That Last Small Shard

by Christopher Cunningham

The dusk approaches here in the deep south and the final glittering rays of a long day cut thru the gold and red autumn leaves left hanging on the skeletal limbs. The light scatters across the cool ground, over the collapsing garden, the overgrown grasses, the dust and dirt where the dogs rumble. We've passed thru the ugly swelter of summer and made it thru what seems like years of stale and stagnant heat and now find ourselves at the brink of something large and strange, something without real shape, without definition. We look over the edge and cannot fathom what lies beyond the edge of this weird precipice, what our future might hold. It might be a place of hope, but who can really say? Having come thru the last eight years with the shreds of our humanity and the remnants of our spirit hanging in rough tatters from our bones, we are not prepared to hazard a guess. The apparatus of the police state remains in place, the consolidated power of the executive branch remains, the rights we lost during the Bush administration have not yet been restored, the racist rhetoric from the willfully ignorant grows more and more virulent (especially the closer we get to possibly having a *gasp* Black Man in the Oval Office), the dollar continues to collapse, weak Democratic leaders are still running the show (Reid and Pelosi), droves of war criminals, thieves, zealots, con artists, perverts and psychopaths are all going to remain at large, and etc.

But here under this fading southern sun we still manage to dig deep down into the stinking muck of the last eight years under neocon/corpofascist rule and unearth one more fragment of hope for the human animal. As the grey days of winter approach, we still manage to believe that enough of us, after repeatedly smashing our fingers with a hammer and wondering why our fingers hurt so fucking much and then doing it again and again and again, will eventually stop smashing our own fingers; that at some point we must realize it is WE who are doing the smashing and WE have the power to stop it. Sure, there will always be the freak who gets off on the pain; we can never persuade such malformations of humanity that some things are TRUE and not open to debate. We can never change the minds of idiots who grin with glee as they work with endless determination to tear down the very construct of their own sad and pathetic lives, simpletons who are terrified that some OTHER is going to somehow come and steal their trailer, their Walmart card, their fifteen year old pickup truck or the seven bucks in their tattered leather wallet. And we shouldn't waste our energy trying. Ken Kesey said, "Put your good where it will do the most." That's the only way to look at things you cannot change. You can't save all the stray dogs in the world no matter how much you might wish to do so. Let em have their hammer and stay the fuck out of their way (until they wander over into your yard swinging that stupid thing; then they'll have to be dealt with in The Proper Fashion).

All we can really do is stare into that dark empty space before us and imagine a blank canvas where we can project that last spark, that last small shard of diamond dust glinting, that last drive and determination to manufacture hope out of the smoking remains of the American Dream. All we can do is be glad that we still possess the capacity for laughter, the capacity for song.

Here we allow ourselves a moment to chuckle approaching the eve of something potentially historic, on the cusp of something we cannot predict, at the birth and unfolding of a whole new era of "unknown unknowns." We allow ourselves five minutes of hope before we get back to making sure whatever good parts of humanity that are left still live on by making art, by growing as much of our own food as we can, by doing as little harm as we can, by helping each other and paying close attention to our world, to our government, to our surroundings, and by actively participating in the unfolding actuality of our lives, uncolored by delusion, unfounded opinion, mistaken patriotism, blissful ignorance or useless superstition. Here we continue to endure. We stand in those fading rays and smile in the small bit of warmth that covers us, and enjoy the feeling of possibility.

And we get ready for what is to come.
 

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.
 

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 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.