Votes formerly represented our freedom and autonomy- however the obvious reality is that  the American people are not free and are not autonomous, so your vote can’t represent freedom and autonomy because those things are largely non-existent in this country. Otherwise it wouldn’t be necessary to gang up in groups of tens of thousands of people and march around impotently with signs in order to affect the decisions which will have a dramatic influence on our lives. The people who make those decisions are largely beholden to powerful moneyed interests, who care nothing for community, interpersonal reactions, or satisfying lives. They care about “growth,” because the international monetary/capital system requires perpetual exponential growth in order to continue to get returns out of an economy.

In the late 1950′s, one man working 40 hours a week could make enough to buy a home, feed a wife, two kids, and a dog, take vacations, and still have some money left to leave to the kids when all is said and done. Obviously I’m not saying that the 50′s were perfect or that everything that’s happened since then was bad. But consider now that a married couple, each working well over 40 hours a week, has to sink itself deep into debt in order to afford things that were once considered basic accommodations. Certainly many people are living beyond their means, but the fact remains that after 60 years of “growth” we are a poorer, less functional country, more like slaves and less like sovereign independent people deciding the courses of their own lives.

People mock me for saying that Americans aren’t free, and I can admit that we’re certainly lucky for our many physical comforts. So far. But consider that we’ve been growing into a soft fascism since the 80′s, and now we have cameras in all urban centers and, since the passage of the humoursly-named “Patriot Act” (quite Orwellian) the government has unfettered access to information once considered private, may tap your phones without a warrant, and may hold you indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” if it considers you to be one, and that there’s no judicial oversight over these decisions. Also consider that, if this depression continues for over another year (it will), the middle class will be well on its way to disappearing entirely.

So the American social strata will look like this: roughly 90% of Americans will be poor debt slaves working hard for subsistence with literally no hope of upward social mobility, and probably 3-7% of people (those working in the upper echelons of the few large corporations which survive the depression, plus their government and military enforcers) will be extremely wealthy. It’s not difficult to imagine how citizens will react to this, so police presence will be increased (for your own protection, of course) and any unrest will be put down with as much violence as is necessary. Does this dynamic look familiar?

What does all of this have to do with voting? Votes and democratic change are the opiates which allows people to continue to feel free, and continue to feel powerful. But, as, I discussed, the people of the USA are neither free nor powerful. And, even though for a while we were able to delude ourselves into feelings of material comforts using debt, the reality is that we are already an impoverished nation, and it will only get much, much worse from here. The best actions you can take right now, with so much uncertainty, is first, not do anything to perpetuate the current money-hungry power structure whose demands for exponential growth have  destroyed the landscape, impoverished this nation, increased the incidence of cancer dramatically, polluted the environment, destroyed indigenous peoples and native species, and generally made the world worse while increasing “wealth” (as discussed, for most Americans this wealth was an illusion anyway).

That means, first of all, don’t vote. Don’t put your money in banks. Don’t buy from faceless, soulless corporations with no connection to your community, if you can avoid doing so. Don’t work as a paper-pusher or administrator or data-entry clerk for their corporate monarchies, if you can avoid doing so.

The second, longer phase of our economic cleansing will not be merely economic but also psychological, spiritual, and philosophical. Capitalism disclaims all value except monetary value… and the results speak for themselves. Look around you right now and think of all the ways the space near you could be better. Look out your window- can children play in the street near you? Would their parents feel safe about that? Is your neighborhood suitable for real human life? Or is it a mere habitation unit with plenty of roads and cars to take people from one gear in an economic growth machine to another? These are the important changes, the difficult ones, and it will require new values and perhaps even a new religion. But it’s what’s necessary, it’s possible, and it is the future. It’s up to you, and other individual people acting within their own local sphere, to make sure that there even is a future for us to create.

Have hope, embrace change, don’t vote.

How far, how far removed from real life? Dusty apartment, mediated experience of the world. I read articles about things that happen all over the planet, which I can prove no more than I can prove the existence of black holes. All taken on trust. A gigantic base of knowledge built on the flimsiest veil of real experience. Absurd! And yet I could fly all around the world and experience these things for myself, but what would I choose? In this life we only ever scratch the surface, so much must be taken on faith. (Comforted by memories of magic; thank you psilocybin for this island of sanity)

This apparatus of which The I has been given control- built to adapt, as capable of loving and caring and peace as it is of brutal and unrepentant slaughter. And why? Biological imperatives, nothing better to do, one has a self and he can either express it or die alone (cf. story from Dostoevsky’s devil in Brothers, the soul doomed to walk for millions of miles before he was allowed into heaven; he rebelled, decided he would just lay down forever. But he got up (after millenia), walked, and rejoiced upon his entry into paradise).

And so this social meat machine, the human, can take a keyboard and write a blog and share ideas. Is there any one human who could carry the information of the whole hive? More and more in common with insects, a fact which has either gone unnoticed or has been accepted by the greater majority. But this strange hairless ape is not an ant, it has a nature, and that nature yearns to break through the modern veneer like tufts of grass cracking  suburban pavement.

Existed outside for a while, in the world of ideas, which against all logic seem more real than anything else (intuition so much more dependable than logic). No back to the indoors of the soul; there’s work to do and external demands to satisfy.

Toil and struggle is the norm, not the exception. Pain and suffering are normal. Failure and destruction is normal. What matters is not whether your struggle ultimately results in something good (a house in the suburbs and a surgically enhanced wife, right?).  What matters is whether you keep fighting or you give up.

Giving up is by no means something unwelcome to the sufferer. On the contrary, to allow circumstances to overcome you, to quit swimming and surrender yourself to the currents, is perhaps the most delicious poison on the planet. The urge to surrender creeps into the back of your mind, and once you acknowledge it as a viable option it’s already won. Surrender is compelling– it’s easy and responsibility is difficult.

But continuing the struggle in spite of terrible circumstances, even the nightmarish horror of an earthquake’s aftermath, is the ultimate expression of life’s resiliency, and marks anyone who expresses such as a true hero.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Saying “I love you” or “you’re my friend” is easy and thus mostly unimportant. Those words are symbols for something that’s already been proven through hard-won experience and  growth together. False friends are easy to pick out because they give up on the friendship at the first sign of difficulty, showing they care much more about their own comfort than the possibilities waiting behind tough circumstances.

An honest friendship will never allow temporary circumstances to interfere with it, because the bond of friendship exists outside of time, shining light on the hidden forces encircling us all and teaching us about ourselves, about life, about one another.

In order to live a rich life in the company of those whose love you share, cast aside fear and embarrassment, be true to yourself and good to those with whom you would share the path through this life. Every courageous action begets an infinity more, and every friendship echoes in eternity.

Water
4. James Macbeth
5. The Black Freighter
6. Bleached and Boring

Air
7. Holy Spirits
8. The Son
9. The Father

Earth
10. Infected
11. 2012 – The Black Whole Memory – Human Mask
12. Among the Dead

Death visited me in a dream (Jung might say that a mythological image emerged from my inherited unconscious to set me on the teleological direction of my life). I resolved to write a poem for death,  to which I will devote most of my energy in the near future. The formal outline appears above. Several verse forms accompanied by guitar and bass.

A giant cylindrical pit, reaching upwards eternally, and every soul who has ever existed is thrown into it. At first it was chaotic: everyone clambered for the top, pulling others down in order to push themselves up. People screaming in pain, clawing in desperation, contorted, eternally struggling, and rarely achieving the fresh air on top (and even then it usually didn’t last long). So it went for millenia, the endless struggle and limited satisfaction, the crushing weight, the gravity and the eternal pulling. Some resigned themselves to the bottom, some struggled continuously, and no one was free from the wrenching pain.

After a long time of struggling in this way, some of the souls near the top had an idea: what if we braced ourselves along the wall? If a large group formed a ring around the outer wall, they could all support one another, and all enjoy the fresh air of the top. So the topmost souls did this, the ones beneath them cooperating because they recognized the possibility of eventually being a part of this ring. The souls on the outside underneath the original ring also formed a circular brace along the wall, and the souls within that circle climbed up and formed a ring on top of the original one.

They proceeded this way until millions of souls had aligned themselves against the walls. There were disasters: many would fall into the middle, bitter or uncooperative souls would try and tear the whole structure down, or large groups would become complacent and allow the intricate, intimate ring to fall apart through lack of maintenance and vigilance (taking their enviable position for granted or forgetting the pain of the pit and actually thinking it was preferable) . This never disturbed the continuous building and rebuilding of the outer wall, though.

And while the wall stood, those on it could continuously breath the cool fresh air, and enjoy the close companionship of their fellow souls, and talk and laugh and relax. They were as free as they could be, and they were as happy as they could be too. These poor sufferers had built a heaven on the back of perdition.

He read back to himself what he had written: elegant, heartful words, he thought. Ornate woodwork on a coffin, decorating a stale and lifeless determination. This is what I want to leave behind me? Walter thought about his life, which could be described in a word as normal. Suffocatingly determined, empty and slavish. Homeschoolcollegecareer, in their proper order: what for?

Sounds echoed in his ears: sobs, heeled footfalls,  slamming door. The impetus of his murderous, self-murderous decision had faded into the background of his thoughts. Walter knew his wife (ex-wife?) wasn’t the reason he wanted to die. Rather, she was a compelling argument against death; now gone, Walter stared into the abysmal vacuum in his life which was once her place in it. His first inclination was to surrender to this abyss, to throw himself into it and let it swallow him up: freedom, blessed freedom!

As he set about translating his fateful desires to words, though, he could feel the disequalibrium within himself. Some small neglected voice, a malnourished child in his soul was asking to be heard. At first this child was polite but progressively she became more urgent, maturing as necessaity demanded it to.

You’ve ignored me for an entire lifetime, and now you’ll end that life without once doing things my way. What have I ever done to deserve such indifference? Now you will listen, I won’t give you any choice but to consider me this time. These other souls of yours, the ones which have failed you now, they could never bring you happiness or fullness or completion. When did you stop wanting to blaze trails? You’ve done things the right way, you’ve done things the way you’re supposed to: what has that brought you? Emptiness and despair. The voices in your spirit which told you to follow, to obey, they will only help you to survive. I’m the voice who will help you to live.

You want to die? Do it right: live dangerously. The deepest passions of your heart, the brilliant ones and the dark ones upon which the brilliant ones rest: express them, chase after them, let them guide you. What are you afraid of? Not death, certainly not, considering what you were about to do. Disapproval? But what does that matter to one free of fear? Or have you been trying to avoid pain? Yes, life is painful, that I will admit. And the problem of pain, of suffering, not only your suffering but everyone’s, is something you’ll spend your whole life struggling with. Don’t let it keep you from your dreams! Don’t let fear smother you!

But enough, I know I’ve convinced you already. The pen has fallen from your hands, you’ve turned your eyes to the sky. Throw the note away- and live your life so that it needs no explaining. Live your life like a long suicide note, a light and happy one, with long sentences of struggle punctuated by awful heartbreak and ecstatic bliss. And don’t write it alone, write it in the open for everyone to see. Write it with people who love you. And cherish it… cherish it, because everything that’s ever written is written on sand.