I had a friend tell me recently of the following story. It was some years ago, she was at a big concert, one of those dusty arena-style festivals with several bands lots of sun dirt and expensive beer. The kind that makes you want to almost believe that you are free and can go go go in this eternal moment and that indeed, this eternal moment is one of which you do not have to let go….Or maybe it was all the acid, which by the way was an essential part of her story….so anyhow here she was, tripping, and they—her and her guests in tow—had just settled down into their spot to start to indulge when the giant tower of sound in the middle of the arena before them suddenly cast on in a dismantled if not harrowing glow. A cartoon was being broadcasted on a screen that was part of the soundwall’s several-storied side. What astounded my friend, as she watched in glued seduction, was the way the crowd simultaneously reacted: heightened in senses as she was, she and her buddies slackjawed in awe watched as the entire mass of thousands in the field below literally all turned slow-motion style and as one, as if inextricably linked to the television sound, surrendered for just a moment all consciousness and motion and ability to let go.
It was a South Park episode on the screen, one of the first, and Jesus was standing there in his million-pixilated animated glory. The crowd was aghast and as One….worshipping that which brought them all surrendered, to a Pause, just for a moment. So powerfull was that great giant wall of sound.
It gets me to thinking. I don’t have TV of any kind, and haven’t for some time(ok at Anngar we did have three channels). It’s always funny to me to see the subtle reality-manipulation people willingly and daily submit themselves to when for example, like today, I end up in a place that’s under the influence of the giant dancing blue screen. I am writing right now from the car dealership where CNN is on go go go.
“Nothing that has been substantiated,” says this woman all grimfaced and poor-souled. She is talking about reports that a terrorist threat had come to NY’s subway in September of this year. Nothing has been substantiated. Nothing except a great giant dose of subconscious fear now, thanks Lady to you! And on the busiest travel day of the year!
Seriously!?!? Seriously do people give their power away to a freaking metal mechanism like this? To these pitiful spirit hungry talking heads? Awwww people, don’t you get it? What you focus on you create. And what you resist, especially, persists.
Awww, so be it than, Poor Americans. Poor poor consumers. No wonder we are so, in these moments, down-trodden. So be it then, I say. Maybe looking at the floor, looking so grim, will be what it takes to get you all to finally look within.
I shake my head.
Then say, Amen. If this is life, so be it. I, on the other hand, shall choose great-full exception.
Or, if done as choice, it's not exception, is it? Awareness, maybe. Or just luckiness I suppose?
Great List of Things to Be Grateful for cont.
23. My health, my perspective... Hands up outstretched heart open at the sun Thank you so much for the fine health of my spirit, for my creative health, my creative heart, my emotional health, my emotional peace, my mental health, my mental joy, my physical health, my physical blessings, my spirit full of clarity and all the gifts in this moment.....
24. The World which by virtue of its very existence (infinity people, remember infinity? so long as there's infinity there's absolute unlimited potential...your choice, how's it gonna be) is a world of gifts and miracles to me...Thank you so much for the gifts of this day, the gifts in this world, the many gifts and blessings of joy I experience this and everyday. Thank you so much for my harmony, my safety, my guidance, clarity and security. For my blessings and my worth and my heart and my soul I give thanks, I am thank-full-ness walking.....
Showing posts with label dumb americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dumb americans. Show all posts
November 26, 2008
November 3, 2008
To a Guy I'll Name Owl or WHY I'M VOTING TOMORROW
Okay. I've held out long and hard on this one--I mean really, for someone wordy as I, I've really managed to stay away. But...
Tomorrow, of course, is election day. And I've gotta say, there are lots of reasons I've purposefully stayed uninvolved this year. The main one is that I think we are a nation of corruption and dishonesty, in a system that's broken, and I prefer to work on the grass-roots level in the local municipalities to put change that I can see in to action. I am disheartened, and have been, at the greed and shameless self-interest that masquerades in the Western world as the American Dream; at the excess of consumerism that we value under the label of Freedom, at the mindless circle that this system has created and at the personal powerless that strikes me whenever I look bluntly at the truth: that I, too, live as part of this lifestyle. That I can't not.
We as a people for the first time ever have the economic, intellectual and technological resources to feed every person the world over, to cloth every one, to see children educated and housed. And yet we don't. This is astounding to me. Simply, quite bone-baring common-sensical dumbfoundedly simple: why don't we, as a basic human species, take care of each other? Period. There is absolutely no excuse not to. This is just common sense people. Ethical evolution, it's the final frontier, it's the only one that truly matters. It's what will save us. Or, if continued to lack, will finally break us.
The rest of it is just pundit powwow and bullshit.
This leads me to my opinion on tomorrow, and to why I am voting, even though I think it's all broken and the whole sick "free"-market pillaging that we call "free-trade" backed as it is by bought politicians backed by corporate-funded lobbyists is nothing but a big, eye-rolling joke and not worth my energy. (There is no such thing as limitless anything. It does not exist. It is a scientifically impossible principle. Right down to the atom: equal parts negative and positive charges are what fire life. Everything has its balance. Capless "wealth" comes at the expense then of it's opposite, insatiable ravaging that quite literally sucks opportunity from the lowest classes in the most bottom of places, making millions of human lives, that is valuing humanity at a literally less than even average status quo--setting the standard of what is livable--what is HUMAN--at ten cents a day in the factories overseas that finance our vainglory. It sucks, it is disgusting, and that I am a living part of it, if I think too much about it, MAKES ME SICK.) So yeah, though I think that operating within this heartless system is pointless, here is why I am going to vote tomorrow:
Martin Luther King. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and his death almost single-handedly stopped in its tracks the momentous roll of the Civil Rights Movement, on the public front. Here's the deal gang. We hear these phrases in this country, like "Black" History or The "Women's" Rights Movement and we take for granted that special interests or movements have all but taken care of themselves, that they are polarized subsets and exist in isolated bans that are far away from us. And so long as we think that, it is true. But the truth is this: Black History, Women's History, this is OUR history. If you are alive and a citizen of the US today then the history of black slavery and subjugation and of the slow and powerful rise of an entire community of Americans from this degraded state is a part of YOUR history too, as an American. If you are an American than the story of the suffragettes and the Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees women the same rights as men and that HAS NOT BEEN PASSED even though it has come up in every congress since 1920!! is a part OF YOUR HISTORY. Period. And if you believe in change, if you believe you can be the change, as King did, as his hero Ghandi taught, or as Lucretia Mott did, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Sarah Palin, each of whom are changing the myth of America by the action, judged good or bad who cares, that each of them are taking--then you are alive and there's hope, there's still a fighting chance out there. To be the change. And to continue to evolve this story of us Americans. Of how good we can be, one by one. These stories aren't over, black history or women's history or our history, all of us, as a Nation, divided but one because the very concept of equality inherently implies differences and thank god for that. I will vote because at the end of the day we all are very different. We all are varied and many in all our beliefs. But thank god we can fight to tell and continue to evolve our stories, our history. Thank god for the many of us still devoted to being the change and for the opportunity to talk about it, to try, if we choose, to live it a little out loud---
at least the hell I've still got the right to actively, and out loud, be that change. So I'll vote for the hope of it, for the power of it, for what I will continue in my heart to believe is right.
Tomorrow, of course, is election day. And I've gotta say, there are lots of reasons I've purposefully stayed uninvolved this year. The main one is that I think we are a nation of corruption and dishonesty, in a system that's broken, and I prefer to work on the grass-roots level in the local municipalities to put change that I can see in to action. I am disheartened, and have been, at the greed and shameless self-interest that masquerades in the Western world as the American Dream; at the excess of consumerism that we value under the label of Freedom, at the mindless circle that this system has created and at the personal powerless that strikes me whenever I look bluntly at the truth: that I, too, live as part of this lifestyle. That I can't not.
We as a people for the first time ever have the economic, intellectual and technological resources to feed every person the world over, to cloth every one, to see children educated and housed. And yet we don't. This is astounding to me. Simply, quite bone-baring common-sensical dumbfoundedly simple: why don't we, as a basic human species, take care of each other? Period. There is absolutely no excuse not to. This is just common sense people. Ethical evolution, it's the final frontier, it's the only one that truly matters. It's what will save us. Or, if continued to lack, will finally break us.
The rest of it is just pundit powwow and bullshit.
This leads me to my opinion on tomorrow, and to why I am voting, even though I think it's all broken and the whole sick "free"-market pillaging that we call "free-trade" backed as it is by bought politicians backed by corporate-funded lobbyists is nothing but a big, eye-rolling joke and not worth my energy. (There is no such thing as limitless anything. It does not exist. It is a scientifically impossible principle. Right down to the atom: equal parts negative and positive charges are what fire life. Everything has its balance. Capless "wealth" comes at the expense then of it's opposite, insatiable ravaging that quite literally sucks opportunity from the lowest classes in the most bottom of places, making millions of human lives, that is valuing humanity at a literally less than even average status quo--setting the standard of what is livable--what is HUMAN--at ten cents a day in the factories overseas that finance our vainglory. It sucks, it is disgusting, and that I am a living part of it, if I think too much about it, MAKES ME SICK.) So yeah, though I think that operating within this heartless system is pointless, here is why I am going to vote tomorrow:
Martin Luther King. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and his death almost single-handedly stopped in its tracks the momentous roll of the Civil Rights Movement, on the public front. Here's the deal gang. We hear these phrases in this country, like "Black" History or The "Women's" Rights Movement and we take for granted that special interests or movements have all but taken care of themselves, that they are polarized subsets and exist in isolated bans that are far away from us. And so long as we think that, it is true. But the truth is this: Black History, Women's History, this is OUR history. If you are alive and a citizen of the US today then the history of black slavery and subjugation and of the slow and powerful rise of an entire community of Americans from this degraded state is a part of YOUR history too, as an American. If you are an American than the story of the suffragettes and the Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees women the same rights as men and that HAS NOT BEEN PASSED even though it has come up in every congress since 1920!! is a part OF YOUR HISTORY. Period. And if you believe in change, if you believe you can be the change, as King did, as his hero Ghandi taught, or as Lucretia Mott did, or Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Sarah Palin, each of whom are changing the myth of America by the action, judged good or bad who cares, that each of them are taking--then you are alive and there's hope, there's still a fighting chance out there. To be the change. And to continue to evolve this story of us Americans. Of how good we can be, one by one. These stories aren't over, black history or women's history or our history, all of us, as a Nation, divided but one because the very concept of equality inherently implies differences and thank god for that. I will vote because at the end of the day we all are very different. We all are varied and many in all our beliefs. But thank god we can fight to tell and continue to evolve our stories, our history. Thank god for the many of us still devoted to being the change and for the opportunity to talk about it, to try, if we choose, to live it a little out loud---
at least the hell I've still got the right to actively, and out loud, be that change. So I'll vote for the hope of it, for the power of it, for what I will continue in my heart to believe is right.
October 10, 2008
The sky was so big the night you flew
So I struggle w my experience and how it relates to what goes on here. And by here I mean the Internet, and by the Internet I mean that pinhead of the pinnacle experience of what it means to be human: where culture-readily-creates-art and vice-versa, where art-creates-culture.
I've always hearkened more towards the art-creating-culture side. This is the rebel artist in me, the antic spirit that craves and comes alive at underground movements, at the change on the periphery edge that minutely, than wholly, affects society. The post punk-rock riot-grrrl in the eighties that preempted the nineties Decade of the Woman when I came of age; the Diane diPrima pre-beat fifties near the village and suffering outside San Francisco that grew Kerouac's poetic-expressive-BOOM; the black folks in country churches and a thousand nameless preachers who finally found their name in King and the movement of all movements that continues to this day; this experience, this movement through our words and our voices which is the force of Triumph, and all of the work that comes before the momentum is finally built and the people, thus Society, finally tips....The Underground stuff. The reason we keep the journey...
But I LOVE in a neurotic obsession kinda way the culture-creating-art thing, too. I mean let's be honest here and look at the art that we as dominant Western Society most venerate. It's easy found on TV--Access Hollywood, TMZ, Entertainment Tonight. I voyeur with my tongue hanging out, or contrastingly with my tongue tsking in judgment, but either way I cling on pop-culture's "edge" to the extreme. I may not go so far as to emulate superstars in my lifestyle choices, like who and how they vote or what their "crib" or "ride" looks like or if they are going green or whatnot but let me just tell you, my fashion-diva, that secret-hidden loud-car-singing inner-pop-superstar trapped inside me absolutely goes wild over the sexy fashions, the highlegged boots or lowback spaghetti straps that I see on TV or in the pages of the magazine...And I'm allright with this, I've learned how, in my adult life, to be loving of Kelly in all the different, if not funny and seemingly at times conflicting parts, that make me go....
What all this comes to is the fact that I want to be edgy here. On the Internet where I, like trillions, have something to say I want to be cool and looked at on this blog w the same eyes that look so lustily, either in judgment or covetousness, at pop-drama. I want you to come here and for me me to have the latest scoop on the flyest site for vintage fall mini-dresses and brand new wayout leather boots and I want to cue you in first cuz I'm the hippest to the best underground house that's on at all the Baltimore parties and throw a thing or two in there about how the same stuff is being touted right now in the lounges of Berlin where, by the way, suchandsuch is the best tapas food that they are currently eating... And Politics! I want to be smart and funny and savvy and one step ahead of the latest convictions to subscribe to and showing off what an activist's heart and intellectual mind I've got and also I want to be able to name drop and lead the way among the who's who with the what what from within the scene. I want my sassy redhot spirit seen and to be known!
But ahhh, I the Fool. I have to remind myself that the edgy choice I can make HERE is to be honest from the truest parts of me, and write about my Truth, about what I believe matters. And trust in my voice both gaining and giving strength to the Authentic Function of Things as we go on....
All that said, my friend Charlie died last night. I loved him. And he is done suffering now. Five years ago in the middle of a doghot summer I was all fucked-up one night cuz my holmes Mike had just committed suicide. This guy, Mike, he used to tell a story so good that it made you laugh out loud again later when you were looking back on and recapping the night. And his stories were always full with lies. So how could any of us have known that it was true what he said that he was facing real prison time for violating probation the second time he supposedly got caught w lots of drugs...Hell we thought the first time he supposedly got caught coming "through from Eugene with all those dirty hippy heads" was nothing but a juiced-up story anyhow! So Mike killed himself instead of prison. It took me years to get through that, survivor's guilt. By the time Mike died I'd been clean three years and was trying to learn the boundaries of good friendship while being protective of my sobriety, too. With him and I, at the time of his death, it wasn't going so well. So he died and I tortured myself and ran from that torture and hurt a whole lot. That same week as his suicide, this man Charlie who, while I was getting clean, had become like a grandfather-mentor to me, saw me out one night and took me aside and said here, I got this for you. Charlie didn't know about Mike's death but for some reason he called me over and tucked in my hand a little metal token that had an angel on one side and the following on the other: Guardian Angel Protect us all, Giving Strength When we might fall, Watching, guiding, Lighting the way, Thru the night, and every day. I couldn't cry yet when Charlie gave that to me cuz Mike's death was super fresh and I was still stunned and with shock and partly with the anger but later when I cried a ton I put that token in a medicine bag and hung it around the rearview mirror of Bran's truck and that's what guided our way when we went travelling, and I running, in 2004.
About a month ago, a little more, I found that token again when I was insanely cleaning my house and sweeping cobwebs with kittyfur from the hardwood floors and out of the corners under the beds in all our upstairs rooms. The token was under my bed. It was the same week that I had to accept that cancer was going to take Charlie, my wise and more, my wisecracking mentor and stable guide and friend.
I don't understand Life and what works and how it all goes and how life is life but life dies but also how Nature shows that all that dies, grows. What I do know is that grief breaks your heart but only so that your heart can grow even bigger where the hurt broke out. It's how we flesh out and become even more whole, even fuller versions of our self. My experience in this life is it's not what we say, or what we like, or even what we claim. It's how we be. And also, that there is this big force, not apart from me but of me and I of it, this force which is steady there and which also creates me and I it. Life. I believe in this force. I found some good words for it just today:
For moments I belong
to the pure and poison ocean;
to the pure and poison ocean;
I love life. I love this sacred mundane experience, love it so much that I love it on TV, I love it in my friends, in hot fall boots that I shake and get all inside lusty over, I love it in working too many hours in a new job that never seems to end. I love it in the corn getting cut down and the music on the radio and the obscure music and shows I find on the web. I love it sobbing on the backroads of the deep shore of Maryland with dark trees and an orange sky. I love it. I love that I get to live it. I love that I get to write about it and that writing about it makes me love my love even more.
Here is what Charlie asked me to read when his life is honored and remembered and he is officially laid to rest on Monday. It is called the Prayer of St. Francis.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
God bless you my friend! You did so good. Travel well my angel. I love you. Amen amen amen.
September 16, 2008
i am anamericanconsumer i am anamericanconsumer i am (say it with me) anamericanconsumer...does this life-style ever end!?: when the economy goes down the toilet best thing to do is flaunt your junk....literally. wow. i am laughing, and exasperating, out loud right now, wondering if it's true what i sometimes think that after this life-through ends i will be delivered back to that shining white tree-full land from where i came and they will be like, so, could you even believe being human???
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