147. CHRISTIAN EXODUS

From the Archives

(September 2005) Christianexodus.org wants to “reestablish a constitutionally limited government founded upon Christian values” by relocating 2,500 families to two SC counties—I guess because SC is not filled with ENOUGH Christianist wackos already!!. Their stealth objective is to gain the electoral majority needed to put their officials in every public office so that they can then dictate how every other citizen can live her/his life.

Here’s their spiel:

ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the US Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.

Notice their past three decades. Many religious extremists seek to overturn spousal and child abuse laws that were put into place in these last 3 decades (God, you see, granted men absolute dominion over their families and women, so they have the God-given right to do with us as they will. See?).

Check out the Family Protection Act from the 1980s for a real sobering overview of these principles.

Randall Terry also props up specious reasoning as fact with lines such as Look what we’ve seen since the second wave of feminism. More violent crime, more child abuse, more divorces, rampant sexual immorality concerning the past 3 decades. What he fails to mention is that the feminist movement pushed to criminalize spousal and child abuse and introduced domestic-violence shelters into our landscape. The movement also encouraged women to leave violent relationships even as it pushed to punish abusive parents.

Protections such as these just irritate the crap out of those "women must submit graciously to men" folks—I mean, how dare we tell them whether or not they can backslap their wives!

There’s more violent crime today because men who beat their wives and children are more likely to be charged with a crime. But, when you factor in these new laws, violent crime is actually LOWER than it was in the oh-so-chaste 1950s.

Sensationalistic reports of violent crime, on the other hand, are all too comonplace.

My pals who grew up in SC speak of the state as rabidly fundamentalist and oppressive, so I worry that this exodus group will encounter minimal resistance there. Still, occasionally visit queers who have stubbornly decided to stay in Greenville (which abuts the area Exodus wants to resettle).

Greenville is also home to the infamous Bob Jones University. Remember the flap that ensued when Bush visited Bob Jones University, with its strict no interracial dating policy?

This university has separate pink and blue sidewalks where males and females walk and a chain-link fence with razor-wire keeps students locked inside/interlopers out. Girls are required to wear knee-length or longer dresses—no pants—and boys' hair must not touch their collars. No facial hair or long sideburns either. And visitors must agree to these policies as well in order to step foot on the grounds.

I can’t help but think about the two gay men in Greensville who have a huge Christmas in July party every year—we're talking hundreds of queers decorating Christmas trees in the tropical heat of summer. A huge event. Will they be forced out? Ostracized? Outlawed? Lynched?

This will surprise people, but this squatting approach strikes me as democracy in action in some ways. Sure, I don’t want to abide by laws I don’t believe in and have done my time at protests and civil disobediences to make my voice heard. And I will continue to fight for equal rights for ALL citizens, not just the mainstream ones.

I am more than a little suspicious of people who rely on stealth invasion to try to force their bias onto others though.

Still, maybe concentrating superstition in a few pockets of the country could free the rest of us up to just move on with our lives though.

Saw this commetary on the Web: “These groups are clever. They are going beyond the ‘intentional community’ model that we’ve seen to date. It is difficult to create an intentional community trying to live with a common set of moral values if your values are not reflected in the laws you must abide by” though.

And lets don't forget that the Bill of Rights is under threat because these groups are so well organized and willing to pretend to be something they’re not in order to achieve their goals.

So much for honesty. The Golden Rule.

Christianexodus got it’s idea from the Free State Project, which started in 2001. This project currently has 6,600 committed participants who are ready to move or have already moved to NH. (Their goal is 20,000 people.) It’s a simple concept: Find a like-minded state, move there, and set up a government that’s run the way you believe it should be run, passing laws that explicitly reflect your own values.

They’ll gain the electoral majority they need to put dozens of officials into every local office from the city council to the school board and then (if they have their way) expand from there.

Also from the Web:

Christian Exodus believes the federal government has extended its reach way too far into the lives of Americans, and has far exceeded the powers reserved for it by the Constitution. They also share many of the Christian right’s viewpoints on hot-button issues (they’re against gay marriage and legalized abortion, they think kids should be able to say Christian prayers in school, and that the Ten Commandments should be displayed prominently in courthouses). But they don’t consider themselves part of the Christian right. They’re anti-war and anti-Bush, and founder Cory Burnell went so far as to describe President Bush as “that big-government liberal.”

Here’s their splash page:

WELCOME TO THE CHRISTIAN EXODUS
ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina.

THE PROBLEM
Christians have actively tried to return the United States to their moral foundations for more than 30 years. We now have a "Christian" president, a "Christian" attorney general, and a Republican Congress and Supreme Court. Yet consider this:
• Abortion continues against the wishes of many States
• Sodomite marriage is now legal in Massachusetts (and coming soon to a neighborhood near you)
• Children who pray in public schools are subject to prosecution
• Our schools continue to teach the discredited theory of Darwinian evolution
• The Bible is still not welcome in schools except under unconstitutional FEDERAL guidelines
• The 10 Commandments remain banned from public display
• Sodomy is now legal AND celebrated as "diversity" rather than condemned as perversion
• Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as "hate speech"
Attempts at reform have proven futile. Future elections will not stop the above atrocities, but rather will exacerbate them and lead us down an even more deadly path.

THE SOLUTION
So what can be done? ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.

ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of thousands of Christians to reacquire our Constitutional rights and, if necessary to attain these rights, dissolve our State's bond with the union. Click on our Plan of Action page to find out how we can experience God-honoring governance once again.

If you are tired of government-endorsed sin, then stand up and be counted! Register a user account to join the discussion forum, and submit a membership form to join the movement.

That about sums it up.

BEST-OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: “Why let people know about your intimate life?”

Well, that IS the question, now isn’t it?

146. SQUATTIN’ WITH CROSSES, OR, IS THIS THE NEW CIVIL WAR?

From the Archives

(September 2005)

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, after reporting that armed thugs now control the city and are raping and assaulting stranded tourists and other survivors, looting and hijacking vehicles, said

the whole recovery operation had been carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days. The rest of the goddamn nation can’t get us any resources for security. ...We are like little birds with our mouths open and you don’t have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm... It’s criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren’t force-deeding us. It’s like FEMA has never been to a hurricane.—New York Times

The whole coastal area of the state has been destroyed, virtually destroyed. It was quiet. It was eerie. It was horrible to behold.—Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)

I’ll say it again, after pointing out that Sen. Cochranm, who used the word “behold,” definitely grew up hearing the King James version of the Bible read aloud: I just LOVE how southerners string words together.

Stan Goodenough describes Katrina as The Fist of God:

What America is about to experience is the lifting of God's hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel. The Bible talks about Him shaking His fist over bodies of water, and striking them.—Deborah Caldwell, “Did God Send the Hurricane?” BELIEFNET 9.1.2005

On Sunday, Bridgett Magee of Slidell, LA told the Christian website Jerusalem Newswire that she saw the hurricane as a direct coming back on us [for] what we did to Israel: a home for a home. (Deborah Caldwell, “Did God Send the Hurricane?” BELIEFNET 9.1.2005)

Interestingly, the White House is referring to the hurricane and flooding as a catastrophe of biblical proportions too.

And here’s a nice twist on the standard specious reasoning: God brought the hurricane to punish America for its homophobia and for not burning Pat Robertson at the stake.—SSEGALLMD (ALTERNET)

"It was not enough for the president to bank his plane and look at the window and say 'O, what a devastating site,'” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) said in a statement on Thursday. "Instead of looking out the window of an airplane, he should have been on the ground giving the people devastated by this hurricane hope." (The New York Times).

I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who had noticed that, for days now, we have been inundated with discomforting noblesse oblige images of white people either rescuing black people from the flooded waters or white people describing thoseblack people in need of rescue as savages. Well, today, the New York Times finally reports that there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck. Just as in developing countries where the failures of rural development policies become glaringly clear at times of natural disasters like floods or drought, many national leaders said, some of the United States’ poorest cities have been left vulnerable by federal policies.

In New Orleans,

the disaster’s impact underscores the intersection of race and class in a city where fully two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter of the city lives in poverty. In the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the floodwaters, more than 98 percent of the residents are black and more than a third live in poverty.

No one would have checked on a lot of the black people in these parishes while the sun shined, said Mayor Milton D. Tutwiler of Winstonville, MS. So am I surprised that no one has come to help us now? No.

"I assume the president is going to say he got bad intelligence"—Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), who noted that the danger to the levees was clear. "Wherever you see poverty, whether it’s in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich."

Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws? Prof. Mark Maison asked. If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions.

"Most of the people that live in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable are black and poor, so it comes down to a lack of sensitivity on the part of people in Washington that you need to help poor folks. It’s as simple as that."—Charles Steele Jr, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is really enjoying the US Open and those Broadway shows.

Meanwhile, concerned citizens are paddling their own canoes down to New Orleans in throngs and going building to building to rescue people. A volunteer citizen navy with its very own flotilla!

People can be so cool sometimes.

145. WE ARE ONLY COMING THROUGH IN WAVES

From the Archives

(September 2005) My family is an old Mississippi family. I had antiques, 150 years old or more. They’re all gone. We have just basically a slab, Anne Anderson of Gulfport told NBC. Behind us we have a beautiful sunrise and sunset, and that is going to be what I’m going to miss the most, sitting on the porch watching those.

Rebuild. With a porch, Anne. Rebuild!

My house is flooded, said Rhonda Green, 44, who had reached the highway safe, but damp. I’m talking about deep-freezer-floating-in-the-water flooded.”

Spoken like a true southerner!

These little tidbits are reaching us, but where’s the rest of the news? This is fucking eerie.

Meanwhile, here's a choice piece off the web:

Letter to Pres. Bush:

What? You want me to donate?

Gee, I dunno. Sending money to the Red Cross to help a red state is a real problem for me. Would the "Christians" down there take money from a card-carrying Liberal from hoity-toity Connecticut? What if they knew I were Gay; would they take my money then? Anyway, I thought I heard some preacher somewhere saying that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrathful punishment against the Bible Belt for turning away from evolution, for their homophobia, for their anti-environmentalism, for opposing universal health-care, for supporting the Invasion of Iraq, for interpreting the Bible literally, for a history of racism, and, especially, for the Catholic diocese down there in New Orleans throwing another Christian church (UFMCC) out of a building they own because of theological disagreements. Maybe it was Jerry Falwell or "ole squint-eye" Pat Robertson. Didn't Falwell blame 9/11 on us? And didn't Robertson agree with him? Will they take my money now? I really need to know.

Since Bush, Cheney, et. al. are making billions from gasoline prices and war profiteering, I'd like to know how much they are contributing first, before I donate. Is anybody asking these questions? Is anybody asking the president of "Personal Responsibility" why he insists that the globe is not warming even though the gulf waters are hotter than ever and are directly linked to Katrina's force? How much are these fat cats donating?

Hey, what about the tax cuts for the rich? Shouldn't the rich be the ones to kick in? I haven't heard about a covey of rich white folks getting it together, giving up their tax cuts, to provide millions in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. Maybe they're all down in the superdome with Falwell, Dobson and Robertson - hot, smelly, filthy, crowded superdome - handing out food to the poor??? Guess not. Say, why can't the Corporations that have bought what used to be a Democracy for and by the people globalize the relief effort? Are the holders of outsourced jobs donating?

Maybe after Bush privatizes my Social Security I'll feel more disposed to act like a good Christian and send money. Oh, if I'm not by chance a Christian at all, would my money be accepted? It's a real quandary.

Frank Chisholm
East Lyme, CT 06333

144. BIBLICAL LAW

From the Archives (August 2005)

If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us—1920s Texas governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, barring the teaching of foreign languages in public schools

What the Bible purportedly says is often the grounds upon which political battles are decided in our country and, these days, some Bible factoid that a slick preacher can encapsulate in a rhyming soundbite often passes as knowledge and is used to try to sledgehammer bias and superstition into policy.

The New York Times reports that an overwhelming majority of US citizens want both creationism and evolution to be taught in public schools. And many are under the erroneous assumption that none of the tenets of evolution are proveable. The fact that we are carbon life-forms, that our ancestors were carbon life-forms that can be traced to a certain era is not theory, but that's missing from this debate.

Meanwhile, the science backing creationism or so-called Intelligent Design remains nonexistent.

The bigger question, of course, is WHY is manipulated public opinion dictating what people are taught in science classes?

When I was a child, a primary tenet of Southern Baptist faith was the absolute separation of church and state. Baptists perceive of themselves as hard-working, good-hearted minorities who would be protected by the rule of law, but they eschewed politics (and carved furniture and fancy make-up, and...) as worldly and unclean.

That’s all changed now, almost as radically as the Baptist version of Jesus has changed.

Jesus, back when I was creating tinfoil lakes and burning bushes in my Vacation Bible School diorama projects, was the supreme authority—the all-knowing, all-loving savior who made everyone equal before the eyes of God. Fundamentalists have replaced this authority with Old Testament fire and brimstone now and assert that the Bible is not open to interpretation.

Nosireebobtail, it’s not a human translation of original Hebrew or Greek written by a host of fallible people, but is instead the literal word of God. And this Old Testament God's wrath, not Jesus’s inclusion, is the authority now.

As the bumpersticker I see too often says God said it. I believe it. That settles it.

Interesting how the Baptists exclude some chapters of the Bible found in the same caves as chapters that are included too. Are these texts somehow less the word of God? Or are they less easily manipulated for social control or insufficiently patriarchal or a little too sexy? (Or too Catholic, as a Sundahy School teacher once told me.)

Baptist ministers are also “called,” which means that some never attend seminaries or receive formal education. Do these religious um leaders even know that these other chapters exist? Or that they were written in the original Greek and Hebrew?

•

You and I can bring the rule and reign of the cross to America. That’s what Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of the 2,000-member Hope Christian Church in Bowie MD said on so-called Justice Sunday II (8.14.2005). And that’s what the fundamentalists want to do: enforce their brand of faith onto this nation.

I guess they’ve overlooked the fact that our Constitution calls for three co-equal branches of government, since they are determined to undermine the independent judiciary and thus undermine the separation of powers.

One of their strategies is court-stripping, but “despite the Christian Coalition’s best efforts, those pesky federal courts keep upholding the Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state. But not to worry, the group has a plan to fix that: take away the right of the courts to hear those cases in the first place. This bold gambit, called ‘court stripping,’ is all the rage among the Religious Right these days.” (Rob Boston, AUSCS’s Church and State, Nov. 2004)

Jesse Helms worked hard to deny the courts the right to hear school prayer cases too. In fact, for years now, the Christianists have insisted that Congress has the power to remove some “issues” from the purview of the federal court system.

Our separation of powers was designed to maintain balance while keeping the will of the majority from trampling on the rights of the minority. If lawmakers infringe on constitutional rights, then the courts pull them back from the fringe and protect citizens from cultural whims and biases and the sometimes boneheaded will of the majority.

You don’t have to go very far back in history to realize why we need this division of power either. Remember when the federal courts stepped in after local and state governments ruled by bias and failed to protect African Americans? They overturned the oppressive Jim Crow statutes that denied a portion of our citizenry the right to vote and imposed segregation(...and many a white southerner has stoked a simmering rage against the federal court system ever since).

Court-stripping was not a strategy back then, but think about it in the context of the present, with the Christianists who are now in Congress running things. With our theocractic-leaning president running things. If a federal court overturned the Jim Crow laws today, a court-stripping amendment could be pushed through to uphold them before lunch.

Now let’s step back to the days of ducktails again. In 1964, George Wallace attacked the passage of civil-rights legislation this way: “Today, this tyranny is imposed by the central government which claims the right to rule over our lives under sanction of the omnipotent black-robed despots who sit on the bench of the US Supreme Court.” Not surprisingly, Wallace insisted that legislation be passed to “curb the powers of this body of judicial tyrants.”

Judicial tyrants.

(Hey. Here’s an idea: if someone enforces a law that you don’t believe in, then don't step back to question your own biases. Instead, insist that you’re being vicitimized by tyrants. They don’t like me becawz I’m a Chwistian! Waaa!)

(Aww. Would you cry me a fucking river?)

James Dobson sounds like George Wallace these days. “Stop Judicial Tyranny,” he says on his Focus on The Family website, as he promotes court-stripping bills and attacks the federal judiciary for any ruling that displeases his quest for power.

And he gets tax breaks for doing this. Amazing!

•

Meanwhile, I’m reading What The Bible Says—and Doesn’t Say—About Homosexuality and A Response to Southern Baptists: A Gay Christian Answers to Fundamentalist Southern Baptists right now in an attempt to decide how to respond to my rabid aunt. This is from the latter title:

The conservative political takeover of Southern Baptist seminaries and other institutions has undermined the objective academic credibility of once great schools and boards and has made Baptists the object of scorn and ridicule in the scholastic world.... Baptists deny the Bible in their attacks on homosexuals. Baptist Greek scholars know, like all others do, that the Bible has no word for ‘homosexual’ in the Old Testament Hebrew or the New Testament Greek. Yet the same incorrect translations and out-of-context use of only six verses to attack and condemn gay people continues in this so-called ‘Bible believing’ denomination.”

Katherine Yurica transcribed Pat Robertson's television show The 700 Club in the early 1980s and points out that he was outlining his strategy to strip the federal judiciary of its constitutional powers 25 years ago:

Robertson wanted to reduce or eliminate the power of the judiciary. He denied that the Constitution provides a system of checks and balances between three separate and equal branches of government...

In fact, Robertson went further: he denied that the judiciary is a co-equal branch of the government. Instead, he saw the judiciary as a department of the legislative branch, which he believed was the dominant center of power in the nation. His reasoning went like this: Since Congress has complete authority to establish the lower federal courts and to establish "the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court," the court system is necessarily subordinate to the legislative. Robertson's idea was that congress could control the court by using its power to intimidate. For example, he said, ‘Congress could say “There's a whole class of cases you can't hear” and there's nobody can do anything about it!’

Now let’s shift our gaze to Rep. John Hostetler (R-IN). He said, at a recent Christian Coalition gathering, "When the courts make unconstitutional decisions, we should not enforce them. Federal courts have no army or navy. The court can opine, decide, talk about, sing, whatever it wants to do. We're not saying they can't do that. At the end of the day, we're saying the court can't enforce its opinions."

Yes, he’s THAT Hostettler, the author of two recent court-stripping bills. (One was an amendment barring the use of federal funds to enforce the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision to remove the 10 Commandments from a Montgomery courthouse; it also restricts the court’s ability to hear cases involving other religious symbols. Hostettler drafted the so-called Marriage Protection Act too. This bill strips federal courts of jurisdiction over legal challenges to the DOMA.

Then there’s the so-called Constitution Restoration Act of 2004, which bans challenges to state-sponsored acknowledgments of “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government” and retroactively overturns all existing rulings even as it sets up a mechanism for impeaching federal judges who uphold church-state separation. And this was written by a judge!

Maybe he never had to take Civics. Or maybe most current Congresspeople these days didn’t. Or maybe the Christianists went to Christian schools and were only taught what would make them complacent believers. Or maybe the Christianists haven’t yet realized that they can’t buy courts the way they can buy elections.

Whatever the case, our nation’s separation of powers means that Congress does not have the power to decimate the authority of the courts through legislation that deals with issues surrounding our Bill of Rights, even if some citizens would like to turn the courts into rubberstamps for Congress and the Christianists.

There’s much more to rant about in this arena and researching the Bible in my efforts to draft an overdue letter to my Aunt Becky is pushing me up onto my soapbox, but I gotta go for now so ciao bella.

143. EVIDENCE-FREE ZONES

From the Archives

(August 2005) Have been logging onto weather.com off and on all day to follow the hurricane and just read that two massive oaks outside the almost 300-year-old St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square fell on either side of the huge marble Jesus, snapping off the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.

This reminds me of a random fact I’ve always wanted to incorporate into a poem—one that would be a lot more effective if I actually believed in a savior (my utterances of “O Christ!” and “Oh For The Love of God!” not withstanding): When the black choirgirls died in the church bombings, the stained-glass windows remained intact except for Jesus’s face, which blew out ... almost as if he couldn’t bear to see the horror of what hate destroyed.

I hope we don’t find out just what happens when the urge to develo destroys over one million acres of coastal wetlands that once served as a storm buffer.

This puts me in mind of Hillary’s comments after her trip to Alaska. She said, after seeing the effects of climate change firsthand, “We can’t afford to live in an evidence-free zone where science takes a back seat to ideology” anymore.

What I find most pathetic is that the White House oilmen not only refused to join over 150 nations in signing the Kyoto Protocols to reduce emissions but also declared that, instead of regulating the harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, they would instead make any such emission reductions voluntary.

The New York Times calls this “Washington’s stubborn passivity.” I call it Pure-T Greed.

Meanwhile, the mayors of over 130 cities have become exasperated enough with the oilmen’s failure to sign the Protocol that they have agreed to meet the emissions reductions contained in the pact at the local level.

And the state of California (which already went into the business of funding scientific research after Shrub announced his so-called moral prohibition against stem-cell research and which already has tough environmental laws on the books) is now exploring a regional agreement with Washington and Oregon.

Nine other northeast states have taken matters into their own hands too and agreed on a regional plan to reduce power plant emissions of carbon dioxide by 2020.

Dan Savage argues that we’re a series of cities that queers live in, that we Island hop between San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and the other big urban gay meccas, but progressive politics is alive at the state level in the humid Southland too. (And I must mention that Dan fails to include RTP in his formula, although it consistently ranks as one of the top 10 places for LGBTQ folks to live—and Asheville is right up there too, folks!)

The northeast states’ agreement exceeds the oilmen’s voluntary approach to reductions (which, no big surprise, has not produced a great response among the corporations and power companies). Of course, automobile companies are challenging these states’ laws too—particularly California’s, which will require a 30 percent reduction in vehicular greenhouse gas emissions. Car manufacturers argue that these laws are an illegal usurpation of federal authority to set mileage standards but, if the national leaders won’t do their job....

According to the Times, “Environmentalists who support a federal law to control greenhouse gases believe that the model established by the Northeastern states will be followed by other states, resulting in pressure that could eventually lead to the enactment of a national law.”

Maybe if Pataki is elected....

But think of it, folks: states are working together in a cooperative action to correct our president’s blatant oversights. Now that’s hopeful!

142. HE HAD A REASON TO GET BACK TO LAKE CHARLES

From the Archives

(August 2005) Just made the perfect August garden-fresh meal and leftovers for the week: grilled fresh corn on the cob, broccoli cooked on high in olive oil and lemon, green beans cooked with fresh garlic and onions and olive oil and balsamic vinegar with chives sprinkled on top, Swiss chard cooked in lemon and salt, and some happy red potatoes cooked with rosemary.

Have been watching the weather channel all evening hoping to hear a report that Hurricane Katrina turned back to sea and spared New Orleans but no good news so far.

I am here to tell you that surviving a hurricane is a damn sobering experience.

I can also assure you that the following is a place you never want to be: sitting in a huddle in your pitch black hallway with your pets pressed against you as your deck furniture crashes through your windows and your fence explodes into ribbons and your roof peels off in sheets and the rain seeps all the way through your thirteen-inch stucco walls and onto the floor around you.

My neighborhood had so many downed trees after our hurricane hit that no one could leave, so we pooled our food and grilled out meals in the tree-strewn streets together and sweated like pigs while we made our repairs and worshipped the generator owners who stored beer for us so we could have a cold one together after chopping up trees together all day.

What’s sobering to me is that the hurricane I survived was only a category 3, and Fran is a category 5 that's heading straight for Lake Pontchartrain.

•

Meanwhile, an Alternet reader points out that the UK has announced guidelines for deporting “extremist religious leaders” who preach hatred and violence.

(This means they could deport Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps, right?)

And another alert AlterNet reader points out that Pat Robertson supported war criminal Charles Taylor and actually muttered on The 700 Club when Taylor was petitioning Congress to drop sanctions against Liberia, “How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down.'"

Apparently, money-loving Robertson loves those Liberian gold and diamond mines.

And, while we’re on the topic, did anyone else note that Dr. James Dobson of conservative Focus on the Family fame told fathers recently that they can prevent homosexuality by showering with their boys (to affirm their maleness) and teaching them to pound square wooden pegs into square holes?

(Yes, it’s all about our inability to hammer pegs into holes correctly, folks.)

BEST OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: No more penis enlarge ripoffs

141. DEAR CHICKEN

From the Archives

(August 2005) Just came across this in a poetry journal and will post it without comment:

DEAR CHICKEN
by Gabriel Gudding


Dear Chicken,
I'm sorry the farmboy punts you. Our housecat is a racist and considers you a brand of Arabian sparrow. Most butterflies are just hinged shabby paper. I don't get your feet: you are such this dressed up lizard. What if I were to plug the tail of a cow into its rectum? Would its hooves frizzle and short-circuit? Is the pumpkin a Catholic or a Lutheran? The evangelist exploded on my mother. There was missionary-slurry all over her.

Yesterday I inserted a frozen caterpillar into my urethra. It thawed and crawled out. I am punching the bunny in the head. I am not going to put the bunny in my mouth. Won't fit. Even a small bunny won't fit in my mouth. You are my chicken. I will send you some nail polish, you can paint your beak with it. That way you can be a pretty chicken.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Gudding

Gabriel Gudding is the author of A Defense of Poetry (Pitt, 2002) and rhode island notebook (currently under consideration at a press near you). An assistant professor of English at Illinois State University, he is a trained mediator and practices Vipassana in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khon.

140. AMERICAN FATWAH, CONTINUED

From the Archives

(August 2005) So I received an e-mail message from Democracy for America this morning. Instead of calling for an FCC investigation or the filing of criminal charges against Pat Robertson, Democracy for America wants to place a “Thou Shalt Not Kill” ad in Pat’s local newspaper. How effective of them.

I signed their petition, but wrote this:

The FCC fined CBS $550,000 for accidentally airing Janet Jackson's silicone breast during the Superbowl. Call for the FCC to fine Robertson’s so-called Christian Broadcasting Network for using federally licensed airwaves to call for terrorist homicide.

Call for criminal charges to be filed against him for his fatwah.

Insist that he be prosecuted for calling for the murder of a democratically elected head of state.

See US Code, Title 18, Sec 1116: “whoever kills or attempts to kill a foreign official, official guest, or internationally protected person shall be punished” and Sec 878, which makes it a crime to “knowingly and willingly threaten” to commit this crime.

Our government is obligated under international law to prevent and punish acts of terrorism against foreign heads of state when they are conceived of or planned on our soil. See the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, which makes it a crime to commit a “murder, kidnapping, or other attack upon on the liberty of an internationally protected person” [including] a “threat to commit any such attack.”

See also The OAS Convention to Prevent and Punish Acts of Terrorism Taking the Form of Crimes against Persons and Related Extortion That Are of International Significance, of which the US is a signatory. Art 8a obliges “the contracting states undertake to cooperate among themselves by taking all the measures that they may consider effective, under their own laws, and especially those established in this convention, to prevent and punish acts of terrorism, especially kidnaping [sic], murder, and other assaults against the life or physical integrity of those persons to whom the state has the duty according to international law to give special protection, as well as extortion in connection with those crimes.” This convention includes foreign heads of state as internationally protected persons.

Obviously, I didn’t do all that research myself but got most of it from Deborah James’s article on ALTERNET.

Democracy for America did make a good point though when they wrote in their plea for funds that

Robertson's fatwah, calling for the assassination of the president of Venezuela—in the name of keeping access to a "huge pool of oil," among other excuses—exposed the warped values of many religious radicals with the ear of the president of the United States. From efforts to squelch the teaching of sound science in our schools, to the "Justice Sunday" rallies trying to impose religion on the courts, to the quixotic jihad against SpongeBob SquarePants, fundamentalist power grabs make the news and have a huge impact. But they don't have the teachings of any religion we know of—and they don't have us.

Infuckingdeed y’all.

139. I JUST DO WHAT THEY TELL ME TO DO

From the Archives

(August 2005) My friend’s little sister recently joined the armed forces (during a war) because she graduated and couldn’t find a job that paid her enough to pay off her student loans, and, well, the following is a song that her Charlie Company unit apparently sings together:

40 rounds Dress It Down, Charlie drop the bomb now. Ahh boom, get hot, get hot, woo (females), get hot, get hot (males) aaah, we’re hot. We’re hot, aah, don’t stop, don’t stop. We’re Charlie, as you can see. We come to rock your company. We’re motivated; we’re dedicated; we’re number one. We know you hate it. We’re good as gold ’cause Charlie’s bold. We’re down to fight from dawn till night. We’ll hit you once with all our might. Don’t let the silence fool ya ’cause Charlie’s gonna school ya!

I find it very scary that people bond by singing a song that equates their sexual attractiveness with their ability to drop a bomb on another human being and kill people.

138. MEDEA IS NOW AWAKE

From the Archives

(August 2005) LaylaGoddess's blog gave me the idea to type “[your name] is” on Google and see what it produces.

So, in no particular order, Medea is found at the bottom of a staircase. Medea is an electronic valve-assisted trumpet and stand. Medea is the type of woman who fakes orgasms. Medea is writing her name. Medea is the embodiment of the Essence woman. Medea is wearing a slip. Medea is an angel who’s job it is to hunt various beings of evil. Medea is the attractive but hard-bitten wife of ageing Mafioso Saro. Medea is in Ray’s house drinking beer. Medea is on her way to Seattle and has a 30-minute layover in an unfamiliar airport. Medea is reading Little House on the Prairie. Medea is a place you can visit with the family. Medea is a dude. Medea is comfortable with her intersex status. Medea is well aware that she is a man magnet and uses this knowledge to her advantage. Medea is the kind of movie that certain people don’t want to see. Medea is the delivery girl who transports the goods across the city. Medea is currently writing a chapter on hunting. Medea is a catalyst. Medea is one dame you don’t want to mess with. Medea is lying in bed like a sack of nothing. Medea is attempting to discover and assert herself. Medea is a prime example of the huge impact technology can make on one’s career. Medea is all about comfort. Medea is a relative new-comer to reincarnation studies, and she does not have a philosophical axe to grind. Medea is the girl with the pretty red bow in her hair. Medea is a predictable combination of street tough and waif. Medea is living with her own sordid past. Medea is a tad piqued. Medea is not amused. Medea is getting grouchy. Medea is shaken, but she grabs her laptop and heads to Mexico. Medea is, for all intents and purposes, a ghost in the machine. Medea is carrying a white bottle representing the purity of freedom. Medea is above all a mystic. Medea is waterbombed from above. Medea is now awake. Medea is a little-bit-older Lolita, a calculating MTV-era honeybunch. Medea is full of love and has nobody to give it to. Medea is posting new pix for which she grew her bush. Medea is a fucking monster. Medea is subject to discipline. Medea is the coolest bitch with a knife ever! Medea is a part of everyone. Medea is everything.

137. AMERICAN FATWAH

From the Archives

(August 2005) I’m in my favorite café having a latte and shaking my head at the latest that idiot Pat Robertson has done to get in the news. You’ll remember that, in 1998, he said that God was hitting Florida with hurricanes because of gay days at Disney (note that queers, not Disney, organized this event). Then he condemned the United Nations for trying to make one world government. And now he is making terrorist statements on TV, telling his loyal Christianists—while no doubt adding that God insists that they should send Pat more money—that the US should assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," he said on the PTL Club (1 million + viewers). "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. ...You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.
It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Perhaps someone should tell Pat that he uses too many you knows. (Couldn’t his god cure that?) And I guess he’s only a literalist when it comes to making homophobic statements about what the Bible says, since he obviously missed the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment.

Interestingly, the White House has had little to say about this, perhaps because they’re beholden to the Religious Right and Chavez is such an outspoken critic of the shrub that would be king.

This did prompt the following line in Yahoo’s story: "[Robertson’s statements] reveal that religious fundamentalism is one of the great problems facing humanity in these times."

BEST OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: dont you think its dumb? (Well yeah yes I do)

136. SHOCK AND AWE

From the Archives (August 2005)

CONSUMER
by Jude Todd

Abysmal: extremely, hopelessly bad; of or pertaining to an abyss.

Abyss: hell; Hades; realm of the god Pluto, who opened a gaping maw in the Earth to trap and consume Persephone. Some say that the Iraq war is an abyss from which Americans cannot emerge. (See americium; engulf; plutocracy; plutonium.)

Americium: a man-made transuranic element produced by the high-energy helium bombardment of uranium and plutonium. Americium is found in weapons that employ depleted uranium (DU); ingesting the tiniest particle of americium can cause cancer (see consumption) and genetic defects. (See absysmal; Pluto.)

Consume: to eat; to use up; to devour. From the Latin sumere, “to take.” The “con” in “consume” is not derived from Latin con/com for “together,” in which case it might mean communion, as in eating together, i.e., sharing; rather, this “con” means “altogether,” or “wholly,” so to consume is to take wholly, i.e. to engulf.

Consumer: one who consumes; an organism that feeds on others. 20 percent of the world’s wealthiest humans consume 86 percent of its resources. U.S. Americans are particularly adept consumers; we currently engulf 30 percent of the Earth’s natural resources. We also produce more waste per capita than any other country. (See greed.)

Consumer goods: objects produced to satisfy human desires, often without regard for the good of either human or non-human others. (See greed.)

Consumption: the act of consuming. An older use of “consumption” referred to tuberculosis and to a progressive wasting of the body. Contemporary consumption results in the wasting of the Earth’s body and of the body politic of all nations. Wars waged to protect the U.S. consumptive lifestyle waste life. (See DU; greed; Gulf War(s).)

DU: depleted uranium, an extremely dense radioactive waste product of nuclear reactors, used in cluster bombs and other weapons in both Gulf Wars. DU is composed of uranium-238, neptunium, plutonium, and americium, all rolled into a hyper-dense b all of hell that burns on contact and causes cancer, neurological diseases, and genetic defects. In the first Gulf War, over 320 tons of DU were pounded into the Iraqi earth. The amount of DU used in Gulf War II is unknown. Because DU continues to kill long after its initial use, the United Nations considers DU a “weapon of indiscriminate use” and, therefore, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. (See abysmal.)

Engulf: to consume; to swallow up. (See abyss; greed; gulf.)

Greed: excessive desire for wealth. In many cultures, greed is understood to cause destruction, so their teachings guard against it. Even before the U.S. culture consumed this land, Pueblo Indians told stories of times when greed destroyed the world. (See abysmal.) In U.S. culture, however, greed is celebrated, and during a crisis it is especially prized. After the 9/11 attack, U.S. Americans were urged to fight that evil by buying more goods. (See americium; Gulf War(s).)

Gulf; a portion of sea enclosed in land; a deep hollow; an abyss. (See Pluto.)

Gulf War(s): wars started by George Bushes to preserve the consumptive lifestyle of the richest U.S. Americans. (See abyss; americium; DU; engulf; greed; plutocracy.)

Pluto: the Greek god who caused Persephone to be engulfed by an abyss in the Earth. Pluto imprisoned Persephone in Hades and consumed her, i.e., he raped her. The Earth shared Persephone’s shock, terror, and grief; grains refused to grow and all life wasted away. Pluto tricked Persephone into eating a tiny particle, a pomegranate seed, so that she would spend half her life in hell. (See abysmal; plutocracy; plutonium.)

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy, i.e., those who own most of the goods, those most adept at consumption. (See greed.)

Plutonium: a man-made transuranic element used to make DU. Its half-life of 24,000 years ensures that plutonium will be highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Engulfing even a tiny partcle of plutonium can cause cancer/wasting. (see abysmal; americium; consumption; Pluto.)

Waste: By-product of consumption. (See abysmal.)

—from shock and awe: war on words, ed. By Bregje van Eekelen, Jennifer González, Bettina Stötzer, and Anna Tsing. Feminisms and Global War Project of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research (New Pacific Press: Santa Cruz, 2004).

135. CRICKET AND BULLFROG LULLABIES

From the Archives

(August 2005) I’m reading My South: A People, A Place, A World of Its Own and trying to convince myself to go to sleep, but thunder is rolling across the sky and lightning is flashing in jagged electric spasms and, just as when I was a kid, here I sit mesmerized by it all and I just don’t want to go to sleep and miss anything.

From the book:

My South is a tree comforting me. Its ivory velvet blooms emitting fragrances of exotic places. Lemon verbena fondly familiar from sea islands to grand plantations. Standing through centuries of hurricanes and sultry evenings silhouetted by the Carolina moon.—Carol Furtwangler

and

In my south, crickets and bullfrogs are my lullaby.—Edward Jack Smith

and

In my South, secrets are heirlooms and politeness is a way of life.—Carol Furtwangler

So one of my rabidly Southern Baptist aunts is determined to cure me of my uh choice to be a dyke and is offended now because I took a lesbian to my uncle’s funeral.

(Yeah and we touched your Baptist doorknobs too so WATCH OUT or we just might rub off on you.)

She is now advising me to

please read the enclosed Scripture. You are a great influence to your family. They love you very much and so do I. We can all repent and see our loved ones again for eternity.

She also sent the program from their church service held the Sunday after my uncle’s funeral with its so-called Message from God’s Word entitled “What The Bible Says About Homosexuality: Isaiah 5:20.”

(Was it our nose rings that gave it away? Glad we made such an impression!)

So here are some extra Bible verses that my auntscribbled onto her envelope: 1 Tim 1:9 • Leveticus [sic] 20:13 • Deuteronomy 23:17 • Romans 1:26 • 1 Cor 6:9 • Jude 1:7 • Matthew 7:1-6 (because you can never say that Medea fails to keep you informed).

I’m toying with the idea of donating Stranger at the Gate to their church library, but suspect they’d never actually place it on the shelves. Maybe I’ll donate a book in honor of my aunt too!

BEST OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: burden creole

(Hmmm. I might have to write a poem about Burden Creole. Maybe one similar to that Wander, Indiana, poem ... and THAT’s an obscure poetry reference that only a few people will get. Sorry.)

134. AGE OF UNREASON

From the Archives

(August 2005) So yeah I know I should probably just paste a hyperlink here instead of pasting an entire (brief) article, but just quit reading already if you aren’t concerned about the fact that only 28 percent of US citizens believe in evolution but 68 percent believe in Satan. And since Bush's endorsement of so-called Intelligent Design, the battle between faith and reason is growing stronger every day.

So here’s a damn good article:

WIDESPREAD IGNORANCE
by Sam Harris, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted on ALTERNET August 10, 2005

President Bush has endorsed the pseudo-scientific notion of "intelligent design" (ID) and declared it to be a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution. This is not surprising, as he has always maintained that "the jury is still out" on the question of evolution.

But the jury is not out—indeed it was well in before President Bush was even born—and anyone familiar with modern biology knows that ID is nothing more than a program of political and religious advocacy masquerading as science.

It is for this reason that the scientific community has been divided on just how (or whether) to dignify the spurious claims of ID "theorists" with a response. While understandable, I believe that such scruples are now misplaced. The Trojan Horse has passed the innermost gates of the city, and scary religious imbeciles are now spilling out.

According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution.

As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance.

Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma.

More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy.

Unreason is now ascendant in the United State—in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality. Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium.

Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts. Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn't; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn't. It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort. The issue is not, as ID advocates allege, whether science can "rule out" the existence of the biblical God.

There are an infinite number of ludicrous ideas that science could not "rule out," but which no sensible person would entertain. The issue is whether there is any good reason to believe the sorts of things that religious dogmatists believe—that God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings; that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception (and, therefore, that blastocysts are the moral equivalents of persons); etc. There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.

Imagine President Bush addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in these terms: "Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus." Imagine his speech to Congress containing the sentence "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that Apollo is not neutral between them."

Clearly, the commonplaces of language conceal the vacuity and strangeness of many of our beliefs. Our president regularly speaks in phrases appropriate to the fourteenth century, and no one seems inclined to find out what words like "God" and "crusade" and "wonder-working power" mean to him. Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world; we are positively smug about it. Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world.

The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

A president who regularly speaks in phrases appropriate to the fourteenth century—and he’s certainly not talking about the fact that 98 percent of our genes are the same as those of chimps! And, these days, our populace revels in its own ignorance.

Sadly, that describes a good portion of the populace of the deep South (and, yeah, I know I just raised some Southerners' hackles, but they also know that this is true. Plus, I'm from the deep south myself and I choose to live and beat my head against the wall here, so I'm going to say it anyway. Only now it's the entire country, seems like, and not just one region, that's embracing this unreason.

A commentor says “If there ever was an Anti-Christ, I would have to say that it is religion.”

BEST OF SPAM: Find Mr. Right and Keep Him. (No thanks. Saw enough hairy backs at the beach this past weekend.)

133. COLLAPSING ICONS

From the Archives

(August 2005) Diane Arbus was a fashion photographer for twenty-some-odd years. Then, in the late 1950s, she turned away from models and began photographing freaks (her term)—transvestites, midgets, Down syndrome patients, carnies, and whoever else fit her category on any given day. What made her turn away from conventional beauty, change her lens? And what made her ingest barbiturates and slit her own wrists twenty years later?

People in New Hampshire once flocked to see a series of granite ledges that jutted out of a mountain to form an old man’s face and, eventually, “Old Man of the Mountain” came to symbolize their state. The granite man collapsed without warning one day though, and New Hampshire was left with a symbol that no longer reflected its reality.

So what do you do when the symbols that represent your core way of being in the world collapse, when you no longer see yourself through your familiar lens? It seems folly to attempt to reconstruct yourself in your former shape, but freefalling into an unfamiliar void is no picnic either. And it’s no easy job to believe that you will experience salvation in some as-yet-to-be-revealed form.

Maybe Diane Arbus looked at the last fashion model she would ever photograph one day and realized that she had reached the point of no return. And she put down her camera, took a deep breath, and took a leap of faith, trusting that she would be okay.

Maybe she knew that she would collapse altogether otherwise.

And maybe changing her lens turned out to be the salvation that sustained her for another twenty years.

And maybe, when she went into freefall in 1971, she believed that she would once again find herself on a new plane.

And maybe she did.

Well, that’s faith, isn’t it? Because, let’s face it, all those I Can’t Wait to See Jezus songs combined won’t alter the fact that, when you lose yourself, you just don’t know what new symbols might coalesce into your new self.

And no one can tell us with certainty what will happen when we die, scare us though they try.

Bush recently said, of global warming, “we’ll get used to it.” But I do not intend to watch the fish die because I might get used to a different ecosystem.

Still, I do believe that sitting still during times of great change and just absorbing the changes until we can get used to it and breathe again is the trick to surviving collapsing worlds and symbols and relationships (but definitely not democracies).

Change is the only constant, right?

LISTENING TO: unfortunately, a prof said “hey, remember this?” and then played “Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting (those kicks were fast as lightning)" so now (damn it) this song is stuck in my head.

SINGING IN SHOWER: That round about being by the wah-ah-ters, the wah-ah-ters of Babylon

BEST OF SPAM: Esperanza Hendrix (she speaks the universal language while mouthing her guitar strings?)

132. MIND THE GAP

From the Archives

(August 2005) Writer’s Almanac features the following:

REUNION
by Amber Coverdale Sumrall

In your old pickup we drive the length of the island looking for
blackberries and trails that lead to the lighthouse, tell stories
about our six cats, the ones we divided when I left. I took your
favorites, the ones that were mine before we met. Your fifth
marriage is faltering. I am falling in love for the third time since
we separated. All you want to do is fish in your father's rowboat,
build a small cabin on five acres of land. Beyond right now,
I don't know what I want. Somewhere on Orcas another woman
dreams of you, waits for you to enter her life.

We smoke from your well-seasoned pipe, nervous as new
lovers. Those last months I refused to get high with you; we
always fought afterward. I remember why I loved you and why,
after ten years, I left. The reasons blend together, rise with the
smoke and dissipate. You ask me to tell you why, once again.
Each time the story is different, a work in progress. Days pass
in one afternoon. Is there still a chance, you ask.

We smile at one another, our defenses down. No one knows
us better. At the trailhead you pick purple flowers, hand
them to me, suddenly shy. I trip over exposed roots as we walk,
instinctively take your outstretched hand then let it go. In the
lagoon a pair of herons dance for one another, lowering their
long necks in courtship. Hidden behind boulders, we watch in
silence until the birds lift and disappear beyond the lighthouse.
There is always a chance, I say.

I like a few images here, but those exposed roots are more than a little obvious. Ditto instinctively taking his hand.

I have a question though. Can someone tell me exactly what makes this thing a poem because it sure strikes me as three paragraphs of straight narrative. She’s telling a story and makes no use of the line breaks, which are, uh, a basic tool that poets use to further or create meaning. What's gained by using this form as opposed to a paragraph?

The poet may have used another format if she’d read Tuesday’s New York Times article about poet August Kleinzahler, who said “Most poets are shiftless, no account fools.”

(Actually, I believe it was this same poet who publicly criticized Garrison Keillor, the publisher of said Writer’s Almanac, for his middlebrow tastes in verse. Hmmm. It's all making sense now....)

Anyway, here’s my favorite Kleinzahler line: “If you’re a poet, you’ve earned the right to blow off whoever you want.”

(Very fortunate indeed that the New York Times did not drop that second three-letter word while typesetting this line.)

And now, a portion of the Kleinzahler poem “On Waking in a Room and Not Knowing Where One Is”—a poem that does make use of end stops:

In a moment or two you will know
exactly where you are,
on which side of the door,
your wallet, your shoes,
and what today you’ll have to do.
Cities each have a kind of light,
a color even,
or set of undertones
determined by the river or hills
as well as by the stone
of their countless buildings.
I cannot yet recall what city this is I’m in.
It must be close to dawn.

Have been thinking about a couple of things today. First, there’s this argument that we should downgrade Pluto to the status of icy sphere and admit that we were mistaken when we declared it a planet. Does this mean that we can downgrade, oh, idiots like GWB to low-wattage shrubbery and admit that we never should have elected (well) him president too?

I’m in favor of that, but worry that too many of us prefer a bobble-headed jingoistic cowboy for a prez.

(Guess I’ve ranted about that enough though for now though, huh?)

Rob Breszny refers to people whose “good intentions get derailed by modest challenges” as people who suffer from Intention Deficit Disorder. His brother, a realtor, frequently encounters IDD people who “act as if they really want to buy or sell a house, but then never get past the first few fledgling steps toward that end.”

My recent actions surrounding reimbursement of my new bifocal (sob) expenses fall into this category. See I requested the paperwork I need to obtain reimbursement from my vision insurance plan right after I got my glasses. No reply from the benefits office after a few days, so I surfed their site again but still couldn’t find the forms online. Left another voice-mail message, then got busy with deadlines and took a few days off. So now here I sit staring at my receipt, which has been sitting on my desk for over 2 weeks now waiting for me to file it.

The other thing on my mind is the Pacific NW (which I’m still willing to believe I can visit in November, even though financing a car for my mother will probably mean that I can no longer afford the trip).

I love the Pacific NW and am concerned about the news that unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem all the way from CA to BC this year. And scientists don’t know why. Water temperatures are higher than normal, so fish catches are low. Unusual wind conditions have resulted in very little plankton, so dead birds litter the beaches at 4 times the usual rate in some areas.

“The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there’s just not enough food out there,” says Julia Parrish (UWA seabird ecologist).

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I plan to scream at the first SUV driver I see on my lunch break today, but know this means absofuckinglutely nothing. And the measly funds I donate to preserve the place are no match for a president who's loosening the few protections that were in place.

So what exactly do folks believe will happen when the fish and birds die? That we’ll be so preoccupied with our Nintendos or some computer-generated cartoon animals that we’ll fail to notice that the real thing is gone?

I want to go to Whidbey Island and hear the owls. I want to smell Douglas firs. Soon.

131. A MOST LOYAL FRIEND

From the Archives

(August 2005) Well, my last entry was jaded, so why not continue the theme here?

This afternoon’s topic is code writing, as in “special friend” or “buddy” or “most loyal friend” or any number of other phrases that do not, ever ever include the words “dyke” or “fairy” or “sexual being” or “love of my life.”

My pal at Duke U. just sent me the following obit from their local paper and I offer it up as today’s example of code writing.

What concerns me is the love and passion missing from this description. How many nights of unbridled passion did Mary Lee and A.C. share anyway? And why isn't anyone acknowledge it?

MARY LEE DENNIS, 85, died Saturday July 30, 2005, at her home.

She was born March 19, 1920, in Durham, NC a daughter of the late Kenneth and Irene Speed Dennis. Her sister, Edith Clair Dennis Hutchins predeceased her.

Once Mary had her high school diploma proudly in hand, she moved from secretary to relief worker to office manager in the Durham, Raleigh, Spartanburg, Jacksonville, Savannah, and New Orleans offices of Jefferson Standard Life Insurance over her 26 year career. She then worked for three years as Admitting Officer at Watts Hospital in Durham, NC before becoming Administrator of the Lenox Baker Children's Hospital for 11 years. She retired to Myrtle Beach, SC in 1962. Mary will be remembered for her love of the Ocean, her true listening heart, and her wonder and delight in each person she met.

Survivors include: her nephew, Fred Hutchins and his wife, Nan and her niece, Mary Hutchins Harris and her husband, Richard; great-niece, Sky Harris; a great-nephew, Sagan Harris and her most loyal friend, A.C. Glosson.

Sometimes I just don’t understand the complacency that seems so commonplace in our world. At ACT-UP protests, we used to shout “The whole world is watching!” but, you know, the whole world was watching that flimsy argument about the presence of weapons of mass destruction too and it didn’t matter a hill of beans that all those people in those other countries (and some of us in ours) were outraged.

The world seems alternately Machiavellian or just plain mean or greedy or filled with people on autopilot to me right now (and yes, I do recognize that even having the option to move through the world on autopilot indicates that you have more options than most and that you are wealthier than most and that you are also probably American). I listen to Bush’s jingoism and think, well, this is an interesting twist on Betty Friedan; am I living in a world in which we’re ALL tranquilized now and just nodding our heads in suburban agreement?

What does our complacency say about us (Medea asks as Pink Floyd plays in her head)? Are we so overwhelmed that we can’t bear to worry about one more unsolvable thing? Walking around with brains too filled with commitments and worries and obligations to comprehend the enormity of, say, our country’s dwindling economic status or those complicated economic theories or the fact that we're working longer and longer hours for less money—or is THAT why we're on autopilot in the first place?

I mean, who wants to ruin a perfectly good summer afternoon fretting about what will happen to Social Security anyway?

I don’t. But I do.

Sometimes I don’t like my fellow Americans very much. And then it becomes easy to convince myself that we are mostly a bunch of lobotomized drones who don’t care enough about democracy or our role in the world to be politically involved, to be outraged.

I also know that this is not true across the board.

Then someone does something decent and at possible risk to him- or herselves and I believe again that there may be hope for us.

So here’s what made me like human beings better today. After the plane crash in Toronto, survivors wandered onto the highway and drivers scooped them into their cars and drove them to the hospital without waiting for ambulances.

130. SUBURBANIZATION OF THE SOUL

From the Archives

(August 2005) Just talked with my bestgrrl for so long that my ears are tired. She’s a city grrl in academic exile in the hinterlands who made the interesting observation that horses have old mouths. Their teeth and nostrils look modern, she says, but their mouths look very old, as if they belong in some other era.

I told her about my new short story involving a firefighter who spends his time extrapolating victims’ lives from the various items he discovers in their dwellings. She likes the concept and told me about a Russian artist who builds rooms that capture a person in his or her particular time or era.

We also discussed what items would encapsulate our childhoods, so here are a few: “Russian” Tea (which I believe the local UU fellowship refers to as Spiced Tea now, but it’s the same powdery Tang-and-cinnamon mixture that my mother served us so we could drink like the astronauts); Iceburg lettuce wedges topped with bright orange French dressing; Family Circle and Guideposts magazines; See Dick Run and Weekly Reader magazines and those hokey protect-your-necks-in-the-event-of-a-nuclear-disaster Super-8 movies with giant spools that invariably ran out and slapped the film against the projector for amusing minutes as the teacher tried to figure out what to do next; cream-colored utility trucks spraying DDT while we kids rode our bikes behind them (shiver); Kool-Aid popsicles made in Tupperware molds that we listened to as Crosby, Still, Nash and Young sang “Teach Your Children Well” in the radioed background.

•

There is something deeply suffocating about life today in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanization of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter. Nothing is allowed to distress and unsettle us. The politics of the playgroup rules us all.—J.G. Ballard, interview in the Guardian, 6.22.04

A bumper sticker on the way into work today read “We ARE the rogue state.” Was pondering the Ballard quote when I saw it and concluded, sadly, that far more Americans can identify the newest Hollywood break-up than define a rogue state.

Also came across this jingoistic gem from AdBusters:

DON’T LOOK NOW
Listen: don’t you get it? This is the greatest place on earth. Nobody cares about the declining dollar, or the dwindling oil reserves, or the massive trade deficit. These are just words you hear on the news every once in a while. They don’t mean anything to anybody.

Look around you! We’re number one and that’s not going to change. It’s no accident we’re all fascinated with Paris Hilton. We’re her, she’s us. She’s beautiful, rich and fabulous—she has it all, everyone wants to be her. And that’s exactly what this country is like.

Yes, we’re in debt—what country isn’t? How much do you think Paris owes on her Visa right now? We get the Chinese to keep buying US treasury bonds and we’re golden. The important thing is: we have to keep our eyes on the prize. We can’t let the eggheads and nay-sayers get us down. These people aren’t in touch with reality.

Look: this is a beautiful place—we’ve made it that way. We can’t turn back now. We can’t give an inch. We can’t let it slip from our grasp.

We’ve just got to believe.

(Groan) A cross between bobbleheaded Gipperspeak and that ee cummings poem about the silver-tongued politician who spoke and then drank rapidly from a glass of water.

•

Matthew Alper, author of The God Part of The Brain (due out soon), asserts that God is a coping mechanism and that we're hard-wired (to our detriment) to believe in deities.

Or maybe we’re just overworked and undereducated and hardwired to accept easy answers that will allow us to turn back to some easier topic that will makes our heads hurt less than economics or death or cancer.

Of course, as a species, we also tend to be spineless conformists who will do harm for no better reason than the fact that we believe that other people are also doing it. (psst. Don’t tell Cheney.) Then there are the Machiavellians and fucking Napoleons (to use ani’s phrase) and social puppeteers who manipulate us with our common fears and insecurities and need for pat answers. They’re adept at using God’s name to, say, build up extravagant riches in Rome, etc.

A recent review of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) contains this wonderful observation: “Art is the only god you can prove exists. Everything else is mortal.”

(Or, to encapsulate Medea’s worldview: “Creativity is my religion. It has saved me more than once.”)

The reviewer says that people who “get” Warhol understand that he was fascinated by the shallowness of personality, by its transparency.

Warhol recognized that Americans respect the infinitely reproducible better than the one-off creations, so he gave us what we wanted: 8,000 identical silkscreen prints of every-day tomato soup labels.

(What’s today’s equivalent? Maybe 8,000 identical hazard-yellow Humvees popping wheelies on the previously beautiful Alaskan wilderness?)

Warhol:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Yep, we're a consumer culture all right and the corporate rich keep inheriting bidnesses that pay ad agencies to use their creative genius to convince the rest of us all that we must spend our money on their latest iteration of bling. It’s supply and demand American style: tell us what to buy in order to be happy, because we are so goddamn empty without the latest toy.

•

In Videodrome, Professor O’Blivion says “The television is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch. Therefore, television is reality and reality is less than television.”

Meanwhile, Warren Buffett, whose personal holdings have outpaced the Dow Jones Industrial Average for over 40 years now, has a luxury yacht named The Middle Finger and Cheney's running hog wild.

Rogue state indeed.

So. Finally, an observation by Slavoj Zizek:

The planes hitting the WTC towers was the ultimate work of art: we can perceive the collapse of the WTC towers as the climactic conclusion of twentieth-century art’s “passion for the Real”—the “terrorists” themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage but for the spectacular effect of it.

And so we line up for spectacles every day, digging the latest Fox sensationalism or exploding Iraqi city, because anything as mundane as an economics lesson is, like, so gawd-awful boring, ya know?

129. HEALED BY IMMERSION

From the Archives (July 2007)

RUMPELSTILTSKIN
by Olga Broumas

First night.
Mid-winter.
Frightened
with pleasure as I came.
Into your arms, salt
crusting the aureoles.
Our white breasts. Tears
and tears. You
saying
I don’t know
if I’m hurting or loving
you. I
didn’t either.
We went on
trusting. Your will to care
for me intense
as a laser. Slowly
my body’s cellblocks
yielding
beneath its beam.

I have to write of these things. We were grown
women, well
traveled in our time.

•

Did anyone
ever encourage you, you ask
me, casual
in afternoon light. You blaze
fierce with protective anger as I shake
my head, puzzled, remembering, no
no. You blaze

a beauty you won’t claim. To name
yourself beautiful makes you as vulnerable
as feeling
pleasure and claiming it
makes me. I call you lovely. Over

and over, cradling
your ugly memories as they burst
their banks, tears and tears, I call
you lovely. Your face
will come to trust that judgment, to bask
in its own clarity like sun. Grown women. Turning

heliotropes to our own, to our lovers’ eyes.

•

Laughter. New in my lungs still, awkward
on my face. Fingernails
growing back
over decades of scar and habit, bottles
of bitter quinine rubbed into them, and chewed
on just the same. We are not the same. Two

women, laughing
in the streets, loose-limbed
with other women. Such things are dangerous.
Nine million

have burned for less.

•

How to describe
what we didn’t know
exists: a mutant organ, its function to feel
intensely, to heal by immersion, a fluid
element, crucial
as amnion, sweet milk
in the suckling months.

Approximations.
The words we need are extinct.

Or if not extinct
badly damaged: the proud Columbia
stubbing
her bound-up feet on her damned-
up bed. Helpless with excrement. Daily

by accident, against
what has become our will through years
of deprivation, we spawn the fluid
that cradles us, grown
as we are, and at a loss
for words. Against all currents, upstream
we spawn
in each other’s blood.

•

Tongues
sleepwalking in caves. Pink shells. Sturdy
diggers. Archaeologists of the right
the speechless zones
of the brain.

Awake, we lie
if we try to use them, to salvage some part
of the loamy dig. It’s like
forgiving each other, you said
borrowing from your childhood priest.
Sister, to wipe clean

with a musty cloth
what is clean already
is not forgiveness, the clumsy housework
of a bachelor god. We both know, well
in our prime, which is cleaner: the cave-
dwelling womb, or the colonized
midwife:

the tongue.

•

READING: Hiss and Tell’s funny, funny entry about how sexy Kris Kristofferson is

LISTENING TO: Lou Reed and John Cale’s Songs for Drella CD

SANG IN SHOWER: curse the guy beside me at the stoplight for reminding me of this song that I would have been happy to forget: Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Must. Burn.Off.Ears.Now!

BEST SPAM SUBJECT LINES: synagogue amazon (uh huh)

128. THE DISAPPEARED

From the Archives

(July 2005) Continuing my earlier riff about the disappeared and those shiny happy people who present themselves as so freakin’ wholesome while doing so much harm.

Carolyn Forché identifies herself as a poet of witness. She says “I have been told that a poet should be of his or her own time. It is my feeling that the twentieth-century human condition demands a poetry of witness. This is not accomplished without certain difficulties. If I did not wish to make poetry of what I had seen, what is it I thought poetry was?”

Gathering The Tribes (1976), her first collection, won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The Country between Us (1982), a volume that focused on the civil war in El Salvador during the 1970s, won the Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets. This prize, which Minnie Bruce Pratt also won for Crimes against Nature, recognizes the best second book of poetry published in the US. Forché’s other books include the prescient landmark anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, which she edited, and The Angel of History (1994).

She read this poem years ago at my writing program and I can still hear her voice as she described the travesty of a grocery bag full of human ears that a general poured onto a table in front of her.

RETURN
by Carolyn Forché

from The Country between Us

—for Josephine Crum

Upon my return to America, Josephine
the iced drinks and paper umbrellas, clean
toilets and Los Angeles palm trees moving
like lean women. I was afraid more than
I had been, even of motels so much so
that for nine months every tire blow-out
was final, every strange car near the house
kept watch and I strained even to remember
things impossible to forget. You took
my stories apart for hours, sitting
on your sofa with your legs under you
and fifty years in your face.
So you know
now, you said, what kind of money
is involved and that campesinos knife
one another and you know you should
not trust anyone and so you find a few
people you will trust. You know the mix
of machetes with whiskey, the slip of the tongue
that costs hundreds of deaths.
You’ve seen the pits where men and women
are kept the few days it takes without
food and water. You’ve heard the cocktail
conversation on which their release depends.
So you’ve come to understand why
men and women of good will read
torture reports with fascination.
Such things as water pumps
and co-op farms are of little importance
and take years.
It is not Ché Guevara, this struggle.
Camillo Torres is dead. Victor Jara
was rounded up with the others, and José
Martí is a landing strip for planes
from Miami to Cuba. Go try on
Americans your long, dull story
of corruption, but better to give
them what they want: Li’l Milagro Ramirez,
who after years of confinement did not
know what year it was, how she walked
with help and was forced to shit in public.
Tell them about the razor, the live wire,
Dry ice and concrete, grey rats and above all
Who fucked her, how many times and when.
Tell them about retaliation: José lying
on the flat bed truck, waving his stumps
in your face, his hands cut off by his
captors and thrown to the many acres
of cotton, lost, still, and holding
the last few lumps of leeched earth.
Tell them of José in his last few hours
and later how, many months earlier,
a labor leader was cut to pieced and buried.
Tell them how his friends found
the soldiers and made them dig him up
and ask forgiveness of the corpse, once
it was assembled again on the ground
like a man. As for the cars, of course
they watch you and for this don’t flatter
yourself. We are all watched. We are
all assembled.

Josephine, I tell you
I have not rested, not since I drove
those streets with a gun in my lap,
not since all manner of speaking has
failed and the remnant of my life
continues onward. I go mad, for example,
in the Safeway, at the many heads
of lettuce, papayas and sugar, pineapples
and coffee, especially the coffee.
And when I speak with American men,
there is some absence of recognition:
their constant Scotch and fine white
hands, many hours of business, penises
hardened by motor inns and a faint
resemblance to their wives. I cannot
keep going. I remember the American
attaché in that country: his tanks
of fish, his clicking pen, his rapt
devotion to reports. His wife wrote
his reports. She said as much as she
gathered him each day from the embassy
compound, that she was tired of covering
up, sick of drinking and the loss
of his last promotion. She was a woman
who flew her own plane, stalling out
after four martinis to taxi on an empty
field in the campo and to those men
and women announce she was there to help.
She flew where she pleased in that country
With her drunken kindness, while Marines
In white gloves were assigned to protect
Her husband. It was difficult work, what
With the suspicion on the rise in smaller
countries that gringos die like other men.
I cannot, Josephine, talk to them,

And so, you say, you’ve learned a little
about starvation: a child like a supper scrap
filling with worms, many children strung
together, as if they were cut from paper
and all in a delicate chain. And that people
who rescue physicians, lawyers and poets
lie in their beds at night with reports
of mice introduced into women, of men
whose testicles are crushed like eggs.
Then they cup their own parts
with their bed sheets and move themselves
slowly, imagining bracelets affixing
their wrists to a wall where the naked
are pinned, where the naked are tied open
and left to the hands of those who erase
what they touch. We are all erased
by them, and no longer resemble decent
men. We no longer heave the hearts,
the strength, the lives of women.
Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are trying to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless.
You have not returned to your country,
but to a life you never left.

So take a moment and ask yourself what Audre Lorde admonishes US women to ask: “How am I using my power?”

127. LIVE AS IF YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE

From the Archives

(July 2005) Just went out in 99° weather to get my yard mowed so I can leave at 4 AM to attend my uncle’s funeral. He was only 52 and in great physical condition (we thought) before he dropped dead of a brain aneurism.

Sobering.

The service is at my grandparents’ rabidly primitive Baptist church in a tiny southern farming community and I am uncomfortable going there because the place is so blatantly homophobic. They’re southern first, though, so I know they’ll be distant but civil to me (unless I’m alone on some dark road when the judgmental rough boys come out to punish difference).

Have been pondering the picaresque poet and co-blogger Demiurgicgpoet's experience showing up queer at her southern family's church for a funeral and boy is her story familiar. It’s so odd to be around people who insist that you are condemned because you actually choose to—to paraphrase Mary Oliver—let the soft animal of your warm body love whom it loves.

But what else can you do and still remain true to your self?

The Baptist compulsion to silence differing worldviews, to cast people with ideologies that disagree with theirs as evil is familiar to me. And Baptist women just confound me. (Well, as do Muslim women. Or Catholic women, for that matter. Or any women who embrace a tradition that places them in a subordinate position and choose to participate in retrograde religious traditions that insist that they “submit graciously” to men.)

These traditions confine women to marginal positions, then the men in their lives point to this marginalization as evidence of the women’s presumed inferiority.

This is the legacy I inherited and I still ponder what it is that keeps women who have other options in such a confining space.

I’ve never been able to explain the whole Southern notion of family honor to nonSoutherners either, but reading about Arab culture is familiar too.

Honor, in this culture, "requires that women give up their individuality in order to maintain the reputation and prospects of the men in their lives. This turns women into communal property, so that their lives don’t actually belong to them but to their families, their tribes, and sometimes even their nations." (That’s by gorgeous best-selling dyke author Irshad Manji, from The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.)

I learned early on that I’d have to either put myself out of my misery or find the wherewithall to break the damn silence and talk about how oppressive it is to grow up rabidly Baptist (or rabidly anything that minimizes our whole beautiful selves)—and this probably explains why I tend to create fictional characters who yearn to escape their oppression.

So yeah, I know what it will be like to return to Baptist Town USA as a queer who publicly rejected the Baptist sledgehammer that so many of the people who will be at the funeral used to try to pound me into a particular shape ...

... and don’t even get me started on this Supreme Court nominee who has a record of seeking to weaken the separation between church and state. This guy can tip the scales, people, and that scares the living crap out of me and makes me want to mail copies of The Handmaid’s Tale to every thinking citizen of this country.

•

No big surprise, but I have been thinking about death and relationships today.

Buddhist philosophy recognizes samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering. All gain ends in loss according to this principle, yet we continue to compete and fabricate a chain of desire that keeps us in samsara. That which we gather, we will lose. Our pleasure will eventually lead to pain. Or “Gain and loss are meaningless preoccupations that we use to foster the illusion of a permanent self.”

Sigh.

Buddhists advise that, after becoming familiar with the truth of our impermanence, we should practice sitting and living as if our hair were on fire.

LISTENING TO: ani defranco croon fuck you and your untouchable face. Fuck you for existing in the first place. (yeah)

READING: J-14 Style Summer Special. This is a sad, sad magazine aimed at fourteen-year-old suburban girls and one day soon I will quote from select articles.

126. REPEAT AFTER ME: DESPAIR IS LAZY

From the Archives

(July 2005) I told myself on the way into work today that I will post a blog entry even if it causes me to miss a deadline. I like stepping back for a few minutes to ponder my life instead of just living on frantic autopilot but, right now, life is interfering with my ability to contemplate at all.

I returned to town last week, but have been so slammed with commitments ever since that I’ve barely written anything. This is exactly what I want to change in my life.

I wrote earlier about Rob Brezsny’s book Pronoia , of which one reviewer wrote:

Human beings are selfish, small-minded, violence-prone savages; civilization is a blight on the earth; the rising tide of chaos that surrounds us on all sides ensures that everything's going to fall apart any day now. Right? Wrong, says Rob Brezsny. In fact, evil is boring. Cynicism is stupid. Despair is lazy. The truth is that the universe is inherently friendly. Life is a sublime game created for our amusement and illumination, and it always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

But Brezsny's buoyant perspective is not rooted in denial. On the contrary, he builds a case for a cagey optimism that does not require a repression of difficulty but rather seeks a vigorous engagement with it.

Brezsny's rowdy and erudite astrology column, Free Will Astrology, has been the most widely syndicated feature in North America's alternative newsweeklies for years. In this book, he unfurls the fullness of the subversive compassion that underlies the column.

Life is created for our amusement? I believe that the earth is, if anything, indifferent to humans and that, frankly, it really ought to be trying to actively get rid of us before we completely destroy it. So no, I don’t believe that the Earth exists for our amusement. I do find illumination in nature, however.

Of course, Rob was probably saying that the purpose of our lives, which exist in nature, is illumination—which nature can provide. If that’s the case, then I’m down with him.

Relationships, connection, illumination, creation, insight really do seem to be all that matter in the end, and everything else is just fluff that will float away like so many dandelion blooms when we come face to face with our core selves or the cold hard hand of death or fatal illness.

MORE FROM PRONOIA

”If you bring forth the genius within you," said Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, "it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you." Is there any aspect of the genius within you that you're not bringing forth? If so, what can you do to change that?

I’m trying, trying, trying to bring forth the genius within me and to get back to a place where I can write and make art and have a family and still pay my bills. There MUST be a way!

Meanwhile, here’s another of Rob’s Sacred Advertisements:

You're a star—and so am I. I'm a genius—and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn't require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World—quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play. In the New World, you don't have to play down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.

also

Even if you're an intellectual atheist who doesn't believe in mysteries you can't see, I encourage you to make Artemis your ally. The goddess of wild places, she asks you to believe that the best place to rest and recharge is not a luxurious spa where all your needs are attended to, but rather a lush wilderness deep in the middle of nowhere. Artemis loves the animals, and she loves the animal in you. She arouses your instinctual fertility, which may fill you with a kind of longing that awakens your creativity. A fierce nurturer, she feeds your soul by stirring your sense of adventure. She unleashes the wild woman within you, even if you're a man.

and

At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: You can have anything you want if you'll just ask for it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.

BEST-OF SPAM: bark, you maybe need ittt

LISTENING TO: Sibelius, the Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22, No. 3, Andante moto sostenuto