Place Holder

There is some meditative practice which I have never learned, which leads the mind to stillness. There are bodily rehearsals which I will never accomplish which remove the mind from a flow at one with qi. There is kung-fu or skill which I will never master which could allow me finally to deploy my metaphorical blade, of words, to find that space between to separate that which only apparently was conjoined. To split apart the armour, of words, and let some light in.

My mind quiets only at the end of a wild drive, through an ice storm, passing overturned and spun out trucks and sports-cars, driving much of the time with only my little finger, finally with jazz on the radio playing as though in some living room, the sound system is that good, into the inky and greasy mist of New York City. This drive was that insane, and yet only into that final tumult was my mind fully reciting ommmmmmmmmmmm.

Right to my daughter's doorstep, right through Wall St. canyons, still not losing my fine sense of direction, I traced my geographic mandala to its source and its conclusion, hardly stopping, and even, still, enjoying the cabby's look at those streets. My car now, at 300,000 miles approaching what a cab does, and starting also to show those rattles which cabs all used to have. My own hips from driving, feeling the way those cabs used to sound, and needing new ones like the newer cabs, all so miraculously smooth. That's the main thing which has changed in New York. The cabs no longer rattle. They have fine joint replacements.

I still enjoy threading through the maze, and accelerating to keep the pace of the stop lights up or down the avenues, finding impossible squeezes through and among pedestrians or construction or other fast moving objects who also must master that same flow, with awareness almost not aware, though never insane like what they do on freeways in L.A. I can only imagine.

Thank God I have a quiet reptile brain, which would keep obsessive compulsive types returning to check the water the lights the locks before leaving this home or that one. Mine only sends me back for what I've actually forgotten, the screwdriver to remove the cover frame so that the boat can be transported. But not, apparently, the flashlight for removal after dark. I'd need a human brain for that; one which wouldn't go roaring past the pornographic undersides of upended monster trucks and SUVs, amazed that there can be enough first responders in reserve to be there already, though the hulk still steams and spins its wheels.

I drink whenever I return from long drives. I drink to endure the imprisonment of sitting still. I drink not to excess, just to the point of falling asleep in the midst of Julie & Julia which would inform me about how people make proper new beginnings writing blogs or learning how to master a man's world. My pacing is all wrong, and the rate of imbibing exceeds the attention I can spend on the moving picture, never feeling sleepy at the wheel no matter how over my edge I've driven. Well, unless and until it's maybe 3 AM, at which point the road starts jumping around. The way the movie does, and I'm asleep.

This reptile brain in human beings has such a fine and important function. It only signals "fit" or "not" taking stock of the entire picture the way a good film must while cutting shots from different angles made at different times. In an unquiet mind, the reptile brain keeps calling shots, compelling returns to something which must be laid out perfectly, and only then will allow hazarding out. Pieces all arranged. The ritual prayer. They have pills for that now.

Our major industries now also defeating themselves, railing against publicly funded healthcare, when really the level playing field would so relieve them of their burden. Or perhaps they really do just want slaves, beholden to their largesse in granting, what, insurance? Railing against regulation for the sake of the environment or the stability of the financial system, when there are very very few who prefer to operate as sociopaths, denying claims to patients to whom they're bound by contract. Secreting poisons beneath their very own earth. They truly only want that everyone should be playing by the same rules, except that they are afraid to lose their advantage.

The cappo at the top, now there's the real sociopath, who makes so much so much money on everyone else's fear, and so the team spirit overcomes the worker bees and they actually do start to believe that what is good for the company is actually good for the world and certainly for them. No different, really, than the person who gets a charge out of cheating on their taxes. Winning - getting the better of - someone in a financial dealing. It's all good.

Until it goes bad. Along my way yesterday - no, it was the day before the day before already - I endured some earnest theologian from the "9/11 Truth Commission." He was convincing. He doesn't know who brought down the World Trade Towers, but he knows it couldn't have been those planes alone. He knows that Cheney and Rumsfeld were in the middle of it. He knows that Bush's brother owned the company with the security contracts on the buildings.

On the outside, we all wonder at the code of silence which could keep such an operation secret. We want to know only about the families of the people on those planes, if they were fictional, and are pretty certain they couldn't be in on any conspiracy, no matter how cleverly written.

So, were the planes then filled with explosives of the sort to melt steel? And were the buildings also peppered? And were the pilots secretly guided or goaded in their grim design? Or were there only acts of omission, to allow an opportunity to be taken opportunistically for a design already set on some other level?

We do know that every smart bomb which is launched, or for that matter manufactured, will already be known to kill that many innocent civilians. We do know and accept these rationalizations, and buy the argument of collateral damage. We know how many more both of the innocent and of our own so poorly paid soldiers would have been killed with and by and behind the older cruder weapons. Once the objective is accepted, then the collateral damage must be accepted as well.

Getting the objective accepted is by far the more difficult part, and one might say the collateral there was also that much more finely tuned than was even the case with Pearl Harbor. I think that is what this "truth commission" claims. That the objective would not be accepted unless and until some precisely calibrated collateral damage became accomplished. And maybe there was even some secret knowledge that the Trade Towers would have to come down. Were already weakened. Were already targeted. Would fit the bill.

The American people are that unlikely to accept the fact of carnage and mayhem in our future when the oil runs out before we have prepared for it. So that even the stepping up of our addiction becomes a tactic in a strategic war for true world domination. I'm fairly certain that these are the games which get played in Skull and Bones. I'm pretty sure these folks are prepped for world domination. Only ever negotiating price and timetable and musical directors' chair.

These things are perfectly obvious, and require no conspiracy theorizing to confirm. So many of us feel bad for Tiger Woods, now that his behavior has been outed as at some odds with his fine image. We calculate what he has lost, and imagine ourselves somehow in his same shoes, what?? My young daughter taught me this as we were driving home. That it was his wholesome image which brought him all those contracts, and now we should feel bad for him when they get clawed back? This is business, pure and simple folks, and there was a lot at stake for him to keep it clean. I guess he tried really hardly, but you know if your sleep is disturbed, you really shouldn't be counting on Ambien. You'll just do crazy things while half aware. You need something much stronger, like Michael Jackson tried for. I'm not saying either of them was guilty of anything. I'm just saying that they couldn't sleep.

So we do know, or we should, what the leaders of the free world, so called, would do if they had full and complete discretion. Which they don't, and we should know that too. We may want them to do the dirty deeds they do in our name, for so long as we don't need to know all the details.

But I did catch enough of Julie and Julia to understand that what we don't want is for innocent people to be used as pawns. (That young blogger's day job was to handle calls from distressed relatives of the dead and missing from 9/11. To turn away and buy off their outrage. How many billions were spent that way, creating plausible deniability of claims for outrage?)

The trouble with focus on the trade tower conspiracies is that it deflects focus from the actual accomplishment of the objective the tower's collapse actually did enable. Metaphorical war was turned literal, in our name, and made nearly perpetual. Armed Blackwater (you can't change your name away from responsibility, Z) contractors make more and have more deniability than sworn upholders of our Constitution. These are not mysterious truths which need one single person to break the code of silence, as if he would be thought sane if he were to do so. As if he would be allowed to remain sane if he were to do so.

I actually might not mind, and it doesn't make me very proud to say it, but I might not mind if this weren't all being done somehow in the name of Jesus. That disconnect between image and reality just really makes me mad. But there again, I think you have plausible deniability, since old W. just might be stupid enough to accept the man-made literal Jesus, and Cheney and Rummie, whom nobody has accused of being altar boys, might be just cynical enough to take full advantage. Earnest preachers from all sorts of pulpits buy this story, and plug it in to some mantra of eternity, with geopolitical players and roles all mapped out in advance. These things don't require conspiracy theorizing to see in their full relief and detail.

I think it's only when the clear and present actual Jesus makes his appearance in our hearts that the big question mark at the center of all sorts of conspiracy theories can get erased. I don't think very many murderers march forth with their confessions. I don't think very many cappos find true religion before the end of their days. I think there's far far too much rationalization available to combat that kind of truth.

Which is, pretty much, how our reptile brains relate to the rest of us. Making our decisions before we know they've been made, and then we can use our cognitive powers to rationalize them. That's how abusive families stay intact. That's how the Mormons build their empire. That's what keeps rosary beads turning. And it's not, by far, all bad.

But family secrets kept in closets have power only to destroy. The chance for love and light. The chance for actual transformation of our lives. It is an act of faith, then, to refrain from calculations of the cost to achieve your objectives. Using anyone, no matter how mildly, is still too high a cost. Abusing anyone, no matter how obliquely, is still too high a cost. No matter your riches, you will still die, the same as the rest of us, but not with easy mind.

You will think it is, because you will have bought your own rationalizations. But your reptile mind will catch you up. Your workers will betray you. Your wife will not be bought off. There is a decent soul among the Blackwater operatives. There is a decent soul inside our government. All it takes is one, and I will never bank on perfect human craft. Never.

I risk my life each and every day, although I understand that car mechanics don't have perfect motives. I understand my fellow drivers' skill cannot be up to mine. I understand that I myself am far from a perfect driver, though demonstrably pretty good and courteous to a fault.

I wish that I had an actual choice. Not about driving down to NYC, which was simply a choice to afford comfort and leisure and time together with my daughter. I should not spoil her so abusively, I know. But I mean in general, so that I would not be required to partake in this conspiracy of destruction of our earth. This misdeployment of so very many smart weapons with so many talented Kamikaze pilots at their wheels.

It takes no great conspiracy theory to understand just why we do this. We want to. We like it. And I do have to confess, I like it probably a lot more than you do, or I wouldn't have taken a job which required 50,000 miles each year. I wouldn't have moved that far away from my daughters. I wouldn't have made the 100 mile trip 4 times each and every week and accepted full responsibilty that it was fully my decision and that I would require no help, at all, from their mom smug and snug at their center.

Because I too wanted out from my imprisonment, and have developed a full on ecology of survival. My stomach, co-evolved with alcohol, seems to know how to reprocess water since I'm not dehydrated, but drink only coffee and beer (I exaggerate shamelessly). It's like a camel's hump, I'm certain. Each time I drive, I am that blasted from myself and so when I get home there is nothing else to do but drink and sleep and rise again another day to do the same thing.

My rosary beaded circuits are complete now. My mandala fully traced. My last blizzard run down the pike toward New York or New England, my last circuit but a couple between my old house and my older one.

I have no conclusion. There is no conclusion. There is no final answer, but I will keep practicing my words, looking for a kind of kung-fu where they take over for themselves without my intervention. Where they find their own right way to open cracks for the light to enter in. To help catalyze the terrible libido stored in money, say, for deployment in other ways from terror and bought fictional security.

I race to find my place, standing still in motion, there will be no closure, it would seem, on house or love or career or tale, but things will fall to dust. They always do. That much can be counted on.