MISFITTED

MISFITTED

This is for everyone out there who’s felt that his life has been out of kilter, consistently off-key, in the wrong cadence, and at the wrong time? On top of that, the pressure to play roles? This is a culture that not only expects serious role-playing but ambitiousness to be “somebody.” And to not be be a “somebody” is to be a “nobody.” It’s one or the other, all or nothing. For some of us anyway, we react and focus instead on a life of “nobodiness,” and (under the rose) it feels right.

I’ve always been one who was never cut out for success. Rather, life has been a matter of “failing correctly,” or avoiding embarrassment. A brief rundown: I almost flunked the 4^th grade, barely graduated high school, had to go to a junior college before entering a four-year school, had my diploma mailed to me (along with complimentary tassel), dropped out of graduate school, landed an MA degree (in psychology) only because I found an “unaccredited” school crazy enough to validate what I see. — Life has been, you might say, radical, non-conformist, ill-fitted, ill-timed, out-of -step, solitary, misunderstood, baffling, and inexplicably meaningful.

Not surprisingly, growing up was also an experience of living between cracks, between spaces and sounds. For starters, I was sandwiched between the guilt of having opportunities and then failing at them. “Anyone else would be grateful for what you have!” was branded into me. Then there was the crack between familial love and familial shaming, the inability to express the former but an acute talent for wielding the latter. “Respect” for my father translated to staying out of his way (hiding) and not causing him embarrassment (he had “a reputation” to protect). “Respect” for my mother entailed allowing her to disparage every idea I ever had since adolescence. Her favorite child was her first child. I was the second “problem” child.

Beyond that, “family” was all about practicing fakery and mimicry. We did things together only because “it’s what families do.” Nothing was spontaneous, real, or naturally occurring. It was the parroting of a 1950s (Rockwell) painting. Everything was about how we “looked” (not unlike dad’s reputation). And then there was the excruciating self-consciousness that followed, the embarrassment of each other for playing those roles. This was a family that didn’t know how to do anything except fake everything. Decontamination and observation did not end at the hospital.

Then came another crack I stumbled into upon leaving home. Specifically, between college and the Vietnam war. Junior college was enjoyable and meaningful. But finding a four-year school after that was a nightmare. Never getting any counseling or guidance, I managed to find one which turned into the wrong school. The experience was flat and empty. I couldn’t find either a guidance counselor or a major to follow. I drifted (“floated” was the term). Thoughts of dropping out came along with the military draft. I really didn’t mind, being that naive. Until that is when a couple classmates from high school (drafted into the Marines) approached me one day and said in no uncertain terms to stay in school. “Stay where you are!!” they said, I felt an intensity in their words I never felt before. I saw desperate fear in their eyes. I stayed in school.

Another crack: the major-to-career transition. I forced myself to choose something and then could never justify why I chose it to my family. I ended up choosing “physical geography” because I liked maps. But they would then ask, sarcastically, “But what are you going to do with it? Where will you work? What kind of money is in it?” It was a dressing down that left me completely deflated. I had no answers and no moral support. As always, they (my brother especially) succeeded in making me feel like the family fool – quick to condemn, adverse to the very idea of encouragement (as a brother).

Then, on a lark, I stumbled into psychology. It happened only because I read a book belonging to my brother one day by Erich Fromm. I couldn’t put it down. Upon moving to Colorado from Illinois I finally found a master’s program that based itself on Fromm’s principles (Jung, Erickson, Rogers, Perls, and others). I earned an MA degree. The school was unaccredited, but it didn’t matter. From then on I only really “dabbled” in psychology & counseling – for 30 years. Most of my education came from hands-on experience and training. I learned a lot, and I think I did good work. But I always questioned my own legitimacy.

The “career” was really a scattershot of hits and misses between clinics, hospitals, agencies and private practice. Mentally, I hanged my MA diploma on the same wall with my John Phillips Sousa Award won in high school band class. They carried an equal degree of pointlessness and emptiness but also profound meaning. The (psychological) irony of that was more than captivating than discomfiting. “I” was my first case study – Why were some things instinctively important, others not?

Looking back, the only diploma that had any real substantive meaning was my AA degree from junior college, where I made the Dean’s List. But that was only because I studied a liberal arts program that felt real. Art and philosophy were never considered a viable career pursuit in my family (where nothing measured up to medicine and science). But it was where I excelled for the first time. The curriculum was major validation. It gave me direction.

The bizarre thing about this whole “review” is that I can now talk about it without any sense of doom hanging over me, like a Damocles sword. That’s only because I’m now at that “untouchable” age and being unofficially irrelevant. “Old” is what happens when you reach your seventies. Nobody gives a shit, and it confirms your irrelevance in the whole scheme of things. It’s a new freedom that anoints you with a new “first amendment” right – to express yourself anyway you wish. Age is a free ticket to “nobodiness.”

As for the career, what I did or didn’t do happened so long ago that most of those with any opinion about it weren’t even alive (neither were their parents for that matter). Age confers irrelevance which confers entitlement. “I don’t give a damn” is a new diploma which says the world had better not either. I don’t recognize it (the world) anymore anyway. I’m an anachronism, and my generation has become little more than a computer demographic, a housing development, a liability, and a market for drugs and ambulatory devices.. – How fucking bizarre is that? The world is spinning faster and faster, and being left “in the dust” (computer illiterate, with “landline” communication skills, still without a smartphone) it’s a godsend.

Add to this yet another benchmark to failure. I’ve always had an instinct (from childhood) to notice the most “irrelevant” things, things of little or no worth to anyone. Gustave Flaubert once wrote about “those who go to sea“ to discover new worlds They search for gold and silk and dive for treasures. But Flaubert read my mind: “I am the obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abyss of thought, down into those innermost recesses…. I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them.” – It summons the same “astonishment” indigenous Indians had upon seeing white people killing themselves over something called “gold.” It was insanity. If I had a piece of gold, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’d use it as a paperweight or a doorstop.

In that same spirit, it’s also seemed a richer experience to dream about things, to anticipate them, rather than to actually have them. Having destroys Being, said Fromm. The consolation of non-fulfillment is what keeps movement alive. Whereas fulfillment itself ends the search for meaning. Failure summons another search, and then another, as if the search itself is what it’s all about – what we’re really after. What we remember most from the past aren’t our achievements but the moments of anticipation.

It’s the opposite of what a “capitalist” culture requires of us. Capitalism fishes for the concrete, the end-product, and “economizes” on the methods and strategies of landing it. It’s yet another reason for my “loser” status in the world. I’ve never been a good capitalist. I connect all the wrong dots in that world.

There’s an analogy here to a fisherman’s net: There are two ways of defining a net: You can see it as a meshed tool for catching things (profits). Or, you can see it as a collection of holes tied together with string. One defines itself in terms of what it catches, the other in terms of what it doesn’t catch, of what gets away and remains unknown. The unknown is where the real treasure hides. What is real is that which escapes categories, labels, quantification, measurements, and ownership – the mystery.

Something deep inside has always seen the futility of catching and subduing. The deep needs to remain deep. It ties in with why we only see the negative in things caught. It’s why we always see the worst before seeing the best. Everything caught in the net is bound to disappoint. It never answers the ultimate questions or delivers the ultimate feast. We tire of wanting to know the best because we really don’t want to know. It’s “love’s favorite perversion” to seek and to never have (enough). “The best” is always the worst. It’s never as good as the anticipation hanging out just in front of it. Just ask the richest people on earth, and then the poorest.

Add to this yet another departure from the world: introversion – my old companion. Like treasures from the deep, my best companions have always been fictional and imaginary, because being withdrawn and “inward” precluded (staved off) most lasting friendships. My “house guests” to this day are selections from my bookshelves. Real people never show up anyway, even after being RSVPed. I’ve learned to fill the empty chairs with famous personalities, dead and gone. It’s a meeting of minds and a banquet that never worries about the evening getting too late.

In conclusion, it’s absolutely true that I’ve never been cut out for success. Rather, life has been a matter of discrete failures. And I suppose the subject of romance must also be mentioned here. It’s no surprise that matters of the heart could never survive in a world like that. What those unfortunate enough to try ran into was a child-adolescent still hiding in the basement (saving his father from embarrassment), echoes of a shaming mother and brother (oedipally tied), failure as a student, checkered academic credentials, a spotty career, and radical (off the radar, extreme leftist) political views on society, life and death.

Does anyone ever really grow up?! Anyone willing to live with all that had to be just as “off key, off center,” and crazy. But then two extremely dysfunctional types do not make a positive outcome. Two negatives do not cancel themselves out. To paraphrase Woody Allen: I wouldn’t want to live with anyone who would live with someone like me.

Part and parcel of being crazy comes a belief is “scripting.” In other words, believing that everything happening with an intelligence behind it and for a reason. An awareness of this comes with age. There are no mistakes or accidents. And now, being in my seventies, I’m beginning to see how it’s all taken me to where I am now. Most of all to a place where “failure” is the whole point. Every guru and mystic I’ve ever studied (including good ‘ol Jesus) has said that failure in the world is what detachment fosters. Detachment/divestment is why we’re here in the first place. Failing is all about not being in the world.

What this does is help tremendously in erasing (atoning, redeeming) the past of its toxicity and shame. It also resuscitates humor – the most important takeaway of all. It puts all the players in line as “tough” facilitators and teachers. I still float between forgiveness and bouts of extreme anger, make no mistake. I still need to dialogue with those ghosts who left indelible scars. But today it’s all about fitting them into a corner of a room without killing them. To acknowledge them each day (“sitting down with them and a cuppa tea” said Alan Watts), seeing them as part of “who I am,” thanking them, and letting them breathe. From all that comes a “painful beauty” called grace.

In life’s voyage there may be “experienced sailors,” but their sea legs are bruised and battered, having had to stay balanced in rough waters. Some of us hold on, some of us don’t.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

INVENTORY II

INVENTORY II

My last “Inventory” was a year ago. It’s time for round two, just to compare & contrast then to now.

This round is more “to the bone” and existential. I listen to Alan Watts and Ram Dass tapes almost daily now. And with what some might call “synchronicity,” I also run into lots of YouTube discussions, lectures, and experiences on the subject of death and dying. It would seem to be the time to address that subject – I guess.

I do meditation. And solitude (where one is told to “find oneself”) is something which there is no shortage of in retirement. In fact, I can literally count the days between actually speaking to a “live” human being. Which then forces me to focus my writing on what solitude renders, the subject of death or different manifestations of the death and “awakening.” I don’t mind this, because again, it just seems like a natural place to be right now, mentally and emotionally.

Then, I turn on the radio (or the phone rings) and a strong wave of cognitive dissonance arrives: “a conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” And I’m thrown back into the world, swimming with issues and problems which are the glue to “being here.” One cannot, should not, diminish them because they carry an important gravitas. To ignore them just buries you further into them. So I “take care of business” as much as I can if only stave it off for another day or two, just long enough to retreat back into what really matters – meditation and solitude. Then the word “retreat” becomes troublesome.

It’s like a wheel that just keeps circling around. But the wheel also arcs upwards just a little. It’s more like a helix which suggests that the churning and churning of old themes and patterns wear out. We see things differently each time around – new things inside old things that are flat and empty. Time moves on, and we move on.

A good example of this comes from the spiritual side itself. We hear words that inspire, until they don’t. They become empty. We just don’t hear them anymore. “Be in the here & now,” “Rejoice in the present.” “It’s all perfect,” etc. Pretty soon they’re just words spoken by people who don’t even hear them themselves. Those people of course reject this observation. But the proof is in their own body language. It just becomes noise that interferes with what’s really going on. In 1872 Flaubert noticed this and said, “Never have things of the spirit counted for so little. Never has hatred for everything great been so manifest, [even] disdain for Beauty.”

We change because we must. It’s a different river, but the same river. We look for some kind of compromise between the two, a middle-ground between the material and spiritual. At the same time we look for something more dramatic, a completely new and different river. But it’s never there, just the new inside the old which requires a different lens.

For myself personally, that different lens is the animal kingdom. It brings a new clarity for me. It lends meaning and purpose after a long dry spell of having neither one. It’s something that grabs my heart and soul and nurtures me.

Then, the phone rings again (or I turn on the radio) and even there I’m assaulted by the “downside” of this new meaning and purpose. It’s the bitter fruit surrounding the perfect and beautiful with the politics of suffering animals and animal rights. So then, again, the experience becomes one of vacillating between detachment and “the noise” of politics. The line between the two is never clear.

At this stage, after so many years of so many go-arounds, I can feel my soul beginning to change as well. There’ the sense of giving up. In other words, to simply not care anymore and refuse to engage in either “the noise” or the spiritual journey. I just don’t think about either one. I go into escape mode – workouts, movies, music, stories, animals, etc. Fantasies and small events which have nothing to do with politics or consciousness. I seek humor, levity, and the irrelevant.

I’m the classic old movie aficionado, a member of the old Casablanca tribe, who repeat lines verbatim from movies. Repeating lines is an effort to bring the scene into my living room, draw it out of the screen and bring the characters into my personal situation. I want them to live it with me, hoping that maybe they can guide and inspire me. – Which says volumes about trying to find a space fitted between the two worlds of reality and fantasy.

At day’s end, there’s nothing left, or very little left. So I watch another movie. The merry-go-round winds down, then stops. Solitude suggests that perhaps there’s a vacuum where there shouldn’t be one. I should perhaps be more “people-connected.” But that’s difficult for me. Meeting people has never been my forte. I can engage in conversations effortlessly with strangers and on many levels (when I manage to find a conversation). But that’s where it ends. Overtures on moving forward, into a friendship/relationship, never materialize. We just say goodbye.

Back in the day when I worked, the work environment took care of that problem. Human connections were natural because they were necessary. We formed natural bonds related to the work at hand. That vehicle is now gone. And it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve even indulged in dating sites as a substitute to the workplace – a monumental mistake (they don’t work). Bonds don’t happen there, just politics.

So much for “escapism” – movies, music, and all the rest. The noise remains, but so does solitude, meditation, animals, and Alan Watts. So does the pendulum.

Through all this self-generated smoke, there seems to be a kind of marriage between Watts/Ram Dass and “the noise” after all. The two hemispheres are not as mutually exclusive as I thought. I’m beginning to see the material world differently, again because the old tapes are worn out and there’s nowhere else to go. It feels like a veil slowly lifting and passing through a thin membrane – not a portal so much, because portals are clearly marked and distinct.

Speaking of synchronicities, it was Dr. Watts who reminded me that it’s not a matter of “doing” anything anyway (about politics or “the noise”). Doing implies a self (ego) trying to transform itself, which is impossible. It’s like trying to transcend one’s own will. It’s also like Eubulides Paradox: Saying “I am a sinner” is false if it’s true, and true if it’s false. “One cannot make a statement about the statement he’s making. No one can think about the thought he’s having, or know the self that is knowing.” It’s also like trying to “bite your own teeth or kiss your own lips.” “The self becomes a liar, and nowhere more than when it says it is a liar…. The most noble efforts to be genuine are disingenuous” – etc.

Hence, it’s a matter of un-doing, or letting go of doing, and simply “letting in” the world. The will/self/ego steps out the way. It must be experiential while nothing claims to be having the experience. It’s a transference of identity (and the end to cognitive dissonance). It becomes the easiest and the most difficult thing in life one can do. It’s the ox sitting under the nose of the rider who is looking for his ox. – And I get it!

This is the key. But I’m still not ready for it. There’s too much will, to much ego, too much self-investment, too much suffering – too much “noise” in the way.

At least the material world is getting a kind of face-lift. It’s the same boat, but the chairs are re-arranged allowing a different scenery. The “ordinary” is becoming just a little more “extraordinary.” This is taking tremendous will power, and yet “will power” is the problem, the conundrum. To focus on un-focusing is a matter of not trying. Yet it’s also to see what Watts and Ram Dass saw around them. They saw themselves “looking back at themselves” through others’ eyes. They saw a “oneness” playing itself out in a kind of graceful dance.

Truth be told, I’m still “stuck,” sidetracked by waves of negativity and fear. I’m not ready to penetrate that more advanced membrane of seeing only a “Self.” There’s just too much suffering. In fact, fear and anger has me backsliding in the wrong direction. I’m lured into a need for vengeance. I feel myself actually wanting to “kill” those who abuse animals and children. Or, I just feel unspeakable pain for both animals and children. I’m nowhere near seeing “cosmic perfection” in that. My soul is too immersed. I even lose sleep over the thought of their suffering.

I wake up in a sweat sometimes, filled with rage. I want to “end” the perpetrators. My body convulses. At 3 AM “sleep” is over with. I get up, move around, and even yield to morning coffee. It’s morning anyway, for better or worse. My adrenaline is its own alarm.

And so…. juxtapose “that 3 AM moment” with transcendence and meditation? How do the two ever manage to even coexist? How can I be so completely in one state of mind, then in the other just a few hours later? It’s Jekyll & Hyde in the extreme. I feel like a jagged piece of glass in a room filled with fine silk. Sharp edges protrude from my body, and with one wrong move I’m ripping through the delicate fabric of a consciousness I’ve worked so hard to understand. – And then I “lose it” anyway and destroy the room.

Maybe the problem is again one of “trying” so hard, to achieve what can’t be achieved through trying. If the ego works so hard for the one extreme, it’s just as vulnerable to the other extreme, and that becomes my suffering.

There’s that fine line one walks between compassion/caring and the “dance” of perfection (and detachment). My ego screams back and rationalizes it as irresponsible complacency, avoidance, and even cowardice. “If I’m going to be in this damn world, then be in it!!”

There’s one consolation to all this. I recall Ram Dass once saying you’re not “whole” until you embrace “all seven chakras,,” not just your higher chakras. You must “burn them up,” he said: “Yes, I’m, Ram Dass. But I’m also Richard Alpert.” And when “Alpert” comes out to play, ”watch out,” he said. That gave me validation. Maybe the confusion over “where to be” isn’t that confusing after all. Maybe confusion is just a conditioned (mental) reflex. Maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be because it just happens to be where I am. Only the ego gets confused as it seeks out its own patterns.

Imagine yet another scenario. Experiencing timelessness, as in “outside” dimensional space (spacelessness). I think of D.E. Harding’s book “On Having No Head.” It’s like that. There’s just a kind of space (for the lack of another word) that can’t be described. Then the phone rings again. The phone is a symbol, an instrument that brings order to chaos. The bell rings and space creates time, time creates space. “Ptolemy” shows up creating a 360 degree circle, divided into 60 minutes, the minutes divided into 60 second minutes. Time and distance are now intertwined. Everything realigns and the universe is organized again. – Oh, the power of the telephone (cell-phone).

The world is reduced to time-space which is like the tail wagging the dog, the blind man mistaking the trunk for the elephant. And “the noise” still wins out. You have to answer the phone. – The jolt from one world to the other is the frisson of insanity every mental patient shares. They say, “See, I told you.” And they’re right.

Does journaling any of this actually “help” in healing from all this? I don’t know. It’s mental masturbation, “stale grist,” but also a ship’s rearranged furniture and a shifting view of what is. There are also chapters here that I never thought were chapters, just afterthoughts and footnotes. A few doors close, and a small window opens. There’s always a thin shard of light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

RESCUING LIBERALISM

RESCUING LIBERALISM

On June 3^rd I watched Bill Maher’s Real Time and his “final thoughts” where he made a refreshing appeal to liberalism. It could not have been stressed more urgently when he said that conservatives showcase the “conservative” brand “like it’s their first name.” Everyone is as proud to identify with the term as they are to announce membership to a church, their son’s Eagle Scout badge, or their grade school honor-student. It’s synonymous with “all-American” hot dogs, baseball, and John Wayne.

But you never hear anyone, politician or voter, announcing himself as a “proud liberal.” It carries a stigma planted there by conservatives. It’s synonymous with all things “un-American.” And yet a paradox keeps surfacing time after time. After all the smoke has cleared (quoting Maher), “the liberal brand is still a better product.” Allegedly, we still aspire toward a liberal democracy, we still sing about liberalis (“the free man”), and it was those long-haired “leftist radicals” who first thought about breaking away from England. And it just so happens that history repeats itself. After just one or two terms of conservative/Republican leadership, so much damage has been done to “freedom” (except for a ruling elite) everyone runs to “the left” again for sanctuary and moral clarity. That is, “the left” as we know it today, which isn’t even liberal.

Still, the stigma sticks. Saying you’re a liberal is only done with bated breath and in select circles. I once announced on the radio that I was a “democratic socialist,” and you could hear a pin drop at the studio and over the waves. You would have thought I said I was the anti-Christ. To announce oneself as “leftist” elicits the same response. It stops time and movement. One almost waits for the wrath of God and the thunder of Poseidon, the search for witch-marks, and sentencing by the Holy Inquisition.

Another interesting fact is that the word “liberal” rolls off the tongue much easier when cannabis or “liquid courage” is present. A conservative would associate that with weakness. But in truth it’s what people confess when their inhibitions are lowered and their fear of social banishment is gone. It says something about how America really thinks.

I have to say that even my literary (political, philosophical) heroes stay away from the the “liberal” stamp. For starters, they don’t want to be pigeonholed, which is understandable. Secondly, it’s difficult for them to determine exactly what the term even means anymore. There’s lots of confusion and overlap. Most people seem to parse their words with caution and use it only “in context.” I hear many saying they are “social-political liberals but fiscal conservatives,” etc. Others see terms like liberal and conservative as reductionist terms that only constrict and narrow. Still others see the presence of one hidden within the other at various levels. Some even confuse liberalism with simply doing things in a “liberal” fashion (a popular habit among conservatives). One has nothing to do with the other. One who indulges “liberally” in something doesn’t make him a liberal. Most of the time it just makes him stupid. – My hope is to bring some clarity to this incredibly abused term.

Politically speaking alone, it also has to be said that liberals have been so shy about brandishing the term that it has practically abrogated its moral responsibility. As Chris Hedges said in Death of the Liberal Class (Nation Books: New York, 2010), “It did not defy corporate abuse when it had the chance. It exiled those within its ranks who did. And the defanging of the liberal class not only removed all barriers to neofeudalism and corporate abuse but also ensured that the liberal class will, in its turn, be swept aside.” Liberals (and Democrats) used to be an institutional check and counterweight to the corporate state. The poor and working class counted on it. Today liberals/Dems appear consistently weak-kneed and without any backbone.

So, enough already!! It’s time to exhume the “the L word” from its dark place in the American consciousness. It’s been without oxygen for too long. Through the years I’ve encountered three different definitions of liberalism worth noting:

“ a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, nonviolent modifications of political, social or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and government guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties,” (Webster’s Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary);

“a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary);.and

“a political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and autonomy of the individual, and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority,” (source forgotten).

From definitions like this, how could anyone not be a liberal?” How could anyone smear it with such toxic connotations? One would have to assume that, for some, liberalism poses “too much” freedom. And too much of anything is a dangerous thing. Let’s not forget why the US Senate was created in the first place. It was an idea that had very little to do with freedom for the majority. The Founders were slaveholders and landowning aristocrats whose “first” interest was wealth and opportunity. Behind the facades of philosophical benevolence stood opportunists ready to exploit new land and new business ventures. It also meant the immediate subjugation of slaves and the “low borne.” Too much democracy was a danger to that. In other words, the issue of freedom (liberalism) goes back to the very beginning.

The “first” Constitution was written in 1787, defended mostly by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay. At that convention seventy-four politicians were supposed to show up. Only fifty-five did, the others drifted off. Thirty-three were lawyers, 44 were former Congressmen, 21 were already rich. George Washington and Robert Morris were the richest – 19 were slave owners, 25 went to college, 27 were officers in the war, and only one was a “twice-born” Christian. The others leaned to deism, agnosticism, and atheism.

The “checks and balances” they meant to defend were between too much monarchy and too much democracy. In other words, they discouraged citizens from getting too close to government while having to stop themselves from too many “temptations” of executive power. Hamilton said, “The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to [the rich and well-borne] a distinct, permanent share in the government.” Governor Morris said, “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.” – These men were arguing for a new Senate, which of course came to pass. They wanted lifetime appointees (which did not come to pass) to be chosen by fellow legislators and rich property owners.

As for fooling “the people” with the notion of self-empowerment, Madison knew the calculus all too well: “The people can never err more than in supposing that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit they strengthen the barrier against the government of the few…. [T] hey will counteract their own views by every addition to their representatives. The countenance of the government may become more democratic, but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic…. The greater the number composing [an assembly], the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings.”

The “second” Constitution came in 1793 with the Bill of Rights. It was chiefly authored by George Mason of Virginia who said, “This government will set out a moderate aristocracy: it is impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical [oppressive] aristocracy: it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.” Madison read this and agreed, as did Franklin who said that every republic eventually becomes a tyranny.

The as yet unknown variable in this whole “new experiment” was the Supreme Court. Article III of the new Constitution said that “the Supreme Court is subject to regulation by Congress…. Congress, in short, is explicitly empowered to regulate the Court, not visa versa.” But of course any good monarchy could not have this, since Congress could at any time forget the needs of the ruling class. So, in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall (in Marbury v. Madison) did some brilliant maneuvering by overriding Congress’s decision to deny Marbury his right to office. It worked, and henceforth the Supreme Court had the right to “review” acts of Congress instead – called “judicial review.”

The “third” Constitution came with the additions of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments – extending the right to vote for blacks, women, and 18-to-20-year olds respectively. One would have assumed that, finally, the Bill of Rights would defend “the people” (a phrase “the people” by the way was concocted by Hamilton to romantically suggest that “God” was listening to them).

But after 1970 the Senate even managed to obfuscate the definition of “a person” to include corporations. They concluded that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without the process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” But that now included corporations which could henceforth enjoy “life, liberty,” and even the pursuit of happiness. Leave it to the Senate and Supreme Court to first serve the propertied class and “well-born.”

A footnote to this was the Electoral College – a system invented by the Senate to ensure that educated, white, slave-owning, landowners would make all the important decisions on governance. They believed common workers were too stupid to make intelligent decisions, and they left nothing to chance. They were looking out for themselves. The notion of a “republic … if you can keep it” was already suspect at the time, but plutocracy was not. — Never trust the people too much was the rule. Never allow too much democracy. “The people” might just end up controlling their own government. It’s okay to float the idea of democracy, but never practice it. It’s safer to just dangle carrots and promise reform every four years.

The oldest debate, and the biggest worry, has always been about a “free society.” On the other hand, leaders throughout history have never had to worry about what their citizens believed because they couldn’t do anything about it anyway. The debate itself goes back to the Greeks: Should there be greater equality in the distribution of wealth and rights (democracy), or should there be less democracy? Aristotle advocated for the former. James Madison (fourth president and principle author of the Constitution), advocated for the latter. From the signing of the “second” Constitution onward, and then from the 20^th century onward, there’s been a growing and pervasive fear of tyranny by citizens who realize their real power.

Since the Greeks the problem has always been one of “too much freedom” in the hands of a majority. Hence, America began its infamous “public relations industry” in the 20^th century, an industry based on the levers of propaganda. A “propaganda system” was all about keeping tabs on thought control. David Hume, et alia, knew full well that “power is [always] in the hands of the governed.” The governed just didn’t know it. Therefore, it was matter of keeping the governed ignorant and misled.

The descendants of the ruling class (who still believe in the old British “primogenitor and entail,” whose children go to Ivy League schools for careers in government) still occupy the Senate. If not the “well born” themselves, then those willing to carry the conservative torch. Its members still project great fear and loathing of too much freedom and “liberal” democracy. And it’s read everyday in the words of Republicans. Just a few examples:

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamn piece of paper!”

— George W. Bush, Nov., 2005.

Bush on being warned that adding new provisions to the Patriot Act could alienate both conservatives and liberals: “I don’t give a goddamn. I’m the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way!”

On reminding Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that the Constitution is a “living document”: “Oh, how I hate the phrase we have a ‘living document.’ We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete’s sake.”
Bush to Scalia: “We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones. Don’t think that it’s a one-way street.”

“The Constitution is an outdated document.” — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

The amazingly stupid (liberally expressed) gaffes of Donald Trump:

“The point is, you can’t be too greedy.”

“On Valdimir Putin: “He’s a genius.”

”[Kim Jong-Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

“I think if this country gets any kinder and gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.”

On immigration: “We’re rounding ’em up in a very human way, in a very nice way.”

“Why are we having all these people from shit-hole countries coming here?”

On abortion: “The answer is there has to be some form of punishment.”

“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

“When you see the other side chopping off heads, waterboarding doesn’t sound very severe.”

“If you look at Saddam Hussein, he killed terrorists. I’m not saying he was an angel, but this guy killed terrorists.”

“[We need] a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”

“We are up big, but they are trying to steal the election. We will never let them do it.”

If all the above doesn’t paint a crystal clear picture of why liberalism is attacked from every direction and tossed into a trash-heap, then nothing will. William Gladstone said, “Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.” Even the founding fathers of capitalism (Adam Smith and David Ricardo) were renowned liberals of their day. Free enterprise arrived with “classical liberalism” and the independent rights of the individual – a revolutionary idea 240 years ago, something the “classical conservatives” vehemently rejected.

In The L Word (William Morrow & Co: New York, 1992), David Barash wrote, “The liberal imagination sits upon a triad of faith: an optimistic approach towards social problems, an orientation toward the future, and a belief in democracy. Not surprisingly, these three attitudes are closely connected. Optimism is a positive stance, a confident anticipation that things will get better and moreover, that they can be made better by human action. By definition, optimism points to the future. — Conservatives have always distrusted it (such is the nature of pessimism).”

It’s an old Hobbesian view that people are always inclined towards evil. To ask conservatives “What is government for? Why do we have them?” gets the same response every time: “to protect people from themselves,” “to maintain law & order.” This is why they seek more and more prisons, law enforcement, surveillance systems, and of course an eternally strong military to ward off foreign elements. Human beings (including nature) simply cannot be trusted.

Conservatives are generally scared of their own shadows and of all things “unknown.” All unknowns must be reigned in – subdued, converted, exploited, or (failing those three) exterminated (depopulated, neutralized, cleansed) “for their own good.” – This, coming from the party which always yells “Don’t Tread on Me!” and harps about too much government. They want less authority but at the same time insist on telling us what we can read, what books should be allowed in schools, what religion to follow, who can vote, who can own a gun, and the final word about abortion and sexual norms. It’s a schizophrenia that runs so deep they’re too blind to see it.

What more can be said about liberalism? And why do conservatives continue to keep such a stranglehold on it? It says something about money, power, and greed that goes all the way back to our roots.

On the other hand, the fact is that 70% of American voters actually think as liberals when asked (in private circles). The media simply never report it. They report the very opposite. Citizens even want to vote far more leftist than they do. But the system (the electoral college) is set up in such a way that stops any chance of a truly liberal agenda. It’s a fail-safe built into the system. The media control the national conversation (what’s discussed, what isn’t), and propaganda dictates the rest.

As mentioned, the political spectrum has been pushed so far to the right that what is called “the left” is at best “centrist,” and anything “true left” (the kind of liberalism expressed in the 1960s) isn’t even on the radar. Noam Chomsky said that today’s mainstream Republican is an “extreme/radical right-winger,” while today’s Democrat is really a “moderate Republican.” Socialism and atheism are barely discussed (sidebars at best), while white supremicism, school (book) censorship, and fascism win national attention everyday.

But, as the old saying goes, you can never kill consciousness. Conservatives don’t believe it and try killing it every day. They try to keep us living in the past (something they know, trust, and can control). Everything retrograde and regressive in their eyes is “safe.” For them the future must be reigned in from the unknown and those who dwell comfortably in both.

One day, maybe, this nation will wake up to its fears and contradictions and begin facing them honestly. But not until institutions like the US Senate and the Supreme Court face their own.

In the meantime, remember what being a liberal meant once upon a time sixty years ago, when the political center was really “center.” Recall the days of secular humanism, Marxism, atheism, socialism, feminist studies, Black (minority/multicultural) studies, the “Green” movement, Buddhism on campus, literary criticism, the sexual revolution, French post-structuralism, existentialism, Jungian psychology, the experimental arts, campus encounter groups/workshops, high literacy among students, and on and on. And that was just “on campus.” Meanwhile, the KKK and “hate” groups were kept to the backwoods of Arkansas and in redneck cowboy bars.

It’s called perspective, something that’s virtually gone today. It hardly exists anymore. Hence, a clarion call to be a proud liberal again. Though the conservatives have done everything imaginable (with every tool imaginable) to never allow the Sixties to repeat itself, the consciousness they cannot kill will resurface by its own momentum. It always does, in new forms. It was violent in the Sixties. It will be violent again and could even be fatal next time. But “what doesn’t kill only strengthens.”

One axiom conservatives will never understand is: the more you push something away, the more it returns. It’s possibly the only advantage liberals ever have going for them. It’s always a matter of time, patience, and perseverance. And in fact it’s actually not something we do. It’s something that grows and evolves in the minds and hearts of the enemy, when enough of them finally “come around.”

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

FIDELITY and TITHINGS

FIDELITY and TITHINGS

Donald Trump amplified the debate between faith and science, telling voters it was okay not to believe facts when inconvenient. It was their “just say no” equivalent to Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” to drugs. It didn’t work with drugs, and doesn’t work with faith. But simple faith is so much easier, n’est-ce pas?

What those on the science side of the argument don’t acknowledge is that science has become the new faith, the new religion. My father was a doctor, and when I was growing up I remember everyone treating him like a god in a white coat. The vestments of special immunity (and impunity) were worn like those of an Archbishop. The stethoscope wrapped around his neck like the Caduceus climbing the human spine (the AMA’s universal sign on ambulances and letterheads). His countenance bore the signature of the messenger from God with the final word about life and death. His word was above scrutiny. His entrance into a room demanded instant attention, respect, and a reverence lent to prophets. – The only problem with that was that he knew it.

Most doctors do, just as rock stars and celebrities know it. One starts out in a profession with a certain humility intact. But when he’s treated like something above the human fray for so many years, the ego begins to make room for that. He doesn’t know or admit he knows it, but when treated as an ordinary mortal again he begins to freak out. “I’m a doctor!” is like saying “I’m a special emissary of the Vatican!” or “a personal friend of George Clooney.” The day his phone stops ringing and the paparazzi stop congregating outside, the ego goes into panic mode. It’s then that we hear about said star/celeb doing incredibly stupid things just for fifteen minutes of fame again, even if its infamous. Like a drug “fix,” at least the cameras are on him again.

For medicine, the problem is much deeper than ever imagined. Before World War II, the eternal question “Will I die” was handled by clergymen and poets. It was also handled by doctors who relied on limited knowledge, the body’s own healing powers, and hope – in other words, rudimentary skills and will power, not machines and wonder drugs. Since 1945, the entire focus shifted to research laboratories, experimental technology, and “miracle” drugs. The hospital took on a special aura replacing the cathedral and the confessional. Pilgrims of the Middle Ages saw the face of God in stained glass. Today they see it in autoclaves, blood analyzers, and “cardio-interpretive ECG machines with spirometry flash-drives.” It’s the new deus ex machina. It’s there where miracles are now found.

In other words, our belief in science is really just a shift in superstition and faith – a different rabbit’s foot. Americans (Christians especially) have always looked for prophets and saviors to deliver them from death. The irony today is the battle between one kind of evangelism and another – one crucifix facing the other on a battleground rented out in tithings to insurance companies, drug companies, lobbyists, television commercials, and politicians. – Is it really science we believe in when in place of logic we look for signs of divine intervention? Modern medicine is a matter of faith, they say.

The language is still as abstruse and hieroglyphic as the Vulgate was to an illiterate 13th century peasant. The writing hasn’t changed – it was Latin then, and it’s Latin now. Understanding it requires a specialized education only the “white-robed” and anointed can understand and correctly interpret. It’s a Gordian knot to the mysteries of the human condition.

And of course, the mysteries require endless donations of money. We poor billions into research & development done by pharmaceutical companies in hopes that they will resolve the most existential questions of all. HMOs and PPOs, HIPCs and “single-payer” programs are all about making peace with life and death. Forget the fact that with each go-around we get less and less for more and more money. The juri divino (boards of directors) boost their yearly salaries, bonuses, and golden parachutes – while hospitals are run like “for profit” hotels (rule number one: keep every bed filled).

The media meanwhile are paid to do God’s work on earth like missionary outlets on a special crusade. Everyday they pummel the minds of the peasants with ads about death and dying. They cater to their superstitions by dwelling on the fear/prospect/imminence of death. At the same time they remind us of how the magic of medicine is protecting us from Satan’s incursions – liver spots, melanomas, life-threatening bacteria arriving from Africa. Satan is that ubiquitous ghost floating on the air, ready to give us AIDS and COVID, staved off only by the good doctor with his potions and medicinal oracles. His entree into the room is like a priest walking in to exorcise demons with a crucifix.

I remember watching old westerns as a child, when the “country doc” would enter the room of a very sick or wounded patient. Doctors knew next to nothing in those days, except on how to treat broken bones, scrapes, cuts, burns, wounds, and deliver babies. Yet, magically, he would do his work and cure the patient, leaving with the same benediction every time: “He just needs rest.” If it were only that easy today.

What we have instead is a “medical industrial complex.” It’s really no different than the military industrial complex which fought communism for fifty years, and now communism’s replacement – “terrorism.” The military commands the lion’s share of the national budget to fight evil clawing at the nation’s borders and now filtering in by way of cyber-attacks. Satan is everywhere once again. – Disease is medicine’s answer to terrorism (and Satan). The only difference is in where he resides. In medicine, he’s in and around each of us – our DNA, diets and habits, the environment, and in the check-ups we don’t keep with our doctors and pay to the insurance companies.

So again, the question looms: Are we really the followers of science? Or have we simply displaced one religion with another? I think back on my father again, who at times really thought he was “above” his patients and extricated himself with convenient four-syllable Latin terms (medicine’s Vulgate) which he knew would dazzle them and leave them hopelessly confused.. The wall of separation was all-important. – My brother was even worse, also a doctor, who carried himself like someone supremely “better than” everyone else. Like father, like son.

It’s not to say that good doctors (with good bedside manners) don’t exist. But, alas, in my experience at least, they’ve been few and far between. The last doctor I visited was a case in point: I waited in his office for 30 minutes before he came storming in. He sat down, looked at my chart (I wasn’t a name or person – just a “symptom” on a chart). Then he “rolled” across the room to his computer (his chair was on rollers) and asked me some “rapid-fire” questions. Then he wrote out a prescription and said, “give this to the nurse out front.” He then got up and stormed out again. Never once did he even look at me. He didn’t even know what I looked like. I thought, well maybe he was “too busy” taking care of “patients??” – I didn’t know whether to laugh or spit when I read the sign outside his clinic: “Our Patients Come First.” What I did feel like doing was to punch him out and call him the arrogant bastard that he was.

Growing up, what still stays in my memory were the nurses. The catechism never changed. “Yes doctor,” “Right away doctor.” “As you wish doctor.” Followed by fawning obeisance to He who was all-seeing and all-knowing. They recrudesced the old meaning of “adoration” (L. adorare, – “to respect and fear”). They walked on eggshells, smiling and worrying every second, blaming themselves for any and all mistakes and misjudgments. The good doctor never made a mistake – of course not!! And the same nervous respect got transferred to the patient: “The good doctor will see you now.” “The good doctor says ….” “The doctor is very busy and can’t be bothered.” “The doctor only sees patients by special appointment.” It was like making an appointment to kiss the Pope’s feet.

Again, the real tragedy was being treated like a god for so long that the “good doctor” became no different than a rock star. Both would eventually believe it. It becomes a kind of psychological “complex” where they have to play the roll expected of them. As a colleague of mine once said, “If you’re expected to have all the answers to everything, you’d better live up to the calling.”

Alas, the complex doesn’t begin there. It begins much earlier. It actually begins with “pre-med” students. The most arrogant students I’ve even encountered (some of whom actually said “all other majors are inferior”) were pre-med. From early priesthood on, they already begin coveting the thought of prostration, genuflection, and adoration that comes with “the white coat.”

In closing, I have my own confessional (if this wasn’t confessing enough). I hold about as much respect for today’s clergymen (doctors) as I do for yesterday’s doctors (clergymen). I actually have more respect for shamans than I do for either one. For a true healer, humility is core, and one cannot “heal” who is himself is not “afflicted” in some way and in need of healing. In other words, he is mortal and flawed. Secondly, a healer knows the difference between blind faith and reality and deals in life and death with integrity and personal (as opposed to professional) knowledge.

Alas, for most of those who look to science, whether in space (macro-cosmically) or in medicine (micro-cosmically), there has just been the transference of blind faith. We still look for sky-gods, stairways to heaven, magic potions, and the instruments of divine intervention. God has simply moved residences.

For the record, there in fact may be gods and stairways to heaven, but in forms we are not ready to explore. Instead, whether it’s a eucharist wafer or a pill from Pfizer, it’s instant atonement and deliverance we really seek. Just add (holy) water.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

ANTI-APOCALYPSE

ANTI-APOCALYPSE

In his famous poem, Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote that he was still waiting for someone to discover America:

“I am waiting for my case to come up   

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America.”

He wrote that in 1958. In 1976 Wavy Gravy nominated “Nobody” for president at the “Yippie National Convention” in Kansas City, outside the Republican National Convention. It was the second time “Nobody” appeared. The first time he showed up at a hippy rally in the Sixties. The Hog Farm actually nominated another candidate as well eigtht years prior – name “”Pigasus.” Pigasus could have been his running mate.

“Nobody” was brilliant. And he’s with us today. Nobody solves the problems of the poor. Nobody brings about racial justice. Nobody makes a fair distribution of income. Nobody keeps his promises. Nobody is making the world a safe place. Nobody is collecting the guns. Nobody is giving us affordable healthcare. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out. Nobody should have such power. Nobody cares. And Nobody is “perfect.” His record speaks for itself. He wins every election. – Wavy Gravy opened a store named “Nobody’s Business” – his campaign HQ.

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, 5 percent of the world’s population holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The ironies only loom larger and larger. Ever since the end of World War II, the “winners” of that war have been on a trajectory towards losing everything. “Progress” has been defined one way but applied in an opposite direction. There’s something about the laws of balance that makes the victor his own enemy and executioner, which puts a whole new light on the meaning of “winning.” We win to reserve the right to lose. – This is Greek mythology.

Where does love reside? Between hatred and cruelty. Where does peace reside? Between war and tragedy. Where does sympathy reside? The famous answer: In the dictionary you’ll find it between “shit and syphilis.” A Manichean world will never be understood as long as humans reach for one and push away the other. We excavate our own abyss looking for hieroglyphics written in our own hand. The writing is on the wall before we ever get to it.

What we also seek is a kind of lingua ignota – an unknown language that will bring forth an answer to the conundrum of laws which seem backwards (what Alan Watts called “the law of reversed effort”). The digital universe is an unconscious (and clumsy) way of seeking it out. – the glyphs of one language trying to decipher the glyphs of another. Yet we seek a new symmetry, a new simplicity, in that odyssey. In my own view, there are only a handful of people on the planet who understand this mysterious equation/calculus. They see it from a wide paradigm. There are the shamans and gurus. Then there are the “Four Horsemen” of the “Counter-Apocalypse.”

What does that mean? And who are the “Horsemen?” If the original Apocalypse means an imminent cosmic cataclysm where God destroys the world and brings forth some kind of “kingdom,” the antithesis to that is not a denial of an apocalypse per se, but a total reinterpretation of one. One that takes us out of the theatrical and fictional and into the pragmatic, temporal, logical, practical, and “most likely.” The Horsemen most widely known for doing this were Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and (the now deceased) Christopher Hitchens. For them it wasn’t (isn’t) simply an atheist view of religion or a widely heliocentric grasp of the universe and our place in it, but a psychological understanding of human nature. In psychology, a synonym for counter-apocalypse is “counterpose” – “to place in opposition, contrast, or equilibrium.” It’s about seeing the whole gestalt – the organized whole seen as more than the sum of its parts.

The horseman sees that reaching for the cosmic and magical was wrongly interpreted. One finds it instead in the most ordinary and obvious reasoning – “the extraordinary ordinary.” No differently than how one finds nature in the purely abstract, or the colors of the prism inside a monochromatic white light. There is nothing magical about magic, and that is its magic. Hitchens said, “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”

Sometimes strange bedfellows like Ferlinghetti and Wavy Gravy see the same problem. Ferlinghetti addressed it with deep solemnity, while Wavy Gravy (the world’s greatest “clown-jester”) addressed it with sardonic wit and irony. Two different responses from two different directions, but both pointing to the same paradox.

Talk of paradigms and paradoxes makes me think of the penultimate terrain for both – religion. Religion can’t exist without its demons and devils. Lucifer was God’s most beloved angel (luci– “light, fer-”bearer”). And it that context I’m drawn to the whole mystery of the Dark Madonna – the dark side of the Virgin Mary. She is where religion goes when the underside of the dominant patriarch demonizes her. She is Kali, Sibyl, Ananna, Ishtar, Annat, Lilith, Diana, Isis, and Mary all in one. She is also all the goddesses found in every other ancient tribal culture, both extant and extinct.

Imagine the wrath after two millennia of Christians shackling Mary to just one function – as a vessel of birth. Then she virtually disappears or is recast as a prostitute. Much later the “wise woman of the woods” is recast as a witch. Chants, dances, plants, stones, rituals, and talisman – all went underground. “Be wise as serpents,” said Jesus (Matthew 10:16). The axiomatic “backwards law” is having its revenge, and the Church is suffering for it.

The word occult means “secret.” In the most circuitous manner conceivable, this is the Phoenix surfacing out of everything masculine, positive, progressive, and “upwardly” mobile in today’s world and with its own message. It’s the great secret still trying to get out. And it boils just below the surface, not unlike a magnitude 5 super-volcano ready to erupt. Yellowstone-type fissures and steam are no longer holding it below ground.

Ferlinghetti is still “waiting” to discover an American way to lock into an understanding of natural rhythms and processes. From that, then to understand human nature, and from that democracy and justice. Until that happens, it will remain occult-ish. And as long as it stays there, it will ooze up through the ground like radon gas, undetectable and toxic. Ferlinghetti will not get his “rebirth of wonder.”

“Nobody” will continue winning elections. And systems designed to promote “progress” will keep resisting progress. We will still have not begun to grasp the meaning of gestalts and paradigms. In-sights will still be manhandled by out-sights, in-lines by outlines, backgrounds by foregrounds, underground by surface-politics.

“Nobody” has actually become flesh & blood. He’s omnipresent in every City Hall. He’s the phantom/faceless figure with a stentorian voice. And we’ve already voted for him. He is the default-president, the reluctant prophet appointed to lead the fallen out of Egypt. In an Orwellian sense, he will remain faceless as well. We don’t need a face, or a persona – just a voice coming from every direction. He’s alive and well through “everything” which is promising victory and delivering failure.

Think of dancing. We are constrained to a rigid “square-” dancing fitted to a mentality which depends on layers of denial, rejection, and rigid protocols. Pit that against round-dancing (like Flamenco) – derived from Iberian, Keltic, Gothic, Byzantine, Islamic, Syphartic, Christian, Phoenician, and Gypsy cultures. The metaphor-analogy fits. “There is no life in a box,” said Sitting Bull. Living lodges are round, like life itself. This is the real apocalypse that waits to erupt like a Vesuvius. But it’s not going to come from the sky or the distant hills. It will rise from buried tectonics, the super-substrata, of the human mind.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

NOCTURNE

NOCTURNE

We’re sitting in wicker lawn chairs on a beach listening to waves at 2 AM. Music from the 1920s is being piped across several lawns from a source unknown. We’re tipping martinis. The warm chinook is coming in from the ocean wrapping itself around us like a blanket. The air is heavy and humid.

My friend leans over and asks a vexing question: “Who are we? What are we doing here?” The question makes me feel like an alien having landed on a strange planet. I respond: “When and where are we?” The second question trumps the first (for now). She leans back in her chair. No answers are forthcoming. We continue gazing into a dark mist that seems to open into infinity. The horizon is lost in a confusion of where land ends and heaven begins, and with that the coming down of that veil separating dream from reality.

This is the scene that describes a private perch I hold onto while watching the world. And I’m glad I’m not alone on this adventure. My best and safest props at hand are a) a companion, and b) liberal helpings of gin & vermouth. In real time the companion is an alter ego (usually cats & dogs), and the classic martini is a shameful dilution of those two liquors. In other words, I fake it (but who’s to know?). Whether four-footed or bipedal, my friend and I know there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do, and strangely enough, nothing is left undone. We “watch” now. We are watchers of the night.

What we stay keenly aware of is the sense of time. Night is day now, and visa versa. The day-night are just vignettes of light shades mixed up like movie scenes. Everything is measured in a melange of grayness, dark to light and back to dark again. There is no color at this hour. To say one’s world is noir is really saying that life has shaken itself free of all things extraneous.

An ocean lies in front of our stoned lanai. It looks like a widescreen TV. Through the mist scenes of the world “out there” come into view. We sit and watch. Images are as insubstantial and intangible as the waves holding them up. I can see, hear, and feel them. At the same time I cannot because I don’t want to. I’ve trained myself not to. It doesn’t mean I’ve lost my capacity to care. It just means I’ve reached a threshold and I’m all filled up. I’m no longer available to share in reportage. I’ve retreated from that watery darkness just as the ebb tides retreat from the shore.

At the same time, while television is both oneiric and violent, its smells and sounds arrive on the evening breeze, reminding me that everything is still out there. The shoals of our little oasis are not immune from what floats up to it. The debris I find is none other than my own. There’s no way to completely extricate from that. It makes my isolation precarious and uncertain. There’s the sense of everything being temporary. The martinis get stronger.

One moment it’s the scene of a mass-murder, followed by scenes of war, then scenes of abuse and loss, then scenes of graft and thievery, followed by marathons of crass commercialism (ads) – junk on top of junk. I turn the sound off. The visuals are enough to strangle the senses. My eyes leave the screen and return again to the waves breaking on the rocks below. I feel caught between the rocks, in an abyss between real and unreal. One minute there’s peace. The next minute volleys of horrible melodrama. I forget where I am and feel only the suffering from “out there.” Another martini.

The world is awash in human drama. I get the sense of a planet overrun by a species which has overstayed it welcome, having exhausted every resource needed to survive because of greed and stupidity. We’re like mice in a maze who have over-populated the spaces available to us. Nothing is ever enough, and we call that a good thing (“progress”). The storm and stress of all that pulsates around my friend and me like seismic shock waves. It’s astonishing how two people (me and myself) can find sanctuary in the middle of a hurricane.

There’s only silence now. The rests between the sounds are getting more protracted. The screen goes off and I (we) sit with the last 24 hours of being in the world – the memory of just yesterday. I no longer listen. I choose my “causes” now, ones that reach out to me. And yet “yesterday” has its way of finding a way around the parapets of the mind into the towers of my psyche. Its task is one of subliminal assaults and blitzes through the narrow cracks of the soul.

I drift into memories and scenarios of my active imagination. “What if” and “if only – this!” What would happen if?!” The subjunctive world fed with pure fantasy brings me back to laughter again, sometimes into uncontrolled hysterics. I can feel the release of oxytosin and sweat oozing from my soul. I reach for a guitar and start playing. This, after all, is a ”party of one.” I’m entertaining an alter ego nursing a martini.

The music is soft and vintage. It sounds like a soiree held at the Gatsby residence. I imagine myself in attendance, but only in spirit. I know that a real presence would be like hearing more television, and I’ve already heard it. I’d rather just take the best of that occasion, leave the rest, and watch for Daisy’s green light across the bay. There’s something to be said for staying at the periphery of human events. They can be perilous and enticing. Mixed with alcohol they summon adventures one should be prepared to navigate.

Again, I’m a watcher. “We” are watchers. We prefer the shadows, and the waves crashing on the shoreline in a blur of intoxication. Let me say again, I am highly selective on who fills that other wicker chair. One boon to aging is knowing with certain clarity what type of personality fills the bill, and what kind can absolutely spoil an evening. They say that with age one “loosens” his/her standards for companionship. This is true. But at the same time (s)he also narrows his/her field, thanks to experience. We know what works, what doesn’t, and we know what we still dream about.

The sights, smells, and sounds round out a complete midsummer night. Before I know it shards of daylight are piercing through the mist. It’s dawn. Another day’s night turns into another night’s day. The world is measured in malapropisms. The sights, smells, and sounds begin to shift, like the changing of guards, along with the awakening of human voices. The mist evaporates and along with it the night’s events. The Gatsby party has long since “passed out.” All that lingers on the breeze is the stale odor of spilt beer, whiffs of perfume, and cigarette smoke. The morning dew brings a fresh bouquet of rose and lilac.

The eternal question also lingers, riding the same breeze that brought olfactory information from Gatsby: “Where are we?” And the eternal answer: “I don’t know.” A couplet that perhaps will give birth to another answer in tomorrow’s nocturne. Same time, same place, same drinks, same company. Hope springs eternal with the reminder that we don’t just go around in circles. We also “spiral” – as in an arc. Tomorrow night will be the same but different.

My God. I didn’t realize it, but this night, this weekend, is what inspired this entry. I knew it had to be something. People are commemorating, mourning, saluting. It’s all about the long history of suffering humans have inflicted on each other, generation after generation. It’s Memorial Day weekend – a long vacation. And again, it feels like my companion and I are on another planet.

Maybe we are. Just maybe, having lived here once before we left on a spaceship, only to return again in the future. We’re witnessing our destiny. The question is, could this also be happening just in the mind? Is there any difference? One way or another, we’re anachronisms in a very strange place. The feeling of alienation (and extrication) is palpable. But it’s okay – it really is – as long as we continue to find safe harbor.

Time for another martini, some guitar, some distant vintage music, and most of all more silence – as the chinooks wrap around us and animate the tall trees in the full moonlight. This moment is exquisite. Nothing like it.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt