Gore's folly

MY wife and MY children.  I would drive to OhiO to look on the children that I haven't seen in over ten years. 

Attention healers, soothsayers and other fixers: Please don't pull the scab off my wound by asking why I don't just go see them now.

Do yourself a favor: Mind your own bizness.

First, Ned

http://www.ned.com/images/logo.j pg and then Hotmail.com.

John Prine said, "Blow up your TV!" and I didn't agree with him either.  TV is an enjoyable and honorable pasttime for a great many people.  For some people, those who can't read, or those with limited mobility, or sight, TV is the only pasttime they have for diversion and comfort.

How many people of my generation sat glued to their TVs during Watergate, or more recently, the World Trade Center bombing?  TV is not a monster, neither is it the enemy. 

The enemy is poverty, ignorance, apathy, hatred and greed.  One enemy that I have inside of me that I am working to erase is believing that I am somehow better than those who do not share my worldview and habits.

Nothing is separate.  there is only one Unified Field.  ALL of US -- and everything else -- are part of the Unified Field.  It don't get more Spiritual than Being Part of The One -- IF YOU swing that Way.  Be here now!  Be here now!!  Be here now!!!

I do not believe in Spirit.  I know this is going to win points at Zaadz, but I believe what WE call Spirit is only more emotional and psychological Stuff that WE haven't figured out yet.  WE call these unknown States of Being metaphysical, magical, spiritual.  We separate These Magical, Mystical, Metaphysical States from OUR regular, every day, baby-burping, boss-ignoring, wife-annoying actions, but the Separation is only in OUR minds.

When I am one with the microwave and toaster, I am filled and content.  I am also on time to work those days.

I hope that no one is hurt, or insulted by this post.  I respect EVERYONE's Spirituality, even cultists, neo-cons and looney-tunes.  I am willing to discuss ANY sort of religious, spiritual, or metaphysical topic, occurrence, or action.  I am not asking to be converted and I will not work to convert you in return.  May we kneel and pray?

Sharing compassionately in ever-enlarging groups, while building consensus and community with regard to the unity and success of OUR One Human Family is the only way to insure equality and to keep moving forward in healthy cooperative venues.

The very idea of any type of singular leadership, those with mad skills, implies a second cless of people WE call followers, those with little or no skills, who need to be led.  What WE call leadership today comes from the flawed world-view of power-over-Others.  The world-view where the few have power-over the many was invented in rape, torture and mayhem and continues to practice those main skills today, whether WE call it the International Monetary Fund, the US Marines, or Walmart.  WE need to change everything about the power-over mental illness which comes to US from Kings and Church and men with spears.

Hey, that Other guy used the S-word, so I am gonna effen relax around here and speak like myself; is that a risk?

My first language was hillbilly-Ebonics.  I got kicked out of a coupla very good grad skols cuz I told them that I planned to write my Master's Thesis in MY own language.  THEY was alright taking the money, but when it come time to do the work and actually think about what was being said, as opposed to what THEY thought was the quality of the writing, THEY really couldn't do very well with either.  THEY was real good at the money-taking part though.

I finally wrote exactly the thesis I wanted and graduated with honors at Binghamton University's School of Education and Human Development.  MY success at BU illustrates the difference between nurturing the fella who comes through the door and attempting to make-over the fella who comes through the door into your own likeness.  Is it risk-taking to refuse to be remade into anyone else's likeness?

Aujourd hui is the Marine Corps birthday.  Invented in a bar, the Marine Corps celebrates two hundred and thirty-two years of tradition, unspoiled by progress today. 

I spent my seventeenth birthday at MCRD Parris Island.  I still cain't figger out whether that was risk-taking, or just plain stupidity.  Find me ANY Marine who says different and I'll call him an idiot to his face.  Standing out of arm's reach, of course.

I was discharged from the Marine Corps as a 1-O Conscientious Objector for ethical rather than religious reasons.  I'm pretty certain that was risk-taking.

ME!

"What gets in the way of peace?" is, at one and the same time, a very simple and a very difficult question for me.  The only answer I can ever really come up with is the one that I left on the Questions and Reflections page: ME! 

I have trouble enumerating the thousands of things that stand in the way of peace when I move the focus off myself. "What brings peace among us? is a better question for me.  This question also implies a lack of peace, but the slant of this question is more positive.

Some of you are thinking, Why doesn't he just answer the question then, IF it is so positive?

"You keep thinking, Butch.  It's what you do best."

Since it be Veteran's Day, and conincidentally, the day after the Marine Corps birthday, I will answer the question.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid aside.

Inclusion, cooperation, compassion, and consensus with an eye toward understanding and accepting the Other will bring peace.

I genuinely believe that IF I were doing more of the right things and less of the wrong things that I could bring world peace.  I do not mean alone, of course.  To even think that I could bring peace alone, I'd have to have a bigger head than Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Smedley Butler combined.  I do believe that peace is possible and I know that when WE have enough folks who genuinely want peace and act on THEIR desire WE will have it.

WE already know what to do AND how to do it.  WE know how to clean the air and the water.  WE know how to stop wars and starvation and disease.  WE could have done ALL these things in the 19th Century, or maybe even the Eighteenth, but WE choose not to do them.

Everyone says, "War is wrong, BUT . . ."  Everyone says, "Starvation is wrong, BUT . . ."  WE ALL say, "Hatred is wrong, BUT . . ."

Little children are dying this morning because of OUR, I mean MY, IFs, ANDs, and BUTs.

WE only need to lose OUR IFs, ANDs, and BUTs . . . to have peace in the World.

YOU!!

Share this currency in peace, health and safety

My first thought was More soup kitchens and small businesses and then a moment later -- and libraries. 

Food and work and education enables people to make THEIR own art.

I am an artist.  Please don't tell anyone and I never use that a-word, even lightly, or in jest, since most artists are self-involved little twits -- which is not a bad thing.  More correctly, I am a writer who draws.  I personally love large, non-representational crap, but crap is ALWAYS a matter of personal taste.  I am not opposed to grafitti, but have a broad range of art that I enjoy.

The press, or the media, as it is called now, is OUR Fourth Estate; the media is one of the most important parts of OUR government's system of checks and balances.  WE need a free press as much as WE need polling places and poll watchers.

Edmond Burke pointing to  "the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'"  (Wikipedia)  He was referring to fatcats, stooges of the King and the Church and his fellow legislatures.

It is my opinion, but shared by many, that a free press is more valuable than OUR other three branches of government.  This is especially true now that ALL three branches of OUR current government are working for thugs and other corporations.

ALL the complaints about media and TV disguise the fact, or ignore it, that ALL the news and knowledge that WE have is brought to US by the news.  Many fine, brave reporters and investigative journalists risk THEIR lives every day to bring US stories that WE need to hear.

Amy Goodwin, NPR, YES magazine and the Internet are ALL part of "the Media" too.  The term "the Media" does not have to be a pejorative.

The press has been giving US stories that WE need to hear AND that WE largely ignore for as long as WE been a country.  Thomas Paine was a journalist.  Thank god, OUR antececents didn't ignore him.  And I do not use the g-word lightly.

Al Gore wasn't the first person to begin talking about global warming and the state of OUR environment.  WE just ignored ALL the previous planet criers.

He wasn't even the first American to discover an uncomfortable truth.

It's OUR fault when WE don't listen to those who tell US the sky is falling, especially when the sky really is falling.  Hanging the messenger won't keep the sky from falling.

I can help with this IF you think you need help.

Imagination is seeing yourself getting out of bed and saying in your mind, "I got to get out of bed."  Creativity is putting your feet over the side of the bed and standing up.

What bothers me most about any point system, including innocuous and potential-filled seeds, is that the people most inclined to use a point system, including myself here, are the least competent judges of how one ought to be used -- for good, or ill.

Siona's post about responsibility says it all: People who use the system will think themselves better able to change things, more responsible and more involved, but WE cannot measure responsibility, involvement and the ability to change things by either frequency, or intent.

The very people WE find the most irresponsible are the people who are bringing US the strongest, and sometimes the most  necessary and correct, message.

WE refuse to hear THEM, or shut THEM up, at OUR peril.

Being a naturally gregarious person, and not much more mature than a child myself, I find both adults and children to be simply wonderful companions.  I don't have a happiness scale, but like Lincoln, I figger most people, children included, are about as happy as THEY chose to be.

Sometimes I find myself in the presence of someone either really young, or really old and I sense this instant smiling bond, as though WE were the only people in the room who were in on the Secret -- whatever the secret is.  I love those little moments, even though it usually turns out that THEY just want someone to return THEIR thrown bottle, and I am the only one paying enough attention to be put to work.

As a recovering drug addict, I used to hang out with a lot of really old people with bottles.

And untended kids, now that I think about it.

I got to go with Frankie, "I did it my way."

Since I was nine years-old I wanted to be a Marine.  Everyone in my family and in my school, spent the next eight years telling me what a horrible Marine I would be, but I enlisted anyway, and spent my seventeenth birthday at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.  I am NOT a Hollywood Marine.  Even though, I was stunned, shocked and terrified, that birthday was one of the happiest days of my life.

I did real well in the Marine Corps; it is not difficult to excel at something one loves and I truly love the Corps.  When it dawned on me that my real JOB in the Marine Corps was killing Other people and not bringing peace and democracy, I had a crisis of conscience.  Almost two years later, I was discharged as a 1-O Conscientious Objector in the closing days of the Vietnam War.  Those two years were a remarkable learning experience.  Come to think of it, ALL the years since have been remarkable, though I ain't really learned much.

I have learned that: War is wrong.  No war ever helped anyone, or ever saved anyone.  We have the very limited freedoms we have today, in the so-called free-world, despite war and violence, NOT because of them.  The idea that war and violence are connected to peace and freedom is a mental illness, fostered at first to maintain power-over-Others.  Today the mental illness, we blithely call violence, is the dominant sickness on the planet.

WE ALL suffer from this mental illness to a lesser, or greater degree.  Some of those who most resist violence, and believe themselves the most free from and of violence, suffer the most and are held strongest in its thrall.  I include myself in this group.

The choice and the power to break free of the mental illness of violence and hatred is at once an enormous blessing and a very great burden, but it is always right at our fingertips.

Wanna join me in curing this planetwide mental illness?

Now how vain is that for writing one's own story?  I sound like the "great and powerful" man behind the curtain, but I have no such nefarious plan. 

I'm just a guy who believes he can help.

With the mouse in my right hand, I made a clean spot on my desk, and stacked three pennies in that spot with my left hand.  I'm not sure that counts.  I live on earth, though it may not seem that way to many of you.  Earth is a finite system, so in one sense, I've never made anything from scratch.  I don't know IF that counts either.

I am also a carpenter and a writer.  I started a huge blog entry, which will no doubt get me booted from Zaadz, for my thoughts on seeds over the weekend.  Good writing is never from scratch though.  Some famous author said, "Good writers borrow; great writers steal."  I'm the kind of writer who begs.  Does that count?

About a week ago, I made a small plywood stand, well, it wasn't that small, to use as a base for a huge metal shelf at work from discarded plywood.  Even MY boss was impressed, although he's known for six months that I am a retired carpenter.  I don't know that said shelf was from scratch, but it was from the trash pile -- and it didn't turn out half bad, IF I may say so myself.  About three days after the whole shelf was installed and the work area reorganized, MY boss made a special effort to tell me what "a good job" I had done "on that shelf."  Shelf and compliment were very small things, but I was inordinately pleased.

Now IF he would just quit stealing from ME and pay ME a living wage.

This was a very disturbing question for me. 

Apart from having an extraordinarily visual relationship with the World and constantly taking pictures with the shaky shutter of MY mind's eye, I think I held the camera for a picture of the Love Train group at the Belevedere Fountain, where MY pink guitar photo was taken.  I'm a school-trained photographer who used to work in that medium, but moved away from it.

As I read the comments, I was more and more excited by both the photos and the discussion.  When I came to the comment Healing Artist Entrepreneur posted, I got stuck and lost track of what I was doing; is it wrong of me, to want to put “budding” in front of Healing Artist Entrepreneur's nick? 

On her post, Healing Artist said, “a picture is worth a thousand words and makes life more simple.”  I completely agree with her, certain pictures are worth a thousand words.  Any pictures of George Bush, or Milla Jovovich will send a cascade of words and expletives tumbling through MY mind. Mine is a poor weak mind.

But leaving aside for the moment that I was an art major and saw a lot of pictures that were only worth two, or three words, such as, “No damn good! or "My god, what is that?”  I sincerely began to wonder whether some pictures really do “make life more simple.”

Not to be rude, or to discount, or to demean, Healing Artist’s viewpoint in any way, but when I read her comment, MY mind said, Some pictures make life a lot less simple and not only do some pictures complicate life, but sometimes a picture, or a work of art can complicate lives across millennia, or for multiple generations.

How’d YOU like to be stuck with that mind? 

One of YOU wonder-hippy-wannabee-gurus prove to me I ain’t stuck and I’ll send ya a BIG box of locally-grown, good-for-you-and-tasty, apples and YOU can sit around wondering whether to eat them, or not.  Like it, or not, after fifty years of working diligently to deal with that mind, I have come to the wonder-filled and uplifting conclusion that I AM “stuck” with it.

Back to pictures that complicate reality: When I read Healing Artist’s comment, pictures started coming into the other side of MY mind, so I am told.  Like MY mind had sides!  IF MY mind had sides, there’d be a tennis match and a television drama going on all the time, but that doesn’t get US any closer to the pictures that Healing Artist’s comment dredged up from the vast empty recesses of MY little pea brain, does it?

The very first pictures that came to my mind, as not simple at all, were the photo of the little girl running with the napalm still burning on her and the hooded fella at Abu Ghraib teaching US, once again, that Amerikan patriotism proceeds as usual.  I thought, WOW!  That shit ain’t fucking simple, is it?  I told ya I was stuck with this mind.  I really think with them sorry expletives – just like they was real words which represented a dynamic way of speaking among a certain, assumed to be rather pathetic, in OUR culture, sub-species of humyn BE-uns.

 Then I got a show-stopping picture of Guernica in my mind and that led to a series of drawings of Picasso’s early experiments in non-representational art.  Nobody was calling those experiments “cubism” yet.  I got out MY little Picasso book.  It’s actually a BIG artist’s book and I looked at Picasso’s disturbing pictures, which have not simplified MY life, or MY mind one iota, once again. 

And I thought, Thankx, Budding Artist Entrepreneur!  Then I sat down and wrote this: Sort of!

Does this include dreaming?  Am I delineating MY waking dream from MY other dreams?  I'm genuinely NOT sure which is actually the waking state.

But don't tell MY therapist.

I'm with Katerina on this, though I am old enough now to know anyone asking ME a question is an opportunity for enlightenment.  Hardly anyone questions fat, old, goats, and certainly not someone as special as Siona, so fat, old goats rarely get a chance to seek enlightenment.

Which is probably a VERY good thing.  Seeking ain't all it's cracked up to be.

I got linked to some crazy guy's blog and I found a poll.  So I took it.  Just taking the poll brought peace and hope to all the world, now all I have to work on is the love part.

By the results of the poll, I thought millions of Zaadsters musta went there and voted.

This is the result of the poll and in ALL fairness here's the weird guy's blog!

Someone must look at the poll and guess what I voted for to hear my response.

21 January 2008, I will be twenty-seven years clean and sober -- the Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.  Howard Cliften and I have been best friends since 1977.  Even though, he know I still cannot spell his name.  God bless him -- and I do not use the g-word lightly.

I have had an outstanding wonderful relationship with reading and writing since 1958. 

While in the Marine Corps I fell in love with food and have had a substantial, loving and respectful relationship with eating for almost forty years.

I have had a wonderful conscious relationship with the Entity, or Process, that many here call Spirit, Higher Power, or God since 1964.  She don't expect Nothing of ME and I live up to Her expectations, though I am certain sure that the Process is without gender, or expectation. 

She actually spoke to ME for the first time, while I was sitting on the side of my bed in 1967, in Orlando, Florida, cleaning my shotgun to murder MY parents.  YOU got to have a lot of respect for an Entity that can find Orlando, Florida, or Who would go there.

"I'm lucky in love," was my first somewhat flip answer. 

Then I realized: I am lucky in love, and at cards, and at just about everything on the planet that I have ever turned my hand towards. 

I am a very very very lucky guy. 

I can get a taxi, or a parking space, in a major city, at rush hour, in a rain storm, while a national leader and eleven important celebrities are in town.  Is that luck, or what?

I can encounter several warring parties, who are  "never going to get along."  Use a coupla Jedi-mind-tricks and walk away with everyone making kissy-face.  That is totally luck!

My children were all born whole and healthy.  People love me even though I totally do not deserve it.  I am twenty-six years clean and sober.  I've survived a childhood that other therapists have compared to growing up in a concentration camp and I still love openly and honestly.  I am constantly amazed at the view right in front of me!

How lucky is that?  Thank you Rachel Ray.

Sat down and started writing before I finished reading the question, and realized that the question was actually about a work environment, as opposed to right work.  I already have the ideal work environment in several places.

What I NEED is right work.

Currently, I am delivering auto parts for minimum wage.  The auto parts store where I work is friendly and calm -- most of the time.  It is a nice place to work.  All the people there are gentle and kind, though one, or two, got untreated anger issues going on.  I do my very best work there every day.  I am the auto parts delivery guy from hell,

                                                                   BUT . . .

I do not want to be delivering auto parts for minimum wage, though even being paid a living wage, and not having MY boss steal from me, would not be enough.  Being paid a living wage would be better, right, and just, but I am capable of soooo much more.

MY ideal JOB would be training Others and running workshops in communication, consensus, and community, including offering alternatives  to violence: Basically getting paid for doing what I do for free, as a volunteer for AVP.

Given a chance, I believe that I CAN change the human idea of peace and make peace as strong a force on the planet as war is now.

I sincerely believe that I am a peacemaker of monumental talent, worth, and ability.

Is I smart enough to deal with this moment.  Right here!  Right now! 

As H. L. Mencken said, everything else is "moonshine."

"We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine."
                                                                                                                                  H. L. Mencken