"...waves of steel hurled metal at the sky...there's no point in direction...we cannot even choose...a side..." -- peter gabriel
It was a game unlike any other ever before played. Street people, Jesus people, homeless people, hungry people – all bartered, all begged, all borrowed and all stole for a chance to win a nationwide game of chance that had the same odds of winning as the one Vinnie the Gimp had run in my Dad’s old neighborhood back in the Fifties. Lotteries and bookies and numbers had come and gone before, but here was a game any man, woman or child could play and actually win vast, life-altering sums of money. Sure it was charity, but it was private industry at its best. We were saving the poor from themselves and turning a handsome profit. Had I not seen the money rolling in from all corners of the globe, I would not have believed it could be possible.
And yet, there it all was.
Before and after pictures of families posted like playbills on every street corner light pole, every bulletin board and even in the small town I had driven to see family and friends on Thanksgiving Day. Make no mistake; Kendalia was a small, isolated town in the middle of the Texas Hill Country. The neighbor’s guinea hens ran wild near the town’s only library – a double-wide that sat proudly next door to the neighborhood chapel. On the bulletin board right outside the sliding glass door entrance of the double-wide home of Kendalia’s literary class was the before and after black and white photograph of the Hauser family. Xerox-copied from another copy that someone had taken from a bulletin board in Sisterdale – that one probably copied, too – showing them all smiling brightly and confidently in front of the home of their new found wealth. They all seemed so happy standing in their new front yard, the carpet of grass already up to their ankles in height. Life would be very different for the Hauser’s now that they had moved from a land of limestone rock quarries, cedar trees and the often-unbearable Texas heat. I wondered why they would leave the small town they’d known for generations, but I reasoned that they thought Kendalia was a good place to be from.
As I rounded the last corner of the two-lane blacktop leading to and from this neglected little hamlet, the smell of turkey fat, cornbread stuffing and gravy made its way to my nose tucked safely behind the windshield of my little sports car. One very nice thing about living in Texas is that the top can stay down most of the year and this day was no exception. A perfect chill of Fall air chased away all traces of the Summer heat and humidity before it, leaving the sky a lovely shade of blue.
Pulling into the dirt and gravel driveway of my Aunt Grace’s tiny house, the smell of cooking bird was most intense. She may have been cooking for the whole town and, from the looks of things that was exactly what was happening.
“I need another three cans of condensed milk! Is that too much to ask,” Aunt Gracie pleaded. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Game is on, Gracie. We tol’ ya’ yesserday.”
“Oh c’mon…the bird’ll burn! Ain’t there a grateful man ‘mung ya’?”
“Aggie’s is a-losin’, Grace.” Faces hung low in the livingroom in front of the old 19-inch with the rabbit ears perched strategically on top.
“Well, lookie-here, boys! It’s cousin Pat from the City!” Aunt Gracie’s face lit up with a bright smile, slightly fewer teeth than the last time I saw her.
“Aunt Gracie, so good to see you,” we embraced, warmly, patting each other on our backs for having lasted as long as we had. “Smells so good coming in! You must have been cookin’ all day.” The smile ran off Gracie’s face with a flash of shame.
“I’m afraid I’ve gone and ruined the meal, Pat. I’ve run up against the game and I’m short some things.” Gracie grabbed her long apron to clean her hands and in a twist was headed back to the kitchen. Nearly forgetting my manners, I rocked back on my heels for a moment, and then I followed her past the swinging doors into the kitchen.
“Aunt Grace,” I started.
“Oh, I don’t know why I try so hard. One day outa the year and…”
“Stop,” I grabbed her by the shoulders, and, as she spun in perfect Scarlet O’Hara fashion, my index finger went right to her lips. “I’ll go into Comfort to Super S and get what you need. Just give me a list and I’m gone.”
“You were always such a good boy.” Her arms surrounded me in another hug, this time without the patting; this time, she was falling into me.
“Not a problem, Grace. I’m a ‘horns fan, anyway.”
Times had not been kind to the rural fans of the Bush Family. Backing out of the driveway and heading farther down the road towards Comfort, I could see the familiar look of alternating stubbornness and disbelief on the faces heading up to Gracie’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Five years after the last crash and these people would rather be dead than admit they’d been taken as tender-hearted fools. With pinpoint accuracy.
The road into Comfort is a pretty drive in itself, so my selflessness was not entirely without motive. But I wasn’t able to enjoy the rolling hills and curves as much as usual; all the old farmhouses were boarded-up. All the families had either won the Lottery and left, or just left outright. The Lottery was a blessing, but it was also a curse. The Lottery sounded so good at first, such a perfect solution – but everything comes at a price. I and my family would be fine, but the families that had spent generations passing land down to their children and grandchildren were relegated to abject poverty. The droughts left the topsoil bleached and barren, so a prize steer could walk for hours trying to get enough to graze. Those who were close enough to water to irrigate couldn’t get any seed that would produce a second crop. Those who had saved their seed from years past were priced out of the market. Every agricultural solution had been perfectly globalized to return an optimum corporate profit, leaving those who loved and cherished the soil on which they were born completely unable to support themselves. The only ranchers making a decent living were running corporate farms – de facto sharecroppers with a 401K.
“Paper or plastic,” the young girl at the end of the checkout counter asked as she bagged Gracie’s groceries.
“Better make it paper this time,” I answered.
“You thinkin’ a-startin’ a fire,” the checkout girl asked, a smirk appearing at the corner of her mouth.
“No, ma’am. But my aunt might. In her fireplace.”
“Well, you just be careful now, here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You want some Lottery tickets to go with those good looks?”
“No, ma’am. I can’t play.”
“You religious?”
“No, ma’am…I work for them. If I win, I couldn’t….” She stared right into my eyes batting her lashes in perfect southern fashion.
“You could just buy a couple for a po’ ol’ shop girl, now, couldn’t ya’?” The girl doing the bagging at the end of the counter practically threw the rest of my groceries into a bag and onto my cart, walking off in disgust.
“I’m not in the habit of buying Lottery tickets for just anyone, ma’am.”
“So who would you buy Lottery tickets for, Mr. Lottery Man?” Not the arched neck with the palms turned up and into the counter look. Not that.
“A respectful, kind-hearted Texas woman who just wouldn’t think of saying, ‘No.’ Have any idea where I might find one of those?” Here we go again.
“I just might. Come back around 6 and I’ll take you to meet her.”
“I just might do that.”
“A smart man would.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“I’ll see you.”
I waved my arm as I left, more for surrender than anything else. I wouldn’t be back and she knew that already. This was just a sporting exchange between players – a warm-up. The real victim was the shop girl’s boss who was likely watching us from any one of several camera angles behind the one-way glass at the back of the store. She had him but good. I was lucky I got off with just a flesh wound. That poor son of a bitch would pay and pay right through her fortieth birthday. Maybe beyond. I’d be right there with him, but I just got tired of handing out cash and prizes to every woman with the good sense to take me up on my hormone-laden offers. One good woman is all any man needs. If he wants for anything after that, he’s either a masochist or just not paying attention. They have professionals for one of those conditions and for the rest there is Provigil.
[to be continued….]
True dat.
…and an American, second, then I can’t be a Baptist or other God-fearing Christian, first, and an American, second.
Personally I don’t have a problem with people exercising their freedom of religion, except as it relates to MY FREEDOMS as spelled out in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. And understood by COMMON juris prudence.
In time of war, however, people owe it to each other to “throw down” on whichever side they are on. While I can thank Major Hasan for his service to his country and his attempts at exercising his integrity, I completely deplore his actions taken against his fellow soldiers and fellow Americans.
Muslims, like other Christians, do not have a problem with taking up arms to defend their country of origin. They do it all the time. So do most Christians — except, perhaps, Quakers.
Creating a false brotherhood of “Muslims” and “everyone else” is precisely what I detest about all organized religion. It is a total set-up for armed conflict. We occupy the same planet, people. Any religion that is not truly global, or does not accept people as they are, is complete hokum. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Anyone who awoke to find themselves both inside, and outside, of the walls of the church of their childhood, knows precisely what I am talking about. Religion is a defense against spiritual, and truly religious, experience. As such it is a meaningless void into which we toss copious amounts of cash.
Certainly religions can, and do, good works. So does my car. So does your left elbow. But if my car becomes too costly to maintain or your left elbow develops a sarcoma, you GET RID OF IT. You learn to live without it. Productively so.
This nonsense of religious intolerance appears to have no end. We are forever getting held hostage by people who would take advantage of the seams in our values created by religion and religious dogma. The childish incantation of my youth, “if God is all-powerful then can He make a rock so big that He, Himself, can’t lift it,” turns out to be founded in some mature, adult thinking. Those who would continue to hide behind the, “it’s a mystery,” or, “it’s a sacred paradox,” need to be shown the SAME DOOR we show to snake oil salesmen and other huxsters. We don’t need this madness. If we allow one bullshit artist to plant the seeds of self doubt in the mind’s of little children, we allow every con artist with a pathology in, too. Let’s have some mercy on each other. Let’s move on.
We CAN, and WE WILL, find something better to replace our religious fixations with. With a little compassion and understanding, we can transcend our own drive to damn each other to Hell, or hold one another unreasonably accountable for the stuff that got done TO US, not BECAUSE OF US.
There is not a God POSSIBLE who could separate out the true identity of any of us, mark it for destruction, and still be considered, “Creator.” Like things create other like things, my peeps. You don’t put pumpkin pie in the oven and reasonably expect to retrieve a pecan pie in an hour or two. Only magical thinking allows for that possibility and the thing about adult reality is that IT CEASES TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC. Some phenomena will escape easy explanation, but adults can deal with that reality without generating alot of fear and loathing for each other while we wait for our answers.
Sin is REAL because each of us holds to our belief in it and about it. Each of us wants to hold out for the reconciliation of that last little bit of ego that can just as easily be ripped out of our possession as yesterday’s newspaper. I can end your physical journey on this planet. You can end mine. Civilized people agree not to do that to one another, ever. It is a sacred compact. When I harbor ANY belief in a behavior that might compromise my absolute commitment to being AT-ONE with any one of you, I place my belief in SIN before I place my belief in a common Creator. And this, my peeps, creates expectations that are impossible to meet. We can’t pray for peace while demanding that there REALLY BE some behaviors people can engage in that make them LESS THAN we are, ourselves. We either share the same, general fate, or we set the wheels of war and conflict in motion.
Can’t have peace and conflict in the same place at the same time. They will annihilate one another.
If you want personal annihilation to hold court in your world, just keep right on believing in your righteous addiction to sin as you understand sin. I guarantee you that you will end up feeling very, very alone in ways that can’t be cured by several cathedrals-full of your like-minded fellows. That’s just how insanity works. Joy can be shared. Insanity cannot, by definition. Joy satisfies wholely. Insanity shatters and fragments wholeness. Not in reality, but in the perceiver of reality.
So…we can’t reasonably criticize a lunatic for believing that their conception of God is more important to them than the neighborhood they’ve chosen to live in. We do the same damn thing every day, and, yes, under enough stress this kind of cognitive dissonance will drive a person BONKERS. In the crazy place, seemingly abandoned by our Creator, the person we’ve kept hidden from our Creator — the defense mechanism we made just in case things didn’t work out between our Creator and us — comes out, full goose.
The problem is fundamentalism and our childish attachment to it. “God either is the way I conceive Him to be, or He is not at all,” needs to be ferreted out of people’s thinking and grounded out like an electrical charge. There is NO GOD that divides and separates His creations from one another. That is something only his nutjob creations could imagine doing to each other.
Of all the possible interpretations of the Christian Gospel, I’ll bet there isn’t a fundamentalist on the planet capable of accepting that what Jesus actually MEANT by “go and sin no more,” is, “let it go…we’ll get over it together.” Stop believing you are separated from your fellows and you will EXPERIENCE the community your heart craves. It will feel like Heaven here on Earth.
Believe that God is an atheist and you will not be far from wrong. Certainly more right and more grounded than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole using only a bigger hammer.
Rick Perry Sings Up A Storm
Governor Rick Perry, attired in his best-ever Johnny Cash impersonation threads, lauded the heroes of the Ft. Hood tragedy. Less than four hours earlier President Obama attempted to quell anti-Muslim rage directed against the soldier who had fired several rounds, fragging his fellow soldiers, during their final medical checkup prior to deployment overseas. Nidal Hasan’s rampage resulted in the deaths of at least 13 of his fellow soldiers, injuring 34 more – some very seriously – and his own paralyzing wounds from which he has yet to achieve consciousness.
Careful to avoid his earlier mistake of “over-selling” his position as he did in his recent termination of an investigation into his own misconduct with respect to his execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004, Perry alluded to the “burning ring of fire” penetrated by civilian police Sergeant Kimberly “Mighty Mouse” Munley that heroically brought down Hasan, and how tightly all present “walked the line” of faith and patriotism to save more lives than might have otherwise been lost.
Simple mathematics suggests that Hasan did not fire all of the rounds that resulted in the 47 casualties at Fort Hood. Even a magazine that sports an ungodly 20 rounds would require 5 reloads to account for all the 100 rounds reported to have been fired at the scene. Since the entire incident took place in less than a minute, that is 1 person firing off two rounds every second for the entire 45 seconds of the live-fire portion of this incident. One casualty a second. Phenomenal shooting for anyone familiar with handguns and their use.
Something is not adding up here in a big way.
Hasan gave away all of his belongings prior to this incident; he knew something was coming up. His deployment, scheduled for after Thanksgiving, gave him plenty of time to consider his actions. Why did he choose November 5th (11/5)? Why did the Bushes show up on Friday and ask that their visit be kept “secret”? Why was their secret not kept (except by the servile mainstream media)?
Why would a Muslim psychiatrist who was obviously not well regarded by his colleagues at Walter Reed for his anti-war position become a wiz with an expensive handgun? I could understand a quiet suicide, but not this dramatic “Ali Akhbar” nonsense.
This whole incident screams of a smoke screen for something else, something much bigger. The events were just too well choreographed and too neat to be entirely real. Perhaps I, too, am suffering from disbelief.
At this hour I have been informed that Hasan has been taken off the respirator at BAMC (Bam-cee), short for Brooke Army Medical Center, here in San Antonio. He is either not long for this world, or he is waking up into a nightmare of unimaginable proportions for someone of his faith and his convictions. Being paralyzed after having the will to live sucked out of you does not bode well for his chances for survival.
Being surrounded by some of the nurses I know who have worked at BAMC also does not bode well for his chances of survival. Hey, sometimes, bedsores just happen to become infected….
What Will You Tell Your Children?
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder was a New York Times #1 bestseller not because Richard Mellon Scaife bought every available copy of the book before it even hit the shelves, but because Bugliosi is a compelling, passionate, prolific writer.
He is also a leviathan as a prosecutor with 99.1% conviction rate. Just ask the Manson “family.”
Click the link above and watch the 9 minute trailer for Bugliosi’s upcoming movie. It’s critical that we STOP allowing ourselves to be handed meaningless cliches in the face of criminal behavior on the part of those who hold, and have held, elected office. It is part and parcel of OUR IDENTITY as American citizens to stand up against injustice for ourselves, our friends, our neighbors and, most importantly, for our children.
First they came for the idiots; but I wasn’t an idiot so I didn’t want to seem like I was “pro” retarded people. Next, they came after the eldery, but I wasn’t old so I didn’t bother to be concerned. Then, they came after the soldiers and while I was sad for our brave men and women, I was not a soldier. Then they went for the poor and the helpless, but I had enough money and was nowhere near helpless, so I sent more money to my favorite charities and forgot about it.
Finally, they came after me and since there was no one else left to complain, all was forgotten.
It’s a trivial exercise to look forward when no one can remember the past. But forgetting the past condemns us to repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it.
| Habits form like water Twisting with the Earth From North due South From East due West To downtown and up the walls |
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| Lifting us slowly out of our mind | |
| Collecting like a sky full of stars Twisting with the Ancient Spin Aching for the embrace of the Moon |
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| The tide rises | |
| Dinosaurs recall the drama The last contraction That sent us forward Leaving them behind And us to choke in their anger Making all of it impossible to swallow |
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| Now | |
| Mother Earth tilts and sways Her skin stretching as she moans deep moans Her back arched and drenched in sweat Her nails digging ever deeper into the damp sheets One billion voices shriek and cry Two billion ears record a report Or a whimper |
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| When the Flood calls |
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