What I long for...

Photo by Samuel

How many times have you heard someone say

If I had his money I would do things my way

But little they know that it's so hard to find

One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Once I was winning in fortune and fame

Everything that I dreamed for to get a start in life's game

Then suddenly it happened I lost every dime

But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old

Or a friend when you're lonely or a love that's' grown cold

The wealthiest person is a pauper at times

Compared to a man with a satisfied mind.

When life has ended my time has run out

My friends and my loved ones I'll leave there's no doubt

But one things' for certain when it comes my time

I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.

-Red Hayes & Jack Rhodes 1955

We'll marry our fortunes together...

The bright spark that fired so long ago has never really gone out, but have you ever gone down the street and seen yourself with someone else? Someone you least expected? I'm sure a lot of people have.

See, we walk and talk our lives away with so much intensity and intention that we can scarcely remember our own original selves. How can we care for someone else when we don't even understand ourselves?

Sometimes we can re-kindle old fires, sometimes we can't. I guess I wonder how you can tell the difference? Why do some people live their lives with the same person they started with and others, alas, spend their entire life trying to figure who that first person is supposed to be? Why do some people have to wait for the happiness that finally comes late in life?

I envy the lovers, the ones that can make a life together and feel joy with each other even in the direst of situations. I am humbled by their ability to cling to each other when all else is failure. I take refuge in their ability to continue happily. maybe I can do it too?

Relationships are difficult, even under the best of circumstances. We work and toil to make them work but, too often, we screw them up. There's plenty of psycho-talk around to decypher motivations for doing things, but none of it addresses the core dilemmas.

Why aren't we happy? Why does everything seem so desperate sometimes? Why do we walk and feel like, any second, the earth will open up and swallow us?

The new day will bring new insights and new revelation. But, somewhere between now and whenever, the anxiety will creep in again. I pray to God for light to understand, but I still wish it were night. The comfort of darkness is warm and inviting.

Done Gone

I think I can say with a relative amount of certainty that I have successfully gotten politics out of my system for the time being. I wake up happy and content and the presence of demonic spirits has finally left me.

Politics, you see, is a study in utility maximizing, at least to my mind. I hold to the thought that doing politics is, in reality a dirty business that we must endure to get from day to day. Some see it as a noble pursuit, but I guess I see it more as necessary evil.

Sure, I played with the idea of running for President in 2008, and even broached the topic with possible cabinet appointees. But, unfortunately, I cannot consider and will not accept the nomination of my party. Sorry Pig. Sorry Spoke. Keep trying if you will, but I doubt that I can successfully lead this hodge-podge of contradiction.

The Deomocratic example ends with doom. Look at ancient Greece. The epitome of participatory democracy and when someone like Socrates comes along, he gets the Hemlock straight, no chaser.

The Republican form stands up no better. Rome's senators had no regard for their heroes or even their friends. get a little power thing going and, adios Julius. Stabbed by your own friends and left bleeding in the hallway. Maybe that's how Congressman Foley feels.

I find myself going back again and again to the notion of utility maximizing. How can I get up in the morning with the least amount of damage? Do I have to get up at all? How does a Libertarian wake up in the morning?

The Season of What Now?

Photo by Leo

Politics are still on my mind. I can’t help it. Like the junkie that I am, dumping politics is an impossibility. It may be the worst jones there is. I eternally hope for the best but have yet to see it. My 50 years have proven less than positive in the political realm.

But maybe now…

Now, maybe we will see some repartee between parties. Maybe we will hear some new solutions. Maybe the democrats will mix it up a little bit. I hope for it.

I voted for it too. I want with my whole life for it to get better and the insanity of the past to finally be expunged.

I want to be optimistic, but I'm not sure yet. We Americans are a fickle lot. In less than a generation we have gone from Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Clinton to Bush, ad-nausea.

The majority of the population looks for instant change. The old-timers know it takes effort and time to make a difference. Some of us are downright pessimistic because of past burns.

We saw JFK die on TV. We saw MLK shot. We saw Bobby die. We saw a Pope hit and even Reagan shot, a victim of his own acceptance of the gun. We see violence in the streets every day. We long for newness and peace but get nothing but more violence and social stagnation and segregation that never seems to end.

Whether the newly empowered Democrats will sound or act any differently than the entrenched Republicans remains to be seen at this juncture. The last 40 years of American politics have been, alas, 40 years of re-elections more than 40 years of progress. Time has shown that once elected, the candidate (now encumbent) struggles to keep the job. Maintain the status quo. Keep your job.

No new thing under the sun. Yet I still hope for a change.

My son sits in the other room struggling over chord changes, sounding horribly like John when he wrote "Hide Your Love Away". Maybe his changes will prove to be more lasting. I can only hope so.

Post Season Review.

Well folks, another election season has come and gone. In the end, all you can say about the winners for certain is that many millions of people did not vote for them.

Politics is a funny thing. There are those whose lives revolve around the process, those who opine from an easy chair but never leave the chair to do anything about it, and the rest of us.

I generalize here, but by "the rest of us" I mean those that sit politics out like I sit out football season. That is, until January and February. Die-hard fans are joined then by people like me that are only interested in play-offs and championships.

Politics, like football or a Rock and Roll concert, is a Dionysian event. It's an orgiastic ritual, with everyone coming together for the same result, the same release. Everyone crowding, working together for that emotional, well, you get the idea.

It's mythical in content too. Heroes like Vince Lombardi, Buddy Holly, Bobby Kennedy are gods, the icons of the American Dream. They ruled the day and their weaknesses are ignored, for the most part, because their strengths and personalities are so huge.

Villains exist in this mythical world too. Remember Ohio coach Woody Hayes slapping players around and bullying. Remember Nixon? How about Colonel Tom Parker?

Then there's the religious element. Every good belief has a ritual, a coming together of the tribes if you will. Here you find the Superbowl, the Stones playing to a million people in Rio, Elections. The faithful make their statement of belief.

Once it's all over, there's nothing left but the commentary. Who played the best, was this the best show of the tour, how could the polls and pundits have been so wrong...

Do they change the way we are? Sometimes not as much as we wish they would. We search for meaning in sensational, emotional events, but do they really change us? Football is just a game. Rock and roll is only more howling at the moon. Politics is, well, I don't really know. Maybe a little bit of both.

Tomorrow we wake up and still have to eat and work and laugh and cry.

...Out of the Blue

"Blues were my favourite colour until I looked 'round and found another song that I felt like singing". Ian Anderson-1970

It's easy to fall into the trap, the pit of despair that too often accompanies this thing we like to call life. The bitterness and struggle to just get along seems to be the rule of the day and the incessant drone of day to day walking. A simplistic answer would be to "Get Religion", but even then the ever-presence of the blues is obvious. Face it, the prophets were some real downers and the likes of Jeremiah even wished he'd never left his mother's womb. Never left his mother's womb. If it were only that easy.

Others say look for that happy place, Nirvana, and spend your life looking or waiting. Or, live a bunch of lives until you get it right. Tao leads us to nothing, maybe the only real human answer but, none the less, a pretty sad answer.

I don't believe God created us to be constantly happy. Eternally, yes, but not just now. He created us to live, to love, to be happy, to be sad, to be all things that are human and, yes, God-like. Here's where we lose it though, at least for me.

It's this thing called death. Not just the physical death, but the emotional and spiritual deaths as well. It's that thing which separated us from what God intended for us. Physical death is the obvious one and, somehow, the easiest to understand even if it hurts like hell. Beginning/end. Keep walking. Someday we all do it.

But emotional and spiritual death are a different story, as they aren't so obvious.

Hate and prejudice, selfishness, disregard and disrespect, gluttony (not just food and drink) are all things that make for emotional death. It separates us from each other but, since we continue to physically live, we don't really recognize the death.

Spiritual death, that death that separates us from God, can come as a result of emotional death, but not always. Jeremiah was on that verge, as was Job, as was (yes) Jesus, when they all asked that same question "Why have you forsaken me?" But they didn't fall into it. They saw the separation and lamented it, as do we all sometimes. I guess that puts us in pretty good company.

But that's where the blues come in.

Willie Brown, friend of blues icon Robert Johnson, is credited with defining the blues this way, "Blues ain't nuttin' but a good man feelin' bad."

I guess where I'm going with this is that emotional and spiritual death don't have to be the end. Only physical death brings it all home. There is resurrection from emotional and spiritual death while we live, if we choose it and, I believe anyways, that the final resurrection comes as a result of those two getting set right now.

Life is a Carnival, Two Bits a Shot.

Photo by Leo

Another election day approaches. Not as big as the 4-year event, but kinda like the play off before the World Series. Out here, elections are big things, so big that when things go awry, no one hesitates to petition a recall. No matter if the elected one gets 80% of the vote. Nope, not out here in Arizona. Someone will come along, petition in tow, and form a committee to dump someone because, well, because of anything from not liking how they keep their yards to the fact that their tinted glasses are too dark. Our allegiances have disappeared and we wallow in extrinsic decisions.

Americans, God love us, cherish democracy , but haven't the slightest idea on how to use it.

Arizona holds the distinction this year of being the state with the most initiatives, amendments and referrendums on the ballot, a total of 19. 8 of them are constitutional amendments, 2 are referrendums, the final 9 are initiatives.

The amendments are easy, basically change the constitution. So too the initiatives, which are the people petitioning and essentially making law. The referrendums are referred from the state legislature to the electorate, requesting them to make the final decision.

As much as I respect the Democratic process, I can't help but be cynical. First off, the turnout will be low, probably a lot less than 50%. Secondly, we'll end up with those 19 issues being decided by a bunch of people (us) who will have, by and large, spent less time than the legislators even reading the issue. Most of the legislators have their aides give them synopsis of the issues, sort of a Cliff Notes version of the issues. Finally, most of these issues we the people are supposed to make decisions on will end up being challenged in the courts and never even become laws anyways. Billions down the drain. Flushhhhhhh.

The process has become the problem rather than the solution. It's Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. It's a mythical monster that survives with or without constituents. Face it, when Jesus comes to take us home, the bureaucracy will most likely continue to run for eternity. People are no longer in charge. Electorate or elected, neither can work or decide efficiently any more.

Solution? I have none. I'm still in the ask a question stage.

I end with a memorial to a more definitive time.

Seasonal Anxiety

Photo by Leo

This time of year, with the beginning of the winter at hand, my mind wanders easily into those areas of grim reality, those bothersome shards of depression that seem so prevalent. Fall now, too often, brings sadness and doom, an uneasiness that comes with the seasonal change. It's still light but darkness is imminent. It's not dark yet but it's getting there.

There was a time when a guy like me waited for days like these, days when it would be so bright, then grey early and night would come with an anxious urgency. It was dark and night was fun, off to see your girl after a busy day that now was ending even though it would still be a long time 'til it was really finished. The darkness was comfort, a shield from the harshness of the day gone by. It was time to be free, release from the pressures and stresses of the day, walking briskly, hands in pockets, to the waiting arms of one who loved you most and best. She'd be waiting and bring you in with a smile of youth and passion that enveloped you, a brief glimpse of later.

Alas, there's no going back. But at least the memories can brighten the impending darkness and remind you that there was once a time when the plagues of life were few and the love you shared was the most important thing that you had.

Rebel Without a Clue

Photo by Samuel
Did I miss something? Is the truth really wrapped in an enigma? Has the totality of existence come to a warped and screeching halt? I guess I used to believe honestly and deeply in America and where we were going. So now why do I feel alienated here in my own country?

But then I hear the noise from Iran and the message of death to Israel over and over again. What the heck are we trying to accomplish? What are they trying to accomplish? All the attitude against everyone is debilitating. What's really going on?

Did you know there were ufo sightings in Vietnam in the late '60's? Whenever they showed up the shooting on both sides would stop? For a while they were commonplace. They weren't Russian MIGs. They came out of the water.

It seems like a situation where America is trying to carve a space for something. It's not just Bush and America though. It's a larger stroke, a determined movement to affect global control for more than just power and oil. It's a movement for world order.

I know. It sounds conspiratorial. It sounds paranoid. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't threatening me. But who is it?

Who the hell is it?

Behind Dark Eyes

It's a problem, see, the idea that life can somehow encompass everything that's important, everything that's supposed to complete or fulfill us. The face of existence is dark and uninviting. What we are is not determined by our simply being here.

No, it's a whole lot more than that. It requires things of us, sometimes things we can't comprehend; things like faith and committment and endurance.Winning the good race revolves around more than being the fastest.

No, being the fastest isn't even in the running. Finishing is infinitely more important than how fast we can go. Neither is accumulation all that important. We might put on the miles, run, walk, crawl when necessary, but the ultimate goal is where we end up and not how we get there.

All I can keep hearing in my head are the words of Job as he laments how, seemingly, God's heavy hand drags groans from him. If God would only consider for a minute Job's plight and Job's faithfulness, certainly he'd be vindicated. Certainly he'd be proven right. Certainly.

But then the truth of the matter rears itself as the Almighty's still small voice roars out of the whirlwind.

Who are you? Where you been? Seen the snow before it falls? Seen the stars before they shone? Did you put them in their place, ever expanding and somehow always looking like they're in the same place? What about those dinosaurs and sea serpents people are always tripping about? Seen them lately? He has.

What about those towers you build? What the heck holds 'em up? No reason they should stand, at least none that you can explain.I know. I beg the obvious. But, somehow the obvious just gets lumped into the mundane and gets ignored, along with too many of our fellow travelers.

Just what is it with those homeless mugs that hold signs that say "God Bless" as they panhandle yet another dollar or coin so's to buy a pint of something to erase their fear and anxieties of walking another day on the wrong side of Paradise?

And while we wander, what's up with people hating so much what they don't understand, condemning others forever to the trash heap of unreasoning prejudice? What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

When we wake up in the morning and everything is as it appears, what happens later to turn it all into some sort of cruel burlesque? It's not the way it was created. What happens between that new birth of a new day and that undefinable second when it all seems to go south?I know. I ramble incessantly, especially after dark.

Doesn't mean I don't really want to know. Just means that, in the quiet of the night, when there's no turning back the twisted laments of the day, everything seems at peace again. No, not like that morning solitude and breath-giving newness. More like a sigh of relief and, yes, gratitude for having steered through another weird one.