I Am What I Am

I guess we all see ourselves differently than others see us. And versa vice.

It's funny really in a way, but it has made me keenly aware of the dark powers in this world and of one of their most ingenious devices: the ability to divide us, to make us focus on our differences, to fracture our Platonic love for one another and send us spinning down into a whirlpool of strife and mistrust. And at the bottom of that pool, there is nothing but drowned and decaying bodies.

You see, my closest friends believe I am a conservative type, casual acquaintances believe me to be a liberal type, and strangers often think I am simply insane (I think they may have the inside track on the truth here, but if I am insane, then I'm probably not right, am I?). Truth be told, I do hold with some "conservative" ideas, then again, I have plenty of "liberal" beliefs as well. So what does that make me? Let me answer by saying: "What does it matter?"

Too often today (as in the past), people wish to boil others down into nice, easy catagories. Conservative, liberal, good, bad, hippie, square, pretty, ugly, skinny, fat, black, white, Jew, Gentile, Believer, Infidel...what have you. That kind of thinking has led to some of the worst atrocities in human history (slavery, the Holocaust, Islamic Jihad, The War on Terror, etc.) Still, it's completely understandable, if not justifiable, for that is how the human brain likes to work, by categorizing and filing items of data away in nice little piles--it makes things easier for us by creating well traveled chemical pathways in our brain, like synaptic interstates for ideas and memories. But then again, who said life should be easy? Only fools. The rest of us know that the opposite is true; living in the real world is freakin' HARD.

So even though I am guilty of these type of generalizations about people from time to time, I try hard to keep a truly open mind about them. Now most people love to say about themselves, with a great surge of (unhealthy) pride: "I have an open mind!" But when it comes right down to it, when they make up their mind about someone, that they are good or bad, conservative or liberal, etc., their mind slams the door shut on any possibilities for that person to change (in their eyes), or to be anything other than what they've already decided they must be. But how do we really know? It's hard enough to "know thyself," let alone know anyone better than we do ourselves. Can any of you see into another's heart? I thought that was God's providence alone. Still, I am open to the possibility that I may be mistaken.

So when I say I try to keep an open mind about people, I mean it in the broadest possible sense. I try to keep my mind open to people, as they are today, as they behave, as they act out their character in their lives and interactions with others, so I can know them better, not to judge them (difficult), and not to file them away neatly in one of the labeled storage bins in my mind (very difficult). But to appreciate the wholeness, fullness and intrinsic value of that person, (no matter how they behave) because I realize now that it is only great pride that allows us to tell ourselves: "He's just a bleeding heart liberal!" or "She's an ignorant, heartless conservative!" And it is only with a truly open mind and open heart that I am able to sleep at night.

So, tell me, how many of you out there, right now, are thinking: "this guy's a hippie" or "he's a bleeding heart" or "he's nuts"??????

You may be right.

But I am what I am.

And you have no idea.

What News?

Well, I'm here to proclaim that it's official. American journalism is dead. And the stench of it's decay comes through without smell-a-vision. It's been bought and sold a dozen times over and no one seems to know who it belongs to anymore. Certainly, it should exist to serve the people of this republic, but now it serves itself, or political parties, or to be perfectly honest, it serves Mammon above all.

How many times must I endure the rantings of newscasters who make a such a big deal out of ANOTHER disappearance of ANOTHER lilly-white, helpless, pretty female. This is not real news. At least it is not national news. It concerns the family of the victim and the police in the jurisdiction it belongs in. Perhaps then, wonder of wonders! it might belong on the LOCAL newscasts. To smear it across the national/international cable news channels and newspapers so wantonly is nothing more than a grab at ratings and circulation.

And Mammon.

God bless her and her family, but frankly, I don't give a rat's behind about Natalie Holloway. I've never met her, chances are I'll never meet her, or any member of her family, or her attackers/abductors/killers, or their families. I've never been to Aruba and don't plan on ever going. So why does this merit hundreds upon hundreds of hours of reporting in the press. The answer is: it doesn't. But the press, the hungry flesh-and-Mammon-eating machine that it's become, can no longer see that. The blind are feeding us our news. Good Lord help us!

How many times must I have to turn the station because the "news" is relating such important information as:

• What or who Angeline Jolie/Jennifer Aniston/Tom Cruise is doing.
• Who got cut from American Idol/Survivor/Insert Your Own Reality Show Here.
• Someone wrote a book that got the left/center/right upset about its liberal/moderate/conservative slant.
• What Oprah bought her audience.
• What I should/should not be wearing/eating/reading/viewing.

I want some bleeding news! Real news! News that affects us ALL! There is plenty of reporting to be done, but apparently, no one is willing to do it any longer. There are real wars in the world (other than Iraq), real problems with the environment, real dangers lurking in the shadows we have yet to be told anything about because someone at CNN/MSNBC/Fox decided it was in the country's best interest to run another hour-long special on Brittany Spears belly button rings.

YEEESH!!

Our Fading Rights

Since when did our government(s) retain the right to monitor our every doing? As far as I know, our right to be free of state sponsored monitoring is not an explicit right granted under the constitution, unless we lump it under the so-called 'right of privacy', that is in itself a derived and interpreted right, not an explicit one. Someone (rich, assumably- in order to finance the legal battle) will have to step up to the plate and start fighting against the in-roads the government has been making on our right to do as we please, without having our movements, likes, dislikes, habits, shopping preferences, library book choices, etc. recorded, logged, archived, taped, tracked etc.

I must admit to being a bit of a libertarian, though I belong to no political party. Perhaps this will help you understand where I'm coming from. I believe in the rights of the PEOPLE first, with the government coming in fourth or fifth place, somewhere behind dogs or fungi. But I think in this day and age, it's all flipped around. The government runs almost everyting and the power of the people to conduct their lives as THEY see fit has become a secondary or tertiary concern.

Some of the examples I wish to provide may make you a bit squemish, because they make me a bit squemish too. Nevertheless, I still believe the people's rights count for more than the government's wishes.

1. Child Molesters/Sexual Predators. I'm not sure what the difference is, but supposedly someone does. First, let me say I think they should NEVER be let out of jail, but that is not the law. Until we decide to incarcerate these people indefinitely or impose the death penalty on them (which I recently heard one state is considering), we should walk the walk where these people are concerned. GPS tracking devices? Internet listings along with their pictures and other private information? Being forced to go door to door to their neighbors to tell them their criminal history? Restrictions on where they can live (not close to schools, parks)? WOW!! Does this sound like America to you? It doesn't to me, in fact, it sounds down-right Orwellian to me.

Until we decide on longer, harsher penalties, these folks, unfortunately, HAVE THE RIGHT, once their debt to society is payed, under law, to be citizens once again. If our constitution applies to visitors from other countries while they walk on our soil, then it applies to citizens who have broken the law and payed the price too. You may think I don't care about the children, or that I don't know anything about the rates at which predators re-offend. Wrong on both counts. I am talking about American's rights here, not making moral judgements about them or the law that lets these freaks out of jail with their gonads in tact.

2. No Warrant Wire Tapping. There's been a load of slanted reporting on this from both sides, so I can hardly add to or mediate such a contentious debate, so no matter how you feel about it personally or politically, if one reads the letter of the law, these are inexcusable crimes for which prison time/impeachment is the only logical, legal response.

3. Data Mining. There have been loads of reports of how the government is compiling data from people's personal business, information, medical records, etc, (some hatched by paranoid liberals and conspiracy theorists no doubt) many of which may be false, others of which may be true. This is a dark tunnel that stinks and frankly scares the hell out of me, and here I am, without my Starglass Phial.

4. Monetary Wire Transfer Monitoring. Dubya can condemn all the newspapers (NYT) he wants. It doesn't change the fact that what he ordered is just plain illegal. I understand his desire to protect the country, I think I understand at least that much about the man, but his willingness to listen to lousy, terrible advice to break the law and destroy citizen's rights in the process is an impeachable offense.

5. Video Surveillance. It's said that in Britain, over 90% of the population is recorded by at least one video camera at least once per day (Smile Winston! And touch your toes!). I imagine that we here in the US are not far behind that. Make all the arguments you want about how much good they do in catching criminals, detering crime, finding lost kids, etc., the whole scenario just gives me a twitching case of the Orwellian creeps.

I'm quite sure I could think of a lot more examples of how our government is making their priorities override our constitutional rights, but frankly the thought of it all is making me ill.

I'm going to go puke now.
Then I'm going to reconsider moving back to Espana.

The Parable of Injustice

Note: This was not taken from any biblical, gnostic, or agnostic text that I am aware of, rather it is just me, rambling.

A humble man went before his master, for his master had sent word that he was to be promoted to the office of overseer of all his slaves, he was to be given a new home to live in, a measure of land to till for his own, and a host of sheep and goats to sustain his family with food and clothing. The humble man asked his master: "What have I done to deserve the blessings you have bestowed on to me and mine? I work hard, yes, by the sweat of my brow, yet I still make mistakes from time to time. I'm not sure I deserve all this. Why have you blessed me so?"

The master looked down on his servant and seeing the humility in his heart, said: "It is mine to give."

Still confused, the humble man shook his head. But he thanked his lord and withdrew.

Then a proud man came before the master. The proud man had been blessed by his master for many years and had earned a place of responsibility over many men in the service of his lord. But the master had sent word that he was to be stripped of his office and returned to the fields where he would live by the sweat of his brow once again. "What have I done to deserve this humilitaion? Have I not served you well, O lord, overseeing your workers, increasing your wealth for more than a decade? How can you do this to me?"

The master looked down on his servant and seeing the pride in his heart, he said: "It is mine to take away."

The proud man shook his head in disbelief, and without a word, withdrew.

In the outer chambers, the proud man saw the humble man kneeling at the gate and giving thanks to God. As the proud man walked by, he kicked dirt at the humble man and spat at him, but the humble man paid no mind and kept praising God.

Finally, the proud man spoke. "Why do you praise God? Do you not know that all that you are given can be taken away in the wink of an eye?"

The humble man looked up at the proud man and said: "Yes, I do. I think it is yourself who had forgotten it."

Which Way Did He Go?

The farther along this road of life I walk, the more I realize I am without a map. Fortunately, God gave me a compass that always points toward him.

Tolkien: In Fashion or Indispensable?

It is interesting to me, though of no real surprise, the rise in popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic The Lord of the Rings. Great novels often go through cyclic periods in which they are alternately reviled as antiquated and unfashionable, or glorified as masterpieces of extraordinary talent and vision. My own feelings on the content of LOTR and Tolkien himself aside, there is no doubt the resurgence in popularity of Tolkien's work has been a direct result of the recent motion picture versions created by Peter Jackson and company.

Or is there?

I remember reading LOTR for the first time. It was around 1981, I believe- the beginning of the Reagan era. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience (the book, that is), though for myself it was quite a long project -if memory serves, it took me more than a year to finish- for I was not an accomplished reader of fiction at the time. Most of my reading interests as a youngster were related to non-fiction. But after reading it that first time, I remember having a deep sense of satisfaction that I'd managed to read such a weighty tome, and I was glad it "ended right" as my father would say. He didn' t like stories that didn't "end right." That is, the hero wins, the boy gets the girl, the bad guy goes to jail or dies or something similar. While there is a certain satisfaction from such endings, they are almost a purely fictional invention, after all, life does have a 100% mortality rate. So at the time, I thought this was enough: it had a bunch of interesting characters, weird creatures, lots of battles, and mostly, that it "ended right." That was where the keel of my of literary criticism bottomed out, at about 3 centimeters below water line.

There was little general interest in Tolkien in the 80's, save for the requisite university literary eggheads- droning on as usual, as public interest in LOTR had peaked in the mid to late 60's (obviously, a time of drastic shifts in socio-political values) and had been on a downward slope since. It seems the west lost interest in hobbits and the like, as we became exhausted and disillusioned from the dragging on of the Vietnam war, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, wars in the Middle East, etc, and by the time the 80's rolled in, the west had begun to look for fulfillment in simple self-indulgent and hedonistic pleasures. For it was during this time the term 'yuppie' came into being, as the stock market boomed, Americans went on a credit binge they still haven't paid off, and the porn industry was booming due to the advent and growing affordability of the VCR.

Fast forward. In the summer of 2000, I read in some entertainment mag that a full-blown movie version of LOTR was being made, I set my mind to read the novel again. But as I was soon to discover, there was a big difference in how I, along with millions of others, was to respond to the experience. Not only had I aged nearly two decades, but the world had changed around me, as it always does, and that, not always for the better. This time around, as I plowed through the text in little more than a month, I found myself swallowed whole by Tolkien's vision, alternately becoming Frodo or Sam, and sometimes even Gollum/Smeagol. Not surprising really, as I had become by then a seasoned reader of fiction, including many of the great American and English classics. I had even taken up the hobby of penning a few short stories myself by that time. And in this reading, everything about LOTR took on a deeper, more intense meaning for me.

Then, three months before The Fellowship of the Ring opened at theaters, something happened that changed our world. I refer, of course, to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.

Many have said that that day changed the world. I would it agree that it changed many, if not all, Americans. Certainly it altered the geo-political landscape, and in turn has, in one form or another, affected us all. But it was the emotional impact of that day that really spun me around. Watching on live TV as hundreds and eventually thousands perished before my eyes. How can someone watch such a thing and not be changed?

The questions flooding my mind, as I watched the two towers fall, were not about how this massacre of human beings would affect governments, wars, citizens of "third-world" countries, gas prices, the Middle-East, or any other such worldly, and therefore suddenly pale and mundane, issue.

No, to be perfectly honest, deep in my heart, the questions were: What kind of human being could do such a thing? Were they human? Or were they some kind of incarnate evil, some kind of black-hearted monster?

Or were they what they believed themselves to be: holy warriors, striking an unlikely shot to the very heart of The Great Satan; a tiny, overmatched force moving secretly in the land of the enemy until the lethal blow was struck?

As I walked out of the theatre on a crisp, December day in 2001, I knew I had witnessed a spectacularly well-crafted film and I quickly realized it would be a smash hit. Perhaps there were enough Tolkien fans around the world to boost it to that level, but I knew that the quality of the film, along with the ones that followed, would win ever more fans. So it is really no surprise that Tolkien's work has gone through such a resurgence, such a re-focusing in the collective culture. On the surface, it would seem the heirs of Tolkien have only to thank Peter Jackson & company for the renewed interest and reversal of fortune.

Or do they?

I think there is something deeper in all of this than action heroes, special effects, superb acting and heart-throb stars (not to mention a darn good tale). There are the fundamental, timeless questions Tolkien intentionally wove into his work. Questions of power and its abuse; of overcoming hopeless odds; of carrying on toward what must be certain death; the nature of good and of evil; the rape of the natural world; the blind, unquestioning obedience to our supposedly wise (see: Saruman) leaders; and scores of other equally important questions. But despite how Tolkien ended the story, the only way he could, with victory for the good and destruction for the evil, (after all, it's only a "faerie story"), we are left here, in the 21st century, to simmer in the briny, harsh realities of our own making, like rabbit carcasses in a stew seasoned with wild and bitter herbs.

Unfortunately, these bitter realities seem to be that there are no Orcs, no Saurons, and no Wizards or shining elves to point the way for us. No easy way to define who is good and who is bad. Maybe that is a part of the genius of Tolkien, that he should paint such a clear picture, bringing into stark relief the fact that in life, we cannot so easily look into the hearts of others.

No, we are but human.

The events of 9/11 reverberated through my mind in many different moments while viewing LOTR: FOTR, but never as loudly as when Frodo stood alone on the shores of the lake, the fellowship fractured, ring in hand, feeling utterly alone in a world of evil, and feeling sorry for himself while musing on his plight of having to bear the ring, and Gandalf's words came back to him: "All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you." And in that moment, I know I, and I believe many people around the world in different countries, across myriad cultures, grasped cognitively, or felt intuitively, an important notion: that while there are no orcs, wizards or elves...anyone...yes, anyone could be Frodo.

We each decide what we are going to do with our lives on one level or another. Sure, there are things that happen to us we cannot control, whether it is inheriting the most evil device in the history of the world from an aging uncle, or dismal health, or the color of our skin, our place of birth, unemployment, poverty, etc. But what we DO in that situation that is handed us...that is what defines us. Our actions in the face of all that opposes us. Our reactions to the hand we are dealt, good or bad.

Tolkien has been accused of being many things: a racist, a sexist, a Mancheistic pagan, self-righteous, an overly-wordy blowhard, an egghead, etc, etc. (none of which I believe to be true, except perhaps the latter). And some have, rather bumblingly, accused Tolkien of simply writing an allegory with Hitler as Sauron, and World War II as the War of the Ring. This was certainly not the case, and Tolkien was so wary of the accusation, he even provided an adamant denial in his foreword. Rather, he spoke of the 'applicability' of his story. He was concerned with the ability of his work to speak to people -no matter the situation. And therein lies the true gift Tolkien gave us; and why LOTR has become, for me, indispensable in these weird days of global war and global warming.

It wasn't the LOTR fans, the SF/fantasy geeks, or the special effects junkies that sustained interest in Tolkien's work. They certainly played their part, no doubt. No, in my humble opinion, it was the situation the world suddenly found itself in, and the messages of LOTR that became so applicable for us, and to us, that gave it a deep, resonating power beyond that of just any old fantasy.

For it is the applicability of LOTR -in this jaded, fractured, post 9/11 world we live in- that is the reason I believe it became so culturally transcendent (remember, this was a world wide phenomenon, not just an Anglo one). It reminded us all that we have serious, deadly, choices to make. We have solemn duties to fulfill. And steadfast friends to cling to.

One thing it does not answer: Who are we?

Frodo? Or Sauron?


RESPECTFULLY,
A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

Dreaming Crystal Images of True Music

I just can't seem to get her off of my mind...

It's the simplest things I find the hardest to bear,
The saphires in her eyes, the crimson of her hair.

So much time is lost, working our lives away,
Keepin' our eyes upon the light of a comin' day.
And when we wake up and finally see the light,
Is there anything left of the Music of our Lives?

Dog Won't Hunt

The pursuit of truth is a risky proposition at best. Like a bloodhound tracking it's prey in a scratch and sniff world.