the title, just in case you were worried about whom you might be reading.
Senator McCain, I've paid particular attention to your recent speeches, and your last debate, where you mention "Joe the Plumber". It seems he has some questionable background issues (including unpaid taxes, being an unlicensed plumber, and actually making only $40,000 instead of the more than $250,000 he claimed to Obama), so maybe, if you're looking for another "regular guy" to make an example out of, you can use me. "Fritz the Garbage Man" you can call me. Tell the world how my meager earnings will be taxed to the hilt by Osama (oops, Obama [smirk]); how my accustomed "middle class" lifestyle of fast cars, fancy dinners, extravagant vacations and multiple mansions will be severely curtailed; how my "regular guy" capitalist principles will be crushed by Obama's socialist ideologies; even how my “guy next door” house will likely be blown up by Obama and his terrorist minions.
"Fritz the Garbage Man" will capture the attention of your audiences. I am an "everyman" with only two Ferraris and a yacht. I am the quintessential "Joe Sixpack", though I prefer to drink 25-year old scotch or $200 bottles of Bordeaux to that domestic light beer swill. “Fritz the Garbage Man”. It rolls off the tongue.
By the way, like you, Senator McCain, I, too, don't know how many houses I own. Seven, I think; plus or minus two.
It is true, Senator McCain, that Barack Hussein Obama is smarter than you; better looking, younger, and leaner. His smile seems genuine and warm. His teeth are white and eyes aren’t jaundiced with age and cynicism. His arms are strong, his legs powerful, his mind inquisitive and taut. It is also true, Senator McCain, that you are on the last lap of the track meet that is your life, and you hit the wall 8 years and many laps ago. However, I still believe in you. We (that is, we 42%) believe in you, despite your erratic behavior of late; despite your absurdly inappropriate choice for running mate; despite your age and health and temperament (which some say in unbecoming of a President, but which I say is not only becoming but will make all those dictators respect us, because we can show them that they aren’t the only ones who have an unhinged, Type A asshole manning the ship). So, smile away, in your smug and corpse-like way. Make uncomfortable jokes about your advanced age. Spout hateful and ugly lies ad infinitum. Continue it all. We love it.
And don’t fret those falling poll numbers, Senator McCain, for you’re like the Red Sox since 2004 and you’re better from behind. You’ve got Barack Hussein Obama right where you want him, just like the Red Sox had the Tampa Bay Rays right where they wanted them when they were down three games to one. Never mind that the Red Sox lost. Ignore that, much like you are ignoring the real issues in this campaign. The Red Sox very likely did win, but the liberal mainstream media didn’t report it. Believe, Senator McCain, believe!
Lastly, Senator McCain, “Fritz the Garbage Man”, should you lose this election (and by “should”, I mean “when”; and by “lose” I mean “get annihilated in”), is ready and able to sweep up the pieces of your dignity and self-respect—or that is to say, have one of his employees sweep them up—and store them in a landfill facility with your bungled, ineffectual, idiotic campaign.McCain/Palin 2008 2012!
Sincerely,
Fritz Miller
[please address all hate mail to Fritz -Eds.]
20 October 2008
Dear Senator McCain,
My name is Fritz Miller and I'm the Executive Vice-President of a fairly large waste disposal company. I make over $250,000 a year ($2.5 million to be exact) and will receive a tax increase under Senator Barack Hussein Obama's proposed tax plan. NOTE: unlike your Vice-President choice, I am capable in my duties and deserved the title, just in case you were worried about whom you might be reading.
Senator McCain, I've paid particular attention to your recent speeches, and your last debate, where you mention "Joe the Plumber". It seems he has some questionable background issues (including unpaid taxes, being an unlicensed plumber, and actually making only $40,000 instead of the more than $250,000 he claimed to Obama), so maybe, if you're looking for another "regular guy" to make an example out of, you can use me. "Fritz the Garbage Man" you can call me. Tell the world how my meager earnings will be taxed to the hilt by Osama (oops, Obama [smirk]); how my accustomed "middle class" lifestyle of fast cars, fancy dinners, extravagant vacations and multiple mansions will be severely curtailed; how my "regular guy" capitalist principles will be crushed by Obama's socialist ideologies; even how my “guy next door” house will likely be blown up by Obama and his terrorist minions.
"Fritz the Garbage Man" will capture the attention of your audiences. I am an "everyman" with only two Ferraris and a yacht. I am the quintessential "Joe Sixpack", though I prefer to drink 25-year old scotch or $200 bottles of Bordeaux to that domestic light beer swill. “Fritz the Garbage Man”. It rolls off the tongue.
By the way, like you, Senator McCain, I, too, don't know how many houses I own. Seven, I think; plus or minus two.
It is true, Senator McCain, that Barack Hussein Obama is smarter than you; better looking, younger, and leaner. His smile seems genuine and warm. His teeth are white and eyes aren’t jaundiced with age and cynicism. His arms are strong, his legs powerful, his mind inquisitive and taut. It is also true, Senator McCain, that you are on the last lap of the track meet that is your life, and you hit the wall 8 years and many laps ago. However, I still believe in you. We (that is, we 42%) believe in you, despite your erratic behavior of late; despite your absurdly inappropriate choice for running mate; despite your age and health and temperament (which some say in unbecoming of a President, but which I say is not only becoming but will make all those dictators respect us, because we can show them that they aren’t the only ones who have an unhinged, Type A asshole manning the ship). So, smile away, in your smug and corpse-like way. Make uncomfortable jokes about your advanced age. Spout hateful and ugly lies ad infinitum. Continue it all. We love it.
And don’t fret those falling poll numbers, Senator McCain, for you’re like the Red Sox since 2004 and you’re better from behind. You’ve got Barack Hussein Obama right where you want him, just like the Red Sox had the Tampa Bay Rays right where they wanted them when they were down three games to one. Never mind that the Red Sox lost. Ignore that, much like you are ignoring the real issues in this campaign. The Red Sox very likely did win, but the liberal mainstream media didn’t report it. Believe, Senator McCain, believe!
Lastly, Senator McCain, “Fritz the Garbage Man”, should you lose this election (and by “should”, I mean “when”; and by “lose” I mean “get annihilated in”), is ready and able to sweep up the pieces of your dignity and self-respect—or that is to say, have one of his employees sweep them up—and store them in a landfill facility with your bungled, ineffectual, idiotic campaign.
Sincerely,
Fritz Miller
22 October 2008
Low Sulfur Diesel
by Father Luke
[What would've been written had Whitman drove big rigs. - Eds.]
“Well, now you know what truck drivers go through. . .”
--Letter from Victor M. Farr, death row inmate - circa 2006
I heard it over the CB Radio:
“Have you ever seen a driver so fat that the back of his head looked like a package of hot dogs?”
I looked at my partner.
The back of his neck looked like a package of hot dogs. He was fat. He was very fat. Oh, he was skinny by Truck Driver standards. And the dough dick was ignorant. He could barely put a sentence together. He pointed and grunted when a simple “Hi," or a smile and a wave would work in any civilized society. He was dumb, fat and awful smelling. It had been nearly a week since he had showered. He smelled only the way that fat men may smell after not having showered for a week.
[What would've been written had Whitman drove big rigs. - Eds.]
“Well, now you know what truck drivers go through. . .”
--Letter from Victor M. Farr, death row inmate - circa 2006
I heard it over the CB Radio:
“Have you ever seen a driver so fat that the back of his head looked like a package of hot dogs?”
I looked at my partner.
The back of his neck looked like a package of hot dogs. He was fat. He was very fat. Oh, he was skinny by Truck Driver standards. And the dough dick was ignorant. He could barely put a sentence together. He pointed and grunted when a simple “Hi," or a smile and a wave would work in any civilized society. He was dumb, fat and awful smelling. It had been nearly a week since he had showered. He smelled only the way that fat men may smell after not having showered for a week.
I looked away from him and to the white lines in the middle of the road. The small lines passed under the truck, and I hallucinated that I was unzipping the American Country side, and that it stank. It stank horribly. Its rank odor was bad, Honcho. Sour, dead meat bad; road kill rotting in the sun bad. I dreamt that America had rotted from the inside out.
The land of plenty: Johnny Cash, prostitutes, and jumbo refills.
Why would I endure being cooped up with a man who refused to bathe? And then, cooped up in a space smaller than a jail cell? Money, that’s why Chief; the Greenback dollar. The promise of money makes an unshowered fat man’s smell the sweet smell of success. Filthy lucre; the American Dream, pal, that’s what it is. Every whiff of his duck butter was another day paid on the rent. America; My Country ‘tis of Thee; Sweet land of Misery, it’s of thee I sing, over the Johnny Cash tune on the outlaw radio.
I am a forty nine year old man. There is a United States Government record of my entire earnings since age 16. Come here. I’ll tell you the amount. It’s less than 170,000 for my entire life. Let’s add that up, shall we?
49 – 16 = 33
49 years of living, minus the age I started having a record kept for me of my earnings by my dear old Uncle Sam. Thirty three years, Buster. Thirty three years of my life adds up to 170,000. Let’s take that one step further.
170,000 divided by 33 = 5151.51
What are those numbers? What gibberish am I spilling now? It’s simple, Simon, and I’ll explain it to you.
For thirty three years of my life, I have lived on approximately 5151.00 per year. Oh, I could throw in the extra .51, but why quibble?
One more step and we’ll move on. I promise.
One more step and we’ll move on. I promise.
5151.51 divided by 365 = 14.11
Still with me?
For thirty three years I have lived on 14.11 per day.
I have a website, Father Luke dot Com, and I have an “About me” section where I brag a little bit about who I am. I brazenly state that I’m a man who has been homeless, off and on, for 27 years. I have been a Priest, I have been a Court Trained Mediator, I have been trained by the state of California to drive 18 Wheel trucks. I have been trained to do these things. In the land of opportunity, and justice for all, I am a man who has made $5000 per year for 33 years. I consider myself a lucky man; a happy man, the type of man who’s happiness only the desperate may experience; a happy idiot. And why the hell not, I ask you? Why the hell not. . .
A swell couple’s company I was working for earlier this year went bankrupt. Their small family business had been purchased for 580,000. If my calculations are correct, it would take me 113 years to be able to purchase that company at my current rate of employment.
I looked out at the American Countryside, with the stinking ignorant beast beside me; an animal, too stupid to care. I looked at the land which so many call their home. We stopped at a roadside stand, and he filled up his jumbo jug with a sugary, caffeinated drink.
As I waited outside, fueling up the truck, a woman with no teeth walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some cologne for 25.00. She was offering me oral sex. I put my hand on the side of the truck and I wept. I cried for me. I cried for Americans everywhere who believe in a dream . . .
Everywhere for fifteen minutes at a time - - - cooking the books - - - .22 per hour
Drivers are held to strict Government standards. 14 hour shifts. No more than 11 hours permitted within those 14 hours for driving. The trucking industry is big money, man; BIG money. It’s the kind of money that can make people disappear. Comprendo? If you drive a truck, Federal law says that operating expenses will earn you 52.00 per day as a tax write off. That is immediately. This is your per diem.
Let’s say you own your own truck. You are making 1.50 per mile to take a load of shoes from one end of the country to the other. A long run of 4000 miles at 1.50 would bring you 6000.00 before expenses. There is no state in the union with a speed limit of more than 75 miles per hour. On average, a truck driver will find himself traveling at about 65 miles per hour. Got your math hat on?
4000 (miles) divided by 65 (miles per hour) = 61 hours
61 (hours) divided by 11(legal hours to drive in a shift, i.e. 14 hour stretch of time) = 5 shifts
5 shifts x 52.00(per deim) = 260 and that means tack on another 260.00 to your profits, because the Federal Government says: “Hey? Take 52.00 per day, and use it how you like. It’s on us, Bud.”
6026.00 for five days work. 6026.00 to drive a truck from here to there in five days. Hell, your per diem is 18,980.00 if you were to work 365 days a year. You won’t work 365 days per year, so take off 52.00 for every day you don’t - - nice bonus from your Uncle Sam.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is good money in being stupid.
Now here is the twist which will make you sick.
Go to work for a company that has a fleet of trucks in every state of the Union. Each week, big trucking companies hire on hundreds of workers who are looking to make that kind of money in their life through good, honest, decent hard work. Men and women who grew up with a work ethic that says:
• Get up
• Make your bed
• Go to Work
Go out and begin employment with a trucking company that has a large fleet of trucks. You will be paid approximately 61.00 per day to drive anywhere from 500 to 700 miles each day.
You will do this for approximately 30 days.
Do you still have your math hat handy?
Okay. Put it on . . .
61.00 (per day) x 30(days) = 1830.00
No per diem is allowed, as the company “Takes care of that for you." In essence, the company has you hauling freight for them for free.
Oh. I could say that you are paying the company to work for them, but that would be ungrateful, wouldn’t it?
The sad truth is that you are being paid the per diem you are rightly owed, as full salary.
The man I am driving with is leasing the truck we drive. He pays 1200.00 per week for the privilege of using the company’s truck. It’s no wonder that the poor goon doesn’t ever stop to take a shower, he’s bat shit crazy with worry that he won’t be able to make his truck payment.
He drives till I have to push him awake. “I’ll drive for you,” I say. And he curls up in back and snores like a wino farting in a rescue mission.
I have already driven 14 hours today. Well, so has he. What’s few more hours, I reckon, so that my friend might rest his worried head? He has children he needs to feed, I only have rent.
I look at the country side. I’m everywhere in America for fifteen minutes at a time. I see beauty, and I peacefully go on the nod behind the wheel.
Once back at the hotel the Trucking Company owns, I fall asleep on a box spring covered with a sheet. It’s supposed to pass for a bed in the room I have been assigned during training. I wake in the morning. I have a roommate. He is missing a big toe on his left foot.
“What happened to the toe,” I say to him by way of good morning.
“Still have it,” he says. And he holds up his right hand. The toe is a thumb.
I look around the room for a coffee maker.
“I have been waiting for 14 days to get assigned to a truck,” he says.
“Well, you aren’t getting paid for that,” I said.
“I know,” the man says to me. “I’ve added it up. I have been here for a total of fifty days. The total of my income divided by my time here amounts to about .22 per hour. I’m getting sick of this.”
There is no coffee maker in the room. I look at the man with a toe for a thumb. I ask him about his bed.
“It was a sheet over a box spring,” the man said.
Home
The man with a toe for a thumb and I phoned the bus station, and we each bought a bus ticket. After 40 days on the road, I am going home. I have less money now than when I began.
The bus driver is an angry man; he yells over the speakers in the dark as we approach small towns. Babies wake, and they begin crying. Old people cough. Adults and children look out dark windows which reflect back to them the sad and angry faces which are inside. I’ll ride the bus for four days.
America: The land of opportunity. America: Love her or leave her. America: of thee I sing.
21 October 2008
The Second Coming
by Hosho McCreesh
originally appeared in installments over at Upright
Part One: The Second Coming*
*(see Yeats)
Shame on us. Shame on all of us. From the humble beginnings of man, be them miraculous & divine or primordial & oozing, this is what we've done with it. We gave up painting cave walls and instead picked up a splintered femur & re-invented murder. We learned to hunt & trap animals, learned where the best tasting berries grew, learned how to stay out of the elements, how to keep warm...& since then we've become positively BORED with ourselves. Do we even do anything we want to anymore? Do we ever do anything we're proud of? Shame on almost the entire rotting stinking lot of us.
I am sick of people who believe things.
Listen, I believe things...some of them deep-rooted, powerful ideals...for me. But let's be clear about this: Just because I believe it doesn't make it so, doesn't make me right, doesn't make people who disagree with me wrong, or people who agree with me my friends. What I do is wander through the world that I perceive through my own eyes, reacting to what I encounter, & within me exists my own belief structure which may be well-calibrated or may be completely out of whack, but whatever the case, it's mine, & it's how I get through what's difficult, how I enjoy what's wonderful, how I find the "story in the suicide," & how I decide what to do next. Beliefs? Convictions? Ideals? What in the hell are they? They are little more than tools used to work through this agony & ecstasy, our way to make sense of the misguided majesty of living. Ours. Not others. & certainly not everyone's.
Carefully now, so there's no confusion: this is not to say that we should abandon all that we think we know & compromise our hearts--no no no. This is instead an indictment of any & all belief structures that harbor, in their fetid bowels, any hypocrisy, any judgment, any exemptions from their own unbreakable rules. I myself must refuse to allow my own stupid head to convince me that I know everything...or that I even know anything. Human ignorance has only begat more human ignorance, & it has done so for centuries, will do so for centuries. Humans invented their gods. Humans invented their governments. Humans invented the imaginary lines drawn on maps that humans sketched, supposedly separating us one from the other. None of these things are as simple as a sunflower & yet these ideas, these concepts, have drowned this planet in the black-caked blood of centuries, of millennia. This hurtling goddamned rock is blood-logged. How can we forgive what has been done in the name of god & country & government? What continues to be done? The horrors perpetrated? All of it based on imaginary notions made real by a deluded zealotry that has poisoned the human race. Our hearts know this. The sad truth is we humans have invented our own misery. Our hearts also know this.
I write poems. I paint. That entitles me to nothing. I live in America, but no gods favor me over their other countless creations, other planets, & most definitely not over fellow humans...no matter where they reside, how they look, or how they think. I am simply one of the many animate beings, a slave to my own capricious biochemicals & perceptions, misperceptions...we all are. We pretend at the divine while wallowing in the carnival of our own man-made damnation.
We'll have to dig deep holes to save all these meaningless trinkets we've hoarded, hide them from the hellfire doom we've wrought. There will be no revolution until we're forced to pack our intestines with gravel to simply remember what it's like to feel full; until we abandon all our vengeful & exclusionary gods & our bumbling countries & castrated governments & replace them with something that works...for us, something our hearts know as righteous, just, true. Beliefs? They are but a falcon, loosed like a plague on the unchaperoned heavens, they split the sky like from a womb. The seed embeds; grows fat; forms man--imperfect & inventive, this misfit. We began by learning one thing, then another & soon we were bored by all we knew & conjured up wacky things to believe in: gods, maps, borders, ways of thinking, ways of of ruling, ideals, judgments. The misfit then Balkanized Eden & reinvented murder. The march of time lands us here, now, with a globe overrun by knee-jerk reactionaries & still we do precious little to spare our atherosclerotic hearts, all gone aplump on the back-fat cuttings of each other. What sense is there to make of a world convinced that whatever they think is righteous, justified, true? Liquid & convenient, these random & foolishly taprooted ideals, invented to justify our murderous & self-serving hearts. Ours is a green god writhing, a golden calf without its neck slit, a false idol. We have only our foolish selves to blame now that sin has usurped virtue. Doom!--my unborn cousins, sisters, brothers, it begs purchase in the radioactive, blistered, weathered crags of the America womb! & thundercrack the skulls of too-soon-dead patriots, splintered, ground down to bonemeal 'neath the thunder of 2 billion feet marching bloody, red as Mao*, forming ranks & advancing, bent on the dusty end. Pitiless & blank, we the Sphinx churn our stoney thighs & trample what's left of Eden...& the worst need no reasons, no evidence, no proof, while the best know less tomorrow than they did today...
At least that's what I think...
Part Two: And Good Luck Outrunning Our Primal Selves!
I just don't see the value in being skull-locked into any brand of dogged, unyielding notion. At this point it would take an entire volley of warheads just to recalibrate the species and god only knows what to dig out the infected roots. Why believe in anything when believing means doing things unbelievable? Why believe in a god when believing means doing things ungodly? Why believe in justice when believing means doing things unjust? Why believe in humanity when believing means doing things that are abjectly inhuman? Better to place your unblinking faith in witchcraft, in voodoo, in genocide, in a final nuclear solution - this graveyard planet littered with only the shadows of its extinct blast-burned on building and boulder. Better the blade "quick and true" than to hear the tireless explanations; better the buckshot than entertain yet another ill-conceived filibuster of convenient intellection; better the rack than suffer case-by-case justifications for actions perpendicular to some quotidian philosopher's so-called personal compass; and better the crucifixion than the rhetorical longshot scenarios which condone hypocrisy and rationalize some phantom delineation between a proverbial inner "magnetic North" and an inner "true North" which the common rube uses to explain away any and all personal liability, excuses these humps use for their temporary dalliances from their otherwise "bedrock core beliefs" as if such extenuations plumb or hold up in the goddamned wash...
Horse.
Fucking.
Shit.
Convictions, rigidly held insist upon rules rigidly held: any room for interpretation is a chasm tailored for doubt - even a hairline fracture wherein seeps condensation, wherein it freezes then expands, melts, re-freezes, eventually breeches the hull. Hence, any belief - any TRUE BELIEF - is blind and cannot allow questions. Nor can it withstand them. They wilt flaccid to rudimentary examination. Any single allowance, any one semantic exception, any sniff that the world is not one of contrasting absolutes and the hypothesis is summarily rebuffed, the lords of ultimatum properly and riotously sacked. To say it another way: a black and white world must always disavow all greys, because the mere existence of any grey illegitimates all blacks and all whites.
So what does the color grey have to do with our primal selves? Only this: Let's quit pretending we're much more, as a species, than Pavlov's dogs, more than a grey, or that we're some sort of black or white. "What? Pavlov's dogs?" you say. I know, I know, pardon you while you scoff. "Man is sublimely evolved, the top of the food chain, supremely intelligent, a sentient being of the highest order," says you, "we're immune to such bestial wailings..." The works of Michelangelo and an honest mechanic or line cook not withstanding, I've seen grown men racing ride-on lawn mowers and other grown men recording this so even more grown men could telecast it for me, a grown man who sat watching the broadcast. This is precisely where we have put ourselves. Pardon me while I scoff back. We are all salivating at the knell of any and all manner of shiny goddamned bell. We're rats gone mad at the feeder bar. Higher functioning rats, perhaps, but rats all the same. Disagree? Then imagine the time-clocks we all punch as feeder bars, and imagine the generations of men that have powdered their knuckles punching them, all for a few meager moneypellets at the end of every other week or so.
Forget the circus of magnanimity, our main concern is of, for and about ourselves. Even our most altruistic philanthropy can be made to serve a primal need to either be hailed, appreciated, or envied. Rarely is it done with a pure heart. Our loins crave moist flesh, our innards meat, our bodies shelter, and our strangled spirits crave meaning. From these cravings - invention, innovation - all man-made and ridiculously imperfect. From all these cravings - conditioned, Pavlovian responses - we've indoctrinated ourselves to never be happy, to always want for more - what madness! We have engineered and manufactured every single ugly desire and ignorant lust, pounded it into each other's bent spines, we loll about in the stink of it like some fetid, putrid green pool. Our primal selves have forgotten how to be content, how to live simply and well, how to eat, drink and just be merry. We've forgotten how to be beautiful. And good luck outrunning our primal selves!
Abandoning just about everything we thought we knew & thought we wanted might be the only way back: lest the entire sky be wasted on us.
Part Three: Pavlov & The Last Laughing Neanderthal
So what of this business of dogs & gods? Just this: even Pavlov’s dogs knew better than we do not to shit where you eat. Salivating wants aside, the gist of what I’m driving at here is this: as with Pavlov & his mutts, any behavior rewarded is one that persists. Conversely, a behavior fades from existence if unrecognized, unheralded. If, for instance, we were to stop taking pictures of Paris Hilton, just you try & guess what would happen...
So we are to blame. For all we’ve encouraged & for all we’ve let die by the wayside, we are to blame. We are to blame & shame on us. You give me science, you give me gods, you give me technology to blast men into space, chart the fissures of Mars in search of water, or makes a Snicker’s candy bar more damnably delicious–you give me all of these things as proof positive of the undying nature & spirit of man. I give you our laughably repeated histories. I give you centuries of basically pointless & unimaginative wars, starving babies while abundant grains rot in silos & farmers are paid not to farm. I give you impermanent lines we’ve imagined across mountains & floating in rivers & oceans–lines our own generations worth of humans have died defending from ourselves. Not from space-aliens, or the brutal assault of mother nature, or anything wholly outside of us, mind you–but ourselves, only ourselves. We dream up things to believe in, believe so fervently in them that we fashion, of our innocent-of-all-but-disagreeing human counterparts, enemies. & thus we are the architects of human misery. Because at the end of the day almost every human I’ve ever met wants basically the same thing: a sustainable source of food, shelter & clothing from their respective & brutal climes, & a way to worry less. Some want solidarity, some want community, some to be left alone. Most benefit from a sense of purpose. Most flourish beneath the weight of love & family. Most deteriorate under tightly girded lack of freedoms. Most want to be heard in some way, want to matter. Most want to be alive, want to bear witness to the simple majesty of it. Increasingly, many don’t want this current manifestation of the world. Too few have too much; too many not enough. Of all these simple, basic, primal needs, too few are being met, for most. How can we believe in any of that? How can that be right or just? How have we ruined Eden so completely? Is it simply a question of geography? Have we become to wrapped up in the lines & borders we’ve invented to remember that before us there were no lines, before us it was just one hunk of hurtling rock? Have we forgotten that it will be that again when we’re gone? Or do these troubling questions about our own mortality & impermanence just fuel the madness?
If so, for many religion is the source of calm, the thing that quiets the swelling inner fears–fair enough. Use it then, keep it–if there is purpose in it for you. But let’s try to remember that there are different brand names, that it’s not the only thing people fill their days with (some might find as much fulfillment in shopping) & that religions too are man-made (or at least man-manipulated) & therefore imperfect. I’ll even allow that most religions, at the core, encourage the same kinds of tenets: simply put, to do things that make you better tomorrow than you are today. I can even admire the undertaking, the self-examination &courage to try & change. As a journey, it’s one that, in the end, can bring peace & meaning to an unquiet heart. Let’s not forget this very important truth: while not mutually exclusive, religion can be something staggeringly different from spirituality. By way of example I offer this: when you find yourself slathering at the maw for your particular brand of religion, unable to appreciate the fact that others who follow a different text are on just as sacred of a journey as you are, when you find yourself with your high-powered cross-hairs beaded on a fellow human, or you’re diving a plane full of innocent travelers into a skyscraper full of innocent workers, when you’re carpet bombing a village or you’ve got a satchel bomb strapped to yourself in a bus full of people going to get bread & beans at a market–religion might condone that, but spirituality certainly cannot. & in such moments it’s absolutely necessary to question how you’ve strayed to the furthest extremes of what your particular text teaches–often ignoring scripture contrary to such extremities en route–& try to identify what specific little religious hang-up derailed your spiritual journey & took you so far from what you supposedly believed in.
Now, perhaps we are too many. Perhaps humans were meant to roam in much smaller packs, driven together by the wild throes of necessity & uncertainty. Perhaps our distended & decaying souls are truly beyond redemption. Perhaps we’re damned to always succumb to our wanton & childish lusts. Perhaps we were supposed to die off as cavemen, & some last laughing Neanderthal bore witness to a spectacular innovation that saw his tiny pack through to the other side of that planned & certain extinction. Perhaps we can blame him–be him Thag or Adam–& his heavy-browed cronies for damning us to a rotting pile-up of useless millennia. But I can’t quiet escape the fact that he knew better than we do, how to fill his days with meaning. As cautious as he had to step, the way even a turned ankle could be a death sentence, I see no way his days weren’t spent on the electric edge of his own mortality & that, in itself, is far more invigorating than the lifetimes we pass in cubicles, on subways, or crawling along in gridlock. I can’t help but see Thag or Adam cackling at all our useless toil, wondering just what in the fuck we are doing with this human race he handed us, this populace working so diligently to ensure it’s own unhappiness in the short term & demise in the long.
I believe it all makes a pretty convincing case against believing or relying on any of the shitty little gimcracks we’ve dreamed up & manufactured—be them objects, borders, ideas, or gods. I believe there was always supposed to be more to living than anything we currently know; believe we were meant–with our silly little lives–to justify & redeem the energies expended to create us…repay, with our honest & purest efforts, that caustic spark that bore us; believe we should all find our own way to make our time matter, to find some meaning in this...
But who cares what I think? I barely even care what I think. Like I said, I am sick of people who believe things...
originally appeared in installments over at Upright
Part One: The Second Coming*
*(see Yeats)
Shame on us. Shame on all of us. From the humble beginnings of man, be them miraculous & divine or primordial & oozing, this is what we've done with it. We gave up painting cave walls and instead picked up a splintered femur & re-invented murder. We learned to hunt & trap animals, learned where the best tasting berries grew, learned how to stay out of the elements, how to keep warm...& since then we've become positively BORED with ourselves. Do we even do anything we want to anymore? Do we ever do anything we're proud of? Shame on almost the entire rotting stinking lot of us.
I am sick of people who believe things.
Listen, I believe things...some of them deep-rooted, powerful ideals...for me. But let's be clear about this: Just because I believe it doesn't make it so, doesn't make me right, doesn't make people who disagree with me wrong, or people who agree with me my friends. What I do is wander through the world that I perceive through my own eyes, reacting to what I encounter, & within me exists my own belief structure which may be well-calibrated or may be completely out of whack, but whatever the case, it's mine, & it's how I get through what's difficult, how I enjoy what's wonderful, how I find the "story in the suicide," & how I decide what to do next. Beliefs? Convictions? Ideals? What in the hell are they? They are little more than tools used to work through this agony & ecstasy, our way to make sense of the misguided majesty of living. Ours. Not others. & certainly not everyone's.
Carefully now, so there's no confusion: this is not to say that we should abandon all that we think we know & compromise our hearts--no no no. This is instead an indictment of any & all belief structures that harbor, in their fetid bowels, any hypocrisy, any judgment, any exemptions from their own unbreakable rules. I myself must refuse to allow my own stupid head to convince me that I know everything...or that I even know anything. Human ignorance has only begat more human ignorance, & it has done so for centuries, will do so for centuries. Humans invented their gods. Humans invented their governments. Humans invented the imaginary lines drawn on maps that humans sketched, supposedly separating us one from the other. None of these things are as simple as a sunflower & yet these ideas, these concepts, have drowned this planet in the black-caked blood of centuries, of millennia. This hurtling goddamned rock is blood-logged. How can we forgive what has been done in the name of god & country & government? What continues to be done? The horrors perpetrated? All of it based on imaginary notions made real by a deluded zealotry that has poisoned the human race. Our hearts know this. The sad truth is we humans have invented our own misery. Our hearts also know this.
I write poems. I paint. That entitles me to nothing. I live in America, but no gods favor me over their other countless creations, other planets, & most definitely not over fellow humans...no matter where they reside, how they look, or how they think. I am simply one of the many animate beings, a slave to my own capricious biochemicals & perceptions, misperceptions...we all are. We pretend at the divine while wallowing in the carnival of our own man-made damnation.
We'll have to dig deep holes to save all these meaningless trinkets we've hoarded, hide them from the hellfire doom we've wrought. There will be no revolution until we're forced to pack our intestines with gravel to simply remember what it's like to feel full; until we abandon all our vengeful & exclusionary gods & our bumbling countries & castrated governments & replace them with something that works...for us, something our hearts know as righteous, just, true. Beliefs? They are but a falcon, loosed like a plague on the unchaperoned heavens, they split the sky like from a womb. The seed embeds; grows fat; forms man--imperfect & inventive, this misfit. We began by learning one thing, then another & soon we were bored by all we knew & conjured up wacky things to believe in: gods, maps, borders, ways of thinking, ways of of ruling, ideals, judgments. The misfit then Balkanized Eden & reinvented murder. The march of time lands us here, now, with a globe overrun by knee-jerk reactionaries & still we do precious little to spare our atherosclerotic hearts, all gone aplump on the back-fat cuttings of each other. What sense is there to make of a world convinced that whatever they think is righteous, justified, true? Liquid & convenient, these random & foolishly taprooted ideals, invented to justify our murderous & self-serving hearts. Ours is a green god writhing, a golden calf without its neck slit, a false idol. We have only our foolish selves to blame now that sin has usurped virtue. Doom!--my unborn cousins, sisters, brothers, it begs purchase in the radioactive, blistered, weathered crags of the America womb! & thundercrack the skulls of too-soon-dead patriots, splintered, ground down to bonemeal 'neath the thunder of 2 billion feet marching bloody, red as Mao*, forming ranks & advancing, bent on the dusty end. Pitiless & blank, we the Sphinx churn our stoney thighs & trample what's left of Eden...& the worst need no reasons, no evidence, no proof, while the best know less tomorrow than they did today...
At least that's what I think...
Part Two: And Good Luck Outrunning Our Primal Selves!
I just don't see the value in being skull-locked into any brand of dogged, unyielding notion. At this point it would take an entire volley of warheads just to recalibrate the species and god only knows what to dig out the infected roots. Why believe in anything when believing means doing things unbelievable? Why believe in a god when believing means doing things ungodly? Why believe in justice when believing means doing things unjust? Why believe in humanity when believing means doing things that are abjectly inhuman? Better to place your unblinking faith in witchcraft, in voodoo, in genocide, in a final nuclear solution - this graveyard planet littered with only the shadows of its extinct blast-burned on building and boulder. Better the blade "quick and true" than to hear the tireless explanations; better the buckshot than entertain yet another ill-conceived filibuster of convenient intellection; better the rack than suffer case-by-case justifications for actions perpendicular to some quotidian philosopher's so-called personal compass; and better the crucifixion than the rhetorical longshot scenarios which condone hypocrisy and rationalize some phantom delineation between a proverbial inner "magnetic North" and an inner "true North" which the common rube uses to explain away any and all personal liability, excuses these humps use for their temporary dalliances from their otherwise "bedrock core beliefs" as if such extenuations plumb or hold up in the goddamned wash...
Horse.
Fucking.
Shit.
Convictions, rigidly held insist upon rules rigidly held: any room for interpretation is a chasm tailored for doubt - even a hairline fracture wherein seeps condensation, wherein it freezes then expands, melts, re-freezes, eventually breeches the hull. Hence, any belief - any TRUE BELIEF - is blind and cannot allow questions. Nor can it withstand them. They wilt flaccid to rudimentary examination. Any single allowance, any one semantic exception, any sniff that the world is not one of contrasting absolutes and the hypothesis is summarily rebuffed, the lords of ultimatum properly and riotously sacked. To say it another way: a black and white world must always disavow all greys, because the mere existence of any grey illegitimates all blacks and all whites.
So what does the color grey have to do with our primal selves? Only this: Let's quit pretending we're much more, as a species, than Pavlov's dogs, more than a grey, or that we're some sort of black or white. "What? Pavlov's dogs?" you say. I know, I know, pardon you while you scoff. "Man is sublimely evolved, the top of the food chain, supremely intelligent, a sentient being of the highest order," says you, "we're immune to such bestial wailings..." The works of Michelangelo and an honest mechanic or line cook not withstanding, I've seen grown men racing ride-on lawn mowers and other grown men recording this so even more grown men could telecast it for me, a grown man who sat watching the broadcast. This is precisely where we have put ourselves. Pardon me while I scoff back. We are all salivating at the knell of any and all manner of shiny goddamned bell. We're rats gone mad at the feeder bar. Higher functioning rats, perhaps, but rats all the same. Disagree? Then imagine the time-clocks we all punch as feeder bars, and imagine the generations of men that have powdered their knuckles punching them, all for a few meager moneypellets at the end of every other week or so.
Forget the circus of magnanimity, our main concern is of, for and about ourselves. Even our most altruistic philanthropy can be made to serve a primal need to either be hailed, appreciated, or envied. Rarely is it done with a pure heart. Our loins crave moist flesh, our innards meat, our bodies shelter, and our strangled spirits crave meaning. From these cravings - invention, innovation - all man-made and ridiculously imperfect. From all these cravings - conditioned, Pavlovian responses - we've indoctrinated ourselves to never be happy, to always want for more - what madness! We have engineered and manufactured every single ugly desire and ignorant lust, pounded it into each other's bent spines, we loll about in the stink of it like some fetid, putrid green pool. Our primal selves have forgotten how to be content, how to live simply and well, how to eat, drink and just be merry. We've forgotten how to be beautiful. And good luck outrunning our primal selves!
Abandoning just about everything we thought we knew & thought we wanted might be the only way back: lest the entire sky be wasted on us.
Part Three: Pavlov & The Last Laughing Neanderthal
So what of this business of dogs & gods? Just this: even Pavlov’s dogs knew better than we do not to shit where you eat. Salivating wants aside, the gist of what I’m driving at here is this: as with Pavlov & his mutts, any behavior rewarded is one that persists. Conversely, a behavior fades from existence if unrecognized, unheralded. If, for instance, we were to stop taking pictures of Paris Hilton, just you try & guess what would happen...
So we are to blame. For all we’ve encouraged & for all we’ve let die by the wayside, we are to blame. We are to blame & shame on us. You give me science, you give me gods, you give me technology to blast men into space, chart the fissures of Mars in search of water, or makes a Snicker’s candy bar more damnably delicious–you give me all of these things as proof positive of the undying nature & spirit of man. I give you our laughably repeated histories. I give you centuries of basically pointless & unimaginative wars, starving babies while abundant grains rot in silos & farmers are paid not to farm. I give you impermanent lines we’ve imagined across mountains & floating in rivers & oceans–lines our own generations worth of humans have died defending from ourselves. Not from space-aliens, or the brutal assault of mother nature, or anything wholly outside of us, mind you–but ourselves, only ourselves. We dream up things to believe in, believe so fervently in them that we fashion, of our innocent-of-all-but-disagreeing human counterparts, enemies. & thus we are the architects of human misery. Because at the end of the day almost every human I’ve ever met wants basically the same thing: a sustainable source of food, shelter & clothing from their respective & brutal climes, & a way to worry less. Some want solidarity, some want community, some to be left alone. Most benefit from a sense of purpose. Most flourish beneath the weight of love & family. Most deteriorate under tightly girded lack of freedoms. Most want to be heard in some way, want to matter. Most want to be alive, want to bear witness to the simple majesty of it. Increasingly, many don’t want this current manifestation of the world. Too few have too much; too many not enough. Of all these simple, basic, primal needs, too few are being met, for most. How can we believe in any of that? How can that be right or just? How have we ruined Eden so completely? Is it simply a question of geography? Have we become to wrapped up in the lines & borders we’ve invented to remember that before us there were no lines, before us it was just one hunk of hurtling rock? Have we forgotten that it will be that again when we’re gone? Or do these troubling questions about our own mortality & impermanence just fuel the madness?
If so, for many religion is the source of calm, the thing that quiets the swelling inner fears–fair enough. Use it then, keep it–if there is purpose in it for you. But let’s try to remember that there are different brand names, that it’s not the only thing people fill their days with (some might find as much fulfillment in shopping) & that religions too are man-made (or at least man-manipulated) & therefore imperfect. I’ll even allow that most religions, at the core, encourage the same kinds of tenets: simply put, to do things that make you better tomorrow than you are today. I can even admire the undertaking, the self-examination &courage to try & change. As a journey, it’s one that, in the end, can bring peace & meaning to an unquiet heart. Let’s not forget this very important truth: while not mutually exclusive, religion can be something staggeringly different from spirituality. By way of example I offer this: when you find yourself slathering at the maw for your particular brand of religion, unable to appreciate the fact that others who follow a different text are on just as sacred of a journey as you are, when you find yourself with your high-powered cross-hairs beaded on a fellow human, or you’re diving a plane full of innocent travelers into a skyscraper full of innocent workers, when you’re carpet bombing a village or you’ve got a satchel bomb strapped to yourself in a bus full of people going to get bread & beans at a market–religion might condone that, but spirituality certainly cannot. & in such moments it’s absolutely necessary to question how you’ve strayed to the furthest extremes of what your particular text teaches–often ignoring scripture contrary to such extremities en route–& try to identify what specific little religious hang-up derailed your spiritual journey & took you so far from what you supposedly believed in.
Now, perhaps we are too many. Perhaps humans were meant to roam in much smaller packs, driven together by the wild throes of necessity & uncertainty. Perhaps our distended & decaying souls are truly beyond redemption. Perhaps we’re damned to always succumb to our wanton & childish lusts. Perhaps we were supposed to die off as cavemen, & some last laughing Neanderthal bore witness to a spectacular innovation that saw his tiny pack through to the other side of that planned & certain extinction. Perhaps we can blame him–be him Thag or Adam–& his heavy-browed cronies for damning us to a rotting pile-up of useless millennia. But I can’t quiet escape the fact that he knew better than we do, how to fill his days with meaning. As cautious as he had to step, the way even a turned ankle could be a death sentence, I see no way his days weren’t spent on the electric edge of his own mortality & that, in itself, is far more invigorating than the lifetimes we pass in cubicles, on subways, or crawling along in gridlock. I can’t help but see Thag or Adam cackling at all our useless toil, wondering just what in the fuck we are doing with this human race he handed us, this populace working so diligently to ensure it’s own unhappiness in the short term & demise in the long.
I believe it all makes a pretty convincing case against believing or relying on any of the shitty little gimcracks we’ve dreamed up & manufactured—be them objects, borders, ideas, or gods. I believe there was always supposed to be more to living than anything we currently know; believe we were meant–with our silly little lives–to justify & redeem the energies expended to create us…repay, with our honest & purest efforts, that caustic spark that bore us; believe we should all find our own way to make our time matter, to find some meaning in this...
But who cares what I think? I barely even care what I think. Like I said, I am sick of people who believe things...
Some General Thoughts on Art, Poetry and The Life
by Christopher Cunningham
The cockpit manual that rode down at furious speeds along with the kamikaze pilots on suicide missions, smashing into ships and soldiers, recommends, "Do not waste your life lightly."
It has rained most of the last week here in the South. The cold weather is rolling in. I have been walking around with a good size hole in my right shoe. It is my only pair, my work shoes, my everyday shoes, all occasion. They've given me a coupla years quality service but now they are fading.
Why does any of this matter? Well, the hole in my shoe where greasy, food-scummy kitchen water flows in as I work in a hot restaurant, soaking my sock, chilling my foot, is more important than iambic pentameter.
Poetry boils down to an intense search for a searing moment of quiet truth, clearly illuminated. It isn't a craft that can be learned. It is a scream from the empty pockets, from the growling guts, from the time clock, from the tired bones on Monday morning. It isn't something that can be workshopped, it cannot be taught. Hell, it may not really exist. It might just be a trick of the light. All I do know is that we humans spend damn little time thinking about the miracle of our daily ability to draw breath, we spend no energy considering how impossible the simple fact of EVERYTHING is. We push papers, we push products, we push consumption and waste, we push dope, we push god, we push, but there is nowhere to go, nothing to push. We curse traffic, we long for speed, but we are already there.
And the poem, the artform, is the only way we, with our simple little brains, can ever hope to GO BEYOND the tangible and touch a measure of truth, a glimpse of understanding, and maybe a bit of meaning in our motions.
Those who ignore the creation of beauty are dead. Those who are dead have no hope. The dead question nothing, the dead cannot love, the dead do not laugh. Yet they wander thru the world, eyes open, never thinking about why. That fucking word: WHY? The answer lies in the look that passes across a person's face when they stare at a van Gogh or a Monet, when they read a poem that speaks to them TRUTHFULLY, with no bullshit, when they hear Miles play a note that isn't there, and the silence that cloaks it in mystery. The answer lies in the mystery. The answer is why we gasp at a falling star, why we smile when we are alone. Even when we are alone in the dark and the cold weather comes moaning.
Nietzsche gives us a take on the answer: "To give a life meaning: that has been the grand endeavor of all who have preached 'truth;' for unless life is GIVEN a meaning, it has none."
So the answer is the smell of black coffee on Sunday reading the paper by a sunny window. Or a poem.
And when you strip away nations, races, ideology, isms, faiths, laws, etc., you are left with a human being. You are left with a collection of cells, atoms, elements that were born in the throes of space, from the bellies of stars and dying worlds, lifetimes ago. This sheer miracle should be enough to stop even the basest of thinker in his tracks with a wide mouth "O" of wonder. This should be enough to end war, end hunger, end mindless entertainment on the television and replace it with the magic of creation.
What else is there except joy? The bone hand reaching from the dim forest at the end of each of our lives? Might as well laugh, you can't save yourself.
But you can save that part of us all that might be worth saving by getting it down. By painting the cave walls, by writing a pointless poem for no one to read. Or, maybe, one.
"When you find you can go neither backward nor forward, when you discover that you are no longer able to stand, sit or lie down, when your children have died of malnutrition and your aged parents have been sent to the poorhouse or the gas chamber, when you realize that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird." Henry Miller said that.
And the poem, for me, is exactly that miracle. The metaphor that allows us to experience the unsayable again and again. The silence between notes. The truth.
Or, I might just be a cook with a hole in his shoe and a typewriter, while outside the winter watches from over an approaching horizon, and dogs bark, and planes fly over, shaking the house, with my stomach rumbling. And what does that mean?
And why?
"Do not waste your life lightly."
The cockpit manual that rode down at furious speeds along with the kamikaze pilots on suicide missions, smashing into ships and soldiers, recommends, "Do not waste your life lightly."
It has rained most of the last week here in the South. The cold weather is rolling in. I have been walking around with a good size hole in my right shoe. It is my only pair, my work shoes, my everyday shoes, all occasion. They've given me a coupla years quality service but now they are fading.
Why does any of this matter? Well, the hole in my shoe where greasy, food-scummy kitchen water flows in as I work in a hot restaurant, soaking my sock, chilling my foot, is more important than iambic pentameter.
Poetry boils down to an intense search for a searing moment of quiet truth, clearly illuminated. It isn't a craft that can be learned. It is a scream from the empty pockets, from the growling guts, from the time clock, from the tired bones on Monday morning. It isn't something that can be workshopped, it cannot be taught. Hell, it may not really exist. It might just be a trick of the light. All I do know is that we humans spend damn little time thinking about the miracle of our daily ability to draw breath, we spend no energy considering how impossible the simple fact of EVERYTHING is. We push papers, we push products, we push consumption and waste, we push dope, we push god, we push, but there is nowhere to go, nothing to push. We curse traffic, we long for speed, but we are already there.
And the poem, the artform, is the only way we, with our simple little brains, can ever hope to GO BEYOND the tangible and touch a measure of truth, a glimpse of understanding, and maybe a bit of meaning in our motions.
Those who ignore the creation of beauty are dead. Those who are dead have no hope. The dead question nothing, the dead cannot love, the dead do not laugh. Yet they wander thru the world, eyes open, never thinking about why. That fucking word: WHY? The answer lies in the look that passes across a person's face when they stare at a van Gogh or a Monet, when they read a poem that speaks to them TRUTHFULLY, with no bullshit, when they hear Miles play a note that isn't there, and the silence that cloaks it in mystery. The answer lies in the mystery. The answer is why we gasp at a falling star, why we smile when we are alone. Even when we are alone in the dark and the cold weather comes moaning.
Nietzsche gives us a take on the answer: "To give a life meaning: that has been the grand endeavor of all who have preached 'truth;' for unless life is GIVEN a meaning, it has none."
So the answer is the smell of black coffee on Sunday reading the paper by a sunny window. Or a poem.
And when you strip away nations, races, ideology, isms, faiths, laws, etc., you are left with a human being. You are left with a collection of cells, atoms, elements that were born in the throes of space, from the bellies of stars and dying worlds, lifetimes ago. This sheer miracle should be enough to stop even the basest of thinker in his tracks with a wide mouth "O" of wonder. This should be enough to end war, end hunger, end mindless entertainment on the television and replace it with the magic of creation.
What else is there except joy? The bone hand reaching from the dim forest at the end of each of our lives? Might as well laugh, you can't save yourself.
But you can save that part of us all that might be worth saving by getting it down. By painting the cave walls, by writing a pointless poem for no one to read. Or, maybe, one.
"When you find you can go neither backward nor forward, when you discover that you are no longer able to stand, sit or lie down, when your children have died of malnutrition and your aged parents have been sent to the poorhouse or the gas chamber, when you realize that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird." Henry Miller said that.
And the poem, for me, is exactly that miracle. The metaphor that allows us to experience the unsayable again and again. The silence between notes. The truth.
Or, I might just be a cook with a hole in his shoe and a typewriter, while outside the winter watches from over an approaching horizon, and dogs bark, and planes fly over, shaking the house, with my stomach rumbling. And what does that mean?
And why?
"Do not waste your life lightly."
20 October 2008
A Letter from a Beer Drinker
by Nathan Graziano
Note: This is an actual letter I sent a little over a year and a half ago. Sadly, very little has changed in my life in this time. I remain the same fatuous lush who, in a moment of unequivocal bliss and beer-bloated bluster, sat down to pen this shit. And who says the epistolary form is dead?
June 11, 2006
Magic Hat Brewing Company
5 Bartlett Bay Road
South Burlington, VT 05403
Dear Good Folks at Magic Hat,
In my sixteen years of beer drinking—I’m thirty-two years old and, regrettably, I imbibed before the laws in this fine country deemed me responsible enough consume…shit, look, I’m already digressing. As I was saying, in my sixteen years of boozing, nothing really good has come of it. It would be taxing to recall a single “good” (I realize this is, indeed, a relative term) incident that has come from what my wife, family and friends refer to as my “excessive” drinking.
That was until today.
This morning I picked up a Summer Variety Show twelve-pack at the supermarket in anticipation of the Red Sox double-header with the Texas Rangers. I’ve long been a fan of your beer, and once received a free pint-glass at a promotional venue at a local bar. Again, regrettably, I don’t recall when this was, or anything about the night when brought it home (although it may have been the same night I contracted that pain-in-the-ass venereal disease). So the pint glass simply appeared in my life. Just as mysteriously, it vanished. The pint glass is now gone. Perhaps, it broke. Perhaps, I smashed it in a drunken storm. My point being: I miss that damn pint glass.
I, again, apologize for digressing. It’s the result of exuberance, as well as being buried seven beers deep into the aforementioned twelve-pack.
Where were we? Yes. The double-header. The first game is not looking so good, as the Sox trail 4-2 in the top of the ninth.
Anyhow, I purchased the twelve-pack today, looking forward to some tasty beers, as well as twelve illuminating remarks that you so cleverly print on the inside of the bottle caps. As a self-proclaimed existentialist, I generally rebuff pithy philosophy and universal “Dr. Phil” life advice; however, I have not found your bottle cap aphorisms either didactic or offensive. Having established my receptiveness to the bottle cap witticisms, you can only imagine my surprise when I opened my first beer—a 374—and read, You’re a winner! (the exclamation point is my own insertion). When I read this, I squealed; a girlish noise that my wife confused with the terror of, say, discovering blood on my genitalia.
But she could not have been more wrong. It was anything but terror.
Once again, allow me to digress. The only other thing I’ve ever won was a raffle at fraternity gathering I attended at Dartmouth College (sadly, I was not a student there, which you probably find shocking). The fraternity—and seeing I was a member of a different chapter, I will refrain from saying it was Sigma Phi Epsilon—had hired three strippers. The names of all of the males in attendance were handwritten and placed into a glass jar (not to be confused with my pint glass). Three names from nearly fifty were selected. The winners were awarded the honor of pulling a stripper’s G-string off with their teeth. My name was drawn. Sadly, I was so intoxicated that I could not get a firm bite on the G-string, and the young woman had to feed me the fabric, like I was a nursing child, then I fell pathetically face-down on the ground. It was not exactly what one might consider “erotic.” This was my only other experience with winning.
That was until today.
After being informed of my good fortune by the bottle cap, I dialed the phone number, as instructed, and talked to very pleasant young woman at your brewery who congratulated me. Twice. I counted. She explained that I had won a t-shirt, and I could either pick up my bounty at the brewery or mail my winning bottle cap with my address and T-shirt size to your fine establishment. I’ve chosen the latter, seeing as I live two and a half hours away in New Hampshire and have no immediate plans to visit Burlington. Although, good friends of my wife and mine used to live in Burlington and I’ve always found it to be a fine city; however, there are a few too many String Cheese pseudo-hippies who have failed to come to terms with two obvious facts: 1.) Jerry is dead, and 2.) Phish was never an adequate substitute.
So, my new friends, I proudly announce that my T-shirt size is a large (grande in case the manufacturer is French) and my address is:
Nathan Graziano
301 Porter St.
Manchester, NH 03103
By the way, Big Papi just hit a three-run walk-off homerun for the Red Sox. This is fixing to be the best day of my life.
Sincerely,
Nathan Graziano
End note: The t-shirt was received two weeks after this letter was mailed. It is an exceptional t-shirt: gray, heavy, durable, made of 90% cotton and 10% polyester, assembled in some sweat shop in El Salvador, and pre-shrunk, so it has not shrunk—even slightly—after multiple cycles in the dryer. However, I have found that I sweat excessively while wearing my prize and need to be especially vigilant in regards to physical exertion when wearing it. Ironically, I tend to sweat while drinking beer so I can’t wear it while tanking up.
Note: This is an actual letter I sent a little over a year and a half ago. Sadly, very little has changed in my life in this time. I remain the same fatuous lush who, in a moment of unequivocal bliss and beer-bloated bluster, sat down to pen this shit. And who says the epistolary form is dead?
June 11, 2006
Magic Hat Brewing Company
5 Bartlett Bay Road
South Burlington, VT 05403
Dear Good Folks at Magic Hat,
In my sixteen years of beer drinking—I’m thirty-two years old and, regrettably, I imbibed before the laws in this fine country deemed me responsible enough consume…shit, look, I’m already digressing. As I was saying, in my sixteen years of boozing, nothing really good has come of it. It would be taxing to recall a single “good” (I realize this is, indeed, a relative term) incident that has come from what my wife, family and friends refer to as my “excessive” drinking.
That was until today.
This morning I picked up a Summer Variety Show twelve-pack at the supermarket in anticipation of the Red Sox double-header with the Texas Rangers. I’ve long been a fan of your beer, and once received a free pint-glass at a promotional venue at a local bar. Again, regrettably, I don’t recall when this was, or anything about the night when brought it home (although it may have been the same night I contracted that pain-in-the-ass venereal disease). So the pint glass simply appeared in my life. Just as mysteriously, it vanished. The pint glass is now gone. Perhaps, it broke. Perhaps, I smashed it in a drunken storm. My point being: I miss that damn pint glass.
I, again, apologize for digressing. It’s the result of exuberance, as well as being buried seven beers deep into the aforementioned twelve-pack.
Where were we? Yes. The double-header. The first game is not looking so good, as the Sox trail 4-2 in the top of the ninth.
Anyhow, I purchased the twelve-pack today, looking forward to some tasty beers, as well as twelve illuminating remarks that you so cleverly print on the inside of the bottle caps. As a self-proclaimed existentialist, I generally rebuff pithy philosophy and universal “Dr. Phil” life advice; however, I have not found your bottle cap aphorisms either didactic or offensive. Having established my receptiveness to the bottle cap witticisms, you can only imagine my surprise when I opened my first beer—a 374—and read, You’re a winner! (the exclamation point is my own insertion). When I read this, I squealed; a girlish noise that my wife confused with the terror of, say, discovering blood on my genitalia.
But she could not have been more wrong. It was anything but terror.
Once again, allow me to digress. The only other thing I’ve ever won was a raffle at fraternity gathering I attended at Dartmouth College (sadly, I was not a student there, which you probably find shocking). The fraternity—and seeing I was a member of a different chapter, I will refrain from saying it was Sigma Phi Epsilon—had hired three strippers. The names of all of the males in attendance were handwritten and placed into a glass jar (not to be confused with my pint glass). Three names from nearly fifty were selected. The winners were awarded the honor of pulling a stripper’s G-string off with their teeth. My name was drawn. Sadly, I was so intoxicated that I could not get a firm bite on the G-string, and the young woman had to feed me the fabric, like I was a nursing child, then I fell pathetically face-down on the ground. It was not exactly what one might consider “erotic.” This was my only other experience with winning.
That was until today.
After being informed of my good fortune by the bottle cap, I dialed the phone number, as instructed, and talked to very pleasant young woman at your brewery who congratulated me. Twice. I counted. She explained that I had won a t-shirt, and I could either pick up my bounty at the brewery or mail my winning bottle cap with my address and T-shirt size to your fine establishment. I’ve chosen the latter, seeing as I live two and a half hours away in New Hampshire and have no immediate plans to visit Burlington. Although, good friends of my wife and mine used to live in Burlington and I’ve always found it to be a fine city; however, there are a few too many String Cheese pseudo-hippies who have failed to come to terms with two obvious facts: 1.) Jerry is dead, and 2.) Phish was never an adequate substitute.
So, my new friends, I proudly announce that my T-shirt size is a large (grande in case the manufacturer is French) and my address is:
Nathan Graziano
301 Porter St.
Manchester, NH 03103
By the way, Big Papi just hit a three-run walk-off homerun for the Red Sox. This is fixing to be the best day of my life.
Sincerely,
Nathan Graziano
End note: The t-shirt was received two weeks after this letter was mailed. It is an exceptional t-shirt: gray, heavy, durable, made of 90% cotton and 10% polyester, assembled in some sweat shop in El Salvador, and pre-shrunk, so it has not shrunk—even slightly—after multiple cycles in the dryer. However, I have found that I sweat excessively while wearing my prize and need to be especially vigilant in regards to physical exertion when wearing it. Ironically, I tend to sweat while drinking beer so I can’t wear it while tanking up.
19 October 2008
The Valley Below
by Christopher Cunningham
(this essay orginally appeared in a slightly different form at Upright)
An overcast day here in the ugly south; a cool wind blows, barely stirring the stagnant grey film that is suspended, like a body from a hangman's noose, in the thick moist air. There is the promise of storms and the last whirring buzz of insects before the winter is upon them, and an uneasy feeling of weight upon the shoulders, a feeling of pressure from an unseen source. These days everything feels like a sign of trouble, even the trembling of curled brown leaves on trembling tree limbs. Each conversation leads to contested definitions from flawed sources, each idea is twisted by ideology and agenda, each thought barely and rarely tested for truth. As the autumn wind blows and the dark clouds gather every narrowing of the eyes is a call to war.
These days we argue over the color of the sky even when there is no real argument, no room for debate. Some of us have lost the ability to discern opinion from truth, fact from slanted fiction. We are presented with a choice between a healthy meal and a shit sandwich and some remain “undecided.” But there is still some truth in the world, even as we are awash in both difficult shades of grey and staggering waves of gleefully willful ignorance; honest answers do still exist, actual tangible realities that cannot be debated, cannot be altered to fit a predetermined purpose. There remains the seeking nature of the human animal, desperate as long as his existence to find meaning, to discover joy, to investigate and explore the mysteries of life and understand our purpose as conscious, sentient beings on a glowing blue rock in the middle of a desolate black void. There is the desire for the bond between parent and child, the connection between man and woman, the coming together of good friends that can be called love, this selfless joining of humanity for something greater than themselves, something intangible.
There is, and has been, much that drives us as humans. There is much that divides and separates us as well. Most of us want to "make a mark" of some kind, and if we don't, we are satisfied with merely passing thru, hopefully trying to do no real harm as we go (though there are always exceptions to anything). We all define that "mark" differently; some of us seek a measure of enlightenment from our time here, a better understanding of ourselves and our place in a cold and uncaring universe, a greater depth of empathy and compassion with our fellow human beings and some hope for the future of all things. Some of us hope to create great works of art that elucidate the complexities of the human condition, art that explores our suffering natures and our inextinguishable endurance in the face of our inevitable mortality, art that sets out into the desert with no water, confident in an inexplicable outpouring of creativity from the ether. Some of us hope to raise families full of good people who contribute to society: tradesmen, craftsmen, teachers, leaders, police officers, firefighters, hard working men and women who make up the teeming legions that keep civilization functioning, who perform the necessary tasks to keep everyone safe, secure, educated and as happy as is possible.
But today, we find ourselves at a curious place, a place where many of us have a stranger goal in mind: to get rich. Middle class folks who think that dollars are the final arbiter of success, who consistently vote against their own interests, strive for some unattainable future wonderland of wealth and contentment. It is an outgrowth of a society that values the glittering surface more than the murky depths, a world where material gains are the measure of one’s worth; where money equals freedom, and not having any equals servitude in a variety of ways (the time clock, the credit card companies, impossible health insurance premiums, cheap unhealthy but affordable fast food, etc.). Some folks want to be rich, thinking an obscenity of wealth will bring with it peace, security and happiness. But it won’t. It never has. It never will.
I agree with the premise that in the world as we find it, we do have to have money and we do have to pay our bills. But none of the situations above (joy, family, love, the search for real meaning and especially the desperate need for a connection between one human and another) require an obscenity of wealth, and most of them require nothing from money short of the basic necessities like food and shelter, money that will be spent in the service of either empty, pre-disintegrated, planned-obsolescence consumerism or the generation of still more income for the bank account and for the inheritance of children who will one day not know what it means to make a living. And what do we all want out of life anyway? Happiness? Safety? Comfort? What? None of these can be purchased, even safety. Real safety is as much an illusion as sawing a woman in half. There is no avoiding death, no matter how hard we try, no matter the money we acquire, no matter the fortified walls we construct. There is nothing for it. All you are ever doing is postponing the inevitable (and why? to make more money?). So safety's out. And comfort? Sure you can buy a hundred soft couches but you can only sit on one at a time. Anything else is for the benefit of other people, anything large scale is so others can envy your acquisitions, your things, your stuff, which feeds the shallow ego that seeks only MORE. That thinking may satisfy in the short term, you can gloat about your "success," feel good about "making it,” but what happens when your wife dies? What happens when your kid gets leukemia? What happens when your livelihood is ripped from you by forces you can't control with any amount of money? Where do you go for that comfort, that safety, that happiness? Do you turn to your dollars, your investments or your property? Will that bring any solace when your heart is broken? Will a life spent in service to the concept of money, bowing at the high altar of "free market capitalism" (a fucking lie as our recent socialist takeover of private banks and so forth) with its Mafioso mentality of “hey, it’s just business” used to excuse even the most disturbing of personal transgressions against each other, be fulfilling if you've never experienced love? If you've ever sat in silence and marveled at the mystery and impossibility of each sunrise, vastly different from the one which preceded it and totally unlike the new dawn to follow, how do you compare the gain of another dollar in the totality of your life to such an experience of actually living?
For those unafraid of death via the religion gamble, you must be aware that money has NOTHING to do with why you are unafraid; you have a spiritual confidence in something greater than you, something that is outside the influence of men, and of human trivialities. Like money. You are confident that your salvation isn’t in the hands of the private sector, and isn’t for sale or barter. You have faith in an idea that exists outside of the inventions of men with worldly desires and fallibilities. Hell, and money, throughout the history of organized religion, has been a corrupting, not unifying, force that makes it possible to control the message of a religion. It doesn’t matter what I think about the afterlife, and it doesn’t make a difference to my philosophy or yours whether or not we have a dime between us.
Of course, numerous examples exist in the secular world of the leader/follower/innocent fellow “just-trying-to-get-ahead” being felled by greed and corruption: see ENRON and the screwing of many hardworking Americans for an example. We often forget that the financial landscape of modern capitalism is an invention of investors and bankers who wanted to make a bundle of money by charging interest on loaning same, as well as chopping up our enormous personal debts into saleable packages to leverage into billions and billions. Their goal was to make more money. Further, we find our political lives shaped by the influence of vast sums of money. Look at ol' Tom Delay and the “K Street Project;” a venture full of such luminaries as criminal thug Jack Abramoff, where the world of lobbyists was bent to the will of the Republican party (the dominant party with all the control), neatly subverting the electoral will of the American People, by padding all positions with party loyalists and cronies, a revolving door of private sector cash infusions, illegal backroom deals and CEOs cum Senators cum Lobbyists crafting laws designed to maintain the status quo/financial power structure. Look at John McCain's entire fucking campaign staff. And what, pray tell, in our Brave New World is the measure of power? Yes indeed: money. If you have enough, you can even disrupt the proper course of our so-called democracy, rendering those who lack wealth powerless, without influence over the workings of their very lives, screaming in a deafening silence. Capitalism, and the “free market economy,” a clearly irresponsible misnomer, are designed to have winners and losers; it’s the nature of the beast.
So what have I expended this much space to say? Just this: there are measures of a life well lived, a life spent fully alive in service to the very mystery of our humanity, a life aware of the fragility of our perch here spinning around a ball of fire in the darkness. There are ways to recline on our death beds and be assured of that good life lived, and none of them include being "rich;" no one will think, "boy I wish I could have got one dollar more" or "I'm glad I spent every moment at my job" and you can bet if that is how they think, they lost a lot more than they gained. The old saw "you can't take it with you" is a cliche for a reason. But what you can take with you up to the very edge of the great unknown are the experiences: the memories, the loves that burned into your soul, the pain of loss, that hand you hold as you pass away from the material into the deep mystery of what comes after. These intangibles will be more real than any house, any yacht, any limo, more real than anything made and sold by men.
I know that money can do good works in the world, just as it can be bent to the will of the savage. It's a tool that reflects its holder. That's not the point. The point is, being rich isn't any kind of measure of a life well lived. Money isn’t the measure of one’s success. Money has nothing to do with how kind a person is, how well one’s lived. It's simply no "goal" to have. Your goals may include family, happiness, safety, peace, long life, and so forth but again, money cannot be what defines your time here. We do what we must to pay our bills and keep ourselves alive, but is the pursuit of large sums of such a meaningless concept as money a worthwhile goal? I mean, under the right circumstances, wouldn't the barter of goods and services among dedicated craftspeople with specialties other societal members lack be just as effective for maintaining a community? Surely not on the worldwide scale of humanity today, but hypothetically, wouldn't you be able to eat and clothe yourself? Couldn’t you take care of your family, build a shelter, etc.? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone to be good at their jobs because those jobs kept everyone alive and healthy? I mean, it all comes down to the necessities in the end.
Money is easy; ask any poker player. They'll tell you that money is just a stack of colored clay chips worth nothing. It is the life away from the table that is hard, and also the most rewarding.
(this essay orginally appeared in a slightly different form at Upright)
An overcast day here in the ugly south; a cool wind blows, barely stirring the stagnant grey film that is suspended, like a body from a hangman's noose, in the thick moist air. There is the promise of storms and the last whirring buzz of insects before the winter is upon them, and an uneasy feeling of weight upon the shoulders, a feeling of pressure from an unseen source. These days everything feels like a sign of trouble, even the trembling of curled brown leaves on trembling tree limbs. Each conversation leads to contested definitions from flawed sources, each idea is twisted by ideology and agenda, each thought barely and rarely tested for truth. As the autumn wind blows and the dark clouds gather every narrowing of the eyes is a call to war.
These days we argue over the color of the sky even when there is no real argument, no room for debate. Some of us have lost the ability to discern opinion from truth, fact from slanted fiction. We are presented with a choice between a healthy meal and a shit sandwich and some remain “undecided.” But there is still some truth in the world, even as we are awash in both difficult shades of grey and staggering waves of gleefully willful ignorance; honest answers do still exist, actual tangible realities that cannot be debated, cannot be altered to fit a predetermined purpose. There remains the seeking nature of the human animal, desperate as long as his existence to find meaning, to discover joy, to investigate and explore the mysteries of life and understand our purpose as conscious, sentient beings on a glowing blue rock in the middle of a desolate black void. There is the desire for the bond between parent and child, the connection between man and woman, the coming together of good friends that can be called love, this selfless joining of humanity for something greater than themselves, something intangible.
There is, and has been, much that drives us as humans. There is much that divides and separates us as well. Most of us want to "make a mark" of some kind, and if we don't, we are satisfied with merely passing thru, hopefully trying to do no real harm as we go (though there are always exceptions to anything). We all define that "mark" differently; some of us seek a measure of enlightenment from our time here, a better understanding of ourselves and our place in a cold and uncaring universe, a greater depth of empathy and compassion with our fellow human beings and some hope for the future of all things. Some of us hope to create great works of art that elucidate the complexities of the human condition, art that explores our suffering natures and our inextinguishable endurance in the face of our inevitable mortality, art that sets out into the desert with no water, confident in an inexplicable outpouring of creativity from the ether. Some of us hope to raise families full of good people who contribute to society: tradesmen, craftsmen, teachers, leaders, police officers, firefighters, hard working men and women who make up the teeming legions that keep civilization functioning, who perform the necessary tasks to keep everyone safe, secure, educated and as happy as is possible.
But today, we find ourselves at a curious place, a place where many of us have a stranger goal in mind: to get rich. Middle class folks who think that dollars are the final arbiter of success, who consistently vote against their own interests, strive for some unattainable future wonderland of wealth and contentment. It is an outgrowth of a society that values the glittering surface more than the murky depths, a world where material gains are the measure of one’s worth; where money equals freedom, and not having any equals servitude in a variety of ways (the time clock, the credit card companies, impossible health insurance premiums, cheap unhealthy but affordable fast food, etc.). Some folks want to be rich, thinking an obscenity of wealth will bring with it peace, security and happiness. But it won’t. It never has. It never will.
I agree with the premise that in the world as we find it, we do have to have money and we do have to pay our bills. But none of the situations above (joy, family, love, the search for real meaning and especially the desperate need for a connection between one human and another) require an obscenity of wealth, and most of them require nothing from money short of the basic necessities like food and shelter, money that will be spent in the service of either empty, pre-disintegrated, planned-obsolescence consumerism or the generation of still more income for the bank account and for the inheritance of children who will one day not know what it means to make a living. And what do we all want out of life anyway? Happiness? Safety? Comfort? What? None of these can be purchased, even safety. Real safety is as much an illusion as sawing a woman in half. There is no avoiding death, no matter how hard we try, no matter the money we acquire, no matter the fortified walls we construct. There is nothing for it. All you are ever doing is postponing the inevitable (and why? to make more money?). So safety's out. And comfort? Sure you can buy a hundred soft couches but you can only sit on one at a time. Anything else is for the benefit of other people, anything large scale is so others can envy your acquisitions, your things, your stuff, which feeds the shallow ego that seeks only MORE. That thinking may satisfy in the short term, you can gloat about your "success," feel good about "making it,” but what happens when your wife dies? What happens when your kid gets leukemia? What happens when your livelihood is ripped from you by forces you can't control with any amount of money? Where do you go for that comfort, that safety, that happiness? Do you turn to your dollars, your investments or your property? Will that bring any solace when your heart is broken? Will a life spent in service to the concept of money, bowing at the high altar of "free market capitalism" (a fucking lie as our recent socialist takeover of private banks and so forth) with its Mafioso mentality of “hey, it’s just business” used to excuse even the most disturbing of personal transgressions against each other, be fulfilling if you've never experienced love? If you've ever sat in silence and marveled at the mystery and impossibility of each sunrise, vastly different from the one which preceded it and totally unlike the new dawn to follow, how do you compare the gain of another dollar in the totality of your life to such an experience of actually living?
For those unafraid of death via the religion gamble, you must be aware that money has NOTHING to do with why you are unafraid; you have a spiritual confidence in something greater than you, something that is outside the influence of men, and of human trivialities. Like money. You are confident that your salvation isn’t in the hands of the private sector, and isn’t for sale or barter. You have faith in an idea that exists outside of the inventions of men with worldly desires and fallibilities. Hell, and money, throughout the history of organized religion, has been a corrupting, not unifying, force that makes it possible to control the message of a religion. It doesn’t matter what I think about the afterlife, and it doesn’t make a difference to my philosophy or yours whether or not we have a dime between us.
Of course, numerous examples exist in the secular world of the leader/follower/innocent fellow “just-trying-to-get-ahead” being felled by greed and corruption: see ENRON and the screwing of many hardworking Americans for an example. We often forget that the financial landscape of modern capitalism is an invention of investors and bankers who wanted to make a bundle of money by charging interest on loaning same, as well as chopping up our enormous personal debts into saleable packages to leverage into billions and billions. Their goal was to make more money. Further, we find our political lives shaped by the influence of vast sums of money. Look at ol' Tom Delay and the “K Street Project;” a venture full of such luminaries as criminal thug Jack Abramoff, where the world of lobbyists was bent to the will of the Republican party (the dominant party with all the control), neatly subverting the electoral will of the American People, by padding all positions with party loyalists and cronies, a revolving door of private sector cash infusions, illegal backroom deals and CEOs cum Senators cum Lobbyists crafting laws designed to maintain the status quo/financial power structure. Look at John McCain's entire fucking campaign staff. And what, pray tell, in our Brave New World is the measure of power? Yes indeed: money. If you have enough, you can even disrupt the proper course of our so-called democracy, rendering those who lack wealth powerless, without influence over the workings of their very lives, screaming in a deafening silence. Capitalism, and the “free market economy,” a clearly irresponsible misnomer, are designed to have winners and losers; it’s the nature of the beast.
So what have I expended this much space to say? Just this: there are measures of a life well lived, a life spent fully alive in service to the very mystery of our humanity, a life aware of the fragility of our perch here spinning around a ball of fire in the darkness. There are ways to recline on our death beds and be assured of that good life lived, and none of them include being "rich;" no one will think, "boy I wish I could have got one dollar more" or "I'm glad I spent every moment at my job" and you can bet if that is how they think, they lost a lot more than they gained. The old saw "you can't take it with you" is a cliche for a reason. But what you can take with you up to the very edge of the great unknown are the experiences: the memories, the loves that burned into your soul, the pain of loss, that hand you hold as you pass away from the material into the deep mystery of what comes after. These intangibles will be more real than any house, any yacht, any limo, more real than anything made and sold by men.
I know that money can do good works in the world, just as it can be bent to the will of the savage. It's a tool that reflects its holder. That's not the point. The point is, being rich isn't any kind of measure of a life well lived. Money isn’t the measure of one’s success. Money has nothing to do with how kind a person is, how well one’s lived. It's simply no "goal" to have. Your goals may include family, happiness, safety, peace, long life, and so forth but again, money cannot be what defines your time here. We do what we must to pay our bills and keep ourselves alive, but is the pursuit of large sums of such a meaningless concept as money a worthwhile goal? I mean, under the right circumstances, wouldn't the barter of goods and services among dedicated craftspeople with specialties other societal members lack be just as effective for maintaining a community? Surely not on the worldwide scale of humanity today, but hypothetically, wouldn't you be able to eat and clothe yourself? Couldn’t you take care of your family, build a shelter, etc.? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone to be good at their jobs because those jobs kept everyone alive and healthy? I mean, it all comes down to the necessities in the end.
Money is easy; ask any poker player. They'll tell you that money is just a stack of colored clay chips worth nothing. It is the life away from the table that is hard, and also the most rewarding.
17 October 2008
Begin Transmission...
Welcome.
ATKE hopes to bring you thoughtful essays, insane rants and intrepid discussion about the political and social landscape of our world, post-American Dream.
Submissions are open. We'll be posting more about what we're looking for soon. Send only your very best work to
alongtheknifesedge[at]gmail[dot]com
and we'll get back to you.
ATKE hopes to bring you thoughtful essays, insane rants and intrepid discussion about the political and social landscape of our world, post-American Dream.
Submissions are open. We'll be posting more about what we're looking for soon. Send only your very best work to
alongtheknifesedge[at]gmail[dot]com
and we'll get back to you.
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