Saying Goodbye (After the Fact)

Would that I could shut it all out somehow: I feel as though I am the victim of a process of shunning, one that has left me alone to experience the sensory awareness of impending danger even as the rest of the accepted group of humanity remains unaware. Hillary Clinton has a book out; a new photograph of her shows those wide and invading eyes, with that smile that's just a little too affected. As I gazed, a comparison came to mind: I recognized it as the same sort of headshot as the one taken of Jared Loughner, the shooter of Representative Gabrielle Giffords; by way of definition, a psycho on Krank. The categories of psychopathology and sociopathology find representation in their shared traits when the patterns of behavior for politicians and the worst sort of serial criminals are compared. Somehow Barry Soetoro dropped out of the sky and became Barak Obama. Now he's saying that he had to issue so very many presidential directives due to the blockage of congressional gridlock. ("I'm sorry," says Caesar, but I had to take charge because of that do-nothing Senate.) Every dictator has used this sort of excuse.

In this paper I am starting with things afield. You see, I had to be away for a few days and, as such, I became vulnerable to the rottenness and filth of television ("Don't touch that dial"), courtesy of my own curiosity and due to my having to be near  a few elderly TV-watching relatives. And referring to hard drugs again, on the way back I awoke in a motel room in Tucumcari and saw the "people" of the early morning shows. My thought was, "Behind every smile lurks a potential lie." (What's new? Just about everything here IS lying.) Okay, that's peripheral information. It could be a tad relevant; some future historian may want to know, but it's not the principal reason why I'm putting fingertips to keyboard.

Two photographs: the first came by way of a professional. It showed Anna and a man at a table, having a daytime beer in a bar. Back in the forties and fifties sometimes a pro would snap a pic of you and you'd give him a little dough. The thing came out like a work of art and it made my eldest sister look like a lovely Italian movie star. But the second picture was not of beauty. It was a bit stark (I don't remember where I saw it), and the circumstances around it were not nice. She was standing on a sidewalk in Sioux City with the woman who had married my dad's brother, Uncle Lowell. He had worked on the first transcontinental highway of Canada and had sent most of his money home, to his young wife. She spent it all and demanded a divorce when he returned. Later, he hanged himself.

Anna Marie married but did not have any children of her own. Her husband had three from a previous marriage but his first wife had been declared insane. After he died in a strange motorcycle accident she became like the deteriorated character played by Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.

There's a part of me to talk about here as well; first I have to return to The Beacon Theater that used to be at 29th and Ames, in Omaha: the year was 1961 and our little gang was walking past the front. Some older guys were there and Lyle gave off a very aggressive "Fuck You" to them. We took off running. I ducked down an alleyway and successfully hid in the middle of three or four trash cans but the next day Lyle gave me hell for breaking away from the group. I remembered this as I sat in – but did not participate in – the Catholic funeral for my eldest sister. The word mass is taken literally: people form a single body as they respond to the liturgical promptings of the priest. The all-together unity of it made me think of huddling for protection as against a too-wild and unpredictable, a too-cold and unforgiving world. Sometimes it's good to have the memory refreshed; some of it came back but in my youth I was performing as a kid, obeying my parents. In contrast, during and after my conversion I can recall synagogues that sounded like a cacophony of auctioneers, each man trying to get his own prayer in (and to heck with mass). Even though it didn't stick with me, I found myself more attuned to the "Currahee" aspect of the Jews. (This is an American Indian word, maybe Cherokee, that means, "We stand alone together.")

The church was a small one off of the old downtown area of Omaha. When I was a twelve-year-old kid I had hawked Sunday morning newspapers on its steps (for a quarter each) some fifty-five years earlier. It was beautiful inside, albeit somewhat cluttered and busy with its too many statues, too much stained glass, and in its symbolism overload. (I pity the one doing the dusting.)

I think it was 1954: she visited us when I was seven. I remember that Anna Marie made a big spaghetti dinner but there was something about that, and the grape juice she had bought, that didn't sit well with me. Later, outside, I threw it all up.

The day before the funeral was the viewing. I cried, not so much for or about her death but the sight of those paltry, pitiful and cheap clothes disturbed me greatly. (From what others told me, our mother had treated her terribly.) Years after her husband died another brother and sister went to visit and ended up taking out about fifteen huge plastic bags filled with trash, junk, and garbage from her neglected home. Her first words to them were, "Welcome to the house of death." In later years she lived with another sister and her family in Omaha. Every time I saw her I would ask if there was anything I could do (and I meant it – if she would have asked I would have tried), but she would always reply that she was okay and didn't need anything. In the last ten years or so even talking sounded like hard work for her (I found myself wondering if she had had a lobotomy); her verbal skills were almost gone, and now (goddamn it) she wasn't even going to be buried in a nice dress.

My private prayer was for her to have something better, no matter where she may go. She paid dearly while she was here.

I sat in the pew with the pallbearers and giggled to myself when I remembered that Jack Kerouac had his first sex in a confessional. Of course with my views and considering what I have experienced I qualify as an apostate and a heretic. I looked up at those wonderful stained glass windows and imagined them imploding inward in a contrived vision of something akin to what may have happened in The Omen. One reason why I broke away is because I feel that if there really is a judgment, then I will have to stand alone for it. When Brian said, "You're all individuals," the ovine gathering below intoned, "Yes, we're all individuals," collectively, but that's not me. I actually try to live as one, and besides that, there's all that mystical stuff about me that my family doesn't want to go near. A feeling of superiority is not where I'm at; I don't see myself as anything but normal while the majority of others want to remain at a lower state where they may feel more secure (plus, couple that with the absence of the pain required as a necessary part of learning and changing). It might be more correct to say that I have to remain a free agent, ready to go wherever I am called (if I get a call). I could not and cannot attach myself to someone or something, at best equal to me or at worst of a lesser makeup. Sorry, Lyle, and I apologize to the Jewish people as well, but I had to be on my own and I could not stop seeking, learning, and changing to fit whatever I found.

Dad and Mom were Aries and Capricorn, two leader houses; their first four surviving children were male-Libra, female-Capricorn, male-Aries, and female-Cancer, covering all four of the leader signs.

Anna was the second one. She was eighty-two-and-a-half when she passed away, the same age as her older brother when he died.

The funeral was followed by my brother-in-law, Tom, taking me to the zoo on my birthday, the day after the services. It was a great time: the Omaha zoo is (for a city of that size) quite exemplary, and an all-day project to take in. My childhood was not pleasant; I cannot bring up a truly good memory. So I find myself thinking of other kids in this town, the ones who will not know of anything good or positive in their youth and it doesn't matter if all the children at the zoo were happy. Even in the middle of my good time I couldn't help but think of the children sitting on a run-down apartment stoop with nothing to do and no money to do it with.

So, after an (almost) heart attack–inducing trip back, I am once again back on Route 66. I wear a wet T-shirt in my repo trailer, with an indoor temperature above 92 as shown on the thermometer. It has been windy (as per usual) but has since died down; tonight I walk and look up at the cloud cover, hoping that it will rain…praying for the rain of John Fogerty and Bob Dylan, a biblical cleansing.

Belief, Learning, and the Trap of Evil

"An average person uses 5% of his brain in his lifetime" —Albert Einstein. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" —Jesus. (I have stated those two sentences as near to each other because they both have a built-in convenience: how nice and accommodating for the proponent that neither one can be proven.) Then, in terms of how the leadership of the earth beats us over the head with their vested interests we have the statement, "It doesn't matter what you say; it's how often you say it" —Abbie Hoffman. And in terms of the totalitarian mind, "The bigger the lie, the more they'll believe it" —Adolf Hitler. And continuing in this vein, the average German soldier captured at the end of World War II would tell his captors that Poland attacked them and (thus) began the war. Jesus said that "All things are possible to him that believeth," but from Einstein we have "Blind belief in authority is the enemy of truth," and it has been my observation in life that reality and truth are God, and if you aren't very careful about where you tender your belief you will be nothing more than a tool to the establishment, a sheep in the program of shepherds and sheep begun by the first secret societies of Akkad and Sumer. And lest we think that this is somehow in the past or the problem belongs somewhere else, I am not content to leave this off without saying that the average American voter still thinks that they do have some say-so in the election process; and some still think that there are men buried in the concrete of Hoover Dam.

I went for a coffee yesterday, told the woman behind the counter I wanted two cream and two sweeteners in it and she immediately turned to another and said one cream and two sweeteners. The day before, I bought a newspaper using a twenty and had to give a dollar back to the lad as he had undercharged me by that much. The common people can be viewed from the perspective of Otto, the main character of the film Repo Man, when he said, "Yeah, well I don't read them books." About one billion people believe that some guy walked on water and about another billion think that another guy ascended up through the seven heavens on the back of his horse. "Hey, did you hear the one about the lady who put her miniature poodle in her microwave?" Vincent Bugliosi wrote a large book that, for the most part, agrees with whatever the Warren Commission said. He is not alone: I know of a teacher with a master's degree who thinks that Oswald was the man. (Anybody remember Treasure of the Sierra Madre? "Evidence? We don't need no stinkeeng evidence.")

We have been and are in a time when the biblical "Sons of Darkness" rule. Reality is seen as bad, something to flee from: go to a movie, get a bottle, smoke a joint, exercise, have sex (but you'll be BAD if you do). Truth is unattainable for most people: There are many on the Internet and on Television and on Radio who are paid to lie, muddy up, obfuscate and make it impossible to discern with normal human senses what is real here. In the place of a search for truth we are offered an emotional tirade; both sides yelling at each other, reminiscent of the two kids on South Park, "Why don't you go back to San Francisco with all the other Jews?"

"There aren't any Jews in San Francisco!"

There are provocateurs and fake anarchists at demonstrations, paid to get violent so the cops can beat up the peaceful protestors. About 99% of spokespeople and news reporters are told what to say and then they say it. They are non-sexual whores. There are evidences of flying saucer technologies being (at least) explored by the Nazis toward the end of World War II; there are no evidences whatsoever that tie the sightings to other dimensions or worlds. The evidences presented by engineers concerning 9/11 lead us to believe that the buildings were brought down by the use of explosives for a controlled demolition…the news outlets won't go there. The burning of the rain forests continues apace; species of plants and animals go extinct every week, overpopulation of man strips the earth of natural resources: nothing of this is covered in the news anymore. Now add Fukushima: flight crews are starting to feel the effects of the extra radiation; the whole of the Northern Pacific might very well become a giant dead zone, but the average person doesn't have to be concerned, nor does he want to be; he is content to live in ignorance, dumbness, and stupidity.

Some believe that the moon landing was faked. Some believe that the moon landing was genuine. According to NASA the monuments of Cydonia are mere tricks of light and shadow. But some people see the mathematical connections and understand them as real, being manufactured by an ancient race. However, the point of all this litany I am engaged in is to point out that in an age of darkness, in a time when darkness reigns supreme its proponents and servants win when an atmosphere of discord and aggression in controversial stances is the norm (without any ending achievable). When the storm is done, when the yelling stops and people forget what the fuss was about, the vile, most-evil scum at the top will INVENT new issues to argue about. The heart of divisionism beats here. And it is a paradox, a conundrum that has people in a state of confusion: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Now step outside the box, and think: Christianity has scores of sects that disagree vehemently as opposed to each other and yet the whole mess has been standing for many, many centuries. It is also in the nature of paradox that, when we all stop believing the myth of the end of the world as written in the Bible, when we stop believing the boy who cries wolf then it is quite possible that the wolf will come.

There's a trash picker in town, a dumpster diver who is sure that he knows everything that is worth knowing. Taking his place alongside the arrogant radio preachers, Earl has it all figured out: as long as a front of anger, aggression and the irrationality of the "True Believer" is maintained, the truly dumb and stupid can find a wonderful world of Disney's Fantasy Land to live in.

To maintain the power of darkness, high levels of fear must be maintained. This is where many of the dire warnings (projected lies, really) of the Bible come into play. The fear/rumor mill helps: in boot camp we were scared of that square-needle-in-the-left-nut shot that we'd been warned about, and of the saltpeter that was sure to make our penises all flaccid for life.

Learning requires mistakes. In a universe where there is as much positive as negative there is no way to learn without sin. For the most part it is best to learn from other people's mistakes but, sorry to say, that cannot be done for everything. The way in which monotheism (not just Christianity) seeks to move people to the dumbness and stupidity of darkness is to remind them of all their missteps and require of them a lifetime of wallowing in repentance with no end in sight. Learning becomes too dangerous so it's best if you just stay away from it, unless it is authorized by an establishment that uses it as a tool.

Not everything in The Scriptures is a lie: the animals of Ezekiel's wheels go out and then they return. To learn you must step outside of yourself, return with the new that you have garnered, and then you must internalize it, incorporate and digest (that is, if you want to transcend the lying, emotionalism, and darkness).