The Space Behind the Noise

A little music. Some plants. Nice tables and comfy seats. Time too. Lots of time, sweet time. To wonder. That's all I ask. Consistency, movement, practice, vision too. Guess I want a lot. Maybe too much. Or not enough. Desire that is. Raging, rolling, burning desire. Into action. Surrender. Joy. Abandon. A taste of sweet peace and paradise. All because of this, of you, beloved. You helped me to remember, to ask, and to give. With you I can stand without fear and step forward into what I will I never fully know or understand. When I have passed the point of seeing I will let you carry me the way I now carry others. Help me see what is so close but so easy to forget, so quiet there in all the noise.

Dangerous Possiblities Outside the Virtual Bubble

The screen lit the way as the cursor blinked, waiting for the next key stroke, the venture into a blank page, uncharted territory. He could stay here, at home, play it safe. It felt like treason, but he closed the laptop and set off into a day still young with possibility and sensory indulgence. That work would have to wait. The desert of his destiny was calling. He might not make it back. Of that he was certain. It was a risk he was willing to take. The dangers were everywhere, the need great, a world on fire. He had to call the warden at the prison to ask if they would allow a camera in to interview inmates. He was lifting his head up high enough to be cut off. They would shine the light of scrutiny onto what it was he was doing: the contraband, the coloring outside the lines, the blunt disregard for rules. He would do it though. Why exactly, he couldn't say. This was all new to him, the bold step forward into a world waiting to sweep him away, to take him off the stage of the drama in which he played the one without scripted lines. Say it, out there where it matters, where you might not get the thing you most desire, the voice said. The lights are about to go out. Your chance is now. 

Ego-Holic In Chief

A man who is never wrong, who attacks others who say he is wrong, who defends his rightness with his dying breath, is an ego drunk, an opinion addict, is acting out and needs to dry out. Trump is drunk on his self-image, his solipsistic conversations with himself, and with imposing his warped worldview on the world. His is the simple-minded, binary universe of winners and losers, of white and black, of with me or agin'me. He is "right" about everything. One of the tenets of recovery is learning to "get off it," or to promptly admit when you are wrong. When that is impossible because the rabid ego will never admit being wrong, the drunk gets to stay a drunk. All who go along with it are enablers. Well, we have a raging ego-maniac who is drunk on power in the White House, and he leaves a swath of chaos and megalomania in his wake. Anyone who really cared about him would call for an intervention. Sycophants, thugs, goons, and yes-women are too busy keeping the house of cards from imploding. We'll see how long that lasts. The biggest drunks fall the hardest and usually take a few of us with them when they collapse: think war, stock-market collapse, healthcare crisis, skyrocketing poverty, xenophobia, and on and on. The cardboard cut-out man,who worships his tall drink of power, the idol of his reflection, won't see it coming. We'll say we knew as the dust settles. We knew. 

Why Public Education Sucks

For the record: I am a devotee of the idea of public, democratic education. My life is better because of inspired teachers. I owe them. As a working class kid, I never would have gotten what I needed in a decadent dictatorship, a puppet plutocracy, an arrogant autocracy, or an opulent oligarchy. Public education has made my livelihood possible. I've been a teacher for thirty five years and have taught elementary, middle, secondary, and college students. This little rant is not a commercial for elite, private schools. What it is is an indictment of the tyranny of testing and all it implies. No Child Left Behind picked up the bad idea that the outcome of a good education should be passing a test. (Of course, the lack of funding, bad working conditions, lack of respect for teachers, bad policies made by politicians (not teachers) also had a lot to do with it.) That outcome pushed, no, coerced, teachers into teaching to the test, and left the real work of education -- equipping students to become creative problem solving humans and engaged citizens of a democracy -- out in the cold, an after-thought. Students have learned not to think, but to wait for the answers. The ones who asked questions got thrown out; many ended up in prison. Public education has made a business out of producing mediocrity: standardized, bloodless, dry, mind-numbing, instruction-following mediocrity. One of the taboos of the new era is creative self-expression and being "human." The new way is exclusively "social." Well, I think that the best social achievement comes from a knowledge of what one loves to do, what one is good at, and what one feels "called" to do. That comes from self-awareness and self-examination. The "self" makes the best "social" possible. This dominant either/or view of knowledge as exclusively socially constructed drives good minds out of the classroom and into hiding. The few that make it do so in spite of public education rather than because of it. 

Little Darlings

Note to self: it's time to murder the little darlings. Now, some of you might find that cruel, crass, and insensitive. But you have to understand that this is war. The war is between honesty and lies, truth and deception, hope and bitterness. They have to die. There is no way around it. Just who are they you ask? They are the self-aggrandizing fears of an egoic mind. They are the chains and loops of chatter that say you are owed a living, that others are responsible for your misery, that you are better than they because you are special. You are special, of course, just not in the way you think. You are special in that you can give rather than just take all the time, that you have exactly what the world needs if you can just get off your ass and give it away. It's what you are called to do, and you know what it is. The little darlings are the excuses you make to sit at home on your hands and hope that you will not die. If you just wait, you think, the time will be right. Well the time will never be better than it is right now and your fear is what is killing you. Time to move on in spite of the terror that you might catch fire doing what is it is you most dread doing, what it is you know you came here to do.

Lucidity

It's been almost a year since my father died. I remember the leaves turning in Wisconsin. We sat on his deck in the back yard and fed a fire in a raised copper pit and watched the squirrels gather their winter stockpile of acorns. He sat wrapped up a blanket, hunched over most of the time. In the early light, however, he was usually lucid, looked straight at me, knew who I was. One morning, my son Sean called me from Panama. Miraculously, he timed the call during one of my dad's lucid moments. "Hey Grandpa," he said. "How are you?" "I'm dying," my dad said. "But I'm putting a good face on it." That left my son quiet. "Where are you?" my dad asked. "In a village in the jungle in Panama." I thought that would be too much for my father to understand. My dad replied that he was glad that his grandson was serving in the Peace Corps. "I'm proud of you," he said. "I love you," he said. "Love you too," Sean said.  They talked some more. It was the last time they would speak to each other. I thought that was pretty good, that moment of light in the October colors where leaves fall and squirrels get ready for the long sleep of winter.

Micro Burst On the River Path

He walks the river path in the morning. Walk might not be the right word; what he does is more like a shuffle, and his heels have worn away the fabric of his too-long pant legs. He looks strong and has the shoulders of a weight-lifter or a wrestler. He has tattoos on his face, a tear in the corner of one eye. The yuppie runners give him a wide berth as they jog past, eyes averted, voices too loud as they discuss investments and travel plans. It is cool this morning, for the first time in a long time, but he is still over-dressed. My guess is he wears his entire wardrobe. When he passes me, he shoots me a quick, appraising, look. When his eyes hit mine, I smile an easy smile. I see you I say. With that his eyes light up and he smiles back. S'up? he says. Chillin' I say. Nice day he says. You too. Two neutron stars collide several hundred million light years away. Waves ripple out. Time bends. Gravity hops a ride with light. He straightens up, lifts his eyes. It might be my imagination but his step is just slightly lighter, perceptibly lighter. Maybe.