Deepest Darkest Africa

At the moment our President is speaking in Ghana to their parliament. I gotta tell ya, it is SO great having a President who speaks as if he could write his own scripts. Someone who can use big words and little words, someone who seems to understand the big words. Now if he actually can do much of what he speaks about, it would be swell.

There is a scene in a Richard Pryor bit I think about somehow when watching the Pres. A shrink is giving Richard a word association test. "Black-white," and then it goes into "spear-chucker, jungle bunny, jiggaboo, and finally, of course, nigger. Pryor has become increasingly angry and wild eyed, "cracker, whitey, honky, and then finally DEAD honky! I like to imagine Barak staring down some southern legislator, saying "DEAD honky" and having the Cheney Assasination Squad haul him away. sigh. we can only hope.

African Americans forget what we are pretty sure is the store of our race. The human race, ya know, because science tells us that DNA refutes the concept of race divisions. We ALL come from Africa. We walked out of Kenya and headed out to bleach our skin, to grow smaller, taller, whiter, and then return to make slaves of our cousins. And of course, it's a good idea to recall that black Africans sometimes sold their kin to the white Africans from America and Europe. Nothing is ever split into a clean 50-50 like black and white, good and evil. Is it more evil to bring a black child to Mississippi as a slave or to kidnap them and turn them into soldiers in Africa? Hard to say. I'd give them both an A+ for evil.

CNN is broadcasting a story about a group of black kids paying $1950 to a PA country club to use the pool. All them little jungle bunnies just splashing away in the same water as white folk use! Yikes, there's neeegrows in the water! Well they returned the money after throwing the darkies out and fully expected everybody to go away happy. This is a good example of just how freaking stupid bigots are. Oddly enough the black children were not happy. We have a nice clip of one young American weeping in the year 2009 because white country club owners didn't want black children in their pool. I guess a black President didn't miraculously turn idiots into citizens. Ah well. Funny thing, the next story line was Spike Lee making the same observation. I kind of wonder if They let a black man into the WH just to keep the neegrows happy. Well, as a fellow African American, although a pale version, I resent bigotry wherever it may be and whoever gets hurt should have a loud voice so we all can see what is happening.

Now we are back in white America, talking about paying down debts and interest rates. Not crying black children, we talked about them for a minute or two, now let's talk about credit cards. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a prolonged discusion about how we relate to one another? Like a few hours, maybe. Well, the next black President can handle that in the year 2090.

Fred Brighton-57

"The only true consistency is inconsistency, and true inconsistency is inconsistently inconsistent."

Brighton's Theory of '57 shook the philosophical world, and they all went down to the local pub to have a few pints of brown ale and to discuss the implications of the young philosopher's new work.

"So, in other words, the Universe could be just cooking along, doing it's thing, and then POOF it all changes, with no obvious connection between one Universe and the Next. That moment before, that last moment of the Old Order, that might have been a minute ago. But up on the top shelf of your bookcase there is a mote of dust where before there was none.

"And the names of the Demons of the Gate are Belief and Perception, And Belief wields a mighty staff to block the passage of unbelievers, Whereas Perception swings the Green Jade Sword, which alone can cut through all blocks to Knowledge and so to Wisdom."

The cat climbs onto the top of the outdoor sink and then leaps to grab the lip of the sill of the bathroom window. Then she scrambles and cries and scratches at the siding with her hind legs. Someone opens the screen and pulls the cat through, and then replaces the screen.
"Where you been, cat?"
"Me? Out."
Tch tch tch. "That's what you told me last night." The light goes out, the door closes. Now muffled:
"I'm beginning to think you ain't gonna pay back that money. I'm beginning to wonder about this friend of yours, what's his name?"
"Burt?"
"Yeah, Burt. I think I should meet this guy. Soon. Like this afternoon. Now what?"
"...me out! Now!"
"Alright, alright. Here's the kitchen door. Now go find that Burt meatball and get MY dough!"
The cat runs to the birding station and waits to see if a bird is going to land there. She waits a minute, then two. Her tail twitches, just the tip, from side to side. Suddenly she whirls and runs to the shady side of the house, to the outdoor sink. She jump to the small screen covering the bathroom window and starts to loudly proclaim,
"You'll get your goddam money when and if you learn not to replace the fuggin' window screen! Now get in here, NOW!"

Daddy's Day

I found myself calculating the difference in time to California and heading for the phone as I saw it was Father's Day. No, it's too early to call Dad. Lessee, earth to the One is about a lifetime away. It's Sunday today... oh, so listen...can you hear the sunshine hitting the air and shifting the layers? It hits the leaves and pushes their fluids around, changing sugars and such. The trees wave their branches about in the breeze to expose all the surfaces to the sunshine. In that way our Father shines upon us from all directions, giving us heat and moving our fluids around.

What? Father? Will usually waxes poetic about Mom, especially on Holy Days. But remember, the Tree has two sides and we are reminded to honor the Father and the Mother. Yesterday was Solstice, today is Sunday and it's Father's Day. I'd like to go sit with Dad in the back yard while the birds are singing and calling to one another. He loved their singing and he loved to watch them fly. I know that when he watched them fly, he was flying too. I've been with Dad in the air, I know how he loves those lazy eights and looping turns. We'd go flying nearly straight up in that Cesna 175 until it'd pause, we'd be weightless, and then we drop, loop and turn until any normal man would have passed out or thrown up. I always got to the brink of passing out but held on because sometimes, on a crazy whim, Dad would hand the controls over to me and say, "Here, Stud, take over."

My razor is dull, I can't finish my shaving. It's a disposable but I use it for about a year before tossing. It must be about a year. It's always strange going to buy a bag of cheap razors with a couple day old beard, maybe half shaven. I feel like I need someone to help count out my change. "Here we go, Billy. How many pennies do we have?"

Dad used to hunch his back and roll his shoulders. I never thought much about it until recently, when I roll my shoulders, trying to relieve the stinging, burning fibromyalgia pain. I get up and walk around, angry and impatient, waiting for the damn pills to kick in. I sit down, continue typing, mis-spelling and rolling my shoulders. Dang, it hurts. Dad used to snap at me when I bothered him for something or another. Like starting the lawn mower or finding where I'd misplaced his hammer. I always thought he was mean. Now I'm mean. But it's just because my pills haven't kicked in. Dad didn't have pills to kick in. The best he had was beer and a shot. Yeah, I've tried that but the next day it's worse. I think if I had to live like that I would have to be grumpy the second or third time a kid asked me to get up and do something.

"Here, Stud, take over"

No can do, Dad, you're the man, I'm just a close second. I can fly a Cesna for a few minutes once you get us up into the air, but I'm no mean eagle. I happen to know my Father can really fly. I know he trusts me to carry on down here until I get my wings and can join him in a dizzy, crazy , lazy eight way up where the Sun shines in all directions, warming us and keeping us smiling.

I love you Dad, call me sometime when you get a chance.

Delayed Responses

I was mincing some dill and sage to put in the dumplings when, as usual, I thought of Dad's dumplings. His mother had taught him how to make cut dumplings and for years our family enjoyed the chicken and dumplings he made. Several years ago he and mom came up for a visit and I made chicken and dumplings for them. Mom said she "liked" them but Dad was vocal in his criticism. "Your Grandmother knew how to make good dumplings. These are drop dumplings! It's not the same, Bill, just not the same. I don't know if I can eat these."
Well, he did eat them and I bet he sort of "liked" them, but every time I make dumplings I think about Dad's cut dumplings. It's like making a pie crust, you need a sizable clear space to roll out the dough, then you have to cut them and set them aside to toughen up. They are great, but my drop dumplings are fine too, especially with fresh dill and sage in them. But I have decided, and you can hold me to this, that the next time I make dumplings, just for Dad I will roll and cut them. I bet Margaret will like them so much she won't let me make the drop kind anymore. That would make Dad chuckle, wherever he is now. I bet Grandma is cooking for him and I bet she's trying new things he won't approve of. Dad needs to loosen up, especially now that he's dead.

Wet Thursday

My room is a dull collection of surfaces and muted colors, except where the novels under the side lamp are illuminated, and even they are mostly black and red. Reminds me of a kids joke. But outside the world is green. It starts where a bottle of ginger ale is sitting on a TV table in front of the couch. Green, but just at the top where the window light hits it, like a key lime pie green. At the window the plants are all translucent green, shades of glowing green. It flows out onto the world forming great shapes of green. The world is textures of green, all glowing and growing and shedding light. If I was 17 again I'd think I'd gotten some fine acid somewhere. It used to be like that, everything led to acid. They told us that acid rots your brain, like a battery left open on a tossing ship. The idea did more to intrigue acid users into doing yet more of the toxic brew than any fear to them about their minds. See, this is how the train moved for those young idiot savants of the sixties:

Acid causes changes in consciousness which is predicated upon one's personal paradigm of the universe and one's place in it. Fearful people generally took acid to find peace, but peace comes from within and all they found were scary bright lights and sounds they couldn't understand. Your friend or guide was supposed to interpret those inputs for you. Reference peyote rituals and coming of age rituals. Science, in the form of physics, specifically quantum physics, tells us that the immediate universe is a product of perception, relative to one's place and time, one's paradigm. Example: delusional people believe things are a certain way, based solely on their brain's chemistry and their perceptions of the immediate universe. There are no hard edges in nature, so we are all of us to some degree, delusional, otherwise we are enlightened. Acid tells us that there are no hard edges in the universe, according to any number of paradigms, therefor it is likely that we are all of us some degree of the universe, and therefor some degree of ourselves, a self referencing existence. The conclusion reached is that you don't need acid to become delusional, nor enlightened, you simply need to change your paradigm.

Thus, you are what you eat, what you shit, what you till, what you plant, what you admire, what you pluck, what you kill and what you bury.  You are what you believe you are, and you might believe you are alone, and then you are.

There is a difference between delusional and illusional. It is important to remember that.

When one is tripping on acid there is often the sense of rapid motion when others might perceive none at all. It's also possible to have that sense of rapid forward motion at the same time those around us are perceived as standing stock still, sometimes combined with a sense of going in all directions at once. The “others” who are standing stock still may in fact be moving, so that one's perception of them increasingly diverges from what they themselves might perceive, and any of the other “others”. The resulting paradigm can be confusion during communication. Nobody makes much sense on acid to others, but often it can feel amazingly sensible. During these times it was always good to have a friend there to tell you how sensible it was not to act too swiftly on one's new awareness, due to the fact that one's chemistry had changed, and it might change again. You could sense this, even if you couldn't absorb it all, like an enormous cake with just the right icing. It would still be your downfall to try to eat it all. At these times it was always good for someone to tell you that, indeed, you had eaten it all, and then show you an empty plate.

You can spend a lot of time trying to see through closed eyes. There are those who would tell you to open them, and those who would tell you to keep trying. Only you can tell if you can see through closed lids, or what you can see. It stands to reason you can see your body, or some version of it. The trick is seeing past your body to some other version of it. Now understand that the stand of trees outside, so vivid in their greenery, are in turn receiving photons bounced off your body, vibrations coming from your body, so that they are perceiving a paradigm as well, and it differs radically from yours. Their perceptions, we are told, must including their roots and leaves, as our hair and skin and nails can be perceived by us. So their perception of self and the immediate universe will include the taste to the soil, the sound of movement, the whisper of air, the smell of everything, and who knows, maybe some electrical-magnetic perceptions we cannot image, not having those organs. So we are living in their universe, and they in ours

If a giant oak or a trembling bristle-cone be enlightened, I assume they would have some perception of me, for I have faith I am of this universe too. Faith is important when creating universes out of paradigms, for faith comes from within. The universe stands without, in all Her trembling new-greenness.

A Pair of Faces Beats an Ace in the Hole

For some time now I have been talking about the fact that every innocent life taken by American forces is connected to hundreds of family members, thousands of neighbors and friends. Let's face it, the way Americans kill these days if one little girl is blown apart or crushed you can bet a lot of other playmates and friends were taken out, maybe even a mother and father. I've written about how the disaster that put my son in a coma took me down into many a pit of dispair. When Jon was a slab of meat in Arizona and I was a father taken to the ER because I collapsed, hell for the last decade it's been tough on a lot of people, and I suggest often that we should TRY to understand the implications of your own actions, especially your proxy actions by the government forces and hired mercenaries, well it all comes back to bite you on your butt. Or smash your son's head through glass and steel, leaving you with a piece of silent meat that could look like you son, or daughter. I can't imagine Jess left with two steel claws because some young American man dropped a bomb too fast or in a wind, maybe. But now, believe it, there are thousands of young men and women eager to blow themselves up with any one of us if some person tells them to do so, the right person.

Last night on PBS they showed us the faces of thouse kids and explored their world. Well, son, it was as bad as I feared and the facts pretty clear, we are paying to maim thousands of children and we will be asked to pay a huge additional fee, the indifference fee. It's well and good to say the appropriate slogans and lyrics, but seriously, try to think of thins a moment. Every day hundreds of children in America are wounded and killed by their parents, and the President will NEVER say a thing about it. If that does not offend him, or her, then where is the goodness is the American soul that is worth sending our children off to die and kill defending it? I don't see it. What I did see was the face of a 15 year old kid eager to not only kill a stranger, but die in the process. Our goverment would add this point start going on with numbers, e.g. "it only took 19 to destroy a Great American Ediface, now imagine thousands of GeeHawdes strapped with Nuclear fuel rods living next to YOU!" or some such thing, but seriously, you probably have within ten miles of you some young American boy saying something like, "They're all the same, we outa just NOOK them all!"

It's not a fucking reality show, son. It's what my son looked like, and his friends in the ward multiplied by thousands, but no that kid will never set foot in my son's ward and see the tubes and the curled hands of a victim of violent impact to the head, like from a 15 year old kid blowing himself up. He might say that "...we wear helmets, they're pretty good.." and I would have to say, "He was wearing a damn VW van, you idiot."

And what I could say to that 15 year old, if allowed and if he could understand my words or facial tics, is that the problem with this whole thing is that people are asserting that killing children is okay and children are saying it's okay to kill the rest of them. Nothing ever works out quite like you think. Sometimes you end up spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, unable to move, with tubes invading your throat and shit drying in your bed sores. You never know what can happen, especially if your actions are based on what some person says you should do rather than you first do no harm. You prefer to act on someone's command, like a slave or a dog, like Wrigley. Then you blow up, or maybe partly blow up. Then we all mostly die. I don't know, it sounds like something somebody from a Hollywood movie would do.

24

So far, in the last 24 hours my friend Sharon has been suffering through numerous tests to find out why her extremities tingle and burn and her hands are icy cold. She hurts, has no energy and looks like she's in her 70's. Sharon is in her 70's but always has looked 60 something because she takes very good care of herself. Next, I fought off a nice migraine at about 3AM, no doubt caused by too many beers, cheese products and a few chocolate cookies in the ice cream for desert. So there i was, choking down Midrin caps, trying to remember what time it was, not wake up Margaret until I was dead sure it was a migraine... because BIG migraines lay me out on the floor, usually near the toilet so I can puke from time to time. Let's see, what next after the migraine? Oh yeah, because the meds make me very sleepy we woke up late and I had to drive Margaret to work in Albany, 50 miles south. Then I had to walk Wrigley because he was so good in the car for an hour long commute. That was fun except it was wet and cold. Then I slept, upon getting home, that is. I slept until 2PM, woke up, remembered Sharon, then thought about what I might do to help. Nothing, actually. I decided to see if I could bake a nice rhubarb pie for her. So the first thing is to clean up the counter of last nights dishes and dog/cat food cans. We save the pull top tabs for kidney patients. Somebody donates 57 cents per pound. Margaret like the idea but freaks out when I pull off the tabs because the metal is sharp and you have to wiggle it back and forth to snap it. "Nonsense, I say, I'm careful with sharp objects!" Unless I am drowsy from the meds and lack of sleep. Then I drag a sharp edge of tin over my thumb and slice deeply into the knuckle. Yeah. Okay, I did not bleed into the dough or the fruit and we have lots of bandaids because I'm always saying things like "I'm careful..." when the world, nay the universe, knows I am clumsy as hell, that's why I never play video games. Drip, drip, drip... leaving a trail of blood everywhere I go, trying to tear the damn bandaid open. Why should you need a combination of three hands to get to a bandaid for your dangling thumb? It's a good product, waterproof and seals the edges together nicely. I finished the pie crust in my usual incompetent manner. Grandma Shirley was great with pies, Dad was great with pies, I USED to be great with pies. Why can't I make a simple lattice top pie anymore? Dang. The good news is my back meds help with finger pain.

Let's see now, steel pin in my left index finger, slice across the right thumb knuckle, arthritis in my fingers and toes and neck and back... migraines... I think that's about it. Yeah, I'm doing great, one body part at a time. If I burn that pie I will begin to think that I'm really losing it, not just misplaced it. sigh.

I have no idea what to fix for dinner. Everything needs knives and other sharp things, as well as fire and hot metal. I wonder if I could boil whole potatoes? Sure, let's try boiling water! The really bad part about all this is yet to come, when Margaret notices the bandaid or the bloody kleenexes and unwashed dishes. Now she gets to say "I told you to be careful!" and it's not fair. She ALWAYS tells me to be careful and I always hurt myself. It's sort of the way I work. Oh yeah the cuts are getting deeper lately but that's just because I'm not careful. Dang, maybe she's right. But how the hell do you make a pie without cutting yourself? I bet Grandma's hands had lots of scars. I do know they were soft, unlike mine.

I think the bleeding has stopped. The timer's gone off. The pie is done. Looks good, except the lattice work is very chaotic, more like a black widow's web, still, it ain't store bought. I think I'll go sharpen my axe and take on that big tree out back.

What Ever Happened to the White Hats?

Going through the Guardian movie reviews I noted a certain ambivalence in the subjects. Most seem dark and depressed, even the children's movies like Prince Caspian had a lot of death. Now Terry Gilliam has a movie out starring a dead guy and his three substitutes. Wow. Should have started with Johnny Depp, he never dies. But there aren't any heroes like we had when the Lone Ranger was about. Some time around Batman, the movie, the world got a little darker. Might have been when the US of A started bombing villages to save Democracy. Or maybe it was when they killed Jack Kennedy. Dirty Harry never wore a white hat, although Clint did on occasion. My Dad wore a White hat, a Stetson, which is currently sitting on my armoire in the bedroom. I tried it on but it felt huge and tall and tight. Guess I'm no hero. Maybe I should use the hat to check on that aspect of suitors for Jess's hand in marriage. Try on the hat and see how it fits. Jess could probably fit the hat but she wouldn't try it on because it wouldn't suit her style.

Can a black man in a white hat be a hero in a bigotted country? Somehow I think not. Between the tap dancing and singing our President doesn't have time to do right. So we continue to drop bombs on children and call them collaterol damage, a term I have not heard from the White House since the Viet Nam genocide. Makes you wonder.

On the one hand we have the previous crowd of heroes still, but they are old, aged, tired and discouraged. Not that term. Cronkite still writes and speaks out for democracy for America, but the media will not cover anybody who acts like things are not well in America, the best of the best bar none, except immigrants. I would lke a political party in which the Jimmy Carters and Walter Cronkites spoke to the values we were taught about as kids in school. Those values which have been shelved for many years but still sound pretty good. You know, the kind wherein kids in high school are eager to join Peace Corps for a couple years before college rather than look for a snazzy college to get a good wage degree from. Nobody wants to be a hero if they have to live in squallor and drink heavily or eat messy hot dogs for lunch.  But the subtlety of this is so fine and clever. Note that since the early days of film the "bad guy" had wealth and a great home and a great looking bimbette. The hero lived in a house with a broken stair, cracked coffee cups and no girl friend at all unless you count the great gal he never kisses. Now we have guys who live in garbage cans as heroes. Not much to impress the children, eh? Small wonder they grow up wanting to be Wall Street speculators.

We can't just start making phony films showing rich powerful good guys because A) it's too soon and B) power and riches corrupt goodness, note the Pope. Batman is a fantasy, remember, who rarely gets laid. So somehow we need to show that even though you don't get rich, you can be happy with yourself and your kids won't think you're a loser if you fight the "Good Fight". You might even get laid. Robin Hood was a good guy who even started out rich but gave it up to fight the Bad Guy.

In India, in the good old days, maybe not so much nowadays, you would live hard until middle age and then, even if rich and powerful, you gave it all up and went to meditate by a stream clothed in a wrap and owning only a beggers bowl. You looked for peace and understanding, not wealth and power. That's India though and we think of them as "seriously messed up with funny accents". But it would be nice if somebody like Gates gave ALL ther money away in order to meditate on Life. It would be even better if the ex-Presidents all went from the White House to work in a soup kitchen. Until then I guess we'll have to make do with ancient mythology as a guide to ethical behavior and the value of a simple life.