A few words before bed

It is, perhaps, a tragedy that our first inclination as a nation is to hurt; to scream at; to mistrust; to curse. It doesn’t seem to matter to whom, or when, or for what reason. We hunker down like whipped animals, lashing out when we feel our backs are to the wall and our last scrap of food is being snatched away.

As it happens, our food /is/ being stolen; just not in the literal sense. Though many go hungry, the condition is hardly universal. Nor am I referring to any theft of our wealth or possessions, though ample evidence of this, too, exists.

The sustenance being pulled inexorably from our grasp is actually spiritual. In an age where no dearth of religion and its trappings can be seen or felt, I do not believe I have ever witnessed (or even read about) quite such a bankruptcy or human warmth, tolerance or joy.

Charity has been supplanted by an almost fanatical absorption with self and the well-being of the individual, however ardently the holy writings of the world’s major religions might advocate the valuation of one’s brother over one’s self.

What if the true need we face as a planet is not a set of rules and regulations to which we must adhere, so much as an almost faith-like devotion to our own betterment as a species. What if, rather than bristling with anger over someone else’s behavior because we happen to believe it immoral, it actually became possible to turn our concerns inward and our love and warmth outward rather than allowing the opposite to occur.

I do not mean to suggest that religion alone is at fault for the wrongs of Humanity. My father was a professed atheist; my mother a devout and passionate Christian. Neither demonstrated the slightest love for this planet or any of its inhabitants, beyond their own narrow social circles. My grandparents, however, who during the last forty or fifty years of their lives never attended a church service, displayed a concern for their fellow man that would put most “God-fearing” folk to shame.

Clearly, religion had little to do with their goodness, nor with the outpouring of grief and friendship from so many of the people my grandparents touched when at last they lay, peaceful and quiet, in their caskets.

I take from their lives a profound lesson in kindness and the underlying goodness of Humanity. Call it a matter of faith. Though I see terrible things around me and speak to people whose primary concern has always been and always shall be themselves, I choose to believe that in the depths of the heart, the purity of childhood still lingers, waiting for someone to shed the layers of cynicism and derision that we build up around ourselves like foul shells, impenetrable but from the inside. Only we have the power to release ourselves from these self-made prisons and breath the free air once more.

In honor of friends and hosts

I wrote a poem recently for a few people who hosted me at their home in North Las Vegas. These people among my dearest friends, and worthy of every praise it is possible to heap upon a person. They mean the world to me…

“To Friends”

Now that I, awash in gold-reflected light,
May ponder for a space such things tonight,
A thousand pleasant musings spring to mind
As drowsy threads from Morpheus’ spool unwind;
A warm embrace from host to treasured guest
Reminds this visitor of all that’s best;
Of friendship bonded close as sibling brood,
Of laughter shared midst fellowship and food;
Of stories told and painted pictures bright,
The warming bliss of wrongness set a-right,
For all the finest hearts and minds thus bent
Upon this week’s sweet journey fondly sent,
My fervent thanks for each of those I know,
Who shine with radiant friendship’s warming glow;
And even those I have not chanced to meet,
Whose names I know not, even these I greet.
May fortune fair and Providence each bless
Beyond the paltry words I here express,
And brighten every path for home-bound friends
As most this splendid gathering gently ends…

by the pricking of my thumb…

  It’s been a while since I put any virtual ink on this page. Life has a way of sloshing around you like the foamy waves of brown water churned up in a flood.  Hard to believe, though, that it’s been since October that I’ve had anything of substance to say. 

Maybe I still don’t, come to think of it. 5 months of long workdays, solitary weekends, friends who’ve stayed and friends who’ve gone (some of them by my own choice);  These elements can all build up until they become a calcified wall that both protects and imprisons… But these days, I’ll take the safety.

I find myself really struggling with what I’m seeing around me in the world today. How is it possible that there is even more division and strife today than there was during the past eight years? It is almost as if people have been that way for so long, they can’t remember how to be any other way. The media seems destined forever to elicit maximal pathos, drama, hatred and outrage from any incident or event, no matter how well-intentioned their target might have been.

We are in the middle of a crisis, in comparison to which our present economic woes pale in comparison. While I do not consider myself particularly religious, there are scattered bits of the Bible that I think contain wisdom.

The book of Proverbs lists 7 things that, according to the author, are hated by God; in fact, that he considers “an abomination”.

1. A proud look

2. A lying tongue

3. Hands that shed innocent blood

4. A heart that devises wicked imaginations

5. Feet that are swift in running to mischief

6. A false witness that speaks lies

7. He that sows discord among brethren

Look around you. Any of us can find numerous examples of these seven cancers feeding on the soul of Humanity itself.  What are we to do, when our very leaders (and I do not speak of one in particular, but nearly all of them;  perhaps every last one) embody the elements mentioned above? I am not naive enough to believe that these things are wrong because God dislikes them. Rather, they are wrong because they are wrong. There is a spark of awareness in each of us that allows us to differentiate between right and wrong. We are born with it and this is part of our innately precious nature.

Why then are we suffering from this crisis of conscience? Why do we look at everyone who disagrees with us with such disgust? Where has our sense of propriety, of decency, of patience and open-mindedness gone? This isn’t an American problem. It’s a global problem. 

There are still some good-hearted people out there, but all too often their goodness and love are inextricably bound to their faith, and the accompanying disdain for other faiths that their beliefs seem to demand.

Compassion mixed with blind religious ferver becomes cruelty and neglect.

Tolerance mixed with ecumenical rigidity becomes a crusade to abolish behaviors deemed abhorrant.

The love of one stranger for another evaporates when both learn of each other’s spiritual differences.

Every manifestation of The Church (regardless of which religion it might choose as its avatar), despite the clearest evidence of teachings that indicate its influence is not of this world but of another, will try to inject itself into politics, and legislate its version of the universe on everyone else. And it does this while smiling sweetly and murmuring in the world’s ear that this is for their own good, and that one day they will rejoice to have been thus forced.

If only we could plan a new world from behind that veil of ignorance John Rawls posited so long ago. How would we envision the world around usif we knew that we would have no choice, no say as to which position, which social stratum, which income level, religious affiliation or political ideology we might find ourselves born? It is easy to make moral choices for the world when you are convinced that your vision is the correct one, no matter how convenient it might seem to be that you happened to be born into it.

I have to believe that better days are ahead, for I can’t conceive of any fundamental way in which they could grow worse. The soul of Humanity is ill; perhaps deathly ill. What will we do to recover? Is there a cure, and if so, have we the courage to swallow the medicine and move on, the wiser for having lived through it?

Could it be that simple?

 

“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough…”

  -  John Adams (McCullough, John Adams, 2001, p. 650)

 

Ever since the award winning HBO movie series on this, one of the greatest of our American forefathers, I’ve been intensely interested in reading about John Adams. I think, after some time of exploring and enjoying his exploits and writings, I have hit upon why his particular brand of integrity has stuck with me.

It is fascinating to me that, through the harrowing trials and mind-numbingly offensive twists and turns of this latest presidential campaign, the simple words above keep floating back to me. It isn’t only the politicians who have lost their way and now blunder aimlessly along the same rutted path they’ve always trodden; The American people themselves are trapped within that same winding spiral, which never fails to lead us right back to the center of our problems. From there the path ejects us to the outer ring where we begin the journey anew, convinced that this time will somehow be different than the last.

There is an inertia to morality, it seems to me. The sick, palsied theocratic notions that so many fancy to be at the heart of our country and the genius of our representative republic, are actually the spiritual equivalent of tetherball. No matter how forcefully the ball is hit, or in which direction, by which hand, on which day, it will always travel to the extent of its rope and circle fecklessly round and round until it stops, bound securely in its own knotted coils. How many times will we travel this road? How many times will we smash our hands against the surface of the sphere, trying to get it to fly in a straight line, before we realize that it can never do so until the ties that bind it to its pole are cut asunder?

Perhaps that seems godless to the reader. Perhaps the very thought that we are caught within a repeating loop of delusion that masquerades as morality strikes some as humanistic, atheistic, even satanic. The fact remains that there is a wide gulf between what I consider “Ethics” and what the world considers “Morality”. I’ve watched too many self-styled moral men display the most astonishing depths of ethical depravity and intolerance, and I’ve seen an equal number of truly ethical men brought down by those who were able to “prove” that they were somehow immoral when measured by the exacting standards of the scriptures (from whichever religion those writings might hail).

Again, I return to the briar patch of modern complexity.  President Adams, for all of his brilliance and erudition, was a flawed man, sometimes caught up in his own notion of vanity. Yet his knowledge, for all its extensive influence and vast utility to the United States government, paled in comparison to the simple potency of his wisdom. Underlying all of his writings is a love of the simple things, in his case: farming, writing in his journal, penning letters to his friends and spouse even as he read the same from them. He knew the importance of family, of frugality, of productivity, of ingenuity. 

He didn’t burden himself with the trappings of wealth (or so I have read). It doesn’t seem to me that he ever lost the ethical center that looked into the heavens and acknowledged that, though there might be a diety at the heart of it all, such a construct intended that we should use our minds to their utmost, and to do good while we are upon this fragile planet.

His was a mixture of liberality and conservatism in their most important and useful aspects. This was a man whose compassion and empathy; his love of Right and Truth, was matched only by his willingness to work and sacrifice for the furtherance of them.

If we could only quiet the tumult in our brains, the dissatisfaction in our spirits, the helplessness with which we seem to watch the world unfold around us, perhaps we might capture some of Adams’ essence and accomplish the great things he did, if only in our own lives. 

It has been brought home to me recently why it is that some choose to study history. History isn’t, truly, about who did what, and to whom, and on which dates. We learn from doing, but we grow wiser from observing what we -have done- and from experiencing (or watching others experience) the repercussions of our actions. 

Until we free ourselves from this revolving door which keeps flinging us into the same burning building, I don’t know if we will ever reach our true potential as a people, as a country, as a world.  I am not sure when simplicity became a thing to be avoided; when ‘provincial’ became a dirty word; when singularity of faith not in a doctrine, nor in any particular god, but in the inherent goodness and potential of Humanity became something to be put down and mortified. I know only that I mourn for that loss.

We must find within ourselves what generations of misdirection have caused to be lost. Perhaps in order to be happy, Mankind need not remain utterly simple. Perhaps through some ethical mimicry of thermodynamic law, simplicity must become more complex; order more chaotic. If that is the case, so be it. But for a long, long time, we have struggled to build a just and orderly complexity upon an unstable and unjust simplicity. Perhaps we need to return to the foundation and rethink that, rather than drawing and re-drawing the edifices built upon it.

Maybe, just maybe, one of the presidents of the United States was actually a wise and decent man. The thought seems ludicrous, doesn’t it? Still, stranger things have happened…

 

Laughter, the Lost Medicine

I was speaking with one of my best friends today online (check him out at http://blog.urbanbohemian.com) and as we talked, the subject of the 1980’s was raised. I mentioned that the decade was ridiculous in a lot of ways. We like to look back on occasion and laugh at the 80’s; the hairstyles, the fashions, the music, the movies. But I think we’ve forgotten one very important thing about the 80’s. They were transformative, and they were all about laughter. Some of the very best sitcoms on television were created during late 70’s and 80’s. Many examples spring to mind, but my intent isn’t to take everyone on a stroll through their own nostalgia. What bothers me most as I look back at the way things were is the feelings I get when I compare them to what we see today. Comedy, in some form, is everywhere, but so little of it seems to have the purity of some of that older work. We have become jaded, cynical, even cruel. If you really stop and think about it, who do we laugh at today? Others. Who is responsible for all of our unhappiness dissatisfaction? Others. Who always seem more stupid, more ignorant, less deserving of happiness than we do? Others.

In the 80’s, we laughed at ourselves. Today we laugh at others; it’s as simple as that. I wonder if it’s possible that laughter is only a curative medicine when its motives are pure. Looking around me today, I see a lot of laughter, but it’s a derisive, divisive thing. It’s the laughter of a schoolyard bully who sees the world through the darkened lens of his own insecurity and masks it with contempt for others.

Look at today’s comedians. Their schtick is laced with invective, mockery of others, the reinforcing of stereotypes, and class warfare. My gods, what ever happened to innocent little Chrissy Snow stopping outside of Jack Tripper’s bedroom door and overhearing something that horrifies her, only to find out later that she’s completely misunderstood the situation and that no one was doing anything untoward or dishonest. Today, you’d never see that sort of scene in a sitcom. The humor would come from two cheaters being caught in flagrante delicto by an outraged spouse or boy/girlfriend.

Sitcoms used to exist to make America laugh, even while teaching us lessons about situational ethics, racial interaction, ethno-religious tolerance, even politics. It drew attention to people in dire need of society’s attentions, and mocked those whose lives didn’t demonstrate a purpose purer than, say, the desperate need to score on a Friday night, or launch some devastating and snarky insult. 

Cheers, Perfect Strangers, The Cosby Show, Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, Three’s Company, Growing Pains… the list goes on. Look closely at each of those shows and a pattern starts to emerge. Families who didn’t quite fit the mold of stereotypical America. There was always a quirk; always something that might cause others to look twice and shake their heads with amusement. 

Now, I’m not trying to suggest that sitcoms today are the opposite. There are few out there that have carried on this odd but grand tradition, and make us happier, better people as a result. If you take a good, close look, however, at what passes for television and cinematic comedy these days, a startlingly different picture begins to emerge. For one thing, so-called reality television shows us daily not what America should be learning, but what they actually -have- learned. The more realistic television becomes, the less it resembles the humanity we all claim to possess. I see people sniping at each other, marriages dissolving, petty vengeance, rampant economic elitism, all bundled inextricably with the medium. It’s a bitter pill we’re all swallowing, but the laughter makes it more acceptable. 

Laughter, in the sense that we experience it today, isn’t a medicine. It’s a poison. We’re laughing for all of the wrong reasons, aren’t we? Laughter, at some point, must be able to spring from something other than mockery or derision, shouldn’t it? If it doesn’t, aren’t we in danger of succumbing to our basest urges and turning the world into another schoolyard with roving ruffians pointing their fingers at us and snickering? Or worse yet, are we in danger of -becoming- the bully, and denigrating those around us just for a laugh?

Gods help us if we have begun turning that corner, folks. The recurring mantra of a movie I once enjoyed (“Toys”, starring Robin Williams) was a phrase that rings true, to me; “Let Joy and Innocence Prevail”.

Perhaps someday it will again.

Random Writings…

I had to chuckle this morning when I re-read what I’d written Sunday evening. I was doing some laundry and sitting on the common deck area of my building around 5:30 PM with absolutely no clue as to what to write… Don’t expect to make much sense of it. Just more inane scribblings. It’s odd, though, what a series of random events and thoughts will lead you to if you allow your mind to wander. I should do it more often. So this little snippet of pondering, unfinished and only partially expressed, is what popped out of my head yesterday:

 

“This is what I write when I haven’t anything to write. These are the words that spring to mind when there are no words; when the buzzing of flies fills my head and creativity is nothing but a word sitting in a dictionary on some shelf deep within a forgotten library.”

“I hate these times. They fill me with dread and foreboding. Nothing to do but hunker down until hope comes.”

“I sit next to a swimming pool on the back deck of my building. It is Fall now and the thing really should be closed for the season. The water is still blue, but it is somehow fainter; perhaps a trick of the fading light of Summer.”

“It is empty; no one swims within. It seems lonely and forlorn, preparing for a long Winter sleep beneath a tarp. I have to resist the urge to jump into it, just to save it from its next extinction, if only for a few more hours.”

“The evening sun glints off of windows some ten stories up the building across the street. The effect is both warm and cold.”

“Yes, I do believe Summer is finally finished. At least, I hope it is. Autumn has always been my time; that part of the year that speaks to me most and fills me with its potent combination of beauty and angst.”

“The sky was a hazy blue today, but now it is a muted, dull gray. Through the clouds I see hints of the azure of before, but they are quickly vanishing into the gloaming.”

“In the distance I hear scattered voices yelling in a park for some athlete they have come to support. He might not even be that good; or she, but they are there anyway, cheering.”

“Suddenly (how do I not see it coming), as I sit I realize that a fog is rolling in from the lake. Gods, it’s fast. It has already wreathed the high buildings around me in paded obscurity.”

“There! One of them in the distance just vaniched even as I wrote the words to describe it.”

“I love the city. No where does it happen quite like it does in Chicago.”

“A bell is tolling now…odd. It’s not the top of the hour yet. The chimes come faster now; tones, music. Somewhere nearby a service is starting. People are worshipping, I suppose. It is Sunday, after all. If I strain to listen, I recognize the melody as “Fairest Lord Jesus”.

Ah, the memories that old hymn engenders; some good and some ill, from a simpler time in my youth, yes, but an unhappy one on some levels; a time when I pretended that I didn’t know things about myself that should have been plainly obvious.”

A Story: “Apparition”

 

I thought I’d share a story I wrote a couple of years ago. All rights, naturally, are reserved. 

 

“Apparition”

 

I still remember my grandmother’s chair. I remember the soft creaking of its ancient wood as she rocked before the dying embers of our fireplace. I remember her fingers flying over swaths of crimson yarn as they emerged magically from beneath glittering needles. She would hum softly; haunting songs that floated upon the silken whiskey of her voice; ancient rhymes set to tunes we’d never heard before.

Ah, that sweet humming. It had always been the most comforting sound in the world to me. At the precocious age of 12, how could I be blamed for idolizing her? Nanna had been an elegant and simple woman, wise beyond anyone I’d ever known.

What did it matter that she could barely read and had learned nothing of mathematics or science? She could feel foul weather approaching in her very bones. She told us once that she could hear the pumpkins growing in the patch and we believed her, for she always seemed to know just the right time to go out and pick them, plump and fragrant and brilliant orange, from their thick vines. 

She could conjure wondrous meals from the ingredients hidden deep in cupboards or stashed away in the dim, cool pantry. She could brew powerful medicines that chased away summer colds, scattering them to the winds like dried daffodils. 

She had been the embodiment of all things familiar, all things loving, all things happy, from the even rise and fall of her shawl-covered breast to the delicate clicking of the sewing instruments moving between her warm, wrinkled fingers.

One day the humming stopped. As I think back, it seems to me that at some point Nanna just started fading away, but it has been so long ago that now that the details of her passing are nothing more than a mist diminishing to nothingness; a dream of surpassing sweetness dispersed by the light of dawn.

But I remember her.

A Fond Remembrance

 

For some reason, early this morning I was reminded of a trip I took to San Francisco last year, around October. I was visiting an old friend of mine. Such a beautiful city… I saw some remarkable things; art, architecture, even the layout and topography of the city itself, full of historical oddities and quirks.

Outside the city, however, the natural grandeur increases exponentially. It was a Friday, and Ken and I drove to see the great redwood groves of Muir Woods just north of the bay area in Marin County.

Late morning and early afternoon were wet, to be sure, but oddly enough it never actually seemed to be raining. Instead, the droplets that clung to everything and plummeted to the forest floor seemed to come from the trees themselves, as if the clouds were not high in the sky after all, but in our very midst, dampening everything.

The drive to the woods had been marked by razor sharp turns as we climbed one side of a mountain through banks of velvet fog and swirling mists only to navigate those same jagged angles in reverse as we descended into the space between massive stone guardians; guardians which have protected the lesser (though no less majestic) giants nestled between their wide bases.

A narrow wooden path, dimmed by the shade of the trees, meandered deeper into the park, though in truth that word could hardly be used to describe such a place as this. A plaque near the entrance to the boardwalk read, simply, “Behold, the forest primeval.” A fitting appellation, indeed.

The scent there, ancient and damp, wood mixed with wild flora and mountain mists, almost overwhelmed me as I drew near. I had to close my eyes for a moment to keep from becoming dizzy from it. Have you ever taken in a scent so powerful and -old- that it makes your mind swim with thoughts that don’t seem to be your own?

Though there were others here visiting the grove, I noticed very little noise, as if the awe that pervaded this magical pocket of the world silenced all but the softest whispers from both child and adult.

My heart seemed to slow, as if it strained to match the grand and prehistoric rhythm that thrummed around me, at once utterly silent and deafening. The trunks, red and massive, surrounded by ferns and fallen timber covered in plush mosses, rose from Earth to sky, impossibly tall, their uppermost branches vanishing into the muted light above as it broke in scattered patches through the hanging clouds that had settled into the nooks and crannies of the valley; this place that was itself high above the regions surrounding the hills.

To draw in a breath here was to take into one’s self a perfume sweeter than any other; the scent of freedom, innocence, wildness and power. No religion could hope to compare with this; no building-bound worship, no matter how ecstatic and zealous, could hold a candle to these lords of the valley; themselves vassals of an even greater master.

As I walked further into the dimness of this faerie world I noticed other small bronze plaques, each nearly invisible amidst the brilliant greens and reds of this place. Each told a story about people who had passed through Muir Woods before. One of them, dated in the 1940’s, spoke of a delegation of diplomats representing the United Nations when it was still in its infancy. These individuals met among the very same redwoods upon which I gazed long before I was even born.

Perhaps they felt some of the same sensations I had experienced as they look ed at the tree before me. Perhaps they were drawn to throughts of peace and brotherhood by the silent giants around them. The plaque, a tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had brought the delegates here, called him “President, Architect and Apostle of Lasting Peace”.

I felt a pang of sorrow for a moment, that this gathering, so noble in its intentions, had given birth to the squabbling corruption of today’s incarnation of that august institution, but a sense of hope also flickered within me; the hope that one day we might again use descriptions like “Apostle of Lasting Peace” for our leaders, far off and unlikely as that day might seem in today’s world.

You cannot walk in a forest like this without feeling a desire for simplicity, tranquility and respect for this place in which we all live welling up in your throat like a cry that must be released and will not be denied.

President Roosevelt was right; the negotiations of international peace should be held in places like these; not in the cold, unfeeling fortresses of steel and glass that even today sap the will and hope from those within.

All in all, I think we walked about a mile into the forest along that wooden path. By the time we made our way back and out of the park I was calmer than I remembered being at any point before. It was as if I had laid my head upon the softest down pillow and emerged from a deep slumber on the far end of a lilac-scented night.

It is an odd thing that an experience like this should strike us as so rare and precious. After all, there are trees everywhere and that same sense of tranquil peace should be as readily available to those in such desperate need of it as it was to me, a few dollars poorer byt free then to enjoy the park’s splendor.

The greatest gift I could think to give someone, when it really comes to it, is time. So many of us have traded, rented or outright sold our time and spirit for a paycheck and a hundred barrels of debt. 

As I lay in my bed this morning, the sensations of the forest primeval stole over me and I was there for a short time again, bathing in the peace. If only we could keep that sense of wonder and awe at our world when we conduct business, help others, elect our representatives, speak to those of other cultures or religions, dispense justice, legislate…

I cannot think of a single facet of life that couldn’t be improved by taking into ourselves the loveliness of that grove of innocence I wandered, and making it part of our minds and spirits.

 

The Scribblings of a Madman

 

Invariably, the rigors of my job (mental rigors, I should say, or emotional ones, for I am not a manual laborer, much as I think my health would be improved by the career) drain what little creativity is left after the worries and conerns of this life have had their say. We are in the midst of a national election which, I am generous to say, is acrimonious in the extreme. Some of our greatest financial institutions are crumbling, every natural resource to which scarcity could apply seems to be skyrocketing in value, and people are losing their jobs and homes in increasing numbers.

And there, but for the grace of Providence, go I. I have a good job now, but for how long? Will I be the next sad case to be shown the door, sacrificed on the altar of corporate convenience and cost slashing? 

Yet, through all of this turmoil, I think it is important to remember that very little of this is truly important. Or, I should say, it is only as important as we allow it to be. The pundits and commentators and doomsayers would have us believe that the world is coming to an end; that all of the carefully laid foundations of the American Dream are being stolen away by the greedy, the ill-begotten, the opportunistic and power-hungry.

But the more I think about this, the less convinced I am that the source of our woes is “the other guy”, or the rich, or our boss, or our president. Could it be that we ourselves are the problem? How many of us wallow in debt, but bewail our state and blame it upon those who lent us money? Oh, to be sure, credit card companies gorge themselves on the hard-earned money of the poor and middle class. But does this excuse those who spent money they didn’t have with the lustful eagerness of a gambling addict?

Change is often painful, often chaotic and very seldom welcome. But, like that ingenious construct, Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, there is a force which guides everything from one end to the next. Markets correct themselves in time. Those who overspend now learn not to in the future. Businesses crumble and are replaced with others. Aren’t we, in truth, watching nothing more than the social equivalent of a forest fire?

I have grown so tired of the constant campaigning, the rabid, saturating coverage of the media, shining their inhumanly bright spotlight on every minuscule detail they can find. I wonder if we are not witnessing the collapse not of an economy or a country, or even of a civilization, but of a state of being. Could it be that through forces we cannot understand, we are being guided toward a simpler life? One less fraught with excess and the panicked spending to fill holes in our collective spirit that only grow wider and deeper by the day?

Shakespeare might have quoted himself in observing the miasma of American life in 2008. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…”  Perhaps we are at last being forced to slow down and stop the frenetic gathering of things to our bosom. Acquisition, it seems to me, is not nearly so satisfactory as creation. Switching from one imperative to the other, however, seems to me akin to changing the polarity of a powerful magnet. It goes against the grain and requires time and significant effort; even pain.

When my life becomes too chaotic, too onrushing and too inflexible and unyielding in its torrential, downward flow, I meditate on images of simplicity like the picture above. Long ago, in the early hours of night, people moved about their houses by fire and candlelight. They created some of the greatest literature of our time using nothing more than a feather plucked from a goose, or a porcupine quill dipped in ink. Imagine the peaceful silence of an evening away from the bustle of the city, only the call of night birds and insects to punctuate the stillness, and the knowledge that this world is too big to comprehend in its entirety; that only this moment, and this small space illuminated by the soft glow of wax and wick, exist for you.

How much stress could one have experienced when one didn’t have the Middle East to worry about, or the stock markets not only of one’s own country, but of a dozen others? We pack our homes with television sets, and then, without enough time to watch all of the shows we crave, we buy devices that will store our programming so that when we actually succeed in carving some free time from the block of unending business, rather than creating or touching the lives of other people, we devour more of what is sickening us.

We should not despair of the American Dream. We should only remember what it actually is, and what it most certainly is not. The American Dream is -not- wealth. It is not power. It is not religious intolerance, nor is it theocracy, no matter the belief system in charge. It is not a large house, or a gas grill. It is not a full to bursting pension fund, or an impressive 401K. 

The American Dream, my friends, is the knowledge that, even lacking those certain comforts, we enjoy Liberty, and the ability to choose our own spiritual destiny. The American Dream is what so many have been craving for decades now; It is peace and quiet; the special bond between neighbors, the celebration of a family at the holidays, the cry of an eagle that isn’t tied to the earth beneath its wings by mortgages or PINs, passcodes or instant messages, Blackberries, iPods and books on tape.

Keep all of those things for yourself if they make your life better. I’ll keep my mental image of a steady hand, writing meaningful things upon parchment, one letter, one word, one phrase, one sentence at a time, with the cool knowledge that we have all the time in the world to finish it, and nothing to lose by slowing to the velocity of sanity.

Sunblind

“Sunblind”

I once awoke and stared into a
Fiery dawn, rays of red and gold,
Bounding off of lakes and trees to
Crash against my unsuspecting gaze.
And for the merest moment 
Locked in place, I was transfixed, 
Bathing in the power of its glow;
Amazed at how intensity could grow
Until at last in golden waves of
Dazzling pain, I jerked away
And closed my wounded eyes.
As soothing coolness, restful dark 
Returned to ease my agony 
I thought of you;
That first amazing glance, filling
All my heightened senses with delight,
Awash in fervent heat that
Emanated from your jeweled eyes,
It seared an image of your beauty 
‘Pon the coldness of my soul, 
As if you were the sun and 
I the watcher from below.
Radiant bursts of everything you are
Envelope me in warmth and silken joy,
To grow until they’re painful to behold,
And though I turn my head once more, 
I see you even when my eyes are closed,
And brighter though you seem to grow
With every passing day, I cannot seem
To blink away the wonder of your face…