A GRAIN OF SAND FROM THE BEACH

andy warhol

Yesterday I had lunch with a dozen friends for our monthly BROC meeting. We put on the Hillbilly Show once a year and use ticket sales to help people in the county needing assistance. Every month we pay several electric and fuel bills for people who need a hand to avoid cut-off. None of the money is skimmed off for any reason. We pay for our own lunches. In one way of looking at us, we're people who believe in doing our part to assist people around us who need an assist. It's another form of volunteer Rescue Squad and volunteer firemen. They take care of immediate needs physically, we take care of immediate needs of the mind and spirit, preventing physical need. People living on the edge have to humble themselves way down to go to an office and ask for help. In every case they're grateful for the help that eases worries immensely. Some pass it on later, which seems to be a natural impulse in us humans. 

andy warhol

I had a time so down and out I had to call upon humility to go to the Food Closet and ask for groceries. No questions, sign here. I drove home with enough food for a week, all I needed. Back in motion, a little bit ahead, I gave them a donation to cover the value of the food four times. I had to do it, not even a consideration to question the need. I feel like what we do in our group is further generous behavior by setting it in motion. As one gesture inspires another, and those gestures inspire others, it spreads over time. Maybe very little, maybe a lot, maybe everything in between. It doesn't matter how many, or if one gesture is the end. The gesture itself is what matters. If it inspires others, all to the good. If it does not inspire others, all to the good. I believe it from having seen it so much in self and others that one gesture of generosity creates another. It's the same the other way. Beat down a kid without recourse and the kid will go and, for example, beat down a dog without recourse. Both motivations go on everywhere all the time. I prefer for myself to spread generosity rather than anger. The people in our group are similarly minded without thinking of it in these words, each with his/her own thoughts and motivations. 

andy warhol

I was sitting at the table facing Jack and Linda Joines, two people it warms my heart to think about. The same can be said of everyone at the two tables we occupied at The Pines. Our meetings consist of ordering our meals, having our meeting while the kitchen prepares the food, eating and talking when the meeting is over. While we were eating, I spoke to Jack, asked him if he had yet entered the zone in life where everything is weird. We're the same age. He came to life, animated. It took him home. Lord, yes. He said everything is so weird he doesn't know what to make of it. Linda said a lot of people are talking about how weird things are now. She, too, was seeing it. I ran it by Jack to see if it was something I was feeling or if somebody else had noticed. I felt about Jack that he might feel it. He did. We talked about it a bit, not a whole lot, there isn't much to say. It's so complex and so inter-woven, it would take hours to make a list of the weirdness we see. We make a list, then what? It's so overwhelming that to fix any one item would be the same as picking up a grain of sand from the beach. It doesn't change the beach at all. 

andy warhol

I'm not quite sure what I mean by weird, except what makes sense fails to apply anymore. I see it in an attitude among the people I see. I don't see many, but the ones I see are representative of the ones I don't see, a pie slice. All are tapped into the same source for input. I don't have the fear generated by propaganda through the tv and a headful of misinformation, which I have plenty of, even without getting it directly from tv. I've a feeling the misinformation the CIA has fed us through television at least the last half century has brought us to a place "when everything the American people believe is false." This quote of CIA's stated goal, spoken verbally by then CIA director, Wm Casey, appointed Reaganista, who said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." Thus Fake News and corporate media. My sense of what I feel is weird about this time we're in is we're approaching the completion of the disinformation program, if not already there. Our corporate government is about deceiving us, from Fed to State to County. It has come out this week that Exxon is on record knowing about man-made global warming since 1981, and funded political denial ever since. It's so believable, it feels like I knew it without knowing it. I have to live, without recourse, in the reality corporate government has created by way of deception. I'll stay home and let the Highway Patrol meet their quotas giving tickets to other people. Another grain of sand on the beach.
   

andy warhol himself

*