Nothings

'Tis happy and it is sad. The two play off each other as a melody that pleases heart. They stretch, I believe, what wants stretching. Like a muscle. To become larger to hold more love. Takes a bit of strain to make a baby. Why any strain at all? Why don't babies pop out of a toaster on time? I see us trying to make that happen. Is it good? Is it foolish? I favor leaving life be and canceling the cell phone subscription as quickly as possible. Eat a grasshopper. Whooper

I have been all balled up in what I had been taught to call Art.

But what is that?

I do not really know. What it means.

I want to abandon that world, vague, arbitrary, indistinct, talked to its death by fools, who are self-appointed experts and whose voices are recorded only because there is thought to be a need for somebody to tell the rest of us what to think and the fools are available with credentials. It is as if the world of art thinks seriously thinks that you and I not hammered with data shall not realize the worth of Da Vinci or Mozart nor Buddy Holly.

There is no culture at all and never has there been such a thing in reality, and friends, reality counts more than its opposite.

Upheaval!

There is going to be.

Hard rain is a name for it in real art.

Upheaval!

People who make a living in leadership positions are going to have to find another way. Leaders are liars. The word is out. We think. We think very well. We think very well without being told what.

Upheaval!

Da Vinci lives! Not in a museum but in the very souls of human beings! Trust what is. Not what was. Not what should be. Not what is hoped for. No. What is!

If the message of the Sermon on the Mount delivered tomorrow on a hilltop anywhere by a perfect stranger who is also despised by the leadership of the place is not fresh enough to carry the moment it is never going to be and if it is not it remains what it is now and that is just a faint symbol of what someone dreamed who now lives far away from us in time and space and so must be related to as a Saint Different and Unique from ourselves who will save us after we die. Funny, how He saves us from nothing but our own self doubt which seems to indicate we are already with it.

Nothing Less Than Skin-Covered Hearts

For most, I love you means I need you, or feel I do, anyway. And it stops there.
It stops there.
It is made easy to say you love what you fear you might be in need of, if not today then perhaps later,
and yet, to truly love goes so much deeper



and has eventually shown all who try to love that love sours and turns to hatred
as one realizes he or she is dependent upon what cannot be kept fresh as a pickle in vinegar.



It is written that writers mislead. Look solely to what you are.
That is your answer to the question who am I? Which everybody needs...
And, why am I here? Where do I plant my seeds?



Why did you ever think you might find you inside a book? Only you can find you in all things; look within your own heart first and follow the music inside as a forsaken kid follows every attractive pied piper with a haunting tune for you are that forsaken kid. Nobody, and I mean nobody, trusts you.
Only you can do that for you. Make you sad?



I am not against books. I read. But, if it is a good book it has suggested I have my own skin- covered
ache to fulfill,
and,
being only human, after all, is more grand than being angel or saint ever can be. Those concocted images! You, on the other hand,
are re-al.

(Here, I will offer a truly valuable bit: any story you will ever hear concerning the work of a saint or angel or a goddess or a fairy or the like, will have been told to you by an ordinary mortal. Trace every one and it must lead to the same ol' unreliable source...one simple skin-covered heart of a human being. We lie to children because we fail to own our stories. Why do we fail to do that? Is that Hamlet's question after all?)

Socrates said: Know Thyself

A mommy and daddy sit by a fire with two babies; and under the fire's glow the family is at peace and mellow. All is well. Mommy stirs soup, daddy stokes the fire. Children coo and giggle. Watching from some higher level, one sees how the same or similar scenes in many places around the Earth correspond as families prepare for evening. Chores are done and family needs addressed. The family pets play and frolic. Peace abides. With or without modern appliances peace abides.
Seen from a still higher level, one notices in a suddenly ominous tone the connection between a family's security and preparations for war. What is that? From a higher level than that, something more becomes clear: one or more wars are already, actually, underway to protect such families. From what? Other families? In fact, some families are being attacked now and babies are being killed and wives raped as husbands lie dead, or dying, on the ground. On close examination one finds that it is young sons and daughters in uniform doing all this killing and torture and rape. One must wonder.
Is that sweet little family dream really the source of all such horror? And ask, Is there any way out of this awful pattern?
The way out is understanding. The way to understanding is inward. Know thyself.
The way to understand is to cease. Cease now all but what is real. A sentence may contain a morsel of truth while its mainstream lies. A seeker must look very closely to separate chaff from wheat, so to speak.



Those sweet families look sweet on the outside, but, as packaged lies, how do they really feel inside?



At this point, I see a chance to find out whether there is anything truly reliable since I need to rely so much? Once all illusion melts away, it is a real skin covered heart we are.
And, what is reliable ends up being me. I simply choose to live my story. My story.
And, what sounded selfish is known to be selfless. Funny, how selfishness is born of the concept of we. Also funny how once my true nature is accepted, as one individual, well, all the we concepts are tossed away as obsolete. Who needs 'em? One is the answer.

That is correct! I am and there is no center of my being. All senses alive! It is now only a question of readiness. This I express is a feeling you must have to know who you are and how glorious is one skin-covered heart, fully engaged!

And, I know of a love that has remained throughout my life a secret. I have attempted to 

share it on numerous occasions, to no avail. This love has remained my secret. This love that 

is felt cannot be shared with anyone, not even one who is the object of this love; especially 

not with her. This love cannot be expressed by words or in thoughts. To speak it is to 

 diminish it. The feeling is mine alone. A secret. It remains. So, the most beautiful of 

experiences draws me inside, not out. Into a void I once tried to avoid. Love draws me. 

Draws me. This way, alone, I am who I am. 

I,  a sketch drawn by love itself.

In 1962, a very young 20 year old Bob Dylan sang the song, No More Auction Block For Me, in Greenwich Village, NYC. It is a song from the heart of an escaped slave. At heart, every slave longs to be free. Every one. Bob was not singing to any set of people, but to all who would listen. He made real and present what he was living. Imagination it was not. His show was authentic.

No more auction block for me

No more, no more…many thousands gone.

Today's professional sports drafting systems, what are they, really?

The massive education systems around the world, what are they, really?

The corporate employment web tied so closely with the education systems, what is it, really?

The ridiculous cyberspace systems offered to connect you to to clients and customers and fans to further your career, what are they, really?

The mind boggling, incomprehensible health care regimes, what are they, really?

The many election processes spread across the globe, what are they, really?

Auctions, auctions everywhere, count them if you care or dare.

No chains? no whips? no salt in the wound? Look into the hearts, I swear, it's all still there-

outrageous profits pour into the hands of mint julip sippin' porch sitters who secretly sneer-striking bargains in flesh with motion of a hand over here over there…

Then discarded heaps of bone.

Going. Go-ing. Gone.

A growling messenger came to town, the people listened and though they frowned

what won them over was just a moment on stage in a cheap plastic crown

and the new brand of awful games going down. Down. Down.

The kids of the sixties in the streets could not see the sneering enemy loves protesters who only wish to be free; so they ask him to jail them-

and thus let them be?

Dylan saw that which others have not-

the masters of war who carry no weapon call every shot…

Bang!

as a crowd of human beings rails at its oppressors this message:

Feed us! Feed us!

Give what you promised, we're weak and we're greedy!

Give what you promised, we're weak and we're greedy!

Give what you promised, we're weak and we're greedy!

Who are these human beings who not who they be?

I know of a world where kindness, generosity, and benevolence are every day all day long occurrences. You can live in the world I speak of if you want to live here. It is up to you. You can be here in no time at all. In less than the time it takes to blink you can be with me here. The distance to it is near.

In thoughts only do limitations abound to what I am telling. In thoughts only. Not really. In thoughts only. Not really.

So, I have  a friend who is one of my first sponsees in AA.  He has been sober up to five years back in the nineties and a few short times since. He is as good a human being as I have ever known.

He got into heroine a while back. His wife is an addict and her son as well.  All three have been living in the woods near the City. For a number of years my friend lived under bridge. We have talked off and on over these years but he could not really say he wanted to be sober. Recently he called and we talked and he said, I want to get sober. I heard that. We went for a ride to visit another alcoholic we both know who is sober and had a bad fall from a ladder on a job and was in ICU then the hospital and then rehab. He has serious injuries but is recovering. Shortly after that my friend called me to say he was catching a bus to a hospital to check himself in because he felt he was about to die. I visited him several times in ICU then in the general hospital and now he is in rehab.  He called tonight.  His voice is strong and he is laughing and he is so grateful to be alive.  He tells me the people at the Rehab are treating him so kindly he cannot believe it.  He is sleeping, eating like a horse and exercising.  They told him today they will try very hard when he is released to have him a place to live. He proudly told me they gave him some new clothes that match. Also because he pushes other patients around in wheelchairs they want to hire him. I will go visit him tomorrow, My heart soars like the hawk!  I heard a song this morning with this line in it and it is my life story.  It goes-

Stop fighting the fight that has already been won

ARREST and REMOVE

I met a woman educated in the study of criminology.

She wants to teach others. Said she learned that cops believe that they need to remain detached from a crowd or a suspect to do their job which is to arrest wrongdoers. The nut of it is these officers will not be so ready to club the people into unconscious blobs of meat for hauling to confinement and sentencing if they are not aloof to the fact these they arrest and remove are people like themselves. She is applying for a job as someone to play the role of an attached human being who will be used by cops to bring a message of sanity from the soul of humanity before the dogs are released, thereby allowing the cops to remain detached to do their brutal job well. Her job is to make it appear as if the politicians who hire the police and pay them really care. But the politicians' way to prove they are right is to trample on others. So, trample they must. After all, who will trust a brute who fails to trample?

What I say is that the very existence of a job to be performed by detached personnel is appallingly subhuman and destined to utter devastation if for no other reason than such a concept is going to bring about the very horror it is meant to prevent. Vain politicians send forth detached brutes to force upon all citizens their plans. They are convinced they alone are right and will not listen to anything that would suggest any other possibility and my friend will be in a position to aid and comfort such brutality.

I say any lawman who even considers the possibility of a state of detached authority should wear no badge whatever. We are human. To think otherwise is insane.

Somehow we have been brought to a way of thinking and acting that means a whole human being is incompetent to deliver justice.