Yer in the Army Now....

Yer in the Army Now

So much has been happening lately I'm afraid this will be a big confused mess, but what th' hey, right?

The world is in a Meltdown. Hell that's the reason I have time for this crap, ya know? This is NOT a surprise. We've all known it's been coming for a looong time now, though it's hard to nail down that specific moment when we knew. Maybe we always did. I'll get to how I think we've known, and how we didn't know we've know a different time. For now, a somewhat more imminent thought. Here's one place to find a buncha bone-chilling stats http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.php . The numbers are everywhere. This is only one source, and far more officious, (don't mess with me, I used that word on purpose), sources are available. YOU look 'em up. Anyone wanting to look fuckin' stupid can tapdance around them til--well, til the Apocalypse--and they're not gonna change, cause tapdancin' won't change it. If it was gonna, it woulda! I already put it more or less in a nutshell: WE'RE FUCK-ED!!

But we're not. We're still breathing, still eating, drinking, fucking, pumping out babies, and so on. I have two accidental children whom I love without bounds. I genuinely thought it would be rude, at best, to sire a new Person and foist all this bullshit upon him16 years ago when the pertinent romantic interlude took place. Maybe it is, in  way, but in plenty of other ways life is as always a thing of such great, broad, deep beauty that I think all potential for its fulfillment ought to be pursued. (Don't imagine I've converted to Catholicism or something--that though was rather more metaphysically driven, and you should put on a raincoat if it looks like rain. Or waders if it looks like--you know ;)) Look around, though. We're ALIVE!! More than we know. And life shows us in every discrete packet of light entering our retinas that it will rise, no matter what. We can't kill the Earth. I rather think She'd prefer us to work this out, but She'll be fine. We can certainly destroy our ability to live here as Humans, though.

In Consider the Lilies, I started to explain what I'm up to here. Every time I approach that question, the answers that come to me sound more and more absurdly grandiose. Save the world? I mean, reeealy! When I was a young child, like in the 3rd grade or something, (no shit--ask Mom), I was politicized and set in a frame of mind opposed to Fascism, oppression, and...unkindness, for lack of a better term. Everyone knows this is the course of idealism, though, right? I got out in the "real" world and it struck me that one must make some pragmatic concessions to get by. Right? We all learn this, don't we? Usually when it "strikes" us it's like a brick in the head. It's usually thrown at us by some cog in the Fascist machine.

If you've read the earlier posts, or caught my live rant, you've likely been puzzled by my carryings on about money being a bad metaphor. It's outdated poetry, good for a time, now hopelessly outdated like that ridiculous, overwrought Victorian romance shyte you may have read in college or high school. (Leave them kids alone, Teacher!). "All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and the old thing has gotten us a long way; in fact, it's gotten us right here. Fucked. Or on the cusp of some spectacular event(s).

We live in a competitive world. Whichever doctrinal approach one embraces, whether scientifically mechanistic or holding out for divine fiat, it's the scrabbling over game pieces that has us in this sinking boat. Everyone has to have a buncha shit they don't need, in order to display for all the other poor losers how dominant they or their team has been in the Game. This isn't a fuckin' game anymore, though. Look at those numbers again. Do you really think a little half-assed reduction in increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 100 years or whatever is going to save the human race? Get real! Do you really think we might someday pay off our $23 trillion debt, or whatever it is? What's that shit, anyways? To whom do we owe it? When did we sign that contract? Didn't someone steal that from us last month? Do we really think we can survive a collapse of the oceans, the food chain, the watersheds, etc, etc, and so on?

I may be grandiose and ridiculous, but I can read the writing on the wall, in the sky, on the face of the Moon. We're gonna need to stop fiddle-fuckin' around and wrestle this shit to the ground, or we're all gonna die. Our kids are gonna die. Our grand-kids, if we live to see them, will be mutant freaks like Goldblum's  fly monster, just like the poor fucked up three-eyed fish around Chernobyl and downstream of a BHP Billiton mine , (BHP: Broken Hill Properties. It's only a secret if you close your eyes, kids). They'll die miserably, and the Earth will breathe a sigh of relief, having fought off a pestilent Virus. Or we can CHANGE EVERYTHING.

I saw a panel discussion at the community college yesterday, (PPCC). A Bahai, a Buddhist, a Pagan, and a Christian philosopher walked into a bar and the bartender said, "What is this, a fuckin' joke?" Oh--sorry. They actually sat behind a table and spoke as cogently as they were able, and we all took them fairly seriously, if with the standard portion of salt--you know it's still all bullshit, right? A thematic keystone was the notion that we're all One, that it's all All-One. You'll notice me playing that riff for all I can wring from it. It's got a lot of Soul, and it sounds good. When I say we're all gonna die, I don't mean all us minor league players. The whole stadium is collapsing. It's already collapsed in a lot of ways. Check out my friend Skip's posts about the Federal Reserve. Don't be tapdancing when you read. The Fascists will die with us. Their secret bunkers won't do. Competition is over; the game pieces are reduced to Parker Bros. parts. Cooperative living is at hand.

Only LOVE will save us. That's right, y'all.Think that's hokey? Sure. It is. But that's a view from the old game. I put this shit up because I believe it. I'm just as much like water as anyone else. I'd stay comfortably here at the lowest level if it seemed for one second to me like that might be an option. It does not. It is not. Change or die. Right now. Today. Look me up. I have a couple ideas, and I bet you do too, if you were to stop concentrating on that tapdance.

There are many, many more things to say about all this. Come back and see us, eh?

Viva la rivoluzione! Viva l'Esercito dell'Amore!

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I

                I like telling the story of the time we went to Telluride with my brother David to catch the Bluegrass Festival there. Dave is a pretty dang famous fiddler, and this happened 13 or 14 years ago when his Freight Hoppers were riding a crest, having two then current Billboard Top 10 Americana list releases on Rounder Records, (Rounder is pretty much a ripoff for them, but that’s for another time).  The Freight Hoppers were hot in Colorado, and their set would draw some 30, 000 festival-goers, with a respectable bevy of hairy Deadheads looking for an outlet following Jerry’s departure bouncing, flouncing and working their little Tai Chi dance up at the stage. Lots of really notable musicians liked The Hoppers, too, and still do, actually.

                Anyhow, we would meet up with Dave and the band at the festivals after winding through a long cattle-line setup to get to the will-call desk and pick up our magic-rainbow all-access wristbands and hang out all weekend with all these niche-famous musicians, eating, drinking, being merry, smoking, and playing music together. That shit is great!

                So one day we’re back stage chillin’ with Tony Furtado, (hi Tony—rock on!), and someone goes, “Is that Johnny Cash?” and sure enough, The Highwaymen had showed up to play an unscheduled set. We never made it away from whatever we were doing at the time to see them play, but not long later, as if they had come for no other purpose, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson show up looking for my brother to tell him how much they dig his music. How cool is that!? Well, we all got to jawin’, and knowing a little about Willie I pulled a little fairly decent weed out of my pocket  and offered it, but Willie said, “Oh, no thanks, son, put that away,” and busted out some G13 mutant weed or something, and sparked the stoniest joint I’ve ever smoked in my life, to this very day. What a day!

                Now, Willie has always been a hero of mine. His heroes have always been cowboys, he says; mine have always been outlaws, and I always figured Willie for a true outlaw, to the core. I mean the guy runs for president on a platform built of pot smoke, with Ani DiFranco as his running mate. Go Willie! That’s why some things he’s said lately trouble me. I’ll get to that in a minute but the first order of business here is to retell that story one more time, (not that I won’t tell it again—it’s a great staple of mine at parties and such), and to let you in on a secret: It’s all bullshit! It never happened!

                ***

                I am a teller of tall tales, a spinner of yarns, a slinger of bool-shyte. That’s what I do. I’m gonna do some now, here; it’s my schtick, and folks who know me will instantly recognize some of the regular phraseology of my everyday standup, right here on the page. Hi Tim! Hi kids! Hi Willie! Some will recognize little inside tidbits and feel special. They’ll pick out my little eddies and anticipate how I circle back around myself. Hell, if you’re reading you might just as well go ahead and start feeling all conspiratorial and special right now. I mean, this is certainly not USA Today. You can pretty much count on being in an exclusive number by this count.

                So if this is a bit of improv by a bullshit artist, how do you know this isn’t all bullshit right now? I’ll let you in on another secret: it is! That’s right—it’s the Lying Cretin. Everything I say is a lie. The Lie is truer than the Truth. Willie and I will be burning one in Austin when I make it down that way in a few months and we’ll laaaugh and laugh about this whole thing, because he gets it, you know:

                This statement does not belong in the set of all true statements.

               Wrap your head around that a spell. It can’t be done. And no side-winding tap-dance involving imaginary words like "pseudo-statement" allowed, either. This is True Lies. It’s a breakdown in reason, a blind spot in our panoramic window to Reality like that thing with the dots you learned in elementary school. You can not manipulate the notions here to fit your mind, though you may, just maybe, be able to manipulate your mind to fit the notions. OK, so I’ll admit we can’t prove the magick here, and maybe someday some mathematician will build a technical ladder up and out of Gödel’s pit, but, we can’t prove a negative, right? But let’s see ya prove that. And now follow it back to the beginning of this paragraph, the beginning of this rant, the beginning of everything you’ve ever read, heard, saw, sensed felt.

               
And, lo and behold, you find yourself  “poised on the wave of explicit Presence, the clockless Nowever.”
               
But don’t forget what kinda bullshit you’re reading.

(Don't miss Part 2)!

http://hermetic.com/bey/ 

Walking on Water, Across a Tightrope, Without a Fishnet

Steve Bass
1 April 2009
For Carrie Spencer

Walking on Water, Across a Tightrope, Without a Fishnet

            Very few times in life does one come across an opportunity to interact with a personage who so completely embodies the essence of a world religion as presented by recognized Tibetian Boddhisatva, the monk  Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan’s visit to Colorado Springs. This verbally acrobatic name and title aptly characterize the man’s persona in many ways.
            Khen Rinpoche, as abbreviated by his local presenters, holds a position roughly correlative to a Catholic cardinal, to hear the presenters tell it-- essentially the Dalai Lama’s right-hand man. The literature provided differs, somewhat, naming him Abbott of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, a rather secondary establishment, with Khen Rinpoche serving as a sort of sanctioned proxy for the Panchen Lama, himself the “second most important spiritual leader of Tibet,” a prisoner in China. No matter, though, the delightful, cheery man demonstrates no discomfort at the lesser status, and in fact appears to acknowledge no real differentiation.
            The experience of meeting this guy is not to be matched. It is really quite astonishing that someone of his stature would deign to spend four exhausting days in our little burg, interacting personally with us on a ground level. But he doesn’t see it that way. Actually, the way he seems to see just about all things is so jarringly alien to most of the Springsians present at Saturday’s talk and meditation that several of them seemed on the verge of flying apart at the mental seams. I have never met a more cheerfully straightforward and forthcoming individual, but problems of conceptual translation caused the simplest of his words to slip through Americans’ grasps as if they were trying to catch trout by hand.
            Those present attempted to bestow him with honor. He would have none of it. They shifted to attributing humility, and he chuckled as he asserted the loftiness of his spiritual position, equating himself with disembodied “deities.” The conversation proceeded and it became apparent, (to some), that although he was utilizing recognizable terms, when he spoke of God, or gods, or deities, or for that matter, meaning, compassion, selfishness, or virtually any notion germane to spiritual discussion, there existed a sort of topspin to his thinking that caused his intent to fly right over our heads.
            Addressing the matter of selfishness he insisted that our first compassionate responsibility is to alleviate our own suffering, that is, to see to our own comfort. This from a man who lives in a barely heated, stone room. One woman expressed sympathy and somewhat vociferous support for the political situation endured by Tibetians. Khen Rinpoche agreed the matter is dire, but proceeded, chuckling all the while, to negate the concern, positing that it is much better to concentrate on changing ourselves than the world, and advocating compassion over blame for even the most deeply flawed of our world's political leaders. Asked about the nature of creation, he engaged in a truly comical tango with the querent, involving that business of God/gods/deities, mentioned above. She almost melted. He chuckled and told a story about a man who spent nine years cutting a steel bar in half with a feather--get it? No way.

            In the end, Khen Rinpoche admirably represented an admirable spiritual school. He’s no dummy and holds the equivalent of a Ph.D. in theology, but remains as down to earth as a chimney-sweep, recognizing our conceptual difficulties, and thanking us for the opportunity to practice his diabolically terrible English, chuckling, of course. He suggested that rather than wrack our heads with too much endeavor at forcing concepts into our worldviews, we hold on to the most valuable basics that we all seem to hold in common. Tibetian Buddhism, not unlike any variety of Buddhism, can be quite complex, and one can never tell if its proponents are entirely sincere in their traditional descriptions of reality. But throughout his conversation, Khen Rinpoche never really veered too far from a tenet expressed by the Dalai Lama himself: “My religion is Kindness.”

First Things

So everyone tells me I ought to write. Here it is then, and what to write about?

Write what you know, I've heard before, but then, I'm with Aristotle in that "All I know for sure is I know nothing for sure," or was that Plato? I can't say for sure.

Some way or another I mean for this to be an expression of things I care about, whether I know them or not. I'll mess around with politics a little, probably stuff that will perturb some more than a bit. I'll blather on about religion, although religion and politics are pretty symbiotic topics, in my head. Then again, so are religion and science, religion and sociology, religion and psychology, religion and actual spirituality, and so on. On second thought, maybe the choice of the term "religion" is a poor one, since only a smattering of my thoughts have to do with actual religion and its tedious mechanics of denomination and conflict between world religious powers. But all those things interest me, and since this is really no more than an exercise for me, I'll probably mingle the ideas around so much that no one will be able to tell what I'm carrying on about anyways.

Just an opener, for now. Tomorrow I'll bellyache about justice in America for a spell, both in terms of overall social justice, and the so-called justice system under which we live. this will be addressed form a spiritual and philosophical perspective, of course.