THE BLUES

THE BLUES

All my life I’ve heard that “there’s the blues, then there’s the real blues.” Black musicians have always said that whites will never play it because they’ll never understand it. It’s deeply cultural and racial and goes back to “deep south” oppressions that simply can’t be measured or described.

As a white person I could never fully appreciate this, until, surfing the internet one day, I happened upon an old album entitled, “T-Bone Walker: Super Black Blues.” It was/is a continuous blues number that plays “non-stop” throughout the entire A and B sides – with brief interludes of impromptu (background) laughter. From that moment on, I understood. There truly is a “blues” far and apart from what I conceived to be the blues. It comes from, to use a cliché, “the soul.” But this particular soul is so oppressed and beaten down that it has only the rawest primal opening through which to speak.

I’ve also heard that the reason we play the blues is to “get out of” the blues. It lifts us out of our pain, however briefly, while feeling it at the same time. It’s like a cool ointment on a sore that brings the soreness into the light. Minus the ointment it just “throbs” again, specifically when there isn’t a guitar, drum-set, or harmonica around. There’s a cappella, but it’s too awkward, and many times inappropriate to be singing loudly in public. Humming and toe-tapping are an acceptable compromise. Whistling is not.

What I almost empathically feel today is a transposition of suffering and pain shared cross-culturally, even universally. It carries its own rhythm and tempo. It’s everywhere, crossing the most unexpected boundaries. Black blues has not changed, but the need to feel and express as blacks do is bleeding into the sinews of lighter-skinned cultures. For the longest time the best “white” blues artists have always been good, even great, but never “black.” They could only listen from a distance at the sounds of Robert Johnson, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin Hopkins, Howlin Wolf, T-Bone Walker, and others. Those white players are also the very first to admit that disparity.

We whites have been “deprived” of the true depths of suffering – a truly colossal paradox. In my own experience, it’s like listening to a good song without a bass guitar. There’s no “bottom end,” no depth, no foundation – just notes skimming along the surface.

“Super Black Blues” isn’t just one long tune whose sounds are like a baton passed in a relay race. It’s a language and communication about a shared cultural reality inside a shared political reality inside a spiritual reality inside a racial reality. It’s the morning and even meal at a huge community table. It’s also a morning wake-up call for those anesthetized from who and where they are. The black & white notes are words tapped out in harmonic progressions of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature, slow and hard tempos, through hands, feet, instruments, and voices. The laughter and moaning are part of the song, the same sign-language. It’s all-inclusive and intact. Nothing is left out.

Hence, “no mistakes, no accidents” in Black blues. This is what separates white music from black music. Whites hear mistakes. They cover them up with 2^nd the 3^rd “takes.” The takes then become end products – which end up mimetic and saccharin. They may be flawless in their timing and execution, but any “soul” that might have been has been long forfeited. In Black music the mistake in incorporated and made part of what comes out. Often it even guides the direction that a score takes.

The only reference to this from a white man (that I can recall) hailed from Jackson Pollack (“Jack the Dripper”) who said, “I deny the accident.” The paint “fell” from his brush with a planned (albeit fortuitous) design and purpose. Some people would call it synchronicity (the “meaningful accident”) and even serendipity.

Which brings up another observation/question: Is there a real blues taking on a more expansive/national/international signature – given the state of the world? Does the blues guitar find itself in bands that are cross-breeding, intersecting, and interlocking, to the point where there are no racial/ethnic/cultural distinctions anymore? Is the “patchwork-quilt” which is America becoming the “melting pot” it was always presumed to be? And if so, what does that say about suffering and oppression everywhere?

There’s lots of celebratory singing and playing, no doubting that – to be applauded and encouraged. But is that also covering up what the entire nation (even the entire human species) might be feeling? Namely, extinction? Celebrations at this scale are often started because they must, because there’s no alternative. Because “up” is the only direction we can go from being so far down. There’s a fine line between faith and belief, just as there is between intuition and projection, wisdom and knowledge, acceptance and hope. Even though the line is very thin, their meanings are very different. The mind is the “master of self-deception,” and we need to understand if “celebration” is really about mourning.

“In the relation of the self (the same) to the Other, the Other is distant, he is the stranger; but if I reverse this relation, the Other relates to me as if I were the Other and thus causes me to take leave of my identity… When thus I am wrested from myself, there remains a passivity bereft of self (sheer alterity, the other without unity).” – Maurice Blanchot.

To this author Susan Gubar (in Racechanges:White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, Oxford Univ. Press, 1997) wrote, “Can human beings (and the cultures they create) be defined as either black or white? Or are most human beings (and the cultures they create) both black and white?” The Janus Gate and the Italian Janiform vase (white face on one side, black face opposite) both share the same head. One is brought forward only if the other is made invisible. They exist codependently, and when spun around at a high velocity they lose their distinctness, becoming fused and confused. – The world now spins like a dynamo, faster than ever. Black and white are becoming a distinct “gray” (mulatto in the racial sense). Think of a “mulatto blues.”

Music is a universal language (another cliche), but everyone truly understands it. It is perhaps the only language that magically unites, if just for 2 ½ minutes (or 30 minutes). Everything stops and people tune in. We go into our bodies and move in ways that only music can induce. It speaks directly to the primal underside. We hear drums again, and we find ourselves at the jungle’s clearing from which we just recently walked away. It blasts through the walls we’ve worked so hard to build since becoming “civilized.” After 3000 years of teaching that we’re “above” the animals, music comes along and crushes it. We find ourselves moving like the animals. Even the most “head-strong” among us succumb to tempos and rhythms without knowing it.

Question: Is it racist to complement a whole race if it borders on a stereotype? Even if it says something positive? Even if you earmark one race with a particular “gift” which other races simply don’t excel at in quite the same way? What’s the difference between a positive and negative criticism in that context? Is it ever okay to generalize in a racial context?

At the risk of sounding racist, being black is being African – is being “earth-connected” and nearer to the roots of a primordial (earthen) past. There’s no denying it in music and dance. As opposed, again, to a white man struggling to dance, which (I’m embarrassed to say) is like watching a catatonic patient convulsing. Even an elderly black man can walk onto a dance floor, who never danced in his life, and look like he’s been there his entire life. It’s about catching a rhythm in a way that a bird catches a warm thermal current.

I recently watched a movie with Morgan Freeman whose character is “forced” out onto a dance floor. At first he doesn’t move at all. He doesn’t have to. The music finds him and fills his body, becomes the body, like a ghost. It’s poetry to watch. And the next 2 minutes is pure movement. – If there’s one thing I envy (and I speak for most white men). it’s the ability to “rhythmically move” in just this way, without effort. But it isn’t just about just moving; it’s about feeling roots down into the earth.

In the fifties and sixties much was written about “black envy.” Assuming that it existed at all (under the weight of Jim Crow), the white race has by now made the minority-man into a tragic anti-hero. The British blues bands of the sixties worshiped black musicians (made them famous) at a time when white America didn’t care. The Rolling Stones,the Yardbirds, the Animals, and others rescued them from the “dive bars” of the deep south and (overnight) brought them into huge venues seating thousands. It was culture-shock for them. But it was the beginning of when the blues began merging with “the blues.” It’s been a journey of meeting somewhere in the middle every since. Whites have evolved (musically), while blacks have compromised and “held back” for the white guitar/drum/harmonica to catch up. It’s been about assimilation ever since. – If you don’t believe me, just listen to “Super Black Blues.” Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would be first in line to concur.

Somewhere in between British blues and black blues sits “American white” blues. And here is where I find myself. There are white guitarists who are famous (and great) but not personal favorites, just because they don’t do “riffs” as I want to hear them. Clapton, Beck, Page, Lee, Green, Taylor and others keep their fret fingers in the low registers or high registers too long, just when they should “mix it up” more and go “elsewhere.” Same with Americans like Bonamassa, Buchanan, Cooder, Winter, Stevie Ray, and even Robert Cray (Black man). – Granted, I say this at my own peril.

Yes, it’s all personal and subjective (as art is). But I hear white guitars who sound “lost” and desperately wanting to know where to go. It’s like dancing (or trying to). The black guitarist (harp player, drummer, bassist, pianist) knows exactly where he is, because he never left it (just as he never left the dance floor). – To be clear, I enjoy those many white players to the extent of my own “whiteness.” But then part of me, apparently, isn’t white anymore.

Fortunately, I’ve also heard enormous transitions in the last sixty years, certainly since the 1960s. And many times it’s difficult to tell white from black just by listening. This is a good thing. Whites are visiting those frets, notes, registers, and progressions as if reconnoitering the “super Black.” We know the language and hear the sounds deep down below, and also, tragically, the pain. We’re joining in now and learning from scratch. It says lots about the human race sharing the same spaces. And the timing couldn’t be better. Because we need the blues more than ever.

Granted, it poses an important question: Does the need for the blues derive from feeling more pain? Or does the pain we all feel increase the more we connect with our “minority” brethren (via the blues)? A chicken & egg conundrum. As someone said, “a chicken is just one egg’s way of becoming another egg.” And I’ll just leave it at that.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

BROKEN SYSTEM? BROKEN RECORD

BROKEN SYSTEM? BROKEN RECORD

It’s very, very old news. We hear it everyday. Yet we’re forced to confront it everyday, because it impacts us everyday. It doesn’t leave us alone. If it did, just periodically maybe we’d all be just a little more amenable to events around us.

But reality converges like a wolf onto a piece of meat. If it doesn’t bite us directly, it bites something non-vital which then gets infected. Most bites are just reminders of corruption gone wild. But the wolf itself has spread his seed, procreated, and has trained its offspring to attack the most hidden parts of the body politic.

As good capitalists, there are many in Washington, unbeknownst to most of us, who actually (passionately) applaud greed. They say it’s “good business” and every person’s right (in our system) to take as much as he can regardless of the consequences. He who ends the day with the most marbles “wins.” It’s that simple. That’s the game. They call it “rugged individualism,” “entrepreneurialism,” and “free enterprise.” Tomorrow is “someone else’s problem,” because the mission today is to simply make money.

Most of us would be shocked out of our minds to know how many of these people still live and breathe in public office – even in 2021, with climate change, COVID, massive starvation and homelessness everywhere, drug epidemics, joblessness, and so on. They simply, utterly, don”t care. And, for sure, they make excellent politicians because they can literally cheat, steal, and betray that day, and then sleep very well that night.

This was brought to light just recently by two events. First, like many, I’ve had to consider the new “Medicare Advantage” insurance plan. I contacted an “independent broker agent” on this matter who advises clients on a wide range of companies. The first thing he did was advise me on how much my current provider was “screwing me to the wall.” He didn’t recommend anyone (not his job), but he did make useful comparisons to other companies.

The second thing he brought to light was the fact that when I was 65 I failed to sign up for a “drug plan.” I responded saying that I “didn’t need” drugs when I was 65. He still said it was a “big mistake” and my previous insurance agent “should” have warned me. I asked why. He said that anyone who does not sign up (at 65) but decides to later on will be “penalized” monthly “for the rest of his life.” I asked for a reason. His answer was that “There is none. They do it simply because they can.”

He also said there was/is one way to avoid the penalty: To not sign up for a drug plan, ever. Which means to pay for all drugs I might need hereafter, out-of-pocket. Yes, I’d be paying possibly hundreds, even thousands, of dollars if I needed serious drugs – but “hey, you won’t be penalized anymore.” This is Uncle Sam’s deal.

Had I signed up at 65, it would have cost about $1 per month. Since I didn’t, the penalty has multiplied each year since then. It will now begin at $30 a month and will go up each year – “forever.” Again, it’s not because Uncle Sam needs it. It’s because “he can.”

Walk next door, and you’ll find my 24-year old neighbor who lost her mother last summer, then her brother just a couple months later, who is on disability with severe diabetes, and had part of her stomach removed for an additional illness. She pays $1000 a month for meds and isn’t allowed to sell her house (stuck with her mother’s mortgage), because if she does, Uncle Sam says “you’re making money, which means you no longer need disability insurance.” She’s living on a thread and is still grieving over the loss of her mother and brother. She has “no” money. This, again, is Uncle Sam’s deal.

Farther away yet, there’s the recent hoopla involving the Manchin family, specifically “Maserati Manchin” himself – so representative of those hardcore capitalists mentioned above. Joe Manchin is the Senator from West Virginia who is officially a “Democrat,” which says volumes about the phony differences between political parties. As a so-called Democrat, Mitch McConnell himself said, “We’d love to have you, Joe.”

Why? Because he (and one other “centrist” Democrat) pushed to cut the “Build Back Better Act” from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion – while 68% of voters in his own state wanted the full plan. West Virginia is 50^th in the nation in infrastructure, 48^th in its economy, 47^th in healthcare, 45^th in education – but Number One in the highest drug overdose death rates. Twenty-percent of their children live in poverty, and 93% are eligible for child tax credit payments. The “Build Back” plan would have provided childcare for 94,000 kids, rental assistance to 83,000 residents, health insurance to 31,000 uninsured, and union jobs as part of the effort to meet climate targets.

But ‘ol Joe has been the poster-child of coal, mining, and the fossil fuel industry for a very long time. Just since refusing to endorse the “Build Back” act, a flood of contributions have come into his office from the Koch brothers, private billionaires, American Express, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, United Health Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and CNK (a natural gas company). – And just to make sure nothing could be done to change what happened, he opposed the “For the People Act,” which would have made significant changes to elections.

But what caught my eye most of all through all of this was the announcement by the so-called “progressive” Democrats (including the White House), saying they “tried” working with Manchin and negotiated “in good faith.” – That immediately triggered a red flag. “In good faith” is another one of those vacuous catchphrases designed to evade and deny accountability for failure. The meaning is as clear as mud.

What the hell does “in good faith” mean? It’s similar to when Obama tried working with Republicans “in hopes” they would compromise (if he compromised). Of course they stomped all over him, so naive and gullible was he. Or was he? Is/Was the White House really that stupid? – I think not. I think the Democrats and Republicans work jointly (complicitly) to maintain a corporate status quo that benefits only them and their “constituents.” They even depend on members of their own party to veto legislation they say they want, but really don’t. They knew Manchin’s record and what his response would be. “Good faith” presumes an incredibly “naive and gullible” trust in cooperative government, when in fact it’s code for a much deeper conspiracy – or as I said in my previous entry, “truth maintenance.”

In their own defense, they would say that West Virginia (a strong Trump state) elected who they wanted and simply sent their representative to Washington – legally. Everything was on the up-and-up. But the problem started way before that, out of sight, with the electoral process itself – which is why, again, Manchin opposed the “For the People Act.” Money and power install who they want at the very beginning of every election. We are “handed” an edited/trimmed-down spectrum of political views to vote on, and it’s why we always end up voting for the “lesser evil.”

Then there’s Manchin’s own daughter. Heather Manchin Bresch became CEO of a very powerful (Fortune 500) pharmaceutical company, called Mylan, in which she became a price-gouging profiteer. She also married a fossil fuel executive.

One of her first decisions as CEO was to take the EpiPen product, something that costs literally only a few dollars to make, and raised the cost 400%. In 2007 the price went up to $100, then up to $600. (In Cuba, by the way, where they have Universal Healthcare, an EpiPen costs $6). – Meanwhile, Joe Manchin’s own wife then lobbied for federal legislation to “require” schools to stock EpiPens. – Jack up the price, then force it onto everyone. That was Manchin’s plan.

In 2017 Mylan was fined $465 million for ripping off Medicaid. But Bresch herself made off with $37.6 million. The Bresch’s live in a $10 million house. – Such is the family of a US Senator.

Everyday I end up putting pieces like this together and formulate a bigger picture of where we live. I don’t intend to, but it comes to me by its momentum. There’s an old saying (a caveat actually) that says that if we knew just a fraction of what goes in Washington, Americans would mutiny and expatriate en masse. Or, there would be an insurrection the likes of which would make January 6^th look like a cake walk. – “Can’t allow too much democracy.” And they simply can’t allow people to become too informed. Citizens would actually demand fair representation. This is why they own (and pay) media to do “truth maintenance” for them.

Like I said in the top, this is not news I consciously want to pursue – ever. But it converges and devours like a ravenous beast. I can’t get away from it. It’s either right at my door, my neighbor’s door, or on the Six O’clock News. So, where does one go? What does one do to save himself from the wolf at the door?

There’s no changing it, so one’s only recourse is to leave it. And at this stage I would settle for just about anywhere in the northern hemisphere. Other governments are just as corrupt and consumed with greed, but at least they let you know it. They say, “This is the way it is, if you don’t like it, leave.” I respect that much. much more than a government that’s just as corrupt but goes to incredible lengths to lie about it. – As I’ve said many times, I’m not a good American. I don’t like it here.

I think about Joseph K being accused of “nothing,” who never knows what he’s charged with. Such is the state’s penalty for committing the offense of voicing an unpopular viewpoint. If it’s not the state, then it’s “good” Americans who take offense – always searching out scapegoats. And in this “gung-ho, All-American, uniformed, extremely right-wing, Christian, pro-John Wayne/Donald Trump, Q-Anon, gun-obsessed fucking nation, an unpopular opinion is met with more and more violence and intolerance. Violence is the ideological solution to dealing with the undesirable – “depopulating” societies to “save” them.

Evangelicals, law enforcement, and military unite no differently than how the Crown and Vatican united in the 12th^th century under the “Doctrine of the Two Swords” – to carry out their “killing for Christ.” Like today, the Church has a “third purpose” (to divide the rulers from the ruled).

Indeed, to do what Arnaud-Amalric, the Cistercian abbot appointed by Pope Innocent-III, did when leading the Albigensian Crusade (routing the Jews and pagans in Spain). When the abbot’s troops burned the city of Beziers in 1209 and made prisoners of its 15,000 inhabitants, they asked their commander how they were to distinguish between the “still faithful” and those deserving punishment. In what eventually became a twenty-first century doctrine of “mutual assured destruction,” he said, “Kill them all! God will recognize his own.”

Violence is violence, anyway you cut it. And it’s passed down most eagerly by the most rigid, intolerant, and self-righteous (i.e., religious). In 1209 it was called “killing for Christ.” Today it’s called killing to “save democracy” and the “American Way.” Meanwhile, Joseph K is showing up in more and more of us each day.

To which I have one recommendation (for everyone): Read up on the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” In short: ignorance breeds certainty, and knowledge breeds more and more uncertainty. I’ll let you figure it out. It answers many questions and even offers a solution. Make it a New Year’s resolution.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

TRUTH MAINTENANCE

TRUTH MAINTENANCE

There’s an old episode of Star Trek where the inhabitants of (what they think is) a planet is really an enormous spaceship. They experience normal weather, see stars above and even a sun. It’s the job of Captain Kirk and crew to convince them of an enormous deception forced upon them, that the ship they’re on is designed to control their very existence. The ship also just happens to be on a collision course with a real planet.

On occasion, say the inhabitants, one or two of them would wander into the hills only to disappear forever. One who does come back says that the sky is really an enormous dome placed over them. Later, he would die from a mysterious illness. Kirk and Spok know that wherever there’s a spaceship, there has to be a master computer running it. And of course they find it, change all the settings, and save the day. But their biggest challenge is de-programming the inhabitants of this enormous fantasy-world which has ruled their thinking.

This is more or less the feeling I have deep down, in my gut, of the United States as an artist-writer-citizen. Though we live “freely” and (theoretically) enjoy a First Amendment, it feels like we’re in a fake reality controlled by a silent and invisible computer – or in our case, an “elite.” It’s the lesson of Huxley’s Brave New World – where citizens think they’re happy and free. It’s where propaganda is so penetrating and thorough that there’s no difference between, as Orwell wrote, “war [and] peace, freedom [and] slavery, ignorance [and] strength.” In Huxley’s world the people believe it (tyranny from “below”); in Orwell’s they do not but are forced to (tyranny from “above”).

The analogy can go as deep and as far back (in history) as one wishes to take it. Especially when one ponders theories of a “global elite” establishing a “new world order” under its own government– using secret codes, banks, corporate media, private paramilitaries, law enforcement, secret service agencies, spying (computer) services, and so forth — to watch everything we do, and (as one author referred to “the Illuminati”) “being in their service without even knowing it.” – I’m not your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist and am not about to go into a long history of the Illuminati. But I also don’t dismiss the possibility of today’s (bitter) fruits hailing from roots that sink very deep. Either way, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the “spaceship” we now inhabit.

I sense this presence as an “artist/writer.” because it almost requires an artistic sensibility to detect it. Otherwise, I’m stuck inside a bourgeois mindset that’s so obtuse that nothing is noticed beyond what lies in front of it. The artist steps away from status quos and comfortable situations. It’s his job to question and challenge norms, to force society to reach beyond the safe and familiar (hence, the only important art is “socially relevant” art). – If I were not a writer, I would most likely fit right in with the blind, gullible, and easily assuaged, who live “contently,” totally untroubled over whether the sky is real or not.

The irony here is that “the artist” creeps up on even the most groveling sycophants without them even knowing it. Even if insisting one is not an artist, to simply question things is a “creative” step requiring imaginative skills. He steps into a broader dimension despite himself. Even the most complacent person runs into small epiphanies that force him to question who, what, and where he is. Whether he acts on them or not is another matter. My point here is, the creative instinct haunts everyone sooner or later. Everyone wonders and thinks the forbidden thoughts, eventually.

One would think such gut feelings about global conspiracies and massive government manipulation would subside by the time he’s reached his seventh decade. But for myself those feelings have become more acute and sharply focused than ever. I suppose it’s because of knowing more, witnessing more, questioning more, and simply living longer. The “best laid plans of mice and men” never bear close examination.

And this is what I sense about a very large “master plan”: While we all aspire to a myth called the “America Dream” and join in daily mantras about the “land of the free” and “home of the brave,” there’s a shroud of forgery and imposture constantly churning underneath. Even more, as artists and critics expose unbelievable hypocrisy and even write about it, nothing changes. Lots of noise goes out but nothing comes back, as if it’s heard and not heard at the same time. –The question is, then, how can this be? What is the truth here?

I think of the many deep examples of propaganda designed to avoid attention. For example, as Noam Chomsky said, “In political discourse every term has two meanings…. Democracy has an official meaning… and a technical meaning which is the one actually used by the business classes. If business runs it and support’s American interests, then it’s democracy. If not, it’s not a democracy…. The same is true of the ‘peace process.’ It has a dictionary meaning but also a technical meaning which is whatever the Unites States happens to be advocating at a particular moment. Whatever our initiatives are, that’s the peace process. That means it’s a ‘logical impossibility’ for the United States to be opposed to the peace process, since it means whatever it wants. [It also means that] it’s enemies are always opposed to peace. You’ll never find in the media any such phrase saying the US opposes the peace process. It would be a logical contradiction.”

We enjoy the perks of many technologically advanced tools and gadgets. They actually consume every minute of our day now. But even with noblesse oblige (new opportunities require new responsibilities), the reality now is that more opportunity brings less responsibility. The more one complains, the more he finds himself helpless, knowing that his complaint is channeled through the very means and devices that are the problem in the first place. There’s no way out. It’s not unlike a prisoner forced to voice complaints about his mistreatment through the prison guard who is the one mistreating him. It’s futile and often brings undesirable consequences.

Cell phones and computers are only the most obvious culprits. Phones have become tracking devices, no differently than credit cards. Computers see and hear everything, either directly or linked remotely to other devices far away. They sift through the electronic droppings of each person, every movement and expression – bank, medical, divorce records, traffic violations, purchases, traffic tickets, blood and urine samples – to detect every movement of every citizen. This is because everyone is potentially “suspect” of making an accidental discovery about what he shouldn’t know. And, not unlike the inhabitants discovered by Captain Kirk, some of them magically disappear, or end up dead (cf. Marilyn Monroe, Jack Ruby, Dorothy Kilgallen, etal).

The whole concept of “free speech zones” for protesters is a very apt and revealing phenomenon. Those are areas where citizens are allowed to ask the “wrong” questions, while being kept out of public view. Cameras and media aren’t allowed in. Citizens can yell and scream all they want, but the Secret Service (and other agencies) ensure the futility of any meaningful sound & fury. Meanwhile, those very agencies then claim to be the defenders of free speech – and the public believes them.

Ordinary citizens await official instructions on where and when they can and cannot express themselves. Meanwhile, corporations fire employees for “trafficking in ambiguous e-mails,” and the FBI scans the smallest gatherings for “anarchists” and “extremist elements.” Students end up with police records for doing nothing, yet are accused of “stepping out of line” and forfeit whole careers for doing so. There are citizens serving time for non-violent crimes which serve as warnings to those tempted to question authority. These are shots fired across the bow of the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, the government has decided that the “experiment with democracy” has gone far enough. An official consensus says too many freedoms wander around loose in the streets, and it’s time to reign them in! – Just days ago Common Cause (a civil rights watchdog group) issued a warning that wealthy special interests are lobbying state lawmakers to “ratify the convening of an Article V Convention to radically reshape the Constitution.” Which means shredding the First Amendment. If only “seven more states” sign on, they will have reached the two-thirds majority needed to convene a convention. They are also rewriting the election laws (78% of Republicans still think Trump won, and Biden is not the president). – This is happening in full view of Congress and the public. What that says is that the masters of manipulation work both ends of the system at the same time (public and private). No quarter is being given to anyone or anything. ¹

This is all so familiar to those who were among the “greatest generation” of World War II. Specifically, for those who lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. There was the facade of normalcy forced upon citizens – and some citizens actually believed everything was normal. “No one told us!!” was the signature response after the war. But during the war itself citizens simply found different kinds of “liberty” that didn’t intrude with the Nazis. Performance arts, hotels, restaurants, taverns, galleries, bookstores, and public markets continued on as if nothing was happening.

But if someone colored just a little outside the lines, if he “trafficked in ambiguity” (as the FBI and Secret Service put it today), he would almost magically “disappear.” It was a time of, as author Alan Riding put it, “creative silence.” “Creative artists needed the oxygen of freedom to take flight. During the occupation, they had sufficient air to survive, but not to lift off.”

Have we inured ourselves as “a people” to settle for just enough oxygen to breathe but never to “lift off?” Do we have any sense of this? Or are we so confined by the straightjackets of mental control that we think we’re still free? Is public control so fine-tuned now that (just like the Nazis who successfully “calculated” public deception) we now face the same effects of mass-persuasion – via psychological engineering, chemical and subliminal persuasion, soundbites, propaganda, the arts of “selling,” genetic sciences, and even “hypnosis through fatigue” (what Huxley called “hypnopaedia”)? Are we contently and quietly looking at a metal enclosure thinking it’s the sky? And if so, are we also on a collision course with something that spells doom for everything as we’ve known it?

It’s a gut-level feeling inside me, one that never goes away. It’s with me every day as a writer and thinker. And all I can say is, at this late hour, if there’s no way out, then there’s no way out!! And I think of the Oscar Wilde quote: “Ignorance is the key to happiness. Too much knowledge and we’re doomed.” – If we’re all going for a ride we never planned to take and cannot stop, what recourse have we except to sit back and watch it? We could complain to the prison guard, but what would that bring us?

All together, en masse, and in unison, the voices of the world cheer on the conductor who “knows where’s he going!” Even as they look out the window and see things they’re not supposed to. A faint discomfort fills the air, but no one says anything. There’s nothing anyone can do. Might as well not think about it.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

1Add the fact that within just one year (2021) the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, overturned Roe v Wade in Texas, blocked Biden’s eviction moratorium, reinstated Trump’s “Stay in Mexico” warning, curtailed workers’ rights to organize, and supported Charles and David Koch’s “dark money” group. – There is now a much needed movement (and petition) circulating to add “four” more seats to the Supreme Court, called the “Judiciary Act of 2021.”

NEW LATITUDE, NEW ATTITUDE

NEW LATITUDE, NEW ATTITUDE

One morning, during the Second World War, Winston Churchill was reportedly in the bathroom when an orderly knocked on the door, saying, “Sir, the Priyy Seal awaits you.” To which Churchill responded, “Tell the Privy Seal that I’m sealed in the privy, and I can only deal with one shit at a time.”

Greatness, I suppose, can be measured in how one keeps a sense of humor during the darkest moments. And if that’s the case, then I’m as far from greatness as one gets. Even when working as hard as I can to stay above life’s daily frays. My method is to keep invisible and live as “simply” as possible. Life needs no help delivering problems to one’s door, and I could never understand why people go out of their way (in spasms of boredom?) to deliberately complicate their lives even more.

I’m overwhelmed with pressures and complexities that just seem to mount. Mark it up, I suppose, to a mix of age and “technology” (which a friend once called “tech – no logic”). They show up unannounced at my door, in my phone, on my radio and TV, and “out there” in such waves that they drain any joie de vivre I might have had when the day started. Mark Twain was right: “The more I know people, the more I love my dog.”

The small annoyances only loom larger and larger. They do not shrink with time, as one normally assumes. Inuring oneself to them does not shrink them either. On one side there are the most dangerous beasts walking the planet – Homo Sapiens. Then there are the toxic conditions they leave behind. Dealing with one directly is one thing, but then there are all the entrapments (rules, penalties, warnings) that remain in their absence. And being a home-owner forces one to deal constantly with both. Fees, taxes, costs, (visible and hidden), gadgets and fixtures, damage (accidental, deliberate), intrusions, wear & tear (of house, of self), all add to a per diem anxiety that eventually kills the mind & body. It never lets up. What I notice everyday are my reserves (mental, physical, emotional) continuing to arc downward on the backside of that bell curve called life.

Hence the impulse to look for a domicile that promises “half” (or the elimination of) that whole paradigm. In other words, to downsize. “Upkeep” is a concept I wish to erase from the vocabulary of my life since there are far more important things to think about. What that translates to is going from a house (in “the burbs”) to a condo or townhouse (in the inner city). I dream of not having a yard, furnace, water heater, roof, plumbing, and a foundation to tax my thoughts ever again. I would gladly give it all up for a fair settlement and a “unit” in an HOA-managed community. – These are the thoughts of a “retiring” individual – no question about it.

There are conditions, of course: a “55 and older” community (no kids!!), safety, quiet, cleanliness, various amenities, and so on. Downsizing does not translate to a reduction in personal needs – just the opposite. Five years ago I would have never considered allowing an HOA fee handle “all” breakdowns, maintenance problems, and dangers. But time and circumstances do move along, mercilessly.

This again is not just an “age” problem. It’s about emotional fatigue facing an array of forces, pressures, and dangers so numerous that I can hardly keep track of them anymore. If something is ignored or overlooked, I’m apt to find a “final warning” in my mailbox, or an iridescent-clad city employee standing in my backyard for reasons unknown and without permission.

On top of that, there is a new phenomenon that can only describe America as a “war zone.” Violence is omnipresent. It knocks at your door and walks the city sidewalk concealed under a signature “hoodie.” Cameras watch and record. The causes are also more obvious than ever – cost of living, overpopulation, greed, guns, drugs, and an epidemic of stupidity. The “system” is out-of-hand. As Gore Vidal predicted 40 years ago, the “American Empire” is arcing towards its final “crash & burn.” Hence, the strong urge to go “underground,” something which has always been with me, but now carries a strong urgency.

And so, I keep a keen focus on a “55 and Older” cluster of condos in Denver. I’ve been doing it for a couple years now, but nothing has surfaced — thus far. When they have, either I didn’t have the funds in-hand (now required), or units have been too large or too small. My friendly Denver Realtor keeps a faithful vigil on my behalf.

But the mere pondering of this new impulse has forced up another more psychological issue as well. It came to me one night watching a film The Wolf Hour (with Naomi Watts) – a movie, by the way, that I watched five times. The main character is a writer who is agoraphobic, but an agoraphobic for an unusual reason. She’s imprisoned herself in a small, rundown apartment in a sleazy part of New York City. She orders her groceries in and can’t take her own garbage out (has to pay others to do it). A friend asks her why she doesn’t go out, and she responds. “Because that way I can’t do anymore harm out there.”

That response rang a bell inside me. Suddenly, this character was me. Though we’re not given the particulars, this writer, once a well-known published author, was severely traumatized “out there” – most likely by media and the public. It produced an irreparable emotional scar. Yet she still says “’I’ cannot” (do more harm). One can only surmise, that a) the suffering she shouldered was her own fault – that the public was right in attacking her for the nerve to present a point of view (about anything); hence b) it means harm to herself. Here’s an artist with low self-esteem, thin skin, and a very sensitive constitution, highly talented but feels completely out of place and worthless. If she holes up like a mouse, if she disappears, she can at least still breathe and stay alive.

There are some clear differences between us: She was once a “major” figure on the literary scene. I never was. She had an agent. I never did. She also disciplines herself to write a second book and “gets out there” again (in the end) – at the urging of friends. She succeeds, is no longer a mouse, and presumably finds healthier digs.

I have been published, but only minor articles/essays printed years ago. And I have no appetite to “get out there” — whatever that means. The “mouse” analogy did not fit for her. It fits implicitly in my case. I also have no “best friends” anymore, but if I had (to lift me out of ??), it would feel intrusive and invalidating. All the signs in my gut inform me to never market myself or become a visible target (what you become). She was visibly (deliberately) shamed and embarrassed in the public eye. I never was. But I don’t need to be to know the perils of dealing with the public.

This also has to do with my own impression of what getting “acknowledged” actually means. The urge is a symptom of ego-development (of feeling unique, of making a difference, of standing out) even as the ego itself rationalizes it as something different – “self-esteem,” “self-confidence,” “courage” – all things healthy and good. Not to belabor it, the mind is the master of deception, and most of all “self-deception.” Part of every successful celebrity is the talent to feign humility. Whereas the wisest people in the world disdain public attention and prefer anonymity.

Naomi Watts’ character finally gets what she wants. She’s “out there” again being interviewed by critics. But in the final scene it’s the same critic asking the same questions he asked several years earlier on the same show. And she’s having to defend herself all over again in exactly the same way. She thinks this is what she wants. I think not. She has a brutal gauntlet she must run for the sake of a career, before realizing that this has nothing to do with the truth or what is important.

Put another way, there’s a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre: “The concrete possession of a particular object gives as if by magic the meaning of that object.” In other words, the world thinks that by trapping you in some way, it instantly takes possession of you and redefines who you are. It takes your “soul.” It therefore “wins” and has the right to then dispose of you as it wishes. This is the world of critics and those who fall into that mindset. Again, it has nothing to do with the truth (what a writer presumably writes about and searches for).

So, again, we return to the idea of a small, nondescript condo in the inner-city. The almost perfect haunt for a mouse-like figure who still writes about the day-to-day. The “blog” is what the mouse regurgitates and leaves outside the door of his garden-level domicile – alongside the morning paper and the cat sleeping on the stoop. The cat reads the mouse. What cat & mouse share in common is the intense need to elude all human noise. They know what’s important. They know the truth.

Both share a strong appetite for staying sub rosa, and the one place on earth where that is best achieved is the inner city – amongst many, many other cats and mice. There, one is blissfully faceless and invisible.

For some reason which I’ll never understand, humans assume that the best place to achieve invisibility is in the country. Au contraire. Nothing could be more misleading. When they get there they eventually discover that they’ve fallen victim to an old marketing cliché, some photos, and the oldest lie in the buying & selling of real estate. Nowhere is one more exposed to public view (a target of constant observation) than in sparsely populated areas. The mere absence of humans make those already there more obvious and curious to one another. The new resident will have neighbors (and townsfolk) who make it their business to know everything about him – more than he even knows about himself. In time he will discover an entire mythology has been built around him based on voyeuring and gossip — when he’s home, when he leaves, who visits him, his buildings and vehicles, what he buys at the store, his mail, and so on. There is no privacy, except for those moments of being literally shielded away by trees and hills.

If gossip is one’s cuppa tea, then by all means, he/she belongs in that world. It follows Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: “If there’s one thing worse than being talked about, it’s not being talked about.” Gossip is the engine that runs everything in the absence of crisis. As someone once said, “Sometimes you need to step outside, clear your head and remind yourself of who you are.”

The optics are clear. And I fear that the urge itself is a progressive one, as nothing remains static. I also feel the momentum of what Alan Watts once called the “backwards law,” or the “law of reversed effort.” That is, the more resistance I hear about moving, the more motivated I am to do it. A certain contrarian instinct has always held me in good stead.

But I am also held back by the old pressures and anxieties. They force me into a world steeped in the subjunctive tense: “What if” – (fill in the blank) – my house doesn’t sell, condos fail to appear, structural problems surface in this very old (1899) house, the market plummets, and on and on?? The worst scenario of all: being forced to stay, pay current bills, in addition to “structural” costs before being allowed to sell at all. My realtor says not to worry, but I worry anyway. If not about that, then everything “out there” – life in Suburbia, USA, perusing the city sidewalks and alleys.

Call it paranoia! Or call it a normal neurosis. It’s a curious thing that there’s no space anymore between neurosis and “good health.” Healthcare professionals now say, in soft euphemistic lingo, that it’s healthy to be just slightly paranoid and neurotic – calling it “vigilance” and “alertness” instead. It’s also normal to be taking anxiety, stress, and blood pressure meds. – I’m actually shocked to find my friends shocked that I’m not taking meds of any kind at all (at 72). I’m more shocked that they are.

A rock is thrown through a neighbor’s window, a druggie sleeps in the alley, a car is stolen, a dog is poisoned, a child is missing, gunshots are heard at 3 AM, a house fire kills three, vehicles (with sub-woofers) “shake” windows and violate city “decibel” codes, motorcycles race up and down streets, cops fail to show up, cats and dogs show up too often (missing), and “gossip,” as always, finds its way inside micro-neighborhoods. – Welcome to the city.

I suppose it’s all about selective attention. Alas, for whatever litany of reasons, this is what I observe in (and around) my neighborhood today. Therefore, it’s time to get very small – ideally, to disappear altogether. When you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough.

As for a “healthy” countenance and perspective, recall Camus’ comment: “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” As for humor, it’s a gift and a luxury anymore, to be held onto for dear life. It’s the engine behind the engine, the final raison d’etre. But like Camus, I need to occasionally bow out in order to find it. Winston Churchill I am not.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

BA HUMBUG!

BA HUMBUG!

An unoffensive and evasive euphemism for a serious moral indictment. While hearing Tiny Tim’s famous words, “God bless us all” over and over again, we deserve anything but a blessing (as Americans, or as global citizens). Just step back and look at the world. It’s absolutely stunning that we can exchange Christmas cards, gifts, and “good cheer” while aiding and abetting the suffering virtually everywhere else on the planet (including here at home). Our holidays depend on sweat shops, ecological desecration, suffering and torture of so many other living things that it boggles the mind.

The rich are so rich now that they’re sponsoring their own space programs. Meanwhile, Yemen and Ethiopia are suffering the worst starvation crises the world has ever witnessed (as we speak), and people are freezing to death and starving in the streets of America. Also, as we exchange our Hallmark cards and smiles we congratulate ourselves for being a “generous, caring, forgiving, and compassionate” people. Literally speaking, it makes me want to puke.

We congratulate ourselves for being environmentally responsive to global warming and ecological devastation, while only 9 % of our plastics actually get recycled, the Brazilian rain forest (the “one” source that supplies 1/5 of the planet’s oxygen) is being burned down, and we’re burning more fossil fuel than ever before.

While the government squanders billions on political “favors” and private deals, the richest among us (celebs, politicians) have the gall to solicit Americans on fixed incomes for donations to causes that interest only them (e.g., “Please save Hollywood’s film archives”). It’s also up to us to keep food banks and veteran clinics open, and tribal and minority communities from going under. We have to hold bake sales just to keep public libraries open. Students are paying off debts that shouldn’t even exist, and we fear sickness (not because of the sickness itself) but because of the cost of healthcare – while also knowing we’re the ONLY industrialized nation left in the world (including most of the 3^rd world) without universal healthcare.

Our only real healthcare plan is this:: “Don’t get sick.” Avoid hospitals and doctors for as long as you possibly can! Otherwise, if you’re not rich, you’re doomed. Insurance companies will not cover you fully (not even close to “fully”), even while we pay for full coverage.

We call ourselves compassionate while unspeakable animal abuse is ongoing in “factories” (out of sight, out of mind) just so we can have our morning bacon and Christmas turkeys. While the rich ignore the bloody slaughter of baby fur seals just to satisfy their vanity, to be “fashionable” and “look cool.” We buy puppies and kittens as Christmas gifts, like stuffed toys, without ever giving a thought to the fact that they grow up. They need food, shelter, and love long after Christmas. Animal shelters are inundated by January and February when the surprises and novelties wear off. Pets are tossed away like Kleenex.

We could go on and on describing our ritual hypocrisy. But what we’re most infamous for, really, is our ability to turn our heads and ignore those horrible truths, then to even deny their existence. Then for rationalizing it all when denial no longer works.– “There’s only so much we can do.” “We don’t even know what the truth is.” “I give at the office.” “Charity organizations take care of all that,” and on and on.

What is significant here isn’t if something or someone else “takes care of all that,” but the attitude we share while forced to confront it. It is as if our own thriving depends on the minimizing of everything that isn’t thriving. Someone needs to stoke the fires while the privileged stay warm, but the stokers are conveniently out of sight. The warmth feels like something that’s “free” and effortless, so we might as well enjoy it. It’s called complacency.

What that creates is a hardened countenance (or “soul”), one adept at selecting who/what will suffer today, and who/what will not. It “seasons us” for witnessing the worst of our own behavior. We watch, we gasp, we look away, we take a moment to get our heads around it; then we move to the next video – “infants dying today?” hmmm. Then we choose, or we don’t choose, and we get distracted by something else. It is an indoctrination unique to the rules of social Darwinism, what someone also once called a “vulgarian” culture.

We cut down trees for Christmas shamelessly – and for what?? Don’t we kill enough trees? Somehow many think that the ritual of tree harvesting and decorating started in Biblical times. But it only started between 600 to 400 years ago, as a mostly pagan ritual (bringing the “yule” spirit inside with wreathes, laurels, and mistletoe). The first tree was brought inside by Prince Albert, and the first “commercial” tree wasn’t sold until 1861 in America. But we ignore the history and treat it like a sacred institution.

Do we not feel just a twinge of guilt when the spirit of “conspicuous consumption” is what really drives us during the holiday? Then to litter our alleys with “tree graveyards” in January? That in this “throw away” culture we could actually plant trees instead? That we could bring the “yule spirit” inside with just branches? That we could improvise with the traditional Christmas “star?” That in fact making the holiday safer, cleaner, cheaper, easier to clean up, environmentally-friendly (and without fire-hazards) is actually a good idea?

Personally, I cannot think of a more responsible and rewarding Christmas (and enlightening for children) than to plant a tree on Christmas Eve. If we want to “give thanks,” this is truly how to do it. But just suggesting the idea is like asking a mule to stop an old habit.

The fact that there are already tree shortages (even of artificial trees) should be a clue as to a harbinger of Christmases to come. And on a much larger scale, the fact is that (without the Brazilian rain forest) we need trees more than ever to produce oxygen. Scientists are saying that “with every fifth breath we take, we can thank the rain forest.” That fact alone should alarm us. But it doesn’t.

What needs to happen – as of “right now” – is a total re-prioritizing of our needs as a species. Drastic and immediate measures need to happen, and we need to fire the politicians that stand in the way of that – paid off to defend fossil fuel and wars that victimize refugees (while making those leaders rich and powerful). As long as we remain divided on this point, the longer we remain the most hypocritical generation of all – just because the stakes have never been higher.

A responsible Christmas (and New Year) would be to stop the “slash & burn” in Brazil immediately, to intervene massivly in Yemen and Ethiopia (and everywhere children are starving), We are the “most powerful nation on earth” (an old cliché, but true). And if we are, we can push our way into the affairs of the most corrupt nations engaged in civil wars, no differently than in how we plant military bases anywhere/anytime we want. We do the latter virtually everyday. We could do the former just once for the sake of survival.

A responsible New Year would be to build massive water desalination plants, to impound and expropriate “oil” pipelines for the distribution of water into the nation’s heartland. It would also mean to update and revitalize the whole plastic recycling industry, so that 9% (recycled) becomes 90%. This time of year it would also mean to plant trees and rewrite our Christmas cards in ways that mention children without food or water. The Hallmark company would need to wake up.

A responsible Christmas/New Year would also mean closing down animal factories and return animals to real (organic) farms where they would be raised humanely. To end the entire fur industry. To stop Monsanto and genetically-modified foods. To eliminate student debt, make college tuition free, give veterans the full benefits (and jobs) they deserve, to start up universal healthcare, and put insurance companies in their rightful place. – All of this could be achieved in a remarkably short period of time – not years.

Whenever you’re told “oh, but that would take a long time, it’s a very slow process,” you’re talking to a defender of the status quo. Just think back when America entered World War II. Our entire peacetime economy was transformed into a full-time war economy within just “six months.” Factories stopped making cars, washing machines, and toasters, and started making planes, guns, and tanks. Why” Because we knew our very survival was at stake. No one fooled around, no time to waste. We just did it. – Survival is the operative term here, once again, but this time for us all as a species. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

Things not simply to ponder this season, but to act on – immediately. If we do, then we’ll deserve Tiny Tim’s blessing. If we don’t, then we still need visits from the three ghosts visiting Scrooge in the night – to remind us of the past, present, and future.

Merry Christmas – and ba humbug!

(c) 2021 Richard Hiatt

INLINES and OUTLINES

INLINES and OUTLINES

Isn’t that a visual portrait of life itself, in three words? When I say I can see your outline, am I not also saying the reverse? “Hey, your background’s inline takes a good picture.” We can say that this is what art is all about. But really, it’s we who imitate art in this very manner. Life is all about selective attention while remembering the operative word – selective.

We do it not only with inanimate backdrops, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches, but with personalities and first (and last) impressions. We listen to our own warning signs but also to those taught to us. We become portals of social limitation, and our norms begin and end with selective patterns of attention.

We collect just as much information from the outlying gray and blurry shadows as we do from the objects they profile. In a way one is a statement about the other – like twins pointing to one another. If something has depth and substance, it’s because of the reflective properties of what surrounds it in contrast.

We could call the surrounding energies mirages. They exist under special conditions, with mental/physical atmospheres. They are also auras. Just imagine an aura in reverse: a lit object, the center of our attention, being the aura of what frames it.

Reality then comes down to where we decide to “draw the line.” When we’re very young all the lines are nondescript and mercurial. Everything’s fluid and difficult to define. In old age we return to the same surreality but with a certain peace of mind about it. Those of us troubled by it get caught in webs of “diagnostic” doom. They’re indoctrinated by disease “symptoms” that must be remedied. There’s the patient in a mental facility, and then there’s the elderly woman I watched one day sitting on her front porch, clearly “out of her mind,” but wearing the smile of an enlightened yogi.

“Oh, but how will she toilet herself or feed and clothe herself?” Her response: “That’s your problem. You take care of it.” “Oh, but she isn’t lucid enough to make that decision.” – Oh really?? Thus, it becomes your “hard” line against her gray, translucent line. And, now that we’re on the subject, exactly why are you “nursing” her at all? To keep up appearances? Why are you keeping her alive? Is it for her needs, or your own? It’s the century-old debate, still unresolved: What is medicine’s first job? Quality of life, or to prolong life?

Leonardo and other genius-artists called it sfumato and chiaroscuro. Sfumato is what makes the Mona Lisa what it is. It literally means “softened, vaporous” and refers to the transitions from light-to-dark in a manner which is almost imperceptible. Chiaroscuro is Italian for “light-dark” and refers, again, to the almost imperceptible gradations of light to dark (more associated with Leonardo’s personal technique). Later, the term “painterly” was also employed to distinguish soft shades from “hard-edged” lines. Leonardo understood the symbiosis of inlines and outlines and the nondescript universes in between.

The background behind the Mona Lisa is, interestingly, a landscape often described as “the unconscious.” Her gaze wanders off. She’s in mourning and yet smiles at the same time – and no one even knows who she is. ¹ That alone gives us a clue as to what it is we’re looking at – an expression (outline) of the universe seen through human eyes (and a smile) and the inline of an infinitely mysterious horizon. Psychologically, it throws a “figure-ground reversal” at the viewer.

The line therefore becomes something magical, an optical illusion, which takes us through many adventures. Colors and tones inside lines, when juxtaposed, fool us as to their relative relationships. A dark object placed inside a light background is the exact same shade as the light-appearing object set inside a dark background. The small-appearing black dot set inside surrounding large dots is the exact same size as a large-appearing dot set inside surrounding small dots. And the famous “hour-glass/two faces” Rorschach shows two things at once but allows us to see only one at a time. One is always excluded. We try to see both simultaneously, but it’s impossible. Nature makes us in such a way as to swim in a universe of endlessly competing contrasts.

If/When we choose, to encounter a person or thing on the street can instantly take on a spiritual dimension. Though we can’t see both at the same time, we can still perceive the codependent “line” between what he is and isn’t. One is the atmosphere of the other. Not only is what you see relative to what you don’t see, but what “you” are in that moment (as observer) plays into it just as much. You are also a “condition” of many competing contrasts and lines. Suddenly, everything is indefinite, contingent, tentative, translucent, and fleeting. Nothing is fixed or tied down. Everything is relative – including relativity itself (since our “predisposition” also relative, declares it to be so). Suddenly everything deconstructs.

We end up walking around wondering which exactly are the optical illusions, and what (if anything) is real? The mind has to constantly superimpose a safe and predictable reality over all this, like a geometirc grid over nature. Alan Watts used to say that what is “wiggly” becomes “squared away and straightened out.” We don’t “exist” unless/until we implant our pre-programmed lines.

And thus begins the struggle that began long ago, at the beginning of time with our cave-dwelling ancestors. The intuitive and natural inclusivity with nature (infinitely “wiggly”) – versus — our interminable fear of the unknown, the need to respond differently, to build illusions, fantasies, and myths (grids) of supremacy over the unknown. We fabricate an idea of “Eden,” and then “square it away.” Meanwhile, as someone said, our alienation slowly kills us much like a frog cooking to death in boiling water without it knowing. Soft lines congeal and crust around us.

Civilization seems to have been the progression of just that – a frog placed in a pan of water slowly heated to boiling. All civilizations die in the end, along with their sophisticated, carefully calculated lines. As the sage says, “there are no straight lines in nature.” Nor are there squares or boxes of any kind. The American Indian, builder of round homes, says “there’s no life in a box.” Euclid was a wise man, but one has to get past his basic geometric principles to know what we really meant by them. His first common notion: “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”

Much closer to home, I pick up on this scenario every morning when I hear a news story, when I watch a squirrel eating a nut, or a neighbor shoveling snow. We all do it. We have foregrounds and backgrounds, and we all do it differently. It’s what makes us unique to one another.

But I have to ask: In this post-postmodern world, in this very late “season of our discontent,” are the lines of reality crossing and blurring en masse and even fasterdespite ourselves?Just looking at how lines are crossing politically, religiously, socially, sexually (with genders), etc., there seems to be a mega-crisis of identities. And again, are we to treat it as a “symptom,” a disease, or like the crazy woman on the porch clearly “out of her mind?” Is being out of one’s mind the just the drawing of new lines?

I will admit, I have had my “episodes” of resistance to all these changes, as recent times have brutally dropped many old lines. I’m a product of my generation, now beginning to fade off along with all the generations that came before it. I sometimes see my own parents inside me. I wax nostalgic as they did, bitch about the present, and wish for more control and predictability in the world.

But then I shake it off and force myself to see it all as a kind of sfumato. And maybe the “new mind” (the lady who was “out” of hers) is the same as what the earliest troglodytes saw – being “fused and confused” with nature. Only this time around we know it and embrace it. We even talk about it now.Life is one huge pot of gray transpositions and “wiggles.” Everything is temporary. It begins to die as soon as it’s born. We are becomings. And as Buckminster Fuller said, “I seem to be a verb.”

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

1The most current answer to the question of identity is that she is a total fabrication of Leonardo’s imagination, someone meant to symbolize a mother-figure to the illegitimate child of Giuliano de Medici. The child’s real mother might have died (hence the Mona Lisa in mourning), or she might have lived (her mysterious smile). No one knows, and neither did Leonardo. – A thin gray line he walked even in this commission.

DARK VICTORIES

DARK VICTORIES

I suppose they come at regular intervals, like waves, and we don’t see them until they’ve passed. Many are unconscious, but others are deliberately subversive against the tides of normal dysfunction. I can only footnote every negative experience with a reminder that playing the bad guy, going against the tide, saying what isn’t liked, keeps the gears of progress oiled, sharp, and strong.

Meanwhile, every new radical idea is the target of incredible abuse. It’s like college hazing or surviving a gauntlet before admittance to a fraternity or club. The reward, having survived, isn’t that you’re now inducted into the club but that the club must now incorporate your idea and change. Your signature is enough, and you are only the messenger.

And what happens then to the messenger? He fades into the shadows and becomes silent; that is, until another idea forces him to the surface again. It’s an uncomfortable place for those used to the darkness, and yet the idea is too compelling to deny. It takes on a force all its own. It breathes and grows regardless of his private nature and lack of will. It’s like a grandfather watching his grandchild spring to life and jump through all the hoops that he cannot. The grandchild is the brainchild (with arms and legs).

Living in the dark brings with it a distinct feel – and with the feel a particular look. What is it about rejection and dismissal that gives both their shape? Before the feel/look comes the effects of ad hominem assaults and the molesting of one’s soul. One then walks the pavement in a black heavy overcoat in the “wee” hours, in those places haunted by fellow “losers.” They all recognize you through themselves, and there’s no need to introduce yourself. First impressions are everything.

Franz Kafka said: “I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into the deepest darkness.”

The “haunt” also tests an old supposition which everyone there ponders. What does an idea have to do with self-worth? Why does it make or brake us? In other words, why are we so inextricably bound to one another’s acceptance or rejection based on our beliefs? Why does Kafka fret over “the way I ought to think?” And why, given that we understand the dilemma of “belonging,” do we let it claim such dominion over us? Even Kafka said that “everything, including lies, serves the truth.” Oscar Wilde said, “If we let others’ opinions rule us, then what’s the point of having our own?” The fact is, regardless of what we say and do, we never leave the human fold anyway. Even the pariahs remain part of “the family.” Which should actually tell us that, again, we still have a purpose as pariahs – to keep the gears of progress lubricated and sharp. It’s a dirty job.

I think of living in steerage on a large (Titanic) boat. The bourgeois on the “above” decks reject the new idea at every chance, while forgetting that the boat doesn’t move without someone stoking the fires below. The real alchemy of ideas burn, liquify, evaporate, and condense again into new forms at every minute. While congealed and dead ideas just recycle from table-to-table on the above decks. They never reach any new discoveries and only keep the occupants depressed and bored, They spend their time covering up the truth, dulling their senses, with alcohol and “conspicuous consumption.” For them more is always “more.”

It’s the great trade-off, the great balance: Everyone is different at this level. At what point does one stop challenging and questioning norms to simply conform? And when does conformity sink even lower into total submission, acquiescence, and the loss of self? When does the creative spark lose to the need to belong again? As I see it, at the very top of the human effort there is no religion or philosophy to answer that question. It all fades into a “meaningful nothingness.” Whereas, at the very bottom there are “no atheists in a foxhole.” It’s where humans are truly lost between mutually destructive forces – war and religion (which become synonymous). Most of us float between those two extremes, and we each ration out the ratio of creativity-to-belonging in our own ways.

Seeing this from a distance makes me want to create even more distance. The shadow becomes it’s own illumination, its own beacon. A complete transposition happens in the matter of my own priorities. I am now a relatively permanent fixture of the dark. This has been true for years, but I didn’t truly realize it until a few years ago. I remember a good friend visiting me one day and looking at the art on my walls. His response was, “All of your art is very dark.” Later on, another friend (fellow radical/subversive) gave me a spiritual name which has always felt more real than my birth-name ever will: “Mountain Shadow.” As I think back on both, they were a calling to reach for another stage in finding myself.

I have since retreated even deeper into the shadows, even to the point of losing touch with those old friends. It has a power all its own, and I am simply a resident there renting space. I don’t know that any of us actually controls anything in our lives, and that is the biggest shadow of all.

I demonstrate my “mole-like” proclivities to myself every day, particularly when I finish an entry (for this blog). I instantly dive into something – anything – again that will take me into the watery depths of human consciousness. It is indeed like a mole that feels completely “out of its depth” until it burrows again – and the deeper the better. There it finds its fraternity, its shadowy companions, books stacked to the rafters, and real stimulants that touch on real discoveries. The mole is a rodent – hated and condemned. The “higher” denizens in more lofty places (on the upper decks) look down on us, try to poison us – while we, in return, never go away and only remind them that self-destruction is their invention, not ours. The last shall go first – and more is in fact “less.”

It’s difficult seeing with any clarity the victories we achieve in the dark. We’re blanketed with shallow and ignorant falsehoods that always reference “the dark” as gloom & doom, the final refuge of failure. Every living thing that lives underground is a metaphor of the worst in human character and behavior. – While at the same time, we (below) sit quietly and watch them poison themselves in their own toxins of lies and hypocrisy. They claim to know so much while knowing almost nothing at all.

The mole is like the Greek philosoper Pyrrho who championed epoche (suspending judgments on the truth) and ataraxia (a state of tranquility that comes from epoche). Pyrrho claimed to know nothing about anything, and that alone made him an outsider to the majority which believed, of course, that it knew at least some things absolutely. “Better a witty fool,” he said. From a Pyrrhonian view, it was those “above” who were hiding (mole-like) from the truth.

A “dark victory” is seeing failure in success, and success in failure. War is evil, yet it pushes us to work harder (not to repeat it). The person who climbs to the top of his profession is the most miserable of all. No man gives more than the person who has lost everything. Nothing serves the truth more than lies. The man who gives up his “treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt” is the richest man of all. To save one’s soul is to lose it. And ambition works, until it kills. – We could go on with paradoxes that point to victory in darkness, and visa versa.

The mole has no need to prove or disprove these axioms. He just knows them, has “been there and done it,” and chooses not to “do it” anymore. It’s a matter of being less of the world while being in it. It’s the great disappearing act which, for me, is what we’re all here to do in the first place. “The reason for being here is to be done with it,” says the wise man.

There is even yet another dimension seen through the eyes of the mole which remains mostly unseen. It is nature’s own window. Hence it’s complete dismissal from those “above.” It is exquisitely, quintessentially primordial. While those with ambition see only patterns that entice more ambition, the mole sees lines and patterns which map an entirely different universe – grids, zigzags, meanders, spirals, squares and circles – the contours of primitive man. He closes his eyes and entoptic things happen. In prolonged darkness comes different states of consciousness (sent by the visual cortex to the retina, reversing signals). It allows him to see archetypal signs (a language) that connects him to his primordial roots. He is the culmination of all that came before him, everything past condensed into “this moment” (ontogeny/phylogeny). Darkness illuminates consciousness.

It’s just too bad that more of us aren’t moles. There would be no global warming, war, suffering, or fear. That’s right! No more fear. It’s the reverse of how humans describe those who “hide.” On the contrary, those living “topside,” engage in the alarums and excursions of life, having to constantly move mountains. They have things to prove. Which means they fear failure and resistance (fearing themselves most of all). They are deeply of the world. The mole simply gets out of the way of that intense human ambition.

It’s almost the equivalent of simply not listening anymore to all those who insist on the existence of God and religion – what Christopher Hitchens said “poisons everything.” One simply “turns it off” after hearing the waves of hypocrisy and lies it takes to keep religions afloat. He walks away and reaches inside himself for the truth. His truth may engage “higher intelligences,” or nothing at all. But there is no better guide to the truth than gut intuition, and it never lies.

And so again, I insist, the world would be a better place. And Mother Earth would thank us with richer harvests than we could have ever imagined.

There is one hard fact which would actually prove my point and present the penultimate irony to all who witness it: If there ever was a global nuclear war, nothing over 50 pounds would survive, while the “smallest of the small” would survive. The highest in human “progress” (man’s final legacy) would turn around and “bite him in the ass” in the very end. And the mole would know exactly what happened. Touche.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

THE TREE

THE TREE

The first Christianity was a pagan (Jewish) Christianity. And it stuns me to learn just how one tribe could systematically usurp another tribe’s religion, claim it for themselves, and then scapegoat the second tribe for the death of the first tribe’s king. But it’s exactly what happened – the biggest heist in recorded history.

Arguably the most twisted story ever told involves this religion – a Jewish movement, initiated and organized by Jews, worshipping a Jew whose parents were Jews, who taught as a Jew, and whose disciples were Jews. And the problem in the beginning (for St. Paul – a Jew) was whether one had to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. “Should we allow gentiles into the Christian movement without first converting them to Judaism?” To which Paul said “yes.” He also said “by faith alone” without the need for circumcision or by entering the Covenant of Israel.

This was a radical move since the Christian God was still a Jewish God. But Paul then went a step further by saying even Jews who followed the Covenant and the Law of Moses could become Christians by simple faith in Christ. In short, his interest was uniting both (Greek-speaking) gentiles and Jews.

Within a century the whole thing had done a 180-degree reversal. The Christian community had become mostly gentile. And by 250 AD it was all gentile with the exception of just a few settlements in Palestine, which means the Jewish character of this movement had vanished. And when we read Paul today it sounds like a dispute between Christians and Jews when in fact it was a dispute over whether gentiles should be accepted as (Jewish) Christians. And the biggest irony of all is how, from this, the former would become the latter’s “darkest twin” – its most hated nemesis, most graphically played out from Alexandria in 414 (the first large-scale pogrom) on through to Auschwitz.

I mention this only because it is that very same Christianity that puts a very high currency into other misconceptions – like the Christmas tree. Hypocrisy breeds lies, and visa versa, and those lies simply mutate like a virus. – This is why I’ve chosen to try and at least examine one small lie here in the Christmas season. It also explains why I’ve already received such a negative backlash just for trying.

The first decorated tree didn’t fall out of the sky along with a “guiding star” on the way to Bethlehem. It wasn’t alongside a burning bush or found glittering alongside the road to Damascus. It didn’t surface until the 16^th century as a pagan ritual. Many will credit Martin Luther. Others say it began with St. Boniface in the 8^th century (thwarting a human/pagan sacrifice under an oak tree by cutting it down, finding a fir tree growing in its place). Some say an apple was the first decorative “star.” Still another credits Freiburg (Germany) for decorating a tree with apples, tinsel, and gingerbread in 1419 symbolizing the Tree of Knowledge. Others stories claim that the first “indoor, decorated” tree arrived in Strasbourg in 1605. And still others that it started in Latvia, that the first “indoor” tree was Prince Albert’s idea in the 19^th century, and that the first “commercial” tree wasn’t sold until 1861 in America. – Choose your poison (or hemlock, such as it is).

Meanwhile, while all these claims were ongoing, the medieval Church was bringing in holly and ivy from outside, and the uneasy marriages between the Crown and the Vatican (called the “Doctrine of the Two Swords”) also necessitated secret compromises between pagans and Christians. The whole concept of bringing “incense” indoors during the Solstice very much influenced the meaning of the “Yule” spirit – eventually Christianized (rendered harmless) under the cloak of wreathes, laurels, and mistletoes. The transitioning of one to the other isn’t that different in how Christians turned Halloween into something completely whitewashed, sanitized, rendered harmless, and reduced to the equivalent of a fairy tale.

The Tree of Knowledge, by the way, is also a Christian rip-off. The first Tree actually depicted the Serpent as the Creator, while “God” was the serpentine messenger of guilt and temptation following Adam & Eve (and eating of the fruit). The Serpent encourages the natural alchemy between Adam & Eve, while Yahweh curses the Serpent, is jealous, and condemns humans to original sin for eternity. Yahweh also links women to snakes which later connects them to a thousand years of witchcraft. He punishes them, saying “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children (Genesis 3:16). – And so, which version do you believe?

Eating the apple is the discovery of “nakedness” which Yahweh shames. “Covering up” is the real genesis of (sexual) shame, embarrassment, low self-esteem, drugs, violence, and suicide. It all started there. And yet, again, the apple was the first “star” on the Tree. It was also the first Tree decoration. Duality (absolute “evil” as opposed to absolute “good”), nakedness, and fruit were never “forbidden” until the Christian Fathers put their official imprimatur on the Creation story.

With all that we come to the present-day Tree itself. So much has been lost in the years in terms of its presumed symbolism. And the fact is, most who celebrate Christmas today don’t ever know, or care, what the symbolism is or where it came from. They simply, mechanically, buy trees either pre-harvested or cut down privately (and more and more illegally).

Which brings me to a relatively new idea – “radical” to the conservative Christians who simply don’t want to think about it – or – have been fed the notion that the Tree is as sacred as the wooden cross Christ dragged up to Calvary. Nevertheless, I believe it’s time for some aggiornamento (a “bringing up to date”) in order to respond to the needs of this critical 21s century moment – when forests are burning, the planet is losing oxygen, natural habits and ecosystems are being plundered and turned into moonscapes.

I’ll begin with a simple question: Don’t we kill enough trees already? Especially when it’s totally unnecessary? Isn’t it rather stupid to harvest trees that weeks later line our alleys like graveyards – along with tons of “stuff” that either blows away, is taken to a landfill, or is mulched and recycled (a process which also pollutes, requires man-hours, energy and fuel)?

My proposal is this: Less IS more. – Instead of killing the trees, harvest the branches instead and leave the trees alone. Line your mantles, bookshelves, tables, and hallways along with lights, tinsel, and anything else you can think of. The idea is to bring in the Yule (festive) spirit, which is incense, into the home without the tree. It’s safer (reducing fire hazards), cleaner, cheaper, environmentally responsible, it saves on major cleanups in January, AND again, no more “alley graveyards” which are (or should be) embarrassing to those of us living in a culture of consumption.

I anticipate the wrath of nursery owners and tree-farmers who depend on tree sales. Also from those who think a “star” placed high in a room is all-important. But let’s weigh the one against the other just in terms of what’s really important. Nurseries can grow other things, and the “star” concept could certainly be improvised – don’t you think?!

Alas, I presented this idea to a chat-group in my current home of Colorado Springs. Predictably, it did not “go down” well. But I attribute that to Colorado Springs itself – the epicenter of American Evangelism. And yet, my intent was also (at minimum) to plant a seed which I believe will germinate one day, even here in the most arid religious sand.

I think it’s just a matter of time before we (as a species) end up facing “ecological/ environmental” decisions that will involve even the Christmas tree. That’s just my prediction. At least we will have begun to save them.

Personally, I think planting a tree instead of killing one is just a subtler version of saving animals instead of sacrificing them on altars (what those early cultures did ritually). We are more civilized now (presumably), and maybe we can match the idea of planting/growing with a more responsive (and responsible) Christmas. It’s giving back to the earth for once instead of taking from it.

Putting it differently, it’s not about worshiping the Trinity anymore but “the Quaternity” which includes that fourth component – the feminine archetype – and Mother Earth. That, to me, is a real Christmas. I think even Jesus (and Mary) would agree.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt