I DODGE WOOLYWORMS

ernest trova

 

You believe God forgives. Yeah. God is done with it, already forgiven the guilts eating you up. If you believe forgiveness is important, learn to forgive yourself. It's only you holding yourself in the bog of self-blame. God is done with it. It's the same as nothing at all. Karma is done with it. Whatever your return would be for all you blame yourself for, you've already had the returns and didn't recognize them. Let it rest. Self talk. This is how I talk to myself when I'm feeling blue from memories in childhood, the neighbor's cat I killed not meaning to. I continue to feel sorrow from the memory. It brings to mind a scene from a Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor movie, the Sandpiper, 1965. There was a young boy under ten, or so I suppose from poor memory over half a century. Daddy gave him a .22 rifle for maybe a birthday present. They went outside with it, a young deer stepped into range, paused for a Hollywood Bambi pose, the kid pulled the trigger. The deer fell down dead. Miracle shot. The kid was mortified. He preferred the deer alive, didn't know he was putting an end to its life. The kid was me.

 

 

 

It is surely something I came into this lifetime with. All the way back to first memories I never wanted to kill anything. I have killed, and every time, mostly roadkill, it tormented me. I appeal to the Higher whatever to take care of the soul of the cat, dog, coon, squirrel, possum that ran under my tires. If there is a chance to avoid one, I will, but there are times, like day before yesterday, a rabbit darted from the side of the road between my front wheel and back wheel. A casualty of the modern world. By end of next day the crows and buzzards will have had a snack, only a spot left on the road until the rain washes it away. In an unavoidable situation, I remind myself it was a quick dying and the bunny will feed several crows and a possum or two. I killed a coon with intent once, and swore to self I'll never do it again. Killed a dog once with intent and swore off of killing anything ever again with intent. I must accept it when a cat darts under a tire, but I have control over intent. 

 

 

 

My own belief that the living beings around me are supremely precious made me feel like I came from outer space through the years of growing up. I grew up into a world where killing is the ideal. Disasters are measured by body count. Killing is continuous on television, the most intense drama. The man that can kill and feel nothing is American superman. I came of age in the time of the draft, mandatory training to kill for God and country. By that time I'd had it with God and didn't believe my country anymore. I didn't want to kill anybody and didn't see any reason behind the military's desire to make me kill except proof of evolution. I, personally, suspect it has to do with gross misinterpretations of the Hebrew Wars in the Old Testament preached to army boys during the Indian Wars, which they fought as though they were reenacting holy script. I believe a case can be made for the Hebrew Wars the mythology of the white man's approach to killing Indians, genocide. God's will. King David, a middle-eastern war lord, was the Genghis Khan of his place and time. David was God's favorite and it was important that Jesus be a descendant of David by bloodline.

 

 

jean arp

 

I can't help but take from the Hebrew Wars that God says genocide is the way to go, kill em all, even the dogs and camels, don't leave anything living. God works in mysterious ways. I can't help but rethink Genghis Khan in light of David's story. I was reading a history of China in one volume where Genghis Khan of Mongolia, was given a couple of paragraphs. Those paragraphs told me very little, but made me curious to know more about the Great Khan, someone I only knew as a name. The biography was an unforgettable story. I cherish the book as one of my lifetime favorites. I found him to be a truly great man in Mongolia's history. It was not a country then. The Mongols were different tribes that warred with each other, renewed revenge every generation. Genghis Khan brought them together into a nation of Mongols. They stopped fighting each other and became the Mongol hordes, the Tartars that terrorized cities along the Silk Road they created to carry the treasures  of pillage back to Mongolia on yaks. Fleas on yaks carried the plague from China to Europe over the Silk Road. Genghis Khan is surely another one of God's favorites. European Christians glorified God with genocide in the Americas. It's kinda hard to reconcile all this with God is love.   

 

 

 

 

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GRUMPY OLD BASTARD AT LARGE

wayne white

I believed I could get through this Ferguson (St Louis), Missouri, incident without feeling compelled to flip my two pennies onto the gaming table. At first, it was just another white cop kills a black teenage boy, a regular occurrence like young white guy blows away a classroom of kids someplace. It's never certain where it will happen next, but it is certain it will happen. One of the first images to come to mind about the Ferguson incident is the police overzealous SWAT numbers and equipment. Talking heads are saying it looks like police state. We've never seen this before. Boston marathon bombing? Anybody remember that? I was most struck by the immediate appearance of an army of cops that swept Boston like ants on sugar. Where did they all come from? A big SWAT operation with the assistance of tv, them saying people were happy to oblige them to go through their homes a SWAT team with machine guns and grenades. What do you say to a SWAT team at the door saying let us in by opening the door or we break the door down and kill your dog? Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde comes to mind. They went to medieval walled cities and told them to give the Mongols whatever wealth they had in gold and other valuable treasures. Give it over peaceably and we let you live. Refuse and we kill all of you, take what we want and burn down your city. I see talking head after talking head saying of Ferguson, we've never seen such a display of police state. Statistics coming to the surface now are alarming of SWAT break-in entry for next to nothing, killing people, even white people now, and saying, "He had a gun." Shooting to kill has become such a pattern, it tells on training. I've seen this coming on since the Nixon law and order fear propaganda, the beginning of white corporate backlash soon after the Civil Rights period. 

wayne white

I see "pundits" asking how we can turn this progression into police state around. I can't help but laugh when I hear that. I know they see it. I also know they are subject to corporate restraints by way of producer. MSNBC is as much a business as Faux tv. They just appeal to different markets, the presentation guided by fear. Even Democracy Now and Truthout, that seem to get it, use fear of police state to rally attention around their side of the divide. Our Ferguson protests and police show of force make fabulous tv for white shareholders: keepin the enwords down. Bright lights, smoke, rolling teargas cannisters, reporters muscled and arrested, a SWAT army keeping America safe for the whites. At the risk of blowing your white middle class mind, I've been seeing for some years that the white working class men of USA, coast to coast, border to border, believe "the nigger war" is imminent, the same as the "Christians" believe "the rapture" is near. The black people know this. White working class people know it too. It's what they are arming themselves toward, not to shoot each other. Black people all over the country are in alarm. The decisions made by white public officials have gone toward escalating the police action in Ferguson day by day so consistently the pattern exposes purpose. Even George Wallace did not provoke black people to this degree. Another young black unarmed guy will be shot by a cop with intent to kill, knowing he will get away with it and be a hero among the white brethren in racism. The cops of that community will come out a SWAT army to put down demonstrations, the protests will grow, the SWAT presence will grow. The talking heads will say incredulously, We've never seen anything like this. Black people say, yes we have, yes we have, yes we have, and the interviewer changes the subject. More blame the victim talk from white male authoritarians. 

wayne white

The black people are saying we want to be treated like people instead of zoo animals running loose. The absence of white authorities addressing the issue tells me what they see is a bunch of monkeys down from the trees hooting and screeching in their faces. If one bites you, you might get rabies. Something else I'm seeing, or so I interpret from what I see, the cops are scared shitless. No accidents in their underpants. The hacker collective called Anonymous has struck the Ferguson police hard, and the arch-enemy of white supremacism, the ACLU, is in town. Al Jazeera reporters and cameras. Ay-Rabs. The members of the SWAT force have been listening to Limbaugh for most of their lives and Faux news. My sense is that they feel cornered, not by a bunch of monkeys, but a threat to their own belief system, which is sacred to them all the way to church. Their zeal tells me this is what they believe they are standing guard for. They may be seen in shame on tv, but being on tv is their pride. They do not see human beings. They see the enemy. Their face shields, their bullet proof vests, their machine guns aimed at you, identify themselves the enemy, not people either. This isn't about people, human beings or whatever we're called. It's about belief systems. The police side doesn't seem able to see they are creating a tremendous resistance throughout the tv audience. It's like they're acting as a circle of wagons around the Bank. They're the cavalry in Indian Country. They're acting on orders from Headquarters. They're doing their job. Another wedge in the systematic divide-and-conquer phase of control. Can this be turned around? Not until Headquarters OKs it. It is too obvious a step in a systematic progression. Every day I see this a public relations police action to rally the well-armed white racists behind the police state for holding back a stampede of criminals and white liberals--same differ'nce. I feel like this ongoing standoff is a PR stunt rallying white racists, announcing to us by way of evening "news" we have police state similar to the Supreme Court announcing the end of Democracy overriding the popular vote. 

wayne white 

The step by step divide-and-conquer progression looks awfully much like intent to provoke more such protests in other cities where it is inevitable a cop will kill another unarmed black kid with his hands up saying don't shoot. It's like your girlfriend saying don't shoot and doing it anyway. She provoked it by saying don't. Put down after put down of black protest assures the white people the police have the black people under control. Good press. Good support. The press about the black kid is the same as the press about Trayvon Martin and others; discredit the victim, make him look on tv like white society is better off without him. Job well done, fellers. The indifference to the feelings and concerns of the black people who have lived in police state all their lives is as epidemic now as cops shooting with intent to kill. Six years of a black man in the White House has been enough time for the propagandists to generate so much racial hatred it's become explosive. I was thinking yesterday that if a hole the size of a quarter were to open in the president's security, he's dead as soon as the hole appears. And I remember one of Indira Gandhi's most trusted bodyguards sacrificed his own life to assassinate her in front of the other bodyguards, who immediately shot him down. A black president has been used for the focus of hate by the propagandists of white racism long enough to brew some serious mass hate. Being white rednecks, the cops in St Louis are as aware of the coming "nigger war" as every white working class man I know. A sensible person does not want to see this happen. The people passing orders down the chain of command to the white cops to provoke the black people of Ferguson are visibly not sensible people. They're functioning from a belief system. What color is the problem? Black. What color is the solution? Red. Black people have seen this coming, yet they appear to me to be in collective shock seeing white racism take such a militant stance so quickly, so blatantly, and so without meaningful censure from higher up.

wayne white

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NOBODY GOING NOWHERE

vada by cheyanne

I don't know if the answer is ignorance, or if it is far-seeing foresight, or if it is trained into us over centuries and millennia, or if it is from feeling powerless without a voice, or maybe from collective experience, but the question is why do we lay about and hope a benevolent force will come to us from outside to rescue us from ourselves? The hope that flying saucers would rescue us from hard-edged absence of caring has been with us since the Fifties. A website, paoweb, has "updates by Sheldon Niddle," purportedly channeled from galactic federation wise counsel. I've looked at it occasionally over the last several years to find over and over that "first contact," when a mass landing will announce we are being watched over by beings more intelligent than we; they're just around the corner, any day now, soon now, coming to set us up in an ideal society under the galactic federation. Whatever. A few years ago, a definite date was announced. The date came and went. Oh, well, no problem. Some things were not in place they thought were in place and it turned out the timing wasn't right. Sounds like Fundamentalists announcing the end of the world and then it doesn't happen. There was a bunch in southern California some years ago who poisoned themselves because a comet was passing by and it was here to collect their souls. Sometimes I need some input like this to remind self that our inept government is not the only dysfunction going around. It galls me to think the people in DC actually represent us. They do not represent our interests, but they do represent the greed, the I'd-rather-be-watching-tv mind, readiness to lie to get what we want, the way we look up the ladder not down, our style of looking the other way when we see somebody down and out, our self-centered focus that says all for me, screw everybody else. In that way, they are a mirror to American motivations.

 

vada by cheyanne

 

Sparta has been down and out since the year 2000. It was limping along before, but since 2000, businesses go away, new businesses start up and go away. For awhile the talk was tourism, get people to come in here from other places to save us because we can't save ourselves. And factories. Maybe a factory will come here and save us. How much of that mind that we cannot save ourselves comes from religion, a totally different kind of "salvation?" An old joke came to mind. A man fell overboard from a cruise ship. He's in the water praying to God to save him. Somebody threw him a floating ring, but he wouldn't touch it, God's going to save him. He drowned and went to heaven. He asked God why God didn't save him when he was calling for help. God said, I threw you a floating ring and you wouldn't have it. I take it to mean an element of self-help and accepting help is part of the deal. Seems like if we take care of ourselves, the desperate prayer to God to fix us may not have to be so desperate. I like to live my belief that God's counsel, scriptures, are here to help me make my own decisions more in line with the reality of the moment and not feel the need for the Unknown to hurry up and save me from the results of my own dim-witted decisions. I believe that in this time, historically in the evolution of consciousness, the mental exercise of making decisions is important in the soul's growth and the brain's development. I never learned about decision making until I was away from parents who permitted no decision making. I came out of the experience dreading, afraid of making decisions, not having experience. Right away I made some disastrous decisions for myself because I did not know how to decide, how to be impartial. Up to age 23 I was ruled from outside myself; parents, marriage, military. The next 5 years after leaving parents were taken up by forces outside myself making my decisions. I gave myself to them. By the time I left the Navy and marriage at the same time, I was suddenly able to start thinking about making my own decisions, and became jealous of making my decisions. Nobody makes my decisions without my permission. Anyway, that was the dream. In this time of the life, looking back, I was then, and am able now, to hang on to original purpose.   

vada by cheyanne

I can't say I've always made the best decisions or even rational decisions, even sensible decisions, but somehow I've made it to today. I started college on my own, making decisions for myself. I was not aware in that time of the importance of decision making. This is hindsight talking about the importance of decisions. Then, I dreaded having to make any decision. Didn't know what to do. I was on my own first time like a dog that had lived on a chain since a puppy set free. The dog runs heedlessly in any direction chosen at random. It just runs. Inevitably, like a bird that escapes a cage does not know defensive flying and gets nailed by a hawk first day, the dog runs across the road in front of a car first day. I was determined not to be heedless with my freedom, which allows me to be sitting here today writing about it; otherwise, I'd have gone the way of the bird and the dog. Made some decisions I would not make today, explaining why I have a little bit of peace of mind in this time of the life. For one thing, I tried to learn how to be social, how to be charming at a cocktail party, how to be seen with the right set, shit like that. It never took. Never found comfort in a cocktail party. Then, I knew people I would totally stay away from now. Also, the other side of the coin, found a handful of the best friends of my life unto death do us part. Knew some wonderful people, too, people I recollect with warm feeling in the heart. It doesn't do to get in touch with people I have not seen since that time. They've gone to careers, families and new cars, bought the package. I've gone hillbilly, live on a back road with a cat, two donkeys, and drive a twenty year old car with rust places. I'm really at an ideal place in the life. I've lived the ideal that I don't want to impress anybody. I'm there. Nobody going nowhere. I don't impress anybody who lives by the way of "the world," the human mind. I need the freedom to let go and let God, as they say, let things around me happen their own natural way with the least of my interference. It may not be good husbandry, but it is how I'm comfortable.

vada by cheyanne

I have, I actually have held as a guiding light for self, to be somebody who does not impress anybody. I don't want people looking at me with the I'm-impressed look, or sucking up to me because I have power and influence, or wanting to rub elbows because I have more money than they do, or introducing me to people I don't want to meet, a great big expanse of expectations I don't want to pretend to live up to. I want the world of commerce and whatever else they do out there, that whole system of taking other people's money legally, I want them not even to know my name. I want them to see me the way they saw old man Sherman Scott who drove to town on his red-belly Ford tractor and wore his bib overalls and work boots to church. Just an old nuisance nobody much knows, he sees just a few people and stays to hisself, not looking for nothing but to live in harmony with neighbors, friends and the people he knows. Articulating it like this, in retrospect, I've made it. I spend my own time studying, learning, not in a structured, academic way. Like, for some reason I start wondering what is going on in China. What news we get about China is propaganda. So I start at zero. I know nothing about China. I found some contemporary Chinese films through netflix, found Chinese fiction and poetry through amazon, then wanted to read a history of China. Came upon the time of Genghis Khan. Two pages. All I knew about him was cliché stuff. He seemed awfully interesting in those two pages. I put the marker in the Chinese history and found a biography, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Found him much like King David; genocidal warlord, brilliant mind, a heart as big as Mongolia, became the Founding Father of the nation that formerly had been continually warring tribes. He really was a great man. This was a man who could jump on a wild horse and ride, only rode wild horses. This is how my study is done my way. A little bit at a time over several years, I'm familiar now with how people live in China. This just one of many veins I follow with no purpose but the guiding light of curiosity.  

cheyanne selfie

 

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