"Fuck Art. Let's Dance...."

John Evans

joev3@mindspring.com

Some ten or so years ago I started writing a journal. My original motivation was just to keep from going insane, which seems to have worked, because I'm still here. Now I tend to write more out of habit than anything else. As a rule, I seldom take time to go back and read what I've written because that would cut into the time I have to write. I tend to view writing more as a zen exercise: write, throw the results into a journal, then write some more. Why bother reading yesterday's thoughts when there will never be a shortage of words?
My journals now span over four thousand pages and they're difficult to search by conventional reading. But since they're stored in electronic form on my computer's hard drive, the simplest way to peruse them is by doing a key word search. That's how I selected this smattering of words.
I hope you find something that's interesting or relevant to your life.

Radio Fund-raising
For the last couple of weeks I've suffered through another of National Public Radio's interminable fund-raisers. Instead of the regular NPR news show, you hear local affiliate announcers pleading for funds, with the sound of phones ringing in the back ground. All radio fund raisers seem to be the same the ringing phones, the announcers pleading with an anonymous listening public, trying to shame us into doing our "duty" and helping to support public radio. Now don't misunderstand me, I don't begrudge them their funds. They do a damned good job, and they don't beat you to death with ads, except for a couple of weeks, once or twice a year, when they hold the regular show hostage until their demands have been met. But I don't like listening to ringing phones and pleading voices. It just irritates me and makes me want to switch to another station. But I usually don't, because listening to the morning news has become part of my daily routine, and they mix in just enough news tidbits to keep you from spinning the knob.
Those obnoxious radio fund-raisers sound so clunky and ineffectual that I'm amazed that they work at all. I wonder how someone could go about exploiting certain aspects of the American psyche to design a new, streamlined fund-raising entertainment show?

Fantasy fund-raising
I have an idea which I'm going to call "Fantasy Fund-raising." It's a Television show where people "vote" with their phone calls, and are charged on their regular phone bill.
Fantasy fund-raising exploits the fact that fewer and fewer people are capable of distinguishing between reality and fiction. As a result, it is no longer necessary to rely on real sob-stories to shake the money out of people's pockets. The show will always start off with a disclaimer stating that a portion of the fantasy fund-raiser funds go to real charities...(Flash pictures of Mother Theresa, starving kids in Boofwannaland, crippled abandoned kittens, etc on the screen). The fantasy fund-raiser operates on the principle of providing people with entertainment while at the same time, manipulating them into donating money.
The show itself will appear to be a public service show, which is always teetering on the brink of financial disaster, just like the Praise The Lord club.
Each week will feature a different group of actors who will come on the show to tell the host (and of course, the audience) about a problem that may be outrageous, heart-breaking, preposterous, (but always entertaining) which can be solved with money.
Some possible scenarios:
The case of the young newly-weds who were involved in a tragic accident on their wedding night
The owner of a homeless pet sanctuary, who has been ordered by the county to destroy all the pets if he can't keep the poor little kittens and the vicious dogs separated
The elderly couple who through misfortune have lost their savings, and as a result are forced to choose between living together as street people, or being separated, to live in sex-segregated charity homes. Each old person is all that the other has got.
The run-away girl in Mexico who is faced with a life of prostitution if she can't pay off the mucho pesos she owes to her evil pimp and get a bus ticket back to Kansas.
The cripple who lost his wheel chair to a mugger.
Occasionally the show features a special emergency relief donation, such as the case of the abandoned puppies. The camera zooms in on a cute child playing with a basket-full of cocker-spaniel puppies. Send us fifty dollars to save these puppies from death by lethal injection.

All of the above scenarios and roles will be fictitious, and played out by actors. The host & hostess of the show are experts at appearing visibly moved by these sad tales, and experts at pleading with the viewing audience to send in money. The audience is told that the scenes are dramatic re-creations of events, but the show is counting on the fact that the viewer will forget that as soon as the show begins, and get sufficiently involved in the story to call the show's number.

Totally interactive Radio: The listeners can trade places with the announcer and speak directly to the radio audience. This is similar to the regular radio call-in shows we have now. This show is designed to exploit the fact that more and more people have cellular phones in their cars. A percentage of the fee for each call will be donated to your favorite charity.

Or "Open Mike" the radio talk show that lets anyone who can afford it talk over the air. People call in to the station, give their credit card number, and are charged a specified rate to say what they want over the radio.

The social psychopathology of contemporary life
Went to see Ida Applebroog's art exhibit yesterday, at the high museum of art. According to the hype, she's supposed to be "a commentator of our times" who investigates what she calls the "social psychopathology of contemporary life."
Also saw a piece called "bearings rolled" which consisted of 1/2 inch black circles on tan paper. Interesting compositions.

Artsy Fartsy
Terry and I went to an art exhibit that one of my friends, Shankwoman, put on with a bunch of other artists at the "new Visions" art gallery. It was a very typical art show a pretentious living theater to which people come to see and be seenwith a bunch of striving would-be socialites loitering beside the cookie and punch table trying to match their actions with the indiscernible mood of the place. Most of the artsy types were attired in typical bohemian gear lots of black clothes for both men and women, with the women decked out in tights, fetishistic black high-heeled shoes and other unconventional foppery. Of course, in spite of their individualistic attire, they all managed to look alike. It must be tough to be a bohemo I have enough trouble deciding which tie to wear with a pink shirt, but their fashion decisions must be decidedly more difficult. Does the purple ascot go with the green earrings, or should one cop out and wear all black?
The guests milled around, sipping their punch out of styrofoam cups, and trying to garner some latent meaning from the melange of non-descript art pieces, all of which stubbornly defied singular interpretation. Most of the art featured in these shows is of the same ilk, being ugly, poorly executed, and conveying a sense of confusion to the viewer, who, being uncertain of his own aesthetic compass, typically assumes that the art speaks a higher language than he can comprehend; when in fact, much of the art speaks no language at all.

All artists hunger for attention, and whenever there is a crowd, there must be circus, with artists as clowns. Artists refer to these circus acts as "performance pieces". A performance piece can be anything which the artist wishes to do to make a fool of himself, but for it to be effective, it must utterly baffle the audience. The logic goes like this: if the artist's performance can be interpreted by conventional minds, then it must be shallow, but if nobody understands what is going on, then the waters must be deep indeed. The cardinal rule of modern art is that the more incomprehensible it is, the more it will impress the typical viewer. The big joke is that the vast majority of art has no meaning whatsoever it expresses no higher thoughts on the part of the artist than a typical bowel movement.
An effeminate bespectacled wisp of a man clapped his hands and called to the crowd to pay attention to the "performance piece" which was unfolding before our very eyes. Then a young man dressed in black stepped from behind a screen and began monotonously tapping two sticks together as he slowly paced the room. He never changed his expression as he paced the room, tapping his sticks . The audience watched intently as the tempo increased. Finally the performer walked out of the gallery, and that was the end of the performance.

The modern artist makes poverty a virtue, while secretly craving fame and fortune.


"The Joy of Owning an Old Car"
Old cars are good, provided you pick the right car.
Classic lines
Built to last
plentiful after market parts
A. Costs Less
1. less up front money
2. less insurance, tag and taxes
3. lower maintenance costs
B. Easy to work on
1. Fewer parts to break
2. Fewer hoses, wires, etc packed into the engine compartment.
C. Less polluting
1. Entropy somebody is going to drive the old car if you don't.
2. EPA figures for a new BMW
3. How much energy does it take to make a new car, as opposed to keeping an old one on the road?

The best way to cut down on emission pollution is to get as much mileage as possible from every gallon of gas. The less gas you burn, the less you emit. An engine that extracts all of the energy from the fuel is a clean burning engine.
Any air pollution device which must reduce MPG in order to cut emissions actually adds to the air pollution problem.
Much of gasoline's energy goes to running accessories, or is dissipated in the form of heat.
Every electrical accessory on your car reduces your mileage, by putting more load on your alternator.
My old car has two fan belts, one for the air conditioner and one for the radiator fan. But in addition to what I have on my car, most new cars also have a power steering belt and an air pump for the emissions system.
Some heat radiated from the engine could be converted to energy to power the vehicle.

Consciousness is all-pervasive, but it becomes diluted and opaque on the physical plane. Particulate matter is unevenly distributed in a lake or stream. Some levels, especially neared the top, are clearer than others. Near the surface of the water the particles are always smaller and less numerous. A river carries most of its debris along the bottom, and so with the stream of life.

Setting the Stage for the Black Shirts.
What passes for news in this country is actually entertainment.
Pictures are greater than words. People remember images longer than words. Politicians know this, and this is why our political campaigns have degenerated to nothing more than a series of "sound bites" and carefully orchestrated blips of imagery. Form has become more important than substance.
Michael Deaver, the genius behind Reagan's political campaign, said,"People want things to be simple. People want feel good and fuzz. They don't want to feel upset about anything."


Howard Fenster, 1988
There was an piece on Howard Fenster, primitive artist, on National Public Radio this morning. Looks like Fenster is catching on with the art crowd. I'm sure his work is going to go up in price. This would be a good investment if there was a way to sell the stuff quickly. One might seek the artist out and attempt to buy direct, then sell to the galleries.
Fenster paints two or three paintings each day. His prolific output is due to his obsession with getting the word of God out to the world. In a way, his popularity makes sense. Here is a guy who is, as Joseph Campbell would say, is "following his bliss." As a result, he is becoming rich and famous. All he is doing to make all of this money is do what he has always donepaint pictures. He doesn't think about what would sell, he has no marketing strategy, he just paints.
This is the same way it is with words, except that it is much more difficult for words to catch the eye. What would be a good way to spread the word?
Modern man has become something of an intellectual baby, and has become accustomed to having his intellectual food cut up for him, like a mother minces food for her infant. Trying to feed big thoughts to the modern reader is like feeding rare steak to a baby. It's unappealing to his frail palate and indigestible to the system. The modern writer must cut his words into small "sound bites."

Art from Berlin
I visited the art museum yesterday to see the "Art from Berlin" exhibit. Some of the works were "Ascent from Knight, Death and Devil" 1988-1989, by Wolfgang Petrick, born 1939, "Gestapo" 1984 oil on canvas by Deter Hacker, born 1942. Blacks and yellows were the dominant colors in "Gestapo", along with chaotic lines and red hues.
"Natives of the big city II" 1979 mixed media on canvas by Helmut Middendorf, born 1953.A hole is the central focal point, and standing beside it are two men holding phallus-like staffs as if they are fencing. Below, nameless blue-black figures toil.
This art is so refreshingly transparent. All of the pieces have an emotional message.
"Large Woman Full of Cosmetics and Industry, Homage to Brinkmann", oil on canvas Walter Stohrfr, born 1937.
Red and black signifies violent death.
There was one one particularly realistic painting from the royal court of Wilhelm II that had some interesting details. It was of soldiers sitting in a fancy parlour that was paved with patterned rugs. It looked like whenever a rug became badly worn, a new rug had been laid down over it. The soldiers were all wearing muddy boots, and bits and pieces of fire wood were scattered on the rug beside the fire place. Nobody seemed in the least bit concerned about getting mud on the rugs. In fact, the rug pattern appeared to be designed to hide soil.
Contrast this with the way people treat their rugs today. Modern man is careful not to soil his rugs. Some houses even sport white rugs, which require the most fastidious care.
People who have white rugs and Pomeranian dogs in their homes should be avoided.
The art of Berlin conveys the emotional anguish of having lived in a dying civilization. Communism is dissolving. Doesn't that tell us something about our own culture? All the old ways of thinking are being cast aside. The old constraints are falling away, to be replaced by what?
America the paranoid no longer has a worthy enemy to fight, and without enemies, how will our country maintain its paranoid illusions? I don't believe it can. We the people are on the brink of awakening from the grand delusion. But I think the truth that we have become a third-rate nation of lies will be too painful to face. I believe we will become the greatest threat the world has ever known. The only way there will ever be peace in the world is when the United States of America is shorn of its delusions of grandeur.

The artist has always been stereotyped as a misfit. While this is not true for all artists, I think many of them are indeed misfits. Society has never allowed for much deviation from the norm, and those who cannot or will not conform are eventually squeezed out of society's mainstream and forced to live in the back waters. This process is not the result of intention or malice on any individual's part, but rather, it is a natural process of selection. A misfit is anyone who cannot follow the standard path toward achievement, take a regular job, and stick with that jobwithout going mad until he retires or dies.
The misfit can never reconcile his present life style with his desires. He always wants something other than what he has, and this drives him away from group goals and standards of behavior. Misfits are quite often the most creative people in a society because they are denied access to most of the conventional means of self expression. Creativity is to some degree, a result of sublimated frustration.
As he ages, he finds himself less and less able to rejoin society. Eventually he discovers that there is no way back into the fold he is a permanent exile from main stream society.
At this stage of life, if the misfit has sufficient talent, determination and above all luck, he may be able to find a niche for himself in society. If he can continue to support himself he may have a chance of survival, and in time, his creativity may benefit society as a whole.
But all odds are against the misfit. He lacks the security that a conventional life brings, and the psychological pressure of life as an outsider with few of the conventional support systems exacts its toll.

The life of a dog is not very good, at least not so long as he must rely on humans for hand-outs. A man is no different. He must pay his own way, no matter how poorly that may be. Any other course is cowardice and moral failure.
Only the psychopath and the parasite drink society's blood without thought toward compensation.
To own even the smallest of houses and to be able to call it your own, is better than living in a palace which can be jerked out from under you as soon as you miss a mortgage payment.

Words are merely a path to the emotions. An artist should be able to synthesize an experience, capture its essence, and transmit only the essencelike a Haiku to the reader.

The White Logic
The paradox of human existence is that those who most ardently seek truth risk being destroyed by the very thing they seek. It appears that there are two types of truth, and one must be avoided lest man fall victim to a spiritual dis-ease. Beyond the life-affirming truths lie fatal truths. In order for man to live this thing called life, he must avoid contemplating the meaning of his own death and the vast void beyond this veil called life.
Jack London speaks of "White Logic" (cold truth) and how it enslaves the man who falls victim to it. It is the task of philosophy to affirm and embolden life rather than paralyze its impulse.
White Logic leads to the acquisition of the forbidden fruit. It is a truth that poisons life, and as such, the only proper time for one to realize this truth is in the act of dying. This truth is carved on the gate to the world beyond, and it must not be contemplated before its time.
The awful truth is that man is a cosmic ape. A thing evolved from primordial slime which somewhere in the course of evolution was infused with an awareness of his own spirit.
Another awful truth is that we share this thing, in varying degrees, with all other living organisms. The dog has this thingwhich we call spiritwith in its body, yet so do the insects that live on its body. All living creatures have this ineffable substance. It is more akin to thought than matter, and as such, can be poisoned by thought. Man may be the only living creature that is sufficiently infused with this thing so as to be capable of contemplating the ultimate thought. But some things are an anathema to life, and this truth is such a thing. Once allowed within the conscious mind, it acts in much the same manner as a computer program gone berserk. It moves its victim in a circular dance a spiral and at the center lies the ultimate reality.
I might die from my own causes, but i refuse to succumb to the spiritual malaise of our age.
Man can never go back to the way things were. We must, as a species, make a great world-wide leap in consciousness. All men must unite if they are to survive. The world as we know it will die in any case, but man may die with it if we do not cease this awful competition and learn how to cooperate. The men of this world must come to view each other not with suspicion and hatred, but as members of the same family.
Danilo Dolci, author of "The World Is One Creature" and hailed as the Italian Ghandi, is the sort of person our youth need to model themselves after. Unfortunately, most youth are modeling themselves after their own parents, and the parents of this age are pathetic indeed.

I am the X-man, and I stand between the poles of existence, Exman, that's me, struggling to survive.
I wonder how long it will be before we use Ted Turner's computer colorization process to obliterate racial differences among film actors? But what color would they be? I think a light brown would appeal to a lot of people. That way, former negroes could retain a vestige of their racial heritage while at the same time, Caucasians could sport a natural tan without unnecessary exposure to dangerous solar rays.
As the world becomes one big family, racial differences blend and blur. What will the future hold? Perhaps brown men with pink, blue, gold, green, brown, and black eyes. new combinations could abound. Brown-skinned women with naturally kinky blonde hair and full sensual lips.


A Yuppie Xmas Party
Tina and I went to a party tonight, thrown by Dianne, one of Tina's friends. I can't begin to describe the guests according to the order that they came in. However, If you bear with me, I'll give you a pastiche of impressions.
When Tina and I first came to the door, we rang the bell and waited. After we were in, I paid particular notice to those guests who entered without knocking. I assumed most were close friends, with the knocking and waiting business reserved for the uninitiated.
This was a wine party, with almost no beer drinkers and no hard liquor served. As I was pouring my third glass of wine, a tall gentleman sporting a moustache walked in, and on his arm was a petite blonde-haired woman dressed in black silk and satin. She immediately introduced herself as if she were a VIP of the highest order. However, her mannerisms elicited a secondary intuition; that she was merely a rich man's ornament. Mister mega-bucks swaggered into the living room reeking of stale cigar smoke. He strode straight up to me and said, "J.P. Mason's the name, and information's my game." For an instant, I thought he was pulling my leg, but then I realized that he was dead earnest. ...

A buffet of shrimp cocktail was served, along with mushroom caps stuffed with crab meat, cookies from the "Pepperidge Farm Southport cookie collection", meat balls, ham, cheese, nuts and other goodies.

A woman walked into the house. She was rather tall, and wearing a black leather skirt. Suddenly, she began hopping on one foot, complaining that "something happened to it during aerobics class today, and it's been feeling funny ever since."
The talk revolved around buying condos, restaurants, parties and ski trips, evaluations of various ski slopes, trips to Europe...
Everybody seemed to be either coming from a party or going to another one. I suppose it's a measure of one's popularity to be invited to more than one party in an evening. However, I think it's mostly a measure of one's own vacuity.
Many of the guests were dressed in leather, and there were no unattractive women, no children, and no unattractive men. Out of the whole bunch, I was probably one of the least interesting-looking men there, although I attempted to compensate for this with conversation.

Dianne's house was decorated in the typical fashion, with everything looking as if it had just come out of a department store display. A fake Renior oil painting hung over the fireplace, with other wall hangings consisting of art posters. I was surprised to see that there was a real fire burning, with the logs stacked and kindled by an expert hand. The living room walls were painted a salmon color, and there was a large vase of the same color resting on a sleek white table. From the vase sprang black and salmon colored wooden flowers, matching tastefully with the walls. Every room adheres to a color theme, with the whole house blended into a pleasant, but unimaginative medley of color themes.
I saw only three books, two of which were turned face down on the bottom shelf of the living room book case. Both dealt with coping with the pain of losing a loved one, and I tried to recall if one of Dianne's parents had passed away recently. The other book had something to do with Japanese olfactory aesthetics. I'm trying to recall the Japanese word which started with a "K".
The buzz of voices finally filled my ears until I could no longer distinguish the words. I sought refuge retreated to the solitude of the upstairs bathroom for a few minutes.

I walked into the the back bedroom where everyone had dropped off their outer gear. The coats piled on the four-poster bed were mostly black, with leather and wool being the most popular shells. This is the leather and silk crowd.
Dianne's bedroom gave no hint of her individual taste. Of course I'd have expected her to "depersonalize" the room a bit in anticipation of guests, but what I saw was virtually denatured, with no identity at all. It was as if no one really lived here, and the condo had merely been rented out for a party. There was no more of the owner's character than one would expect to find at a Howard Johnson's. The only hint of an owner was an invitation to the North Atlanta Towne Club New Year's Eve Ball. That was conspicuously displayed beside a lamp next to the bedroom door. I thought this was a grand piece of vanity. It would be like me buying ten Rolling Stones concert tickets and then leaving them casually on my dresser.
Dianne's bathroom probably told the most about her. There were the typical cosmetics standing on the sink counter. Hair spray, mousse, hand and body lotion, lipsticks, perfume, a half-empty plastic bottle of 1,000 aspirin. The Bathroom scale was dishonest, indicating that I was five pounds light. Evidence of self-deception always tells me something about a person. Curiously, both upstairs bathrooms had crumpled towels thrown in the bottom of the tubs.

Now is the time to read Ecclesiastes, with its message for the jaded soul-sick man. "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity... What has been is what will be... There is nothing new under the sun... I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly." And what is the Christian solution?
"Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

News: More evidence that Biology Affects Behavior
Dr W.V. Harlow, who has a PhD in financial economics, has conducted a study for Salomon Brothers, Inc (an investment firm) to determine if biology and behavior are linked. The conclusion of the study suggests that "Certain individual personality traits are closely associated with specific neurochemical processes." Women generally have more of a neurochemical called monoamine oxidase (MAO), and the more you have of it, claims Dr Harlow, the less likely you are to do risky things.
Generally, females in his study had more MAO in their blood than did male subjects, and were less inclined to take financial risks. Those men or women with the highest levels of MAO were found to be the most risk-averse. Extroverts, with low levels of MAO took more risks than introverts. Low levels of MAO were also associated with sports participation and impulsive behavior.
Dr Harlow concluded that "it can be inferred that there is some common biological thread" between brain chemical levels and economic risk taking."
"Neurochemical activity may be related to an overall perception of gains and losses, with a more risk-averse individual being more sensitive to losses than gains."
"All things being equal, there is a larger propensity to accept economic risks the lower your level of enzyme."

The evidence is mounting that biology plays a far greater role in determining our behavior than we once thought. The implications of this study are such that I suspect few people will accept the findings.
What amazes me though, is that there is a need for this type of study at all. It should seem perfectly obviousto all but those in a persistent vegetative state that levels of hormones, neurotransmitters and other drugs have the potential to affect behavior. It also seems obvious that one's genetic heritage plays a vastly significant role in determining the type and quantity of brain chemicals one's body produces.
The fact that one's genetic constituency should influence one's behavior is, at least in my mind, so self-evident that it merits no debate whatsoever.
Human thought and behavior is intimately bound to chemistry, and so it will remain, as long as humans consist of flesh and bone.
The feminists have sought to deny that there is a biological basis for their behavior, for to admit such would contradict their entire philosophy. Feminism will certainly go down in history as one of the most deluded and socially destructive concepts of the twentieth century. Women cannot become men merely by wishing it to be so, any more than men can become mothers by an act of will. Each sex has its own specific role to play, and whenever one sex attempt to usurp the other's role, both sexes suffer greatly.
Currently, there is a growing imbalance of power between the sexes. Women are seeking to grasp control of something which is forbidden by nature itself. Modern man has been reduced to a state of confusion, but even as I speak, that confusion is precipitating into action.
I believe it was Margaret Atwood who wrote "The Handmaiden's Tale", a story that predicted an age of female subjugation by males. At first, I thought this was just another paranoid delusion by a shrill feminist writer. But now, I think there may be a bit of prophecy to the story after all. If this were to happen though, it would once again set the pendulum in motion. The welfare of one sex is forever linked to its opposite, and the oppression of one sex brings ruin to both. Atwood's vision could only come about if women pushed men so far that society itself was destroyed.
That is not likely any time soon, but it is an inevitability. Society will some day fall, and when it does, I am sure that the cause will not be due to the aggression of a foreign enemy, but from decay from within.
1 And he sure didn't marry her for her looks, but then again, he once mentioned that he was raised by two lesbians, and that may have something to do with his choice of brides.

2 (The correct spelling is Nietzsche...damned if I'll ever learn how to spell these names.)

3 Pertaining to the Greek god of vegetation and wine. Identified with the Roman god Bacchus.


Nine-year old Boy Commits Suicide.
As I said earlier, two news items caught my eye. The second deals with a Nine-year old boy who was a ninth grade student at Fayetteville elementary school. He shot himself in the head with his .410 shotgun. He left a suicide note which said in part, "I did this because of my teachers."
The child's father said that he had recently purchased the gun for his adopted son and took him quail hunting in South Georgia over the Christmas Holidays.
Two things which interest me about this story are the boy's age and the fact that he is adopted.
There was a time when child suicide was rare indeed, but now it is becoming all too common. Also, children appear to be committing suicide at a much younger age nowdays. I have no doubt that if the present trend continues, infants will eventually be hanging themselves from the bars of their cribs. What is driving today's children beyond the brink of despair? Why do some children find childhood so bad that they prefer to self-destruct?
The fact that the boy was adopted seemsin my own mind to have certainly been a factor contributing to his death wish.
These are the most pestilential of times. Our decaying environment breeds disease, and man is it's principle host. With each new year come a host of unknownand often exoticdisease strains, sending researchers rushing to develop a cure.And although modern medicine continues to find new cures, fewer people can afford to be treated. Soon, even the price of medication may be beyond the reach of the masses.
Our technology can barely keep pace in the race against disease. The more energy we use searching for cures, the more industry is required, and the more contaminated our environment becomes. Contamination is what disease thrives on. Toxic shock syndrome, Legionaire's disease, radiation sickness, AIDS, Yuppie flu, nervous and mental disorders. People are dying from strange diseases which didn't even exist ten years ago, and we humans are merely pouring more fuel on the fire. Nothing can save us from our own stupidity now. The opportunity to use our collective wisdom to avert carnage, the time in which we could alter the course of events, is already passed. Man has bred himself into a dilemma which can only be solved by the great regulatordeath.
Death is marching across the face of this planet as never before. I am standing on the brink of a great human decline.

My Own Curious Vision of the Future
I'm convinced that it will be people similar to my self who will populate the world of the future. I didn't say "like" myself, because I suspect I'm not nearly so evolved in my attitudes and viewpoints as one would be in the future. I am certain, however, that the greed-driven, non-contemplative type of person who currently makes up the majority of the earth's inhabitants will eventually come to an evolutionary dead-end.
People like me aren't some sort of super-intelligent beings. We're no more intelligent than anyone else. The difference lies in our attitudes, and how we use our intelligence. But that alone is enough to make us quite different from other people. So distinctly different, that we are almost like a different intellectual species. We look the same as other people, but view the world in an entirely different way. And because of the way we view the world, we are aware of things which other people seem utterly incapable of seeing. We have the peculiar ability to see through many of the illusions which captivate the minds of the masses.
All my life I have been intrigued with the fact that people only see what they are looking for. Of course it's possible on the physical plane to encounter something you've never before seen or conceptualized. This is because you have the proper sense organs to detect it's physical reality. But if your senses were unable to detect anything, such as in the case of radio or television signals, you would have no way of knowing that they even existed. Consider for a moment that ancient men lived on this earth for thousands of years and never knew that radio signals existed. But that didn't make radio signals any less real.
The fact is, the vast majority of the physical forces which influence our lives take place outside the realm of our physical senses. How do we know of the existence of ultrasonic sound, infrared light, radar, atomic radiation and the many other invisible forces that surround us?
The only way we can know of their existence is through the use of our most powerful and neglected sense the human mind which is capable of seeing far beyond the physical plane.
It is an indisputable fact that radio waves exist, but try explaining that to someone from one of those stone-age tribes that are occasionally discovered in remote regions of the earth like Borneo. You could not do it to save your life! Not unless you had some proof, like a radio. But even then, you know as well as I do that a stone-age mind could only understand the concept of radio waves from his own perspective. Most likely, he'd think it had something to do with the spirits of his ancestors or something equally off the mark.
If you consulted a book on anthropology you might be surprised to learn that there is virtually no difference in brain size between that of modern man and that of the most primitive men now living on earth. Yet there is such a vast difference between the way the two live and view the world that if one didn't know better, he might assume he was looking at different species.
It is important to note that the limited amount of understanding available to primitive man has little to do with his brain size and much to do with the way he uses his brain. The way we use our brains determines what we are capable of seeing. And every one of us is capable of seeing much more than we ever thought possible, if only we knew how to search for it.

Throughout the ages men have always assumed that they stood at the pinnacle of human understanding;. But history proves that each age has possessed an ample share of ignorance, arrogance, and out-right stupidity.
The same may be said for our own age. In spite of all of our pride in our vast knowledge and technology, once this age has become ancient history, future men will view our actions and beliefs as no less superstitious deluded, ignorant and outright stupid as we view those of our own ancestors.
Take note of the way history regards mass opinion and belief throughout history. Almost without exception, mass opinion has proven to be wrong, with the greatest mass of people embracing the greatest bulk of ignorance. The truest thinkers of any age have always been in the minority. This age is no different.

Man is a conceptual animal;, and the quality of his life is directly related to the quality of his concepts. Thanks to industrialization, man has made great strides during the past century. The concepts of scientific inquiry, continual growth and capitalism have benefitted mankind a great dealup to a point. But now, the world and all of it's creatures are beginning to suffer from the consequences of man's heedless growth.

Unfortunately, few others share our perspective, and it is only human for others to assume that whatever lies beyond their senses doesn't exist at all.
Because we are such a minority, the majority views us as social deviants. Fortunately, the majority is usually too busy living their own lives to give us much thought, or we might not fare as well as we do.

The Outsiders, or X-people, have been living amongst ordinary men for a very long time. They're sort of like an evolutionary ace in the hole, which isn't used except in very unusual times.
Normally, the world's wealth and power goes to those who follow the blind ways of Mammon, for it is ;who is Lord of the earth. All you have to do to have wealth and power is to follow Mammon, but in doing so, you lose the potential to develop your spirit. The X-people would enjoy money and power just like anybody else, but because the refuse to subject themselves to Mammon's rule, they are shunned by mainstream society, and thus are cut off from most of the sources of earning money.
The reason the X-people refuse to bow to Mammon is because they know something which everyone else seems to have forgotten, which is that the way of mammon is the way of spiritual death.
For centuries, the X-people have eked out a living as best as they could, trying to limit their contact with Mammon as much as possible. But since the X-people were human, like everyone else, and since they, too had to feed themselves, they were forced to submit to the ways of Mammon merely to survive. But when they did, they did so with the greatest reluctance.
The X-people are the only ones who have the gift to create It is their lot to create, but they rarely benefit from their creativity. Usually, their creations are widely scorned, until years later long after the creator is dead and gone those same pure creations which were once held in such low esteem suddenly become recognized for what they are, a thing of great value. Unfortunately, it is the fate of all pure creations to be made filthy through their association with Mammon.

The X-people do not create to get rich, although that is sometimes the accidental result of creation. Generally, X-people create to express some inner vision.

There are many who seek to mimic the creative gift of the X-people. But since imitators have no soul, their creations are ugly and devoid of true creativity. X-people have no difficulty recognizing such imitations, but mainstreamers are almost universally taken in by such imitations. It's not that the imitations are ugly. No, that's not the case at all. Some imitations are quite beautiful, it's just that they lack something, just as a beautiful store mannequin lacks something. But mainstreamers are largely unaware of exactly what it is that the imitations lack. They don't really give it much thought because they assume that if it is accepted by everyone else, it must be good. They would stand in line at the finest restaurant, and pay great sums of money to eat shit, if that's what everybody else was doing. And what's more, they would claim to like it.

The X-people are seeds of a new order, and eventually they will inherit the earth. But they will do so not by competing for it, or trying to possess it, but by rather, they will win it with the power of their spirits alone.
As I've mentioned before, X-people aren't any smarter than mainstreamersMammonites but their attitude is quite different. I hesitate to use the term "spiritual" because this attitude has little to do with conventional spirituality, but there is a definite spiritual quality to what I am alluding to.

The X-people merely live their lives like anyone else on earth. They are no different than you and me with the exception of their attitude, which sets them apart. By and large, the X-people are not social activists. They are not revolutionaries except in their way of thinking. Although they may detest the current order, they have no interest in taking action against it. All they do is wait patiently for the rest of the world to collapse from the accumulated weight of it's own lies, corruption and stupidity.

Recently, the Western world saw just how quickly an oppressed people can rise up against a false god. We have seen the weight of Communism dissolve like so much black snow in the desert.
Who can point to the next illusion destined to evaporate?

In biblical terms, we X-people are watching a great struggle taking placea struggle which is invisible to the majority of mankind, but nevertheless, is as real as the air you breathe.
It is a between the Lord of the earth and the forces of consciousness;. Mammon, Lucifer, whatever you wish to call it, rest assured there is a force which lives and rules all things of matter.
God, consciousness, the Great Light, no matter what name, there is a force which exists on another plane.
These two opposing forces, the law of matter and the law of light, must unite to create life. Life is what results when these two uneasy, conflicting forces unite. Life cannot exist without both. Spirit cannot act without coming into an uneasy alliance with the forces that govern matter, and matter cannot become animate without suffering the enervating qualities of the spirit.
Spirit serves the X-people just as Mammon serves Mammonites. You choose you own god and then you pay the price.
Those who live by the spirit in hopes of a spiritual reward are the most sadly deceived of all, for they gain nothing from either world.
Man must know that he lives for both matter and spirit. There must always be a balance between the two. Pure spirit cannot act on this earth, although it may still be heard. Pure matter is utterly inanimate, and cares not whether it is mud or gold.
Only man can discern between the two, and each man does so for his own reasons.
The less mindful one is, the more like mud or gold one becomes. In either case, since he no longer has the faculties to realize what he's missing, he has no reason to feel loss.

I'm quite sure than the vast majority of X-people were not born that way. X-people are self-made. The become a little more X-like every time they think like an X, and they become more like Mammon every time they take a step in that direction. That is the way things grow, orienting toward sun or shade, growing up or down, depending on it's inclination. This difference in orientation is what eventually distinguishes the daffodil from the mushroom.
Considering the strength of mainstream values, it's a wonder that any X-people exist at all. But paradoxically enough, the more the moves toward a world-wide mono-culture;, the more X-people there will be.
Unfortunately, this is not a good time to be an X-person. I know that I will be long-dead before the dawn of consciousness. But still I'm luckier than most of my kind, since the majority of X-people have lived and died in a hostile environment, with no hope on the horizon of anything better ever taking place. I, on the other hand, stand on the brink of a genuinely new age. I guess i should be ecstatic, but I'm not. The coming new age will be Hell itself while it is being born. Humanity will suffer as never before, and from the very institutions which were once their mainstay.

Disaster will follow disaster;. All of the long-over due consequences of man's own stupidity will smite him, with interest.
The X-class will suffer just like everyone else, and may possibly suffer more than it's share simply because so few of it's members have any material goods. But the X-class will survive, and it will do so as it is has always done, by not engaging the mainstream in competition.


Morning Digressions
I didn't sleep well last night because my mind refused to shut down. I should have stayed up and written all night, but I try to keep the same hours as Terry, and she had to get up at six this morning to catch a flight to Memphis.
This morning when I heard the radio click on, I opened my eyes and just sat up as I'd only been lying there for a moment. Five minutes later, I was back at the word processor.
Soon, people will be getting up to go to work. The oxen spend their days walking in circles, turning the wheel that grinds the corn. And what do they get for their toils? A lot of hay and a few stolen mouthfuls of fallen grain.
I suppose I should be out there turning somebody's wheel, but I don't have time. Unlike the others, I am all too aware of the passing of my brief life. I know where death lurks, and I know my time here is short. Far too short to be walking in circles, following my own footprints in the dirt.
But why should I spend my day pecking away at this keyboard, when no one will read these words? Why should I bother to write at all? Perhaps I won't. Perhaps today I'll do something else for a change...nah! The reason I do this is because I am happiest when I'm working, even when that work earns me nothing but tears. Perhaps one day I'll be read, but if not, who cares? This is not my bid for immortality. This writing is no more and no less than the silver trail of a garden slug, signifying nothing more than my passage through this garden we call earth.
Men toil for the green needed to purchase their baubles. Men toil their lives away seeking substance on this most insubstantial globe.
A man spends his hard-earned money to buy a piece of land and a house so that he may say he owns it. But does he really? Or does the land own him? A land owner is tied to his property. If he wishes to move, he must first dispose of his property. While he lives on it, he must conform to community standards, which forbid him to do anything to his property without government approval. He cannot build without a permit, or demolish without one. He does not own the minerals under his land, and must obtain permission before mining or drilling on his property. He must pay taxes on his land, or the state will take it away from him. If the city or state wishes to build a sidewalk or highway across his property, the landowner has little power to prevent it. It does not matter that the sidewalk will destroy twenty of the finest trees on his land, and it does not matter that he owns the land. In the end, he is not free to do with it as he wishes, and so, in my way of thinking, he does not own anything. Society owns him by virtue of his commitment to societies ideals.
I think though, If I had my way, I'd still buy a piece of land. But I'd make damn sure it never owned me. By that, I mean that I would not buy the biggest chunk of real estate that I could afford, then struggle for years working all the over-time I could get just to make the payments. I'd rather live in a tiny house, if living in a big one meant spending my life slaving for it. A place to call home is a great comfort, but a house is a stupid thing to devote ones life to gaining and maintaining.
After all, by the time the mortgage is paid, it's time to die. You go in the ground and your house goes back on the market for some other drudge to buy and "own" for a brief while until he too, moves into a tiny piece of real estate in some chintzy memorial garden.
People who concern themselves with what will happen to their bones a hundred years hence, never cease to amuse me. We are such silly creatures!

The Bible says that the meek shall inherit the earth;.
What could that verse possibly mean? Is it a joke or what?
I'm not a religious person, in the conventional sense of the word, but I believe the bible contains a good bit of hidden wisdom for those who are capable of reading between the lines.
The Christian religion as we know it is based upon a limited interpretation of the bible. Indeed, the bible was written so as to foster just such an interpretation. For it is only this interpretation which is palatable to the mass of humanity. If the bible's real message were not hidden, the book would have been destroyed long ago, by the very people who now venerate it by virtue of their ignorance.
I, who once considered myself an atheist, am now reading the bible. But now, I am reading it with new eyes. I care little for what it has to say about desert tribes. What I seek is prophecy.

We are living in the strangest of times. Men say history repeats itself, and that there is nothing new under the sun. The bible says the same thing, in Ecclesiastes, but that was then, and this is now. Never before has there been a time like this one. A great and invisible struggle is taking place, and soon the world as we know it will cease to exist.
I'm sure you're wondering how I can say that with such conviction. I sound like some kind of apocalyptic bible-thumping kook, don't I? Well, that's the nature of great revelations. They never come from those in power, and they never come from rich men. Revelations belong to the meek and weak. It is the nature of such things to always make themselves known only to the powerless. Revelations and prophecies are not the agents of change that we have always thought they were. They occur naturally, like the wind before the storm. The mourning dove's insistent call is heard by every ear, but few know what it heralds. Only those who can recognize the smell of rain on the incoming breeze know to seek shelter.

Men throw off chains of rusty iron in exchange for chains of shining silver. Confronted by the forces of a greater evil, Communism collapses upon itself. See how quickly an illusion dies when the time is ripe? The West rejoices when it should be weeping. Soon, those of this world, joined together in a head-long rush, blinded by the glare of countless mirrors, will feel the ground drop from beneath their feet.
As top-heavy earth shifts in its orbit, those who were at the top will soon lie at the bottom.

There is so much irony in the world! The tyranny of Communism is dissolving with little bloodshed. Whole nations are freed to pursue a new creed of relentless greed. All they will do is hasten the end of this dark era.
America, in its desperate pursuit of a receding illusion, will become the most misery-wracked place on earth.
The iron fist of Communism opens to release it's people unharmed, but the United States government will never release it's people without a bloody revolution. Only in this country will the government wage war against it's own people.


Photos
I came across a photo album in a book store called "Deeds of War", by James Nachtwey. According to the introduction, Nachtwey "stalks the terrifying existence of war and civil strife with his camera. He places the dehumanizing elements of war in a human dimension."
"Art is the main process through which we can achieve a consensus about how it is with us. Only art can remove a moment from the whirl of events and place it before our scrutiny. It is the place where imagination meets the outer world and where each can be seen to subtly change the other."
Nachtwey's photos are some of the most brutal I have ever seen. One particularly memorable photo was of two soldiers wearing rubber gloves holding a seated corpse up by its hands. Although the body was not decayed, it's head was totally stripped of all flesh. Nothing covered the skull except for a thin caul of white cartilage-like substance. I never imagined a skull could be so white. With the cheeks missing and its jaws laid bare, it had a most horrifying gapingly grim grin. But the most horrifying part of the picture were the corpse's eyes. They were sunken into the eye sockets, so that the corpse appeared as if it were peering down beneath its own cheekbones.
As horrible as these photos are, they are worth seeing. I'd like to show them to each and every little boy who wants to grow up to be a soldier.

Key to the New Age
Women hold the key to the new age, and the dawn of consciousness cannot and will not arrive until women change their fundamental attitudes about sex. Currently women tend to select mates on the basis of money and power, and thus, men are driven to compete amongst themselves for these necessary commodities. This is the sexual economy the most basic of all economies and it forms the foundation of our society.
Until women begin to recognize other virtues in men besides wealth and power, men will continue as they have always done since time immemorial, trashing the world in their mad competition for wealth and power.
If however, instead of money and power, women suddenly began selecting their mates based on poetic or artistic talents, the world would soon be awash in artists and poets.


Skepticism is a powerful tool for thinkers, but all too often it ceases to be so much a tool as a knee-jerk reaction, a conditioned response to every novel situation. The disciplined thinker knows when to use a tool, and when to lay it aside in favor of a more appropriate one.
Any writer will tell you that when you are in a creative phase, you shouldn't stop to edit yourself. To do so is death to creativity. The mindset required for editing is quite different from that needed for creativity. And the two are mutually antagonistic. Creativity comes from a release of control, and editing is an exercise of control.
Original thinkers always operate outside the constraints of conventional thought. In such a state, the critical mind (which is an embodiment of society's values) is held in check, and anything becomes permissible. Later comes the task of sorting it all out, separating the good from the bad, the relevant from the irrelevant, then arranging the pieces in an agreeable (intelligible, or socially relevant) fashion. This is what editing is all about, and there is an art to this as well.
Any reasonably literate person can read another's work and make spelling, punctuation and word usage corrections. There is no art to this. In fact, it's such a low-level intellectual task that computers can now do the job quite well. But a computer cannot think like a good editor. The best editors are sensitive to the subject matter, capable of shaping, smoothing and clarifying the author's thought to its highest level. This sense of the art is what distinguishes the mediocre editor from the man of genius.
There are times when a creative thinker needs a good editor, but all too often the editor becomes over-zealous in his role. At such times, he tends to kill precisely that which the creative writer has laboured to give birth to.
The most creative people are those who are most intellectually free; free from limiting concepts, free from ideas of how things "should" be. The artist is like an uncivilized child who has yet to learn society's values. A child who hasn't been brainwashed into seeing things the same way everybody else does. Every act we take has the potential for creativity,12.5 but we have this little censor inside our heads who, every time we start to deviate from the norm and venture out into the world of the new, says, "That's not right! That's not the way it should be done!" So we turn away from the unknown and burrow back into the way society says it should be done, which tends toward the familiar, the mundane, mediocrity and banality.
Unfortunately, the very characteristics which allow the artist to create also serve as a barrier between himself and the rest of society.
The artist must seek to transcend the illusions of his own culture in order to seek a higher truth. This is what makes the artist such a threat to society he does not buy into the mass delusion of the time, but rather, follows his own vision. And whenever a man follows his own vision, there exists the potential for madness or genius or madness and genius. When the artist brings back visions of the things he saw and did out there on the fringe, the rest of society tends to view his vision as subversivewhich it is. But a little subversion is necessary for a healthy society.
The artist is the child who points out a truth, such as the absurdity of uncle Milt's toupee.

The Artist;

-What I'm trying to say here is that the artist must necessarily divest himself from the bulk of society's values if he is ever to do anything "original" ( meaning not the hackneyed cliched way everybody else does it.) But by expunging society's absurd values from his mind, he is also rejecting parts of society, and in return, much of society rejects him. The problem arises when the artist comes back in from his trek in the desert, with an arm load of creativebut highly threatening ideas. He needs some sympathetic intermediary between himself and the rest of society. Someone who can assist him in his attempts to introduce these new ideas to society. This is what the editor does. The editor is an intermediary between those who are blinded from their vision of truthand those who are blinded by the illusion in which they live.
Sometimes the editor's job is to take that which is socially unacceptable, and re-package it into a form society will find more palatable. However, he must do this without damaging the integrity of the work. This is a great art indeed.
The editor is the artist's midwife, who assists in the birth. He/she takes this ugly red-faced thing all covered in goo and cleans it and wraps it, and places it in a crib for all to admire.

Weirdo-Types;
I dropped by the Taco Bell the other day for a bite to eat. Standing in in the line in front of me was this woman who kept smiling as if she was really happy. I looked around but couldn't see any reason she should be so happy. Since genuinely happy people are such a rare thing to see these days, I thought perhaps she might be retarded or mentally ill. I watched her order five 49 cent tacos and the largest-sized Coke they had. But it made absolutely no sense to buy the largest and most expensive Coke because they gave free refills no matter what size drink you ordered. That's when I knew she must be some kind of dangerous weirdo-type, and so I edged away from her.

Form of Music Censorship
Heard my first New Age protest song today on WRAS radio, lamenting the stupidity and complacency of the masses. It was by "Dell Amitri" from the album, "Waking Hours". I dropped by a record shop to see if I could find the title, but I was told that WRAS plays a lot of import titles, and due to the "Parallel import law" it is not very difficult for international music to be imported into this country.

Solving
Paul met me at the High Art Museum this afternoon, and for once he was almost on time. After checking out the art work, (what can you say about art?) I gave him a ride back to his car, which was parked several blocks from the museum. As we passed Yonah park, we spotted a city of Atlanta dump truck way out in the middle of the park, next to a swing set. It was loaded with tree limbs and was also stuck up to its axles in mud. One look and you could see that there was no way it was going to escape under its own power.
The driver of the truck had summoned another dump truck to the scene, and the two trucks were parked head to head, about 100 feet apart. Both trucks had winches, and the drivers were busy extending the thick steel cables. We watched a guy hook the two cables together, and then stand there as the winches began to reel it all in.
I said, "Watch! I'll bet that cable is going to break right where that guy is standing."
We quickly parked our car and got out. As we headed toward the scene I called to Paul, "If we hurry, we can see it bust."
Sure enough just as the cable grew taunt, it snapped right in the middle. One of the five-pound hooks whipped back like an axe head. Fortunately, it clanged harmlessly into the truck's grille. But anybody standing in its way could have been cut in half.
I got so excited that I jumped up in the air and shouted out loud, "Did you see that, Paul? It busted exactly where I said it would! All we had to do was look at it as we were driving up to know that it was going to bust, so why couldn't any of those guys figure it out?"
"Hell, John, I don't know, maybe that's why those guys work for the city, and you don't."
"Look at that, man...they're hooking it up the same way again. There's no way they're going to pull that truck out that way!"
"Well" said Paul, "What would you do?"
"I'll tell you instead of running both winch cables out and attaching them in the middle, I'd attach the winch cable from truck "A" to the bumper on truck "B" and vice versa. That way, you'd cut the strain on the cable in half, and at the same time, double the pulling strength."
"Yeah, that makes sense."
"So why can't those guys figure it out?"
"Maybe they're stupid."
You'd think that the men would have learned something from watching the thing break the first time. They should have known that over-extended cables would stretch dangerously under so much strain. But they just re-attached the hook to the broken cable, then re-connected the two hooks the same way as before.
When it was time to start the winch, a big black man walked over and leaned up against the truck with his back to the cable, then pulled the power lever. I was amazed at his bravado, and considering the accident I'd seen just a few minutes earlier, this appeared to me to be a very dangerous and foolhardy thing to do. I said to Paul, "Look at that fool! He's tightening the cable and isn't even bothering to keep an eye on it. If it snaps, it could cut him in two!"

Sure enough, when the strain became unbearable, the cable snapped like a rifle shot, and as it whipped back, the hook sliced through that guy like he was soft cheese, burying itself half-through his kidneys. The force of the blow doubled him up like a hinge and wedged him under the truck bumper like a wad of play-dough. He barely managed to shriek one short scream before he died
I said to Paul, "See what I told you! The dumb son of a bitch went and got himself killed can you believe that?"
"Jesus, man, oh God, I can't believe it, ...he's cut in half man, what can we do, oh God, his guts are all over the ground man, I can't believe it! I just can't believe it, Oh god man..."
"Shut up Paul, and get a grip on yourself! The show's over. Let's get out of here before the cops show up."

as Hood Ornaments
While we were watching the dump truck pulling contest, Paul spotted something wired to the grille of one of the trucks. We couldn't figure out what it was until we got closer and discovered it was a foot-tall plastic gorilla. The driver must have found it in the trash and decided to use it for a hood ornament.
This struck me both as odd, yet understandable. Odd, because since all of the men in the work crew were black, you'd think the last thing they'd want to be identified with would be a monkey. Understandable, because several of the huge pot-bellied black men loitering around the truck looked very much like gorillas to me. Therefore, I could understand how they could identify with the gorilla, which is a big and powerful black animal.
Are you shocked at what I just said? Do you think there's something wrong with saying it?
There's nothing wrong with identifying with animals, since people of all races do it. People have always identified themselves with animals, especially macho animals like lions, tigers or grizzly bears. The Black Panthers a militant Black organizationidentifies with a powerful black jungle cat, don't they? They obviously didn't see their identification with this animal as demeaning, and I assume the same is true for the City of Atlanta workers.

We live in such sensitive times that I feel compelled to justify what I have written. We've gotten to the point in this society where a guy can't even think aloud without poofing somebody's sacred cow, and I think it's a damned shame. It's gotten so bad that now we're digging up dead men's private diaries (H.L. Mencken) and attacking them for ever daring to think unpopular thoughtseven in private.

I don't think we should be ashamed of our animal ancestors. After all, we are animals.
A lot of this animal name-calling thing is in the ear of the beholderif you can behold with your ears. I could call you "tiger" all day long, and it would be up to you to decide whether I was insulting you or giving you a complement. If you took it as a compliment, then more power to you, but if you too it as an insult, all you'd accomplish would be to give me a stick to beat you with.
When you think of it, there are few animals in the world that deserve greater respect than the gorilla. He's strong, yet gentle. He's only fierce when he's defending himself or his turf. He's mainly a vegetarian. Gorillas are not prone to joining the Hare Krishna's or any other religious sect, and no gorilla has ever been known to vote Republican. They rarely steal from one another, they don't have wars nor do they murder each other. All consideredand especially compared to humans gorillas are pretty decent animals.

Taboos
Quite frequently, the most taboo subjects are not deeply hidden secrets nor are they vastly incomprehensible mysteries, but rather, they are things which lie right out in the open where everybody can see thembut for some reason they don't. One reason people don't see the obvious is because they refuse to look. They have learned to quickly avert their eyes whenever they are in danger of seeing one of those unspeakably obvious facts of life which people so assiduously shun. But why is this? What possible reason could there be for society's refusing to see or deal with some aspect of reality?

This question is especially intriguing when you consider that while society refuses to acknowledge the existence of certain realities, those realities still exist, and therefore still exert an influence upon the society which refuses to acknowledge it.
The net effect of refusing to acknowledge a reality is simply to render it invisible. And you cannot avoid an invisible reality, because you have no way of knowing it is there.

For a society to deny the existence of something is like leaving an invisible pothole in the middle of the social highway. Suppose for a moment that those people who use the highway want desperately to believe that their roads never wear out, and therefore, they refuse to see or admit that there are any potholes in the road. But refusing to see the potholes doesn't make them go away, it merely relegates them to the invisible realm, beyond human awareness. And so long as they remain invisible, they lie beyond human control. A driver cannot avoid what he cannot see, and even after he hits one, he has no idea what happened. All he knows is that it couldn't have been a pothole, therefore it must be something else something very complicated and mysterious which keeps ruining his tires.
What I am really talking about is mass cultural blindness a society's refusal to look at certain realities or consider certain possibilities. That mass cultural blindness (or denial) exists is indisputable to anyone who is capable of seeing the obvious. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people so endowed are all under the age of five, and nobody pays any attention to what children have to say. And by the time a child is old enough to play with other children he has become as blind to the culture in which he swims as a fish is to seawater.

Although all humans have basically the same brain, we don't all think alike.
What makes different cultures different is not the funny clothes people wear, but the way the way they view their world.

Most of life is a state of mind.
Therefore, it is quite possible that we really are whoever we think we are.

The Asquats can speak to their ancestor's spirits because in Asquat society it is permissible to speak to spirits.

Krishna is just as real to the Hare Krishnas as Jesus is to Christians. Yet it is human to scoff at that which we cannot understand. Therefore, since I was raised a Christian, the Hare Krishnas are full of beans.

Before we can attempt to understand, we must first learn to see what there is to be understood.
And we can only see what our minds already know to exist.
We can't see what isn't supposed to be.

Each society has it's own unique way of seeing the world. This is what makes Americans and our way of seeing the world so different from the way the Balinese see their world.

In many ways, each human culture is like a distinct organism, in much the same way as ant colonies may be thought of as being distinct organisms. Think of yourself as being like a single cell in a very complex brain. You play a role in the scheme of things which transcends the individual nature of your existence. You are a part of something larger than yourself, whether you want to be or not. And it is not possible to understand what it is that you are a part of, nor it's purpose. You're just going along for the ride, just like a single cell in your own brain goes wherever you take it.


Each society must define itself in terms of it is, and what it is not;. The same is true for individuals. Each individual defines himself in terms of who he is and who he is not.

Aspen Colorado notes:
Aspen produces several free daily newspapers. Lately, all of the papers have been following S. Thompson's escapade; with an ex-porn star whose tit he is accused of maliciously tweaking.
Her accusations precipitated a raid on H.S.'s home by the local Gestapo, who subsequently discovered a machine gun and some explosives in the house along with minute quantities of drugs. Now poor old Hunter has his ass back in a sling, which seems to be the most natural place of it to be.
The way I see it, instead of getting arrested, Hunter S. Thompson ought to get a medal for promoting tourism, since he always seems to be in the news. If it weren't for him, the newspapers would make very dull reading indeed.
the Stores
The people working in the stores and art galleries seem quite desperate for business. They're all fretting as the snow base slowly melts away. Many of the shop keepers I spoke with are already worrying about the effect a dry summer is going to have on the summer rafting season.
I noticed a conspiracy among local merchants to lie to any and all tourists about how much snow base is actually on the mountain. They also lie about the quality of the skiing.
I passed a photo gallery with an interesting gimmick I thought worth stealing. They'll take a person's photo and mount it on white quarter-inch plastic, then cut around the figure's outline with a computer-driven laser, producing free-standing figures.
Several of the art galleries I passed looked interesting, so I checked out a couple. The sales people were always quite unctuous and eager to present me with Polaroid photos of any art work I liked. Whenever I would ask for biographical information on the artist, they would practically do handsprings to fetch it for me.
I also visited several fur stores and tried on some jackets and hats. Whenever I found something particularly ridiculous-looking I persuaded the sales person to take a photo of me with my instamatic camera. First, I tried on a calf-length shearling coatSawyer of Napa brand priced at only $1450, then modeled a Coyote fur jacket priced at a mere six grand.
Although I tested out some expensive gear, the only thing I bought that afternoon was a post card at the Leiderhosen hut. I think a bullshit artist could have a lot of fun in Aspen so long as he didn't stick around in one place too long.
Frou-frou Shops
I popped into a T-shirt shop specializing in putting famous works of art on shirts. I spied one shirt which I liked very much, which had a Pablo Picasso painting "Les Demoiselles D' Avignon- 1907 " on the front of the shirt. Another shirt which caught my eye was Van Gogh's "Harvest at La Crau"-1888, and a funky modern piece by a guy named Eduardo, called "Ozone", which I have reproduced below.


I saw a tourist taking a picture of a woman who was filming someone else with her video camera. Tourists taking pictures of tourists who are taking pictures of tourist attractions.Morgan Falls Landfill
People never consider any but the most immediate consequences of their actions. A good example of this is the landfill located about a half-mile from Morgan Falls. Morgan Falls is on the Chattahootchee river, upstream from where Atlanta draws its drinking water. Although the landfill doesn't leak now, it probably will within twenty years. Then people will will wonder how city officials could be so stupid as to build a toxic waste dump next to the water supply.
Dump trucks are still hauling trash to the landfill, but fancy apartment buildings have already been built across the street. The air rising from the landfill is probably foul and unwholesome even though it looks and smells fresh enough. I see that Georgia Power has strung high-tension power lines right down the middle of the fill. There's no telling what mother nature will cook up provided she has plenty of raw chemical sludge and electromagnetic energy to play with.
Across the street from the apartment complex, the vast expanse of acreage which was once covered with garbage is now cloaked with green fields of grass. It looks safe enough. But is it really safe? Nobody will know for twenty years or so, because that's how much time it takes for cancerous tumors to appear. But by then, most of the the residents will have moved elsewhere, children will be grown and scattered, and nobody will be the wiser.
Hidden Killer
That's horror behind pollution;. It's a hidden killer. Not only does it result in the loss of life, but it destroys human potential, and the quality of life. When a child's brain is damaged by lead poisoning, how do you measure what was lost? When a man develops Alzheimer's disease in his early forties or becomes mentally ill due to toxins in the air, how does he go about gaining restitution? What can you give a man to compensate for the loss of his mind?

Unfortunately, people only concern themselves with what they can see, but since they occur at such a slow pace, the major effects of pollution are invisible. And because it takes such a long time for the slow poison of pollution to take effect, it is almost impossible to establish a link between cause and effect.

Ugly Duckling
I took a walk by the duck pond late this afternoon. The ducksabout a dozen were there as usual. An island juts out of the middle of the pond, providing the ducks with a safe refuge. There are no predators to speak of, except for an occasional stray dog, and there's plenty of food in the pond. It looks like a duck could have a pretty good life here, and all the ducks do all except for one.
All the ducks look healthy and well-fed except for one, and he is dying from abuse. I don't know why, but several of the other ducks will not leave this poor creature alone. He walks and swims with the other ducks, and they appear to tolerate him without any trouble, until suddenly, without provocation one or two ducks will turn on this one ugly duckling and chase him. If he's caught, his attacker will climb onto his back and try to drown him while plucking at his neck.
When I last saw himseveral weeks ago the attacks were apparently just beginning, because he didn't look too much the worse for wear. At the time, I thought that "he" was a "she" and suspected that what I was witnessing had something to do with duck sex. But now I realize that this isn't the case.
Now the duck is a pathetic sight to see. All of its feathers have been plucked from his neck, and most of the feathers are gone from his back. His neck is covered in sores from where other ducks have ravaged him with their beaks. And most sadly, one of his eyes has been put out.
As I watched him swim about, another duck swam up and attacked. The attacker climbed on his back and forced it's head under water while "chewing" its neck with its beak. I have no idea what is going on here, but it appears that this one poor duck is being mercilessly hounded to death.
I'm not certain whether it's just one or two other ducks who are playing the bully, or whether all the ducks take turns attacking him.
However, it disturbs me to see this poor bird being hounded to death by the pack. I'm not sure why this bothers me so much, other than I can see no reason in the midst of such abundance, for any duck to suffer so. I know that ducks do not have any sense of right and wrong, and I realize that it would be foolish to expect a bird to conform to my sense of fair play. But I guess what I'd like to do is to play God by somehow altering this bird's fate. As it stands, he has no other fate but to be pecked until he dies.

While I was there, a large tan dog built like a Labrador, except with pale blue eyes, came bounding up. His master was nowhere around. The dog kept dashing into the water after the ducks, but of course he couldn't catch any of them. Whenever he came back to shore, he'd head for the nearest person and either try to jump on them or shake water on them. He tried to jump up on me and had to fend him off with my hand, which was left disgustingly wet. Then I watched the dog chase some children, not maliciously but as if to play. But the dog was twice the size of the children, and he scared them, especially one little girl whose arm he caught in his mouth. A woman accompanying the children shoed the dog away, but he just jumped in the water, then bounded back on land to shake water all over the kids. The woman shooed him away again, so he jumped back in the water, then headed over to shake on me.
Well, I'd had about enough of this canine hooligan, so when he drew within two yards or me, I let him have it with my Mace. The wind was blowing in his direction, and I watched the cloud of spray blossom from the nozzle and waft toward him. But he just stood there looking puzzled. I, too was puzzled. First of all, I'd expected the Mace to come out in a stream, but instead it sprayed out so that it couldn't have reached anybody standing more than three feet away. Secondly, I'd watched the breeze carry the stuff to the dog, but he acted as if I'd sprayed him with water. So I poofed him with another dose. But he just shook his head for a second like he was going to sneeze, then stared at me without moving an inch. I decided that my spray had either gone flat or he was immune to the stuff.
At that point, I wisely decided against giving him another shot, since it certainly wouldn't deter him and it might make him mad.

Ants
Today I killed and killed again until a dozen lay destroyed. But then one more appeared and out of reflex I killed it too, and before I knew, had brought the weight of unlucky thirteen a hex to rest against my door. This curse I had to release at once, so I searched about for just one more. Soon I found him, feelers waving to explore; it lurched from the shadow of my approaching finger, not a second did it linger, running fast as tiny feet could carry, not an instant did it tarry, but nevertheless, nevermore!


is Less
As our society continues to amass information and knowledge, individual understanding decreases. That's because information is infinite but man's ability to comprehend is finite. Even if a man had no need to eat or sleep, and was gifted with a photographic memory, he could study night and day and still not ingest any more than a fraction of the knowledge humanity has amassed.No man, not even the greatest genius who has ever lived, can fully comprehend the world in which we live. That's why people in high places make such stupid mistakesthey literally don't know any better.
When any system or thing is seen in its entirety, and the connections and relationships between each part of the system are clearly evident, we say that it is a well-integrated system. Integration is the aggregate, the whole, which is the opposite of fragmentation. But specialization requires that one focus solely on one tiny aspect of the whole. Specialization requires a process of dividing or fragmentingsomething into smaller and smaller components. Specialization is just another word for dis-integration.
Specialization is a process of giving up one form of comprehension in order to obtain another. It is merely a change in perspective, another point of view. There is nothing wrong with this per se, so long as one understands that he only has one piece of the puzzle, and so long as there exists some system for re-integrating the information. Unfortunately, our society lacks a way to integrate the masses of fragmentary information into a well-integrated body of knowledge.

Dis-integration is the opposite of integration. Disintegration is analogous to entropy, which is a process of coming apart, dissolving, breaking down.

Apparently, the second law of thermodynamics also applies to information, resulting in information entropy, which is just another way of saying information pollution.
Man's ability to comprehend the society in which he lives is disintegrating.
As the volume of information increases within our society, there is a corresponding movement toward dis-integration.Society
Specialization, fragmentation, dis-integration;
the end result is that within the body of society
the thigh bone becomes disconnected from the shin bone,
the elbow becomes disconnected from the hand,
and eventually we all fall down.
Coming Information Flood
Beyond a certain point, any additional data merely serves to clog the communication channels, further reducing the flow of useful information. As the information flow grows in volume it will eventually reach a point at which it becomes a destructive force.
Like a storm-swollen river overflowing its banks, a flood of information washes away all understanding.

Beyond a certain level of intensity, information merely becomes noise.

Disintegration
Civilizations tend to become more complex over time. This is self-evident. Think about it there has never been a civilization which has started out being complex and grownor evolved toward simplicity.30
Complexity, however, leads to specialization, and specialization tends toward division and fragmentation. Each specialized field of study seeks to know all there is to know about one little piece of the whole. But by training our minds to view the world only from the micro perspective, we eventually lose our ability to see the world from any other perspective. This is the situation we have today. There is no one alive who is able to understand the workings of society as a whole, meaning in it's entirety.

"In medicine as in life, until the mind has been prepared to see something, it will pass unnoticed, as invisible as if it did not exist."
Ovid, ancient Roman poet.

Proceed in an Orderly Fashion
One day in the Kingdom of Id, the King fell ill. And a call was sent throughout the land for the greatest medical experts of the age to assemble at the palace. An endocrinologist was the first to arrive. After performing a battery of tests he announced "The King is suffering from a hormonal imbalance."
Then a urologist arrived, and he too, performed a battery of tests before solemnly announcing that the King was suffering from weak kidneys. Then a cardiologist listened to the king's chest and said he thought he heard a heart murmur. But the King's neurologist said, "No, the King's problem is not his heart, but rather, he lacks synaptic plasticity! Then a hematologist peered at a test tube full of the King's blood and proclaimed that the King was ill due to an elevated count of white blood cells.
While these learned gentlemen were debating among themselves, a hospital orderly came in to empty the Kings bedpan. He took one look at the King and announced, "The King is dead!"

"The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end is Art...From its first to its last works, Art is the spirit's voluntary use and combinations of things to serve its ends."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882 Society and Solitude: Art

"Those communities intent on suppressing difference, preventing change and compelling loyalty to shared beliefs inevitably find themselves at odds with art. Art sustains individualism and diversity, the right to difference. Authoritarian regimes silence artists."&nbsp

The Art Museum
Today was "prole day" at the art museumthe one day in the week when they don't charge admissionso I stopped by to view the new Black artist's exhibit. It's always strikes me oddly how the city can sponsor an art exhibit featuring only black artists, and bill it as such, yet avoid being labeled as racist. Can you imagine the uproar if the art museum tried to sponsor a "white artist's exhibit?"
The first gallery I toured was on the third floor, which is where all my favorites are. Everything there is three to five hundred years old. The artwork's venerable age places it beyond the reproach of contemporary society. I think that's why I like it; it isn't of this society, but rather, a product of another age.
Title of painting: "Amnon and Tamar";: Scene of a satyr-like man pressing his amour onto a reticent female. Painted by an unidentified artist, Venetian, late 17th century, oil on canvas. (ID# 40.1)
If a painting of this subject matter a sex scene featuring a man forcing his attention on a woman was produced today, the daughters of lesbos would probably march to the museum en masse to have a slash at it with their box cutters.
Title of painting: "Boy With a Carafe of Roses" Artist: follower of Caravaggio, Italian, late 17th century, oil on canvas. (ID # 58.1).
Judging by today's standards, I can see at once that this is a homoerotic piece which was probably commissioned by some rich 17th century Italian queer. No doubt it hung in his bed room and served as an aid to masturbation or worse!

Sometimes as I'm viewing a painting I'll make a quick pencil sketch. This helps to etch the work into my mind. It's amazing how much more detail you will notice, and how much more you can remember, if you simply take the time to sketch what you see.

As I stood sketching, three black women walked up and stood between me and the painting. They seemed to be unaware or unconcerned that they were blocking my view. How rude! When they didn't move on after a couple of moments, I blew my police whistle and shouted, "Guard! Guard!" When the guards came running up I said, "Those women are trying to deface the art work! I saw them, I saw them!" The guards then grabbed the women and dragged them away.

Usually the only blacks I see when I come here are the guards, but today the museum was crowded with black people. When the Chinese exhibit was in town I hardly saw any blacks here at all, however, they turn out in great numbers for a black cultural event.

Thought usually precedes action. Sometimes, however, thought substitutes for action.

we grow old prematurely
We set our minds on wearing out too soon, and that's why we do. A man can often succeed in living twenty years longer simply by allowing for the possibility in his mind. Instead of sixty-five or seventy-three, think 101.

"She"
I found a bench in the upstairs gallery and sat down to write. Soon a young blonde-haired woman entered the gallery.. She was tall and slender and wore a short black skirt. She walked to the center of the room, then paused in front of a painting I'd been studying. Suddenlyin spite of the fact that I had no real interest in the girl it became very difficult to focus my mind on writing. She was young and pretty, and this was all it took to steal my attention.
Sometimes I resent this power women have to distract. There are times when sex is a welcome intrusion, but other times I'm happy enough being by my self and would rather be left undisturbed. It's so easy for a woman to disturb a man's mind. What's so damnably aggravating about it is that she doesn't even have to know he's there. She arrives like an unexpected gust of wind through an open window blowing across the mind's desk top, scattering papers and sending man scrambling willy- nilly for his wits.
But whose fault is that, anyway? Is it her action that's to blame, or my reaction? It's neither one nor the other, but a combination of the two. It's her sexual attractiveness and my mind. But her sex alone has no power; if I were some other animal, like a dog or cat, she'd elicit no more than a yawn from me. But I am a man, and men are apparently hard-wired to react to certain stimuli whether they want to or not. And that's what irritates me about women; they're so damned hard to ignore.
There are times when I don't want to be bothered with thoughts of sex. What good is desire without satisfaction? All it amounts to is frustration, and I've got enough of that in my life already. Every time a woman walks by, she fans the spark of desire. Women come and go, largely oblivious of the havoc they wreak on man's spirit. The coal ebbs, then glows brightly, its heat burning through the center of man's awareness. It begs to be extinguished, all of nature demands immediate action, but circumstances won't allow it. So a man sits and stews in his own juices. He suffers a thousand temptations without hope of attaining a one. Constant sexual temptation without hope of gratification is a subtleand for some unfortunates not so subtle form of Chinese water torture.
And that, I suppose, is why I resent this young woman's intrusion into my thoughts more than I appreciate her beauty.
I don a stone face and labor over my writing tablet, trying to ignore her. My eyes turn cold, my heart grows cold as snow-capped iron. Finally she starts to leave. As she's walking out of the room I cannot resist a final peek. Everything moves like clock work, the puppet jerks on his string. She feigns a yawn, then turns and glances over her shoulder directly at me. When our eyes meet she smiles. Instinctively, I smile too. How brittle the stone is, how easily it cracks!


Title of painting: "Landscape With Head and Blue Birds, " wax crayon and pencil and ink on paper board. Artist: Minnie Evans

While I was studying a chromed steel sculpture of a man-like figure, two young black women walked up beside me. One woman said,"Eh Lu." At first I thought she said "hello," but when she repeated herself, I realized what she was actually saying was the artist's name "Ed Love."

I saw an amazing musical instrument called "Instrument For Four People," which had been made by an artist by the name of Everald Brown, a Jamaican, born in 1917.

Snake and the Sperm
One theme that all the art kept reminding me of was the connection between the snake and the sperm, the serpent and the seed; both have a potent bite. The serpent has a poisonous bitethat we all know but how many know that the serpent also brings life? While on this subject, why does the doctor's staff, the caduceus, (which used to be Mercury's staff) have two snakes twined around it?.

Leather Woman
The most amazing piece of art I saw was a life-sized standing figure of a black woman. The woman looked primitive, like an African native, and was more naked than clothed.
The most remarkable thing about this figure was that it looked like a mummified woman whose skin had been peeled off, tanned, then stitched back onto a form. I could see stitch marks, which led me to believe that the form was a life-sized casting of the artist, which had then been covered in extremely thin dark-stained leather. A big fat black woman came over while I was studying the piece and commented that she thought it looked so life-like it looked like it might move.
While I was studying the sculpture, I discovered a gold seal, about a half-inch square, high on the figure's right hip. It said Renee Stout, 1988.
There was also a descriptive plaque on the wall which said that in this sculpture, the artist was presenting herself as a life-sized Nkisi covered with the accoutrements of power and magic that are characteristic of Central Africa.

Gains and Losses
Yesterday I saw a woman weeding her garden while talking on a cordless telephone. She looked kind of silly trying to pull weeds with one hand while holding a phone to her ear. I guess she'd have looked even sillier wearing a telephone headset, but that's what she needed. Seeing this lady made me realize how deeply technology has intruded into our lives. The telephone provides us with a marvelous means of communicationwhich I can't imagine living withoutbut at the same time I wonder what we had to give up to get this new technology? People tend to believe that any new technology represents an improvement over the way things were, but is this always true? I suspect doesn't so much improve the world as it does change it;. Look how the telephone has changed the face of long-distance communication.
&nbspLetter-writing; was once the preeminent long-distance mode of communication. But now this function has been largely usurped by the telephone. There once was a time when people took pen in hand to lay down thoughts on paper. But the ease and immediacy of talking on the telephone slowly rendered letter writing obsolete. Of course a few people still write letters, just as some still practice calligraphy, but the art is fading fast.
If you visit the library you can find whole books of letters written by famous people. President Teddy Roosevelt wrote over 150,000 letters while in office.42 You'd think from looking at the volumes of letters shelved in the public library that when writers weren't busy authoring books they were frantically pening letters to all of their friends. There was a time when people actually composed their thoughts before utterance, but that was then, and this is now. Now we have the telephone.
People used telephones back when Hemingway was alive, but still, he managed to write enough personal letters to fill a book. 43 However, if Hemmingway were alive today I doubt that even he would bother to write personal letters. Nowadays people just pick up the phone and call. Besides, he'd probably be too busy making public appearances to promote his books.

It looks like I've developed a weakness in my argument: If the telephone signaled the demise of personal correspondence and phones existed when Hemmingway was alive, then how do you account for all the letters he wrote? It just occurred to me that the central idea I'm trying to tease out of my tired brain has little to do with telephones versus letters.
What I'm trying to get across is this: we tend to think of technology as an accumulative process, with new information continually being added to the collection of information which humanity has amassed over the centuries. But is this actually the case, or do we forget as much as we learn? How many people still know what to do with a stone axe and how many know how to harness a horse or an ox? The fact is that new technologies tend to supplant old technologies. We cannot embrace the new without loosening our grasp on the past. No matter what a new technology may give us, we always give up something in the bargain. Here are some questions we ought to ask ourselves whenever something new and wonderful is introduced to the world: what do our new technologies force us to give up? What have we given up in exchange for the technologies we now have, and more importantly, what will we have to give up in order to embrace the next level of technology?

What we gained with the advent of the telephone was rapid and immediate communication. But now, the down side is that people would rather pick up the telephone than write. People phone instead of visiting friends in person. You think of your aging parents sitting home alone, but do you pay them a visit, or do you just pick up the telephone and call? What do we gain, and what do we lose?
The telephone is faster, easier and more efficient than writing. Because it appeals to a wider population, it may be said that the telephone is also a more democratic instrument than correspondence. One must be literate in order to write but speech is common to all.
In all true democracies, the cultural level tends to gravitate toward the lowest common denominator. The telephone allowed more people to communicate with each other than ever before, but at the same time the overall quality of communication declined a great deal.
I think we're seeing a similar thing taking place with respect to computer technology. For a few grand, anyone can own a printing press. Verbiage is expanding exponentially. Anyone with a PC can string words together and print them on paper.
Look at the PC has changed the way things are done; at my church: it used to be that the only printed material the church produced was the church bulletin. It consisted of a single 8 x 11 piece of paper folded in half, and contained all of the information necessary to conduct a Sunday service. But now instead of a simple bulletin, the church publishes a four-page newsletter each Sunday, complete with cartoons. By the time the benediction starts, the slow readers are still on page three. On top of that, the church singles group mails out a monthly four-page news letter which is so juvenile that it does not merit reading. The thing which pisses me off the most though, is the fund-raising letter which the church mails out twice a month. It's a smarmy mealy-mouthed Word-perfect fully justified computer-generated document that's been printed in Courier font so it'll look like it was typed on an old-fashioned people-friendly typewriter instead of one of those Satan boxes from Hell.

On the surface, you'd think a renaissance of good writing would be produced by providing Everyman with the means to self-publish. And for all I know, that might very well be the case. I certainly fall into the category of Everyman. I don't make my living writing, I simply do it because I'm bored with T.V. I, of course, write only the purest cream of literature, but unfortunately the bulk of what is being written today (by Philistines) is very base indeed. Even though the writing may technically correct, the quality of thought is usually quite mediocre. (Unlike the quality of my own thought, which is adequately sufficient, tolerably acceptable and passably competent.)
What we have in the world today is an explosion of printed words, but unfortunately the bulk of what's being published is not worth the time required to read it.

Writing; tends to overshadow good writing.; Finding the good stuff is like searching for lice on a Llama.


Printed material is multiplying at such a rate that it is impossible to sort out the good from the bad. There's simply too much to read! Thanks to desk top publishing, magazines which used to be 100 or so pages long are now four or five hundred pages. One magazine called "The World and I" regularly tops 1,000 pages! Who has time to read all of this stuff.
Competition for publication becomes ever more fierce. You'd expect with so many more people writing that there would be an ever-increasing diversity of opinions, but instead what you find is homogeneity. I'm not sure why this is, except that editors keep aiming their publications at the largest common denominator. Banality is all-pervasive.
I'm not glib enough to make money as a writer. I'm no genius. All I can do is string words together in my own attempt to make sense of this world, but sometimes when I get through writing, things make less sense than before. There's little organization to my writing. Mostly, it's an undisciplined evanescence of thought. But it's the best I can do. Judging from the writing that I see on the best-seller lists, people have little appetite for plain and simple words. They want to feast on pastries and cream puffs. Unfortunately, there's little sweetness in my writing. And in that respect, I'm out of step with the times. I think what I write must be more like potato soup.
In this world publication means everything. If you haven't published, no one takes you seriously. In this era everything has been reduced to money. There is no other criteria by which to judge or be judged. But hasn't it always been this way?

Custer's Last Stand
An hour later I was standing on a tall hill in Piedmont park looking down on a vast whirling flock of swifts flying around me. They were beautiful to watch. They'd flap furiously down the straightaway, then suddenly lock their outstretched wings and veer back around like black boomerangs.
Usually this type of bird only comes out in the evening, and then they tend to fly high up in the sky. So today it was a real treat to see them so close up. They actually flew within inches of me as I stood like a man in the eye of a hurricane.
I wondered what had drawn them to this spot, and thought at first it might have something to do with thermals. But then I noticed bird shadows whirling against the groundor so it appeared. As I studied these shadows, a dragon fly flew by, followed by another one. I stepped down off the hill so I could look up and have the sky as a background. As soon as I did, thousands of dragonflies appeared before my eyes! They must have been there all along, but I hadn't seen them because I'd been looking down at them, and from that perspective they'd been perfectly camouflaged against the grass. The birds were feasting on dragonflies!
While I stood watching this drama of life it suddenly occurred to me that I'd never observed insects to swarm in such a fashion except when they were mating. But it was quite evident that instead of mating, these insects were evading. They hovered herded together against the hill's hollow like tiny helicopters under attack by jets.
I thought about a technique known as "bubble netting" which whales employ to herd schools of fish into a circle prior to attack, and it occurred to me that the swifts might be using a similar tactic against the dragon flies. I studied the terrain like a General deploying his Army, and suddenly it all made sense. The site where all this was happening had once been a golf course and now it was a vast expanse of grass dominated by the hill upon which I stood. Normally, dragonflies cruised this turf looking for prey, but today the swifts arrived and began flying around and around the edges of the field. In great spirals they flew, slowly herding all the dragon flies toward the center of the field, toward the highest spot, until they were all crowded together like the doomed soldiers at Custer's last stand.

Good Guess
While strolling the park an especially bright exhibit caught my eye and so I paused for a moment to check it out. The artista woman struck up a conversation with me, saying that her art evolved out of her penchant for collecting things. I said, "I wouldn't mind doing what you're doing if the weather was as nice everywhere as it's been here the past couple of days." The as an afterthought, I added, "but I sure wouldn't enjoy it if I had to go sit out in a desert somewhere, like in Nevada."
She looked surprised and said, "The next show I'll be going to after this one is going to be in Las Vegas!"
Later, I thought how often it is that I blurt out something silly like that only to discover that it's not so silly after all. I think talking off the top of your head (spontaneous talking, without fear of losing or gaining anything from it) is a lot like Zen shooting: the most accurate shot is always the one which is prefaced by the least amount of thought.
Tonight is the opening of the "Earth Factory Show" at the Hasting's Seed Warehouse on Marietta street. It's going to be a jumbo art "happening" a big party featuring the works of 230 artists. Most of the art will probably be amateurish but it ought to be fun.
Several days ago, I called Paul up and he said he'd go with me. But this morning he called me up and said he'd meet me down there instead. That kind of pisses me off, but I can understand where he's coming from. He doesn't want to have to drive all the way over to my place, because there's really no reason to. All it does is add about an hour or more to his driving time. At first, I thought he was being a self-centered prick, but now that I think about it, It's me who's acting self-centered. I'd have done the same thing if I was in his shoes.
I guess I'm going alone, which is ok by me. The only thing that worries me is the fact that the warehouse is just a couple of blocks away from Techwood homes. Also, the Metroplexa punk rock club known to attract violent typesis practically next door. To cap things off, the parking situation is terrible in that area of town, and Gypsy wreckers prowl the streets just looking for illegally parked cars.
The show starts at seven, but I'm going to go down early In the hope that I can sneak in without having to pay a cover charge.

Hodge-podge of impressions from the Earth Factory Show
God-damned weirdos; The fire marshal wanted to shut the whole thing down. He prohibited people from going above the second floor, but nobody paid any attention. They covered the windows with black plastic so the FM couldn't see that people were walking around above the second floor, but they needn't have wasted their time. The fire marshall could have closed the show down if he'd wanted to, because it was obvious that the show wasn't up to code. But I guess somebody paid him off. That's usually the way it works. The inspectors threaten to close the show down unless mordita is paid.

Hot young bodies writhing to the beat of drums and fists on flesh, wearing panty hose with torn-out crotches, they dance, skirts rising waist-high; asses and cunts bare to the air, swinging their fragrant butts and flailing men with chains; rope-bound bare-chested men tied to chairs, writhing on the floor, streaked in red paint with dark cum stains streaking their torn jeans, tattoos and body paint, T, more T, C & A.

of The Earth Factory Show
My plan worked just as I'd imagined it would. I knew from past shows that nobody would be guarding the doors until seven, so all I did was arrive early and stay out of sight until the show officially opened.
I entered through the loading docks, walking past workers as if I knew where I was going. The stairway leading to the upper floors was blocked off, so I had to find another way up. I found another staircase in the back of the building but it was barricaded with boards and rope. I waited until nobody was looking, then ducked under the barricade and climbed the stairs to the next floor. From there, I located another staircase which led all the way to the fourth floor. I didn't see anybody in the building beyond the second floor. (I didn't know it at the time, but everybody had been ordered out by the fire marshal.) I found a room in the front of the building where I could look out the window overlooking the parking lot.
At 6:35, I watched Paul drive into the parking lot. It looked like he was planning to sneak in early also. I sat in the room for about an hour. I'd expected guests to begin entering the building by seven-thirty, but there wasn't anybody. I learned later that this was because the fire marshal was still debating whether or not to let the show open. It wasn't until almost eight that people began filing in. Meanwhile, I sat in my little room, drawing pictures on the wall with a bunch of colored crayons somebody had left there for that purpose.
When I finally heard people coming up the stairs, I left my hiding place and began wandering around looking for Paul. I found him on the third floor by Rose's exhibit. Rose is an artist-friend of ours. Her art project consisted of a room that was only lit by a flickering strobe light. The white ceiling and walls were covered with paintings of foot-long black roaches and spiders. In the center of the room from floor to ceiling, hung a giant spider's web. Beyond that was a cradle holding a baby doll. Giant roaches lay across it's body. I don't know what Rose was trying to say. Perhaps she was inspired by the approaching Halloween season.
Most of what happened that night isn't worth repeating. Mostly I just wandered from floor to floor looking at the crowd while they looked at me. The only three exhibits that caught my eye were on the third floor. One of them was a pro-lesbian art show entitled "For Women Only," while the other two involved naked women, which I'll get to in a moment.
The only reason I noticed the lesbian show was because its blatant anti-male lesbian theme offended me. I'd brought three stink bombs with the intention of using them on just such a target. (Ironically, it was Dierdra Dodsona lesbian who first introduced me to the little glass vials of stinkum available at your local novelty shop.) I walked over to the art work's optimum viewing spot and when nobody was looking, casually dropped one of the vials on the floor and crushed it under my shoe. The el beano magnum fart super-shit smell reached my nostrils before up before I'd taken three steps.
The only other two art exhibits worth mentioning were performance pieces. One involved a young woman slowly emerging naked from a black coccoon-like thing lying on the floor. From where Paul and I stood, we had a perfect view of her little beaver crack covered in fine brown hair. She actually wasn't very interesting. She wasn't unattractive or anything, but neither was she exceptional. She looked pretty much like your standard generic young female, with average breasts and hips. The only way she'd warrant any further attention would be if she came and sat in my lap.
The other performance piece was put on by a bunch of neo-hippie post-adolescent semi-punkers who were into body painting and shitty music. Two young women wearing short skirts up to their asses writhed dancing and shrieking at high decibels as the rest of the group engaged in assorted adolescent debaucheries. A man/boy, face streaked with purple and black paint, sat tied hand and foot to a chair while all about him the rest of the group writhed. Another young woman, bare chest painted with cryptic symbols, dragged a bound and blood (red paint) drenched man across the floor while the other women beat him with chains and ropes. Female voices shrieked, males bellowed while hyper-amplified harmonica sounds wailed and tore at my ears. A bare-chested paint-smeared man bolts out of a darkened room pursued by a half-dozen frenzied men and women who beat him to the ground in mock violence, tie him with ropes, and leave him writhing on the floor.

As artists, they've actually achieved what they set out to do; they've regressed to 100-thousand years ago, back to a time when man was mere beast. They tie each other to chairs. I say "they" the women don't feel the ropes, only the men. Why is that, I wonder?
The bound man topples face-first onto the floor, hands and feet still bound to the chair. He's hung on a human stretcher, a contortionist's tool. He shrieks as the metal cuts into his skin. Frantically, they work to untie him. He collapsed weeping, too emotionally wrought to rise up and flee. He's incapacitated by tears.
The telephone rings at the Cleaver house... it's the police. "Hello, Mrs Cleaver? This is the Police. We've arrested your daughter on trespassing and assault and battery charges. She was apprehended trespassing in a condemned warehouse, participating in a pagan sex ritual could have had something to do with worshiping Satan, we're not sure. But I'm sorry to inform you that your daughter was caught in the act of torturing a young man who was bound to a chair. She was roasting his buns with a Bic Lighter.
The others surround him as if tears had summoned a shred of compassion, but instead of showing compassion they begin to torture him anew.

It's not reality that shapes us, but what we deny that bends the twig. Insanity lurks at the boundaries. It seeks the cracks lying between the mind's locked doors. That's where it first shows itself, at the cracks.

News: America's wealthiest man attributes his success to luck. Metro Media Co. founder John W. Kluge, the wealthiest man in America, credits much of his success to gambling and good luck. "The greatest factor in my life and I know entrepreneurial people don't want to express it, they think it diminishes them but luck plays a large part."

What You Can't See Can Still Hurt You
"It can't happen to me" combined with "What you don't see can't hurt you" makes a deadly combination. It takes a guy about half his life to discover that what he can't see can still hurt him. Three good examples of this are germs, radiation and toxic waste.
People are now moving back into Love canal in spite of the knowledge that this was once a toxic waste dump. Those who has a vested interest in Love canal wish to believe that the place is once again, a safe place to live.
Prospective homeowners are attracted by homes selling for about 20% less than comparable homes in safer environments. They're more concerned with getting a bargain than they are with invisible threats. After all, everything appears to be quite normal. The city that owns the abandoned community of love canal want to stop paying to maintain a ghost town. They want to have taxpayers move into the now-abandoned community. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to have a success to point to. Everybody involved has a vested interest in minimizing the risks involved. Everyone wants to believe that what you can't see won't hurt you. But in reality, only time will tell. The only way to really prove that the place is safe to inhabit is to allow human guinea pigs to move into the area and then study the statistics for twenty years to see how many sicken and die. The people moving into the area are the victims of tomorrow.

My own thought is that since it takes ten or twenty years for many environmental hazards to affect a person's health, we ought to turn our toxic waste sites into low-cost housing for the elderly.

Ants, Leaving Behind Nothing But Pheremone Bones.
In many ways, people are no better than ants. The ant builds its mound without concern for what might step on it. Ant columns may be protected by soldier ants, but soldiers cannot defend the column against feet and hooves and wheels. When a column of ants crosses a road, and a car drives over it, the ants simply haul off their dead and continue doing what they've always done.
Humans are no different. We build our cities on earthquake faults, at the bases of sleeping volcanoes, and next to rivers and oceans, and whenever periodic disasters strike, we simply cart away our dead and rebuild.
We live like mites on the fragile crust of a spinning ball of dung. We do not think about how vulnerable we are, we just live our lives and take our chances. Life and death continue unabated, like inhaling and exhaling.

This is my ant colony theory of economic forecasting.
The masses never know what's going on.
The vast majority of experts know no more than the man in the street, but even if there were an expert who knew what was going on, his opinion would be cancelled out by the myriad voices of opposing opinion.
If Christ himself returned to earth and had a direct phone line to God, he would make no difference. Who could hear him over the yammering of fools?
The morning news is preoccupied with economic news, but not even the experts know what is going to happen until after the fact, and even then, we're not so sure. A recession can't actually be identified until we're already in one.


Worms
We're at a poetry reading. A well-dresses conservative-looking man steps up to the podium. He adjusts his glasses, shuffles his notes, clears his throat and begins. "Worms!!!" He screams at the top of his lungs. A nervous titter races across the crowd, as he continues to shout out his lines. "Filthy stupid blind burrowing worms! Crawling, belly in the dust...eating dust! Eating and wiggling and wriggling down dirty dark tunnels into the bowels of the earth. Your bowels! And what dim thoughts register on that miniscule ganglion that wee lump of nerve cells that you call a brain. What does the worm think as it eats its way through a lifetime of soil? Do you twaddle away your days dreaming? I think not. For dreams require imagination, a quality eminently lacking in the alimentary worm.
What does a worm know of the sun's shining rays, radiating through the top of your tunnel? Do you know the origin of the warmth against your back?
All you know is the tread of the wily robin as it stalks your kind, and the scratching of the blind mole as it seeks your place of hiding. You feel the thunder's rumble and the scrape of the farmer's shovel as it cleaves the earth (and possibly you) in two. But what do you know of the stars that shine in the night sky?
Is there anything to be learned in the course of a worm's life, or is it just one endless tunnel? Is there a light at it's eventual end, or does it simply coil around through nowhere and back again, connecting upon itself in an endless loop?
(Slowly the security people edge up to the podium and then on command, grab the frenzied speaker and wrestle him off stage.)




of Change

Yesterday was an especially beautiful Fall day. Distant buildings stood out like porcelain vases against a china-blue sky. Ruddy russet red leaves shone like newly waxed apples and the yellows shimmered in the sun like Krugerrands, all clattering in the wind. And I climbed in my car and drove down tree-lined streets of gold and ethereal blue thinking how grand life was on this fine day, surely one of the most beautiful of the season.
As I drove through trendy midtown along Rock Springs road, I passed a pile of household goods stacked willy-nilly alongside the curb. Acting on a whim, I decided to stop and browse. As I parked my car I thought to myself, "What an odd yard sale this is, with lamps and rugs and old furniture all strewn about in the ivy beside the road. It was definitely not a typical mid-town yard sale. There were only two people there an elderly couple and they seemed to be rummaging aimlessly through the merchandise. An ancient photograph mounted in a heavy frame stood propped against a ragged sofa. An empty bird cage feeder still half-full of seed lay lopsidedly in the ivy. The old man moved like a sleep walker, a blank look on his weary face. He didn't seem to notice me as I approached, but old woman looked up at me, and when I saw her face, ruddy from recent tears, I suddenly realized this wasn't a garage sale. But it was too late to simply turn around and leave, so feeling very stupid, I said, "Hi, what's all this?"
And the woman answered, "We've been evicted!" I could read the despair and shame on her face. I said, "I'm sorry,"then turned around and left, feeling no more welcome than a vulture at a funeral.
I pondered this as I drove away, how such a fate could befall two old people on such a day; how an old couple's life can be ripped and torn, then scattered like leaves by the winds of change.