Late Political Essay

A Declaration of Independence

What’s more powerful, the right to complain about government, or the right to reform it altogether? Clearly, one right is more powerful than the other, and indeed it’s that right which makes an American citizen who and what they are--a part of a society with the power to alter or abolish whatever they dislike about their government. You’ll find very few Americans today who want to abolish the government we have, the one with a Congress, President, and Court. No, what the vast majority of Americans want is to keep what we have, but just clean it out real good. Polls show as few as 9% approve of Congress, flip that stat around and it reads that 90%+ disapprove of Congress, a statistic that’s been trending for a decade now. When the very institution established to represent the People is disapproved by 90% of them, and going on ten years, clearly it’s time for them to exercise their ultimate right to alter or abolish what they dislike. History teaches us that if we don’t become proactive and do away with what we dislike, then our government will be altered and abolished for us. The current status quo, the way things operate now, will eventually remove all the rights established in the founding era--not because this essay says so, but because history says so. Some argue it’s already happened due to a few choice rulings by the Supreme Court, namely that corporations are human and money is speech, the result being public government drowned in private money, unresponsive, and disliked by the People.

If private funds had no influence on the way politicians voted, or what does and doesn’t make it out of congressional committee to the floor for a vote, then corporations and wealthy individuals wouldn’t dump millions of dollars into political advertisements and campaign accounts. For generations the People have desired to remove private funds from public elections, or to “take the money out of politics,” where legislation goes to the highest bidder, written by lobbyists, signed off by members of Congress. The intent of the Constitution was to prohibit such a system. Through agents of corporate power--members of Congress--what was once a government for the People, has been overthrown.

The Founders all agreed that the Constitution was not and could never be complete due to the fact that things change, and therefore amendments were necessary from time to time. Initially only the Congress had authority to propose amendments, but then the question was raised, what happens if Congress itself became the problem? Or, what if the Supreme Court made some really bad decisions running counter to the principles of the Constitution? The solution was a feature which provided for a convention of state delegates, so they could deliberate, find the common ground, and propose solutions based on that consensus. The only reason we’ve never held a federal convention is because the People have erroneously been lead to believe that such a process might destroy the Constitution itself, but when the Framers wrote Article V, they also wrote it so as to protect it from hostile forces. Three things were forbidden:

1) Altering the arrangement known as slavery (a ban since removed by amendment).

2) Altering the arrangement of equal representation of the states in the Senate.

3) Writing a new constitution.

The Framers were keen to use the phrase, “a convention for proposing amendments,” and by doing so made it an institution beholden and limited just like Congress. Once there, any such proposals then require 3/4 approval of the states in order to be ratified into law of the land. The principle of 3/4 approval, or what is also known as a super-majority, is shrewd in that agreement of multiple regions/constituencies/bias are required for any change to occur. Whether Red state or Blue state, conservative or liberal, an amendment needs all of one side signed on, plus at least half the other, or it goes nowhere. In other words, it’s mathematically impossible for the People to harm themselves in the constitutional process of holding a convention because a proposed amendment must first be sanctioned by popular will of the People before it becomes a law, and 3/4 of the People are not going to insist on harming themselves and/or removing their rights and liberties. The Constitution is based on the common sense that not everyone is always going to agree, and that deliberations are required to build consensus and find common ground. Yet, even though the Article V Convention embodies the ultimate right of Americans--to examine and purge corruption--groups on the right like the NRA and John Birch Society, and groups on the left like the ACLU and Common Cause, have had Americans erroneously believing that a “constitutional convention” would be like throwing our rights to the wolves, when it is nothing more than a non-binding deliberative process of building consensus, and then proposing solutions based on that consensus. How is it possible that these national groups from opposite ends of the political spectrum miraculously agree when it comes to being against the idea of a convention? That’s the subject for another essay, ironically though, what these groups irrationally fear happening at a convention is already happening in reality. Our rights and economic security and prosperity are thrown to the wolves every day in the form of corporate lobbyists writing legislation that members of Congress sign off on.

Since 90%+ of all campaigns are won by the candidate who spends the most money, public servants are no longer dependent upon the public, they’re dependent upon the .05% of Americans who make political contributions of $200 or more, and corporations which create and fund political action committees. This is the problem with confusing the freedom of speech with the freedom to spend money. Money is not speech just because a session of the Supreme Court said so. Money is the volume of speech, or what message is heard over the broadcast frequencies. There’s no reason one should have to be wealthy or have access to wealth in order to serve the public. A non-partisan amendment concerned with electoral reform is likely the only thing to be ratified today as it’s the only issue which consistently polls with an approval rating of 90%+. Is it coincidence that 90%+ disapprove of Congress, and that same amount desires electoral reform?

History shows there’s an inevitable conclusion if something isn’t done. The writing is on the wall, either the People alter their government by finding common ground for a suitable amendment, or agents acting in the interests of corporations will not only keep our government from acting in our interests, but will eventually do away with our form of government once and for all. Do you like your standard of living here in the USA? Do you like the opportunity it provides? Do you like being an American citizen? These things are all on the line, again, not because this essay says so, but because the objective facts of reality and all of history say so. So what are we going to do about it? What can be done about it? Anything?

The legality of the Article V Convention is spelled out in the Constitution, if 2/3 of the states ever cast an application for it, the Congress calls it. The call is ministerial in nature, non-discretionary, meaning federal politicians don’t decide whether the People exercise the right. Over the decades hundreds of applications have piled up at the doorstep of Congress, and as might be expected, certain think tanks and university professors have created bogus assertions that applications sent in by the states must be concerned with the same subject, or cast around the same time, or cast for the same subject at the same time. The problem with arguments as to what is and isn’t a valid application for a convention, is that there are no laws stating such terms or conditions, which means one thing: there are none. The reason no terms or conditions apply to the applications is obvious, because the spirit of that clause was and is that people in Washington DC will make up excuses not to call a convention. Thus, the Framers based it on a simple numeric count. And because forty-nine states have already cast dozens upon dozens of applications, means that the clause has been satisfied, and in terms of political science and practical politics, means that as soon as enough Americans desire a convention, the politicians in Washington DC will call it. Why? Because there are things that those in DC don’t talk about because if they did they’d have millions of Americans galvanized in unity, and their system works better when the People are divided. The flip-side is, if a tipping-point ever does desire the same thing, the politicians will deliver.

Over two hundred years and our government has now become what the thirteen colonies had successfully escaped. We today have the right to examine and fix what’s broken, indeed we have an obligation to do so if one respects the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. To convoke a federal convention is to do just that. For those who believe we don’t have Americans bright enough to pull it off, they forget delegates will not be there to reinvent the wheel, but to propose an amendment which would alter the system as it currently operates. Those who think Americans today don’t understand the Constitution and why it exists as it does, fail to realize how the process of holding a convention and building national consensus in and of itself will re-educate two or three generations here and now, not to mention leave a lasting impression for who knows how many generations to come.

Do you think Americans should be free to determine their course, or do you think corporations should determine it for them? Do you think Americans today deserve to go through the constitutional process of deliberation and finding out what 75% of us agree on, or do you think we’re no longer good enough? The Declaration of Independence was written into the Constitution in the form of the Article V Convention, the genius of the Constitution is that it provides for a peaceable reformation. All we have to do now is raise awareness that 1) The Article V Convention is not dangerous nor fraught with unanswerable questions, 2) The current system of institutionalized corruption requires an amendment and such a one is not going to originate and pass in Congress, and 3) A tipping-point of Americans desiring a federal convention of state delegates is all that’s required and in the blink of the eye we'll have our republic back under the control of the People.

Early Rothko

Manzanita In Autumn Light

Late Notes, November 2012

I've been working hard. Went out to Las Vegas to another Constitutional Sheriff convention in September, made more connections, and am going to let them sit until next year. I have a couple of other angles too, but all that I'll let fly somewhere late Winter/early Spring? We'll see.

I've moved up into the mountains above Montecito and feel very blessed for the Universe to have unfolded in such a way. I've been writing as much as I can, and am really, really close to finishing a work I had written up four or five years ago. I knew there was something there, and I knew there was something wrong with it. Over the month of October I cracked the problem and began to break it down. It's a play, and I think it's really worth staging. Before I focus on final touches, I have a magazine piece I've been commissioned to do, then back to the play, then I'm going to finish the How I Became A God essay.

Now that I can post photos from my phone to the blog I'll be doing that too. Stay tuned....

Three Channel Islands

How I Became A God: Step 2

As told by the writing on the clay tablets, the Creation story is like a fantastic science fiction tale, and the second step in becoming a god not only involves knowing it, but also how it relates to the Bible. There are a lot of aspects to it which are unclear, but as far as we know to be true, the Sumerians where the first to use a written language, and signed off each tablet saying so--that they were taught to write by their creators and were only retelling what they had been told.

According to them an aristocracy of twelve “gods” ruled over some lesser gods, and they all splashed down for a mining operation about a half billion years ago. They wanted precious metals and minerals to take back to their home planet. As it turns out, the captain and chief science officer were brothers. Enlil was captain in charge, and Enki was the chief science officer. Their names, attributes, and aspects of their stories have altered over the centuries so that through time they became known as Zeus and Poseidon, and later as Yahweh and Lucifer. Enlil outranked Enki, just like Zeus outranked Poseidon, and Yahweh outranked Lucifer. At some point there was a decision to create a worker. They took DNA from one of the hominids running around then, mixed in some of their own, and created us--humans.

According to the clay tablets the first male and female, the Adam and Eve, were given a portion of the Garden to watch over each day, and each day at a certain hour the lesser gods, or angels, would leave them alone to go up and hang out with Enlil. Then one day Enki stayed behind to talk with Eve.

    "Is it true Enlil said you shall not taste of every tree in the Garden?"

    "We can eat of others, but of the tree in the middle of the Garden, our lord said we shall not taste or we will die."

    "You will not die, your lord knows that on the day you taste of it you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

    Later that evening, Enlil is down to take a stroll in the Garden, calls out, and Adam and Eve hide. He asks why they’re hiding and they say they’re ashamed because they went against his command. Enlil says that because they can now distinguish between good and evil, they must be banished from the Garden because, as he tells the others: “For behold, if they eat of the Tree of Life, they will live and endure forever.” Watching them leave, Enlil says, “Behold, they are now alone in the world as we are alone in the heavens.”

Sometime after we had gone out from the Garden and began to multiply, like it says on the clay tablets, and like it says in the Bible, some of them started getting it on with us. That was when Enlil ruled the experiment was over, and as they knew of coming Earth changes, they decided not to tell us. There was a huge argument about it, but in the end they all swore they wouldn’t tell what was coming--except Enki. He figured he’d give us a shot to survive. He found the most righteous guy around at the time--the guy who came to be known as Noah--and told him to stand behind some reeds and listen. Enki then went on to talk about a coming flood, and how a big boat needed to be built and some animals gotten aboard. From there the rest is history.

Sometimes important elements of plot occur off stage. In our narrative, there had to have been a discussion between Enlil and Adam and Eve about the Tree of Knowledge at some point prior, where the command was issued for them to not taste the fruit from a certain tree. The question then raised is, why would the Enlil character create a worker, tell it not to eat something, then leave it alone with that thing each day? In other words, if we look at things objectively, Enlil had no business placing the workers in proximity to something that would alter their consciousness if he didn’t want it altered; and to compound that negligence is the injustice of punishing Adam and Eve when they had no intention of going against the command to begin with--it was only after they were persuaded by Enki that they did it. In addition to all that, the narrative shows it was Enlil who lies and Enki who tells the truth: eating of the tree did not kill them, it only upset Enlil with the fear of his creation becoming like him.

So, what to take away from all this? The first thing is that the Creation story was told to us by the Sumerians--the ones every other civilization pointed to as the first writers--and that they themselves say they were taught to write by the ones who told them the story. Unless you believe those later civilizations lied about where they learned how to write, or that the Sumerians lied and made up a story about where they learned, you realize the scientific record shows that humans really were taught how to write at some point. In other words, that means we really are not alone in the universe, that there really are other sapient beings in it along with us. The advent of writing and a Creation story still familiar to half the population on Earth is proof. If we didn’t have fired, clay tablets detailing such things, we might be able to explain away the Creation story as a myth built up over the centuries. But we can’t, because the tablets exist, and the writing and notations on them say specific things which refute the notion that it’s all a figment of our collective imagination.

So we have to ask: is the Enlil/Zeus/Yahweh sapience superior to ours? If left to our own devices, would we not one day reach a mastery of gene manipulation and modification? Of course we would. That means sapience is sapience--the ability to know--and it doesn’t matter if you have blue skin, bleed yellow, and live a thousand years, or if you have human skin, bleed red and live a hundred years--sapience is the ability to know and create and we humans have it. Even the creators themselves remarked, “Look, they’re alone on Earth just like we’re alone in the cosmos.”

How I Became A God: Step 1

The process began as most do in the west--brought up in a family of monotheists--people who believe what the King James Bible describes. Of course as a kid I believed whatever the family did. I was singled out at church, said things others wanted to hear, a Jesus Freak at fifteen. Then science turned my head, the truths of numbers and facts were more attractive. I couldn’t look at fossils and geology, obviously hundreds of thousands of millions of years old, then embrace the explanations of King James. I reconciled, saying that just because the Bible and science didn’t square doesn’t mean there isn’t a creator.

Most humans have heard of Genesis and the Creation narrative: the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve; and how they got kicked out because they ate from the Tree of Knowledge; and how they had to go out into the world to live by the sweat of their brow. Not only 2.2 Billion Judeo-Christians know the story, but also 2.1 Muslims, because the same story is part of the Koran. Half the people on the planet today know the Creation story.

It was less than two hundred years ago, in the 1850s, that the Europeans went back to Mesopotamia to excavate the mounds of lost civilizations. They went back through the layers mentioned in the Bible--the Babylonians, Assyrians, Akkadians, all the way to the Sumerians. After we figured out their writing, for a long time we believed they were the oldest known civilization, that they were the ones who first employed writing because every group that followed named them. Their script was a bunch of tiny triangles and arrow points pressed into clay. Sometimes they would fire it, and like pottery the record would last forever. The French, British and Germans brought back tens of thousands of these fired, clay tablets with writing all over them, and to this day they’re scattered about the globe in the world’s finest museums. Besides laws, records of property, trade, marriages and the like, the oldest tablets begin with the original version of the Creation story, the one with the most information. We know the King James’ version can’t be superior to the clay tablets because it tells less and came after the first telling.

If one were to ask for a rough account of the evolution of human beings according to Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution, we might say that sea creatures moved onto land, land animals evolved into apes, and apes into us. Then after awhile we figured how to bang rocks together to make sharp edges. From there, for two million years, from hominids until we arrived on the scene, physical appearances were similar. Then there was an inexplicable progression where brain mass increased fifty-percent, our face became flat, and we slipped into a hairless, modern anatomy, thumbs and all. When framed by the idea of Evolution, it happened in the blink of an eye. Oldest known cave paintings are forty thousand years old. Suddenly we looked like movie stars compared to millions of years of monkeyness. And on top of those sudden changes, suddenly use of fire and art too. The random mutation/natural selection required in that short a period, for us to have become what we are from what we were, cannot be explained by Darwinism and the Evolution story. This doesn’t mean the science of natural selection is invalid, only the notion that we went from monkey to movie star naturally, that there wasn’t some sort of “creation” outside of nature’s process. The takeaway is that the Evolution story and the Creation story both require faith because the explanations don’t square with all we know to be true.

Whether you lean towards one story or the other, or believe something different altogether, it still remains true that Sumerians made use of the wheel, mathematics and writing, agriculture and animal husbandry, poetry and music, beer and wine—laws, sciences, and arts--everything we equate with high civilization existed with them. We still don’t have a clear idea how or why their civilization appeared, but we’ve since discovered it was by no means the first. We’ve since discovered settlements that predate the Sumerian by tens of thousands of years. If that’s true, what does it mean alongside the fact that half the people on the planet today know what’s on those clay tablets? You might say it means nothing--just a bunch of myth and metaphor--but it’s not that simple. This is the first step to becoming a god, you have to become cognizant that there’s the Creation story and the Evolution story, and both have their flaws.

Late Notes, early June 2012

Check this out! I'm stoked! I went to hang out at this place I used to live, high up in the mountains by the sea. I needed some mountain magic to help pass a big piece of writing or it might’ve killed me. When you’re an artist you have to get rid of stuff or it’s ugly, ugly. I got the writing out of the way, or got it out at least. I was able to puke up the pieces. Yes, the work of writing is a bunch of puke and shit. Where was I? Oh yeah, art discovery. Got back from the writing retreat wanting to make visual art, couldn’t look at a page of words if you paid me. Previously I’d been trying to figure about how to make one of the primary components of my art myself, instead of buying pastels for two bucks apiece. It’s the colorless oil pastel I use to rub out dry pastel that makes the colorfields I do, and I knew I should be making them myself instead of melting down a box into a block. What I'd been doing.  I’d already bought bees wax and paraffin and other types, but they didn’t have that oily skid the two dollar sticks did. All afternoon I heated up and melted stuff, and although I didn’t get the recipe tonight, I will soon, and from there on I’ll be able to make big cakes of it. Happy artist. A few days of art, then back to making the puke and shit beautiful. I'm not writing a novel! It's a novella I might slap onto parts of the first novel..Who knows? Who cares? Not me ;)

Love Is To Knowledge

It was poetry that I wrote first, around the age of ten or so, and from there it was fifteen years of poetry and journal entries before I started working on the novel. The novel took fifteen years plus to complete. My excuse is that I was researching, reading, and contemplating throughout most of that time--that I didn’t have everything nailed down enough for it to garner respect as a piece of literature.

The actress was the inspiration to finish the first novel, so I could write plays; to win her heart; to fulfill the dreams of being an artist living with their muse. But maybe I was already out of the game, forever estranged for having come to know too much. Nonsense you say, how could learning too much ever estrange anyone from anyone else? Emily Dickinson once said that hearing the truth is such a rare thing, it’s a delight to tell it; but then on the other hand, Frederic Lorca said the worst thing about seeking truth is finding it. So perhaps like everything, the truth itself is paradoxical, both a delight and a horror.

As human beings we ought to relish the truth because our ability to reflect upon the past, consider the present, and imagine the future is what defines us apart from all other creatures here on our beloved, sexy, Earth. Of course there’s the well-known saying that ignorance is bliss, and so we might say an interesting person, a bold person--perhaps even a noble person--is one who cares to know the truth whether it’s a delight or not. Maybe it’s that the truth is a delight to those who are delightful, and a horror to those who are horrible.

Descartes said never accept anything as true unless you clearly know it to be true. How do we know we exist? Because we’re reading words, and we know things like if it’s day or night, and how day and night are divided into seasons, and everything that follows--all such things we clearly know to be true. We know we exist because we’re thinking--we think, therefore we are. OK great, so what’s the most important thing to us? Wait--why even ask what the most important thing is to begin with? Answer: because we can’t get where we want to be unless we first know where we’re at.

Premise: It can be contested that water and food are more important to humans than knowledge, that without it we wouldn’t be able to know anything because we’d be dead. But how do we get water into our system if we don’t first know where it is? People have died, not because water and food wasn’t available, but because they didn’t know how to get to it; and people have also died because they didn’t know what they were drinking or eating would kill them. That makes knowledge a matter of life and death. So it’s not a conundrum, a chicken or egg thing, nor is it even a question as to which is first in importance. An infant will die if uncared for because it doesn’t yet know how to survive. To reply that an infant needs food first, in order to live long enough to gain knowledge, is to confuse the requirement for knowledge with the importance of knowledge. When we make that distinction we realize that for us little naked monkeys, whether it’s first-hand knowledge--where water is--or second-hand knowledge--a parent knowing to supply it--knowledge always comes first.

To those who say love comes first, remember we have to first know who and what to love. Many people have loved things which were not in their interests to love, which in turn cost them much joy and happiness. And to those who point to Einstein’s comment--“Imagination is everything,” remember, he wasn’t making a pronouncement. How could he have developed E = mc2 if he didn’t first know what energy, mass, and light were? How could Picasso have painted Guernica if he didn’t first know what paint, canvas, and war were? Imagination requires knowledge in order to do what it does.

But what of the position that it’s love which gives us the desire to live, and that without it no amount of knowledge would drive us forward? That we wouldn’t keep making babies, building the human bridge into the future. In that sense, for those with heart, take heart, and happily, that love, not knowledge, is first in importance if you think human existence is important. Love is to knowledge what knowledge is to the imagination; one relies on another to exist, while love simply is.

Although truth is derived from knowledge, is it really paradoxical? Perhaps the notion that objective truth is a delight to the delightful and a horror to the horrible is untrue because there is such thing in the world as deceit, and while deceit often wears the mask of truth, truth never the mask of deceit. Truth is what it presents itself as and nothing else because it can’t be anything but what it is. Truth and only truth escapes the paradoxical nature of existence. And if that’s true, then knowing it and acting in accordance with it is what helps us escape confusion while at the same time vetting us as genuine--if one believes humans should operate on truth rather than deceit.

Can deceit be employed as a means to an end which is true? No, because we do not call that deceit; if it’s to bring about the truth, we call it altruism. Just as being angry and being indignant are not the same; one is due to thwarted desires, the other to injustice. That we humans even make such distinctions and have developed words to render such, that alone would lead one to believe all is based on the love of truth.

Love of truth can get you estranged and cut out of the game if that love is not handled correctly. You can either be right or be happy, but you ain’t gonna be both. Too bad for some they’re not better at hiding their love.

Holy Macaroni

It appears victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat, dear Universe. Why are you so unspeakable of late? Coming from a person who never says nor thinks to say it, you make me want to say it: Holy Macaroni. After the conversation today, I’m 99% certain we’ll get the convention call this summer. I know you’ve been hearing about it for some time, but it appears you’re guiding the right pieces together now, but here’s what I posted to Facebook last Sunday night:

“Dear Sun,

Not only am I dealing with the burden of information in the face of others groping for truth and justice, even in conducting my life as another ordinary citizen, as a writer, as an artist, I’m getting no relief. I know you know the answer whether I’m doing a good job or not, but recent developments and recent disappointments, and failures, have me wondering if I deserve any sympathy. Although I have an excuse, being born in the year of the Dragon, blessed with abundant health, I do have a new personal myth. And even though it’s taken an abnormally long time to change it to something more realistic, i.e. not me going on in my head as if I’m 29, 30, when I’m in my forties, I can see life being fun if the right outcome to the impasse occurs. You know what I want, you’ve heard me say it more than a couple times now--that we’re made aware and sovereign to Earth. That we humans are made aware that we’re part of a larger community within the cosmos, and we’re sovereign--we say what goes and what does not on this planet. What they have done to us will be something to both cry and laugh at, but because consciousness is dynamic, in a few generations or so we’ll be back to normal, but with free energy.

“It’s so difficult to think of free energy and what it means for humanity. To know what Tesla did and what the robber barons did to him, and in turn us. Unlimited free energy would make for a different world, that’s for sure. This moment is difficult to live in, being fraught with such astounding contradictions. To be very realistic, it looks like what’s approaching, that the mouse-trap being completed, the hammer comes down. How hard, and in what fashion, no one knows. Of course we want the magic ending, the new beginning. It’s so difficult to tip-toe along the tight-rope of this year, our 2012. It’s frightening and exciting. Some days it looks like the forces which are denying us free energy will have to resign, other days that the Bank of International Settlements wins and completes its new world order. I hope we hear trumpets one day soon.

“Driving up to meet eyeball to eyeball with sheriffs, testify as to the legality regarding Article V, and what it means to them, and then getting home and waiting a week or so, and sending a final communication, and getting only one reply, requesting I remove them from the list--Hardy-har-har!”

I wrote all that, really down about a few things, and blowing it all off--or not letting the weight of it crush me--I’m through with being crushed I tell ya! One of my fellow Facebookers said they didn't get it, that I lost them at "Dear Sun." I replied that maybe I meant a fake religion, that the way I figure, it may be the best way to think about the grand scheme of things. The Sun really is the giver and the taker of life, and it's undeniably magnificent, and so why not talk to it like you would your god if you were a monotheist? I said I'd rather be a sun worshiper than a monotheist--even a Zoroastrian, and they were rad. Yes, the Sun is my god. My god is there for me every day. My god knows what's going on down here on the face of Earth, and my god loves me just as much as everyone else, and that's one of the reasons why I love my god the most.

But yesterday this one sheriff who is in the news lately because the Attorney General of his state is attempting to remove the powers of arrest from his office, he replies to my e-mail--the one no one else replied to--asking me to call. I called, we talked, and he gets it. He just wants to be assured the basis for arrest is sound as to fact and law. He’ll be convinced Thursday night when we get him on a call with Bill Walker and John Guise.

Now, the desire to be rad: why would anyone have it? A famous playwright on a well-known talk show once said something about wanting to “knock ‘em dead,” to transform how the audience sees existence by the time they hit the exit, to make ‘em laugh till it hurts, make ‘em go Wow one way or another. Why do we want to be rad? For doing new, exciting things never before done in our fields? One reason to be rad is to have access to other rad people. If you’re rad in one way or another you’re usually rubbing elbows with other rad, interesting, and talented people, and that’s fun if you’re a human. It’s very natural to want to meet and hang out with rad people. That’s not a bad reason to aspire to be rad--to be invited to cool parties. But that’s not the only reason. Is it power? Doing something rad as power for having done it? Or is it on the animal level, letting fellow animals know you.are.not.average. Or on a biological level preeminence means power, means security, and security means happiness--happiness the ideal state. Being rad has a purely animal basis. Just like birds who fan their feathers in the hopes of attracting attention and…happiness.

Some would reply that rad people don’t do rad things to have power, they do them because they can’t help being who they are. But you have to want to be rad to actually be it--rad in the sense where achievement is above/beyond the norm, accomplished through time and focus. You have to spend time and effort on something to be truly rad at/in it. Unless the person is a mystical monk or monkess of some sort, I’ll tend to attribute the spirit of most actions to the desire for radness, for power, as requisite for happiness. And again, which would seem natural--the whole thing from Ecclesiastes--vanity of the vanities.

Of course ego comes into play, and today not all ego, but certain ego, gets a bad rap. The type which says, “Ta da! I challenge anyone else to be as rad!” Voltaire and his lover Emilie du Chatelet and other humans back in the 1700s were able to declare how rad they were in that manner--in the sense of challenging other people to be as rad or radder. Isn’t that a good thing? When we see someone being egotistical about being rad, vain even, can’t it be seen in the larger frame of things, that that little monkey is strutting their stuff, ultimately to move the whole game forward? Today anyone who is rad must be blithe about it, not a hint of consciousness. Which is fine, I suppose. Maybe it starts out ego, then mellows into just wanting the Universe to flow through, to bring joy to others. Maybe that’s it, the desire to be rad and the desire to bring joy to others are interwoven. Maybe it’s ego that launches someone to their deserved greatness, and from there, best case, they carry on, no longer out of ego, but out of the desire to bring more joy into the world.

What else? I went to see the movie The Hunger Games. I’d been aware of it as a book peripherally, that it was some sort of Harry Potter phenomena, best-seller thing. When something like that appears on the radar I check to see what it’s saying about now. To which some might ask, what if it’s saying nothing about now, what if it’s just a story about some fictional time? To which I’d respond that all creative endeavors, all creative manifestations are about now, and the really great ones are not only about the now at the time they emerge, but in perpetuity--like Shakespeare, for instance. Is The Hunger Games like Shakespeare? Wouldn’t be surprised at a writer being able to tie them together.

On the way back from Washington DC I sat next to a young woman who was getting over a heartbreak, she worked for a non-profit in DC, her beau had decided on an advanced degree at Stanford, and the bond didn’t survive the distance. We talked about her iBook and she showed me how it worked, the titles she had purchased, and I noticed The Hunger Games. She had seen the movie and I asked if she thought the film had been faithful in translation. She thought it had.

It’s a futuristic scenario where wealth, luxury and affluence had merged into a bubble, where all the cool people, all the connected people, lived in a shimmering city in a beautiful part of the world. The outlying terrain was a wasteland of poverty and dearth, people scraping and scrapping along to survive. The depiction in the film is reminiscent of the Great Depression, the look and feel of the photos of Dorothea Lange, dirtied people peering out from dilapidation.

The film is very good in depicting how the cool people have been led to believe that this event, The Hunger Games, is necessary in order to keep their civilization strong, free from deterioration. It harkens back to the origins of our own civilization. The book Pagan Christs, written in the 1910s, relates how very early on in human development there were systems of belief where a member of the tribe would either be chosen or offer themselves up to sacrifice. In other words, The Hunger Games is futuristic telling of that motif of the human condition, the dynamic of sacrifice manifesting once again. What’s ironic is that many in the audience enjoying the movie, watching smartly dressed people cheering on the imminent death of “tributes,” have no idea that those the filmmakers have set up as the villains, in reality, are actually the audience itself. Those who are fat and happy enough to go watch a movie are those who are just as delusional as the pretty people in the film. That the empire of the United States, at present, is the nexus of unfettered capitalism--corporate totalitarianism--moneyed fascism and the inevitable conclusion of absolute despotism--the very same thing that runs the show in The Hunger Games. If all goes as planned this motif will become a silly dream from our past.

P.S. I’m officially a poet again, someone took on one of my poems: “Rights remain with you, although I do ask that you credit vox poetica if you choose to reprint elsewhere and there is always the possibility that I would contact you about including your work in future collections….”

I think it goes up on their site the second half of this month. I wonder how many poems I have stashed away back there in my poetry files. Maybe after this summer I’ll be able to put some focus there. I really hope to focus on the novel too. And PLAYS! We’ll see. I love you.

Road Trip

Voltaire, in the 1700s, was the first writer to use the “visitor from another planet” analogy: as if you were looking down on Earth, maybe reviewing its history, cosmic eavesdropping on what was taking place. I’ve used that frame often when thinking about what ought to be happening here on the globe, based on all we know to be true.

After the fundraiser with Sheriffs Lopey and Mack, and after I got back from DC, I figured I’d wait a bit before heading up to northern California, to start visiting sheriff offices instead of just an e-mail or phone call. Turns out there’s a panel discussion Saturday with a handful at the same event. If I can get just one to see what the plan is, or ought to be, based on all we know to be true at this point, then we’ll move on to the next step. If not, I’m not sure it’s possible, or that it would have to be some sort of divine intervention. It's all very confusing, I'm trusting no one but myself in regards to these matters, and I think they'll make for a decent final chapter to a novel. Time will tell. For now, it's about seven hundred miles to the top of California, selling Shakespeare along the way. Naturally ;)

Dear Sun

Dear Sun, why? Shouldn’t this have been disposed of months ago? Why do I now have to drive to certain counties in Northern California in hopes of finding one or more sheriffs to begin taking tactical steps if honest and sincere?

The fundraiser was what I expected, Mack is either an operative or of lower intelligence, though I was able to speak with Sheriff Lopey at length, and I hope it’s dawning on him this very weekend what we discussed. I hope it’s him, Wilson, Lutze, and D’Agostini that do it. I’ll wait a week or so, then I’m driving up to see if they’re going to protect/defend/preserve Article V. And at the first sign of mental reservations, I’ll note such, then cuss them out for failing their oath.

I’ll admit, political science is not as much work as creative writing, I don’t feel a little dizzy at the end of the day, politically strategizing, as I do working on a play or novel. But I like that dizzy feeling after a great day of creative work a lot more than the kind of feeling the ruminating hunt for justice causes. I’m afraid I’m now too old to do both effectively in a single day. I used to do that ten years and more ago. Haha. I love you and hope you like what I’m doing.

Late Notes

Since when is the subject of revolution boring? Now? Oh yeah, forgot. In that case I write this in interests of the Akashic Record (and I’ll have to remind myself what happened, should things not go as planned). I read about the Akashic Record a long time ago and wouldn’t be surprised if true. It’s the idea everything thought and done by humans is recorded--a universal library supercomputer of sorts--supposedly accessed through astral projection or hypnosis (neither of which I’ve experienced). It’s a concept derived from texts of the Vedas, where a minister of Dharma has the duty to examine a list of good and evil actions by humans after their death. "Nothing is lost of either piety or sin that is committed by creatures. On days of the full moon and the new moon, those acts are conveyed to the Sun where they rest. When a mortal dies the Sun bears witness to all acts. Those who are righteous acquire the fruits of their righteousness there."

Dear Sun, I hope you think I’m doing a decent job. I know I could be stronger against impatience and anger, but I hope you think I’m at least decent in carrying out the life of a poet/artist/activist.

The sheriffs who met in Vegas are having their first fundraiser the day after tomorrow, which I’ll attend having after now having had indirect conversations with both sheriffs that will be speaking--Mack and Lopey--on an internet broadcast. Mack is retired but has renown in the law enforcement community for challenging the Clinton Administration on the Brady bill in the 90s, and is now running for Congress. By the likes of things it looks like Lopey will fall in behind Mack, allowing him to be front man. The group supporting Mack are names I’ve run into, I was co-speaker with them at an event one or two years ago, Oathkeepers, libertarian people, etc.

Mack and the political thought behind him is that of Nullification: when a state doesn’t like what the federal government is doing--either bad legislation from Congress and signed by the President, or bad rulings by the Supreme Court--the states can strike them down, nullify. If Mack is an operative, or is controlled, or is just too conditioned to accept the truth, then Lopey and the rest are about to fall in line with the idea that the sheriffs are going to save America by advocating nullification instead of a convention.

The problem is, and always has been, that there’s no mechanism to execute the rights of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, i.e. all the states can do is pass resolutions saying they’re not going to obey legislation and/or rulings. And where does that leave the nation? In metaphor, nullification as political strategy is like building mops to mop up the latest water from a leaky main, whereas the Article V Convention proposes amendments which stop the main from leaking altogether.

As it turns out, one of the first applications for the Article V Convention was cast with the intent to craft an amendment where powers of the federal government and rights of the states and the people are more clearly defined. In other words, the states have already expressed the desire to add as amendment to the Constitution the legal mechanism to enforce the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

After speaking with both Mack and Lopey, either they’ll get it, or they won’t. If Mack is an operative, there to persuade Lopey and the others that a convention is dangerous, then I have to focus on Lopey, and if not him then hopefully a sheriff who isn’t afraid to realize that they’re actually bound by oath and the record to begin arresting not only members of Congress, but state legislators and Governors, for not obeying their oaths. Of course in terms of practical politics, the sheriffs can’t come out with that. What I hope I can get them to do is to get as many sheriffs on board as possible (there are 3,080+ counties in the US), then when ready, do a press conference with the message: “We county sheriffs intend to do our job; it’s recently come to our attention that the states have satisfied the convention clause and members of the 112th Congress are currently blocking one of two ways to propose amendments that are fixed in the Constitution; therefore we respectfully request members of Congress to honor their oath, do their job, and issue the call for a federal convention. If they fail to do so in a timely manner, we sheriffs will be forced to do our job and begin arresting members of Congress….”

There are a few other things that can be done, but if Mack and his backers are not operatives, just people who simply haven’t gotten it yet, then that leaves it up to preparation and delivery. Unfortunately, based on experience, I’m next to certain that’s not the case. If so, I’d then have to be so persuasive as to wrest Lopey and the sheriffs from Mack and his backers.

That meeting ends and I fly to DC to speak with Occupy folks. A lot of stuff going on, though the more I look at things, the more I realize it really does come down to the office of county sheriff to lead society back to the principles that would have humans free.

Final Steps

Early last year something came over the wire about a county sheriff having problems with the way federal agents were treating him and the property within his jurisdiction. I called and spoke with him about the legal tool meant to deal with those symptoms. Then in October that sheriff got together with a half-dozen other sheriffs to discuss these common problems of federal agents/agencies overstepping their authorities. Out of that, a larger conference was held in late January of this year--a bunch of county sheriffs ticked-off at the Feds. I sent an e-mail to the one sheriff, reminding him of our conversation last year. He gave a call, we talked, and he mentioned that there was a conference of county sheriffs of the western states taking place right then.

History: the sheriff came into existence around the 9th century, in England, which makes the sheriff the oldest continuing, non-military, law enforcement entity in history. In early England the land was divided into geographic areas called shires. Within each shire was an individual called a reeve, which meant guardian. This individual was originally selected by the serfs to be their informal leader. The kings observed how influential this individual was within the community and soon incorporated that position into their governing powers. The reeve soon became a king’s appointed representative to protect their interests and act as mediator with people of a particular shire. Through time and usage the words shire and reeve came together to be shire-reeve, guardian of the shire, and eventually the word sheriff.

Depending on the mood and needs of kings, the responsibilities of the Office of Sheriff ebbed and flowed until 1215 when the great document of freedom, the Magna Carta, was reluctantly signed by King John. This document had 63 clauses, 27 of which are related to the restrictions and responsibilities of the sheriff.

Because of the vast British Empire, the concept of sheriff was exported to places such as Canada, Australia, India, and of course, the American Colonies. Following the pattern of English government, sheriffs were appointed. The first sheriff in America is believed to be Captain William Stone, appointed in 1634 for the Shire of Northampton in the colony of Virginia. The first elected sheriff was William Waters in 1652 in the same shire (shire was used in many of the colonies, before the word county replaced it).

The duties of the early American Sheriff were similar in many ways to its English forerunner, centering on court related duties and protection of citizens. In 1776 Pennsylvania and New Jersey adopted the Office of Sheriff in their constitutions. The Ohio Constitution called for the election of the county sheriff in 1802, and from then on state-by-state, the democratic election of sheriff became not only a tradition, but in most states a constitutional requirement. The elected sheriff is part of America’s democratic fabric. In the United States today, of the 3083 sheriffs, with few exceptions, all are elected by the citizens of their counties. This characteristic sets the Office of Sheriff apart from other law enforcement agencies in its direct accountability to citizens through election. The Office of Sheriff is not a department of county government, but the independent office which exercises the sovereign powers of the people in interests of the public trust.

Anyway, I did get to Vegas on Thursday, I did speak with as many county sheriffs as possible, and it turns out that some are like politicians, and some are not. What if one hundred sheriffs or more called a press conference to say they intend to uphold their oaths and defend the Constitution? And since it’s recently come to their attention that the states have cast the requisite number of applications to trigger a convention call, and members of the 112th Congress have failed to carry out their constitutional duty to issue that call, what if the sheriffs proclaim that any member of Congress who steps foot in their counties may be arrested for breaking four separate criminal laws in failing to issue the call? Seems that’s what will be required. The conference I went to was for the sheriffs of the western states. The national conference of county sheriffs is this June in Nashville, Tennessee.

Late Winter Notes For This Year's Novel

The idea that each moment has everything possible within it. Life has been bumpy lately. It’s so very strange to put in time/effort to be something, and then, not only is all of society (indeed civilization itself) moving in a different direction--to a world far away from the one you had trained for--and the people apart of your life, your contemporaries, cannot see you for what you are based on your actions for the past ten/twenty/thirty years. For instance, the Article V Convention means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but if it did emerge into reality it would transform America, and in transforming America it would transform the world. How would things transform exactly? No one knows of course, but you can make good guesses based on what history shows, and all we know to be true about the human condition. So if the Article V Convention would be revolutionary, and you’ve been talking about it for years, burned through a small inheritance and then some, getting Supreme Court ruling, making documentaries, traveling to various political conferences to persuade others, etc--that would make you a revolutionary, right? And if you wrote a novel, sold a few thousand copies and occasionally get fan mail saying your work changed a life, that would make you a novelist, right? And if you’ve been creating/giving away/selling art for years, and continue to think about visual art constantly, that would make you an artist, right? And if you've written scripts and plays, and people have performed some to positive reviews, that would make you a playwright, right? And if you’ve been writing poetry since ten years old, a few collections worth, and still more to this day, that would make you a poet, right? Now what if you had done all these things, and everyone around you says things like “you better get your shit together” retirement saved, and looks at you as if you're just another human being? Guess what, not all lives are equally important. Anyone at any time can make their life important. Not because I say so, but because the universe says so. With the way things are going, having just read that, anyone might say--Wow, get a load of this guy blowing his own horn about how great he is. Well, yes, it could be that, but I’ll tell you it’s not: it’s a poet/writer/artist/revolutionary crying out in the wilderness, crying out in a world that is bleeding soul and not likely to survive without something. In some ways I love that it’s happening like this. Except that I’m not kissing one or two special women at present, that part I don’t exactly care for. The two fellow facebookers I fumbled? One of the things that crossed my mind was, what if instead of ditching me, they swatted me on the butt and said something like, “Don’t ever do that again, we’re not in it for romantic love, we’re in it for human love--if there is to be a love between us it will be higher, one that fits like the smooth, warm glove of old friendship; one that is stoic, free from any worry other than being true to what is in the heart and mind that moment.” Who knows, maybe life will unfold in such a way. Today I had to drive to Los Angeles to try to get my computer fixed; had no idea if it was going to work or not. Everything in life is upside down if I don’t have a functioning notebook. Turns out the person I paid to fix it pulled it off. I can write again, like a fish back in water. Of course I can write in a composition book, but when you’re working on a novel, you want it text in a word processing program; because re-writing is writing, it takes the same amount of time and means the same thing ultimately. Stone me now. Or, I’m stoned. No, I’m sad we can’t juice cannabis to cure cancer. Not yet at least. Time will tell. Remind to tell you about a sculptor I sold a Shakespeare book to, and her experience with gypsies while attending art school in Italy. And then tell about Nancy, the girl with Saint tattooed on her, then the gypsy with the light tattoo later that day.

Paradox

par·a·dox, n. 1 statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. 2 a self-contradictory proposition. 3 any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature. 4 an opinion or statement contrary to commonly accepted opinion. [Origin: 1530–40;  < Latin paradoxum  < Greek parádoxon, noun use of parádoxos unbelievable, literally, beyond belief]

I knew the word paradox, and always had vague notions of what it meant--a puzzle or riddle of some sort. I made one up: “The greatest truth is that there is no greatest truth.” I went along for years holding the notion that a paradox is neat little word game. Then a couple years ago I read something that changed my mind. The following is a bit of science, but if you bear with it, I promise I’ll tie it in.

Atoms are made of smaller parts, and these parts act as waves, repeating in cycles, rather than as positioned points of mass. For instance, an electron, the part that zings around the nucleus, exists in all its theoretically possible positions, all at once. Every possible outcome--up/down/right/left--exist simultaneously, in a superposition, until an outside force acts upon it, where it then sticks to one of the two contradictory states. Although the rule applies at small scales, nobody had seen evidence on a large scale, apparently because when things are bigger, outside influences more easily alter that fragile state where all possibilities exist at once.

Early spring 2010 scientists took a tiny metal paddle, cooled it to its “ground state,” and connected it to an electrical circuit. The team verified it had no vibration, then used the circuit to give it a “push,” and saw it move.They put it into a superposition of push and don't push, and through a series of measurements were able to show the paddle both vibrating and not vibrating simultaneously. What this means is that the physical world itself is a paradox. What I thought was a neat little mind game was actually an indicator of the nature of reality--that it’s really true, life is but a dream. Every moment, every move, every utterance, everything is all melting into a ceaseless beginning that’s contradictory in nature.

There’s this phenomenon called lucid dreaming, where some people can act in their dreams. For most a dream is a crazy, trippy thing where things happen to you, or you seem unable to act. I experienced lucid dreaming once and only once, years ago, where I was in a boxing ring against a white guy with dark eyes/hair, and I suddenly realized that because I was dreaming I could kick his ass even though he was bigger. The point is, because physical reality itself is a paradox, means that living is the real lucid dreaming. When you wake up, you’re no longer involved in sleeping dreams, but in the real dream, where you’re able to act. Living is the real lucid dreaming. Or maybe, real living is lucid dreaming. Lucid living is really, really dreaming--something like that.

Anyway, I told the two muses I’d write something great for them, to see if they might forgive me for being a bonehead. It really was painful, but it was illuminating. Made me see how a part of me is very possessive of the overall me. Jung would say it’s the Anima archetype, and I’d say he’s right. In a way I practically need to be taken hostage by who I love. Once there, it’s been nice the couple times I’ve had it. I’ve never had a real ménage a trios, and of course because I’m not god, I have no idea if we’d have our tongues and such in each other right now had I not sent the message. I asked if I could at least have a chance to persuade them. I said I’d write something really beautiful and human, and if they liked it they might consider forgiving me, and keep being my muses.

I knew I had stuff from last year I needed to revise/add to, I could present that to persuade them; it’s human and beautiful, but not in the way I meant. Plus I wanted to write something new, something deserving of their spirits and beauties. I was afraid I wouldn’t find something grand enough, but it turns out the story to frame it is from my own family. It happened over Super Bowl weekend, and it had drama, screaming and yelling, and it articulates a bigger idea that I think is very human.

My family is like most families in that it has a certain degree of dysfunction and estrangement. I don’t know what the average dysfunction/estrangement is, but I’d bet ours is a little above average, like maybe sixty-five percent, who knows. Anyway, it was planned that I’d drive my dad to my older brother’s in the east San Francisco Bay area, spend the day, then drive to my sister’s on the Monterey Bay--the ranch house Saturday, the beach house Sunday. Actually my sister has two beach houses, the old one on the cliff over the water, and the new one on the hilltop overlooking the bay. My dad and I stay at the old one. I was going to drive straight to my brother’s but my dad was tired and wanted to sleep at the beach house, then drive to the ranch house in the morning. So we did that, and when we got to my brother’s Saturday morning, somewhere there was reference from him implying we were staying at his place that night. My dad and I thought we were leaving back to the beach house later, neither of us brought our toothbrush/shaving kit, but it seemed he wanted us to stay, and I figured we’d just wait till we got back to the beach house to freshen up, before going to my sister’s.

My older brother’s daughters, two of my nieces: T is nine, P is six, and they have lots of pets--chickens, chics, turtles, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, horses, and a goldfish. I was surprised when we went out to the hen house to check eggs. One had been pecked open by the little brown birds which had snuck under the netting. The girls were very clinical in their approach to the not completely formed baby chick, and examined it before throwing it onto a nearby pile of dirt and burying it. We watched their mom do some horse stuff in her ring, then I asked if we could go hiking. T and P were stoked to, just like they were to walk the shore when we were at the beach house over Thanksgiving. My other brother’s kids don’t like to hike, and my sister doesn’t let my nephew out of her sight, so one of the things I found out this year is that finally, at family gatherings I have someone to go hiking with. I feel that at least some of the family should go hiking or surfing or something on holidays. That way there’s good stories for dinner. Anyway, we walked around their ranch and checked out some of the adjoining fields. Then later I wanted to go explore some more, and only P wanted to go. So we went, and then T and her dad chased us down with quads. T commanded her quad very competently while I sat on the back, even having to back it up to turn around when we ran into a dead end. Then we went to the local museum, checked out a little history, did a little shopping, and had a great dinner.

The first bump was after dinner when P asked me to play a game on wii. You need these wand-like things, and we were getting ready to play, and T decided she wanted to play, took the wand from P, and made her cry. I showed no favoritism, because there wasn’t any, but I remember in the past, T squeezing P out of the way for my attention. While T was getting scolded for making P cry, I thought to say something to T. I wanted to let her know that it was embarrassing to me when she was inconsiderate to her sister like that. She was in our presence, she knew we were about to play, and she should’ve just called for next game. I decided to let it go.

Near when it was their bedtime they got a little squirley, nothing too bad I didn’t think, but their mom got in her mode that I had seen before, and a couple times that day, and started scolding them in their rooms, and not screaming but loud enough that I heard it, she said she’d slap their face. I think slapping a child’s face is wrong, I don’t think it should ever happen. I was slapped in the face plenty as a child, I even had stuff broken across my back more than a few times, and I understand parenting has evolved a lot since the sixties and seventies--maybe a swat on the butt and send them to their room, or extra chores or something? But no slapping the faces of children.

So I’m uncomfortable, and a little tired, and my dad starts up conversation with my brother about what traffic might be like. In other words, he didn’t want to sleep at the ranch but wanted to drive to the beach house. It had been a long day, and I was irritated, and I didn’t mind the idea of waking up at the beach house either. So I didn’t say anything, and listened to my dad lead my brother into the notion of us leaving that night. My brother says OK, and now it’s about telling the mom and kids. T starts crying, the mom goes ballistic.

My dad is in his eighties and showing signs of his second childhood. He’s more fussy about things than say twenty years ago. One of the most kind, gentle people I’ve ever known, but a little more bumbling, a little more fussy these days, as is to be expected. When my brother implied we’d be staying with him that night, one of us should’ve said something. Now that my dad was wanting to leave, I should’ve said that we had to stay at that point, and that it would be OK, we’d just drive in the morning. In that sense the whole screaming and yelling was my fault, because staying would’ve prevented it, and I could’ve got my dad to see that. But as I said, I was irritated, and there really was a concern about the drive in the morning. If we left then, the traffic equation was totally different. Anyway, it turned into this big deal where she was screaming we broke the kid’s hearts, and how they wanted to make us breakfast an all. I finally had to yell to tell her to be quiet, to explain that we didn’t know we were meant to stay, and that she had scolded the kids in a manner I didn’t care for. They told me I couldn’t tell them how to parent their kids. We patched it up best we could before we left, it wasn’t a peeling out of the driveway in anger type thing.

So I thought about what happened, and realized I wasn’t asking them to parent differently, what I wanted was the courtesy of them not doing it while I was there. Polite people say to their kid, “We’ll be discussing this matter later,” or something like that. I’m very much against corporal punishment of children. I don’t think a child’s face should be slapped under any circumstance. Plenty of reasons for an adult to have their face slapped, but not children. So do I endure the discomfort of them disciplining their kids in the manner that they do, or do they wait till I’m gone? I think the reasonable thing would be the latter, but I wish that somehow my brother and sister-in-law would realize it’s not OK to slap a kid’s face, and that if they ever saw someone else do it, they could let them know it's somehting they used to do, but no longer.

"Beautiful, Bawdy, Villains!"

Since young, the word villain has held a certain amount of humor as to the way it’s pronounced as opposed to spelled. I enjoy pronouncing it as spelled. “You vil-LAIN, you!”

vil-lain, n. 1 a wicked person. 2 a playful name for a mischievous person. 3 character in a play, novel, etc., whose evil motives or actions form an important element in plot. [< Old French villein < Medieval Latin villanus farm hand < Latin villa country house]

Examining etymology we see origins are likely that farm hands from country houses stole into town to pilfer things. Perhaps one was caught, and in fleeing, was recognized, and it was called out after them--“Villein!”--so the townsfolk knew who the thief was--someone from the villas. The Old French pronunciation is as the word is spelled, vil-LAIN. I figured that had to be, it seems more correct to human speech to yell/sound out AIN over IN.

In the play Hamlet there is a monologue where, because he’s failing to take action against the corrupt state of affairs, he berates himself as a “…bloody, bawdy, villain!” I like to use the phrase when addressing someone or something that has gone wrong. Like if Dick Cheney or the like are on a talk show I might yell the phrase at the TV--“Bloody, bawdy, villain!”

But I also like to use it playfully, like I did signing off to two women I was involved in a facebook ménage à trios with--“beautiful, bawdy, villains!” I wanted it to turn into a real life ménage à trios because both women are dynamic and beautiful. But just the other night I may have hurt one of them, if not both. In not thinking things through, being too impulsive, no filter rawness, I disrupted a budding relationship. I cried about it, I really do care about them, and the thought of hurting them, hurts. If I would’ve waited an hour or so on the development of what I really wanted to say, I would’ve eventually reached the correct words, instead of what I sent.

I had been messaging with them both, then created a thread with the three of us, and went back to message the one. I sent it on the chance she might have wanted it for her narrative. She is near that age where if she wanted kids, now was a good time. My imagination even went to that place. What I should’ve done is asked them at the same time if I could give the one a baby, or both, and then maybe we all make a go of it as a tribe of some sort, whatever that might look like. Then they could’ve taken the idea however they wanted, as a great laugh at least, and we could’ve continued to row gently down the stream. Instead I faltered by telling the one I loved them both, but was a little more in love with her. She read it, showed it to the other, and they both bowed out. Alas, haste is the Devil’s best friend, and not only was the wording imprecise, it was not well-considered and so the wrong message overall was sent. And quite rightly the one showed it to the other. I hope they forgive me. Maybe one day. But let this be a lesson: if you’re in a ménage à trios, on-line or in the real world, favoritism is likely death. The tragedy in this case, besides hurting people, is that I don’t think there really was any favoritism. I think I loved them both just the same, and I sent the wrong message out of fear it might’ve been what the one wanted. I’ll talk about it more because there is a lot to be said for the situation and for women and men in general. For now let’s shift gears, here is what I wrote a few days ago:

I feel so lucky--the first few weeks of 2012! Very busy. The political science is bumping along, though there is comfort in hearing people talk about the need for a convention. There’s text I could write about how the ten year struggle for it destroyed my life, but I wouldn’t bother, it’s 2012 now and every day is a gift of the heavens. Sounds over the top to say every day is a gift of the heavens, doesn’t it? But not only is it true--literally, the heavens contain the Sun--but it’s a feeling too. The “gift of the heavens” feeling, where you’re happy just to know so much of what’s going on here on Earth. In an essay by Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Truth” he quotes an unnamed poet: “It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth, and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below. That this sight be with compassion and not pride--certainly it is heaven on Earth to have a mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

The higher ground of truth is achieved through your choice to seek out, read, and contemplate the world--and maybe that’s really what we’re talking about, whether or not you read books--that a feeling of bliss can be achieved just by knowing things. If you read books, of course you are going to know more. They don’t have to be non-fiction books only--you can learn about life through fiction--some would argue you learn more through fiction--if the writer is any good (literary fiction that is, that which attempts to raise consciousness about life and living, and so teaches a better way to live). But surely, the more you read the more you know, and the more you know the higher ground of truth you stand, and thus more often to have the “every day is a gift of the heavens” type day. Knowing things is important, the trick is understanding what they mean when considered in relation to one another. That’s the job of the poet and playwright and novelist.

The other night I went down to LA, to the Kaballah Center. A friend joined the group a year or two ago, went to Israel with them last summer, and talks about it when we catch up over the phone. I’d heard of it for years, it’s centered on Jewish mysticism. They have a few speakers who know their stuff, and they all groove on good ideas. It’s kind of like its own church, everyone generally smiling, feeling good. I was there for the talk they were having about 2012. Here are notes I jotted down:

Wisdom as tool

Breaking free from slavery

War of thoughts/ideas

Law of solidarity--every person an agent in the unfolding

Awake core mass for change

Afterwards I spoke with the woman rabbi who gave it. She was a dynamic speaker, high and low notes throughout the hour--very shiny hair I remember thinking at one point. She talked about things I had considered at one time or another and I agreed with her take--pretty much what any fair-minded, rational person would. In the main, the message was about how what we think and how we act as humans affects the unfolding of reality. This is one of my favorite ideas of all time, so I wanted to share with the rabbi a story I heard about, and confirmed with a little research at the library. It’s a story about the Hopi which underlines the idea.

The Hopi elders had a prophecy passed along for thousands of years: that when the “gourd of ashes” was dropped on mother Earth, the elders living at that time were to go to the “house of glass” on the eastern shore, and warn the leaders of the world that if they did not become peaceable and blend with the land, they would cause a catastrophe. Then, in the 1940s, the elders took the atom bomb dropped on Japan to be the “gourd of ashes” and they headed to the United Nations building to warn the world’s leaders. Their prophecy instructed them to attempt to deliver the message three times. In research I found a short op-ed from the 1953 Wall Street Journal which basically made fun of these Hopi elders trying to address the General Assembly.

The important message of the prophecy is that if humanity didn’t do something, it would cause something: human thoughts/actions affect how things unfold in reality. I wrote down a link for the Article V Convention stuff and gave it to the rabbi, letting her know her message of the Law of Solidarity, and how each individual is an agent in the unfolding, and the goal is to wake a core of the mass for change.

I've decided not to do another Shakespeare book, and am going for another novel. Rider, Horse & Dog is the storehouse for the raw material. I'm also working on a new play, as I was sent an invite from a New York theatre for their latest competition. We'll see. Anyway, there is more to say about the two women, and even the actress. For now I must go prepare for a conference call with the politically engaged.