TO WALK THE RED ROAD

I feel more every day like I'm understanding the time Herman Melville was in before and while writing Moby Dick. He saw the nation dividing into factions that fell into hating each other unto wanting to kill the other by way of war. Corporate propagandists today have divided us into factions that hate each other. I can't tell if it is getting more intense daily or if I'm just recently aware of it. The division has always been there. It has never been a problem before, under the American belief that each man and woman has a right to their own way of seeing. We have been consciously divided by way of propaganda since 1980, a step at a time. Expressions of racism today have a hard edge of hate out in the open, arrogance. Before, the racism was the same, it was kept to oneself and one's circles. Much as I dislike seeing such vehement hatred out in the open and increasing, I also see that these dark shadows in a culture are the same as dark shadows in individuals--to be dealt with, we need to bring them to the surface to assess how to deal with them. Hatred surfaces, works itself up and needs to be burnt off by way of a fight or a war. War amounts to, essentially, burning off hate. The hate the right-wing media pumps into their audiences appears to me without conscience. Political ideologies don't do conscience. Neither do belief systems, nor corporate coups. I read Moby Dick made aware by Melville himself that hate was swirling in the political air of his time and he saw the American experiment, democracy, in peril. The white whale, white supremacy, broke and sank the ship of state, a democracy of people from all over the world, Captain Ahab dead and tied to the whale's side by harpoon ropes, Ahab a teabagger of the day without compromise.

I tried to read Moby Dick again a few years ago and could not get with it. I found John Huston's 1957 film of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck playing Ahab. It was a remarkable American film. Orson Wells delivered the sermon in the seaman's chapel. It was old-time New England Primitive Baptist style. I felt throughout Melville's story a civil war on its way. I feel the direction American politics has taken in this time is toward civil war. Again, the justification is immigrants of color. I have the division in myself. Last summer I came face to face, not by my choice, with Reaganista Supreme Parrot, the Congress person of my district in NC, who does not represent me in any way, Virginia Foxx. I felt like hell opened up and this presence emerged before my eyes. I backed away automatically. She put out her hand to shake and I could not touch her. I would have had to go straight home and soak my hand in kerosene to exterminate the cooties. I acted like I didn't recognize her, I, a demographic profile of a Fake tv viewer and Limbaugh listener. This angry old white man was angry with her. I could not speak. I froze inside. It was awkward and she handled it well, distracted herself with someone else. The next one paid no attention to the news, cared nothing about politics, had no idea who she was and did not care. She handed me a business card fancy with gold print, which I dropped in the trash soon after. Then took it back out of the trash, thinking it would go good with my collection of things it's really weird for me to have. 

Earlier in the day I was on the phone with my friend Lee, who lives in New Mexico. We talked some about how we both love this period of our lives the best of any other. We both like to stay at home, like being at home, prefer and enjoy the solitary life. In both our cases, we've become comfortable enough with ourselves we don't need to go looking for distraction. I stopped in at the grocery store for some coffee filters I forgot to buy two days before. At the register, from behind, a familiar voice, Hi. We spoke and hugged. She said, "What are you doing?" I would not let self say, Standing in line at the grocery store. Too redundant. I said, "Staying at home." She showed a long face like to say, Bummer. I said, "There is nothing sad about it." She said, "Really?" I said, "There's no place I'd rather be than home." She just accepted it, already knew I was weird. Glad our conversation was cut short by the momentum at the register, I said, Bye, and proceeded on my way. Somebody from the past, from a chapter that ended long ago, a few cycles back. Six years ago I trimmed down the people I see to the people I care about who care about me. In this time of the life, I know who those people are. I've done my time having superficial associations. I don't do it anymore, and don't care who it pisses off. I'm flowing with this cycle, happy with it, staying at home. I don't even like to cross the county line, except knowing I'll be back to sleep in my own bed. I have my purpose for coming to the mountains, which I am still living, and will go on living. This is the place I walk my spiritual path. It is the only reason I'm here. I don't mix socially, never have. Got the name arrogant on account of it, not my concern. 

I did a lot of spiritual reading for a lot of years and came to what all the masters had said, reading is not it. It is in experience. Paying attention to experience, living in the world as it is, allowing others to be themselves, allowing same with self. My spiritual reading in this time of the life has trimmed down to the Tao te Ching. It's all there in beautiful verse form. It's about honoring the god in others. It's about allowing God, not expecting of God. It's about allowing the flow, going with the flow, using the flow to find a tranquil life. And finding a tranquil life, allowing it. I never enter a lottery for fear of winning. I do not want money messing up my life. I'm able to meet expenses and have a little bit of fun too, quiet, at home fun like movies, reading, music, art projects, donkeys, and Caterpillar. The car runs good and all is well. I trouble my mind with news less and less, though continue to be traumatized when I give it any attention, disturbed every day at the rate American cops are killing black people, man, woman or child. It's shameful and shameless. I'm one of few people I know who think anything of it. And what can I do about it? Send a twitter? Leave a comment? I remind myself it's not my world out there on the news. It's not mine until the swat team breaks down my door and blows me away, saying, Whoops, wrong address. Shit happens. As long as my door is still on its hinges, I'll go on staying at home being a detached viewer.         

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MANIPULATING ILLUSION

It feels good to have the temperature up in the 50s for a change from in the 20s. Some people are talking like this is the end of winter, but I'm not going to count on that. Though global warming is ending winters sooner than before, still this is early March. Our blizzards come in late March. However, as we change toward warmer weather, when the blizzards happen will change too. I would like to see early March be the end of winter, but don't think I'll count on it this year. Maybe in a few more years winter will end this early. Winter is already ending a month before it used to. I'm grateful winters don't get as cold as they used to, start later and end earlier. As the people who study weather conditions are saying, the heat is set to go way up real fast in the near future. Is this why the rich are moving underground? Through Faux Noose the 1% keep the 99% fooled, at odds with each other and completely unprepared to save ourselves from the condition created by the 1% in process of draining resources from the 99%. We the American people have been plundered unto peasantry in my lifetime. It's weird to see, considering what I was taught in school about American government is every bit as irrelevant as evangelist Pat Robertson. In the time of Reagan I saw him making us into a Third World country. We are there. It has happened.

In this new century I see Latin America passing us by. Asia already has passed us. Europe is way out there beyond us. Africa will be passing us too. The wheel of fortune is turning, "What goes up, must come down, spinning wheel, spinning round." The Reaganista strategy of funnelling the money of the working people up to Cayman's Island bank accounts that are tax free, has pulled the rug out from We The People. Our whole nation is on the downward run. I can't help recalling CIA director with the Reagan Junta, William Casey's quote, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." So far, the Republican half of the population has fallen for the disinformation. With Faux Noose the Republican tv network, they ought to keep their idiocy to themselves. It looks really bad from outside the fold. They have become the "party of stupid" by believing their own disinformation. That's the funny part. I'm not going to tell them they have become self-defeating. They wouldn't listen anyway. I like seeing the party itself destroyed from within. The Republican party has become a cancer in American life. I'm glad to see the cancer they created is consuming them first. I'd like to see McConnell and Boner both put out in the next election. Of course, they'll be replaced by even worse than they are, but I won't have to see their ugly faces anymore and their deer-in-the-headlights eyes.

The party of stupid is holding back the rest of the country like the dumbest kids in class hold the class back for everybody else. The Republican party has become a ball and chain around the ankles of our country. If we have that many really dumb people, we don't have a chance. They want us uneducated so we'll be easier to manipulte. Plus, the uneducated tend not to vote. Working against education is Republican strategy to further block voting. They know as well as I know that voting doesn't matter, but it keeps the population believing in Santa Claus. Whoever wins an election is ruled by the 1%. All allegiance to the voters is over the moment the ballot count is announced. Running for election was playing pretend, and upon winning, the game continues to be pretend. Manipulating illusion. I question myself paying attention to them, and answer that I need to know that they are working against me, not for me. They hype that they're for me, but their actions show quite a different purpose. Again, white man's belief that he is superior to black man, Asian man, Latin man and all women is what is behind the Fall of America. The Reagan Junta was the puff of wind that started the fall of the tower of cards.

Herman Melville was writing in the 1850s that white man racism will bring down the ship of state. No one paid attention. The Civil War happened. Moby Dick wasn't read at all in this country. It was read and appreciated a little bit in London. It applies again today, again in a population that hasn't read Moby Dick and doesn't intend to. A century and a half later we're at the same place again, a nation divided unto civil war, the racists creating the problems and blaming the non-racist half of the white population called liberals. We, as a nation, do these things over and over because we, collectively, have no regard for history or education. To paraphrase Gore Vidal again, when the American people can't recognize stupid, we're done for. I've come to see it that alas, we do recognize stupid. It's what the majority wants. It's the Land of Oz, color tv round the clock, a hundred channels, only misinformation coming through the corporate media "news." Everything on television is saying: Stupid is beautiful. They say it's a big dumbing down of America, but I see dumb is what the population wants. It's American culture. White man is in crisis. White man has shown himself with no bottom to how low he will go to keep power over all other races and women. This is what I'm seeing happening in Congress and Senate, white man hysterical in crisis, so hysterical that they let their stupid hang out, like when you get so mad you start blubbering. Going by the pictures I see of Teabaggers, white man is very angry unto freaking out.


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