MONKEYS WEARING PANTS

The trouble with using the term paranormal, while simply meaning above or beyond our current understanding of normal, is that ostensibly it comes, arms linked, with its ugly stepsister – The Supernatural – and invites all manner of credulous thinking and unverifiable truth claims. For this reason we prefer to talk about unexplained phenomena even though the shorthand “paranormal” seems more convenient.

 

 

The Victory Cross feels good between my legs. The vibration arouses me and my nipples stiffen. The crotch of my jeans tighten and my bare arms are alive with the thrill of gooseflesh as I open it up on this narrow lonely highway east of Bum Fuck South Dakota. There is something sexual about riding a motorcycle that is more than it being just an extension of my penis. Its potency – 845 lbs and 85 horsepower of pure adrenaline enhanced potency. It’s – dare I pun – omni-potency. The world and its highways are mine. I am the Road Warrior.

 

Dain is sitting behind me her arms wrapped tightly around my chest. Her pelvis is pushed into my backside. I still can’t believe we are doing this. I have never been that adventurous in my life. But, lately life seems more precious as if I have less time to do the things I want to do. I want experiences not endless hours and days sequestered in a cubicle frying my eyes in front of a computer screen. I want to live. I want moments not deadlines.

 

I have never driven a motorcycle before last week. If I should get pulled over I am likely to get a huge ticket and maybe have the Victory Cross taken from me as I have no endorsement. But, endorsements are for safe, unadventurous people. They are for people who clock in and out at the precise times, fold their laundry neatly and read the morning paper over a piece of dried toast, a bowl of fruit and decaffeinated coffee. They are for people who make little fuss and eventually die quietly so as to not bother anyone or put them out.

 

How intimately close the thrill of being full alive and our sexuality is. We forget that we are sexual beings. We become embarrassed by it. We try to hide it and repress it. Then something happens in middle age. We wake up one morning and the world no longer encounters us as sexual beings. We are paunchy, balding and sleep deprived. We fret over our mortgage payments and how much it’s going to cost to send our children to college. Our spouses become bored with us. We become bored with them.

 

The Victory cross hums and vibrates like one of the great erections I got as an adolescent, often when I least expected it. Those impossibly rigid hard-ons are lost on young men. They think their potency is eternal. If I could go back in time and talk to my 13 year old self, the young man who kept his oversized winter jacket on in math class to shield his unfortunate arousal from the class when he got called up to the black board to work a problem. I would tell him to be proud. Face the room. Put your hands on your hips and thrust your hips forward. Declare, “Behold my cock with which I will rule the world and bring it into submission.”

 

I am aroused with vitality. There is a beautiful young woman hanging on to me as we speed freely and dangerously down the highway. She is aroused too and her face is flushed with it. Her eyes are heavily lidded and glassy with lust. I don’t dare dream it is lust for me. I am still too safe. Her lust is a lust for life. She is a wild child who wants to live her life completely unfettered. She wants to be naked – exposed to the raw elements of this world.

 

Dain wants to escape what has kept me imprisoned for far too long. She hardly believed her eyes when I pulled up in front of her house Friday night on my new bike, my leather travel bags strapped to the back. She claps her hands and coos like a girl in love.

 

“I wanted to find one just like the one the narrator rode in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” I tell her. “But this will have to do.”

 

I was going to add and it’s more mechanically reliable, but adventurous people don’t give two shits about reliable. I let it drop. The look in her eyes reveals that she has no idea what I am talking about. I anticipated this and retrieve my tattered copy of it and hand it to her.

 

“Her,” I say, “Reading material for our road trip.”

 

“Like for the weekend?”

 

“No, like I just quit my job and I am ready to get the hell out of here,” I tell her, “Do you want to come with me?”

 

Three days later we find ourselves with a lot of road behind us and with more in front of us.  In fact the world from where we sit seems like nothing more than roads needing to be unwound and trod upon.

 

How ancient is the tarot? In all probability the 78 cards making up the deck of the Tarot are not all that ancient and neither is the symbolism. In fact the Tarot as a divinatory device was not widely used until the mid 18^th century. Unfortunately, because the facts surrounding the origin are not available to us the credulous take this “shrouding in mystery” to give it an air of an ancient and venerable mysticism that just does not stand up.

 There is a considerable amount of effort expended by occult writers and theorists attempting to trace the origins of the tarot’s symbolism back as far as ancient Egypt or at least to the beginning of the Kabbalah. However, there is no actual documented evidence to support these theories at all. Prior to the 18^th century it was simply a card deck used to play games such as Italian Tarocchini and French Tarot, both are variations on what is commonly referred to as a trick taking game. The tarot deck is reasonably believed to be the origin of the modern 52 card playing deck – also used by hucksters and villains to foretell the future of some easy mark.

 Unfortunately the enthusiasm expressed by such notable persons as Carl Jung only seems to give the tarot credibility that it does not deserve. The science of psychology during Jung’s life did not enjoy the rigorous standards that modern medical science employs today. The psychology of the late 19^th century and early 20^th was often simple occult pseudoscience. But, just as alchemy grew up into modern chemistry, psychology also matured and grew. However, just as there are modern day alchemists blissfully ignorant of their credulity so there are those who see in the tarot deck a philosophical and mystical system that does not bear up to scrutiny.

 If we want any sort of reasonable facts to back up our presumption of the plain, non mystical history of the tarot we need to look no further than medieval Europe where various games using decks of playing cards existed prior to the advent of the Tarot. The association of the Tarot with the mysteries of ancient Egypt is most likely due to the possibility that playing cards first came to Europe by route of Mamluk Egypt in the late 1200’s. A Mamluk was a sultan from the Kipchak Turks who ruled Egypt and Syria from the mid to late 13^th to 14^th centuries CE. The Malmuk deck was composed of several suits comparable to the tarot decks of the 18^th century.

 If one is inclined to contemplate how the tarot became associated with divination we only need remember that fortune tellers and charlatans have been using mundane items such as chicken bones, dirt, tea leaves and the stars for centuries. There was even one gentleman who claimed he could foretell a woman’s future by the way his ejaculate landed on her bare belly. The last I heard he survived a near catastrophic castration at the hands of jealous husband. Fortunately one of his testicles survived.

Why not a deck of playing cards? The elaborate artwork and symbolism of the tarot would only lend credibility to the decks dubious occult powers. The religions of ancient Egypt and European Christianity are overrun with symbolism. For the believer symbols equate to spiritual truth or at least a way to encode or hide the truth from non-believing heretics such as myself. The word occult itself implies some “thing” that is hidden. Whether it is a hidden spiritual truth perpetrated by the fraternal secret societies of the 18^th and 19^th century or a hidden speck of blood in your fecal matter (occult blood) that you physician may test for when you bring him or her the desired stool sample, the implication is something secret or hidden away.

In the end a deck of cards regardless of how beautiful the artwork or design cannot give you hidden secrets of your future or help you gain psychological insights any more than an astrological forecast or palmistry. Shhhh...This will upset a lot of true believers so let’s keep it a secret between us.

The trouble with debating atheism with the Christian right is, first and foremost, that we are speaking two separate languages. They are speaking the language of religion and we are speaking the language of materialism. In fact, as Dr. David Eller argues so well in his book Atheism Advanced, religions are separate language communities.[1]

 

Words such as god, devil, angels, heaven and hell have no meaning to the atheist. They are nonsense concepts and as such lie outside the realm of experience for the atheist. At best their reality is subjective and therefore dangerously delusional. Bill Moyer asked the late Joseph Campbell if he had faith. Campbell responded by saying he didn’t need faith he had his experience. Atheists rely on our experience to inform us. When in doubt we seek evidence. When we lack evidence we respond by saying, “I don’t know.” We do not invent imaginary beings or make supernatural claims to fill in the gaps of our understanding no matter how uncomfortable doubt or not knowing leaves us.

 

The trouble really begins for atheists over the Christian hypersensitivity to any attack on their belief system. Christians see atheism as being “against god” which is not true. An atheist is simply an A-Theist or someone who lives “without gods.” There is nothing for us to be against. What the Christian right is most often responding to is the reaction that non-believers generally have when they try to legislate and impose their sense of morality on the rest of us. We could give two shits if they believe in god or go to church otherwise.

 

Over the years religionists have attempted to defeat or debunk atheism through an array of specious arguments such as claiming that atheism is a religion. Other arguments include that “a belief in nothing is still a belief” or that you have to have god or religion in order to have moral and ethical conduct in society. None of these are true.

 

Atheism is not a religion. We do not have a collection of truth claims such as the Nicene Creed that must be accepted in order to be an atheist. Creeds or truth claims are a crucial element in religion at least as we experience it here in the United States. Belief is a function of faith. Faith requires no evidence to support its claims. It needs no such support. Its acceptance is based on a variety of factors most often an irrational acceptance of the moral authority of a messiah, prophet, pope or set of writings that it reveres as holy.

 

A belief is totally irrational. This brings us to the idea that “a belief in nothing or no-thing is still a belief.”  The problem with this argument is that it puts forth that a theory is an opinion and therefore an opinion is a theory. Again not true. A theory – in order to be called such – requires hard evidence. An opinion does not. The earth orbiting the sun is a fact because it is observable and is supported by a whole body of scientific knowledge and mathematical equations thereby proving the theoretical assertions of physics. That god created the universe out of nothing is an opinion. It is not based on any facts. It is taken on faith by someone who chooses to accept the peculiar truth claims of the Judeo-Christian class of religions.

 

 

This type of confusion is seen clearly when creationists try to debunk evolution. Someone once told me that my belief in evolution requires faith. But, that is false. The mechanisms of natural selection and evolutionary processes are well documented and they work whether I believe in them or not. I don’t have to believe that flipping a light switch will turn a light on. But, doing so will complete the electric circuit and bring illumination to the room regardless of my opinion on the matter.

 

Creationists observe the gaps in our knowledge and claim that evolution is a theory in crisis. A scientist simply notes the gap in knowledge and looks for reasons of why such a thing exists. An honest scientist never mistakes or misrepresents his or her speculation as fact. They look for evidence. That evidence is subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific community. Experiments are conducted, results noted and experiments are then conducted again to see if results vary and so on. None of this is true of the absurdly named creation science or intelligent design.

 

 Materialists understand that our knowledge at any given time is incomplete and imperfect. It is subject to change as new information becomes available. Religionists often adhere stubbornly to a creed or set of doctrines even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

 

Finally the tired old argument that without religion you do not have morality is patently false. I have written on this previously so I won’t belabor the point here. Honest Christian thinkers would agree, and there are a few, that non-believers are capable of being every bit as moral and ethical as a believer.

We are born into this world completely ignorant and unaware of religious concepts, morals, right and wrong, good and evil and so forth. These concepts have to be taught to us. We might say that we acquire these concepts as we acquire language. We don’t learn ten different languages at birth. We learn to speak those languages we are exposed to. We speak the language of our parents and / or our country. Our religion – if we have one – is the religion of our family. Our concepts of morality and good and evil are based on the society I live in. As a child born during the cold war my concept of evil was the USSR and godless communism. A young person today would have no idea what I was talking about.

 

 

Hi All:

I know you have been wanting to ask me all kinds of questions, but you are shy about me knowing who you are. Well, know you can ask me anything you want and I will anser all your questions.

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So go ahead and ask. You know you want to.

The PRC is not a government friendly to the United States. They are not our friends; they are certainly not our ally. What they are is a government with an ideology dramatically opposed to the West and the United States in particular. Instead of defeating us with bombs and tanks they are using economics to wage a peaceful war against us here in the west and we are blithely letting them do so.

 If you have been following my vanity blog for the past couple of months you will notice the above to be a verbatim beating of a dead horse. Be that as it may it needs repeating and repeating often. One of the biggest mistakes in recent years was to open up trade relations with the PRC. The trade between our nations continues to be dangerously unbalanced and if the allegations of China’s currency manipulation are true the problem will only spire out of control. 

 The People’s Republic of China is a severe economic threat to the United States. It’s a threat that must be minimized as quickly as possible. It is holding back any attempt to create any meaningful recovery in the United States. In fact any country that we have sold our manufacturing base and other services to are in this category.

When it comes to protecting the economic interest of our nation the Obama administration gets a C-, which is only slightly better than the D average that I routinely gave the former Bush Administration. Obama needs to start using his skills as an orator and statesman more efficiently in the area of international trade, especially where it relates to the PRC. That being stated, as an Obama supporter I have always sided with his critics over their concerns regarding international trade and foreign policy. It even caused me to briefly consider voting for McCain. But, I agree with Glenn Beck (I know, huh?) that McCain would have been worse.  

 Obama’s first year in office completed and his first State of the Union address delivered we find ourselves with an ambitious president that has bogged congress down with an out of control debate (more like combat) over health care reform and a potentially devastating escalation on our Middle Eastern war fronts. I can’t really criticize him on health care reform as I have been an activist and blogger in this area for years now. However, I do not currently support what is before congress at this time. That should be no surprise to my one reader (besides me).

 To spur on meaningful recovery in our country Obama needs to do more than push a jobs bill through congress. Long term growth requires employment to grow in the private sector and not in the public. Obama knows this and said as much in his State of the Union address. But, knowing it and acting on it are two different things. Getting Congress to support him another thing still and the contention between GOP and the Democrats is only winding up. It will get worse as the reality of the mid-terms approach. Election years are a bad time to get anything meaningful accomplished.

 The downside to a jobs bill is the potential it has for growing the size of government. Government subsidized jobs are not a long term solution regardless of what FDR did during the depression. Disparaging Democrats as the “big government – big spending” guys is a favorite pastime of the GOP. But, lest they forget during the Bush era we saw the largest increase in Government bureaucracy and spending since the Lyndon Johnson years. That is the problem with authoritarian politics. The constant meddling from the left and right except in areas of importance, such as banking regulation has only grown our government, which is gone from the baby gator in the sewer to a leviathan.

 Obama is going to need to get the support of the G7 to put an end to China’s currency manipulation. International pressure is necessary, although in the case of the arrogant PRC who refuse to acknowledge their human rights violations and illegal occupation of Tibet it is hardly going to do much. Add to the pot of woe Hillary Clinton’s strong position regarding PRC support for sanctions against Iran and we are going to be met with a metaphorical Great Wall of China.

 The Chinese government behaves like a petulant child with mild to severe sociopathy. Our problems with them are only beginning. They are perhaps the last true emerging or industrial economy to grow to international concern. Like the United States they are spending finite resources like income and not capital. Instead of investing fossil fuels into creating new energy technologies they are surpassing the West in terms of green house gas emissions. The PRC is rarely moved by international pressure – but, most superpowers are not. Competition for oil and natural gas will only to serve to increase tensions. Given the low esteem of the United States with many of the countries who export oil and we could see ourselves loosing even more ground.

 Why do we continue to do business with China? Because the corporate marauders in the West are making bank and care less if we get tainted or inferior products or give away jobs that Americans could do. If Obama wants to create jobs in the private sector he needs to bring an ends to the crippling trade agreements and provide incentives for corporations to keep jobs here in the United States. Our countries stability and future demand putting an end to the way we currently do business with China.

 

The tragedy of the Soviet Union was the perversion of Marxist theory that led to a central corporate communist state.  The worker was no freer under this regime then they were under the capitalist ideologies it pretended to be opposed to. This has led many in the west to proclaim the ultimate morality of the free market. Tragically the “doctrine of the state” became a new religion and was pursued with missionary zeal cementing its further debasement from the ideal democratic workers government.  The Soviets traded Capitalism and Christianity for a new secular religion that ultimately betrayed them.

 The free market is believed to be more just because the worker is not directed like a “soldier of labor” and is free to obtain employment wherever they choose with whomever they choose. As such the western worker is free to quit or change employment without being punished by the state as a deserter. However, this completely ignores the consequences of misallocation of resources by capital and the cruel whims of the market that often profoundly impact the worker.

 Traditional Marxism cannot thrive morally or justly as a large centralized government. Marxism requires independent worker collectives free to attend to the needs of its members. They may, if needed, collaborate with other collectives as needs arise. This was theoretically the ideal behind the soviet. The optimal goal was that worker revolutions would spread out and fan across Europe until the proletariat was free from the burden of capital and master of their own lives. The Marxist view myopically supposes that a world such as this would be more peaceful once capital and private property is abolished. Unfortunately, as long as there exists even one person whose mind and heart is turned toward wealth and power peace will be nothing more than a vivid pipe dream.

Karl Marx is an example of how a person can be a brilliant and shrewd observer and profound thinker and still manage to get it all wrong. Communism, while more just in many ways, is no more sustainable than the free market of the capitalists and just as prone to violence, greed and human wickedness as anything else.

 

Democracy still stands the best and most just way to govern a people however inefficient and ridiculous it is. As Churchill quipped, “all other governments have been tried.” The problem in the United States is the current trend back toward large centralized government. As Libertarian Socialists, we need to support and push for policies that reduce the central government and give power back to the individual states. From the states we can reduce power down even further to more localized communities. The less power in the hands of bureaucrats means more liberty for the worker. We must never suppose that more bureaucracy will ever result in anything other than more tyranny.

 

Our post modern world and its technology most likely will never allow a thoroughly post industrial society such as the United States into becoming local worker collectives, especially given the general satisfaction the majority has regarding their lives (this despite the recent economic woes of Wall Street, bank bail outs and high unemployment). But a scaling down of our consumption and reclamation of our manufacturing base is required if we are to survive beyond the next decade.

Revolution is verbose – Leon Trotsky

 There is something insidious about the so- called free markets that cannot be labeled any other way than as evil. If Evangelical Christianity seeks to continue their war against Satan they would do well to attack the deception of the free market. At least they would successfully pursue a real enemy vs. the imagined adversary of their nightmares.

 Free in this sense can only be achieved by the hyper ambitious whose heart is filled to the brim with gluttony and avarice. The notions of right leaning libertarian ideology are as far away from the gospel of Jesus as one can get and one might assume that neither Jesus nor Paul – the actual founder of Christianity – would approve of such ideals. But, then the majority of our founding fathers were not “Christians” as the religious right assumes or generally understands. At best they were deists. Today many, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, might even be atheists.

  In a free market economy only the greedy can be truly successful. The majority will become wage slaves or worse. A system that allows some to acquire more than they will ever reasonably need is at best amoral. A system that looks down upon those who are unable to “make it” as if they are defective or simply lazy entitlement whores who live off the hard work of the few as parasites is depraved.  Complete deregulation will lead to such unfair imbalance that they only way to right those wrongs is through violence. There is nothing just or “free” in a wealthy society that has a growing number of people uninsured, unemployed and hungry.

When did bringing a  girl home go from meaning a night of passion to wrapping her in a big warm blanket, putting fuzzy slippers on her feet and serving her a hot bowl of soup and a cup of tea? Not that I was ever a player. Sex for me usually came as a surprise. Most of the time it was when I least expected it and with whom I least expected to be interested in me. But, still every now and again I got lucky.

 

I woke up this morning on my left side. My lower back has been smarting somewhat throughout the weekend; a dull burning ache, nothing too serious, probably a disc or vertebrae or something that needs to be popped back into place. I have been doing more back bends during my daily yoga practice lately. Most nights there is a nice satisfying little snap or pop as something slides back into place. I suppose I should go see a chiropractor. I have always had bad posture and at 43 it’s probably catching up to me. I can hear the spectral voice of my late father telling me to stand up straight and to quit slouching. My shoulders are starting to take on the first signs of a telltale hump. I am going to be Quasimodo before I hit my golden years if I don’t do something now.

 

Dain is pressed against my back tightly as if we are riding a motorcycle in our sleep roaring down the highways free of care, the wind whipping in our hair as we round the corners of winding Midwest roads. We are the only two living souls in sight. I want to be lost in the vast expanse of the forgotten Middle America with this beautiful young woman, who is really young enough to be my daughter. I feel like I should be ashamed of myself even though we have never had sex or hooked up or whatever it is these crazy kids are calling it these days.

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Her small perfect breasts are crushed against my bare back. My old tee shirt that is two sizes too big for her rides up a little and I can feel the warm soft skin of her belly pressed against my bottom. Both her hands are pressed tightly against my bare chest. She moans softly in her sleep nuzzling my neck as she does.  I reach behind me and caress her thigh, my fingers slipping just a little beneath the latex band of her cotton panties. Dain burrows herself deeper into my back and neck. She moves her cool bare legs until they fit against the backs of mine – two perfectly content spoons in a drawer of our own.

 

My sleepy mind drifts back pleasantly to thoughts of her panties. Not so much about how I want get inside them (my evil side wants to very much so), but to the sweet contradiction to the girl the world sees. She calls her style EMO Death Punk. Black eyeliner, black clothes, studs, piercings and dark clothes and the iconography of death worn about her body in necklaces, chokers and other assorted pieces of jewelry. She is fascinated with death. She finds it romantic. As I descend into the valley of middle age I find life more romantic. I want the light. She does too really. Despite the mask she wears for the world to see her simple white cotton panties that hug her youthful buttocks and thighs reveal a hint of the light hidden within her. She just wants to be loved and to trust the person she loves with all her heart.

 

Trust! That is why we have never had sex. She sleeps next to me at night…sometimes reeking of cigarette smoke, alcohol and the scents of other lovers – some male, some female – clinging to her lithe body – because she trusts me. Last night as she sat drinking tea and eating soup, the big fleece blanket wrapped around her Dain reveals a secret. Some nights she just wants to crawl deep inside me and never come out. I make her feel safe. She knows my desire and she feels the evidence pressing into her buttocks some mornings as we drift in and out of sleep. But, she feels safe. She is confident that I will never violate her. I have – almost – once.

 

I wonder about that sometimes, especially when my morning erection is pressed against her my balls aching so much I think they will explode. I imagine pulling those plain white panties down just enough to slide into her. But, I don’t. I won’t. 

 

I have thought about putting an end to our sleepovers. How pussy whipped is a man who sleeps next to a woman reeking of other people while never being allowed to touch her himself? Yet there is something more intimate in what we do than the frenetic sex she has with other – more age appropriate people. At, least that is what I tell myself. But it is little comfort.

 

Why don’t I just go and get a girlfriend and be done with this? I think that again as one of Dain’s small hands slip down my chest coming to rest on my belly. My fur fascinates her. I find this interesting as a lot of young women her age seem put off by body hair. I have some bad news for them it only gets worse as you get older and their young and perfect bodies won’t stay young and perfect forever. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend at the gym or on the yoga mat. Our bodies fall prey to entropy eventually like everything else.

 

Dain, the dark goddess with the alabaster thighs...

 

That is what Danni the young lesbian who lives upstairs calls her. She winks at me and digs her elbow in my ribs conspiratorially when she talks about Dain. She can’t believe I am not “hitting that” or “tapping her sweet young ass.”

 

“You are a strange man,” She told me the night after she had made love to Dain the musk of Dain’s secret places on her skin and breath. “You are one of a kind, a perfectly heterosexual man not wanting to get himself a little trim when it’s practically being thrown at him.”

 

Danni is very a feminine lesbian – lipstick lesbian is the term I believe except for the objectifying sex talk. She has never been “violated” by a man as she refers to heterosexual intercourse. Oddly, she loves sleeping next to me as well, her head on my bare chest arms loosely wrapped around my neck. What is wrong with me?

 

Danni and I disagree on what ‘practically thrown at him’ means. I don’t see it that way. I am also uncomfortable with the lesbian locker room talk in reference to Dain. However, I do see her point. She is a dark goddess with alabaster thighs. One night I tread the line precariously as my tongue traced a fading scar that stretched from the back of her knee to the top of her inner thigh. Looking up into her eyes I saw a dark confusion of wanting and fear. I stopped and it had never happened again. The next night she crawled into bed with for the first time.

 

Last night I noticed fresh cuts on the underside of Dain’s arms. She is a cutter. It scares me – this angry self mutilation. I know it is a common enough phenomena, but I worry for her safety. I don’t understand what drives this. She hasn’t done this in quite awhile – since she started sleeping with me at night. Cutting isn’t suicide, but it does seem alarmingly suicidal to me. Dain refers to it as body art and sometimes as letting the demons escape.

 

Over the past couple of months I have learned some terrible dark secrets about Dain’s family. She was molested by an uncle and her brother for years. She has come to think of herself as ugly, deformed and twisted. Her uncle was killed in Iraq two years ago. Her brother, now in jail, still raped her until the day he was sent away for aggravated assault. She learned to give in and even convinced her self that she loved her brother “in that way” for a few years.

 

Her best friend refers to her sexual adventures as suicide by fucking. There is so much anger in her. In my arms I hold a frightened little girl and do my best to override any carnal impulse so that I can be a safe harbor. I want to help her escape these nightmares and the dark destructive urgency that causes her to prowl the night clubs and other places that the EMO and Goth kids hang out at. She is trying to fuck herself to death or find redemption. I can’t tell. Death, sex, redemption and new life are easily muddled. The lines blur with psychedelic clarity.

 

Tomorrow morning I will take off work. Maybe I will buy a motorcycle and ask Dain to leave everything behind as we head down the road to Middle America toward the light leaving the darkness and anger behind. The demons can get along just fine without us.

 

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My response to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Non-Violent Terrorist

 I am a big fan of Herr Bonhoeffer and I consider his book, The Cost of Discipleship, to be his magnum opus. I found this piece to be interesting, but I quite disagree with labeling him as a non-violent terrorist. First of all he hardly meets our present Western definition of terrorist. Secondly, he ultimately chose to participate in an act of violence. The morality or “rightness” of his action doesn’t matter at this point. A violent act is a violent act regardless of its perceived necessity.

 The term terrorist conjures up unfair and bigoted images of bearded Arabian men strapping bombs to them and blowing themselves and others up. We tend to use the term for violent actions against people and see the perpetrators as an evil we must vanquish. However, from a sociological perspective one might consider that the “suicide bomber,” regardless of how twisted his or her thinking may be, is attempting to vanquish what they see as evil as well. It is always about perspective.

 I like to recall the words of Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh:

 Are you sure? Wrong perceptions cause incorrect thinking and unnecessary suffering.

 I wonder what kind of a world we would find ourselves living in if the majority of us heeded this advice. 

 The writer concludes that Bonhoeffer is a nonviolent Christian terrorist because of his “theology of the cross” and states that the theologian is an heir of Luther’s Two Kingdom theology. Perhaps that is so, but I still object to the labeling as so much academic nincompoopery. The plot to assassinate Hitler had a more visceral birth.

 Bonhoeffer was a man of deeply convicted faith who through his sermons and actions stood as a voice of conscience against Hitler’s Third Reich. He could act in no other way and not betray his God. As we read in Ecclesiastes there is a season for all things. Bonhoeffer found himself in a season of violence.

 How does a gentle academic and convicted man of faith go from non-violence to attempting to blow up Hitler and company? That would be a fascinating study and one that I am sure has been done. But, let’s not label Bonhoeffer non-violent. Though it may only be one action, when an individual crosses the line and plots to murder another individual they become violent. It matters not whether he was a mere conspirator or the actual trigger-man as it were.

 I believe that Bonhoeffer must have wrestled hard with this fateful decision – one that would ultimately fail and lead to his execution at the hands of the monster he was trying to vanquish. Nietzsche sagely wrote that in attempting to rid the world of monsters we would do well to not become monster’s ourselves (paraphrase).

 Perhaps, it’s because of my profound admiration of Bonhoeffer that I believe he took the only action left to him. Pacifism is not an effective means to an end in many cases in our troubled world. If we stand with our fellows, arms linked, in front of a battalion of tanks we are sure to be run down, our entrails becoming grease for their treads. Sometimes more assertive action must be taken. As long as others choose violence we may find ourselves needing to respond in kind from time to time, especially if diplomacy has failed.

 Bonhoeffer’s action is the embodiment of the Christian principal that there exists no greater love than laying down your life for another. In this case the risking of one’s life in attempt to save untold others from the Nazi death machine. In this case Machiavelli may have been correct in that the end does justify the means – almost. Using violence to fight an even greater horror must have seemed a troubling and unjust compromise for this man of God. Sadly, this often unsung hero of Christianity found himself faced with a time to kill.

 

There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build.

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

5 A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

6 A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away.

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak.

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

The president didn’t question the integrity of the court. He questioned the judgment of it. I think it was dead wrong and we need to reverse it.”

 

Vice President Joe Biden

In reference to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling reversing corporate campaign spending limits

 

 

The Constitutional separation of powers does not prevent the president or any citizen of this country from criticizing any ruling made by the Supreme Court. President Obama was correct in his condemnation of the high court’s recent ruling that removes spending limits when it comes to corporate donations to political campaigns.

 

Justice Alito – the majority opinion writer in this instance – can pout and dismiss the president’s remarks all he wants. The 5-4 decision was wrong –plain and simple. Our democratic republic continues to be threatened by irresponsible corporate thugs and highly funded special interest groups. Our president is of the opinion that it may open the floodgates even wider allowing foreign special interests to dramatically influence the outcome of our elections.

 

The dissenting voice of Justice John Paul Stevens echoes agreement, “(The Ruling) would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

 

The biggest problem with our democratic republic is that over time the democratic control of the country is taken from the hands of the people and put in the hands of the elected representatives whose loyalties are purchased by corporations and special interests with enough money to make significant donations to their campaign efforts.

 

This may be legal

 

But, it still stinks like bribery to me.

 

Who are these men and women anyway? What gives them the right to sell out the citizens who elected them? We don’t own them? The lobbyists and corporations do. This ruling will exacerbate the problem created by the unfair and unbalanced trade agreements. Is it just me or does America no longer appear to be in control of its destiny? Globalism is killing us and our way of life.

 

Allowing foreign nationals to potentially impact our democratic process in a significant way and is unthinkable. Whether Justice Alito likes it or not the Supreme Court has failed Americans in their recent ruling. They should be ashamed of themselves and they should reverse it immediately. Unfortunately, in our legal system the justices are little despots which is okay if they act on behalf of the greater good but when they don’t they are little tyrants who are immovable.

 

The Supreme Court has just joined corporate America in the selling out of our country to foreign interests. It is time for Americans to get a little more jingoistic and to hell with the world’s criticism. President Teddy Roosevelt, who was often accused of imperialism and jingoism, said it best:

 

"There is much talk about 'jingoism.' If by 'jingoism' they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are "jingoes.'"

 

We, the people of this nation, need to start acting in a little more in our own collective best interest if the freedoms we enjoy are to endure. We can still be a compassionate nation giving aid where it is needed, but we don’t have to sell ourselves out in order to do so. Its time to put America first and corporations and special interests last. The Supreme Court has threatened the safety and stability of this nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this an honest apparition of the Virgin Mary or is it a mere water stain? My inner skeptic is going with water stain. Father Ernest Belinda of Norfolk Virginia’s Basilica of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception was passing by the baptismal fount one day when he noticed an odd water stain. The water stain looks eerily similar to the veiled statuary of the Virgin Mary, head tilted forward and cockled to one side, arms spread open in an invitation for a motherly embrace that I grew up around. But, my skeptical nature reminds me that I have seen water stains such as this before and in my own bathroom.

 I am pretty sure that the mother of God was not personally appearing to me, and, as Father Belinda remarks, she is showing up everywhere nowadays including on pieces of toast (paraphrase). Occasionally stories from Mexico or South America surface telling how people have seen the Blessed Virgin’s image on the side of buildings or on cinnamon buns. All of these cases have one thing in common – credulous people willing to see what they want to see and nothing more.

  That these occur in Latin America where religion and superstition share the same bed does not surprise me. The vast majority of people who choose to believe seem to have not had the benefit of modern education and illiteracy seems to create an open invitation for credulity. However, I would be remiss in forgetting to mention that there are educated and intelligent people among the ranks of the superstitious. Studies increasingly indicate that the United States – the most modern of the modern world – is one of the most religious. There seems to be something in many of us that craves the supernatural.

Poor Retching Souls


One of my chief complaints about my native religion of Roman Catholicism is how easily it permits and even encourages magical thinking. Its reliance on holy relics, rosaries, amulets, statuary, candles, incense and shrines makes it very easy to absorb the occult practices and superstitions in the cultures it has invaded. It should be no surprise to anyone that in Catholic communities across the world we still find the practices of shamanistic and atavistic religions present. You have to travel no farther than the American South and you will easily see what I am talking about. Perhaps, not even that far as I personally met a practioner of Brujeria while still living in Salem Oregon.

The supreme piece of magic of the Catholic liturgy is the Eucharist whereby the priest consecrates a thin wheat wafer and cheap wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In the minds of Catholics this is no mere symbolism, rather it is a full transubstantiation where one substance is transformed into another. It’s reminiscent of Renaissance era Alchemists attempting to turn base metals into gold. In the case of Alchemy, there was a maturation process whereby superstition and ritual was eventually eliminated from the scientific method. Unfortunately, Western religion has not enjoyed the same maturation process.

As a child I never quite understood why I needed to “eat the flesh” of my Lord if he was already within me. The sacrament of communion is a strange ritual of symbolic cannibalism that seems dreadfully gory and frightening. It seems a left over of ancient Judaism where a part of the sacrificed animal would be eaten as a symbolic sealing of a covenantal agreement between them and HaShem who has accepted their sacrifice as atonement for their sins. Later the Christian church would turn Jesus into the atoning sacrifice. Yet, all the reference to him as the “Lamb of God” does not take away the stink of cannibalism, a practice forbidden by God.

Another staple of Catholic occult magic is holy water. Each time you entered a church you dipped you hand in and performed the sign of the cross. It is seen as a renewal or a remembrance, rather, of the baptismal promises. Unfortunately, for most of us cradle Catholics this baptism was not our choice. Generally we are baptized as infants or at the very latest young children. As young adults our families made the decision of confirmation for us.

Looking at the blessing or consecrating of the holy water as I found in my 1946 Manual of Prayers it’s hard to miss the occult thinking behind it with the exorcism of the salt and water.

“I exorcise thee oh creature of salt…”

Hocus pocus

Abracadabra

And bippity boppity boo

The priest has transformed ordinary water, salt and chrisom into holy water. My best friend in grade school had a little plastic bottle with a cross on it. He would fill it up at Sunday Mass and have portable holy water for the rest of the week. I was so jealous of him. I wanted holy water too. You never knew when you might have to splash it on a vampire or a demon or some other childhood comic book monster threatening your life and very soul. And if Linda Blair ever showed up hiding in your closet vomiting up pea soup while her head twirled on its neck you could splash her down too.

When I was 7 years old Lynn – my first starry eyed crush – who lived across the street told me that if you drank holy water you would be holy for one whole day. Despite my childish imagination and credulous belief in other magical beings such as Santa or the Easter Bunny, something seemed fishy about Lynn’s claim. I ran home and asked my mother whether or not this was true. Mom just laughed and ruffled the mop of auburn curls on my head.

“You may not be holy, but you might get a tummy ache,” she said.

Let’s get our pet boy Sherman to set the Way Back machine to return us to present day Moscow. The Associated Press reports that Russian Orthodox believers were hospitalized after drinking contaminated holy water during Epiphany celebrations in the town of Irkutsk. Apparently, much of the tap water in Russia is undrinkable.

I have just had an epiphany of my own.

If your tap water may be undrinkable maybe you shouldn’t drink it. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, tends to view the Orthodox east as a bastard child to the Roman Church and as a flawed church. I say this for no reason other than to take another dig at the present pope – something that is becoming a bit of a hobby. I also say it as an off hand way of admitting that I know very little about my distant Orthodox cousins. But, it seems that they share some of the same magical and faulty thinking as many Roman Catholics do.

I am not certain whether the water was blessed by a priest or not, but it seems that regardless drinking tainted water is not a conducive to good health. It is also not the best way to approach life. If it was blessed then hopefully, they might crawl out of that superstitious nightmare they dwell in and start seeking answers to their deeper questions through the process of rational thought. Although, the AP reports that in this part of Russia any water on found on Epiphany is considered Holy.

I’d like to say that at 7 years old I was smarter then most of adults that got sick in Irkutsk. The children can be excused as they are influenced by their parents. However, while I was smart enough to question my friend Lynn’s pronouncement about drinking holy water I was not smart enough to refrain from trying it.

So like a young boy who knows better then to accept a dare to stick his tongue on a frozen pole I did it anyway. My best friend and I collected some holy water the following Sunday, enough to fill an empty Welch’s jelly jar with Looney Tune characters on it. I drank about half of it, which was oily and nasty. I don’t know if I achieved momentary holiness on that fateful day, but the holy water did have a wonderfully terrible laxative effect. This caused my best friend’s mother, Sarah – my second starry eyed crush – to dub me St. Thomas Crapper. The moniker stuck and when I was 15 the family asked if I would come and bless their new toilets. They had just remodeled the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms.

I learned a powerful lesson as I hope my Orthodox cousins will learn. Water has many benefits. We need it to live and sustain our health. We need it to grow food. But, it doesn’t make us holy. Bathing in it will clean us. Drinking it will quench our thirst, but in the end we are still the same person. Magical thinking doesn’t promote learning nor does it take contaminated water and make it potable. Magical thinking keeps people in darkness and often leads them to do things that are against their self –interest. Often times these actions make no sense. Religion and magical thinking are anti-human. Survival of our species requires the judicious application of reason and logical thinking. We must remove the crutch of religion if we hope to do so.

St. Thomas Crapper
Denver, CO
January 26, 2010

 

Part III

 

Beep…beep…beep

 I opened my eyes. There were grey smudges clouding my peripheral vision. My head ached and my body felt as if it were on fire. The ground beneath me felt firm, but softer then moments ago. Was I lying in a hospital bed? There were faces floating around me. A young woman with warm brown eyes and a furrowed brow reached behind my head. A doctor with a pathologically detached expression stared at a chart.

 “How are we feeling today?”

 “His temperature is 104.”

 A stabbing pain pierced my eyes. A hot knife blade skewered my vision blinding me. I closed my eyes reflexively. Clamped them tight trying to will the pain away. My throat burned from thirst. Who had stuck the funnel in my mouth and poured sand down my throat?

 The light was dimmed when I opened my eyes. The leathery old crone stood above me. A malicious grin cracked her face wide open. Her red rimmed eyes boring into me searching the secret places of my innermost being, she seemed to find what she was looking for as she smacked her dry chapped lips in hungry anticipation. The tall bare-chested man with the skull of a stag on his head stood next to her, an eerie red light pulsed dimly from his eye sockets.

 The crone ripped off the front of my shirt and dug her nails into my chest tearing the skin painfully as she drug them down my chest toward my belly. Crimson flowed up slowly from the trenches left in my flesh. The hag rubbed my body with ancient dry hands smearing the blood across me. Her hands were bony but surprisingly strong, maybe even supple, though not in appearance.

 “Stop it,” I croaked. My words cut across my dry throat like hot razor blades.

 “Leave me the fuck alone…”

 Fear seized me like cold fire

 I pushed up on my elbows struggling to get in an upright position. Panicking I knew I had to get free of this place, of these people. But, I was no match for them.

Hands from all directions pushed me down. The more I struggled the harder the hands pushed. The old crone tilted her head back and screeched in victory. Great leather wings unfolded behind her. Her hands, talons now, pushed into my chest. I heard my chest crack and I took a sharp, painful intake of breath. Those sharp talons continued plunging and twisting into my chest cavity.

A searing pain

Talons gripping my heart…

Closing tightly around it

The old bitch pulled her hand out and held my warm still beating hard in front of me. Blood squirted against my face and stung my eye. I gasped, but could not scream.

The old hag flapped her great wings and took flight. She screeched into the night spiriting my heart away as I lay dying in on the cold hard ground, blood rising up through the hole in my chest and flowing from me onto the ground like a flood ravaged river that has breeched its banks. The hands that had held me no longer pressed against me. I wasn’t going anywhere and my captors knew this. I was dying and they had what they needed. She had what she needed

Lilly stood in front of me, her naked body framed by the moonlight. A giant snake curled around her protectively revealing a small hint of her swelling breasts. One hand covered her pubic region demurely and the other hand held to her lips as if she were trying to quiet an unruly or fussy child. Her hair blew behind her in the wind. She was a vision of loveliness. I didn’t understand why she was here. I didn’t care. I was just glad she was. I reached out to her…

She leaned over me

Soft, warm lips kissing me lightly

Her eyes red rimmed from crying. Her sinuses were swollen

Lily was standing above me and I was back in my hospital bed. She was pressing a cool, wet cloth on my hot forehead. She had traded the snake for a pair of baggy sweats and a green sweatshirt.

She smiled sweetly at me. I felt safe.

Closing my eyes I sank back into darkness like a child returning to the safety of the womb.

To Be Continued…

 

 

 

 

Lilith entered my mind unbidden this afternoon. Legend depicts her as a gnarled old crone with leathery wings and red eyes. She is sometimes associated with screech owls and in a few cases she has the torso of a human female and the body of a goat. But, for me she is always a radiant woman. Her beauty is painful to behold and her touch thrills me and sets me free. She is not a goddess per se, but in my heart she is divinity reborn. I love her.

 How she came to be associated with the Jewish creation myth is not entirely certain. Scholars love to debate such things and they treat their pet theories like abusive husbands treat their wives.  The legend currently most popular tells us that Lilith was Adam’s first wife and when she refused to be sexually subservient to him Adam complained and God cursed her and threw her out of Eden.

 Lilith was cursed for embracing her femininity and for the crime of asking her husband to respect and cherish her. She didn’t want to lie beneath him or have him rut behind her on all fours as if she were a simple animal. She was Adam’s equal even though he was to dim to understand this. Lilith saw her sexuality as a path toward union. Adam wanted to simply copulate and follow his baser instincts. It’s the age old struggle between the flesh and the spirit. Lilith knew that sex didn’t have to be mere animal fornication to perpetuate the species. It could unite us both in flesh and spirit.

 Adam was a rapist. God for his part was complicit and punished the victim for her violation. Medieval legends of the succubus are thought to have originated with Lilith who was cursed to deliver all her children still born into the world. At night she would visit hapless men in their sleep and mount them stealing their seed. She especially loved to torment holy men and priests. But, each child would be born hideous and deformed and its body lifeless and limp moments after being pushed from their mother’s womb.

 At the sight of these abortions Lilith would take to the night skies screeching in despair and rage. The villagers feared her call and believed that she stole away their children in the night and devoured them. Her lair was thought to be a dank cave cluttered with the bones of the children she had eaten. Clearly it was men who created this legend out of their fear of she “who bleeds but doesn’t die.”

 I know this not to be true. Lilith – my Lilith is a gentle and powerful soul. I have been told by my neo-pagan friends that in ancient Sumer, Lilith was the earth. Wikipedia states that she was a Mesopotamian storm goddess or daemon. We know how you Christians love daemons.  You’re like the football meatheads who dated the cheerleaders for status, but you really wanted to be with the Goth chicks or the nerd girls. You just couldn’t tell anyone about it.

 Lilith’s migration to the Jewish creation myth is not well documented, but given that there is no such thing as exclusivity in religion it is easy to imagine how it got picked up along the way. Even Yahweh (The Goya transliteration of YHWH) is thought to have originally been a Sumerian storm god.

 Dr. David Eller, writing in his book Atheism Advanced, says,

 As complex as the religious picture appears so far, it is actually much more complex in reality. This is because any actual practiced religion tends to be a hybrid of various types of religion, as well a hybrid of various religions and even non-religions. It might be more accurate to say that these types of religions are bits or building blocks out of which an actual religion can be constructed, rather than being closed, mutually exclusive religions. The building blocks of religion can be combined in various ways, and they can be combined with bits from sources other than religion as well. (Eller, P20)          

 This is why the debunkers of Christianity can find elements of other god-man myths in nearby ancient Palestine and claim that Paul and the early Christians “stole” them, although, that may be unduly harsh as it would seem that our collective religious imagination appears to operate this way. In other words, all religions are made up, as my friend Jill will argue. We create religion to fill in the gaps that our knowledge has not provided. In the ancient world it seems understandable. Today it seems sad that we still do this.

 Eve didn’t fair much better. She too was raped. The depiction of her encounter with the serpent in the garden reads more like a seduction followed by rape. Adam failed to protect her and defend her. When the cranky Yahweh came tromping through the garden Adam pointed his finger and blamed his wife. Adam may have been excommunicated from paradise, but Eve was cursed and disgraced. Eve is true intelligence. She gained the knowledge of life, Adam suckled from her like an infant at its mother’s breast. But, he did nothing to receive it. He drank from the well another dug.

 The Genesis account states that God removed Eve from Adam. Adam was put into a deep sleep and created Eve from the flesh of the man. Adam was flesh and Eve his sparkling virgin bride was his spirit. She was the animating force that gave him life. She is the power or breath of the divine within each of us today. But, Adam committed the only true blasphemy – he disfigured the soul of humanity.  

 The Christian authority of the Middle Ages despised and feared feminine knowledge. The cunning women (from where we get the derogatory term ‘cunt’) or wise woman” were tortured and murdered with impunity. Only in the twisted mind of male authority could the skills of healing and hearth be considered to be satanically inspired.

 Poor sweet, beautiful and tormented Lilith…

 How many of these wise sisters and daughters did you welcome into your dark exile?

 How much of your daughter’s blood did the earth soak up?

 The divine feminine has a dark side too. She is every bit as bloody and dark as the divine masculine. I don’t subscribe to the saccharin traditions of post modern paganism that seeks to whitewash spirituality because of its weariness over the oppression of monotheism. As Jung points out, we do not become enlightened by imagining beings of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

 We must bring the darkness within us out into the open light. That is perhaps the biggest difference between the darkness of divine masculine vs. the divine feminine. One is a bloodlust of destruction and the other seeks to transform.

 Lilith is our spirit in exile. Until we become her lover cherishing her and making her our equal enlightenment will elude us. Lilith holds the torch of sacred illumination and we must enter her cave to receive it.

 

I am shocked at some of the callous remarks I see people making about Haiti. Perhaps, it’s just the false sense of anonymity provided by the internet that makes people feel comfortable voicing their hatred and lack of empathy. Maybe it’s because of Pat Robertson’s stupidity about Haiti’s pact with the devil. Whatever the reason it is shocking to see such near sociopathic lack of empathy for our fellow humans being expressed by some.

All it takes is one dumbass to open the door and all the other dumbasses will come following. I don’t want to mention any names, but Pat Robertson you know who you are (although I suppose calling people dumbass is my own hatred – I loathe ignorance in myself and in others). My brother – generally one of the most rational and level headed people I know – often talks about his irrationality in the face of another’s irrationality.

There is something about ignorance, a willful form of stupidity that makes many of us who strive to be informed and enlightened see red. Ignorance may not always be a choice, but in this age of cyberspace it is often just that, a choice, for those of us who live in developed post industrial societies. We can choose to know better if we desire it.

This morning I browsed comments on CNN.com following the story about the 6.1 aftershock that rocked Haiti earlier today. Most of those commenting expressed empathy and sorrow for the people of Haiti and support for those who have rushed to the tiny island nation to bring relief and aid, but there was one response that chilled my blood. It lacked total understanding of both history and the present humanitarian crisis facing the people of Haiti today and it demonstrated a chilling lack of compassion.

Paraphrasing, the respondent said:

“How dare these people snivel?”

He (I am content to assume it was a male) expressed anger that some of the people of Haiti were concerned about a “US occupation” of their homeland. He suggested that we should just pull out and leave the Haitians to deal with their own problems themselves.

The citizens of Haiti are not “sniveling.” They are frightened as any of us would be in similar circumstances. They are tired, homeless, hungry, sick and injured. Then there is the dead. Last estimate was nearly 200,000 people that lost their lives in this catastrophe. Precious loved ones have been lost. Children have been left orphaned.

Their government has literally collapsed like the rubble that was their homes, schools and hospitals. Medical aid, food and supplies are not arriving fast enough to deal with the devastation. The rule of law is falling apart in some places as looters and others who choose to take advantage of the circumstances inflict their cruelty on others further threatening the lives of many.

As to their concerns about an American occupation – if this is truly real – who can blame them? Their history demonstrates their oppression and utter powerlessness against the colonial French occupation. Even after rebelling and throwing off the yoke of their French oppressors they were forced to pay restitution the French government.

In 1825 Charles X of France agreed to accept Haiti’s independence provided that they pay 125 million francs, which was the annual budget of the French government at that time. This atrocity has been dubbed the Charles X Ransom. The balance was later reduced to 65 million francs. As if that would have any impact on the tiny nation.

Historians cite this as one of the contributing factors to the staggering poverty of this nation, the effects which are still being felt today. Then there is the cruel despotism of the exiled leader Papa Doc Duvalier who pocketed millions in foreign aid while his people suffered. Their present democratic government has been ineffective.

So it is quite understandable how the people of Haiti might fear and view with suspicion the landing of another superpower on their shores even if they come with open arms. History demonstrates that there has been no greater lie than “We come in peace.”

I believe that the United States and the rest of the international community have nothing but the best intentions in coming to the aid of Haiti. This recent tragedy has mobilized the world and helped ignite the love and compassion of many as we all struggle to find ways to do our part no matter how small it might be. Still our less than empathetic commentator and others like him would do well to search their hearts and find their shared humanity with the people of Haiti rather than promote hatred and ignorance.

The people of Haiti deserve to be treated humanely and as fellow human beings. Sadly, the world has failed to do this and it has taken a horrific tragedy to remind us of our failing.


Please consider giving to one of the many responsible charities working in Haiti.

I recommend Doctor’s Without Borders or the Red Cross.

Awesome !

Part II

My relationship with Lilly changed the night she crawled into bed with me. She was no longer Scott’s kid sister, but a maturing young woman who I had somehow managed to fall in love with not quite aware that it had been happening for sometime. Lilly was a comforting presence. An energizing power that chased away the nightmare of loneliness covering the profound pain of loss I had been living with since my family died 3 years earlier. I don’t recall dreaming the rest of the weekend.

 This newfound intimacy – still unconsummated – seemed loud in its quietness. Lilly didn’t return to my bed the rest of the weekend. We had talked and thought that our first night together should not be under her parent’s roof – out of respect for them. The tension, however, was palpable.  The intimacy evident in the way our eyes met when one of us walked into a room to find the other, hands brushing lightly, furtively against each other as we walked side by side or the way she put her hand on my chest or arm when she laughed at something I said or poked at me with some teasing remark the way new lovers sometimes do. If Scott or her parents noticed they didn’t let on.

 Sunday afternoon Scott’s parents came out to the driveway to say goodbye. A big bear hug and slap on the back from Scott’s dad, a soft kiss on the cheek and general fussing from his mom as she handed us Tupperware containers of turkey sandwiches for the ride back to Northwestern. Lilly had already left earlier in the day for Iowa City with her dorm mate leaving a burning hole in my heart where she had been the rest of the weekend.

  She had only been gone a couple of hours but I was already desperate for finals to be over and for Christmas break. I could still feel her goodbye kiss wet on my lips and cheek. I could smell her wonderful scent – clean, spring like lavender and a hint of wildflowers and freshly mown lawns and the fecund smell of new life emerging around us nestled in trees or from the musky earth. Lilly child of the earth and daughter of life – my sweet and longed for soul mate. Lilly night guardian and protector of my dreamland

 The dream returned. It was as is if that old crone with the leathery skin and her ritual of blood and sex were haunting me. The first night back in our dorm room I woke up screaming. Scott fell out of bed stumbling about in the darkness for a light. Tripping and knocking over the debris of college dorm life. Our neighbors were pounding on the paper thin wall screaming at us to “Shut the fuck up.” The commotion brought the dorm RA to our door. My heart ached for Lilly. I needed her protective embrace.

  I made the connection in my mind that Lilly – my Lilly – possessed some power over my subconscious that vanquished the nightmare, but as long as she was not in the same vicinity the power waned. I am not a superstitious individual and never had much stock in dreams. I had taken a seminar on the work of Jung and Transpersonal Psychology last spring and had pretty much dismissed the notion of universal archetypes and the collective unconscious as nonsense. Yet, in light of these very vivid dreams, that seemingly came out of nowhere, I found myself pulling out my old lecture notes and scanning them, not sure exactly what I was looking for.

 The smell and taste of blood lingered in my mouth and nose throughout my waking hours. I awoke each morning with mounting horror that I was also sexually sated even though I slept alone. Despite my eagerness to be with Lilly I had not felt the urge to relieve myself through masturbation and there was no obvious sign of the dreaded wet dream. Yet from my genitals I got that sweet aching feeling that often accompanied the release of sexual tension. 

 My eyes were bleary and bloodshot and their deep dark circles giving the impression that I had been in a nasty bar fight rather than from sleep deprivation. I was sleeping less and less for fear of encountering the leather skinned hag. She frightened me and each encounter with her left me feeling more drained and hopeless that the time before.

 “You look like absolute shit, bro,” Scott said the Friday morning before finals week was to start.”

 “I think I am just burning the candle at both ends,” I replied. “I have been studying pretty hard.”

 We were in the student union building where we met everyday between morning classes since we were freshman. He placed a large Styrofoam cup of very black coffee in front of me. I sipped lightly. It had the viscosity of motor oil.

 “I have seen you with study burn out. This is something else.”

 I tried to brush him off. But, Scott was having none of that. That’s the problem with sharing a dorm room with someone you are as close to as a brother – they know your bullshit and can see right through it.

 Later that afternoon I snuck off to a small alcove in the basement of the library with the pretense of studying undisturbed. I had really gone to try and take a nap. I had become a zombie since Thanksgiving. The little out of the area had the secure feeling of a womb for me and I had a few hours recharging. Very few people ever seemed to come down her.

 The acrid scent of smoke burned my nostrils

 It was black and oppressive choking me as I tried to gasp for air. I struggled to my feet surprised that there were no fire alarms sounding or sprinklers going off in the building. Then survival instinct bolstered by years of public school fire drills took over and I dropped to my knees cracking them on the hard ground. Instead of the dirty linoleum of the library basement my knees cracked on ground frozen by winter.

 Looking around I could see that the forest itself was not on fire. The sickly sweet smell of burning flesh confirmed it.

 Human flesh?

 I started to wretch.

 I realized that I probably wouldn’t know what burned human smelled like. I scrambled to my feet bracing myself against a large tree for extra leverage. I felt weak – dry. My mouth was pasty and my throat prickly. A rustle in the leaves behind me caused me to start. My skin grew clammy and my flesh crawled despite how dry I felt. I excpected to see the hag but instead was confronted by a giant of a man with a stag skull on his head covering his face. The antlers were huge. I counted 8 points if I did it right. Scott and his father were hunters, a sport I never understood. But, I had spent a few nights by the fire in the family living room listening to them relive past hunting adventures.

 Then the drums

 And flutes

 Those damn drums and flutes.

 Then the world went dark.

 To Be Continued…

Pat Robertson is a huge dick and apparently so is the god he worships. Earlier this week I was wondering just how long it would take Pat Robertson to open his big fat, stupid mouth. I didn’t have to wait long. According to CNN on Wednesday Pat Robertson is suggesting that God is punishing the Haitians with their pact for the devil.

Yes! You read that correctly. The Haitians made a pact with Satan in order to free themselves from the oppression of French colonial rule. Apparently before their revolution in 1804 they knocked on Satan’s door and said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.”

Satan said, “Okay it’s a deal.”

“True story,” Robertson affirms.

Here is another true story. Evolution is no longer a hypothesis. It is also not a theory in crisis. The earth is older than 6000 years. Snakes don’t talk – not now; not ever, and Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is an allegory. Not to mention that Robertson’s assertion that the Haitians made a deal with the Christian God’s nemesis is horseshit. All true stories.

“You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another,” CNN reports Robertson as saying. The only thing the Haitians have been cursed with is staggering poverty and a government that is unable to help them out. Then there are the rest of us – complicit because we have done nothing and once again it takes a catastrophic disaster for there to be an outpouring of compassion.

If an imaginary god should punish anyone it should be the rest of us. But, he is or so Pat Robertson asserts as he has linked Hurricane Katrina to God’s anger over abortion and The World Trade Center bombing in 2001 to Homosexuals. Hurricanes and Earthquakes are natural disasters. They are events that occur on a geologically active planet such as the Earth. These are no more “acts of god” then an ex nihlio creation of the universe. The refutation of that is simply E=MC2.

Ironically Robertson has previously made statements about God’s position on the spilling of innocent blood vis a vis the Old Testament. Yet, he seems to have no problem with God killing thousands of innocent Haitians with a 7.0 Earthquake. Apparently the 40 million unborn babies that are “murdered” each year in America alone are more important that the hundreds and thousands of children that die around the globe each year from violence, poverty and disease.

If people didn’t actually hang on every word this numb nuts had to say Robertson’s comments would be laughable and easy to dismiss. Unfortunately, his 700 Club and his other “ministries” reach thousands of credulous believers who feel the need to believe in a bronze age storm god who later became the Yahweh (or Jehovah) of Christianity. On the other hand a storm god is an angry sort and hurricanes and earthquakes may be exactly what he would do. The only question an intelligent person should ask is, why bother with this childish and abusive god in the first place.

So in the end how do we respond? I believe the Haitians savior Satan says it best.

All hail the dark lord.