Chapter 1, unretouched, as Word Processed (no kidding) back in 1983

MIXING METAPHORS

AND CLICHES


ramblings of number 747


(read me andpass me along)

no copyright



February 3, 1983 5:47 AM

I was awakened this morning by a booming against the side of the boat. What?! Driving rain such as one en­counters only once a year was all the answer I got. Go Away!

I tossed under the quilt, looking for the comfort that I had only just lost

Boom!

My God, could that -- whatever it is -- really crash through the hull? It's so miserable out there.

Gentler now. A soft bumping that taps the rhythm of waves. Probably just a chunk of ice broken free by the wind.

Now I wonder if I will be able to sleep again.

I remember something from last night. The quilt was damp from condensation on the inside of the hull, next to which it had been stored. I'd pulled it out with some sense of dismay, wondering what other areas of neglect were stored around me. I'd just showered, out of a mixed sense of in­tolerable sliminess of the skin and the always paired in­ability of my thoughts to grasp. The clouds of steam fill the cabin and find their rest along the frigid planks of the boat's hull. But I couldn't find the calm that usually comes with cleanliness.

So I decided to give in to my tiredness. I had a futile moment when I went to arrange the bedding. Silly preoccupations. I was smooth and soft, and there was the sleeping bag I was accustomed to bundling in. It was to be washed tomorrow -- today -- and I hated to immerse myself in its accumulated punguence. So there was the lighter-weight quilt, quite fresh and only slightly damp now.

It was a luxurious feeling to lie between light and clean covers, which to me betoken visits to other, more established lives. Made beds with sweet cotton sheets. Sprawling in a dry warmth which so differs from the sweaty coziness of a sleeping-bag during an over-cold night.

Should I, or shouldn't I? What will be my fate? It was warm enough for now to enjoy the clean bed, but I knew that before morning I would be cold. Good, I thought. Then I'll just have to wake up. It will break the monolithic silence of the overly sound sleeps I've been having lately. The wind was building, and light squalls were scraping over the boat with increasing frequency. It was with real luxury that I was rocked to sleep this night.

Crash!

This time the impact was definitely threatening. It carried a much greater weight than just a chunk of ice. I was summoned. It will be difficult to explain why I felt summoned. There was a moment's remembering of the decision upon turning into bed that I would wake in the night. So this was why I was to sleep in the quilt.

Alright, so now instead of resentment, I felt eager to learn what specter of destruction was getting me out of my comfort. I arose. No, not those pants. Some work pants. And the old wool sweater that seems to be made of iron yarn. The one my father wore thirty-five years ago, I remembered, and which doesn't begin to show wear. The one with my-his name embroidered inside -- varsity swimming.

No point trying to keep dry. It's a typhoon out there.

I crawled out in my bare feet. A moment's hesitation that was reduced to a pinprick of awareness that I shouldn't really want to go out there. There was no physical hes­itation. Immediately I was spinning in the stormy world that I liked so much to perceive from inside the cabin.

There was no feeling of getting wet or cold. There was no possibility of even distinguishing those sensations. They were too pervasive. Water on the deck was up to my ankles. The rain was torrential; there's nothing on deck to hold a pool that deep. What is it then? I scrambled toward the bow with just enough abandon to be reminded of the need to grab hold.

A huge slab of ice had wedged itself between my hull and the behemoth in the next slip. The crash I felt was the full weight of that monster transmitted through the ice each time a wave hit. It was indeed a force that could crack my hull. The wind and waves pushed it further into the vee between the boats.

I sat on the edge of the boat and gave the slab a mighty shove with my bare feet. As though driven by a ghost, it drifted away against the gentler prodding of more natural forces.

I followed its course until I was perched on the spindly bowsprit, where I was reminded of other exhilarating times there when crashing though waves at sea. I felt no less exhilarated. And now as the cabin fire has warmed me again and I sit in dry clothes writing.

So that was why I was waked from the comfort of my sleep -- and this. I ought to have felt unlucky to have to go out into that storm. This writing, too, is a burden. But there was a moment in which by purest accident I was called to partake. A moment of soul-moving existence that otherwise I was bound -- and determined -- to sleep through. It seemed not to be an accident though, and that is the subject of more writing.

I had known that I was to be awakened, and had even prepared for it. The consternation of why the preparation --for what -- was answered in the simplest and most mundane fashion. Strange how life is to be made wonderful by such simple preparedness to meet one's fate. I can't say that there was any God to greet me at this moment of miserable epiphany, but the feeling was exactly as if there had been. That is the thing that requires some explaining.

It's calmer now. The rain has stopped. I'm warm. Only my eyes hurt from the early hour. There's a lot of work ahead, and I'm not sure I'm equal to it. I have a metaphor in my life for such times, though. I have this boat. There was a moment of dread following the excitement and disbelief that came when I realized that I actually own this boat on which I now live. I had never sailed anything more com­plicated than a 'sunfish'. I was far from certain of the boat's seaworthiness. There were impossible and imposing considerations of time and money. Behind the excitement was the lurking fear that I might just have done something crazy. And so now, as I scrawl, I know that it is not just to myself -- though it might principally be for myself -- and that too seems out-of-bounds. I don't know how to write.

How many authors write Accident or Fate in the same capital letters they use for God? They have all seemed aware of what I, with my peculiar style of reading, find most compelling in their writing. There is life borne through the written word. I never remember the words -- their meaning or their sound -- but I think their life stays with me. Yet these authors are no worshippers of fate. Theirs is a controlled writing. Still, I would insist that there are the muses. I can't judge whether I'll be blessed by their attentions, or whether my writing will crumble under the entropic force of too many details left uncared for. 0 gentle muse, how can I prepare for your coming?

And what a lie! What conceit! I don't set out to write literature. Belles-lettres, even. What I'm about comes perilously close to the profane realm of argument. I have something to prove, though I don't believe in proofs. If she comes, the muse will only-just grant a blessing upon a lost sheep. There will be little fiction here, and even less poetry. My only claim for indulgence is my lonely spirit, which even now can hardly believe that words are the proper release. There are other, and deeper mysteries which call forth my captured soul. They are there beyond the words, though not, perhaps, apart from them.

I had been in school, and miserable, when the lure of ships and the sea finally demanded a response. Boats, really. Or anything that could fly white sails and have some space within for repose. The embodied paradox of calm en­closure; shelter set free in the grip of the literal swells of fate. It began as might the longing of a child for love of the sexual sort that he cannot understand. It begins as a beautiful image, too distant to be anything but the subject of pleasant dreams. The body is left out and there is not yet the painful ache of adolescent longing. By then the dream is painful in its impossibility. Whole worlds are lost at each moment that desire is confounded by what is too far beyond comprehension. A kiss which once was innocent now becomes cruel for its promise of what is unknown.

And for me even the kiss was unknown; or rather the plunge was made precipitously thereafter. Like all true fallings in love, I am convinced, this one was surrounded by the mysteries of synchronous happenings. These are simply conjunctions which defy rational appeal, and in their occurrence change the main event as a presence made more real by the impossibility of its circumstances. First, there is the simple coming together of the lover and his object. Then there are the little things which make one know it is right.

The conjuring up of apparitions made real by merely speaking their Name. The start of turning a corner to find what you know not where to seek after. These are the proof of relationship, as I will set out here to prove. But they are all first led up to by tiny seeds each time we have opened our hearts. The love that is first sown as belief can bear fruit in reality when the heart remains fecund.

I was not actually miserable in school. Quite the opposite. My belief in meaning was bearing its fruit in questions answered and mysteries confirmed. I was excited by what I was learning, but it was to the point of distraction. I can rarely read poetry, for after the first poem I am distracted by beauty -- too excited. The whir of my being takes off in an impossible building of meaning such that I fear the text. How can I be competent for the task of reading, when such words as these are put to paper? It is the exhilaration that keeps me away, and such was my relationship with school.

There was a mistrust, not of what I was learning, but of the demands in return. The piles of words which are a product of universities grew nightmarish in their aspect for me. What came together in the excitement of learning was something that could sweep away that rubbish and get back to the text. I didn't want forever to be afraid of poetry, and I felt my fear to be connected to that kind of understanding -- the piling up of words. Each new clue to the unraveling of the poetry of a text -- of the world --was a catalyst-seed in the crystallization of whole encyclopaedias of meaning.
This is why -- that's why -- Ah, now I understand. But where would it all end?

It could be that my boat romance began there -- that I needed to be delivered into the sort of exhilaration that doesn't even flirt for understanding. I don't now, and I didn't then understand why I dreamt of boats. There was something familiar in it. Something to do with bicycles and motorcycles; scuba diving, mountain climbing, and other passions of my past. This seemed like one more attempt to transcend the flesh -- to get out of my skin -- and that worried me. There had been too much disappointment in the past, and I felt wary of repeating it. Yet they need not remain disappointment.

I began to make excursions to the shore; to wander around the marinas and admire the boats. That was instead of writing the papers which I knew could never come together; so full would they be of impossible longing for knowledge to prove what I had already proven to myself. If you want to stay sane, the understanding has to come after the words and not before. I was not a sane member of the university community. I already knew what I wanted to say and could scarcely bother to find the evidence. It all jumped out at me, rather, and I was overwhelmed. So I took to looking at boats.

Marinas exist in an other world, protected by ties of belonging -- in and out -- and by signs which make the vis­itor nervous. I've never been good at penetrating those invisible but very real social barriers. I feel ill at ease, and that is why I now sit alone in my boat. But there have been moments, we all know them, when the piercing of such barriers provided the route to an untold aliveness.

Climbing atop a monument in ever proper Austria just because the sign said verboten, and discovering the singular vista, made singular, perhaps, by its having been a breech. So in the marina, I walked past the signs and tried to be natural. I was armed with a fiction -- a lie -- that I was looking to buy a boat. Otherwise I would have scurried away at the first guarding glance of one of those who belonged.

I had less than no money and little enough experience to dare open my mouth. But my inward pretense gave me the courage to stroll. I didn't see much at first because I didn't dare to look. I didn't want to be caught off-guard. When you are a part of something, you stop noticing the things of which you are part, and I instinctively knew that I should be nonchalant.

Eventually, whether because curiosity gets the better of you, or because someone is sympathetic to your alienness, you begin to learn; and by degrees can gain admission to any other world. I know I left a trail of bewilderment with my misplaced terminology and impossible circumstances. But no-one called my bluff. I couldn't have been a good actor; if I were to see myself now I would know exactly what I was up to. And so, I guess, did everyone I encountered. It was the sincerity of my interest that gave me my education. The attempts at playing a part were too bald to be offensive. I guess.

But I did eventually get myself into a lot of trouble. Because I began to believe, myself, the part I had cast for myself. Pretending to be interested in buying a boat in order to gain admission to the museum led through a real desire to possess something like the objects displayed there­in to a swindling of the soul who would sell me one. Still, they were salesmen whose souls are already so twisted by charade of truth that there could be no further harm.

I was gaining momentum. Those arcane forces -- that arcane structure -- was taking shape that would funnel me to the object of my desire.

It was against all reason. As in cases of true love where the emotion is so overwhelming that only later can one reflect on the utter impossibility of the meeting. Not be­cause it is so unusual or even special by comparison with the myriad other events which conspire to make up the world. Just in what it entails. That this boat should have been there, at that time. No-one else wanted it. I'm afraid to say her -- and indeed, it had much to be wary of. It was not impossible simply by the occurrence, but by what it entailed.

This is difficult. I'm being led to all corners of my life, and there seems to be the necessity of drawing in those other souls who've been reflected therein. I would expose them -- or their soul as it strikes me-- and then cast myself off more completely than I already am in my floating herm­itage. The telling requires it, however. 0 where is there justice? Not to tell is to leave the narrative of my own life unpeopled and dull. But to lay bare the basis of all existence -- the communion between souls that must forever remain other to those who are not friends -- that would be abominable sin. What then? I have no power for invention.

"You seem to have come to a dead-end, Mr. H****. It's about time, too. I was getting sick of that pile of involuted shit you've been writing. You tear open the sewer of your soul -- as if all it took was a series of words --and suddenly you're wallowing in it. Every fucking detail gets connected to every other little detail until it has to stop, of its own confusion."

Who are you? What are you doing here?

"Who do you think I am?"

You couldn't be the muse. Muses are gentle.

"Fat chance. They're about as far away from you as the moon.

"We've been there, you know. To the moon, I mean. That's the whole problem. You strike down your goals by achieving them. All narrative has that kind of goal. There's an end to it. It wants to comprehend something. And fiction presumes the comprehension to be accomplished by invention -- like getting to the moon. You invent a vehicle that's more real than the conveyance of one's feelings, and when you've gotten there, everyone who's been left behind is saddened, though they might not know it. The moon of poetry has been destroyed, and we are fooled into leading our lives at a remove, through the thrills of those few who actually galloped off to the moon. I mean, you read a novel and there they are, those astronauts bigger than life whose existence you can only wish for. Only Tolstoy avoided that.

"Enough! God, you go on. How are you ever going to get this under control?"

Will you help?

"I'm not your muse."

Perhaps you could pretend?

"Ah. Well, perhaps -- if you do."

Well then let's pretend. Let's imagine there's a young fellow by the name of Howie Hahn -- that's sort of Chinese for "hero" -- and that he ... Hell, that's just changing the names to protect the innocent. It'll never work. And I don't want to be a hero. That's just my point. That's what I want to prove.

"Why don't you just go ahead and prove your point then?"

I don't have the evidence, or rather the only evidence I have is my own experience. I can't just invent that. Or maybe I did invent it. Let's be honest. I'm going to invent a story and the protagonist is going to be me. I don't want anyone to fall into the trap of thinking that my whole life is here, though. I won't let slip all the dishonorable moments. And I don't want the reader to think I've gotten anywhere at the end. It might be nice if the reader has gotten somewhere, though.

"Bull Shit. If anybody reads this you will think you've gotten somewhere. And so will the reader, if he likes it. Any writer casts himself in the role of hero. People who live life don't need to read about it. And people who read about it aren't fooled by the characters in the book. Their real hero is the author."

I don't read that way.

"Yeah, I know. You identify with the characters. Living your life as though you were a character in a novel. You thought that once, didn't you? That instead of having to write out the play of life, one ought to take the message and live it. So why are you writing?

I have something to prove.

"To who? To yourself?"

Maybe so. I don't know. There's something I know -- I feel -- that I think the whole world needs to know. I decided a while ago that you can't just tell people such things. You can't prove to them the truth. So I thought I was free of words. The way to teach what you know is to live it. To be the author of your own life. But there I was, a mechanic, a carpenter, and always the words would ensnare me.

I learned something from the very real satisfaction of building things -- fixing them. But ecstasy was reserved for words. That seems to be my realm. Not beautiful, well-written words. I'm not trained for that. But words that are the only vent for a soul inadequately tied to the world by other means of expression. I don't know. Maybe I do have to prove something to myself. Just as I got myself into the boat project and had to see it through -- well, somehow I've gotten myself tangled in the net of words. I have to see it through. I can't keep turning my back with excuses that are only more words.

"You can't prove anything to people with words." That's a truism, but all I ever really do that's central to my being is talk -- words. I go around the woodlots and boat-yards as an enigma. Nothing of what I want to let out gets released because I'm just a confusion. No matter how I perfect my skills at carpentry -- my soul's not in it.

"Christ! Don't get so upset. I'll help already. We're going to have to consider this a bit more. Let me get this straight. You have something to prove, but you can't prove it by words. You might prove it by carpentry if your soul were in it. Is that right?"

I'm not sure. I guess so. There are carpenters who know what I know. They're calmer, though, because their work gives vent. I mean it connects them to the world. But, it's different. They wouldn't be able to put into words what I know. I've struggled with words -- with reason -- and so what I've got to say takes that form. Perhaps it's an interpretation -- a translation. I'm sure the world is as caught up in words as I am. Many people don't understand the work of the carpenter. They put it into words and suddenly the carpenter is alone -- because no one connects with his work.

Those carpenters who can tolerate starvation just keep on working. And so life goes on. The rest are dead...

"Stick to the topic. We're trying to figure out how you can make your connection in the world, and you keep going off trying to vent your soul or something. There's got to be some order here. There are good words and bad words; good carpentry and bad carpentry. You can't just spill your soul into your words and expect them to be good."

I wanted a muse!

"Listen! The way I see it, you're only trying to connect with people who read, right?"

But there a lot of dead carpenters out there!

"Well, start a religion, for Christ's sake. Maybe you just want to preach."

That's no fair. Alright, I'll admit there's something dead in religion. Something about God. I mean His Word. But I'm not trying to replace that.

"So you keep telling yourself. You lost a good majority of the 'dead carpenters' anyway. A lot of them believe in God -- and His Word."

No they don't. I mean they don't really. Well some might --but not the dead ones.

"Stop! I agree you don't know how to write. Poetry isn't it. And fiction seems dangerous to you. Why not an essay?"

An "Essay on the Life of R*** H****". Not too promising.

"You've got to start somewhere."

Well, you've given me a thought. I've put it all wrong. I don't know anything. I have nothing to prove. That's what I really meant before anyway. My life is here, on this page. Open it, gentle reader, I would like to talk with you. I can't think except when I'm talking, and I have to talk to somebody. By the way, you wouldn't be my reader would you?

"Not a chance."

Good.

During my childhood, I would spend my winters dreaming of the summer, when I had the whole world of Lake Erie at my back door. The water was clear then, and I loved to swim. In my winter dreams, the house would have flooded with that sweet transparent water. I could float through the rooms, and especially up and down the stairs. I didn't worry about breathing. These were day-dreams and had no true logic. At night, I would dream of flying. In the end, I would actually physically crash onto my bed. Falling, I suppose, from the paroxysm of fear that preceded the crash in my dream.

My summer dreams were concerned with skiing. A controlled falling at breathless speeds down slopes of clean white snow. The dreams were present also at the event. The reality wasn't a disappointment, I mean. At least it provided the stuff that would fuel the next season's dreams.

But there I was in the hot activity of summer, where the whole world invites you to repose -- dreaming of the exhilaration of winter. And in the cold repose of winter when the house beckons with its warmth -- dreaming of the easy drifting of summer. The dreams were confused, but the activities were in place. I was doing things all the time, and in their rush even the seasons passed too slowly.

There are other moments that come later, when I would have stopped the progress of time to expand the moment into an eternity that I might sort out who I was. Dead, empty moments of thinking. Thinking is an impossible activity, and I know now that I wasn't thinking. I was troubling. There was something unfinished hanging over my life, and each time I was beaten down by the senseless procession of events which always left me short of where I wished to be, I would be pushed flat on my ass to think -- or so it seemed to me. I was actually just troubling.

But I would have moments of clarity when the words that flitted through my mind clamored together their great sense. It made thinking seem legitimate, but it didn't get me back into the procession of time. Each time I'd solved something through thought, a book or an event -- or the event of read­ing a book -- would come my way and prove to me that this wasn't it. This had been "thought" of countless ages ago. Yet this conspiracy of little accidents that would both excite and depress me gradually drew me out.

Excite, because they legitimized my activity -- that is, my inactivity; my thinking. Depress, because I'd solved nothing. And finding that my thoughts had already been thought prodded an effort to control -- to find out as much as possible about what had been "thought" before, so that I could really own my own thoughts. So that I could know that my own thoughts were truly original. So that, as it seemed would happen if I didn't learn to take control, I wouldn't forever be misleading myself and rehashing old mistakes.

Recognizing my thoughts in the thoughts of others also enraged me. I was enraged at the blindness and stupidity of the world. A world that hadn't told me what it already knew, but had fed me a pack of rotten lies instead. Generally, the anger put me back on my ass.

Here was the situation; what I had been told -- what had been put my way in a controlled manner -- seemed wholly lies whenever something would come my way accidentally -- beyond control -- to prove that my own doubts about the controlled truths had been expressed before. They were therefore both legitimized and taken away from me. I knew I had a right to doubt the received truths, but I knew the revealed truths weren't original. They were very old. A kiss is a rev­elation only to a fool who imagines that no-one's ever felt that way before.

Yet personal revelation seemed not enough. To get a handle on the revealed truth of the world, and to know that personal truth is also original. That each new discovery is not made illegitimate because somebody's been there before. But also to find someplace, through effort and control, where you could be sure that you are the first. That you might own the territory.

But why own the territory? Why this desire to be so alone? My struggle between the ancestral truths and my own, expressed itself violently in the prepubescent nightmares I suffered for so long. When the inkling began that I would in fact eventually find myself alone in the world, my sleeping mind would warn me of the consequences of stepping beyond the ancestral territory. Simple things, like being upside down --even though everything was upside down in the dream and I wasn't falling -- would send me into a howling panic. There would be no pain in the nightmares, just an undeniable sense that nothing made sense. There was even my awareness within the dream that I could ignore the fear and relax, because my senses told me that I was alright. Nothing was hurting me, and I wasn't apparently affected by the lack of sense. But I couldn't stop the terror. A terror such as I have never experienced since.

There are only two ways to stop the terror -- the nightmare. Either you bind yourself ever more tightly to your inherited world, or you learn to be alone and swallow fear. I followed the path I was shown, but always the ground felt insecure. Terror would lurk behind me -- a breath away. The inherited world gradually became the nightmare, and I was bounding to some private world. I sleep soundly with hardly a memorable dream. But I am ever more lonely, and ever more callous. There must be a way to stand firmly without being alone. And there must be a way to be alone without stepping beyond the solid ground of the community.

It has been my restless, childhood years that have pulled me out of the swamp -- and the anger, and the terror, and the thinking -- each time. When in high school, I had fallen into the brooding which this century's early sex and late morality leads to. It was the instincts bred in childhood that saved my soul. There was a sucking power of depression that set in as each revealed truth was contradicted by the expressed truth of society. The sexual experience that was real and the morality that was also real and needed to be corrected. My mind wasn't up to the task, of course, nor could I stand ad-hoc solutions. I was too troubled by morality and by truths to just ignore them. Perhaps if I had read. But I didn't or couldn't. As I've said, fortunately there was my childhood. I would sooner brood on a long bicycle ride than in a dark corner. And this at least left me exposed.

The actual Valentine

This is what I would write to a woman who wanted me to court her (thank goodness, there aren't any) as I leave her behind to go help get out the vote for Obama (is there or should there be a let's Rock for Barack slogan in Cleveland, home of the actually really cool Rock and Roll Hall of Fame??? )





Hi (Sweetie),





I'm so sorry to do this to you, but I'm going to let exactly three people in on my life's plan: Women in my life have only meant that I have the power to break their hearts. My mother has been near death 100 times, and she is the toughest woman I've ever met. But I break her heart, regardless of what I do.





My ex-wife is a working class girl who has a real fear of poverty (last night skiing, I had a pitcher of beer with wings, with a guy from (nearby town) - (Friend) is a social retard, this guy was his neighbor - spilled my beans only to find out that he knows my ex's entire extended, and I gather notorious, family from (Nearby town) - (now that's a funny story), and therefore a real fear of me, and she literally doesn't understand me, and I scare the shit (can I say that on email) out of her. She really doesn't understand how painful it is to have a brain in the United States, nor how frustrating it might be to have no money to spend, although your car (which you can't afford) is entirely subsidized by mileage reimbursement, and you drive a 1988 VW fox when you don't get reimbursed, you pay $1000/mos for housing, and nothing for food or clothing and you can't pay your bills.





I forgive her everything, but I'm done.





I've had two abortions, and I am incredibly happy that I have two daughters who know who their Dad is. There is no regret here, only anger at the way that the so-called Christians abuse children in the name of God. (the Catholics are just serf-like zombies, who deserve what they ask for) I'm sick and tired of illiterates running what they call the Church. They don't understand metaphor. They don't understand irony. They can't read (quite literally). Dyslexics are either really rich (I ran the (Fancy) school (for dyslexic rich kids) for a month and then got paid off for the rest of the year, which I used to ride a Harley 12,000 miles around the country) or they are born again. This is no joke.





There is only one church, and it has to get over the medieval period. The sweet Marquis de Sade is the only informant I need.These people are stuck in the feudal period (but at least they can read)





Jesus is real (but not God, not immaculately conceived, and not ascendant). If Bishop (Liberal) is the best we can do (and he is) then the church holds no interest for me. Every single one of my childhood playmates and (Ivy League) classmates has sold out (the ones not in the nuthouse, plus my old girlfriend). I used to know what that means, but it's like the joke about the prostitute: would you sleep with me for $1Million? How about $100: "I'm no prostitute!!" Well, we've already established that, we're only haggling price.





These chicken shits, who received their $150,000/year educations are still like my ex-wife, afraid of poverty, and I guess there's not enough money in the world for them, or their beloved (Ivy). How much is your soul worth (not a question to you, clearly)





I thank Bush and Rummy and Cheney for giving me back my courage. I long long long for the day when I can have Alzheimers like my Dad, surrounded by love and warmth and adequacy. I see nothing sad - he's 85. I see nothing to fear (no need to purchase Drugs or iron lungs.) He gave me the courage, by selling out to his father's fear-mongering, and giving me the example of my brother (I was a bookkeeper in the law office, while my brother was being abused by my father - then I took off for parts far away, but I couldn't continue to break my mothers' heart).





Thinking in the United States is a painful experience, and you get blamed for arrogance, aloofness, and impenetrable words instead of being listened to. I actually know about this. I ran a school for these victims, and I am not so smart as half of them were when they were 10.





Even alcohol doesn't drown the pain - it's more like pouring gasoline on the fire. Damn!





We are wasting money on education just as much as bombs. We are mesmerized by pornography which depicts humans as animals. Jesus christ, don't people watch cows, horses and bears do it any more? Don't people know that our leaders, including Jesus Christ have and have always had a perpetual hardon?? (Christ was routinely depicted during the Renaissance for reasons I could care less about, but which have all been airbrushed out, with a gargarntuan hardon. I honestly don't know if it was symbolic, Amish-style honest, or pornographic, but it is a fact, which can't even make it into the New York Times, and those scholars don't interest me anyhow.)





Bill Clinton was tricked, and a victim. Of course, duh, he had a perpetual hardon. I remember running a school how many Moms wanted to f*** (can I say that?) me (honest, not a one did I do). I have been in love, and know the difference between ooohhhaahhoohhyesyesyes and making love, and they aren't any more interesting than horses doing it (although you get a bit hotter watching the horses), and there's a reason we aren't allowed to see it (even gmail scrubs me if I use "f***" in the header (maybe this won't even make it through).





The Marquis had a point, although he's really gross. Marie Antoinette was a victim too (I think that's my favorite movie of all times), but my (Ivy League) classmates are her moral equivalent. No more rounding up of Stogonoff's (what was the family name of the Russian nobility???) and shooting them, whether you're Mao or Chavez or Fidel. Bush is a very small man, not worthy of my attention. Ditto, Bill Gates. Ditto Fidel. Ditto Chavez. I like Obama OK.





So, since I'm no longer afraid of my cholesterol count, and Altzheimers looks like a vacation to me, I've given myself 200 days to live, after which I'll be in jail if my ex wants, or dead if the remnants of the Bushies want, but I'm going to blackmail the Bishop, Hillary (who needs to stay in New York, for honor's sake), (Big Boss) and a few others into solving poverty in the Rust Belt. It will cost far less than the bridge in Alaska. I have an actual plan to do it.





My good friend might (or might not) make billions on an idea I helped with, and he'll be good for at least a million to the cause (more than enough). The three people are you, (the internet genius,) and my brother in law. I can't include my family, because my mother is still alive, but I've discharged my duties, and they can tell her whatever they want. (bro) has gone back to mountain climbing and is oppressed by women in his own right. (Internet Genius) will make his millions one way or another. My sister (bornagain) will cheer me on, but she is still 10 years old, and oppressed by her father substitute (I sent you his picture).





OK, that's what happens when you sleep in cat's piss 25 years to the day after you emerged from the cocoon of your sailboat, same temperature. I am no longer cautious in my statements. I am telling lies, tall tales, stories, and half truths (just like the big boys) to make sure that at least the Southern Tier of New York will get fed instead of bombed.





I think it's a worthwhile cause. (all you have to do is read about the mothers who sent their children off to war under Honest Abe, Teddy, FDR, Woody, LBJ, Tricky Dick, Cheney, and my very own cousin now credited with winning the war on terrorism (while our college shooteres and that guy from Newfane Near Nia. Falls - Tim McVeigh??? I knew him well (NOT) and the passion for the automobile terrorize us all for real)





There are two heros in my life (not including Jesus, who can't be known because he's surrounded by bullshit). Gore Vidal, who has more moral courage than almost anyone, and my former student Kurt Schneiderman. If my kids are cared for, and there's anything left from the life insurance, I'd like Kurt to get it all. And I mean all. Well, I kind of liked William F. Buckley, who died today. He was a thinking Atilla the Hun, probably didn't drink the way I drink ( I could be wrong about that), but I caught him debating Gore Vidal, before I knew who either of them were (read Yankee in King Ivy's court), and at least he had a brain. Please read this and delete it. Or tuck it away. I have tucked my bed. Now I will sleep in it.





With actual love,





Me

Well, now that I think about it . . . a Valentine

I come home from a family reunion type ski vacation to find that one cat is in the garage, having overturned some stuff, or so it seems, and another has locked herself in my bedroom going after her image in the mirror on the back of the door, thus bottling her catshit and its smell. Likely, the one in the garage followed me in, though that leaves other perhaps more troublesome possibilities for who or what scattered the stuff around.




But they weren't dead, and I should be grateful for sure. Up against the other possibilities, I got off easy, although the logistics which pile up in front of good relaxed reading time never seem to shrink.



I didn't think I'd be able to ski, so out of shape have I allowed myself to become. But I rallied, and we all had a good time. There are no really good reasons for everyone to have gotten along as well as we did. Among us; a lawyer, a housewife, a born-again (and again) without any worldly knowledge whatsoever, leaving her subject to whatever bloviations I or others professing worldly expertise, might impose, plus our hosts the young retired.



The range was from full blown, and quasi-religious, skepticism, to Bible-as-literal-truth brain freeze. I myself realized only lately into the trip that it was, rather precisely, a kind of silver anniversary for me. It was 25 years ago Valentine's Day that I emerged from a cocoon of sorts, thinking I might be about to flex my wings. I'd been living aboard a ridiculously small old wooden boat through a record-breaking cold snap in Connecticut - somehow minus 20 Fahrenheit seems actually accurate - and likely experienced some sort of cabin fever induced brain melt-down. I warmed myself by a minuscule coal stove after having been roused by icebergs pounding the hull, and proceeded to write my heart out.



Since then I've labored, dilettantishly at best, to fill out the already perfected but not quite communicable crystalizations realized by my pen.



So, here we were, a somewhat extended family plus friends, preoccupied, of course, with the pending election and the state of the world. Our collective carbon footprint was huge, having flown or four-wheeled or super-trucked in to this moutain. Still, there was some friction about the recyclables, and no real consensus about what to do either for the good of our personal lives or that of the world. There was a pretty clear consensus for Obama in the election, alongside some difficult lettings go of Hillary's outright competence and some coy silence from the super truckers.



So while I'm trying to finish up Gore Vidal's Empire series (working my way through Hollywood) which is incredibly informative toward this, and perhaps all, upcoming elections, my brother is reading Jim Kunstler on a World Made by Hand. He's the Peak Oil guy, who cries Chicken Little like about the doom pending post oil. Well, I don't think he's Chicken Little because he speaks the obvious truth, but I can't exactly divorce my actions from those of everyone else whose louder-than-words clear conclusion is that we can drive and drive forever.



I think it was by virtue of love, precisely defined, that this grouping of friends and relations had ourselves an absolutely wonderful time. There was no necessity for doing so, and certainly an alternative was to allow petty differences, frictions, and irritations to overwhelm, since there were plenty of them just below the surfaces. After all, there were married couples here, alongside, say, me, who has acquired an apparently autonomous revulsion from ever re-entering that dance of suppressed antipathy, resentment and a sexual frustration far more sharp than that of mere abstinence.



Now, exhausted, I am willing to see beyond the depredations of oil gluttony and addiction. This is surely a gift, like that love which drew my new friends and family together. We have seen through suffering and pain and even dream of death deferred, on this mind-altering high of post armageddon technological bloom. If for the moment we remain enveloped in cocoons literal and virtual, there is still the hope that we can emerge as something new and more human. For now, technology isolates, and we like it that way, cradled in leather, craving repose in only apparently moving or apparently stationary wombs with views. Video encompasses, encloses, comforts, narcotizes but also extends and could possibly liberate a still inchoate consciousness.



I crawl into bed, shocked at how clammy my sheets are after having indulged myself with the furnace where normally I wait for the wood stove before releasing my shivvers. Then I realize that I have surrendered myself to a stinking mess of cat piss. Well, it could still be worse.

My, how time flies . . .

Even as I thought I knew that I wouldn't really maintain any commitment to this silly business, I do get little ideas while tracing the mandala of the roadways on my daily rounds - my own special and personal version of the rat race. And having the blog in the background, as it were, is an excuse to organize the thinking, even if it never leaves that impossible referent: the mind.

So, way over here, beyond every pale that ever gets mentioned, in upstate has-been Empire-land, where I have managed 230,000 miles on my car even before it was paid for - an accomplishment which should at least get me a discount on my next VW if no particular honor - I think I may have standing to comment about driving etiquette. We're all familiar with the internal battles of road-rage, hormones against brains, reason against outrage, and ride that little wagon veering between self righteous pride in our own nobility and terrible shame when we manage, carelessly, genuinely to earn the flipped bird in our own right. The searing honk of correction that you too are guilty and low.

Which leads me (isn't this the point of blogs) to comment on another leftie apostate (hadn't I once expressed dismay at the heterodoxy of Alexander Cockburn - I hardly remember), recently reminded of; Christopher Hitchens. At least he isn't off his rocker wacko with the religionists, but I have this feeling that he abandoned the Nation for lucre and selfish calming of angst. Anyhow, I was alerted to his damn-the-main-currents upstream observations about our culture of self-improvement in Vanity Fair following upon (maybe preceding, but not in the order of my awareness) a genuinely moving piece about a noble young soldier dying, still in my eyes, for a brand name more than an honorable nation, and apparently moved to accept the risk in part by Hitchens' writings. I know it is cruel of me, and reflective more of my own passivity than the truth of our nation's relation to its mythology, but I cannot find any death for this cause in Iraq to be other than wasted. But if I could come close, it would be thanks to Hitchens' take on this particular young man, who might actually, in the manner of his commitment and by that very act, have managed to bring the United States closer to its promise than whole armies of passive objectors such as myself. Admitted. Guilty.

Though that is not why I thought of Hitchens. It had more to do with the similarity of our lifestyles and body types, and the levels of our vigor in correcting them (nil). I know this is a stretch upon a meander, but what I was thinking of is how very Buffalo is the condition of our bodies. There is some perfected self-knowledge here about how buff, beautiful and fit belong in some other place, and here is rusty and has-been, but loving our families, when not convinced that we are somehow doomed by subtle childhood abuse of our never quite budded self-esteem to languish here forever awaiting the never forthcoming but somehow always identified with its only canonical source - familial - approval.

So, here's what happens in these parts when there is construction on the highway. Two lanes combine to one, with advanced warning, and so, innocent of traffic jams, which happen in more prosperous parts, we dutifully move to the open lane way before it becomes necessary. Precisely, in fact, when the traffic starts thickening. This leaves the asshole lane wide open, for the more savvy drivers - we assume they are from Long Island, taking advantage of our superior educational resources at reduced upstate rates - who whiz by and merge at the last minute. Always the expensive cars. Buffalo is all about Chevy Impalas, and anything more is embarrassing grandstanding. Just ask Tim Russert.

It takes no particular mathematical understanding to see that the polite drivers, wanting no advantage for themselves, and in a civilized way knowing how to queue (a sign, I believe, among denizens that other has-been Empire, of true civilization) are screwed forever by these advantage-takers, and so the line slows to a potentially permanent stop.

Sometimes truckers, never from Ontario, genteelly block the asshole lane and generate this shower of positive ions (negative?) among the thereby more relaxed and no longer conflicted obediant. Hmmm, I never have checked to see if these are the Jesus drivers, perhaps since it's hard, for me, to associate that bent with gentility. But these must be truckers from around here.

So, it is after all clear that the overall best thing to do would be for everyone to drive right up to the merge and then zipper together in polite alternating fashion. I understand that this is what happens in the rest of the world, though I have had no occasion to witness it myself, being an undocumented wage-slave (yes, these are primitive parts) without papers to travel beyond my ancestral esteem valley.

I don't know if this self-tortuous behavior is connected to our globally high concentration of church-attending Catholics, but I suspect so. Non-Catholic myself, I have always been outside that particular familiar, and therefore free at least, if not to leave, to raise ridiculous questions.

So the net angst is raised, and we get what we always wanted, our own validating traffic jams. And incredible heart-risking self-righteous glares at those in the asshole lane, where sometimes we must sneak by ourselves, beyond all endurance with fatigue and frustration and somehow concocting an inner story to keep our outward impassivity (if only you knew my story you'd call a police escort). But the ones who know better and drive flashier cars either have the validating experience of real traffic jams or at least know how to get out and improve their lives.

So, this is precisely what happens in the minds of all the Buffalo Bills fans (I'm not one, and can't even begin to understand the fanaticism) when on a recent Monday night the Bills are blessed with an incredible run of good fortune and defensive out-of-place offense. All the plot elements are there. The rookie quarterback moving with poise and precision. The exteme underdog position of the team against the league stars. And every single fan, this time including me, knew with certainty that we were watching a slow moving train wreck. That we could not possibly keep this enormous lead and inevitable victory. We knew even after that really clever dodge which revoked the last-minute field goal that there would have to be another last minute, and that the wide right was reserved only for Buffalo. Huzzah and goddamn! We must love it this way. Even the television announcers were too abashed to ply the obvious, though the 'only in Buffalo' undertone was clear enough.

It might be like the leftie bind, which Hitchens broke free of. It might be like staying home to rescue Dad's old business instead of taking that Harvard degree off to the big times. It might actually be a nicer cut of human being. It might just be patsie-land. But it is at least clear that there is a lot of unnecessary agonizing going on and angst that we, around here, are likely not good enough. By not politely filling the asshole lane, it is certain that we cut ourselves off. I'm an asshole, yodeloo yodeleee, yipee! But I'm still not going to engage in any self-improvement, profit-oriented religion, or flag-waving.

High Speed Internet - go figure! (a patriotic screed)

I can't imagine what God operates this way, but I live in the middle of nowhere (I had to pause for a bear to get off the road just up from my house the other day), and had pretty much written off the internet as anything interesting for me. I did start this blogging thing just in case the internet was still interesting to anyone else, and to see if I could develop any discipline about writing. Then I caught the telephone line guy the other day and jokingly asked him when he would bring DSL my way. To my amazment, that 's what he said he was doing. So now I know that the internet is not qualitatively different with speed. It's a totally different thing!

Google Earth, and Live Search (3D) make me feel like living on earth has actually changed, once again without anyone letting me know! I'm a network guy for a living, but am always too busy to play on the worksite, and frankly HAD NO IDEA. Truly (I admit with some shame)!

There are really two pieces to this. One, I can sit in the same chair where I read, and don't have to gear up (bifocals also work better with a laptop actually on the lap). Two, I can poke around. Cool!

I'm still not so sure that I can bother with the formating or photos or anything. Just the words, Ma'am.

So, now what do I want to say? Let's try this: Pornography on the internet could almost ruin lovemaking. And it gets boring really quick. I know I should have my hormones checked or something, and trust me, I'm not without response. But Google earth is way so much more interesting.

The whole porn thing raises the whole what is love anyhow thing, which raises something about the difficulty of the level of trust required for love, and the place of sex in there. Sacramental pledges can easily be posed as the necessary condition for "true" love, as much as it is easy to see the poseurs (of love) as so many abused and love-traumatized victims. But has anyone out there seen Short Bus? It can certainly cure the over-moralizing of sex, which for Chrissakes needs to be cured.

But I think that's what I was trying to get at regarding Gore. Researchers say that, just for example, Ritalin may be appropriate for, let's say for the sake of argument, 45% of ADHD kids, and maybe that's 2% of all kids. But sales figures show that 20% of all kids are on Ritalin. You go to each of the doctors, and they have a good and prudent and conserative reason to prescribe the drug, but then you have the numbers.

Or even better, take a look at the babes driving the really expensive SUVs. This is not a scientific sampling, but I defy anyone to gainsay the obvious. Now you investigate the protestations of truelove among the well-heeled, and I daresay you find the Ritalin story.

Now, I know for a damn fact that these relations are just prostitution on a grander scale. I learned that from my sociology class in high school. I also know that the narrative script for true love becomes the more likely the more health wealth and beauty one has at ones disposal. In the middle, it seems likely that real honest to goodness Hollywood style true love is rare indeed. And given that we all know that, why not go for the gold?

So, let's be real about Al Gore. He's very rich and very pleased with himself. And have you ever driven by that section of Nashville's tony outskirts? You have to want to live there (I honestly wouldn't). He's not going to save the world, but I am willing to say that he would be a whole hell of a lot better than the cynical overdrive in the other direction we've gotten from his opposition.

Speaking of narratives, it's a wonder how few have picked up on the Al Qaeda as The Federation against us as The Empire script. It seems certain that the self-bombers have. But that's an American narrative. Shouldn't we own it? How did we end up as the evil empire up against religious nutcakes obsessed with sex paranoia?

So, speaking of Sicko, it becomes hard not to argue -- to argue against -- the construction whereby these United States of America have lost democracy even as we pander it to the world. One can become shrill inside the country, because sensible arguments so seldom get voiced. But there is Michael Moore to provide comfort -- not necessarily by his entertainment or polemics, but because he so simply demonstrates that not the whole world thinks the way we do. There's lots of company outside, which can see us better than ourselves.

Among a people so uninformed about politics, and so well informed about consumer choice, it has to be inevitable that our very beliefs are marketed to us, to the point where quite literally and with good conscience we vote against very selves. I guess the rest of the world sees this, and recognizes the threat of all that unmediated raw power for what it is. Concentrated in the hands of so few if not stupid, and if not maniacal, and if not even immoral, well certainly unsophisticated champions of the powers that be.

There is a kind of inevitability to it all, well beyond notions of conspiracy. Just as, I hope, there is a kind of inevitability about it's collapse. If not from resource runout, then from what used to be seen clearly as internal contradictions. When our self interest stares us down in the form of blatant injustice, rampant disease, and educational burnout. We're not there yet, and the contradictions remain beyond the castle walls (The immigration debate is SO what it's all about), but Sicko certainly does hit the mark. And is therefore hopeful.

Hey, I'm writing on July 4!! (I do so always miss the obvious) So just as I believe in True Love, and just as I am certain that there is another culture of medicine apart from the predatory one now in ascendancy, and just as I have not become entirely cynical, so do I believe in this great Nation, and find myself a patriot of the very best sort. We, the people, will take back our country.

Gore Letdown

By now, I'm sure none of us are too certain about Al Gore's real intentions about entering the presidential race - he certainly hasn't been shy about promoting his new book and getting his name out there. The sense is that here is someone who might actually know how to handle the awesome responsibility of the position, and who still has a soul, but he might also have a plot.

I've been hanging fire after reading the Nation Magazine (Alexander Cockburn, specifically, in his Beat the Devil occasional column) blast Gore. Reeling might be more like it. I don't think it's any more possible to track the alignments and inner political code of some Nation Magazine angles than it is to do their crossword puzzles (does anyone?), so I'm forgiving myself for not getting it (actually, they might have dropped the crossword -- maybe they figured out that no-one did it, or that it was too metaphorically related to their content?). I was waiting around for the followup column, which promised some perspective on the state of the environment as promulgated by the "fear mongers", so called.

Gore was targeted among the fear mongers (I'd thought they were all right wing, in the simple sense that there's where the profit from fear is, though clearly a cause can profit from fear too), tarred with Tennessee relations to Nuclear and Clean Coal, and pretty much dissed altogether as a self-promoter. I, and a lot of other readers for sure, were sorely disappointed when Cockburn demurred for another round, licking his wounds for having been blasted so sorely in return, instead of making good on his promise of perspective on the true state of the environment. Then he rolled out arguments debunking global warming theories which sounded for all the world like the ones out of the shameless right.

What's going on here? Polemics, I guess. For sure, it is important to remind ourselves that Gore is filthy rich and well connected, and therefore by definition isolated from reality, as though, I guess, the vested slants from wealth and power connections are different in kind from those of the ideologically devoted of any stripe. Catholics have their slant, evangelicals theirs, neo-conservatives theirs, but the money power slant is the one the Nation is ideologically devoted to rail against. But I felt taken aback to find the trustworthiness of Gore at least implicitly related to the trustworthiness of Bush-Cheney. Yet another brander of truth.

But those guys are just out and out liars and manipulators, who have moved so far beyond slants, toward power for its own sake that many of us wanted and needed someone like Gore. Someone credible as a power-broker, but still more credible as standing outside the soul-compromises which seem required of a player.

I refuse to go far with the notion that he was hurt by having been cheated of the presidency, as though that fact grants him a credibility credential. If you follow that line, then you are logically required to assume that he is a self promoter. I think the idea is that you serve as a politician. You're not supposed to do it for your own sake.

I can certainly buy, as I said in the last screed, that he has been terminally burned by the political system in its current state, and for sure is having way too much of a blast on his current global warming tear. He seems to understand that when the political system is broken, the way to real influence is apart from politics. Bush-Cheney haven't exactly gotten away with their felonies, any more than mega-corporate vegetable mongers get away with their dirty processes in our new media culture.

Of course, that cleansing only takes care of stuff with a global media reach, while, sans a viable professional fourth estate, the Internet mediated citizen-corp can't fill in against all the daily corruption which is gotten away with now more than ever. Because that takes vocation and funding.

So, where is the real power? Is Cockburn right that Al Gore knows only about money mediated power, and that mongering fear suits some occult purpose of his? Are we all being truly hoodwinked by the global warming stuff, such that it provides cover for the earth poisoning and defenseless people-exploitations which more properly should be our main concern? Is global warming just a way to position the global-corp money power to market needless remedies for non-existent problems descendant from mega-oil profits, which can't last forever? And how does one separate the oil guzzling-global warming connection which Al Gore details, from all the underlying evil which The Nation and all good left wingers must be devoted to doing battle against? Finally, how does one reconcile the agendas of Left and Right coming to the same conclusions about global warming. It can't be that their agendas are aligned.

We know that the Bushies had wanted to deny global warming because they'd assumed it would get in the way of their global corporate agenda. The argument about politicizing science gets good traction, and guilt follows without trial. Maybe they're revising for the same reason Cockburn comes around to the other point of view. But I want some argumentation. I have to think Cockburn is either just way wrong, or about to pull a Hitchens.

Still, Gore remains tainted for me. I've been awakened to his undeniable essential nature, and what I'd thought was simple boastful self-promotion now starts to find its agenda.

Maybe my agenda is that I am plainly disgusted by what first-world life has become, and so it suits me to find an endgame. I suppose that defines the anxiety of a world disaffected by the Christ story, but which once bought it hook line and apocalypse (the brain-dead true believers don't count, no matter their numbers, since truth can't be decided by a vote). Endtime nostalgia, or something.

Actually, there's my rub. How can Cockburn get in bed with the God-will-call-us-home-so-soil-our-nest-with-impunity crowd? Has the eschatological link between Marxism and Christianity finally poked through the rhetoric? Cockburn relates carbon-credit economics to the selling of indulgences by the Church.

Al Gore and Jerry Falwell

Phew. I confess some relief! Since here I am scribbling away in the vast public space, and I was actually afraid someone might have been reading. Glad to know I can continue to hide out in my corner. It's really hard to know how the numbers work -- among the billions on the planet, and then among the millions online, etc, you might think it almost inevitable that there's something for everyone. But I can lurk yet.

I did just read the Time magazine cover story about the "Last Temptation of Al Gore", and it sparked a couple of thoughts. (My whole goal here is to start writing, on the theory that for a hermit it might have a salutary effect similar to actual social engagement, and that I might be able to develop thoughts beyond the mere having of them.)

I found it quite credible that Gore does seriously not consider running for president, since he is pretty convincing on his read of the state of the American political system (one doesn't gulp poison once having identified it!). Part of the argument he seems to be making in the book excerpted in Time (The Assault on Reason) is echoed in the Time headline. The headline represents the kind of bonk-over-the-head poetics which is all that has survived the television age. This is what you find in Grey's Anatomy on TV - Life shadowing art shadowing life in ways which feel literary in the same way Applebee's food tastes like real food (when compared to fast food) since it might be more artfully prepared than what you eat at home. Or perhaps even the way movie renditions relate to the book on which they're based. The feeling is very much related to what you would feel while reading actual literature, were you trained and un-lazy enough actually to read.

So, Time magazine does keep itself a cut above, in a way, with fairly literate copy, but can't resist the cartoonish allusion, requiring at least as much literacy as a subscriber to Time would have, though not enough actually to have read Kazantzakis. But surely the implicit comparison to Christ is vulgar? Well, maybe no more so that the Spiderman efforts.

Anyhow, Gore knows fairly well from the inside what's wrong with the political system, feels some actual pain -- more authentic in scope certainly, if not in depth, for his realization of what might have been -- and would no more plot to jump back in than would anyone who'd escaped with his life some undervalued force of nature, jump back into that maelstrom. I think he's actually found religion on the subject, and knows that he couldn't win without losing, so to speak, and that there is no power in the world great enough to change that equation. Well, except for Christ, which Gore decidedly knows he's not (even if Time wants to tweak him).

So, you don't cloak yourself in the skin of the enemy and expect to be able to shed it upon victory. Which brings me to Falwell. I've long struggled to justify my conviction that the likes of Falwell do the bidding of the devil, in their own terms. I've thought it has something to do with accepting a formula for faith (and then relinquishing all and any obligation to renew faith through actually contending with challenges as they occur).

So, these lazy non-thinkers confront difficult issues like abortion, or the challenges of scientific discovery (Creative Design) as if there could be actual guidance elsewhere than in the living confrontation about what the right answer is. And they rattle off a kind of canned theology, which surely reduces the beauty, subtlety and potential depth of the Christ story in much the same way that Applebees (sorry Applebees, you were convenient, and McDonalds is overused for the purpose, and well, I kind of like your food, just as I like Grey's Anatomy) reduces good cooking to a frozen deliverable.

So the feeling of true religion is, in this argument, sort of like the feeling akin to reading literature that you might get from a movie, or of actual intelligence while reading Time. It rehearses something which might have been true once, and might even still be true, but somehow the very security of the brand name is what makes it a fraud (the thinking and feeling went on once, long ago, and far away). So the chef in the lab once did cook with something like love, and what you are eating at Applebees, reduced though it has been by various lowest common denominators, still at least echoes that chef's art . . .

The information age, so called, has, in its summary effect, centered all value-creation back in the central office, and rendered all actual creation the product of machines or machine-like drones. So that the incremental cost of any particular widget or digitally mediated copy is approximately nil, and the capitalist model has reached its logical end. There is no ownership of anything outside the grasp of the new robber barons, even though we the people hold title through the pensions, tax subsidies to the military industrial etcetera, free market choice and, in theory, our vote.

Apparently, Al Gore remains incredibly optimistic about the internet, providing as it could the means for individuals to counter the prevailing tsunami in the other direction. Keeping in mind that this is the very technology which powers things which, tsunami-like, destroy the democratic power of civic anything. This is why we have only Walmart at which to shop, and really really cheap stuff made elsewhere where hands cost ten cents an hour, and get our politicians marketed to us in the very same way. How can there be democracy in such a perfected marketplace? There can only be manipulations, when the scope of choice has been reduced before the questions even get asked.

Al remains buds with that proto-fascist Steve Jobs (seems like a nice guy). And Jobs swims in the soup with all the other techno-enthusiasts (have I mentioned my trite observation that Kurzweil tells the same tale, Propp-structurally speaking, as does LeHaye?). But then Dr. Seuss has long since established that Mom is a fascist (Mothers' Day was nice, thanks!), and so it's not all bad. Anyhow, of course they are optimistic, and maybe, just maybe, there is a moment left for great masses of somehow liberated individuals to make their choices and make their choices known. There's always suicide bombing, apparently, against which absolutely nothing can be done. But short of that sort of final logic to Jerry Falwell/Jonestown numbscullism, where the rote formula justifies literally anything, there just might be thinking back against the machine, as mediated by the very technology which masters us.

Well, I hope so. I like Al Gore. I like the very picture of his working life, and its oh-so-stark contrast to our leather-gloved bush-whacker in celebration of un-thinking exercise of cartoon mythology enacted. That's what I hate about Jerry Falwell and ilk. They cannot help themselves from saying right out what the logic of their beliefs leads them to, and ironically enough, if they were as marketplace-important as, say Don Imus, it would destroy them, and should, but doesn't.

But it will. Just as Karl Rove has (unwittingly?) exposed the flaw more surely than Al Gore ever can, and thereby provides the ground on which Gore's actual thought can take root. So, I think Gore is right and true in his sense that he has more actual power now than he would have had as president. This Gandhi truth force thing. Or maybe actual Christ's power. Maybe we don't really need all that much. Just a few tweaks here and there. Net neutrality. Unionism's resurgence. Genuine revulsion at torture committed in our name. Pity for ignorant suicidists, and even understanding of their stakes, instead of supposing them to be our evil selves. Awakening from the drunken stupor of our oil binge. Democracy can be reclaimed a soon and as simply as people awakening to give a damn. And that's what the Falwell people have already caught on to, though there is no truth-force on that side, thank goodness. Now if only the secularists would stop being so enamored of technology. Cool as my i-pod is, it's not as nice as a real live concert, and I'd love to hop on a hay-wagon to get to it, so long as I didn't have to brave traffic every day to make me living . . .

Blah blah blah