the Narcissist's Guide

New Year's Eve on the Gulf of Mexico

2009-02-10T14:41:00.004-06:00

Psychology Dissidents' Victory at Last

2008-10-10T08:59:00.002-05:00

Exercising a never-before used bylaw, a dissident group of psychologists in the APA forced a referendum on the issue of psychologist participation in the interrogation of detainees. This referendum will seek to remove military psychologists from places like Gitmo and replace them with independent psychologists who will work on behalf of the detainees.

This is The Place

2008-10-02T11:44:00.003-05:00

You would have chuckled at this title,

as only a heathen in SLC could.

The night of the day I found out

all I could see was your face when I closed my eyes.

I am sorry I was not there the last time you reached out to me.

I know that I would not have been enough.

For the longest time you were a kindred spirit:

a razor sharp mind

that wrapped the finest humor

like bandages around a soul

with wounds that wouldn't heal.

While I'm left with great sorrow,

I can respect that you'd had enough...

and I hope that you've finally found a love

that is enough

in the great abyss.

Ronald John Bernier
Ronald John Bernier 1959 ~ 2008 Ronald John Bernier died 8 September 2008 as a result of long-term illness and depression. He was born 6 January 1959 in Putnam, CT to Armand and Evelyn Doris (Ouellette) Bernier. He grew up in Plainfield and graduated from Plainfield High School in 1977. Ron attended American University in Washington, DC, studying History, and also worked at the National Archives from 1978-79. In that year he began his long-time association with the probate industry, helping to find countless "missing heirs" and reuniting families that had lost touch with each other. He worked for the American Archives Association of Washington, DC (and later Bethesda, MD) from 1979 until the firm closed in 1993. Ron moved to Sacramento, CA to continue this work and in October 1995 founded his own firm, National Estate Services. He lived briefly in San Francisco and Oakland, CA before moving to Salt Lake City on 22 September 1996. In addition to his probate company, Ron co-founded Genealogical Resource Institute in 1998, helping people trace their ancestry. In June 2007 he also became Research Manager with American German Heir Search, based in FL. Ron learned that he was HIV positive on 31 August 1988 and lived with that disease for 20 years, through many illnesses and much suffering. He served on the Board of Trustees of PWACU (People with AIDS Coalition of Utah) from 2000-2005 and was its Secretary in 2004. Ron is survived by a brother in CT (and his children, Daniel, Jonathan and Erin Bernier), as well as a sister, Carole Krzywda of Liverpool, NY and her two children, Laurie Krzywda of Augusta, ME and Michael (Rebecca) Krzywda of Rochester, NY (and their children, Matthew and Josephine). He also leaves many friends in CT, the DC area, CA and UT, who will miss his quick wit and amazing sense of humor, as well as his deep love for them. There is less laughter in the world because of his passing. Ron will be buried alongside his parents in St. John's Cemetery in Plainfield. A celebration of his life will occur on Friday, 3 October at 11:30 a.m. at the Plaza Hotel on South Temple, in the APG meeting room. All of his friends are warmly invited to attend.

(from the Salt Lake Tribune Obituary Notices, Oct. 2, 2008)

Images of Colorado

2008-08-13T20:36:00.005-05:00

Love enforcement officer

Demonstration: the importance of wearing protection

Guru, poolside

Cowboy, sunny-side up

Tenda

Ecology Amiss at 'Casa Ra'

2008-07-17T10:16:00.051-05:00

Columbia, MO (AP) Trustees of the favored retreat of intellectuals and iconoclasts have sounded the alarm about the wildlife surrounding The Sunset Villa. "The ecology's all out of whack," lamented Colby "Jackalope" McPherson, Director of Organics, Environment, and Balance for the Villa. Mr. McPherson, a former sheriff of Fremont County in southern Colorado, released photographs and a statement to the press that made allegations that unchecked populations of deer around the Villa were most likely to blame for the recent destruction of the site's tastier landscaping.

Denuded green sweet potato vine

Vandalized and scandalized purple sweet potato vine

Local naturalists were quick to challenge McPherson's claims. "It most probably was nothing more than a hungry rabbit," dismissed Phinneas Rector, Interim Director of Backyard Habitats, a not for profit group frequently at odds with custodians at the Villa. Rex McPherson, Managing Director at Sunset Villa, defended cousin Colby's assessment of the situation, "Could've been a rabbit but if you examine the photo of the once robust green vine you'll see that such a rabbit'd've (sic) needed a long neck to nibble the end of that vine which clearly extends out past the wall."

Mr. Rector returned fire, "Rabbits are keen at using their little forehands and one could have easily bent the vine toward his hungry agenda." Biologists at the University of Missouri-Columbia were eventually pulled into the fray. Edna Prudence, Department Chair, stated from her office late yesterday, "The faculty are divided so it could have been either culprit. We will probably never know with any certainty." Driven to display unity, the McPherson cousins held a press conference today. Said Colby McPherson, "As is often the case, human malcontents have now eclipsed the story of nature with their own bent agendas. We're merely trying to shine a light on the ongoing tension between peaceful cohabitation and the consequences of brazen self-propagation."

Rex McPherson, without advisement from his more environmentally minded cousin, chirped, "The loss of Rubi marked the beginning of the whole system getting out of balance." Porifio Rubirosa, nicknamed "Rubi" by her fans, was a turtle who had taken up residence on the Villa's grounds ealier this summer but who vanished without a trace several weeks ago.

Cormac's Gems

2008-07-12T14:24:00.057-05:00

Here are a few favorites I've plucked from McCarthy (italics added for separation):

"We done blessed the food once, he said. So unless you got some personal business to conduct just tuck on in."

"They rode through the ruins of old sawmills and they rode through a mountain meadow dotted with the dark stumps of trees. Across a valley in the evening with the sun on it they could see the tailings of an old silvermine and camped in withy huts among the rusted shapes of antique machinery a family of gypsy miners working the abandoned shaft who now stood aligned in all sizes of them before the evening cookfire watching the riders pass along the opposing slope and shading their eyes against the sun with their hands like some encampment of ragged and deranged militants at review."

"He said that even the sepulturero would undersand that every tale was a tale of dark and light and would perhaps not have it otherwise. Yet there was still a further order to the narrative and it was a thing of which men do not speak. He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the smalldoer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new."

"The horse had dark hooves with heavy hoof walls and the horse had in him enough grullo blood to make a mountain horse by both conformation and inclination and as the boy had grown up where talk of horses was more or less continual he knew that where the blood carries the shape of a hock or the breadth of a face it carries also an inner being of a certain design and no other and the wilder their life became in the mountains the more he felt the horse subtly at war with itself. He didnt think the horse would quit him but he was sure the horse had thought about it."

"They followed one by one, the stiff winter nettles at the cave door rattling viperously against the legs of their jeans. Inside they struck matches and Warn took a candlestub from a crevice and lit it, the calcined rock taking shape, tonsiled roof and flowing concavity, like something gone partly to liquid and frozen back again misshapen and awry, their shadows curling threatfully up the walls among the dried and mounded bat droppings. They studied the inscriptions etched in the soft and curdcolored stone, hearts and names, archaic dates, crudely erotic hieroglyphs--the bulbed phallus and strange centipedal vulva of small boys' imaginations."

"Were there darker provinces of night he would have found them."

"The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked. These gangling progeny with black hair hanging from their armpits now sat idle and wide-eyed day after day in chairs and crates about the little yard cleared out of the tips while their harried dam called them one by one to help with chores and one by one they shrugged or blinked their sluggard lids. Uretha, Cerebella, Hernia Sue. They moved like cats and like cats in heat attracted surrounding swains to their midden until the old man used to go out at night and fire a shotgun at random just to clear the air. He couldn't tell which was the oldest or what age and he didn't know whether they should go out with boys or not. Like cats they sensed his lack of resolution."

"All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.

Yessir.

But there aint but one reason.

Yessir.

You know what it is?

No Sir.

It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be."

"He woke all night with the cold. He'd rise and mend back the fire and she was always watching him. When the flames came up her eyes burned out there like gatelamps to another world. A world burning on the shore of an unknowable void. A world construed out of blood and blood's alcahest and blood in its core and in its integument because it was that nothing save blood had power to resonate against that void which threatened hourly to devour it. He wrapped himself in the blanket and watched her. When those eyes and the nation to which they stood witness were gone at last with their dignity back into their origins there would perhaps be other fires and other witnesses and other worlds otherwise beheld. But they would not be this one."

"To see God everywhere is to see Him nowhere. We go from day to day, one day much like the next, and then on a certain day all unannounced we come upon a man or we see this man who is perhaps already known to us and is a man like all men but who makes a certain gesture of himself that is like the piling of one's goods upon an altar and in this gesture we recognize that which is buried in our hearts and is never truly lost to us nor ever can be and it is this moment, you see. This same moment. It is this which we long for and are afraid to seek and which alone can save us."

"I thought one time maybe you'd gone to California, Boyd said.

What would I do in California?

I dont know. They got cowboys in California.

California cowboys.

I wouldnt want to go to California.

I wouldnt either.

I might go to Texas.

What for?

I dont know. I aint never been.

You aint never been noplace. So what reason is that?

Only one I got."

"They washed their clothes out with soapweed and hung them in an acacia tree where they could not blow away for the thorns. Clothes much consumed by the country through which they'd ridden and which they had little way to repair. Their shirts all but transparent, his own coming apart down the center of the back. They spread their blankets and lay naked under the cottonwoods and slept with their hats over their eyes while the cows came up through the trees and stood looking at them."

"He sighed and seemed himself weary and cast down. He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation? It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart's memory which is the sole place of their abode then or now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back, whispered the sepulturero. Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift."

"Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is the poor man's history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death."

"He nodded. He knew her well enough, this old woman of Mexico, her sons long dead in that blood and violence which her prayers and her prostrations seemed powerless to appease. Her frail form was a constant in that land, her silent anguishings. Beyond the church walls the night habored a millennial dread panoplied in feathers and the scales of royal fish and if it yet fed upon the children still who could say what worse wastes of war and torment and despair the old woman's constancy might not have stayed, what direr histories yet against which could be counted at least nothing more than her small figure bent and mumbling, her crone's hands clutching her beads of fruitseed. Unmoving, austere, implacable. Before just such a God."

"I had an uncle was born in Missouri. His daddy fell off a wagon drunk in the mud one night goin through there and that's how it come about that he was born in Missouri."

"Who can dream of God? This man did. In his dreams God was much occupied. Spoken to He did not answer. Called to did not hear. The man could see Him bent at his work. As if through a glass. Seated solely in the light of his own presence. Weaving the world. In his hands it flowed out of nothing and in his hands it vanished into nothing once again. Endlessly. Endlessly. So. Here was a God to study. A God who seemed a slave to his own selfordinated duties. A God with fathomless capacity to bend all to an inscrutable purpose. Not chaos itself lay outside the matrix. And somewhere in that tapestry that was the world in its making and in its unmaking was a thread that was he and he woke weeping."

KIM

2008-06-27T08:24:00.002-05:00

huddled prayers for you

warming as i wake,

rays of dawn light

fervently poking me

with a thousand urgent pinpricks,

"now! Now!"

eyes opening in time

to see the silo of my mind

opening, too

then the trembling launch

of a psychic ICBM of Grace,

heading west to find you,

inscribed simply with the spell,

"love"

Summer Reading

2008-06-22T09:14:00.013-05:00

1. The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy

2. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (Pulitzer)

3. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

4. When you are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

5. Term Limits, Vince Flynn

6. Beast, Peter Benchley

7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (Pulitzer)

8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

9. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

10. My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult

11. You Shall Know Our Velocity, David Eggers

12. The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy

13. The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy

14. Child of God, Cormac McCarthy

15. The Philosopher's Apprentice, James Morrow

16. Sellevision, Augusten Burroughs

17. The Cave, Jose Saramago

18. Seeing, Jose Saramago

19: Suttree, Cormac McCarthy

20. The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Insculpta Homeboy

2008-06-22T09:05:00.001-05:00

(AP) Columbia, MO. The Management of the Sunset Villa (aka "Chalet du Soleil") announced Sunday morning that a local turtle has, in fact, taken up residence on their grounds. Rex McPherson, grounds manager, remarked, "Our friend goes by Porfirio Rubirosa and is one of many splendors of wildlife our guests can expect to enjoy when they stay with us." It's true: a deer was spotted leisurely grazing in the Villa's front yard in the middle of the day just last week while McPherson was chatting on the phone with his brother. A few days later, a doe was seen with her two spotted fawns in a nearby neighborhood. When asked about the turtle's moniker McPherson replied while smiling, "It stays with the original Latin theme of the Villa, but we're not sure if the turtle actually has ties to the famously endowed Dominican lover or not."

The Worst Graduation Present Ever

2008-05-18T08:51:00.005-05:00

for K, my Stunning, Redheaded Princess/Niece upon her Departure to Adulthood

As I've said before: God does have a fabulous sense of humor. One of its manifestations seems particularly poignant now: namely, that with age comes wisdom that can almost never be imparted upon those who follow us on the journey through life (at least not successfully). This wisdom is forged in the fires of our cumulative experiences and shaped by the hammers of adversity that fall upon us and that we bring down upon ourselves. It is also informed by the reluctant realization that certain truths do, in fact, apply to each of us and that if we had only been able to consider those truths as relevant when they were passed on to us, they would have indeed changed the course of our lives. But you're a bright star and so I offer to you those truths I have uncovered on my journey in the hopes that they may offer you some guidance, solace, or simply some company as you prepare for this momentous departure. Put another way, the best that I have to give to you comes in the form of unsolicited advice, quite possibly the worst graduation present ever. I use the phrase departure to adulthood somewhat loosely; I know that train left the station some time ago. It has been a pleasure watching you blossom into such a beautiful woman. It has also been a terror--but that is mostly about my own response to the passage of time: something that you will no doubt discover yourself picks up speed as you move along the path until the movement of days, weeks, and months become seamless and fleeting and indistinguishable. But mostly, it has been a pleasure to watch you grow up--not the least of which has been merely an aesthetic pleasure: you are a beauty. In addition to the unsolicited transmission of my discoveries below, please know that I am always available to you in person. I promise to always give you the truth as I see it (all that any of us can ever do but most won’t and likely to be not quite right oftener than not). Nonetheless, I hope this is simply the formal beginning of our own lifelong dialogue as adults on the journey.

Here’s what I know so far:

Kibble of Wisdom #1: Adulthood has no Endpoint

That is, of course, unless you consider death an end (but that's another conversation). I've discovered that, in some ways, I got duped by cultural myths that sold me on the notion of becoming finished. Hollywood sells us the notion of a perfect mate and guidance counselors the notion of a perfect career. That's not to say that these institutions cannot bring joy and meaning, only that they can never complete you. The seduction of getting through college is a sense that when you finished you’ll be done. Not true. Adulthood is a process. Relationships and careers are too. Consider your life as happening right now; not when you're finished with school, not when you're in a relationship, not in the future. Life is now so never put off becoming who you want to be--start being that person now. We reach physical maturity fairly early in life; growing up mentally and spiritually takes the rest of our lives and only becomes arrested if we choose it.

Kibble of Wisdom #2: Only You can give Yourself Happiness (and only You can take it away)

When you fall for the myth of perfection it's easy to put your energy into the pursuits of finding the soul mate that will bring you happiness and the career that will actualize you. Unfortunately at that point you've just placed the source of happiness and actualization outside of yourself and you'll be locked in to an endless circle of chasing your tail and consequently, will never obtain either of them. I spent more time chasing my tail that I would hope for you. We're all dealt a hand for which we are not personally to blame. The hand is never fair, but this works in both negative and positive ways. It appears that the tendency for many people is to focus upon the ways the hand they were dealt was negative and not upon the many beautiful things they were given that they didn't deserve either. Focusing on the negative rarely achieves more than acknowledging the simple truth that life is not fair and then ensuring daily doses of misery and pain. This acknowledgement of misery and pain never rectifies our lives by transforming us into something different. No, while the hand dealt is not our fault it is always our responsibility. Here's why: the hand you were dealt has shaped the person you are, both good and bad--and no one or no thing can reach down inside of you and make it any different. You can. Be weary of letting yourself think of the hand you were dealt as a cage because if you do, it becomes one. When the hands are dealt, the Dealer also gives us the key to release ourselves from mental cages: the key is called Choice and it is the greatest gift of this Life (in my opinion). On my journey, the times I was most miserable were those times when allowed myself to become passive--to view myself as being swept along by the river of life. It's true: life is a river and much is out of our control; nonetheless, resist the idea that this means you should throw your hands in the air and fail to attempt any navigation whatsoever. Think of whitewater rafting: everyone is going to hit rapids but not everyone will make it through them. We can control how we position ourselves in the rapids, how we paddle, and how we work with others.

Kibble of Wisdom #3: If You haven't already, start a Relationship with Yourself

I've noticed that most people treat their friends better than they treat themselves. If this sounds like something you do then consider thinking of yourself as one of your friends. If you would forgive a friend for making a mistake, then forgive yourself when you make one. If you would give your friend something during their time of need, then give yourself something during your times of needs. If you would be honest with your friends, be honest with yourself. If you would respect your friend's boundaries or limitations, accept your own. If you would defend your friends, defend yourself. If you would want the best for your friends, want the best for yourself. When you relate to yourself as another one of your friends then you will be aware of those times when someone is asking you for something that you do not have to give them. If a friend didn't have money to loan you then you wouldn't ask them for it or expect. In the same way, when someone asks you to compromise who you are or crosses your boundaries they are asking you for something that you don't have to give them. If they don't respect the borders of your singular nationhood, then they want something from you that you cannot give them and they're probably not a very good friend. You will have to defend those boundaries because no one else can do it for you. If you afford yourself the same respect toward yourself that you give to others you'll find yourself in healthier relationships. If you rationalize and justify others' disrespect of your boundaries you'll end up in relationships where others repeatedly cross them. Queen Latifah gave herself a wedding band—not a bad idea.

Kibble of Wisdom #4: Boys are Problematic; Men are an Endangered Species

One of the most profound statements to come out of the HIV epidemic was a bumper sticker that read simply, "Boys Lie." Granted it was surely developed by a bitter, old queen and it's no accident that this message is being passed along to you by another one. Boys, particularly those in their 20s but not limited to them for sure, appear willing to obtain sex through any means necessary. Now, I say this not to presume that you're a naive, young thing who knows nothing about the ways of the world but only to serve as a steadfast reminder of the landscape. If adulthood is defined by being physically, mentally, and emotionally responsible for oneself than we have to conclude that most of the men in the world are, in fact, boys. Boys will say anything to get what they want so it would serve you well to pay less attention to what boys say and more attention to what boys do. So here's the lowdown on how to deal with boys: resist giving them what they want. I know it sounds like playing games but I know of nothing else that provides you with more information about whether they are actually a man and if so, what type of man they are. Boys who lie are lazy. They're lazy because they want what they want and they want it now. They're lazy because they don't want to put the effort and work into relating to a whole woman with an intact personhood. Therefore, the quickest and easiest way to avoid boys who lie is to not give them what they want. At this point, many will simply call you names and move on (they're lazy so they're not going to put any more effort into someone who is not giving into them). Good riddance but it's only the first cut of the cards. Some will persist. Continue resisting what they want and instead, express what you want. In this way, you'll be able to see if what you want is important to them--and if they're willing to put time and effort into meeting your needs. At this point, more will move on. Good riddance, but it's only the second cut of the cards. At this point, if you wish, you can give them a little of what they want, but with limitations. In this way, you'll be able to see if they respect your boundaries. This is a critical point because, by now, a healthy adult like yourself will have begun the process of making emotional connections to the other person. If they don't exactly respect your boundaries a temptation will arise to rationalize their behavior, to understand it, to empathize with it, to passively condone it. Don't. It will be easy to tell yourself something like, "Well, he doesn't really respect this small boundary that I've put up because he doesn't understand it, or he was raised differently than I was, or because it is a less significant boundary, but I’m certain that he'll come through for me when it's really important, when it matters." He won’t. I've fallen at this point many times and let me tell you unequivocally: when you hear your internal voice making justifications to yourself, say back to it, "Bullshit!" As far as I can tell, one can never be sure of another person’s fidelity to their promises to us at all times. What you can be sure of is how they behave when they hurt you. A boy who clearly feels pain if he unintentionally hurts someone he loves (especially in the minor ways we hurt the ones we love) is probably less likely to hurt you in the big ways. A boy who clearly does not feel pain when he unintentionally hurts someone he loves in the little ways is most assuredly a boy who will go on to hurt you in big ways. Resist the temptation to tell yourself anything otherwise and you will avoid much pain. If you set the bar at real adulthood for the men you are involved with it would mean expecting them to take full responsibility for their own happiness, their own sexuality, their own emotions and that they would never place that responsibility on you. He will also have nothing but respect for you owning those same responsibilities for yourself. If he's not matured to this point, never take on the task of trying to get him there. You'll only be reinforcing the underlying current that you are somehow responsible for him growing up and therefore, it will never happen.

Kibble of Wisdom #5: Being Generous and Being a Doormat are Not Synonamous

It took me a long time to get to this one for myself. This includes everyone else, not just romantic interests but certainly including them. Always be generous. Helping others is one of the very best parts of being human. It's also linked to happiness and well being. For those of us who have been given so much there is a moral imperative that we also give a lot to others. I used to hold the worldview that if I gave my best to someone the exposure to such rich love would teach them and change them. Not true most of the time. When you lose yourself in the process of giving to another, or when you fail to recognize when you are trying to give someone something that you don't have to give them (i.e., money, time, energy) or cannot give them (i.e., happiness, fulfillment, resolution of their own past and problems, moral absolution) you have crossed into the realm of becoming a doormat. Anyone who continues to take from you without the awareness that they're depleting everything you have for yourself is not someone who cares about you. (Would you let a friend give you everything they had? No you wouldn’t). Also, there is evil in this world. I never wanted to believe that until I met it face-to-face on more than one occasion). You need to know that there are people in this world who would use your generosity, your kindness, or your trust in order to exploit you. I don't want to give the impression that you have to walk around with an impenetrable shield around yourself. I just want you to be aware that caution should precede generosity and those people who feel real gratitude for your generosity will understand that generosity is never be a blank cheque (literally and figuratively). For me, I mixed up the notions of empathizing and trusting. In other words, if I could understand they way they were I thought my empathy for them would make them trustworthy to me. Not true. Everyone has reasons for being the way they are--experiences in childhood, shitty parents, etc. Understanding those reasons still does not make them trustworthy. It just means that like everyone else, there are reasons they are the way they are. Make others earn your trust and don't give it to them a minute before they have. Trust is never something that can be frontloaded in a relationship – it just can't be. Trust will come only when someone successfully navigates the rapids with you. Before you've gone through rapids together trust is nothing more than a warm and fuzzy feeling (and probably a delusional one) inside your body but not something woven into the fabric of the relationship between you and them.

Kibble of Wisdom #6: Your Family is your Touchstone

Sure, right now you want to put some distance between yourself and the rest of us and that's normal. But know this: you can come home anytime you want to or need to. You've got a big family and lots of homes. Part of the cultural myth about romantic love is that it's unconditional. Perhaps over a lifetime it can become that. By and large, however, romantic love is the most conditional--and it should be. If a romantic love crosses a line, hurts you, disrespects you then he better change his tune and better change it fast or he should be eliminated from your life. But the love of your family is unconditional. We love you and will always love you. No matter what do. No matter what you become. Take it from me: this is not to say that you can never disappoint us or that you can never hurt us. On the contrary, you can and you probably will (because we can never not disappoint or hurt our families sometimes). Also, that's not to say we won't ever disappoint or hurt you too. It is to say that we are among the most charmed and blessed because we have a family who can work through the disappointments and the hurts and who will never stop loving us. Who needs the lottery? We've already won it.

Kibble of Wisdom #7: Categorical Variables: Handy for Research, Not so much for People

What I most loved about my education was that it exposed me to people from the far corners of this Earth. They looked different. They talked different. They ate and loved differently. They prayed differently. They played differently. The given categories of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, creed and such amounted to vast amounts of misinformation that served only to make me feel far away from them. I challenge you to get up close to them and get to know them as individuals. It will enrich your life and ground you to this world. It will bring you friends that others will tell you should not be your friends. It’s the best way to be a rebel. As well as learning much about those who people this planet you will learn the nuance of your own texture and that will allow you to better celebrate your own life. Differences will cast into relief what is important to you and what you can (and cannot) tolerate in others. Fear of difference is probably natural--succumbing to it is just lazy.

Kibble of Wisdom #8: Be Weary of Simplicity and the People who Peddle it

Way back when, snake oil peddlers rolled into town with a cart full of ointments and tonics. They made all sorts of claims and lots of people believed them. Of course, they had to move on after they made the sell so they'd be long gone by the time that people wised up to falsities of their claims. The same kind of charlatans still exist now, more often than not on the internet or telephone so you can’t find them when their covers are blown. But a more sophisticated beast also lived then and still exists now as well. They peddle simplicity in matters that can never be proven or disproven. Because their claims can never really be tested and they don't have to be nomads. In fact, many of them build huge physical and emotional edifices that will be around a lot longer than they will. My advice: be leery and weary of anyone trying to sell you anything that’s cheap or easy. Watch out for these folks particularly in the areas of politics, knowledge, and religion.

Kibble of Wisdom #9: Absences in Laughter Require Investigation

When you’re a child and say you don’t feel good, one of your parents usually sticks a thermometer in your mouth. Think of laughter like that thermometer. If you’re not laughing frequently, what in your life is suppressing your spirit? What will it take to change or exorcise that suppression? How can your Family help you at this time? These eerily silent times that possess a lack of the forceful, diaphragmatic expulsion of air typically mean there is an illness in your life. These are good times to come home and be pampered a bit while you figure out where to make adjustments. Let me know if I can help as I try to make this one of my specialty areas (not counseling so much as laughing).

Kibble of Wisdom #10: Stretch your Wings

OK, so we can’t all be good at everything. Granted. But most of us can be good enough at a whole lot of things but most people won’t because they’ll never spread their wings. The monumental acts of survival required of our ancestors mean that we are equipped with so many tools that most of us will never know we even had—that is, unless, we try things and discover that they were in our toolboxes all along. In knowing you, I know that you have more tools than most of the people you will meet. Don’t be arrogant or modest about that. Just use them and do great things. Soar high and enjoy your wings for every second of the flight.

State of the Union

2008-05-05T11:35:00.003-05:00

The New York Times continues to be the last American newspaper standing. Dip your toe into American waters to get a feel of our nation's current climate:

Who Will Tell the People?

Dumb as We Wanna Be

Clueless in America

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

Making Greensburg, Kansas Greener

2008-05-05T11:01:00.003-05:00

If you haven't caught wind of the rebuilding of Greensburg, KS - a rural community leveled by an EF5 tornado last year - you're missing out on one of the most exciting environmental developments to blow through our national consciousness.

Welcome to Greensburg

Green Technology in Greensburg

Sustainable Resource Options in Greensburg

Greensburg Greentown

Media on Greensburg's Reconstruction

Planet Green: Greensburg

If you think of people living on the Plains as a bunch of hicks, you'll probably be surprised to witness the most brilliant rural revitalization project ever undertaken in the Heartland of America.

The Athens of Missouri

2008-05-05T10:06:00.004-05:00

Enjoy some photographs from a recent hike just outside of town:

Since my recent relocation from Kansas City, MO to Columbia, MO I've been reflecting on life in a smaller, college town in America. The immediate benefits that I have enjoyed are the many nature hiking opportunities and the ways that locally owned businesses still thrive on the basis of maintaining a good reputation. Of course, the dramatically lower crime rate is not a minor factor: one that increases one's senses of mobility and liberation.

PBS: America at a Crossroads

2008-05-01T12:12:00.003-05:00

If media images of the Middle East leave them feeling dread and dislike, citizens of America and Her Allies (should we have any left) might enjoy watching an upcoming episode of America at a Crossroads on PBS. It is called Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age on May 11. Check your local PBS listing for specific times.

Pollan on Food, Condensed

2008-04-13T04:41:00.006-05:00

The sentences below are quoted from Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food without comment.

EAT FOOD

DON'T EAT ANYTHING YOUR GREAT GRANDMOTHER WOULDN'T RECOGNIZE AS FOOD.

AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS CONTAINING INGREDIENTS THAT ARE A) UNFAMILIAR, B) UNPRONOUNCEABLE, C) MORE THAN FIVE IN NUMBER, OR THAT INCLUDE D) HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.

AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS THAT MAKE HEALTH CLAIMS.

SHOP THE PERIPHERIES OF THE SUPERMARKET AND STAY OUT OF THE MIDDLE.

GET OUT OF THE SUPERMARKET WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

MOSTLY PLANTS

EAT MOSTLY PLANTS, ESPECIALLY LEAVES.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT EATS TOO.

IF YOU HAVE THE SPACE, BUY A FREEZER.

EAT LIKE AN OMNIVORE.

EAT WELL-GROWN FOOD FROM HEALTHY SOILS.

EAT WILD FOODS WHEN YOU CAN.

BE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO TAKES SUPPLEMENTS.

EAT MORE LIKE THE FRENCH, OR THE ITALIANS, OR THE JAPANESE, OR THE INDIANS, OR THE GREEKS.

REGARD NONTRADITIONAL FOODS WITH SKEPTICISM.

DON'T LOOK FOR THE MAGIC BULLET IN THE TRADITIONAL DIET.

NOT TOO MUCH

PAY MORE, EAT LESS.

EAT MEALS.

DO ALL YOUR EATING AT A TABLE.

DON'T GET FUEL FROM THE SAME PLACE YOUR CAR DOES.

TRY NOT TO EAT ALONE.

CONSULT YOUR GUT.

EAT SLOWLY.

COOK AND, IF YOU CAN, PLANT A GARDEN.

The Truth is a Harsh Mistress

2008-03-12T13:30:00.002-05:00

"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: 'Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop.' Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them 'for their own good'--not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it."

Heinlein, 1966, p. 205
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

For the Truly Righteous!

2008-02-07T11:26:00.000-06:00

My Vote: Barack Obama

2008-02-02T07:13:00.001-06:00

Some interesting, recent articles on Barack:

Barack Obama: America's First Jewish President by Bernard Avishai

Mano a Mano: Hillary, Obama Face Off On Immigration by Ruben Navarrette Jr.

Who should you vote for?

Barack Obama				61
Mike Gravel				60
Hillary Clinton				20

You expected: Barack Obama
Your recommendation: Barack Obama

Party: Democratic

Born: 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii

Family: wife and two daughters

Career: Business International Corporation; NYPIRG; attorney and constitutional law lecturer

Political career: Member of the Illinois State Senate from the 13th district, 1997-2004. Incumbent Junior Senator from Illinois since 2005

Hot topic: Universal healthcare

Did you know? He is the only African American currently serving in the US Senate

Supported by: Oprah Winfrey, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, George Clooney, Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ed Norton, Jennifer Aniston, Zach Braff, John Cleese, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Shields

These Increasingly Untenable United States

2008-02-02T03:04:00.000-06:00

"There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."

James Madison

Federalist No. 10

Please consider the U.S. Government's most recent assault on the Liberty of its own Citizenry.

The Federal Government of the United States (specifically the monarch-like actions of the Executive Branch but with the cowardly collusions of the self-demoted and now inferior Other Branches) appears unable to slow its uncontrolled acceleration toward an inevitable, fiery collision with our precious Constitution itself. The 'SS Troopers' of this Un-American President (please do not think I used this term in light of the survivors of the Holocaust but in serious reference to the extreme dangers of a fear-induced, willful abdication of power) have either failed to grasp the critical role of a Free Press in a democratic Nation State, or they're simply the obedient muscle of whomever bully is scratching them behind the ears. Either way, fellow citizens, we're fucked--a bit more nonconsensually and with a bit less lubrication with each passing day. Perhaps they don't consider a Free Press as the Fourth Branch of our Government, as the only entity that even has a chance of protecting the People from tyranny as the watchdog of the largest, richest, and most powerful institution on our little planet. Maybe it requires cognitive complexity or moral reasoning beyond their means or their concerns to bother connecting the dots between the Free Press' execution of its oversight responsibilities and the necessity of anonymous sources. There can be no 'whistleblowers' if there is no anonymity of sources. 'Deep Throat' would have been unable to reveal the criminal activities of the Nixon Administration from his vantage point in the FBI without the embedded protection of the Free Press (and also of stalwart, sanctimonious, and strong newspaper owners who would themselves be jailed before they would ever offer up one of their reporters, may they Rest in Peace).

Mark Felt was a fine American who continues to deserve our thanks for putting the ideals of our nation above its powerful machinery.

It is quite possible that such heros to ordinary Americans are cast as villans in the neocon pagentry of blind patriotism, Jesus as soldier-of-fortune, and the absolute Truth of American superiority, rightness, and sanctity. Be afraid and start getting outraged! Beyond a traditional nod, our parent nation no longer even bows to a Crown. Who are these strange people who've gone about volunteering to be my moral authority? my strict but 'caring' parental guidance? my 'benevolent' and wise Life Coach who protects me from myself?

Does anyone read the Constitution anymore? Are these strange, arrogant people's actions a direct link to poorer Reading Comprehension outcomes from our public schools? (But most of them are schooled privately, aren't they?) Are there no more Americans for whom the defining feature of our political identity is not a Party affiliation but a republican Government that serves the interests of majorities and minorities but that dare not begin to serve its own interests over its citizenry? Are there no Americans left who are willing to confront religious zealots who think it acceptable to express their Freedom of Religion by burglarizing and molesting the rest of us from enjoying our sacrosanct Freedom from Them? Treasonous!

While representatives of the 'American Press' are frequently annoying, tragically simplistic, aggravatingly persistant, frighteningly souless, arrestingly immature, painfully commercial, academically short, ethically challenged, easily duped and oh yes! Prone to peer pressure, obssessed with the Popular Kids' impression of them, and tempted to be cuddly and cute lap dogs in spite of their own knowledge and conviction that they are--and should always be--the mangy and lonely sentry who has to sleep outside of the Pack in order to keep an eye on things.

I keep scanning the Horizon for a new generation of hippies.

I watch for the Signs of feint rumbling as a countercultural revolution begins to awaken.

I lose hope.

My mind wanders in the wonder if places in the world still exist that will welcome an American expatriot when it's time (1) to kill--in a pure and forced act of self-defense because we really don't care what walls they pray to on their Holy Days and would never wish them harm, that is, until the day they come to get us) or (2) to flee those of our Countrymen who will eventually decide to put a bullet into the heads of Americans like US: you know, those of us born from the Soul of this Place, who are not frightened by truth or by dissent; those of US who prize Self-Determination and Liberty for all people; the ones who know that freedom always begets terrorism and that no Government could ever protect us from it without taking away the very Liberties that honor people in the image of Divinity; the ones who would never request such costly and foolhardy protection or a life banished to the companionship of huddled, trembling cowardice; those of US who would sooner die than allow Fear to turn us into the very malignancy that always threatens freedom, the one they claim is their enemy despite the fact that with each passing moment they come to resemble it more and more:

Tyrants. Kings. Thugs. Dictators. Priests. Masters. Murderers. Oligarchs. Bullies. Czars. Devils. Prophets. Shieks. Rulers. Slumlords. Feudal Lords, Warlords.

And any other self-annointed Motherfuckers who view the humanity of other human beings as an annoying and temporary inconvenience that needs to be overpowered, over-ruled, over-turned, or simply, just: over.

Cousin Colby Reviews Deep Dish

2008-01-27T07:11:00.000-06:00

5 stars
Creators of some of the freshest, happiest sounds you'll hear
27-Jan-2008 05:03:47 AMReviewer: colbyjack
Deep Dish offers fresh cuisine at the 'salad bar' of otherwise stale selections slung into the trough by the Recording Industry. In addition to electronic melodies you can listen to from your belly, this duo will also feed your head by dishing up delightful lyrics and delicious remixes of some of yesterday's favorite leftovers.

It is a brief review but then, the "Jackalope" has always been a parsimonious man. Check it out here. And for gosh sakes, if you've never heard Deep Dish before (or if you'd like to go back for seconds), play a few tunes on their jukebox here.

Prelude to the Acquaintance of God

2008-01-14T22:41:00.000-06:00

I would begin with a formal apology to my audience--or even just to my reader--for the amount of time that has lapsed since I painfully birthed my last Manifesto. As you would no doubt recall that the conclusion of that treatise teased the fact that I had, quite unexpectedly, bumped into God. Despite the potentially comical sound of such a chance and casual encounter--as if I had simply been standing in line to purchase tickets to the theatre when I bumped into an old friend I had gone to school with--the personage of whom I stumbled upon being one of the most storied and sought after celebrities of all time was not lost on me. That is actually why I concluded the Manifesto of Self, Alone with a cliffhanger about meeting Her. Shamelessly too: perhaps it is no coincidence that behavior that could be described as transparent name-dropping occurred following my completion of a 'manifesto' lacking my strongest declaration and my best writing? Truly, it had only recently happened back then making it seem timely and relevant to mention it. This takes us back to my apology...

The possibility of the need to apologize arose from the concerns of one of my many cognitively ample, yet emotionally retarded and painfully self-conscious and neurotic, ego states--(and possibly more than one or even a small organized gang--it's not clear) was/were troubled by my not delivering on my divine tease in a timely fashion, particularly this tease about this deity. Defensively, I proffered that in God-years scarcely any time had passed at all and even offered a mathematical proof based upon algebraically modifying dog years. Yeah, it didn't play well in my psyche either. Anyway, because most people cannot claim to see or hear God within their lifetimes, it seemed apparent that my experience would certainly evoke interest and anxiety beyond the usual commotion generated when Jesus or his Mother decide to pull off one of their alleged garden-variety appearances in a potato chip or the bark of a tree or in the window of a high rise building.

"It is insensitive," went the deafeningly quiet voice of that timid and cultivated part of myself that still actually seems to care about what others think--or maybe it was the silent crescendo of a growing intrapsychic mob chanting, "It is downright rude!" as they cajoled me to smooth out whatever rankles I caused by delaying my explanation of my brush with the Supernatural. So it was settled then: "Fine. I shall atone at once and beg the pardon of my devoted...audience? er...to my regular...reader(s)?" The elevated tone of my voice as I ended the word "audience" and "reader" was a dead giveaway that I was inquiring into an unknown phenomenon rather than making a settled statement.

I wish you could have been there--or here--for what happened next. A raucus bellowing of all of my many selves rose up and reverberated off of my skull as we simultaneously realized that the whole apology incident was a distraction and had all been for naught--at least all for naught beyond the moment we were doing anything other than begging pardons amongst ourselves.

"Narcissists, indeed!" a soft voice squeaked feebly but was heard by all. In the next moment we all realized the comment had come from the small, autistic voice of none other than the perpetually-rocking-for-soothing-self-stimulation 'self care & boundary defense' part and it had come from the cellar in which we almost always kept him bound. He giggled as he delivered another unwanted truth, "No audience, No reader, No apology." This final special-needs commentary was met by the gruff voice of the burly 'appeasement & collusion' part as he grumbled, "Obviously worked out of his gag again, little freaky runt!" He delivered this line, of course, just as he was trying to act casual about doping himself with more steroids. When I shot a glance his way, the tawdry (but sexy!) 'denial' triplets piped up, "It's just a prescription for that bad cold he's been fighting off lately." They whored the comment as best they could and then began working the room in order to distract the others.

And while I admit that, for a moment, I was tugged hard by the usual temptations of more muscle and a smaller penis--who isn't? Just as I was starting to chuckle at the triplets' flawlessly delivered cocktail party reparte (because I wanted to take a shot at a night entwined in all of their fingers), my mind was violently intruded by a magnified mental image of the hundreds of perfect globes of beaded sweat beginning to glisten on tiny autistic part's damp forehead.

"No." My one-word resistance coming out louder and more forcefully than I intended or was comfortable with. At once, the freakishly large 'appeasement & collusion' giant appeared next to me offering various party favors on a tray. I realized how unflatteringly he looked like a brutish monster. I was afraid. I softened, "Not tonight." I walked out of the revelrey and made my way toward the cellar.

Consider Signing the 'Media Carta'

2008-01-09T10:11:00.000-06:00

Our beloved Sisters of the North have managed to catapult a fiery ball of freedom resistance into the turrets of the Canadian courts: do mere tennant farmers like ourselves retain any right to media airwaves here in the 'free West' or are they the exclusive property of the landowners for whom we work? At the time of my signing, 30,977 other ungrateful 'little people' had also: perhaps if we stick our necks out together it will be too many for them to lop off!

Over the top? Probably. Nonetheless I will defend my reference to feudalism as that is how our culture feels to me, increasingly. It comes as no surprise that the movement that I pray culminates as a radical 'new hippy' revival in our next generation here in the States has originated in Canada, our closest and dearest friend. I thank them for the wakeup call and urge my fellow countrywomen and -men to join their measured civil disobedience with the unruly and unrefined civil disobedience that has defined the short life of the U.S.

Check out the thoughtful words of Bill McKibben (What's my Damage) and Kevin Arnold (The Tragedy of the Mental Commons) if you need to get your juices going...

Green

2007-12-25T01:43:00.000-06:00

(a farewell tribute to my colleagues as the brightest Stars of Beauty -and certainly the best smelling ones - fade from the KC skyline)

Green is as Green does,
but also as she does not.
Green celebrates her Wellness
and passes it on to all things around her.
Green is Vitality. Green is Fertility.
Green fructifies almost all of the time:
if not in the same place, then at least on the same planet.
Green is very, very old.
~~~
Some say that Green burns with envy.
Some say she bears the signs of motion sickness.
Some have been taught that Green is childlike and inexperienced.
Green finds these attempts to know her amusing but she doesn’t let the gossip of infantile and foolish creatures upset her vibe—
Her humming capture and transformation of stellar energy is the Mantra of Order and Wellness the seams the very fabric of our Universe.
~~~
If Green was a different hue, she could dispel each of the slanders against her:
She is not jealous—not towards any of us who came after her; she’s older, wiser, and has many more tools honed at the satisfaction of her needs and commitments.
She doesn’t get seasick because Green dominates in the sea as well as on the land.
She’s hardly naïve and is actually quite lethal in those contexts where an adversary confuses her slow and deliberate pace as a weak form or stategy. She’s a master of persuasion who could lay waste to the rest of us in a few, short weeks.
~~~
Green can also be radioactive.
~~~
Green is the Great ‘I AM’
~~~

So go forth Sisters, and be always, forever,

enchantingly GREEN.

City Nightscapes & Men's Public Restrooms (a holiday slideshow)

2007-12-05T10:25:00.000-06:00

Evolution in Action

2007-12-04T09:59:00.000-06:00

I saw this article in the Denver Post last summer while vacation in Southern Colorado with my folks. It's about the genetically 'impossible' offspring of a sterile hybrid. Quite fascinating. Mutation with a face.

'Buy Nothing Day' - Who are you when you're not a consumer?

2007-11-19T05:09:00.000-06:00

If you've never explored the Adbuster's Foundation you owe your brain such an outing.

When my conquered generation fills the aggressive post-Boomer nursing homes, the final, flickering electrochemical ejaculations limping across our syntax from frayed neurons to weakened action potentials will finally result only in our sad disembodied amalgamations and sputtering cacophonies of corporate jingles and mass media taglines.

Adbuster's can assist you in considering a new frontier of environmentalism: the threatened ecosystems of our own mental landscapes. If you are in need of such an intervention, they promote an annual "Buy Nothing Day." This is a time for you to consider your role and function on this planet as something other than a consumer.

Conditions in Paris

2007-11-18T19:32:00.001-06:00

When did you know that you were nongay?

2007-11-06T07:51:00.000-06:00

Have you told your parents yet? Are you sure it's not just a phase? (I mean, maybe you should get a puppy and then you might not have the urge to breed--is it possible?) Were you molested by a straight guy as a child? Perhaps you weren't exposed to male role models who took you to the theatre or the other arts as a child, or you just lacked strong female role models who encouraged you to be celebrated for your mental and physical prowess and not for current makeup trends and eating disorders. I'm sure that your church recruited you as a child. They're the ones with Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, infant baptism, and confirmation of developing teenagers into their faith: clearly their Agenda influenced you!
Well, it doesn't matter to me, hon. While my gay sensibilities won't allow me to condone your lifestyle, I'm not a judgmental person. Love the sinner, hate the sin! Some of my best friends are heterosexuals. We should go to a Tupperware Party together sometime! Hey, by the way, in your relationship, which one of you plays the part of the person with courage and authenticity?

Oh my, that was quite fun. Just one more, I promise: Given all of the half-American children left behind where ever our soldiers have been, and because they're clearly terrified of something as tame as taking a shower with someone who might think their ass kind of sexy (although most assuredly would never take a page out of the heteromale history by making a discomforting, cat-calling type of comment), do you really think straight men should be in the military?

Anyway, for some respectable reclamation of our long and proud history (a history devoid of the embarrassing failures and wife-owning features of the Institution of Marriage that can ONLY exist between a man and woman and therefore, I know I can never count on capitalism engulfing me and trying to sell me an $800 cake alongside some empty religious posturing because its known for never doing things like that! That'd be like suburban white kids listening to gansta rap...), take a look at this Wikipedia article on some famous people who played for 'the Pansies'

Think Pink with this Link!

Isn't it just a hoot that the Pansy turned out to be the toughest flower in the garden? Poetry.

Meet the Top Five Critically Endangered Species

2007-11-03T20:43:00.000-05:00

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is the definitive voice on endangered species here on Planet Earth. Would you believe that 41,415 species (40% of the known species on our planet) are endangered with extinction in the "near future." That number is shocking and should make you want to throw up; particularly if you're leaving offspring here before you die.

Believer at The Gates

2007-11-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

(continued from comment 2064 about George Carlin's 'Religion is Bullshit' at YouTube):

[God enters from Stage Left].

[Believer shudders].

God: "I AM the Great I AM. The Alpha and Omega. The Yin and the Yang. I AM thy Father and they Mother. And, oh yes! I begat the BIG BANG!"

[Believer's face shows the protest of his cultivated arrogance; then it shows the panic of his neglected and atrophied Ego. God slaps Believer across the face with white, Victorian-style glove].

God: "I pushed evolution painfully through your Semian cousins specifically so that you could think. You 'honored' me by peddling easy answers that not only insulted minds but also bruised hearts?"

[Believer turns red with indignant rage upon hearing these words].

God: "And then you had the nerve to portend that you could know my mind...and that really pissed me off! I AM is the muse of all great artians and authors throughout every age and among every people and on many worlds. I AM is not the sterile and feeble scribe of pulp theology nor the dimwitted, invisible beauricrat hastily churning out incomplete guidelines. [sarcastically]: To witness you--and many did since you made it your primary mission to be heard with much aggression--I AM was portrayed as a nothing but another weak, disappoint father (much more in your own image than in mine). Who in the hell are you, by the way?"

[God again slaps the Believer].

[Believer grits teeth].

God: "Did you really think that I needed you to protect me? When, my arrogant child, did you determine that I was such a weak and feeble God?"

[Believer looks frightened now (but still righteously angry, of course)].

God: "I'm not sure that you can even read
Scripture...I mean, literally read them--you know, your so-called favorite discipline. Just for you hateful and mentally lazy ones, I spelled it out redundantly and also simply enough: Shut up and love people. If anyone will be making a summation of another monkey's worth, it will be ME..."

[slap!]

God: "Of course, I also filled the Scriptures of many Lands and of many spoken Tongues with beautiful and layered and metaphorical and interpretive treasures--wisdom and humor and beauty and desire...and also empathy and salvation and atonement and affection...
treausres worthy of the fundamental and holographic minds that I gave you. [Pause. With sadness now]: These were to be enjoyed by my blessed children; enjoyed alongside their birthright of choice. Such was the only way I could give them a glimpse into the Image of God...if only for the ones who dared to reach out and grasped their freedom, if only for those who THINKED.

[God leaves Stage Left].

[Believer tries to rally followers milling about the Gates that he's just been tempted by Satan. He annoyingly rattles off several obscure Biblical verses that prove he was not just in the presence of God. He commands Satan to get behind him. For theatrical effect, Satan enters Stage Right, walks over and stands directly behind him chuckling as lights fade].

[Curtain. Pause. Loud Claps of Thunder].

Loansharks in Drag Now Playing at your Bank

2007-10-26T03:32:00.000-05:00

You really haven't had enough "service charge" harassment, enough "hope you live until you're 100 to earn enough interest to buy yourself lunch" insults, enough "it will take us a week to clear holding your hotel room on your credit card but a nanosecond to charge your account for using a 'foreign' ATM" muggings, enough "we resent your requests for ANYTHING from us and express this by taking your money one fee a time until you fuck off or until you submit to your master" indignities, enough "during feudalism, i was the rich bastard with the the castle who would leave you outside of the walls to the bandits unless you agreed to let me work you until you died but now, honey, i promise i've changed...really, i mean, you get to vote now" masquerades? Really? You and your bank are taking S and M to really sick places. Maybe you should think about some counseling--that is, if outright disobedience isn't too much for you given your collusion in this socio-economic obedience training.

(When) Will India's Population reach 2 Billion?

2007-10-23T19:02:00.000-05:00

Anyone for rethinking their stance on gay marriage? I predict that when Earth's teeming human population nears the unbearable (an adequate teaser of this should be available as soon as 2050), gay people will again be seen as sages, priests, and oracles...(but then again, they'll probably just explain that because we underhandedly challenged the fabric of decent heterosexual marriage simply by living out loud and honestly, they were unable to remain focused on their child-rearing responsibilities--and that the bisexuals [and let's not forget people of color!] among them were actually the ones responsible for such irresponsible breeding rates; and its a good point except that it fails to account for the variance of runaway breeding that can be blamed on removing prayer from public schools).

Update! (12-22-07)

If the plants die, we die.

2007-10-14T07:15:00.000-05:00

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is set to open in early '08. Of course it would be the Northern Europeans who are behaving like grown-ups, benevolently acting on behalf of all of us, including those of us who are consuming like overweight children at Halloween,and blissfully so, giddily, with melting sugar trails streaking down our fat cheeks, in our private little bubbleworlds of ignorance.

"We’re actually losing crop diversity on a daily basis. I’m really saying it’s becoming extinct on a daily basis. We’re losing crop varieties and we’ll never see those crop varieties again. Any characteristics they might have had, we won’t see that again either."

~Cary Fowler
The Global Crop Diversity Trust

While their scope is not as large as the good people in Norway, the Center for Plant Conservation is hard at work trying to salvage plants indigenous to North America. In addition to banking the seeds of endangered plant species, they are studying their propagation methods in the greenhouse and then attempting to reintroduce them to their natural habitats. This is my favorite non-profit organization; they have numerous partnerships including one with the exemplary Missouri Botanical Garden.

A Nation of Christians is Not a Christian Nation

2007-10-13T08:37:00.000-05:00

Jon Meacham provides a lucid clarification of Christianity in the United States, past and present.

Questions You Should Never Ask A Writer

2007-10-13T08:33:00.000-05:00

A brief essay written by this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Doris Lessing.

Could this be the generation?

2007-10-07T05:53:00.000-05:00

I cannot pretend to understand the generation that is now entering adolescence. I am happy about that because I think the United States is in need of another growth spurt like the ones that occurred in the 1960s. We need more revision. My generation--I was 10 in 1980--and those just before it and just after it, in my opinion, have been disappointingly mild [whatever subversion had begun with Boy George and Annie Lenox was soon buried by Ronald Reagan and HIV.] This young person's film, while covering territory pioneered by brave souls before us, stills seems to contain an emotional maturity that should be well beyond the grasp of anyone his age.

John Waters on Free Speech

2007-10-06T02:35:00.000-05:00

A Rant of Perfection from the High Priest John Waters. I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to our beloved right to express ourselves (assuming that part of the Constitution wasn't smeared out by Dubya repeatedly using it to wipe his ass; and, in his defense, it requires not only reading, but also reading with higher order conceptual thinking, and, most annoyingly, reading that involves colloquial spelling and syntax) than one that takes in a few of the many exotically-dressed vagabonds one encounters on the road to uncensored expression: straight porn, cigarette ads, nude dancers, "Gunt," and his own films.

If you enjoyed this clip (and you did enjoy it like a lip-smacking and expensive cigar or possibly like a sweet, syrupy cordial after a tasty meal or you should see this as your frail and tragically unhip Lord's way of sending you a sign that you should NEVER find yourself here at the Narcissist's Guide again!), you might also take a stroll on over to YouTube for more of his eloqutionary gemstones. In fact, feel free to use my place while you're there by tapping your heels together and saying, There's No Place Like Home...There's No Place Like Home...There's No Place Like Home..." or just click on the following link:

"I will make better choices at YouTube if Craig chooses for me"

Or, if you're more of a SPIKE person, I've got a little cabin over there as well:

"I like the CRUST on my white bread: follow those dirty McPherson cousins, Rex & Colby, instead!"

Or, if you need to take a moment to familiarize yourself with the constant war being waged to fulfill the Constitutional guarantee of free speech:

"Grant me the privilege of meeting the soldiers fighting for my right to express myself"

Manifesto of the Self, Alone

2007-09-15T21:03:00.000-05:00

I've come so far since Self-Soothing for Survival (the Manifesto of Love); yet, I've hardly made it anywhere at all. It must be practically universal: the dream-sensation of needing to run or trying to move but finding yourself unable to execute even the most simple movement at all? It's as if you're sluggish, in slow-motion, or that you're encased in something thick like marshmallow creme (or some such textual equivalent). That's been my pace for so long now. My mind (as per usual) has been whirring away 'click' 'click' 'click' (both delightfully and ad naseum). Then: output nada. (I've never experienced digestive constipation but from the way others speak of it, I believe it should serve as an adequate metaphor for what I'm explaining here: something needs to come to pass, quite possibly even something of greatness; yet, try as I might, I cannot move it through me...

As you might imagine, my treadmill journey has been frustrating to those who love/d me (many of them are gone now and on most days, I don't blame them for leaving). My family remains, but sometimes distantly. And this is through no fault of their own: they're simply weary of the disappointment engendered by my partial--but by no means purposefully so--engagement in their lives and, I suppose, perhaps also by the frustration that must certainly accompany my long periods of inaction. I hate that it is this way. I wish they could see that while outside I resemble a hamster on an exercise wheel, inside I am panting and exhausted from activity. I hope I can mend the tears in the fabric of each of these relationships. If I did not believe that such mending would occur at such time that my words regain a valuable and dependable exchange rate, I would not have had the courage to come to this horrible, but necessary, place. I doubt that I would have been able to comprehend and face the developmental linchpin that has been wedged between me and a sustainable emotional future. Always, the risk is that I have pushed any one of them too far away. I don't think this is the case, but I need to get back soon and accurately assess the damage I have caused. The irony and the ecstasy, of course, is that the primacy of family will never again be an abstraction for me: here, now, almost completely alone, I live and breathe and can feel beneath my feet the trusim that they are the only ones that really matter (funny, once I would have said that this sounded trite). Your tribe are the only ones who will ever save you, if they can; if you're one of us fortunate few who unfairly won the King of King's Lottery of Lotteries with our effortlessly-received family of origin. A baseline for life that was cozy and gentle, generally, and that was functionally an asset towards surviving, specifically, as well as for thriving.

(If you are one of those who got screwed out of such a Tribe of Origin, although I could never speak the Mind of God--much less begin to understand it at all--to offer you any solace, I would strongly encourage you to question Him/Her relentlessly on your raw deal--and to do so with the rage that I imagine must surely accompany an awareness of such familial injustice to those skilled enough to close the gap and courageous enough to know that all families are not at all created equal. If S/he gives you an answer I would love to hear about it if, tables being turned then, you feel so inclined to share it with a familial silver-spooned motherfucker like myself...)

But really, it's not that the others who were in my life didn't matter. And it is not my point to make and try to defend some absurd definition of 'family' in this little treatise; nor will I ever attempt such an arrogant and absurd undertaking (I suspect that those who do honestly believe that they do know the Mind of God; I like to suspect that God doesn't find such simian soothsaying too amusing; given my glimpses, however, at what appears to be a rather profound and sharp sense of humor stretching throughout the Creation, it's probably best that I keep such suspicions on strictly self-gratifying basis). Despite my aforementioned opportunity, good fortune, and great wealth with regards to my Non-Chosen Blood Kin, if you will, I would still never drive an artificial stake of distinction between our Genetic Lottery Family and our Chosen-Family. On most days and in many ways, blood is surely irrelevant. The heterogeneity of human genetics almost guarantees that your Tribe ends up a motley crew of quite different and dissimilar human beings anyway, right? Chosen Family and Blood Family are the same entity, totally. Even if your are blessed with the Blood Tribe, no one makes you stay, makes you choose them (and in some families, clearly, not choosing them is the right decision for an individual to make), and in many, many cases, the drive to couple will drive you into the arms of a chosen one (who, oftentimes, is then folded genetically into the Blood Bouillon, and so on...

(You guys should also make...Her/Him...accountable to you on that one too; I mean, truly. And again, your sharing of such encounters for my metaphysically and spiritually voyeuristic curiosities would be deeply appreciated!)

No, the others mattered to me a great deal. I loved them all. I still love them. Matt. Kerry R. Constance. Wheezy. Tommy. Larry. Kerry G. Maria. Wayne. Kurt. Lisa. Helen. Karen P. P Paul. Makiko. Wesley. Gita. Ron. Nancy. Brian and Johanna, La Verne, and of course, Burton. But here's the painful (and fucked up) part of my historical reality: no one has ever survived when I have (finally) moved across the threshold of a developmental barrier. Not one has remained with me; I have not remained close with a single one after I move across one of my awkward milestones. And I don't know why. The ones who were close to me in high school. Gone--many years gone. College. Gone. Graduate School. Almost all gone--and slipping fast. Internship. Gone. First job. Nope. And I'm not that bitch who hates everyone and really competes with them behind their backs. These are relationships that have been the holding containers of real and deep intimacy--and were often the catalysts that required me to move into the uncomfortable realms of intimacy that typically, then, fertilized a need for further development. Perhaps my stunted growth, or retarded shell, or whatever you want to call it (but do not blow sugar up my ass with some contemporary touched-up positivity poison, but thanks...) destroyed any hopes of an equal balance in sharing the burden of the relating. I wish I had some way to make them know that, at the time, I perceived myself as willing, able, and as actively pulling my weight. I recall scrapes here and there and I suspect that I wasn't. I feel remorseful and embarrassed by my lack of self-awareness, about my ignorance.

Ironically, although this was the friend (or brother) that I was to all of these dear people who have called me a close friend, my less than spectacular achievements with those men I have called my lover, my 'partner,' the primary recipients of my affection, have given me the opportunity to walk in the shoes of my former friends. Fraternal Love and Romantic Love are quite different beasts, indeed. I have found the former so much more gratifying (minus, for the most part, the time that has constituted those experiences typically concluding in ejaculation). In spite of such happiness and companionship (really, only minimally offset by the calculation of met sexual gratifications), I've neglected them all emotionally and in terms of my availability at levels that far exceeded a time commensurate to such an offset. And why? Trying to quench a lifelong loneliness: gestated for years in the Closet for the Love that Dare not Speak its Name and nurtured by the Western Cultural Myth of Romantic Love. This, for lovers who made me feel like I had to shoulder the entire burden. As for the parallel process: if this is how I made any of you feel as my friend, I sincerely apologize. I know, now, how impossible it is to believe that you are really cared about by someone who is willing to let you suffer alone under the weight of the Mechanics of Intimacy.

So now here I am...

alone...

perfectly...

perfectly alone

in most ways, the same way that I've always been.

In a few critical ways, highlighted by experiencing and describing the mechanics of intimacy as a great weight,

this is possibly right where I've always wanted to be.

It doesn't hurt quite so bad this time. Not like before. Before, when I was trapped on the inside looking out--wanting nothing in this life if not to be on the outside with everyone else. That experience led me to look Outside, always, for truth, happiness, love, meaning, divinity--for anything of value.

Remember earlier when I mentioned God's Wicked Sense of Humor? My punchline went something like this:

I've really been trapped outside (of myself)...and I haven't had a clue about how to get in...

(While I didn't exactly feign a socially-polite, cocktail party laugh for the Invisible Trickster, the way I really had begun to think of the Lord), I did, finally, figure this riddle out.

Then to my complete surprise, I unexpectedly bumped into--and made the perfect acquaintance with--

GOD, the Merry Prankster, Herself.

Coming Soon: Creed of an Internal and Confined God

Fall is to Me, Act II

2007-09-08T02:19:00.001-05:00

"Jesus, Mary, and Geppetto it's HOT!"

I lodge my unrequested climate editorial by hurling it skyward
in the hope that my flagrantly blasphemous inclusion of none other than the father of Pinocchio with the heroic and revered parents of our Savior will, at long last, evoke the ire of the Creator just
enough that he'll impulsively imagine, and possibly therefore simultaneously bring about the sad and untimely, middle-aged, tragic and unusually premature death through spontaneous red supernova combustion of our very own Center-of-the-Solar-System, at once lovely and radioactive, so originally trendsetting that this diva with a singular moniker in every tongue on the planet is ahead of her penultimate competition by measures of geological time: Sol, Ra, Sun.

The ancients among us might recall that she was the young one that none could ever quite think of as a star; at least, not one like the other stars. She was the bossy girl, whose second toe was noticeably and considerably longer than her big one, and whose unbridled enthusiasm and penchant for overstatement always worked against her in any contest or comparison that required finesse, inuendo,
or sensitivity to the plight of smaller heavenly bodies.

Contemporaries, should we not be vaporized in the last sunset we ever witness, will know her as a bit past her prime, struggling both to hit the range of notes she once easily enjoyed expressing in her youth and to keep the color of her lipstick from bleeding, albeit everso colorfully but, of course, not in a good way, into the willing tributaries of the persistent and encroaching lines circling and puckering her once plump lips as they smugly call out the tiresome and predictable (and sadly so rarely correct) Judeo-Christian indictments of the consequences of too much joy or pleasure or laughter during one's lifetime (yeah though such tyranny does--shockingly--happen to be correct in the particular case of gluttony and nuclear fusion). In simpler terms, if our gaseous and volatile girl was the lead vocalist in a classic rock band which had not long ago slipped away through the compliments of an unassisted but nevertheless lethal and suicidal overdose, as is often the case, or, as is often the other, she had parted from her bandmates, with or without shameless public and emotional drama, simply because they had failed to navigate the awkward interpersonal terrain that accompanies newfound wealth (and for which travelers are hardly ever prepared): partnerships that were forged out of necessity and held together for survival are, somewhat suddenly, left standing alone with the uneasy realization that none of you need each other now, nor will ever need one another again. Matters of survival--simple, savage, and sublime--make friends out of those who might otherwise be enemies, then she'd be on the college town, State Fair circuit, busting her old ass for what would surely be her last 'ATM-run,' subsidised out of the sweat of working folks;
working folks who have only themselves to blame (of course, right?)
for being in this audience, for allowing themselves to grow bored and to get disenfranchised
and for starting to give a damn about silly celebrities in the first place...

[With the possible exception of a few simple, but geninely enjoyable good people, like mysef, who allow themselves to relish, to hum along with, and/or to move and sway to any music that has ever privately whispered sweet and spiritual and sassy and sexual words to them; songs, sounds, or lyrics that have made their bellies take the wheel while their brains paused to eat; without a thought or care in the world about its social timeliness, its freshness, or its fashion. Lest we not forget, however, that we are currently still discussing our star, the Sun, our fading beauty queen, I shall only quickly here surmise that music, music quite literally and not in the figurative manner I've used it here to paint a classist and regionalist solar slander, or in any other metaphorical way despite how fluidly its magic lends itself to all types and manners of abstraction--but that music,

music is quite possibly the best thing that we've ever done as a species].

While such grandiosity has always been part and parcel of my fantastic musings about God and the Solar System and other such things,
it probably comes as no surprise to anyone else that even my most vulgar and witty blasphemies (to date) have not only not brought about the end of our Solar System, but they have also not even caught an audible reaction from any deity that I can recall.

And the sun beats on. And on. And on. And yes, to me, it speaks only in a language of overstatement as if its entire education took place in an American school of business, marketing itself in extreme terms as if it has to sit upon a shelf competing with so many other distractions we could chose from. I ply myself with sorry transparent condolences like, "If it takes this much solar energy to make a tomato, then
for the love of Pete, then I suppose it's worth it!"
Really though, I'll be clammy until the end of September
if the sadistic and selfish (and solar flare spittlin') Sun doesn't relent.

For the love of Pete...
...and Geppetto.
Jesus.
Mary.
Joseph.
Geronemo.

Don't even get me started on September's sorry ass
of an excuse for the first month of Autumn.
Perhaps when the oppressive air of Summer is finished making me torpid and stupid and lazy,
I'll get fired up and do some preachin' on September.

poetry

Whole Foods

2007-08-30T19:39:00.000-05:00

Organics and You

A (somewhat) Psychoanalytic Separation Soliloquy

2007-08-23T19:56:00.000-05:00

What a self-righteous little email that has broken your silence! Admittedly, my recent name-calling episode was childish, aggressive, impulsive, and (mightn't we say) expulsive. Given, however, that it was executed through the so-called medium of email, surely you should have received it as harmless and, at the very least, as quite pathetic. Such is how my assessment would have gone if such a messy and minimalist e-missile had trundled into my airspace. I was simply cleaning out some old email folders when I saw your name upon one I had saved (call it sentimentality or simply obsessive-compulsive hording) and that's when the impulse to hurtle a hurtful epithet at you overtook me. Much like I resisted the mandatory self-control imposed upon me during potty-training: the delight I felt in my quick and rebellious and (perhaps) unprovoked attack mimicked the childhood satisfaction of forcefully contracting my sphincter when launching a fowl and gaseous surprise attack from deep within my belly. Obviously, to you I mean, the verbally remedial nature of my attack surely suggested that my initial bliss in blasting out the sour and stinky parts of the primitive edge of my experience would quickly be followed with recoil, or puckering up, shall we say? Of all, you who once knew me so well should know it: shame! insecurity! self-consciousness! I could never shit my pants as a child and enjoy it for a second! Fear kept it there in my pants, terribly heavy, squishy, stinky. And me waiting until someone, in anger, rescued me as I dare not ask for help amidst such utter humiliation...

...so come on now, righteous-boy: after all of this, you won't suppose, just perhaps, that you may deserve a single...little...criticism? Not even one that requests no real reflection, evokes no social ridicule, asks you for nothing; one that hardly can stand alone?

But then, as is the first place your mind goes in matters of me: I am far too selfish and greedy to send a critique that would demand nothing of you! I'm just being sarcastic about the slightness of my slight because, of course, the simple and singular act of calling you a 'butthole' was, of course, opprobrium without eloquence: the laziest and sloppiest way to insult someone without putting forth any real effort--you know, without having to push, or grunt, or bear down on a clump of offensive prose that is firm and solid and holds its shape? A cheap, passive-aggressive, careless, anal expulsive, projectile of mental diarrhea.

Not so fast! Could it be that your own frailty and hunger and insecurity have created yet another frustrating blockage from the amplification and magnification of mere gestures flung in your direction into another constipated attempt to glimpse that elusive mirror of your own grandiosity? Could it be that this little transgression of colonic name-calling is less about my shit than it is about your shit? I don't suppose you'll entertain this notion long (but then, no one is able to avoid premature disengagement when digging through their own relations with feces: an evolutionary strategy well-designed since such can be as infectious psychologically as it is physically).

Thus, may I submit a simple proposal? I think we should bury this turd right here and now and move on from it. I don't want to inspect it or get much closer to it. I don't want to guess what inadequacy in me brought about the latest movement and evacuation in you. A lifetime of waiting to be rescued but fully prepared to compensate my savior by metabolizing his anger has been quite enough. It has involved great passages of time sitting in my own filth, sublimely uncomfortable, wanting to be noticed and ashamed of attention, needing to be cleaned without being made to feel dirty, and without noticing the irony and futility of begging for the adoration of self-absorbed and self-conscious men.

I am not a beggar anymore. Here is your decree. Your comments on it and about me are not requested. I might look your way again one day should you ever understand what it means to love another more because of their sweaty, stinky humanity; not in spite of it.

STAR (2007, BMW; directed by Guy Ritchie)

2007-08-19T09:57:00.000-05:00

BMW Short Movie. - video powered by Metacafe

Kansas City's Bold Move out of the Middle

2007-08-19T04:26:00.000-05:00

Architecture Review | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

A Translucent and Radiant Partner With the Past

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Published: June 6, 2007

Steven Holl’s breathtaking addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, opening on June 9, is his most mature work to date, a perfect synthesis of ideas that he has been refining for more than a decade.

KMBC / Water Hose Blooper & My Sweet Sister

2007-08-01T18:07:00.001-05:00

A friend recently met my sister and then announced, "Now I know what you'd look like if you were a woman..."

Her statement was sweet and I enjoyed it: 'Yes, we both have the delicious brown eyes, the dimples, the sparkling gregariousness--'

I could have gone on for some time, probably, if my thoughts had not been dashed by the remainder of her editorializing, "...except you wouldn't have half the class she does..."

[even though I wish that my stunned silence hadn't rendered me unable to parry her blow with a witty counterattack...really...she was actually quite right, indeed.]

News for the Narcissistic Diaspora

2007-07-05T00:47:00.000-05:00

Those of us who move uncertainly through this world struggling to make sense of its senselessness while silently and hopefully entertaining the fantasy that, surely, a Mother ship of our 'People' is frantically searching for those of us inadvertently abandoned here in the Milky Way (quite likely due to the dangerous complexity of our scientific missions in general, but also because of our willingness to sacrifice ourselves heroically for the Collective, if need be--qualities one should understand that stand out handsomely even among our considerably more evolved Civilization of peers), will not express the same degree of surprise as do the Smooth-Earth-Monkeys regarding recently published news reports:

Dead Airman's Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real

Possible 'Mile-Wide UFO' Spotted by British Airline Pilot

[Disclaimer: We regret that even our more advanced species cannot be held responsible for the shameless Conservative bias of Fox News Corporation; nevertheless, our heightened Fairness Awareness requires that we do, from time-to-time, reference stories from Fox News that do not appear to advance an agenda of the Republican Party, the Republican National Convention, or the illegal and unAmerican Administration of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and...oh yes, of George W. Bush.]

Alberto Gonzales: No Constitutional Right of Habeas Corpus

2007-06-24T07:31:00.001-05:00

'Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.' (November 11, 1755; often incorrectly attributed to Benjamin Franklin)

american identity

All the King's Horses and All the King's Men

2007-06-12T16:19:00.000-05:00

You were the one.

The one who showed me how to relax in my own skin.

The one who used my skin to take me places

that I never knew existed.

The only one who knew precisely when to laugh

the very first time I spoke my native tongue.

The one who could journey with me into my sick sense of humor.

The one who instantly liked the gap between my two front teeth.

The one who always declared our togetherness by holding my hand in public.

The one who captured my every adoration.

You were the one who, with me, invented ‘million dollar kisses’

(can you even really remember them? it’s hard for me to now)

The one I liked taking care of.

You were also the other one.

The one who seldom took care of me.

The one who made me question the fledgling intuition growing in my gut.

The one who actually made me feel violent rage.

The one who would abandon me with no warning.

The one who would punish me by making me live with no knowledge of your wellbeing.

The one who would yell at me.

The one who always told me that my feelings weren’t right.

The one who always had an excuse.

The one who approached fighting like a legal case with a winner and a loser.

The one who hardly ever gave massages to my tired muscles.

The one who always made me feel second-in-line.

You were the one that made everyone wonder how we were together.

You were the one that I thought I’d be with for the rest of my days.

Now, you’re the one that can be so cruel that I exert myself

considerably to remember how I fell madhappy in love with you;

But, you are also the Muse that provided the capstone experience

in my personal education, forcing my understanding and acceptance

of, quite possibly, the critical lesson of my lifetime:

Breaking the cyclic recapitulation of my own self-loathing

is an non-negotiable and mandatory requirement

if I am ever to escape perpetual torture, spiritual poverty,

and the sickening recognition and familiarity

of the belief that I am not worthy.

To M, my Niece (a few years from now...)

2007-04-08T19:00:00.001-05:00

After an Arduous Journey to the Oracle,
The Oracle is going to answer you with a Riddle.

(Yeah, A Fucking Riddle).

The Obsessive-Compulsive Rosetta Stone:
An Uncle’s Recipe for Transforming Ordinary Genetic Genealogical Casseroles into Elegant Existential Delicacies
that Reveal your Social Inheritance and Satisfy the Exacting Standards of your Refined Cultural and Spiritual Palette.

Realigning your Anguish for your Consequential Awareness of
the Unfortunate Diet of Nihilism Relished in Ignorance
by your So-Called Peers at the Fellowship Supper of
the First Church of Ordinarianists, Mediocrity Synod

(Third Wednesday of each month, 6PM in the Family Reflux Room,
Potluck—share a dish of your special slice of misery!)
The ‘Special Olympics’ of Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix recipe competitions,
transgressed in the Arena of Barely Cloaked Social Comparison)

- - -

Please understand the context of my message: sent simply from a place of Love and Empathy refusing to patronizing you with sugar-coated platitudes and explanations or underestimating your ability to cope with reality by plying you with guarantees that I could not possibly execute through any meaningful refund, substitution, restitution, or repayment of any kind not to mention with regards to your time or energy (however commonplace such ‘guarantees’ are bandied about in the name of commerce or 'customer service' but have, in actuality, no meaning or value beyond the [disingenuously incited] psychoemotional response that is engendered by the heuristic values and pleasing sounds of the words themselves), I promise to always give you Honesty (as I understand it%) with Fidelity. I will try to do so with sensitivity and tact (not really—I just got swept away by the current American impregnation-with-insincerity of the once honorable verb ‘to try’; but I will be available to help process any effects of my insensitivity and affectations and my occasional (alleged) lack of appropriate, or at least those commonly held, self-editing processes—‘limitations’ that one day, perhaps, you will see within the context of a Quite Remarkable Matrix of your Uncle’s Fearless Qualities). I earnestly hope you appreciate this as the Rare Gift it is, but also as an Affirmation of your Worth as well as a Statement of my Confidence in your abilities to metabolize the Consequences of Sovereign Self-Determination.

Since your arrival, I have enjoyed your presence, admired your uniqueness, savored your humor, and celebrated your potential for pranksterity. My desire to offer you my perspectives now [fast forward to when you're old enough to read this], here [wheresoever that may be] that if not humble than at least modest…grows from a more recently revealed layer in the fabric of our relationship (or perhaps one that has been thrown into relief when actually there all along...but let's leave such boring and hair-splitting ideological dogma and dilemma to theologians and scientists; we have big thinking to do!). Regardless, I can see clearly now that we quite likely originated from within a similar Strata of Distinctive Source Material (one that's barely understood mind you) that snakes along a vein within the larger Genetico-Metaphysical Sedimentation of our Family. (I’m not yet sure what this means for you.) The best I can tell at this point, the first challenge probably before you is wrapping your mind around the understanding that such is both the Good News and the Bad, rolled up inseparably into a Blood Bouillion Reduction (eww!) carefully poured into our veins well before we woke up for the first time (Are you catching my drift? Gifted to us without our input requested: arguably, there is no sense in ruminating on the remuneration of one's own birthright unless you have a Penchant for Needless Pontification on That Which is Beyond your Control or a Penchant for Self-Torture [see Uncle Craig if so-cursed, but we should never attempt to ‘bridge’ such frightful chasms (again) unless no other choices are availed to us; I’m compelled to believe that you’ve not yet lived long enough to make the Breathtakingly Self-Defeating Choices required to evoke these Curses]. In other words: those with which I frequently credit the people of my hometown although I’m fairly certain that they have probably never even heard them (and who certainly have no claim to their authorship because, as I recall, they were coined by a Duchess who was a dear friend of mine long ago in my life)

“You got to work what wit’ the Good Lord git ya,”

It is precisely at the moments of this awareness about your complete lack of input regarding the ‘less pleasant’ features that provide the topographical relief of your personal Lifescape, in my opinion, that you will be tempted to let loose a litany of expletives skyward (And perhaps you will. And perhaps you should. From what I understand about God, She is capable of handling a bit of rage). Regulate yourself as soon as possible, ok? You can cogitate a navigate to the realization that this—as with a significant portion of Life—leaves you with the solitary ‘option’ of Making Peace with Self. While this non-optional directive is devoid of any hint of the Democratic Ideals that the we’ve come to cherish as Divine, one of the first riddles from the oracle is thus: Real Divinity isn't democratic at all and frequently issues non-optional directives. Recall that God isn't a European, however, and this one really is quite a Beautiful and Precious Thing. Like many of the Priceless Lessons, it is also not entirely unlike skiing down an Expert slope when you have no business attempting to do so [See your Dear Ol’ Dad; See Also, All of your so-called intelligent paternal Uncles and Aunt]: it will scare the hell out of you; at times, it will be totally out of control; wipeouts should be fully expected but are not simulations and are therefore adjoined, of course, with a cornucopia of discomforts, injuries, and Pain. Please also be advised: this Process, and others like it can, if fact, kill you; it is, therefore, imperative that you never let anyone sell you a fabricated ideological safety net that simply does not exist--if it looks official and is endorsed by masses numbering in the millions that's a pretty safe bet that it's mental opium. As you’re about to find out, my Dearheart, the Masses really have very little do with you anyway…

[if I am ever to be accepted as a mentor, you’ll have to learn to relish (or believably pretend to) endless and ad naseum caveats that will either 1) contextualize something I’m about to say, or 2) will simply amuse me but actually serve no function outside of my Inner World unless they serendipitously also entertain an Outside Other as well—this latter occasional consequence, of course, is not an intended function to my possibly selfish but critically necessary Self Amusing Program. Our sincere apologies [not really; this should be understood as a willful mimicry of an historically held Minimal Social Contract of Pleasantness to Others in Shared Public Spaces&]

So obnoxiously at long last, and perilously close to Self-Disqualification through Reckless Aggrandizement and Thoughtlessness toward the Time Constraints of one’s Readers;
something that if ever criminalized will turn me into the likes of a prolific serial killer with a wake of bodies behind me in 15 States…

[and the way we’re going, most likely will be outlawed in the spirit of the rapidly metastasizing malignancy with the Nazi-sounding name of ‘Homeland Security’ that the Masses are foolishly pursuing with apparently no awareness of its impossibility or of its inevitable decay of a little concept called 'Liberty' that was once hailed as a cornerstone of our way of life; consequently, it is also a perfect example of one of those aforementioned, fabricated safety nets that you will be strong-armed into buying into and given repeated justifications and sales pitches on a constant…hypnotizing…brainwashing…propagandizing basis],

…So now presented without further ado in its entirety with the Heartfelt Love of your Uncle…
an Uncle like no other, to be sure...(but that makes it a Love like no other, too)…

- - -

My heart breaks a little each time I hear of your struggles repeating…

my little Cheshire Cat princess,
my Sweet Kindred Soul with Curls.
When I hear that quicksand words have swallowed you whole, and
so I know that the peacefulness in your head,
again, is crumbling,
my familiar old fault line begins rumbling in my chest.
I long to be able to give you something,
to do something for you:
to be the Uncle who Saves You
instead of the one who I am:
able only to give you more words
(seldom a valued currency for the important and lively Commerce of Childhood—
even when they don’t open up beneath your feet and bind you where you stand!)
So far, I have only hurt for you from afar
(and while this is certainly preferable to not caring
and sometimes positions itself as your only option,
it must surely rank right up there
with the most worthless things that one can do for another.)

Apropos of most of the other things
that are already important to you in your short life…
at least with regards to me
(and with my sincere apologies)
my hands are tied behind my back
(but bound with the hope that)
one day my uncular influence will be funicular in your future.

My Hope goes something like this:
maturation and development
(and no, I’m not sure whose just yet)
will give my murder of Nieces and Nephews
a Wonka-like pass into adulthood
that will concurrently usher in a new era of Kinship and Connection
capstoned by my primacy not only
as Sensitive and Supportive Uncle,
but also as a Loving Mentor and Favored Elder

…for a vanguard of reasons not the least of which is
a mysterious ability to be relaxed, generally…
and thus, in quite non parent-like ways…
in my repertoire responses and reactions
to the milestone events of your unfolding maturation.
I suppose I’ve digressed a bit from the Matter at Hand today—
another one of my undervalued qualities…

Although conditions in situations like these
are often ripe for projective identification,
I will risk such confounding calamity in order to share something important with you, here, now;
even if it takes some time to reach its Meaning Maturity
(think of it as Uncle Craig’s non-monetary version of a Savings Bond)
[See Other Uncles about these boring, yet I’m sure prudent, slips of paper;
See also and adore Uncle Craig when the US is no longer solvent and said Bonds are worthless
and Uncle Craig’s brilliance is finally without question].

For what its worth, my important message to you is this:

I know what it’s like when you’re stuck.
I’ve been trapped in those demeaning little loops
many times myself.
I used to fall into the hole you’re in all of the time
when I, too, was a child.
I can remember the anguish and frustration
and confinement.
I can close my eyes and recall the abject rank smell
of anxiety and pressure and fear.

I can taste the salty, hot tears from your eyes as they
burn trails down your cheeks ~ falling from the infidelity of a
mind that’s betraying you
into the mouth
that’s betraying you also…

You’re not alone, my Precious little One,
so cry if you need to.
Know that I’ll never let you cry alone
--or in shame, if you’ll request or allow my company;
even when this may not feel like it helps you.

Back in my day (isn’t it just a gas that I can begin statements like this now?), we called the outward behavioral manifestations of this humiliating straightjacket my ‘Habits’ and assuaged them with many ‘treatments’ of reformulated doses of the Calamine-Lotion-Cure-All-Solution of the Protestant Work Ethic (mixed with appeals for self-applied units of Willpower and Self-Regulation) liberally applied both externally and internally (and then, of course, internalized). These European-derived ointments, sadly, only achieved the same medicinal efficacy as the aforementioned pink liquid-to-crust salve that I’m sure you’ve probably never even heard of, praise be to Scientific Progress! Unfortunately, not like the anachronistic and optimistic calamine placebo, the salves habitually applied in the spirit of habilitation to my ‘Habits’ had a hell of sting! [See Protestantism, in general, for examples of other abrasive responses to the Self and to pain].

Given the Plate Tectonic movement of social understanding derived from of our Semian-sourced psyches, we can now boldly (and with airs of confidence) call it OCD and can also proudly dispatch a cursorily researched, pharmacological armada in its general direction (Note: you should also see what can now be done for those ‘creepy-crawly,’ ‘pin prickly,’ or ‘knotted rope’ sensations pulsing through your Restless Legs as a result of living in a tragically sedentary, yet ironically stressful culture!).

Now that I’ve just outed myself as an early childhood victim of OCD on your behalf, Darlin,’ I’ve got to admit that I’m not sure which one of us had it worse: but then, let’s leave the unpleasantness of such quantification to the Scientists and their faithful, admiring sidekicks, the Social Scientists, ok? As I’m sure that you will also attest, the Bottom Line on treatment (yours or mine) is that nothing about the treatment even comes close to being the bitterest pill that we have been forced to swallow.

While we're on the topic of forcing down stubborn and unwanted boluses of misery,
I submit to you the first tidbit of many kibbles of unsolicited advice that will follow:

The best response
to Forced Swallowing
is Projectile Vomiting.

Acknowledge its power, but don’t chew on this point for long…

If you will, rather, please come with me on a Brief Journey, ok? We’re looking down from the perch in our Large Tree* at the many, many branches** that are supporting us[1]—we can see the Roots before they enter the ground into what must surely represent a vastness that reaches down for miles and back for eons. Now we look up at the Branches we’re yet to climb, knowing that whichever ways we choose to go up this Big Tree will determine the leaves and the blossoms that we will touch and change forever.

Gaze now past the branches—can you see the stars in the heavens? Do you see that blazing shooting star as it hurtles across the dark sky coming directly towards us?

Do you notice the surge of fear that you’re feeling as we watch it burning towards us at incalculable speed? It’s like it has been thrust right from the Hand of God and now it’s bearing down on our Beloved Tree!

Good. Hold on to that Fear.

It’s how God marks the Special Ones.

You’re One.

I’m One too.

There are Others.

(Don’t believe me? How many others can say that they have Spoken In Tongues?)

Forget you ever heard about ‘normalcy,’ my Precious, starting today. Really, who would actually want it? As you grow up you’ll look around this place and the Disturbing Nature of Normal will be unequivocal and you will know that it is unacceptable for you. It isn’t to most and this will always inform and surprise you again and again.
Be prepared to spend some time alone. This won’t be new as you’ve already spent time in the Verbal Quicksand and have had to face the Unsettling Reality that no one else can really get down in there with you. I’m sorry that you had to face that at such a young age. I know that it’s scary. Be proud and feel strong that you have reckoned with one of the Terrifying Givens of Human Experience and you haven't even graduated Kindergarten yet. That’s impressive. Many can’t—or won’t allow themselves—to glimpse such Truth during their whole time here on our Feverishly Fructificative Planet. [See Uncle Craig for list of people to avoid while journeying].

We will practice together more later, ok? If you want. You can always come to me to discuss these, or any, issues without fear or shame—a gift that I can easily give you but can never wrap in a box for the Normally (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, giggle) Recognized (and quite Disappointing) Calendar of scheduled holidays [See Especially, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial & Labor Days, and Presidents’ Day].

Although you will spend some time alone,
you will always have a special way of spotting and plotting
with other Cultures of ONE.

Aloneness does not always equal Loneliness.

I don’t know what precipitated your Awareness of your Specialness and Uniqueness. For me, I’m pretty sure it was an astoundingly clear understanding of the Mortality of the people I loved (and still love) and needed (and still need) at a very early age. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t something like that for you too (perhaps one day you can tell me your thoughts on this). I’m not sure how I became aware of it; only that I did—and once I did, it was very clear to me, and very clearly bigger and beyond any control I had or shall ever have. Perhaps seeing our dog, Mac Tavish, dying in the arms of your Father (just plain ol’ ‘My Oldest Brother’ back then!) with his quickly blanching white tongue hanging from his precious black lips after being hit by a car. Maybe it was going to Grandma Meme’s funeral and becoming preoccupied, my eyes repeatedly following her torso down to the place where her legs should have been but seeing only the darkness of that big, horrible box swallowing her like a child.

(Even though I don’t recall a strong emotional attachment to her, I do recall being transfixed by her body, on her legs disappearing down into that box, and—“Did I hear this correctly? Surely not! They’re going to bury this box in the ground now…with her inside of it!?”—processing…processing… processing…
noticing similar gray hairs on the Grandmas who I was strongly emotionally bonded with…connecting these Grands with the categorical variable ‘Old’ that they were using to explain away this horrible, permanent sleep…processing…processing… processing…
’What a second! Dad calls my gray-haired and beloved Gran his ‘Mom'
…and...I...have...a...Mom!'…processing…processing…processing…
crunching the math…the horrible, awful math!…
wanting and needing to find a different solution…
knowing I would not ever find it…
never…and never enjoying math again…

Oh! I beg your pardon. In reliving the trauma of Angst's Origins during my own little journey,
I almost forgot to tell you something very important!

Another clear mark of the Special:

Kindergarten is, without question, an unexpected and unwanted intrusion into the perfectly delightful and metropolitan (yes ours was quite, agreed?) Homelife that brought us (quite close to) perfect Contentment and Actualization…(Camelot should have gone on forever, shouldn't it have? That's why some go on to have children of their own--to try to go back or at least to glimpse it again--and who could blame them?). But back to the remediation of Kindergarten: "What’s this? I can’t politely say ‘No Thank You’ to this horrific institutional stockyard that has been understandably designed for the rest of my…rather…uninteresting…peer… group…but which clearly holds nothing for me?” While your mind is screaming, “WHY THE HELL NOT?” all that you’ll find the least exhausting to give the world is one word, dropping like a tiny, dead bird:

“...but…”

That ‘but’ will be falling from your lips for the rest of Your Life—

…but hopefully, at least now you know why.

First to Come, First to Self-Serve. Not everyone can be a winner. Prizes include social status and interpersonal dominance. Open braggadocio discouraged. Appropriate attire required. Family Atmosphere celebrated and enforced. Difference strongly side-eyed and sternly frowned upon. Come for the food, Stay for the Witnessin’! All Welcomed!
Subject to Approval by the Social Standards and Membership Development Committees of course!
% If not already, please sound internal alarms!
& Sadly, the whole unwritten Code is on its deathbed and will be lost to our society within a generation. You’ll have to seek out someone approximately my age or older before we are dead if you’d like to learn more about this. Will probably be considered colloquial and quaint to your generation, so learning about it is optional. Having said that, in my opinion, its loss probably ranks as one of the greatest mismanagements of a national treasure in Our Times. Sadly, this List is Endless and is our Legacy to your Generation. Oops. Our Sincere Apologies.
*Metaphor Alert. **Early Childhood Fever-Induced Delusion Alert. [1] These often go together for us.

"Dance Monkeys Dance" by Ernest Cline

2007-02-26T07:42:00.000-06:00

My thanks to Mr. Cline for capturing the entire theme of the Narcissist's Guide in such an eloquent, entertaining, and parsimonious manner...

Rex's Soliloquy on Mending & Trust: An Ode to Allison, Book II

2007-02-11T06:28:00.000-06:00

[Antagonist enters Stage Left and walks into single spotlight].

Ahhhh...those warm and wacky days and nights spent in your home--at times, it was so full of cartoon characters and ghosts that I was annoyed and amused just watching them. Sometimes, I was stunned and baffled by the sheer logistics of their antics, confined to one house. I swear I even saw Boo Radley a couple of times, descending from the attic if only for a second or two. Scout's honor. Because each floor and each room captured unique adventures and uncountable tall tales, I'm sure that when we write our memoirs our accounts will cover many different stories and likely, will only converge around those qualities that your noble, old, wooden abode certainly did not possess. Your homestead did entertain mythical beasts, sadly however, most were not fantastic (perhaps I would be sassy if I suggested that they were hardly ever even pleasant--or rude if I stated that they were certainly never witty?), so Hobbiton or Rivendell it was not. Even though its location almost always confused me and its inhabitants were easier to see at some times more than at others, the centennially-present and always lovely Brigadoon it was not. And while undisciplined magic and sophomoric curses frequently came into play among its motley regulars, it was never even close to being Narnia or Hogswart.

Given that you were trying to heal, and that I was trying to help--with both of us pitted against unreasonable forces of evil not then fully exposed or well understood--perhaps we could say that it was simply more like Bedlam? Is 'Contemporary Bedlam-esque' too historical or too much of a stretch? Well, at any rate, it provided a quasi-mythopoetic stage upon which we were frequently beset by ill-defined challenges posed by even less defined caricatures, didn't it? Fear not, my Naazbah, as I truly do believe that history will vindicate us sweetly when all is said and done. Repeatedly, we wielded Ockham's Razor heroically whenever others lacked the fortitude to overcome the mundane moral struggles that make up the human condition and also at those times when they simply became a bit too fuzzy or impulsive. Our displays of this courage, if not always in the name of decency than at least in the service of parsimony, allowed us to build trust in one another. 'You parry and I'll blow!' one of us would shout to the other during such heated conflicts (it was something like that, wasn't it?) Alas, we have come through it, together, after cutting them all down to size. Your house is no longer haunted, my friend. Trust, we have far too much wit and imagination to harbor a worry that this peace is only a temporary calm like the exaggerated end of a scary B-movie. There can be no evil hatchlings incubating in furry eggs under the stairs to the basement (although you do have one hella-Elm Street of a basement, dearheart). We've reclaimed your space. Not only that but apparently the gossip-prone are even intimating that we may have built a friendship for life. Maybe they're right: these elements do forge the meaningful human connections: faith, challenge, and fidelity; at least, those connections worth having, no?

I suppose that we can chuckle easily about all of this now, but I have to say that it did get quite touch-and-go there for a moment, didn't it? You weren't sure if I could be trusted; I wasn't sure if your trust was worth having. Bad intelligence and wormtongued advisors-- especially when gnerously dolluped right up on top of one's own storied recapitulations of relationships that did, in fact, leave behind blisters and scars, do have a way of leaving the best of us somewhat reticent, don't they?

[Antagonist turns and quietly looks at the photograph of our smug, smirking, fundamentalist Commander-in-Chief; LONG PAUSE]...and perhaps even the worst of us too...

I must admit that for some time I was frustrated that you hadn't quickly pegged me as the most noble and trustworthy of all in your court (particularly against such a ragtag and motley band of moral featherweights). Pausing a moment to nurse this ego injury, I made a brief review of the more recent character assessments that have been lobbed toward me. As you might no doubt suspect, such 'assessments,' if we can really call them that, have typically been done in haste by those who wrecklessly believed that they acutely understood my motivations and had accurately sized me up without difficulty, but to my dismay, have also been leevied at me by a couple of friends whom I cannot as easily dismiss. Such being the case, I ardently coaxed the surly and unkempt cousins of my ego (yes, those crusty McPherson boys) to consider your confusion to be momentarily legitimate and not to begin issuing you citations on all kinds of trumped up charges!

Anyway, the confusing change in your demeanor that precipitated with a subtle--and then a marked, increase in the use of hybridized words of an allegedly Scandinavian origin that grew into more frequent and longer conversational pauses, and then finally culminated in frequent fevers that were breathtakingly bedazzeled, as they are prone to be, with their associated dileria. This symptomological hodgepodgery was then cocktailed with your frequent and foreclosed assertions of a recurrent bout of Malaria that you originally hosted on a jaunt through Africa: frankly, you had me not only perplexed and concerned, but also quite outside of my area. It was then when I heard the smartass cousin chuckle, 'This is proving to be quite a mysterious little caper, indeed.' 'Well, thank God you're a sheriff from out in the Wild West, then,' I heard myself reply to him sarcastically, 'Please don't delay in applying your law enforcement expertise to the business of cracking this one, Colby.' Suffice to say to anyone who knows this cousin well, I ended up chasing this diagnostic dragon on my own...aided only by my self-directed and clunky Google searches.

(NOTE TO READER: when tossed into a search engine, a handful of laymen's symptoms will yield nothing less than tens of thousands of medical maladies; I strongly discourage such malpractice to anyone who's actually in need of a useful outcome or to anyone even slightly prone to hypochondriasis).

With the benefit of that golden thread of historicity that bound us together with regard to this arduous part of our journey--and that provides an epistemological binding as we move together through time), we both had darn fine reasons to be huddled over our separate and small, flickering and sputtering flames of trust. In spite of such a handicap, this is when I really heard you, Allie (when I really saw you, to be more exact). With a self-conscious startle--like when you're squinting your eyes in a dark room with your heart pounding as you try to make out the ominous figure who is standing still and silent in the shadows watching you only to suddenly realize that it's your own reflection in a dimly lit mirror--I came to understand that experiencing your primitive, emotional wounds felt very similar to fingering my own relational scar tissue. If only it could have been so painfully simple as such simple pain. As it were, our little dying fires of trust were not the only challenge that we shared: we would come to find out that we both kenneled a Little Monster that wrecked havoc on us if we failed ot make ourselves little too. Of course, this Little Monster that cannot be "bitched down" easily, if at all (and when not protected by the shields of denial is actually quite an enormous demon that is almost impossible to keep fed). Our recapitulating Rascal of Belittlement has been effectively tagteaming us both for quite some time, hasn't he? (Surely, you don't mind if I used the masculine referent to refer to him, do you?) I suppose that neither of us would call this companion a friend; perhaps a looming chaperon would be more accurate? It's a spooky realization to find that the real enemy lives comfortable inside of you, and that as long as he's there any efforts spent on so-called external enemies will be wasted. Banish one external enemy and he'll just make sure that you'll meet another one just like the last.

One cannot really consider having difficulty trusting others when amidst a sea of beggars, charlatans, and cons to be a psychological dysfunction, right? On the contrary, it's quite an accutely developed and healthy mental tool that has served us well ("Hey! Maybe my emotional toolbox does have more than just a hammer in it, Allie! What else do you have in yours?"). Unfortunately, as just mentioned, this means that despite our sizeable victories in our battles with our Enemies of the Other, our expenditures of time and energy have been in vain. In order to author a new and fresh amendment to our pasts we would be required nothing short of sewing new threads of worth into the fabric of our developing friendship. (You could almost hear the whispered excitement and rising crescendos of voices at the summit meeting of all of our fragmented intrapsychic parts: dare we stitch the rare and expensive threads of pure and self-loving narcissism into the relational folds between us? Of course, you also realize that such a move will render unilateral control of the situation impossible for both of us?)

[The Dilemma enters from Stage right to Stage center. No blocking. Dilemma simply grows and throbs and makes its presence felt by all].

(Unintentionally, of course, we'd grown rather accustomed to being masters of the sweatshop--using the frightened children of non-reflected glory who live inside ourselves in order to rapidly produce socially eloquent tweads that consisted only of the yarns of insecure bravado, but that we would, nonetheless, expertly send to the marketplace of human interaction labelled, Genuine Self-Worth. We merely had to pay off our own sense of conscience, and considering our own deflated value of such an internally produced commodity like that, we had long ago found ourselves to be an easy bribe. Well, let's not bog ourselves down in the self-indulgence of probing psychological insight, ok? And I don't just say that as a psychologist-in-exile; simply, just that the handsome and parsimonious Insight--not unlike its parent, the cunning and costly Intelligence--is sharp on both sides of the blade: helpful when at its best, dangerous and dubious at its worst, and nothing short of the frothy and fretful joy of masterbation at its most harmless--do you follow? (Sorry, I always get a bit lost when I take the scenic way home!) Double back: we both have obvious, as well as confounding, reasons for fostering the belief that everyone else matters and that we don't. Our reasons, of course, are valid and grounded. (But remember that logic talks a good game but doesn't always remain faithful to its promise: it can be mechanically correct at the very same time that it is being factually incorrect). Our logical reasons for sheltering our little self-images were fertilized with fictions and pollinated by phantoms that have all long sense become the vapor of memories and legends. They provide us with no sweet, dark soil now; simply dust. We cannot continue to expect a bountiful harvest if we're not going to add some serious treatments to such a medium.

I must insist that you credit yourself with the beauty that exists within our friendship. I submit to you earnestly and lovingly, that you should wrap that shawl around yourself because it is true. It will also have more meaning to you than yielding to the false brilliance you give me (as you unknowingly, yet generously) commit an inverted, yet still fundamental, attribution error when you insist that I breathe 'the air up there.' Am I flattered? Positively. Am I humbled? More than ever before. Did I need someone to hear me as you did? Desperately. I gave you The Narcissist's Guide because I needed to give you something and I had no idea what you needed or what I had to give you. Fortunately for both of us, you needed words--the singular commerce in which I am endlessly wealthy. Mind you, my capital is seldom in demand and frequently returned. Because of this (and because of all of the foretold reasonings explored here) my words are usually cynical.

But only until they are beautiful.

Fortunately for both of us, I needed someone to show me the beauty in my words--and you did.

When you told me that Self Determination for Worth (the Manifesto of Purpose in a Vaccuum) allowed you to cling to life for several days during one of your sessions bitching down the Grim Reaper, you payed me the highest compliment I have ever received.

My heart is consumed with the wish that my words would be able to keep you here always...

Please Don't Leave - Ode to Allison, Book I

2007-02-10T08:28:00.000-06:00

Hey darlin’…please don’t go just yet, ok? You left for the hospital and I didn’t even know it…and you’ve caught me by surprise here…I’m not ready…We were having such a nice time together, weren’t we? I would tell you all of the things that you should look forward to doing in your own life if I wasn’t a selfish prick…

…(tauntingly: not the least of which, I’m sure, are the shrill cries for attention of your aged, curly, 'feminine' dog...

...not to even mention the unadulterated bliss of your big boy shamelessly performing 'Full Hambone Johnstons’ without a care in the world for his deliciously rude and un-neighborly scrapes with the Law:

...Oh yeah, we haven’t gone fishing yet, either—and you damn well know that while I wouldn’t have actually fished for a second of our outing, I would have positively glowed in it right along beside you, most likely bitching about inadequate SPF protection and how hot I was--all the while being a Tory to my father’s Bass-fisherman identity just so I could rib and cajole you all day about how the Apostles of Jesus were definitely NOT flyfishermen—and, Allie darling, you know I’d be liberally applying some judicious,

“…and I don’t care whose goddamned river runs through it!”

And maybe, if you were lucky, I’d do a dramatic re-enactment (is there any other kind?) of your loser ex-husband and discharge a firearm in order to swat flies…IT’S POSSIBLE, albeit unlikely, but I suppose you’ll never know…that is, unless you defy the odds one more time and stare down the demons that would send the regular mortals among us into a paralysis of fear that would be almost perfect and complete but for the minute muscular contractions firing away like the Fourth of July in their pelvis and across their brow just prior to…well…let’s just say…just prior to their...being parsimonious, like never before, in soiling their freshness then and there)...

You really leave me no choice but to have to tell you what your absence will do to my miserable stage production on this little heavenly pebble—but you already know just exactly what it’ll do to it: it’ll leave me all alone on my humble, little stage again, Allie…it’ll condemn me back to entertaining myself (although usually out loud, of course)…my peers, when around, will offer me nonverbals that suggest that they think i’m funny when later, not in my presence, they'll more authentically comment about how I'm ‘intense’ or ‘intimidating’…

all of that was ok until you spoiled me, Allie—until you gave me such an appreciative and loving audience…

But then again, ‘audience’ wouldn’t be a fair word for you, really, if taken in the contemporary passive, theatre-goer sense of the word (let's be honest: although said theatre-goer is typically smugly intellectual and self-appraises quite comfortably with him- or herself, they’re still just sitting there being entertained). No. That’s not how I mean it—(although I emphatically declare that you were a delightful muse for some of my more entertaining improvisations these last few months—and not only did you never miss a beat with my sporadic, watch-now-as-I-make-this-complex-sentence-just-plain-complicated-and-confabulated written and verbal styles, I’ll be goddamned if you didn’t also make me double-back more than a few times in order to track you through the light ethers and dense fogs of one of our verbal jams…I wasn’t really prepared to have my stylistic shit thrown back at me, Sweetheart! Your ability to give chase and erstwhile make me run after you was only one of many pleasant surprises that I had learned to look forward to and anticipate with you). No. That sense of the word is not what I mean. More parochially, let’s turn to the first definition in Webster’s to strike the right chord for this swansong, shall we?

“the act or state of hearing,”

“an opportunity of being heard”

You heard me, Allie.

You made me realize

the exquisite gift it is to be heard!

You heard me in a world that often doesn’t,

and at a time in my journey

when above all else I needed to be heard.

(bowing to you: awkward and Occidental,
but with my forehead touching the ground)

Thank you, Allie, thank you, thank you.

Please just a moment, though,
before you decide about your departure, my Friend,

because here’s where it gets really unscripted...
for both of us:

I heard you too.

Look at War

2007-02-03T09:32:00.000-06:00

When I was younger, my father used to take me hunting. While I no longer enjoy that activity as an adult, I appreciate having had it very much. As a non-vegetarian person (for now), it is important to me to understand the processes and particulars involved in killing an animal; not as a pleasure, but as a necessitude for the guilt required in order to live. To me, firsthand knowledge of the killing of animals for food is simply more honest than eating the meat in ignorance. With regards to taking the life of another human being, however, I hope that I can always bask in firsthand ignorance of the particulars. Nonetheless, if others are killing humans in our name (yes, in the case of warfare, but also in our national pastime of capital punishment), it is my opinion that we should not close our eyes to it. I have always believed that if we are going to kill someone through capital punishment, we should do it in the light of day and with public access instead of cowardly in the middle of the night. The way we execute people is an admittance of its wrongness: why else does it need to be hidden away so? Don't slip in an argument for the dignity of the person being executed as a justification here--if we believed in their human dignity, we'd find another way of punishing their crimes (as has almost all of the rest of the industrialized world). Similarly, if we are going to send our young into battle (resigning them to a violent death or, at the very least, putting them on a first-named basis with it, and if we are going to ask them to kill others least they be killed, I believe that the least we can do is watch it--all of its horrors--and watch it closely so that we may live through it with them--and also so we can know, precisely, what things are worth human bloodshed...and what things are not.

[THESE VIDEO CLIPS CONTAIN RAW WAR FOOTAGE. ADDITIONAL CLIPS CAN BE OBTAINED AT ifilms.com]

An Unminced Dismissal of the Institution of Marriage

2007-01-29T23:28:00.000-06:00

Aside from the reasons that gay marriage should never fall under the approval or condemnation of Government in free societies that espouse philosophical and legal dedication to self-determination, equality, fairness, not to mention 'the individual pursuit of happiness,' it is also obvious and 'self-evident' that consensual adults should not be offered advantage nor discrimination on the basis of their personal choices in the expression of love, intimacy, and sexuality in the privacy of their own homes, if not simply because such governments have no business in the personal, private, and spiritual lives of their citizenries--nor have they any history resembling a proven track record with regard to the complicated matrices of social relations or the intellectually challenging layers of moral and ethical reasoning--then, fundamentally, simply because of the preponderance of evidence that neither other-sex, nor same-sex relationships display an unequivocal monopoly on functionality, or positive consequence, to free societies-at-large. The institution of heterosexual marriage is tattered and has suffered such undignified signs of erosion that it may yet prove to no longer be structurally sound (read: the critical moment when efforts shift from 'rescue' to 'recovery'). Does anyone still honestly believe that simply having a man and a woman in a legal union under one roof satisfies the correct completion of a proven moral formula that results in wellness, enrichment, or productive functioning? If so, would such a person regard abusive marriages as uncommon statistical outliers (despite their positioning well within the plump middle of the Normal Curve) that will still, with some simple--or perhaps even some sophisticated data transformation techniques--provide a superior blueprint for the construction of a sounder foundation for larger society? I wonder how they would possibly explain, justify, or make peace with the matrimonial trophy being used to bait 20-somethings who simply cannot construct a useful social identity without clearing the (apparently) mandatory developmental hurdle of attaining a spouse into participating in demeaning, televised 'reality' competitions created simply for the entertainment of the rest of us? Fascinating. Delusory, but fascinating.

Given that our 'straight' brothers and sisters have managed to trivialize and cheapen this institution even with all of the social supports and celebrations that have accompanied it--all on their own mind you--I say the smartest and most gay-affirmative stance on gay marriage is: "Thanks, but no thank you; not today. After all of the hateful things you've had to say about our relationships, we're going to let you keep that institution for yourselves. Good luck with that and again, congratulations...beautiful ceremony, by the way..." Rather than the unseemly process of begging the hetero-majority to let us into their allegedly finer clubroom, our polite refusal to even walk into that crumbling edifice will force them to take responsibility for all of its less than savory permutations without dragging our own dignity into it. History--real millennial history--is ripe with our own fine record of successes in the development and maintenance of personal unions outside of and without any social support or celebration for those keen enough to see them. Friends, herein lies the beauty, the sacrifice, the pain, and the fortitude of true love in this world.

In the spirit of honoring the strength and courage in our love, so unwanted and despised in this world, I want to thank my dear friend Alison for most recently directing my attention to the the most affectionate, gentle, haunting, and heartbreaking expression of love, given by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in the dedication of his book:

The Little Prince

"To Léon Werth

I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for dedicating it to a grown-up. I have a serious reason: he is the best friend I have in the world. I have another reason: this grown-up understands everything, even books about children. I have a third reason: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs cheering up. If all these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the book to the child from whom this grown-up grew. All grown-ups were once children-- although few of them remember it. And so I correct my dedication:

To Léon Werth

when he was a little boy"

Such profound beauty. Such deep loss absent the decent and humaine acknowledgement and support of others. You tell me if the integrity of your partnership, of our partnerships, is best served by 1) timeless and insightful words of our fore bearers, such as those expressed by Miseur Saint-Exupéry, 2) by a unity candle recitation of "If you love something, set it free..." or worse yet, 3) by the stamp of approval of the same United States Congress that lacks the ability to balance their checkbook while making the preposterous and arrogant presumption that they possess the character to either serve as parental advisors in matters of the heart, or to stand as our moral superiors with their petty decrees and pseudo-sociological edicts in matters of our very old souls. Perhaps the clearly ailing 'commitment' to Liberty, Freedom, and Justice for All of these so-called morally superior heterosexual political 'leaders' suggests their own underlying difficulties remaining Faithful to their Commitments...

Insect Wisdom

2007-01-01T18:18:00.000-06:00

...like the Praying Mantis and Black Widow spider calculated long before her...if the male of the species is not capable of providing the emotional and spiritual nourishment of monogamy along with his sperm...well, perhaps then, the bar need only be lowered to a Maslowian level he can get over in order to provide her (and perhaps a few of her closest friends) with nourishment...

Obit. Uncle Sam

2006-12-31T10:29:00.000-06:00

The image of the dictator being hooded at the gallows was striking as it imposed itself right there on my personalized Google homepage. He occupied a space that just as likely could have contained the image of a celebrity or more shots of heavy snows falling in Denver. Oddly, until just recently, his space had unwittingly tempted me with the digitized promises of this year’s American Yuletide. I felt sadness, not for him, honestly, but for my foggy, fading yearning for a youthful and grateful homeland that comforted itself with visions of sugarplums dancing in its head.

I clicked the link for the video as I looked at the tyrant’s feeble, old face, realizing that it had become so ashen and drawn in the last three years. He had become just like one of the big cats in a cage at the zoo: all the trappings and markings of ferocity present but deflated by this pubic display and lampooned by this inescapable fate and confinement.

Although I have become, shamefully, desensitized to my homeland’s immaturity in its use of physical aggression to deal with what threatens it—and in its cowardice in killing its condemned in the middle of the night while everyone is sleeping—I was, in this paramount moment in its fight against evil, insulted to find that the video clip that queued up on my browser was merely a teaser of the dictator’s final approach to the hangman’s noose. Had the awkward, insecure, emotionally volatile teenage father that is my American Government decided to guard and protect me from the harshness of murder in an unlikely moment of tenderness for me?

The slow moving poisons of disappointment and shame began their warm ascent up into my face as the dreaded and intuitive answer radiated into my awareness: no, my ‘Guardian’ was simply acting out again—his rage, his indecency, his ignorance and his arrogance. His childlike limited acumen of emotional regulation is so very dangerous within his strong and muscular adolescent body. I felt such shame at being associated with him; I still do.

I was about to feel rage at being his parentified child, forced to be hypervigilantly accountable as the decent one in a family of slobs and heathens. Fury at also having to enduring his sadly prioritized and poorly executed attempts to protect me from myself when, clearly, his own lack of development rendered him intellectually and morally unfit to even know how. I could feel the waves lapping against the levee of the reservoir of anger I had been building against him for some years now.

But as I glanced back at the strained puree of ‘video’ of American justice in a foreign land, I saw a second figure hanging from the gallows halfway around the world. No. It could not be. But then, his outfit is quite unmistakable. And it was true: there was the lifeless corpse of Uncle Sam, hanging side-by-side with the dictator, the ends of his beard poking out from beneath the hood. Several confusing pains moved through my abdomen and settled into a throbbing ache in my head and in my heart. My Uncle’s crazy suit of stars and strips seemed so out of place there on his dead, hanging body, so far away over in Baghdad.

My rage gave way to pity and sadness. I have to admit, he hadn’t been himself for such a long time. Or at least, this is what I had been telling myself for some time now. Perhaps I had just made up this Uncle so I could pretend that our American Family still possessed a person of courage and character. At this moment in time, I needed a right and righteous Uncle Sam to protect me. My eyes burned as I imagined him screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing his boney finger at my irresponsible, hot-headed father as he proclaimed without apology, “If hanging a person has been cruel and unusual punishment for Americans for the last 100 years, then by God, we will not turn over a criminal to anyone who will hang him, I don’t care who he is or how cruel he has been!” I smiled through my tears, “Yeah, Uncle Sam, give ‘em hell!”

The manufactured sense of pride and security that was born out of having a reasonable and responsible Guardian filled my heart. Just then, I didn’t even care that my stern ol’ Uncle Sam probably wouldn’t even have considered the possibility of not killing this dictator at all. I was just relieved that, for him, the values that made him an American were based on a set of assumptions considered to be universal truths about all people.

This is what I believe as an American: not that how we do things is how others should do them, simply that the ‘self-evident’ human truths revolve around the sacredness of self-determination. As such, they dictate legal and procedural realities for all human beings. Admittedly, while we’ve never been very good at holding ourselves to these aspirations amongst ourselves, my hope is that enough is in place for true, Liberty-embracing, disciplined Americans to keep our motley collective on a constant course of correction and countenance.

“And a few other things,” bellowed Uncle Sam (perhaps even as they hooded him on the gallows), “Torture, imprisonment without legal representation, violating sworn treaties with our allies, Guantánamo Bay as “a human rights scandal,” disrespect for international law—these activities are Un-American! And before you puff up your chest and try to tell me that you have to fight roughnecks the same way that they fight, let me tell you something: if that’s how you behave in the world…if that’s how you fight…then what can you claim if you win?”

Jimmy Carter this morning on Meet the Press (a tribute to a rare man & even rarer President)

2006-12-03T10:21:00.000-06:00

Every time I hear you speak, I learn something. I was young when you were President and that time in our history was so fucked up. I believe that you were swept away by the confluence of time and geopolitics—forces that would have rendered any sitting President powerless. Your Administration was ideologically idealistic when the Adolescent America was too depressed and ashamed to hear it. But now…(and then if anyone checks the record of your words)…the music falling from your lips (and the silent prayer that falls from mine) when an educated President preaches liberty and equality within our own borders and eloquently, courageously articulates such perspectives from the vantage point of the neocon, a faith informed by Christianity. Your spirituality, contrary to the normally and aggressively publicly tantrumed one, is not offensive or demeaning—it shows an intelligent maturation theirs will never know. And who, as a Statesman, an otherwise anachronistic political concept with a somewhat funny, colloquial flavor in our common era, not only proposes that this nation approach every other sovereign people in the world with dignity and respect*, but who also has the guts to openly criticize our foolishness when we’re long overdue for a swift kick in the ass. You have my heartfelt admiration and gratitude, Mr. President.

*(including the Palestinians and other Arab nations)

Geometry with Six Balls

2006-11-12T00:23:00.000-06:00

How do you express your sorrow

in a vacuum

when you’ve spent your life

apologizing for yourself?

and while you surely feel remorse

for where things have ended up, you’re not exactly sure

if you’ve really anything to apologize for,

or anyone worthy of apologizing to…

…to these people around you

who surely took what you gave

whether you were giving head

or just loving admiration?

No, it’s not like you were Mother Theresa

but then...

...neither were they,

were they?

To be painfully honest,

you were selfish often

with one of them,

and hardly ever at all

with the other.

But that was the game with both of them,

And with you too, wasn’t it?

‘Careful self-pity’…this was a hypotenuse.

One fantasized his nurturance of your tattered ass;

the other let you dream he was bleeding you dry…

each allowed his own troubled martyrdom, so tragic

(as such matters psychosexualized,

masculinized,

religiositized trend):

After all of this heartfelt sacrifice each right angle

turned rigid and disconnected,

glancing away, or possibly inward—

but never again into each other’s eyes.

Intercepted tirade from conversation among the McPherson Cousins

2006-11-11T22:07:00.000-06:00

“…well, of course, as you know, I consider profanity to be justified by a blanket check, if for no other reason than I'm not going to be the idiot overheard using some lame-ass, half-assed substitute word like "fudge" for Christ's sake! Gimme a break! I say that if you can use the word "fudge" in the place of "fuck" then you live a blessed but sterile fucking existence. There is no substitute for "fuck" in all of its permutations. I dare you to even offer one to me while keeping a straight face (and if you do then you're doing it for the sake of your kids, your parents, your pastor, or the parents of someone who you'd like to fuck in which case, it's all about you just pretending there's a legitimate synonym for the pathetic audience of some silly, blessed but sterile polyanna thus rendering you a totally worthless dumbshit. Such self-serving, weakass psychological crutch word choices that somehow actually prop up your own fragile sense of decency don’t even begin to approach the verbal equivalents, much less the emotional catalysts, of the “profane” explicatives that so purposefully season written and spoken communication. Perhaps I could have just called you a socially opportunistic messy bottom, but then I would never take responsibility for such a limp swing--and a miss--at your face unless I was gesticulating a level of sarcasm with such contempt that it was bordering on physical comedy). Furthermore, any neurotic mess that substitutes such semantic stingers as ‘Goshdarn,’ or ‘Gol-dern’ in the triumphant place of ‘Goddammit’ should probably own the frightening fact that she or he has just taken part in some unholy idolatry and, I believe, should probably start worrying about what that says about their morally questionable character and if it mightn't have pissed off their deity quite a bit more than calling upon him to rain from heaven with a plague of locusts or some such…”

These Days

2006-08-15T17:06:00.000-05:00

Reform has become a tame word,
and one not to be trusted, for sure
(especially by an idealist).
Idealism cleaned up and got a job
with the rest of her generation;
she had mouths to feed, of course,
so who could blame her?

Subversion is now reckless and pointless;
embodied in the phenomena of computer viruses,
and such, in the Special Olympics arms race of hackers.

Rebellion got wind of the Second Amendment
and prefers violence over clever Disobedience
or even over the occasional Unruliness.
(according to gossip, he is a pissed off, heavily
armed, beer bellied, Born Again white guy
spouting off about tax revolts and the definition
of marriage somewhere up in Montana).

Individualism is trite and selfish,
Collectivism, oh so passé.
Spirituality has been enjoying new
popularity as an annoying label for those
who don’t want to endorse a particular sect,
but who can’t quite severe the cord with
the Almighty.

Art is bourgeois; Education, exclusive;
both of them so deep in denial that we all
feel concerned that they really don’t know
they have a problem as they drown
themselves in Humanist and Pluralist
sentimentalities while keeping earnestly
clueless straight faces.

Community still has a nice ring to it;
not completely unlike the word Wholesome:
both of these charlatans hint at something
that’s good for us, but it’s hard to pin them
down to firm definitions. Such commitment
issues make them a couple of favorites among
marketing, advertising, and political circles.

The old mafia godfather, Religion, sadly,
is still sponging off of the working class; and
still trying with all His might to bring down
the tenuous wall between the Church and
the State. I suppose that He’ll be the last
to realize such a fence could have made
Him the strongest of them all. And then,
the unattended muttering of a bitter, old
man will be the congregation He deserves.

poetry

Self Determination for Worth (the Manifesto of Purpose in a Vaccuum)

2006-08-10T21:04:00.000-05:00

I will assume the worth and responsibility of reflecting Divinity.

I will live facing forward
eyes open to my givens
and with footwork
designed for progess
in all of my sacred realms--
physical, spiritual, emotional,
and mental.

I have released my yolks
because I possess their scars
for the rooted comprehension
of my past.
I needn't carry them any further;
these abandoned knapsacks
marking a new journey, and
a material divorce.

I will tap into my wellspring source sublime
to make courage flow for fuel and ambition;
my placental anger no longer needed
to feed my belly with the rage of survival.

My open eyes will acknowledge all
who they encounter, but will see only
the beautiful and the kind--my vision cannot
dwell upon remorse
or disappointment beyond my need
to know they exist, or my desire
to understand their remedies.

I will be Lord of my Selfhood--
dwelling in my flesh Temple,
and I will challenge myself
relentlessly to grasp the
Divinity within each and all
whom I encounter.

I will believe those things that
make life worth living--
and that rebelliously pollinate life
with honor in a cold, dark,
and silent universe...
I will save my skepticism for
for those beliefs that would mock or
seduce me into obediently laying down
to die.

Regardless of the 'accuracy' of my
epistemological aim, the life
lived from this choosen orientation
will be rich and righteous and
will exist beyond the frayed consciousness
of endevoring to 'prove' one's way
into solace by ruminating on our
paulty measurements of a
hypothetical, unknowable, 'objective' reality
suggested to exist outside of our minds,
and offered on a currancy backed by the
psychological gold standard they
fantastically pretend to transcend,
and ignorantly fail to acknowledge.
(the ultimate
leap of faith that rests on unprovable
assumptions).

I will honor and hone the
blessings so liberally showered
upon me (and for which I cannot take credit).
so that I will not take them for granted
and so I can pay respect to those from
whence they came (the ultimate rejection
of the fradulant fiction of meritocracy).

I will push myself
to be generous to those
who I love the most in this
life and to those who have
survived impoverished worlds (and
for reasons for which they
should not be shamed into taking responsibilty)
I will work to find ways
to contribute to communities of people,
animals, plants, and nature.

poetry

The Salty, Sexy, Standalone Sass of Dan Savage

2006-08-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

'The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the Shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.'

-Dan Savage, The Portland Mercury (11.11.04)

Self-Soothing for Survival (the Manifesto of Love)

2006-08-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

Who are these beings among us? They look human and they even appear to understand complexities within our expressions like irony, idiosyncracy, and humor. We let them into our lives, our families, and even into our beds and our bodies. We convince ourselves that they're one of us in spite of the occasional flashes of intuition and those little voices that dare make the suggestion that they are imposters. And then it happens-- some cosmic hiccup if not a crushing bodyslam-- it's what the existentialists referred to as the absurdity of human existence. The very universe itself lays waste to your best formulated plans and expectations as you turn to one of these aliens among us-- after, say, 6 years of committed romantic love. Sure, the relational binding's got some wear and tear because you fell for the same "soulmate" myth that we have cruelly set up for each succeeding generation (right alongside the one about finding a career that will make you wake up each day whistlin' Dixie and feeling actualized and fulfilled), and it's had to endure some serious mileage. Nonetheless, you continue to believe that such commitment will mean something when you need it most. So again, you turn to them in trust and faith; and then you have to live through the epistemological jolt of realizing that they either left you a long time ago and just failed to display the vertebrate characteristic of having a backbone, or worse, they never really connected with you at all. So, despite everything you've done, including your painstaking gentleness with regards to where they are vulnerable because you have an intimate understanding of their psychological Achilles heel. These human imposters apparently lack the ability to actually give a shit about you. So, although you are an adult and not only can survive the truth even when it hurts, you also prefer it to living in the fairy tale they constructed for you (possibly in some perverted sense of compassion because they may lack the ability to deal with reality and certainly seem unable, at a minimum, to deal with the discomfort associated with the vulnerability required for intimacy). Thus, being incapable of imagining surviving the truth they will effortlessly, and narcissitically, decide that you are also retarded and therefore should have your choice to deal with reality made for you. So, you turn to them fully expecting their partnership, in a true sense of that word, and therefore their support and resources, and, lo and behold, you find that they're in the arms of another. The only mercy in this, of course, is that such chickenshittery becomes quite unattractive rather quickly and you can make peace, at least cognitively, with the fact that you are clearly better off without them. Be assured, however, such intellectual understanding is the salve equivalent of calamine lotion on leprosy--it is not emotionally easy. I have to remind myself that while we should fear these aliens because of their abilities to mimic concern and the provision of safety and home, they are quite childlike and cowardly. They are not, therefore, at all equipped to deal with the sad reality that sometimes the romantic relationships of human adults run their course and are not going to work (at least, not in healthy ways). Anyone who has experienced the obvious neurochemical addiction and temporary insanity involved with starting a new relationship (would offspring have ever happened during the dawn of humanity without this?) can rather easily see this strategy as a dishonorable means of self-medicating onself through the sadness of such a loss. Be warned, these aliens will take this easy way out (or the equally dubious one of manufacturing anger and hostility to similarly make it easy). Expecting them to be an adult and acknowledge the relationship failure, and to assist you in the huge task of actually ending and unraveling the relationship is like expecting a child to be responsible without your constant chlding and supervision. But to be fair, my nieces and nephews are actually surprisingly good at being responsible given the developmental impossibility of their understanding real consequences in the beautiful fairytale of growing up in the padded world steadfastly created and defended by parents who really do love you and refuse to abdicate their responsbilities of having had you in the first place. Well, I hope I've made my point and issued a warning to the actual members of my species (or struck a chord of some type of validation for you) about the emotional difficulties of such a crushing disappointment that, sadly, coincide with being forced to reckon with the lack of guarantees in this life that you feel solidly in your belly during those times your mind cannot be seduced by the comforts of delusion or the promises of religion. Be prepared for not being prepared, but let me offer a perspective that I hope allows you to cut yourself some slack when faced with the humiliation of betrayal. Fine, so you're trusting and maybe even guilable--clearly, so am I. But don't feel ashamed for that. You've given someone the best that we have to offer as human beings: trust, and the belief in them that they'll do the right thing. The startling reality that they don't do the right thing and that they were probably never worthy of your trust falls morally, squarely on their shoulders. They took your gift of the best and, in return, gave you the worst. They are exemplars of the definition of a con man, an identity defined by the betrayal and manipulation of the trust of others. So, my fellow citizens, celebrate your humanity and know that it is better (at least by my way of thinking) to make the conscious choice to extend our best to others with open and sparkling eyes, and without the benefit of naivete because you are well aware that this choice will lend you vulnerable to being hurt by some of them. The alternative is to allow yourself to be abducted by these aliens and rendered souless because you yielded to bitterness, suspicion, and the loss of empathy. Although you will espouse the believe that you've done so in the name of self-preservation, you will have authored your own spiritural demise. It's a wicked paradox: by the time you fall for this rationalization, you will have lost the very part of you that is worth preserving. I've come to understand myself to be fortunate and refuse to bear shame of having been successfully manipulated, because it has become clear that I will not only survive and have a happier existence on this planet than the one experienced by these aliens, eventually I will thrive because I will find a human being who understands the liberation that must surely exist when you find the Brigadoon-like oasis of real intimacy with someone who, in addition to really liking you, also knows where you've been hurt and loves you there too. Our alien counterparts appear unable to fathom the fact that the security they procure for themselves by never really caring about anyone else (paradoxically) enslaves them in a place where they can never really trust that they are loved because no one really knows them and therefore cannot really love them in way that is meaningful. These poor creatures ignorantly fulfill their own prophecy of true (and surely agonizing) isolation and lonliness. So, befriend yourself right now and feel pride in your ability and willingness to be true and open and genuine--and, if your experience is like mine, you'll eventually find yourself feeling pity for the alien who betrayed you, pity that is almost completely devoid of vengence or cheap, spiteful satisfaction. They will never know the joy that you, even in a world that rarely displays even a weak gesture of justice, at least have the chance of knowing. I bid you the best of luck in your courageous ability to take the risk required in order to hit the relational jackpot (while simultaneously exposing you to the risk of losing it all) or to simply live with dignity and the knowledge that you will survive these emotional setbacks. I am confident, if you've followed what I'm saying this far, you are quite worthy and deserving of a love that honors you among your human siblings.

poetry

Appreciation of a Fine Paragraph

2006-04-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

"Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend--the weekend of the Yale game. Of the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, nonmatriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries."

-J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, 1955

Thank you, Mr. Salinger, for these--and so many other--finely crafted sentences...and, thanks for Zooey, too!

development (x) mistrust =

2006-04-19T08:21:00.000-05:00

SUFFOCATION
SUBLIMATION
RECAPITULATION

LONLINESS AND FEAR
INTOXICATION AND CHEER
LONLINESS AND FEAR

NO YOU
NO I
YOU

poetry

Letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Human Rights Watch, 25-1-2006)

2006-04-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

Letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Human Rights Watch, 25-1-2006)

My Best Friend was Sleeping

2006-04-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

I was gliding quickly up, two stairs at a time, mumbling something under my breath about Burton’s distractibility when he was like this. And I was also miffed that he was making me play cat-and-mouse after him all evening long. We’re both therapists, for Christ’s sake, and I had already been quite parsimoniously verbal and direct that he was making me chase after him. Of course, without even processing it consciously at the time, I knew the flawed nature of my thinking, given that much of our pleasure has come from being able to act out with each other. Burton and I are playmates and allow each other to leave behind all of the intentioned words and movements that are the powerful salve of our profession.

We’ve given ourselves such joy for the more than five years that have passed since we became acquainted by permitting and enjoying our less regulated selves. I have experienced it as a treat and as a rare gift amongst therapist-friends because (and those of you who have been in therapy won’t have a hard time following this) such tomfoolery and irresponsibility is not common among our professional kinfolk. Yes, Burton and I have played together in private because we worked in front of a public backdrop that is starchy and somewhat humorless. Such is the landscape that exists around those who believe that each of their inner thoughts and feelings is pregnant with meaning and importance. And perhaps they are. Nonetheless, having chosen the psychic armor of denial during my formative years, I, however, find it impossible, as well as unattractive, to even consider entertaining every impulse that surges through my inner world.

I find such a social group to be tedious, high-maintenance, and self-conscious (as for elitism, I can see their hand and then raise it a bit). Burton has his own reasons for escaping this social intercourse (and admittedly, wants to do so less frequently than I do), and sometimes, despite the closeness we are able to share, I’m not always sure I understand what his reasons are. I think it’s ok if we don’t fully comprehend the mechanics of how we both got here—it is quite enough to understand that for both of us it involves shame and, in many important ways, aloneness.

When I hit the top of the stairs I quickly cruised through Burton’s kitchen. I scanned the top floor of his house, expecting to see him making alterations to some aspect of his décor, or changing the CD to a theme song apropos for that moment, or perhaps sharing his generous attention to the new acquaintance we had brought with us to his home on this night. No, the new guy was passed out on the sofa. I scooted around the corner, with a quizzical look fastened to my face now, to Burton’s bedroom, and there he was: my sweet friend, stretched out on his back sleeping atop the comforter on his bed. My heart swelled with such tenderness and affection for him. It’s happened to me before (and for less deserving people in my life): at times when I see a fragile, sleeping human I am capable of a depth that I can seldom reach when communing with the awake. My friend’s unguarded form pushed me into that reservoir of humanity and inter-connectedness that is usually so emotionally allusive (even though it’s so intellectually obvious).

Burton looked so vulnerable and child-like. Although I’ve come to admire and appreciate his complicated defenses and sophisticated humor, I was touched by the simplicity of his humanity…as well as my own. As I watched his chest rise and fall slowly, I felt a sense of calmness and happiness stemming from the clear fact that my friend was experiencing peace. Sleep leveled him off and was an equalizer between him and the rest of the world. It rendered his intellectual quandaries futile and showed how much simplicity he really needs in his life—even (or especially) in our little cognitive cosmos of language and other abstractions. With great and pained hope, I so badly longed for happiness for my friend, in his life, in how he is loved. I felt a challenge go out from and loop back into myself to be a better, less cynical, gentler friend.

I turned and went back downstairs. I wanted Burton to rest. After all of the thousands—possibly millions—of words that I had given him with the heartfelt intention of providing him with some morsels of comfort, my satisfaction now was allowing him this quietness. Perhaps it is no accident that I have spent years running from sleep in my own life. I do love my friend Burton—but I have to understand this whole episode in the context of my own emotional residue. I stop. I reflect. And I wonder. If I could see myself sleeping, just for a moment and through the same eyes through which I saw Burton, could I be filled with the inspiration to love myself better too?

Retail Reminders

2006-03-18T01:03:00.000-06:00

(Let's start talking about social entitlement
programs in suburban America!)

Retail Clerks are People too!

(Sure, it’s easy for any of us to entertain fantasies of being better than others…but still…believe it or not, such value judgments are relative to the perceived social position of the judger and may not reflect any real or actual higher value to society-at-large.)

Feudalism is History!

(Granted, there’s nothing like the power surge associated with a make-believe game of Feudal Lord – wherein everyone else in the world plays the part of your very own lowly tenant farmers. As you enter a place of retail during this fantasy, it’s as if you’re transported back hundreds of years and have just entered the filthy village of your subjects, lucky to even be alive and working because of your generosity! But now really…it reflects very poor manners to play this game without the consent of everyone involved – and no one is making enough money to be the receiving vessel of your foul moods and frustrations. Remember, the retail clerk didn’t saddle you with those three loud children! Just because their corporate bosses require them to be polite to you regardless of how tastelessly rude you are to them, they’re not tenant farmers!)

Use your Words

(It’s such a simple lesson when we apply it to children, isn’t it? Of course, we all learned the lesson of using our words so long ago, who doesn’t forget it from time-to-time and regress back to preverbal signs and non-vocal grunts. Nonetheless…because communicating with someone in retail is an adult-to-adult interaction, verbal symbols are generally favored as a sign of good manners. For example, if you’ve received a postcard or direct mailing from the corporate bosses of a retail employee, you should guard against the impulse to walk into an establishment simply waving said postcard in the general direction of a retail worker. If you struggle with this one, try the common salutations that you use with real people in daily life {e.g., “Hello, how are you today?” or “Isn’t this some spell of nice weather we’ve been having lately?”}. After a socially appropriate opener like this, it is then appropriate to mention, “Say, I received something in the mail and was wondering if you might tell me more about it.” Keep practicing!)

Cell Phone Etiquette

(Gosh! Don’t we all struggle with this one! I mean, who knew that having your cell phone ring during a funeral, class, church service, or theater production might disturb our neighbors! Similarly, making, receiving, or continuing a cell phone conversation throughout an entire interaction with a retail salesperson could slightly be on the rude side. Now, lower those defenses and think about it! Why, such behavior does tend to infer that the retail person isn’t really a person at all – certainly not one with anything useful to say or worthy of the minimal social encouragers mentioned in #3 above. Keep trying to wrap your mind around this one and it will come.)

CEOs don’t work on the Sales Floor

(Yes, we’re all disappointed when our favorite bran muffin gets taken off the market – “discontinued” as they always say! As good Americans we dutifully consume the myriad of marketplace offerings placed before us, and understandably, we begin to identify with them. So, when a retailer discontinues that special product that was the best at scratching one of our material itches, it’s like part of us has been discontinued too! But always remember…the retail employee who has delivered this terrible news has almost never had anything to do with the decision to discontinue that extension of yourself. Please, don’t kill the messenger – and don’t treat them as if they have personally wronged you. Although many of you may not know this, most companies have toll-free numbers that you can call to express your displeasure! Simply, {and politely now!} ask the helpful retail saleperson to provide you with this number.)

Hopefully, these reminders can facilitate
the development of civic-mindedness*

*\siv-ik-'min-ded\ adj (1947): disposed to look after civic** needs and interests - civ-ic-mind-ed-ness n

**\'siv-ik\ adj [L civicus, fr. civis citizen] (1542): of or relating to a citizen, a city, citizenship, or civil affairs - civ-i-cal-ly \'siv-i-k(e-)le\ adj

definitions from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

Architecture as Inspiration (National Museum of the American Indian)

2006-03-10T00:23:00.000-06:00

For My Brother Todd on His 42nd Birthday

2006-02-24T23:43:00.000-06:00

Ours is a classic bond:
I admire you as my eldest brother.
(Quite probably in ways similar
to many younger siblings
as they look up in admiration
by gasping and gazing down in awe
at the massive genealogical trunk
that has raised them so highly and securely
above the fray).

I said classic, however,
But not common.
Although I admire you
(and also treasure you dearly),
I never had to aspire to be you.
My affection for you isn’t simply some
Instinctual imperative of birth order
That carries with it unseemly and unspoken
Injuries or jealousies:

No, the serendipitous
(as far as we’re concerned)
chronological distance between us
cultivated a mild and fertile climate
around us that will always be special.

Among the topography of our brotherhood,
if you’ll allow me this self-indulgent metaphor…
(my fraternal sense of historicity suggests
that not only will you grant it without hesitation,
but you’ll be grabbing your own verbal knapsack
to join me ~ I cannot begin to express how that frequent gift of
understanding and celebration has sustained me at my roots)

…Our dwellings together have been characterized by
Gentle and dry spaces amidst terrifying and turbulent storms.
Our differences provided the relief
That brought the landscape into focus.
Our samenesses allowed us a currency
for exchanging courage, knowledge, decency, and discourse
without the cautious and costly diplomacy
often incurred by others.

Brother, the way you move through this world
(by some accounts, allegedly, the same one that I’m living in):

So gracefully,
And big-heartedly generously,
And mischievously jesterly

It presents me with such a vexing riddle.
Vexing, but so very good for my soul.

Without a doubt, you have saved me so many times.
I hope that I was able to save you even once.
While the bridge between us spans
The greatest number of years,
It has most commonly required
The fewest number of steps.

Happy Birthday ~
Stay here a long time, please.

An Academic's Finest Editorial Moment

2006-02-07T02:25:00.000-06:00

April 2002 • American Psychologist
Examining Redding’s (2001) Claims About Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Premature Opinion on 'Brokeback Mountain'

2006-01-30T07:18:00.000-06:00

When I first heard about 'Brokeback Mountain,' I'll admit, I was excited. As time moves along without seeing it, however, my excitement is beginning to turn to dread and apprehension; I'm reserving the right, of course, to not see it at all. From what I've heard, it is groundbreaking in terms of Silver Screen portrayals of human sexualities. Yet, the more I hear about it, I suspect it won't be too groundbreaking to me. I am beginning to think of this film in the category of 'Philadelphia' with Tom Hanks: a film with an intended heterosexual audience that sorely needs education about the larger world that exists outside of their institutions and realities. Just as gay folks had already been harshly educated about the realities of HIV/AIDs when 'Philadelphia' was released, gay folks are also well-aware that many gay men do not fit the stereotypes about them that are held by many in our culture (even though a lot of them do, but I'll save that topic for another time!), and that sexually conflicted guys with interests in extra-hetero-curricular activities oftentimes are conflicted throughout their lives and frequently take on identity labels that tend to avoid the word 'GAY' (i.e., 'M2M,' 'on the down low,' and 'bi-curious' to mention a few; and my favorite: hearing a guy use the self-referent 'straight' while simultaneously hitting on you in a gay bar).

That, in a nutshell, covers how my initial excitement has been morphing into dread and apprehension (those of us in the marginalized quarters of American life are so systematically excluded from the mainstream that it is hard not to feel an initial flood of excitement whenever included, for whatever reason; with time and context, unfortunately, that excitement typically ends up a betrayal). Certainly, that's not enough to make a decision not to see the film (and in my experience, one can find many gems of value in any of Ang Lee's fine films). The part of me that is quietly beginning to urge my other parts to boycott 'Brokeback Mountain' is, ironically, the accolades being steeped upon Jake G and Heath L. I saw the epidsode of Oprah a couple of days ago when the duo discussed the film with the obligatory explanations of how they were able to do the big "makeout" scenes. While I admit that it is an impressive thing to see a couple of presumeably straight guys talk about this in a world where most men won't hold direct eye contact with one another for more than a few seconds, I am left wondering if it is really worth all of the Oscar buzz. Recall that Tom Hanks won an Oscar for his 'Philadelphia' role some years ago. Put it this way: if a couple of gay actors held the leading roles in 'Brokeback Mountain,' do you think they'd be up for Oscars too? Frankly, I don't. It's almost like people, probably largely well-intentioned ones mind you, want to reward these straight guys for being able to overcome their repulsion and resistance to the physical expression of gay love.

For the sake of argument, considering that a large percentage of porn for straight guys involves 'lesbian' sex, maybe it's time that we hold them to the standard of getting over their repulsion regarding men who physically love one another--this, rather than rewarding them with the highest honor their industry has to give. Gay men have been playing the roles and living the lives of straight men for millenia and all we ever get for it are the smears, "dubious," "manipulative," and "dishonest." In Jake and Heath's defense: yes, it is hard to pretend that you're something that you're not--and do it honestly, respectfully, and convincingly. Yeah, it's a bitch--and again, a given that would not come as much of a novelty to a gay audience at Ang's latest work.

Here Is The Big Gay Agenda / Revealed! The horrifying secret plot to homo-amplify America. Also: Dig this hetero agenda!

2006-01-30T07:08:00.000-06:00

Here Is The Big Gay Agenda / Revealed! The horrifying secret plot to homo-amplify America. Also: Dig this hetero agenda!

Upside-Down

2006-01-15T19:22:00.000-06:00

The current issue of Vanity Fair has some insightful Letters to the Editor regarding an article in the December '05 FV about evangelical Christians and their preparation for the "Rapture." Sadly, some of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters have chosen to interpret the message of Christianity to be one of intolerance and revenge. I cannot imagine a more perverse understanding of the faith-based lessons with which I was raised. Namely, 1) that Christ, as a fleshly manifestation of God, chose to come as a human infant (vulnerable, soft, opened skull and all) with a message of love and charity; meaning, 2) S/he did NOT choose to come as a warrior with a sword who could have defeated the Roman Empire through FORCE (one of the very reasons that many followers of Judiasm at that time thought him a rather unlikely candidate for Messiah); and 3) the central thesis of his ministry (whether you believe the Sermon on the Mount was an event or an amalgamation of his oration) appears to have been a reinterpretation of Hebrew Law along less literal and FUNDAMENTALIST lines (e.g., suggesting that commiting adultery in one's heart was the equivalent of its behavioral counterpart; in this way, suggesting that the SPIRIT of the Law was as important as the WORD of Law); and 4) Christ appears, primarily, to have charged his followers with the MONUMENTAL task of loving, feeding, healing, sheltering, and caring for humanity, and he challenged social mores with the company that he kept, as well as those that he considered worthy of his love and attention.

So, to apply religiosity to politics--at least informed by this perspective of the ministry of Christ--one might have to conclude that liberal and progressive political platforms are more aligned with Christ's mission--providing welfare and healthcare (healing) to all people, regardless of their socioeconomic status, concerning oneself with issues of injustice among people, and with conservation efforts among the rest of the natural world (HIS CREATION, after all!). On the one hand, you have politicians like George Junior who vocalize that Jesus is a personal "hero" and who then resolves issues in the world through violence, divisiveness, and wealth (this, believe it or not, is seen as the "moral" candidate by many of our so-called evangelical friends). On the other hand, you have politicians like Jimmy Carter (whose only dirty laundry was his own admittance of having commited adultery in his mind--how squeaky clean is that and can you believe such words came out of a politician's mouth who is still living, in this century?) and even those like--dare I say it?--Bill Clinton, who worked toward a cleaner environment, a more just society, and who actually acknowledged the problems in our healthcare delivery system, quite probably the most fundamental economic issue/timebomb facing all living Americans. Somehow, our evangelical friends don't seem to even notice Jimmy Carter, a man whose personal faith runs deeper than probably any other living American politician or religious figure. With Clinton, of course, there was the blowjob and so although no one died when he lied about it--he was clearly, the "immoral" and "evil" choice of candidates.

Seriously, if this is the moral reasoning behind the leading Christian mouthpieces and minds of our time, I am left looking around nervously, expecting Alan Funt to pop out of the bushes at any moment and tell me that I'm on Candid Camera. (Whew! Wouldn't that be a relief?) Instead, here we are on planet Earth in 2006, with evangelicals in the Holy Land talking about the physical measurements of the depth of blood that will flow from BILLIONS of people when Christ destroys them during the "Rapture." This, in spite of the fact that the Nazareen's message about people was so very positive, forgiving, and...well, downright HUMANIST! Perhaps God can change His Mind over a couple of millenia (but then, if that's true, it kind of pokes a hole in the whole fundamentalist approach to Truth, doesn't it?)

FALL IS TO ME

2006-01-04T15:41:00.000-06:00

A perfectly timed, eloquently delivered,
paradoxical intervention.
as my garden turns to purple and rot
and heavy fruits slump to touch the ground,
and heavy Romantic allusions about sunsets,
winter, old age, and death (come to mind to)
soften the texts and to invite the notion
of entropy to worm its way into
an existential dread of the inevitable.

and yet,
i am so far from feeling fretful
here in my inverted, upsidedown, proudly perverted,
achingly lonely, antimatter parallel universe of
unchosen defiance…
not that i’m dancing a jig that would bring a smile to the face
of anyone who hasn’t been spiritually castrated
or emotionally entombed here in the planet’s regular sphere;

just…

…a feeling of respite from
the relentless hunt of the nuclear
catastrophe that sits at the center of our world,
spewing its radioactive seed recklessly past us,
hurtling like a roaring maniac
as he consumes his home in big boluses of unchewed food,
spraying smelly saliva that splatters your face
if you look at him while he’s yelling…
careening toward his cosmic myocardial infarction:
solar/aortal explosion from the grotesque implosion of wanton fusion/consumption.

so, that’s how i feel about summer.
(and yes, before you even
begin to curl your lips to say it again,
“it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”).

here at the peripheral territories of the
square-peg condemned to a round-hole universe, solo-culture—
although masochistic, and really not so strangely if you think about it,
also deliciously narcissistic—
the end of summertime comes with a dramaticized
sigh of relief.

as the world prepares to die,
(if this mortality metaphor is the one you must stay with)
i wake up to live.

---

[i just had a flashback to graduate school in realizing that this little treatise
hadn’t really answered the question by completing the sentence stem:
my diatribe against the sun, hopefully though,will impress my professor
even though it skirts the assignment with what autumn is not, rather than what it is.
Academic tip to students of psychology:
when you have to bullshit through an essay,
i found it helpful to pepper your writing
with a delicate balance of personal disclosure seasonings;
a word of caution:
treat disclosure like a powerful herb and only use it sparingly:
too much is inappropriate and can be distasteful;
not enough and you won’t fool the palate into believing that the meat has been substituted by something with value and flavor.]

---

the summer sun makes me torpid and stupid
and i find myself hopping from island-to-island
of conditioned air.
sadly, rather than celebrating the decadence of this cold treat
that has been brought to me on the back of the rest of the world,
I realize that i am consuming AC recklessly like an addict;

Fall comes as the Savior.
Cashmere hugs me and provides simulated affection.
Burnished smells tickle my primate DNA.
The painful pinpricks of coldness tell me that I am alive.