PEACE AND LOVE GO TO WASHINGTON

 

il papa surrounded by angels of death

 

Pope Francis continues to reward my attention. I find him inspiring. I was wary of him in the beginning. He spoke a good line and he appeared to be a practitioner of his belief. But, he is also the top of the pyramid of the greatest bureaucracy on earth, the original bureaucracy. Like it's hard to believe an honest man can be president of USA, it's equally hard to believe an honest man could become pope. I don't care about the Church and I don't care about organized religion. I am a pilgrim on my own path independent of masculine hierarchies and control by self-centered men who could not go to church unless "called by God" to be the center of attention authority and collect free money. I don't have to deal with money and membership, judgment, expectations, piety, pretense. I understand the value of getting together with others sharing a belief system, even value such moments. They are the people I feel true brotherhood-sisterhood with, immediately.

 

the man on the right has done lost it

 

I like to spend time with such friends, though I also like the company of people who think differently from my way. They keep me reminded that mine is not the only point of view. I feel like it is very important in this world to recognize and accept that everyone's point of view is valid. I'm not one to start a sentence, if everybody would....  The only thing everybody is going to do is ingest, evacuate and die. The rest of it is an infinite assortment of possibilities. Not everybody is going to stop saying the C-word or the B-word or the A-word or the N-word or the F-word. Not everybody is going to use their turn signal. Not everybody is going to be respectful of others. Not everybody is going to think twice. After two thousand years of the Savior telling his people not to be judging, it only hinders your own spiritual growth, it's like those words the same as have black censorship bars over them and no one knows what they were. Like the old feller said, "When I want to be judged I'll go to church."

 

 

 

All the advice from Jesus was such that if everybody did it, the world would be a better place. It's understood not everybody is going to do it. But if the devotee does it him/her self, applies a given principle to everyday life, it makes the devotee's world of people one lives among a better place. Put out peaceable vibrations into the world and peaceable vibrations return. Karma is the core of Christian teaching. Give peace, receive peace. Though it has been forgotten by now. Some years ago I was in Philadelphia visiting a Muslim friend I knew in the Navy, a jazz vibraphone player and devout Muslim. He had a different wife and we were both different from before, though we flowed together well, largely because our faith was similar. He introduced me to a Muslim brother or sister as not of the faith, but my faith was similar to theirs and embraced theirs. They welcomed me. I went to a mosque and was greeted as a brother. I found them beautiful people I felt happy and at home among.

 

 

He and I were wandering through the museum of Art in Philadelphia, and came upon an exhibit from western Africa of replicas of huts people lived in from different regions. I think it was Senegal we were passing when he spoke with an African man in a black suit standing beside the exhibit, who was with the exhibit. They spoke and found both were Muslim.  Friend also spoke Arabic. They embraced as brothers and were the same as brothers from the embrace onward. I thought: Wow, that's living peace. I can't help but find it interesting that the Muslim world is draining into Europe in such numbers they must be accommodated by necessity if not decency. I see it an injection of devout, peaceable people into societies that could use some peace. Of course turmoil will arise from racism and religionism. Europe's racism is on the verge of a test. Pope Francis in DC appears to be a spirit of peace in "that great city" where hate and greed are the order. He looks kind of pitiful surrounded by men in black with ear pieces, weapons out of sight though instantly accessible, well trained in the art of killing, everybody in the crowd a suspect. Alas, it's necessary in every city in the world.

il papa sequestered

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

POPE FRANCIS HAS LANDED

il papa

 

The pope is in America, riding about in a tiny Fiat in a sea of security in ominous Lincolns. He appears out of place in pictures surrounded by important Americans in expensive clothes, the masses herded behind a barricade. In Cuba he was out walking around greeting people, individually, praying with them. In America he's surrounded by military and power in suits, kept away from the people, a security risk. I saw a video of him walking from one place to another with a parade of security, a crowd of people the other side of an impenetrable fence cheering him. He looked at them, I imagined feeling impotent, like a cow in a stockyard led from gate to gate by the threat of an electric cattle-prod. The other side of the barricade huddled the Americans who interested him. He could not reach them, was not allowed to walk among them. Dangerous. I'm thinking he must feel like he's reading 1984. I feel like his only defense in the world of American power, where false is true and true is false, would be his humility. His center will hold. He is beyond desire, beyond seduction. I'm sure he does not have a sense of humor as jaded as mine, leading me to suspect he will be praying for us when I would be laughing. We need all the prayer we can get.

 

love pope by karl urbach-mallin

 

I can hardly wait til Thursday to see what he has to say to the American congress for the international record. The corporate marionettes will have a great time indulging their propensity for hissy-fits. This is the only thing I can see that's predictable. George Will goes on being a serious disappointment. Even back when he was the new voice of conservative punditry he was as screwed up as he is now in his advanced age. I had not paid him any mind in so long I forgot about him. Then he turned up today in a snit about the pope, writing fundamentalist nonsense, as usual, the reason I've never been able to take him seriously, or even read him. He's a good writer. It's the mind behind the writing I have issues with. Not really issues. I don't take him seriously enough to have issues with him. The republican reaction to the pope, presaged in Wills' prosecutorial accusations, need be of no more interest to me. Wills already spelled it out. 

 

 

Next is seeing it in action for the corporate propaganda show called the news, Meet the Press, jabber, jabber, jabber, Rachel Maddow yelling back at them, pointing the finger. Bill Maher is at risk of jumping into the deep end again. I'll be curious to see what humor he makes of America's encounter with Pope Francis from a proud and provoking gay atheist point of view. This particular pope, Pope Francis, in America in this time of corporate police state that holds Mammon highest, seems so out of place he will make great editorial cartoons, the little humble guy with raging morons on Fake news blaming him. To the pope, I imagine he feels like he stepped into the world of another religion as foreign to his own as Zoroastrianism or Hinduism, even more foreign, and far less gentle. The nearest he will see to gentleness could be the black servants. They would be the people he could connect with, eye to eye, the divine in me greets the divine in you.  

 

 

 

I never imagined in my lifetime I'd see a pope that did not support fascists. This is one of his many aspects that makes him a surprise pope. He will get all kinds of criticism, and of course, he must, as no good gets done without opposition, yet this man will prevail. He is unafraid. He is backed by the gospel. Not even a twisted interpretation of it. The American fundamentalist reaction will be so ridiculous, it won't even be comic. As in life, they do not matter. I'm more interested in what he has to say before congress and of his American experience. He will see much of what he sees in Rome, the rich and the poor and all the in between, American style, which, when you get down in among the people, is a very genuine style. We are a good and a genuine people on the whole, albeit aggressive and obnoxious with a passion for killing. We're complex. Some are this, some are that. We have some who like to get their brains bashed playing football for television and some who play string instruments in symphony orchestras all over the land. The Obamas show him respect. He will have delicious meals. His tour of Babylon will be on a soft cushion surrounded by an assault army.

 

 

 

 

*

 

MONEY GONE WEIRD

elizabeth murray

Fourthajuly everywhere, fireworks, explosions, talking heads remind us of wars and rumors of wars, freedom thanks to continuous war. Cheap talk about freedom runs year round like American elections, so much flag consciousness, narcissist nationalism, it makes me uncomfortable. The rest of the world leaves us to it the way a group of people allows the most self-centered among them, the one needing to be the center of attention at all times, allows him to rule. His time will pass. He'll self-destruct. Everybody bears with it and says, "Well, that's just how he is." He rules because his ego demands it, he has more money than anyone else. In America, money is the only measure of an individual's power. I have no money; therefore, I have no power. I have white privilege, though it's only good for a better chance than somebody black not to be killed by a cop. And I don't want the power that goes with money. I don't want to be looked up to for money. I want money to have no role in my life but legal tender for exchange, a form of energy---this energy for that energy. Beyond an exchange of energy, money gets weird. 

elizabeth murray

Social status in America has to do with money and money only. I imagine it's the same other places, so it appears in films from around the earth. Success is measured by money. Respect has to do with money, too. Among the mountain people, the working class, everyone rates basic human respect for mere existence. The middle class people moving into the mountains only respect people up the money-status ladder from themselves. This makes them obnoxious to the mountain people for their snooty arrogance toward people down the ladder. Of course, mountain people who climb the ladder never look down the ladder, either. It's the nature of the money-status hierarchy to want more, not less. Corny as the Beverly Hillbillies tv show was, it plays on the comedy of what hillbillies do when they tap into big money. They do, indeed, become comical, like Texans draped in gold, driving a Cadillac pickup. I never enter the lottery from fear of winning. I know a shit-load of money would make a mess of me. I'd have to give it away immediately, get it out of my mind and out of my hands.  

elizabeth murray

The system of money, status and power is American from all the way back to inspiration to cross the ocean. Making money overran a continent, drained it of its resources, squandered its profits and is left like a working-poor man who won the lottery and a year later is that much in debt. Something interesting is in the works. It's not yet on the surface visible. I'm thinking of an example of the process in the art world, like while abstract expressionism was having its moment, taught all over the country in university art departments as pure art, young artists were doing what was to become Pop and some others to become minimalism in the background, unknown, unanticipated. The artworks were being made over a period of years, shown in small galleries nobody outside New York ever heard of. Eventually, a few of the artists are heard of beyond New York, and a very, very few everybody knows, like Andy Warhol. In this time when the rich have taken all to themselves in off-shore, tax-free, numbered accounts, something unknown to outsiders is stirring. 

elizabeth murray

I can't help but think Bernie Sanders is coming from what's next. Greece, Spain and Puerto Rico are putting a strain on the old way. Something new is yet to come forward, though I doubt it is far away. Finally, the Pope, a Christian who appears to speak and make papal (infallible) decisions with attention to the true spirit of the Christ. The people who identify Christian, yet are quietly embarrassed by the Fundamentalist misuse of the identity, they must be feeling good to see the Pope Francis example take Christian back to where it has dimension beyond cartoon. Sanders, a politician talking straight, finds overwhelming support every appearance. Whether an honest man can make it all the way through the corridors of corruption to a win will be seen in its time. He gives me the appearance that he represents a rising wave of a population of people becoming aware they want their democracy and their economy back. I don't mean  to pretend to be a prophet. Sanders and the pope seem like two public figures speaking honestly in a time of deception, just when we needed them most. I wonder if they could be a sign more individuals of good faith are finding a forum.   

elizabeth murray herself

*

A LOOK AT POPE FRANCIS

pope francis

The new pope, Pope Francis, came from out of the blue as a meteorite that happened to fall by chance in Rome, Italy. Kinda like Superman. Pope Francis has shown himself to be a kind of Superman in that he has stood up to multiple centuries of tradition moving away from the gospel in a steady progression to the point of the Church standing on the verge of losing its credibility by clinging to medieval traditions too long. The world changed around the church, the scientific method for one thing, and our modern tendency for fact checking. Until Francis, it appeared to me, on the outside with no experience on the inside, the Church was bracing itself against the people rather than paying attention to them. Francis comes along, applies the teachings in the gospels, and sends a shock wave through the church, welcome to some, and a horror to many. Overnight, the Church went from sheltering child-molester priests and public denial to open recognition of a problem and doing something about it. To some points of view, they don't punish enough, but that's the fundamentalist belief in a God of fear and punishment. It tells me the God Pope Francis appeals to is the God of love and compassion. 

I've paid attention to the popes in my lifetime, not close attention, but to see who they really represent. Money, like every position of power on earth. I was disposed toward John 23rd for his apparent humility, but he turned out to be another apologist for the forces that beat people down. Frances enters the scene and right away is saying the American fundamentalists, who call themselves Christians, are "ugly pagans." Just last week he noted that people who make their money in the arms industry are hypocrites and can't call themselves Christian. He had something to say about the rich taking resources to themselves. A rich American Catholic publicly threatened him with putting his tithe money elsewhere. The pope the same as said, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. He stopped the use of the Vatican Bank by the Sicilian mafia for money laundering. He was warned it could be a fatal decision. He responded, what's he got to lose? Shortcut to the City of God. He doesn't like to wear silks or gold or red shoes. He doesn't want a gold throne. He doesn't want a papal suite of dazzlingly expensive furnishings. He wanted a small room with a bed, a desk and a lamp. He came on so true to the spirit, I've watched him out of curiosity to see if it's an act or from the heart. I've become convinced it's from the heart. 

Now I like to watch a man with big power of influence among the Roman Catholic people of the world talking something besides bureaucratic smokescreen. He is a relief to the eighteen year olds of the world who grow up being taught about honesty and good behavior, aghast at the hypocrisy in the adult world they're stepping into. Some cut their wrists, shoot themselves, OD, over inability to commit to a fake life in a world that rewards hypocrisy. I don't mistake the pope for having too much influence. American fundamentalists think the pope is the devil himself. The pope says global warming is a serious issue and they dig their heads deeper into the sand. He is a negative influence. The pope says God is in the heart, it confirms for the fundamentalists that God is on the other side of the clouds. The pope says God is love, it confirms for them God is fear. I imagine some Catholics are freaking out, the ones who have given their lives to greed and want justification. He points at the needs of billions of really poor people around the globe, drawing attention to them in a time of turning backs to the poor. American police brutality is reserved for the poor and black, the people without recourse, too poor to hire a lawyer. If one can get a lawyer, the cop will lie in court, the judge knowing it, and that's the end of it. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of his influence I see is that he is inspiring the people who take the church traditions for granted to think about what they believe, think about it in relation to how they live their lives. Do you live what you believe? Like somebody living on stock dividends of munitions corporations, he'd recommend they sell the stocks and put the money in business not so destructive, like solar. I've an idea it will mostly amount to something else to feel guilty about, like birth control. Pope is, after all, a bureaucratic role. I'm sure he's had his fill of it by now and has learned how to flow with it. Francis has turned out to be a pope I admire unreservedly as I admire the Dalai Lama. I like seeing that Christendom has such a figure. The fundamentalists who usurped the word Christian to themselves have given all other Christians a bad name. I've wondered how long Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, would put up with the gross misuse of their own identity as Christian. So far, I suspect it's been a matter of ignore them and maybe they'll go away. One thing about it, the fundamentalists are so far off the beam of what it means to be a Christian that I feel like they are inspiring the other people who figure as Christian to question their own commitment to love, compassion, understanding. Pope Francis has stepped forward to remind the whole world of Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant, that helping the poor is what Christians do. My feeling is il papa has caused serious thought to echo through Christendom for some time yet to come. Ultimately, he could be the cause of a welcome reformation inside the Catholic Church. He inspires people outside the church as well as inside. I can't help but find it curious why such a pope came forward in this time.

il papa

*

VIVE CHARLIE

The air is full of Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week. At first, it was shock. Now, everybody has an opinion about what somebody should have said they didn't say, or the other way around. Somebody said or did something racist. Surprise. Whoever heard of such? Francis the new pope said something I took for fairly rational and pundits are making him out for a fool, doesn't know what he's talking about. He said something like free speech, like everything else, is good in moderation. To insult somebody's faith is using free speech to harm. He didn't condemn it or say there oughta be a law. He simply noted that speech has the capacity to be harmful. In my way of seeing it, the boomerang of karma came around. Muslim fundamentalists are hyper sensitive to their belief system of absolutes being challenged, the same as American fundamentalists. They're right and everybody else is wrong. To quote Mitch McConnell, "Period." Those people are humorless and of zero tolerance. The Charlie Hebdo people were challenging intolerant absolutists. OK, so that's not PC, but it doesn't matter when they have AKs. If there were a Muslim satire magazine in Los Angeles that shamed American fundamentalism with in-yer-face laughter and mocked Jesus, consequences would be inevitable. In Paris, they're talking like freedom of speech is important. Hearing it with American ears, such talk sounds old-fashioned, like questioning capital punishment, the 1950s. I remember my ears perking up when I heard the talk about the importance of freedom of speech. I can imagine Obama paying it lip service in a rally-round-me speech that, like other American political speeches, has no meaning whatsoever, but as smoke screen for what they're not saying. I wondered if French politicians were not as sophisticated as American, or if American were not as sophisticated as French. Seeing the American part from the inside, I already know our politicians have no sophistication at all. American politicians come from an anti-sophistication people.

I suspect the French have not yet been taken over by corporate mind control. That they have television tells me the probability is not far away. All I know about the French is from French writers and art films. I love the French je ne sais quoi that characterizes French art in all its forms. To me, French is a culture, a sophisticated culture. I don't know if the French appreciate their artists any more than the Americans don't appreciate our artists. I've noticed in films, the French are quick to say, of course, something inhibited in American talking. I can't say conversation. We don't do conversation in America. We do distraction. We talk. An old country saying, a dog is barking to hear its head roar. We talk to hear our heads roar. We are characterized by willful a-literacy. It felt heartening to hear a Frenchman talk of the freedom of speech as something important and sound like he meant it. I wondered if he might be ahead of the times or behind the times. The trend seems to be going away from freedom of speech. The North Korean reaction to the American film, Interview, made fun news. Like all laws, they are for court, after the fact. Abusing somebody with freedom of speech, legal in court, will create a reaction. The reaction will make the abuser cry persecution. The pope left out when you mock someone's faith, a wrath will come back to you in a form you don't want. In Paris, the satirists were walking a knife's edge and they knew it. They were stirring volatile people, fundamentalists, and they knew it. It was their purpose. It's not my place to point out blame. It seems to me a natural law that what goes around comes around. Provoke just about anybody, you will get a reaction in proportion to the hurt delivered. To mock one's faith is below the belt. The return will be below the belt. They knew they were taking a chance. One day death walked in the door dressed in black. 

I'm not saying the Charlie Hebdo people should have done anything differently. There is no should about it. They made their decision, acted on it. Someone else made a decision and acted on it. The reaction I'd call overkill, but it makes a measure of the hurt the satire delivered. My feeling is Muslims are regarded in Paris about like black people are regarded in any American city. The Muslims resent being shunned. They are proud people too. When something extreme happens, they would quite naturally react in extreme, and through a few volunteers do what everyone else wants to do, but can't allow themselves. Another old saying, It's the weak link in the chain that breaks. I call the satirical cartoonists brave people, knowing they were aware of the danger. I take them for people who like the edge, people who climb Himalayan mountains solo. I have freedom of speech, but I don't use it to provoke others with disrespect. I don't do it, because I know something I don't want will come back. This is partially why I am not a satirist. Even if I were, I would not mock Krishna to Hindus or Zoroaster to Parsis. I would not mock Martin Luther King to disrespect black people. This is the difference between me and a satirist in an extreme time. I don't mean to deny them their right. It's just that I don't want the consequences for such action to come back on my head. This is why I align myself with the pope's thinking on the matter. Free speech is a good thing, but push it too far and, like anything else, it breaks. Had they lived, they would have won in court. In America, it's legal for the False News Network to tell fake news. A case of freedom of speech gone awry. Generating hate like they do will inevitably come back on them. The fake televangelists get their fraudulent tax-free fortunes, then are publicly discredited for private indiscretions. They point the finger at everybody else. The turn-around comes and all fingers point at them. I felt like what the pope wanted to say was something like consequences follow words and actions, but it sounds too callous to speak from on high. I think he was talking about self-editing with consideration of others in mind, living in peace.      

        

Fifties comedian Lenny Bruce pushed the obscenity laws and suffered for it. There again, I would not have been one to push the obscenity envelope. It doesn't matter that much to me. The Sixties band, the Fugs, pushed the obscenity laws and spent about all the money they made as a band in court defending obscenity charges. There again, it's not my issue. The satirists in Paris were pushing an envelope of zero tolerance with dangerous consequences. I think of Paris with a large North African underclass, people there for political and survival reasons, every one his and her own story. My first feeling when I heard about the Charlie Hebdo incident was sadness that artists were shot down. Gentle people who don't settle issues with guns. One thing it said to me was art matters. In this country, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ caused a furious backlash. It didn't fire somebody up to assassination, but might have. I remember when Giuliani kept his name in the news for a week over a painting in the Brooklyn museum with a couple of balls of elephant dung, painted, hanging from strings. It was called Madonna. She was black. It offended his faith mixing a black mother of God with elephant shit. He failed in his efforts to have it removed from the show, but that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was his name in headlines. Jesse Helms made headlines attempting to censor Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. He failed, but it drew plenty of attention to himself. I would not drop a crucifix into a jar of piss to make an artistic statement. I can see what Serrano was about, and defend his right to do it. He was pushing the envelope, seeing how far he could go. What it did for Serrano's art was make him famous overnight. I'm all for these people pushing the envelope further and further. I may not want to provoke a backlash, but I defend the right of anyone who wants to. It feels good to see the remaining staff at Charlie Hebdo sold out their edition of three million right away and printed two more million, then two more million. It appears this experience has boosted their determination.

*  

  

CELEBRITY ROLE MODELS

andy warhol

Earlier, I watched a half hour talk by young actor Jack Gleeson of some pop tv show I've never heard of and don't want to see. He spoke to the Oxford Union about celebrity, this new role in life he fell into unawares. He was insightful. He spoke as himself and as celebrity. He analyzed what celebrity means in our society, role models largely, though he hesitated to see himself as a role model, when all he's wanted to do was to be an actor. Of course, he wanted celebrity status too, but had no idea what he was getting into when the role of celebrity came to him. I felt like he fell short of what he wanted to say. He lost himself in the forest of his mind and research, a talk written in another place and time, the night before, possibly in a hotel room, where one follows mind in one context, then at the place he's meant to give his presentation, it's an entirely different context from the one he'd projected for himself in the writing. I sat through the whole half hour of his talk. It held my attention. Not long after, I saw where Pope Francis ordered the distribution of 400 sleeping bags with papal insignia to the homeless of Rome. Swiss guard and volunteers distributed them, driving around the city in a van looking for people to give the sleeping bags to. I thought, a conscious role model gesture from a celebrity using his celebrity status to call attention to the people who need help. I admired him again. At first, I thought it a bit corporate having Vatican insignia on them, then rethought: the people who receive these sleeping bags will prize them as personal gifts from il papa, holy sleeping bags. 

These are humble people, more than likely all of them Roman Catholic, who hold il papa the highest. It's a refreshing bit of news. His celebrity status is a role model for many, and some of them will repeat the gesture in different cities of the Western world. He encourages people who pay attention to him to be kind to the poor, to see that poverty is a miserable existence. He has already reformed the Catholic church with his own humility. He has a charisma no other pope or public religious figure in my lifetime has had. He extends himself to the poor, not the rich. Kinda upside down and backwards in the world as it is today. I wonder if he might be a light in the darkness. I don't know if any popes in the past have had his compassion. It seems both odd and necessary that a celebrity religious figure who cares for the poor would be in ascendance in this dark time for a world of people living in spiritual poverty. America that calls itself a Christian country hates the poor. The poor are not beloved in Europe either. In a time when only celebrities have voices, it's refreshing to have a papal celebrity who wants to live the teachings of his Master. Like Bob Marley, he's too popular to assassinate. It's fun to know that he is burning the American so-called Christians a blister. They have him identified as Satan in human form. Help the poor? Satanism. Half a century ago, it would have been communism. Enabling the good-for-nothings. Get a job. Great idea. Know anyplace that's hiring somebody who needs mental health care? Get them off the streets, put them in prison where they're abused and given AIDS, often end up in solitary for inability to contain emotions. I hear Fifties comedian Dave Gardner in my head saying, When a man's down, kick him. 

andy warhol

The few times I've seen American Idol, I've been in awe seeing these young people so desperately appealing for celebrity status and a chance to be rich, wanting to be a product, the next Britney Spears and Michael Jackson. Listening to Jack Gleeson talk about role models, I was recalling the time when I was taken with pop star celebrities for role models. Bob Dylan was a good role model for me. He went his own way, struck out in a new direction several times. Pete Seeger wanted Dylan to be the one to take folk music mainstream and Dylan went electric with rock. I think I've used Dylan for a model in my readiness to change my art form from time to time. When what I'm doing gets boring, I change and do something else. I knew intuitively in childhood that my life would be one of many big changes. I've made it a point to be open to the changes and to flow with them. Dylan has been an encouragement to honor my own changes. A guiding light in that way. A celebrity role model. Henry Miller, too, was a celebrity role model. I liked Miller's moral code, his willingness to let go and see what comes next, his writing most of all, his engagement with the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. I learned from Miller that the people immediately around me in my world are every bit as important as celebrities. It's been among the most valuable learnings of my life. It has opened the door to a lot of people I might not otherwise have appreciated. I learned from Miller that interesting people are everywhere around. Nobody is writing their biographies, but they all have unwritten biographies. I learned much appreciation of others from Henry Miller, as well as appreciation of solitude. It's an interesting subject, the influence of celebrities as role models. It's something I never think about. I can't help but think it would be a horror to be a celebrity. I'm happy on Waterfall Road pursuing my own interests. 

andy warhol

About the most foolishly flattered I'd ever been was when I was asked for an autograph taken for Mick Jagger. The kid was so disappointed when his star sighting turned out to be a dud. I laughed in embarrassment, embarrassed because I was so flattered. I'm laughing that same laugh right now. This would have been 1967 or 8. Now I'd do good to be taken for Walter Brennan. Even then, I didn't look any more like Mick Jagger than Willie Nelson. I think of the Rolling Stone song, Star, that's what you are. One of the great songs about celebrity status. And another Stones lyric, it's the singer not the song. In the old-time way, it was the song, not the singer. Now it's the other way around. It's another time, another experience, another cosmology. I've seen the celebrities of my past fade into history, like Frank Sinatra and Elvis. A few years ago in the grocery store a girl at the register had a name that was a Chuck Berry song. I mentioned the Chuck Berry song. She said, Who's Chuck Berry? I knew then I was in another time zone. Our celebrities change so fast and the role model they manifested is in new faces and names, new ones for each generation. They make us think we're cool for being aware of them. I find in this time of the life when I hear the Rolling Stones as a band of musicians making music, I hear the music better than I ever did when I was listening to stars. Baby Vada, 3, already is enchanted with Elsa, the princess in the children's movie, Frozen. Crystal took her to see the ice show in Greensboro, Frozen on Ice. Elsa waved to the audience in Vada's direction and made Vada's show, "Elsa waved at me!" Vada has an Elsa dress she dresses up in and runs around the house a princess. 

andy warhol by andy warhol

*

A RHYTHM OF PEACE

I've fallen into a continuum of being awake, being asleep, days go by and from time to time I need to know the date. This is what calendars are for. I keep one with big numbers on the kitchen wall to consult when I suddenly need to know the date. It becomes a nuisance to look up the date and a bigger nuisance to keep up with it. It seems like there comes a place where alternating states of awake and asleep make a rhythm of their own and it's all one nameless stretch. Awake and asleep become like waves on the beach; water advances, water recedes. I like this rhythm. It feels like the rhythm of the old-time days, working on the farm, working by seasons and daylight. The calendar has its place on the wall, a document that keeps us in sync with everyone around us by way of agreed upon time. The Atomic Clock is civilization's official time keeper, gives us divisions of the earth's rotation so we can coordinate time in a way that is agreed upon all the way around the globe. The clock is the closest device we have to being able to see time, as far as I know. Like gravity, time is invisible. Gravity is measured in weights. Time is the spinning of the earth spiraling around the sun, the moon going around the earth, and the bigger transit of the sun spiraling in the Milky Way galaxy. Hence, astrology, given that cosmic arrangements of planets are in a continuum of change, never two nanoseconds the same. As in our lives where change is the nature of the continuum. Like cigarette smoke rising into spirals, the spirals in turbulence, the spirals in water flow. Another vision of as-above-so-below. 

My friend Carole and I have come into a place of living by light, dark, weather. When things are going my way and I have no appointments in town, I like the rhythm of awake awhile, asleep awhile. I sleep when I feel like it, night or day, am awake night or day as I feel like it. It's not very ambitious living. It separates me from the rhythms in everybody I know. Add to the list television that separates me conceptually from everyone around me, given exceptions. I can go with the core of the religion around me, but not the trappings. That I have to swear to believe immaculate conception, I cannot. I don't care. I don't care if Jesus was born biologically or mythologically. His life is more important to me than his death. His message of love is the only reason to know about Jesus. That he walked on both land and water is cool, but love was his only reason for being. The trappings make the followers into a herd of sheep. Love frees one from the herd and sets the seeker on one's own pilgrimage, whatever form or path it takes. Each one is unique, leaving no room for s'posed-to, and no being held back by a committee. I see a headline about Joe the Plumber saying Obama girls are promoting gangs. It doesn't annoy me anymore that ignorance is front and center. When I look at the progression of American public education and the progression of American politics, I'm surprised by no extreme degree of ignorance. Our politicians are corporate stooges. They are not put in place for any reason but their ignorance, they truly do not know right from wrong, people easily told what to do and eager to go along, fame and money, glitz and glamour, face-lifts, looking like a mummy in old age. 

My purpose leaving the world of commerce and committing to rural life on a remote road in the mountains was to find a way to live "in the world, not of it." First thing, I had to define for self what is meant by "the world," which took some years. Finding the place to draw the line between world and not-world gets subtle and at once obvious. I gradually came to The World is the world created by human mind, the not-natural world. This includes everything from architecture to music to religion to spiritualism to art to getting up in the morning. Everything. Duality. Ok, this is the world I want to live in, but not of. I can see I'm in it, the playing field. Then I had to figure out what OF meant. Attachment comes to me first. Ego. It's ego that wants to attach to things, ideas, agendas, purposes, and again, everything. I took it that letting go of attachments is a way to not be of the world. I didn't know why it was important to me, but that it is universally said to be the way, the path. I had no idea of why, except figuring there must be something to it. By now after years of mentating on the issue and allowing the super-conscious to search on its own while mind is distracted by the world of commerce, getting basic bills paid, I feel like I have some insight, a little bit. It's about inner peace. Attachments of my past have fallen away due to waning interest. Turns out attachments worry the mind. 

I used to want stuff for myself, paintings on the walls, books, music. Now I have more than I want. I want to get rid of stuff, wants of the past. Like I want to keep a copy of Pinocchio in the house, knowing I'll never read it again, but love it so much as a story I like seeing the spine of the book on the shelf. It's a reminder of the story within. I like seeing the spines of books on shelves, titles I've read and remember in a nanosecond my feeling about the content. I see the poetry of WB Yeats and feel a soft glow in the heart. Three months in London in 1972, I carried a paperback of Yeats poetry in a pocket, reading in it every day on "the tube." In that way, a book is, indeed, a friend. I want now to keep the donkeys comfortable, Caterpillar comfortable, and want the well-being of my friends, want them all to have a good life on their own terms. I have to pull back from wanting a reasonable government. That hope is over. Learning from the nature of the world to step back and let it go by, the world of treachery and me-first, I let the people that want to partake of it have at it. I see news about police brutality, killings and mayhem in general, and look out the windows at the green world, the birds, the squirrels, the donkeys, the meadow, thinking, this is peace. I see the occasional car go by on Waterfall Road out the windows, the road of peace. I tell myself none of the nonsense in DC applies here, nor do the Koch brothers, except in destructive ways that apply to the future. As long as they're not bombing Waterfall Road and a SWAT team isn't breaking down my door with guns blazing, the wrong address for a meth lab, I live in peace. Waterfall Road can exist in a condition of peace because the road, like the country Costa Rica, has nothing of value to corporate mind.  

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GRUMPY OLD BASTARD LIKES THE POPE

I put off going to town today until after 4. Necessary to go to grocery store for catfood, carrots for donkeys, and may as well pick up items for self, granola bars, bananas, apples, paper towels, Bounty, the only kind I'll buy because they work, peanuts, a cranberry-grape sugar drink with "no sugar added," ice cream Klondike bars with a polar bear logo, something to nibble on while writing, reminding me that polar bears are on their way to extinction but for zoos. African elephants may be extinct soon but in zoos. The gorilla is on its way to extinction. So curious. And what can we do? Nothing. I once knew a woman for a short time who worked in Rwandan refugee camps and other African refugee camps, mostly burying bodies with a shovel. Several years of it made her gaunt and took the light from her eyes. She was serious, wanted to do something to help, wanted to help the suffering. She couldn't change it, but she could do her best to assist survivors of international horrors. It broke her spirit. She entered a short-lived, disastrous marriage hoping to rehabilitate herself living rurally in America, the Appalachians, with a guy who lived simply, grew his own vegetables and hunted his own meat. Except he was crazier than she was. She jumped out like the frog dropped into boiling water. I hated to see her go, but was glad for her she cut and ran instead of sticking around being miserable. She was already miserable. She wanted to rest from it. She comes to mind when I feel impulses to want to do something about the vast horror show of extinctions going on and genocides and people hating each other for mere existence. It is possible that too many parasites can kill their host. After how many thousand years of religion as an ongoing part of civilization and pre-civilization does it take for humanity to get it?

People calling themselves Christian spew hate predictably like Old Faithful blowing steam. They're the most hard-hearted people around and they point the finger at the rest of us (three fingers pointing back at themselves). When I meet somebody with a hard-hearted attitude, I know right away its a Christian. Not a Catholic, not an Episcopalian, not a Lutheran, not a Methodist, not a Presbyterian, but a Christian. This is behind my Woody Allen quotation in the column to the right. Jesus really would not ever stop throwing up if he were to come back and look at what was being done in his name. For once, the Catholics have a pope who expresses compassion and caring for down and out people, maybe first one since the beginning, one who wants to dress simply and know people, wants to be in among the people around him, to feel their lives, their living spirit. His eyes glow with love as do his sayings. Strange to see the top dog bureaucrat in the original bureaucracy is of a sincere heart. He sets himself up for assassination going against the Sicilian mafia and says, What have I to lose? So I leave the body. I will be free. My jaw drops to witness such a man in the papacy. Some say he speaks truth, but does he live it? He gives the appearance that he does. He won't wear red shoes. He wears the simplest garment allowed a pope, wants a simple room for himself. He has been elevated by his character to a place where he can make a difference to the poor by appealing on their behalf as infallible authority to a rather large population. He may yet be offed for so much emphasis on the poor, the billions of people having a rough go of it all day every day, hungry and no help coming from anywhere;. The poor have been his lifetime concern like some people are concerned for pandas and ecology. I continue to be in awe that such a man would even be considered for pope. He's pissing off the rich Catholics and alienating important (translates: self-important) people everywhere in the world. He's a rebel.

Pope Francis came to mind as someone who has a position he can use to make a difference appealing to the higher self of the people who look to him and to many who do not look to him. He's the only pope of my lifetime I'd like to meet. But then, why? If I admire what he does, I can find in myself a way to "make a difference," whatever that means. I don't have money to give to the poor. Hell fire, I'm one of the poor. That's by American standard, not by the Zimbabwean standard or the Somalian. I don't know what I can do to help the poor people in my world. When I come face to face with somebody who is poor, I don't turn away. I regard the poorest people I know with even higher respect than the well off people I know. In fact, the poor people I know get a great deal of my respect. They have hard lives that I can't change. I work with the Hillbilly Show in Sparta to raise money to help some people of the county in need. We can't take care of everybody, but we can help some. We're a dozen devout believers, each in our own way, who come together in agreement that we can do something toward giving an assist to people who need help. Sometimes I give money to somebody asking for it and sometimes I don't. An individual's worth, to me, is in who the person is, character. The wealth factor is just a way of life. I prefer the company of working people, the working poor. I came to the mountains wondering what it was about the poor that God loved so much. Some years of living in the world of the working poor and having known about as many truly poor people as I've known very well off, I find the well off are better educated, experienced in the social graces, dressed up pretty with every hair in place, and every suit showing its price tag. The poor are every bit as obsessed with money as the rich. And the poor are stuck wherever they're living, unable to afford to move someplace else, like the rich live near the source of their income. The poor have nothing to fall back on but God, while the rich have money. They're God liberated.  

I've never known where I stood in the matter of being a benefit to the poor. I see so much going on around the world that is creating human misery, animal misery, misery to all life, poisoning the worms in our lawns, poisoning the ants with lethal food that kills the whole colony. Roundup spray for weeds is the first thought now, like Raid for bugs. All this happening at such an alarming rate, it's looking like the momentum is going in an obvious direction, everybody sees it. We're like watching it on tv. Even the news on television is fantasy. What can I do to stop the Japanese from killing whales? How can I turn the rising temperature of the ocean? Our politicians are on the take. That's the long and the short of it. They're no good to us. They're a large part of the problem. The part that floors me is that everybody in the congress and senate and supreme court is college educated. They don't sell a college education any better than Michele Bachmann sells Jesus. A large number of them have law degrees. I look at them and listen to them and think: What? An educated man who speaks like a fool. So many of them. What is it about our educational system that doesn't educate stupid out of people? It seems like transcending stupid would be a matter of education, but these people are educated and, as we say in these hills, dumber'n shit. It is surely the end of the American Empire when our representatives only represent our ignorance by acting it out publicly. I know there are intelligent people in this world, a lot of them, but they're staying out of sight in this time. This is the age of ignorance in the driver's seat, the Reagan Revolution 34 years into its purpose, ignorance its trump card. Ignorance has taken over our government from local to state because intelligent people are staying out of it. It takes low intelligence to want to be a politician in this time, and a very real inner cheapness. Our "leaders" are not respectable in this time, except in fake ways. My answer for myself on where I want to aim my respect is never for wealth or the show of wealth, but for individuals with compassion in their attitudes.  

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THE POPE AND THE UGLY PAGANS

Earlier, I set out to watch Kurosawa's 1961 film, Sanjuro, his take on a samurai slasher film. It started putting me to sleep. Took a nap. Watched an hour of it and couldn't handle it anymore. For one thing, maybe I've seen too many samurai slasher films, but that's not it. That just increases my appreciation for a really good one like 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike. I'd seen Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, the films of Kurosawa's samurai series before Sanjuro. This one just didn't click with me. I felt like it would have made a comic stage play with stylized pretend slashing with Star Wars light sabers. I'd like to see that. Sanjuro had too much running and hiding, a bozo bunch of sidekicks with the bold samurai that might have worked in 1961, but it doesn't hold my attention now. I turned it off and went back to bed to get out of the cold. I have heat, but the floor is cold and sometimes I feel like a barefoot Sherpa climbing a Himalayan mountain. I have on some warm sox and some warm houseboots that make a difference. I lay in the warm bed listening to an NPR hour-long show of three people telling experiential stories before audiences. It was an attention-holding hour of three people talking what we call some real shit. Wrapped up in my favorite blanket I thought of a few of my friends I saw earlier in the day, stories they could tell, stories I could tell, everyday life moments that matter for one or several of an infinite number of reasons.

 

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I see trends in our television society that I often find heartening in that they acknowledge our humanity. We have well-intended political correctness as a regimen, the ABCs of popular self-censoring. I've realized the republican strategy of using people like Cruz, Palin, Bachman, and a host of others like them, worms that crawled out of the pit of ignorance to infect others with their disease, is based in the predictable rule of thumb that people of lower intelligence levels vote republican. Their appeal is  their ignorance. They appeal to the people of below average intelligence. It's sad to see, but it's always been that way. It's just that Karl Rove brought it to the surface and used it politically. Of course, Ted Cruz does not appeal to anyone with any sense. It's not what his role is about. He stirs up ignorance. So much activity is from the dark side in the capital of the nation and every state, it gives evidence that the only purpose is money, Mammon is worshipped. The new pope nailed it when he called wealth the new golden calf. He has spoken to the world that American fundamentalism is an illness. It is funny in a time when the police state of the world destroys governments and infrastructures of Latin American countries, impoverishing their people, to keep them under control. It was known at the time, and in all time since, that American's bombed Allende, the popularly elected president of Chile, in his office in Santiago, a bomb from a plane aimed at his office. The world looked the other way. USA put fascist Pinochet in power and destroyed Chile such that it will take decades to a century for it to come back, and killed Nobel Prize poet Pablo Neruda. For corporate interests.

 

 

 

Reading the public words spoken by the new pope, Francis, is so refreshing they make tears run down my face, tears of joy. The contrast with the force that has power over the American people is such that it shows our entire way of life, the American belief system, the American Dream, to be from the dark side, Mammon. The pope has even brought up Mammon. Our American government and media are coming so much from the dark side in this time that speaking the views of Jesus publicly has rich catholics threatening him with leaving the church out of their tax-deductible charitable giving. This pope might say something like, Get behind me Satan,  if pushed to it with such threats. He said that the people who call themselves Christians and accumulate wealth are "ugly pagans." He's sweeping out the trash. I never imagined in my lifetime seeing a pope as anything other than the top dog in the worlds original and greatest bureaucratic hierarchy. This one appears to have read the gospels. He's a pope who inspires with his truth. Whoever heard of such a thing? Every time I see a new quotation from him it takes my breath that someone in a position of international authority is talking anti-fascism. I don't even need to question what American fundamentalists are going through being called by the pope on the evening news an illness. The funny part is that from their point of view, he's the devil himself. For their sakes, would that he were.

 

 

Now he's saying that hell is a concept of the past, that a loving God would not have such a place. He's speaking from papal infallibility, which he actually may be instrumental in changing. It seems like something he'd do. I won't even let my mother talk to me about it. Hearing it would be a repeat of what I already know. It's Satan, himself, talking. That's all. I don't see the American fundamentalists being moved very much by what the pope said about them. They will wear it with pride and  become even more so, because the devil called them an illness. I don't know and don't want to know, but I see them in my mind's eye making this pope out to be the anti-Christ. I don't want to hear the preaching on the subject, because I already can. He says they can't call themselves Christians and continue to refuse to help the poor. He points out that helping the poor is what Christian is about. Not this side of the Atlantic. I don't think it is that side of the Atlantic either. Won't it be fun to see helping the poor American style. Corporate logos everywhere. This box of instant oatmeal brought to you by Calvary Bible Church in association with Exxon, sign here that you've never had an abortion. I've never held the pope up high, as I did not grow up Catholic, but I've paid attention to the papacy because it was so visible and so in free fall in this time. Pope Francis is something like a parachute opening. I'd like to see a world-wide grassroots trend creep into action everywhere of Catholics reaching out to the poor. I would never anticipate American fundamentalists  doing something the pope said is the Christian thing to do. 

 

 

 

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WHITE SMOKE OVER THE VATICAN

 

 

 

 

I don't know what it is about the papacy that holds my interest, albeit a disinterested interest. I have dim affection for the Roman Catholic religion as far as I know. The Church appears to me to do the reverse of the spiritual intent behind the symbolism. Gold representing whatever, white representing whatever, red representing whatever, lace representing whatever. Outfits from Roman times that are made of incredibly expensive cloth with personal tailors. Recalling a Lou Reed song that had the line, Pontif, pretty Pontif, spoken in Reed's sassy suburban teenage sneer tone of voice. I think it was somewhere on his New York album. When I hear it, I feel a twinge of empathy for il papa without knowing why. I tend to see the Roman Catholic Church the original bureaucracy, the original hierarchy, the original monopoly, the original dictatorship, the original international corporation, straight-jacket bound in a couple thousand years of tradition plus all the way back to goddess, tax-free wealth beyond the Cayman Islands, outrageously expensive (sacred) objects of gold. I left out the original conqueror of the New World sponsoring the slaughter of New World residents as too heathen to exist. For the gold. For the gold only. The Inca and Aztec civilizations were plundered to extinction for their gold taken back to the Crown and the Church. The North American people were slaughtered by Protestants to get them out of the way. Then it might be said, the Catholic approach was to kill them and take their gold, while the Protestant approach was to kill them for the thrill in the killing.  

 

In a paragraph, that's a summary of how I see organized religion. The more organized, the worse. The most organized, the worst. I have the Protestant perspective from the start of seeing the pope as just a man. As just a man, I can appreciate il papa. That's it. That's where I appreciate the pontif. When I saw pictures of old Pope John bent over, unable to hold his head up, looking like a case of dementia, I felt empathy for him. He's just a man, but he's pope for life. If it takes all he can do to raise his hand and give the papal wave, he's pope for life. As long as he's living, he's pope. When old Benedict went in, looking way too much like the actor who played the Emperor in the Star Wars series, I felt sorry for him right off. He looked small and frail. Saying so soon he was unable to keep up with the papacy's regimen, the doctor having told him not to travel anymore, I could see he was in the early phases of frailty. He recognized it and saw that the Church needed a fresh mind to walk it through this next span of papal time, not somebody fading into frailty and dementia. It looks like the Church is going to be walking on hot coals for some time to come.

 

 Lawsuits over child abuse from everywhere in the world have the potential to put the Church's outlandish wealth in jeopardy, perhaps into sales at international auction houses of wardrobes of popes past and infinite amounts of gold. When Wall Street starts sniffing at the leavings, look out. This period of time could put the Holy Roman Church out of existence, turn the Vatican into a museum of itself maintained by Friends of the Vatican. It could take a long time to liquidate the assets. I want to see the Vatican art collection I've heard is kept away from public view for various reasons for multiple centuries. It's said to have dollar value through the roof. When the buzzards are picking at the carcass, the dollar values told on evening news, in news magazines, money magazines, tv talk shows, will shock the world, make the Church look as materialist as the Americans. And this is where I have the problem with the Church. All their symbolism is about a Romanesque display of wealth and an Egyptian belief in the physical body. Big gold rings for the faithful to kiss on the bishop's hand. Phew. Give me a break. This is the few controlling the many.

 

 

 

 

I see the display of wealth and imagine a million times beyond what I can imagine, and there we have more symbolism. Wealth as infinite as the universe, therefore sacred. Give it unto Jesus. Jesus doesn't want that detritus. That's the stuff of the human mind, the stuff he took a human shape to help us get control of in ourselves, individually, to see that aint it. Then I see swarms of cardinals dressed in red billowing gowns like from Gone With The Wind, buzzing around il papa in multiple thousands of dollars worth of outfits apiece. And this is about Jesus? Jesus attired himself in his culture's equivalent of bluejeans and a tshirt. He didn't need scepters nor necklaces nor silk underwear nor million dollar mafia rings nor thousand dollar shoes. I can't help but doubt a "faith" that believes a man who gets up like Elizabeth Taylor in all her jewelry out of all her safe-deposit boxes represents the Jesus I read about in the Gospels, the Jesus the Holy Roman Church stands for. I don't get it, never got it, and probably never will get it. I don't see anything to get except the Church as another institution of the few controlling the many. It was a smooth transition from the Caesar to the Pope. In the name of Jesus, send us your money. Jesus said render unto Caesar in reference to taxes. Now he would say render unto the Pope. I'd venture that if Jesus were on foot somewhere on earth now, he would not be interested in seeing the Pope and the Pope would not be interested in seeing him unless he had a substantial amount of money to be giving over.

 

The pictures I've seen of the new Pope Francis tell me Woody Allen could play him in a movie. Wouldn't that be a riot, Woody Allen playing Pope. Being a director and experienced at New York dinner parties, Allen has the experience necessary to assume a papal role. I've heard a brief BBC radio profile of the new Pope and he seems like an interesting man. Again, I see him as a man who drew the losing straw and became Pope. He is evidently known for living with a monk's simplicity, called austerity by reporters, and won't be needing thousand dollar shoes. He is known for taking public transportation when bishops are privileged with big car and driver. He evidently was not one to take advantage of privilege, rather has no need for it. That's his style. Pope Benedict's style was scholar monk. Pope Francis looks like a social monk who gets out among the people as one of them. The reporters speak in awe of how he walks anywhere in the city, Buenos Aires, alone, without body guards. He didn't just walk around and people look at him with suspicion and say, What you doin in this neighborhood? Everybody he saw knew him. They talked with him. They respected him. And he respected them. They knew him as the one who was not afraid of them. They're not going to hurt him. He knows it and they know it, but seen from the outside it's like he's taking his life in his hands. Considering that from my point of view he's just a man, I see him needing waders, big yellow New England waders, maybe the whole outfit. He will be a good example to the world of a man who really means it when it gets reported how simply he lives in his papal privilege. One thing I believe I can say without fear of contradiction is the only thing this pope needs is prayed for. He's going to need the prayers of the world to hold him up through what looks to be a rocky road ahead like something you'd see in a disaster movie.

 



 

 

 

 

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