The One LOVE.

The One LOVE.

Don’t be wasting any more time, babe, tryin’ to join together what Is already one.

That from the Beginning has been done.

Love is not for sale. 

Won’t be worn as a ring on a finger or a thumb.

So, my dear, if you’ll quit trying to keep warm by swallowing the Sun something you always had but never knew you had will seem automatically to come.

We can’t mint love.

Cannot print love.

Can’t give or take it and

sure can’t forsake it.

It has done for you and me what we never even thought we wanted done. And all love asks of you is everything you claim you wish to have…and then some.

Talkin’ ‘bout the One LOVE.

 In halls and halls FILLED WITH books man praises his story…His Story…History. All you need to know is it’s his story. And, in truth, there is no such goddamned thing! The full-time job of a stupid person, and all persons are stupid, is to promote day and night a stupid point of view and all such ideas are stupid, empty and really pointless. Every point of view is without dimension. That’s the point! They give each other awards for this and make promises concerning a future in a rose garden. Swear to each other undying loyalty as they build a ladder that will enable them to rise above it all. Over dead bodies.

Each person pretends to be unique but all amount to “same things”. Sameness turns to dullness. Dullness implies treatment. Doctor Feel Good is called for. That is the beginning of hell in the human brain. Second most powerful thing in the Universe has taken control  of that brain. For awhile the stupid person in Hell is aware he is watching himself from somewhere else. Gradually the light grows dimmer until it goes out. That’s it! A robot is complete as a small, blind central point pointing through imagination only. It has been said that in a world of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

I saw the heart break.

I saw it break in the boy’s eyes and across his injured face.

I saw the heart break and I could not stop accusing him and piling on blame.

I am so sickened and carry such shame.

He’s grown to be a good man, kind and strong

in spite of what I did to him one night 

which has lasted my life long.

Then, suddenly, from another place, the shame was seen and to those eyes is gone. That is forgiveness!

 Riotous Joy 

is on the Wing!

For A Lover of Life

  All Ways Spring!

Never Mind

A Dog Gone Thing!

Laugh And Dance! 

PlAY And Sing!

Laugh And Dance 

You LuckyThing!

 Try and understand this: A true stoic is light and jolly and free of all worry. And, it shows!

 And Be Careful Not To Beat Your Drum For Any Reason

Life’s its own cherry mystery and History’s like some gravy on my tie.

The evil mankind experiences in all its many disgusting forms

cannot be the result of nature going coo-coo, oh no, 

it’s refusal of her magic. 

Actually, stars go to a far away place when the Sun comes up only to return when it goes down. All we have to do in order to enter Eden in a flash is to look again without explanation and that requires no time. A clear mind is a brilliant one. 

All man’s remedies since the Fall have amounted to no more enlightened sophistication than to tell that beating on a drum in a certain fashion will keep elephants at bay. That’s like buying gadgets advertised to save you time. That’s coo-coo. Nobody has ever saved even one beat of time. No pocket can hold one. Hell, how many even spend time?  It spends us. 

The way to respond to an epidemic is to decide to change into a human being who serves decency. Not to impress God or your neighbor or the traffic cop or anybody else, that’s indecent.  Only for you. Let your own self prove:  I am a  DECENT HUMAN BEING.

 FINE DAY!

Billy:  Fine day!

First: Billy, what do you like to do on a fine day like this one?

Billy: Shoot my pistol at targets.

Second: What targets you like to shoot?

Billy: Lily-livered Governors make good targets.

Third: What’s another target, Bill?

Billy: Oh, I guess it’s fun to shoot empty pop bottles.

Fourth: Who do you like to shoot with best?

Billy: I prefer my own company when shootin’. 

Fifth: When you’re older what do you want to do most?

Billy: Shut up!

Fifth: What? Why do you say that?

Billy: Don’t ask. Just shut up, won’t you?

First: That’s no way to be. We’re just interested in things you like to do. What’s wrong with that?

Billy: Holy shit! Shut up!

Second: No need to get so upset like that.

Billy: There’s every need! Nothing is as sacred. Gadammit. I do not want to speak about what I want. I do not want to spend time that way. I know where it takes a fellow. 

Third: Where does it take you?

Billy: Livin’ Hell. That’s where. I wanna spend my time in the company of this one fine day. Free from the 10,000 worries of tomorrow…which never comes by the way.

Fourth: But can’t we spend some of today thinkin’ and talkin’ about what we would like to have? That’s only natural, ain’t it?

Billy:  You just don’t git it, do ya? Shut up! Simple. Know what I mean? Just shut up.

Fifth: I don’t git it.

Billy: At least that’s not another damn question. It’s an admission.You don’t git it. Ya don’t git it because you are stuck in what is not natural. I never met a man who was happy because he got what he wanted. 

Fifth: I git it.(laughter) It’s like let tomorrow take care of itself.

Billy: Only in that way is your time gonna be made of real stuff. Another thing. The practice of imagining what you want is so habituatin’. Before long, at a time you are unaware, it captures you in a tangled web you cannot escape ever except by a very difficult amount of tortuous trouble. Most people are not alive at all.  Only wish things were different. I want nothing. 

First: I don’t either. 

 Who Are We? 

They are I and I am they.

I must be told that often it seems lately. No matter how much or in what ways they torment me…I am they and they are I. Funniest thing to me is that when I actually, fully and not partially, accept that as factual I am immediately absorbed into peaceful contentment. And, man, there is no other place to be suddenly stranded as lovely as that place! When here I never want to leave.  But I do. Leave it. Perhaps I do so for the sheer joy of returning to it. And another thing, the experience of being stranded here is so strange it feels like I am in the company of everybody…even those who are lost and forgotten or dead and those yet unmet also I am with. Although it requires no effort at all it is the only fulfilling existence I have ever known. But still I leave it. To try something new or different is what I tell myself but I think it is for the joy of returning we do it.

 WHEN AND WHAT HELP IS TO BE GIVEN ANOTHER?

I heard once on a TV show that a moth lives in a cocoon until time to come forth with its new wings to fly and to sew silk. Well, one seeing the moth working constantly to make its way out of the tough cocoon may decide to help and take out a knife and make a cut.  The result will be that the moth will not gain needed strength from the strenuous effort nature requires of it to come out from its cocoon when it is time for it to do so. It will die.

 GOING HOME

I am embarked on a journey back home. Wherever anyone asks me about it I begin here:  

“Why, do you think, would anybody bother to admonish another that only a fool reinvents the wheel? Why not mess around with their wheel?  It's damn sure broke. Begin from scratch. Make it up as original, all or any part of it. Not for somebody else though, for you! You may meet up with allies in places you least expect to find them and rediscover unexpected resources you tend to neglect.”

Don’t Miss it.

Swan River Theater Tonight!

 Autonomy The Kid

Does what he wants to.  

Takes orders from nothing but the voice of Liberty.

 Just too stubborn to be governed by forced insanity.

Most friendly fellow you 

could ever hope to see.

Likable, dependable

Helpful as can be.

Whatever he is devoted to he

Will always see it through.

And he’ll let you live your way
and asks the same of you.

The trouble people have with him is all imagined in their brain.

Loves children and animals.

Dislikes being locked up or wearing the ball and chain.

He’s the one you are drawn to when you need to be 

reminded: Clarify your brain!

                         

 Don’t Miss it.

Swan River Theater Tonight!

 The good life promised you by society

Is a fake life.

Wake up! 

And kiss the good life goodbye.

And do not listen to a voice telling you that it means you will now live a hard life as a starving peasant in the wild mountains with no bright light of elegance to elevate your understanding of the Universe.  No music. No art. No poetry. No science. No love. Those fake lives are only in a different place under different circumstances. The overlords tell the peasants better times are comin’. So, kiss the good life goodbye. 

 Look inside your own soul. There’s no clock in there!

There is no other in there!

 GROKKING

Excerpted from Mr. Tambourine Man:

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

By Bob Dylan

This might be interpreted by interpreters as a drug song or it can be heard as a song of deep meditation which honors the listener by providing no method at all. In my own case I feel I finally invented my own world by the grace of a love that is beyond love. The word “grok” from the 60’s was helpful to me. It is a word that is to be used in the English language with care always remembering it is not “of” the English language. It’s an invader! An invader “from love beyond love”. You gotta grok It, (Wo)Man.

The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them. The simplest way to think of grok is as truly, deeply understanding someone or something. With any luck, you now grok the word grok.

You can appreciate the deeper message in the single line from Mr. Dylan’s song:

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

It goes beyond all limits of ordinary English and points the way to the timeless. Let me discover the gap that leads into timelessness and grok the immensity of a still brain.

THE PANDEMICS

A symphony is playing in splashes of wild, fast colorful motion and when it got dark, and it always does, you once could rely on the ability to smell out in detail what lies before you or be eaten alive from within. But you shoved all this into the background for the power of thought. 

You have given up on the big picture to look at pieces of the picture through the cloudy lens of a confused mind, growing more confused everyday. Many a night will you pretend to be sleepin’.

A confused mind is in conflict and it is frightened; 

both of which 

more thinking 

only heightens. 

It is perfectly all right 

if you cannot please the world.

A TIMELESS PSYCHE

If you walk you want to be centered over two moving feet lest you stumble and fall. If you ride a horse you want to be centered over four feet in motion and so ride upon the horse as one creature.

Upon entering the world of timeless thought through the gap in psychic time one is centered in the present. This is the way to meet all things, not only horses and rockets, even storms and plagues. More than that cannot be told without breaking the spell.  It’s for you.  It’s for you.

All there is to be done by each of us is this-have the patience to await the Lord’s perfect timing in all things and this you will never regret. When your friends remark, “Oh, that’s terrible” reply simply- 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

p.s. You will fail to do as you promise yourself to do, of course, but learn that it will take a personal touch. Call it mercy. Find the Lord of your own heart and you will fall deeply in love.

I am a human being. As one, I have knowledge of my own existence. Existence is Lord. All things true arise from existence. I can forget. If I do I become the slave to non-existence. Knowledge of existence is like a pitcher of a precious fluid.

 Everyone alive has such a pitcher.  A pitcher that something fills with precious fluid.  I keep pouring mine out on the ground, leaving me holding an empty pitcher in wonder.  The pitcher is refilled for me.  I do not know what the fluid is for.  I want to do something with it.  I pour it on the ground and wonder.  This has been going on for more than forty years.  I am no more aware of the purpose of the precious fluid today than I have ever been.  Still, the pitcher is refilled.  It is not refilled because of any merit on my part, I know.  I continue to pour mine out on the ground and stand holding an empty pitcher wondering what this has all been about.  This is my story.  And still the pitcher is refilled. 

I have learned this much.  Each time the pitcher is refilled  I feel the fullness within it, how complete it is,  and that feels good,  and I know it.  It is satisfying, and I know it.  It took a long time for me to understand this much.  I lived many years ignorant of the feeling of satisfied contentment available at such a trivial price and with so little required of me.  Nothing.  How little is that, Friend? Those years were chaotic.  I lived in dread much of the time.  I was trying mightily to achieve some goal or other that might bring me satisfaction and peace.  Nothing I tried brought more than a fleeting feeling of excited pleasure that seemed always to dissolve even before the goal was reached into another faraway goal to be reached.  All the while,  this feeling of satisfaction was lying inside as a refilled pitcher of precious fluid, refilled for me time after time by some unknown source that must have remained interested in me even though I was pouring the precious fluid out on the ground.  

In truth, I have explored possible ways to use the precious fluid and none have seemed to be anything other than simply pouring it out on the ground and standing rather foolishly, embarrassed, in apologetic wonder.  I have heard of people who are able to do something worthy with their pitcher of precious fluid.  They use it to grow some lasting fruit trees that continue to produce good fruit.  I must admit I  do not have evidence of it.  Only stories. Whenever I have attempted to locate one of these people they elude me.  Like smoke they elude me.  So, I am left here holding a pitcher of precious fluid that has been refilled by grace without my deserving a drop of it and , not knowing what else to do, am pouring mine onto the ground to stand again in wonder.  No, this time I will not fail to do something worthy of the pitcher full of precious fluid. I will use it to reinvent my world.

 Come see us at Swan River Playhouse when it opens.

War, pestilence, disease, earthquakes. Arguments, hatred, vengeance, envy, loneliness. All such are not things at all.  They are the absence of heart. Efforts to rid yourself of them will fail. Have been failing for thousands of years. Look carefully at the Twelve Steps.  The difference is they have worked now for about 85 years. Notice the only mention of alcohol in the steps themselves is a simple admission: “I cannot do anything to save myself from my addiction.” The remaining eleven steps direct one to a power that can and the power is in every human heart. Only the humans can know of existence. By the way, EXISTENCE is Lord. Knowledge of existence is a human trait. It is nurtured in deep meditation. Take the time to seek what exists and lose that which exists not.

That’s it. 

Come see us at Swan River Playhouse when it opens.

The desert can be a place of desolation. It can seem hopeless. Lifeless. Empty. It is a good place to be when you want to know the truth. It will be shown to those with eyes to see.

It rains. And when it does, the place comes alive with possibility. Nothing becomes everything.  That is the truth. All has been baked down to its essence and then it rains. And then it rains. 

I have heard it said the amazing smell in the desert after a rain is the fragrance of water falling upon parched earth. You have to smell it to believe it. It is the perfume of kindness. 

There is a truth that is always here. It is now. Simple. Yet to give it attention feeds something in you that holds an artesian well of pure goodness. Sir Issac Newton looked for it in secret all his life. The Philosopher’s Stone he sought goes by at least as many names as there are religions of mankind. All the while, all mankind needed was to be kind. As a whooper swan I found that to be so.

I am Whooper Swan. I am who? I am walking, talking dirt. Made of earth stuff which was made of Sun’s fire. I walk and talk and laugh and cry. I can even fly! Now, Dear God, let my poor voice be heard.

A friend tells of a time in his youth when he lay in some grass looking up at the sky and felt completely happy for awhile. Nothing, he said, brought this experience into being. It was many years ago and he has never felt that way again. But he still searches for it. He had it for no reason, had it, and he searches. How foolish is that?  He makes gratitude lists when he already knows it comes out of nowhere for free. 

He has been told often by those he has met who are happy that gratitude comes from one thing only, it comes from knowledge you are alive. That other thing, the thought of gratitude, the words, “Thank you”, is all about good manners and has nothing to do with feeling grateful.  All the gratitude lists in the world will never bring the feeling of gratitude. And, so, my friend does not make the connection with his own simple experience lying in the grass doing nothing. Only meditating. What a tragedy! 

Locate the Gap

I AM THROUGH WAITING SILENTLY FOR THE WORLD TO CHANGE, SO, 

MUCH LIKE A FRAGILE FLOWER BRAVELY STANDS TO PRESENT ITSELF, JUST AS IT IS, I SHALL BEGIN 

MY NEW WORLD AND STRIPPED OF ALL BAD TRADITIONS KNOW BY SIMPLY BEING: WHO I AM.

Alice was told, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will do.”  We are told that by our world as soon as we get here. Choose one. Choose a major.  Choose a career. Choose a companion. And follow the rules. The risk you take when you listen to the world is that the world will never see you as somebody who knows where (s)he is going. That is terrible. Why is it terrible? Because you will always be receiving advice from those who do not know where they are going either. All who know where they are going will automatically refuse to tell you to choose a road. They respect you too much. Lost people will be be glad to be your guides. They think you have need for one even though you have no such need. You already know that feels like a rolling stone, completely unknown, and all alone. Bob Dylan said that. 

First, know where you are going and where you stand are the same. It is no coincidence that nowhere and now here are the same. It is perfectly all right if you cannot please the world.

I will discuss a moment something very beautiful and very important that everyone knows but almost nobody remembers. It is this-nobody can embarrass an infant. It is impossible. You were once such a creature…beyond an embarrassing experience. The world had to first build up inside your head an image which it could embarrass before it would accept you as one of “us”. It gave you a name and then drilled that name into your consciousness to the point it one day embarrassed the named kid…not you, by the way, but the named kid you had become. Now you had a feature the world could send to school and later to war.  It had control of you. You were a citizen now. Not happy, sad, actually. There is beauty in an otherwise sad story, though, and the beauty is that you were never made to give up entirely on the baby who could not be embarrassed, the amazing creature who never once gave a thought to its appearance in the eyes of anybody else. It lives on inside you.  It , I call, the heart, so courageous, so bold, so full of passion, so intelligent, so wise, so devastatingly fascinating to observe. It’s free. It’s you! Given a chance, it will show you and everybody else it is as kind and generous and and tolerant as it is courageous and bold and free. How divine!

1968

In the Summer of 1968 I know something happened to change me forever but I was unaware it happened or that I had changed either. I lived on until now inside that new, invisible cocoon where I was molded by loving hands to become one of these… 52 years later. While that was underway, I was aware only briefly from time to time that, “I am different somehow and I like it”.

This afternoon I looked hard into those years right up to that fateful summer. I noticed a few important happenings. In April and then June, Martin and Bobby had been assassinated. I was about to begin my third and final year of Law School. The political scene that Summer was an insane parade of wild, weird, incomprehensible freak shows. In Chicago, the Democrats led off with violent beatings and stomping and kicking and jailing of many kids my age also students who dared protest in the streets and parks. It was sickening to watch on television. People just like me being treated in such horrible ways by policemen who behave as if they hate them ferociously. That could be me. Should it have been me? The trials of those kids in Chicago who were the leaders of the protests were a complete mockery of anything resembling justice. By now, I knew it. I had learned enough to know better and had not yet stepped into a courtroom to try a case. 

And it was to be another 24 years until it was revealed to me, an honor graduate, that as early as 1830, when the nation was only about 30 itself, then President Andrew Jackson directly and without apology flaunted the United States Constitution by ordering the Trail of Tears forced march of all Indians across the Mississippi River to live on Reservations designated suitable by the white politicians in direct violation of the order of the Supreme Court which told him he could not do so legally because the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, forbids it. That is not taught in Law Schools in the United States. In my lifetime, I lived to listen to another President tell the world on television,”If the President does it, it cannot be illegal”. These guys with swollen egos never learn. In my law practice, I  saw many times the laws disregarded by courts, police, lawmakers and elected leaders. It is enough to make anybody sick. I even once wore a tiny device to record a public official tell me repeatedly, “forget the law, let them have what they want” (meaning the authorities.)

Okay, that which I turned out to be when I emerged from the cocoon?  It is a whooper swan! Have you met someone who knows who he is and is happy with it? Such a one can make peace with the world he lives in and experience that miracle while alive, regardless of what others do or do not.

___________________________

*Let me add that it was the darkness played an important role in that transformation, as important a role as the light within the cocoon. Both are with us.  Which will you feed the most? Think it over.

ANNOUNCING!  Grand Opening of the Swan River Theatre!

Politicians say, Make America Great Again, Vote for me.

What do they mean tossing the term, “America” at us? Is it in the government offices in Washington D.C.?  Is that where “America" resides? Is it on the printed money? Is its voice heard in false positions of power wielded over others? Can it ever be? Is it jobs? Is it in institutions? Is it an army, navy, and air force? Is it law and order as determined by fiat and punishment? Is it a chain of prisons? Is it glamour, sports and entertainment? Do not answer too swiftly.  Give it some thought. What do you think? What do you want it to mean to you from now on? 

The politicians speak of it as if they had understanding of the term when they have not any.  Little do they know that “America” insofar as the word has any meaning in reality is not a place marked on a globe. It is a magical spot that is at the same time vast beyond measure and so tiny it can never be located to be attacked or mocked. It is where all people who are born come from and long to return to and mostly they wish to return because of the confusing mess politicians have made claiming they are the experts on the subject, “America”. It can be things like those listed and many more or it can be humanity’s gate that never closes. It can be confusing or it can be simple. When will we learn that politics speaks only to the worst in us? Fear, greed, intolerance, envy, lust, hatred, rage, violence, vengeance. The other “America" listens to and speaks to only our goodness:  which includes love, patience, kindness, tolerance, courage, stamina, appreciation of beauty, contentment, self reliance, simplicity, joy, wisdom, all supporting a peaceful co-existence. That is where we wish to live.

Maybe “America” is something so important its name ought never have been spoken. The essence of its meaning to those who crossed uncertain seas looking for something better is certainly unspeakable. We know it when we feel it. So, it is recognized by every human being. It is the first treasure.  The one from which all other good, life-enhancing treasure flows. It is a treasure no one can own or hold as his own in any way, shape or fashion. It cannot be held, printed, banked, or counted. It is the heartbeat and the first breath.

Then it must be obvious no man or group of men and

women can make it great…it is what it is by its nature and that is all there is to it. Everyone of us carries an abundance of it inside ourselves. In other words, it is obvious that since the first treasure belongs to nobody all treasure that flows out of it is likewise the property of nobody. All things good are to be accepted in the heart of a human being as gifts every day as the daily bread spoken of in prayers.

Now, if there is a poet out there with an original thought it would be nice to hear something like, “America” is freedom of each of you to be true to thine own self. After all is said and done, it is the only decent way to live.

You can be reminded of the meaning for your own self at the Swan River Theatre tonight.