Hope (illusions of)

False hope, that’s what I’ve been living on. Doing this blog and its commentaries has gotten me hopes up, giving me an inexplicable sense of excitement and unfounded optimism. Had I been able to publish my book and make my film – no mean feats in any lifetime – maybe all my babbling on here would have some relevance. I was writing as if I were a celebrity blogger, that everyone should read it because of who I am. A sad plan of self-deception.

I can no longer feed myself this lie. I feel closer to death now than I ever have. I was broken a few nights ago. Something weighed on my soul so heavily that I was eventually forced to face it. So what was it that drove me to the edge of insanity? I needed a talk with Debby. A simple conversation. I deny, deny, deny – but in the end, I really can’t do without her. This is a source of much of my mental and emotional anguish. What hope have I of reaching her?

I thought if I spoke words of truth on my blog it would matter. Who knows if I have or not. I’m pretty scared myself and that can lead to self-serving comments. I used to think how vile it was when I read of the so-called nobles of yore mocking the idea of democracy and a rule by the common people. They are too stupid, they said, too unintelligent. Not that those fat pigs were speaking out of anything but self-interest, but perhaps they were right. I remember the story of the great Greek hero Thermisticles, who alone among all the Greeks faced the fact the mighty Persian empire was coming back to destroy them when all others had no interest in preparation. But what do you do when no one accepts the truth?


In Thermisticles’ case, he lied. He told the stupid masses something they would believe: of how a neighboring island was preparing to attack, thus he was able convince his countrymen to use the new found wealth from a silver mine to build war ships. Now there’s a case of political leadership. (Unfortunately, every lying politician since then has claimed to be doing it for the common good also). The path for me too is to create something that sells. (“Listen, Steve, a message from home!”)

I have a link to Flavia Colgan’s page here on my blog and I would sincerely give my eye teeth to meet her. She is an amazing person who makes me feel good just listening to her speak. She too has hope in the truth of life – but it’s through a filter of politics. As if souls can be saved if we elect the right people. It’s true that over the past seven years, America has chosen to destroy herself. There is no Thermisticles to save the Great Unwashed this time, political pollution bringing only poison. I wonder what Flavia’s life would be like were she to face that fact.

I’m not saying there's no hope. There is hope - in life (though not for the ways of the world). For me it was with Debby. When I imagine life with her, all the problems of the world fade away into nothingness. I could see Eternal Life with her. Once you have that, the fate of your body doesn’t seem so significant. Love truly is all we need after all.

Decembers of Despair

It's no coincidence I started this blog in a December. It is by far my worst month of the year. I don't know why it is that way, I just know that it always happens. Who knows, in this perverted life of mine maybe what would have been my favorite time of year is now my worst. December of two years ago I was going out of my mind with rage and frustration and I've been venting ever since. This year is no better.

It could be that something happens in this month that allows me to move closer to reality. That, of course, means facing my life and all of its (and my) inadequacies. Meeting Debby forced this upon me also. It's in these moments I can truly see the Hell I've created for myself. At the end of "Platoon", the Sheen character kills the tormented (and tormenter) Berenger character. But when Sheen talked of that scene, he said his character didn't think of it as killing him, he thought of it as releasing him. That's how I view my death.

I feel left behind, a man who through pride or attitude or whatever stayed behind when others moved on. Now I'm terrified by what I've done. I touched on this before when I felt surrounded by ice. Now I see myself lost in a desert, knees huddled to my chin in a relentless blowing wind of sand and scorn. A solitary soul who now clearly sees the mistakes of his ways - yet does not move. I have no defense for this.

My dreams exhaust me, continual nightmares of the day, going something like this:

I'm in Pier 1, a store that was exotic to me in my youth when I visited it with my parents, only now I'm in there as a homeless loser and I'm looking for something to eat. The clerks have to explain to me there's nothing to eat there and I say I know that only I don't because I don't know what I know. Customers peer at me through the corner of their eyes and whisper: "He's stupid!", "A crazy man!", "Make him go away." I keep wandering around the store a bit - feeling all eyes on me - so I can pretend I came in for something other than food, as if I were really going to buy something. I ask myself, "Do they know? Do they know I'm a fraud, that I can't buy anything? Oh Jesus, get me out of here. I've fucked up again!"

I wake up gritting my teeth and my jaw's sore from tension. It's actually a relief to find out it's only a dream - and yet I still feel trapped in the feeling. Dear God, release me.

I don't have the powers to express the desperation I feel when my mind goes black and I look around the desert in endless solitude knowing that even if I scream until the end of time, no one will hear. This makes it hard to sleep in the desert night. My bones are tired, more tired than they've ever been. When I shut my eyes to rest, I find hell, and when I open them again, I find hell there too.

Arm Flapping, Inc.

Each of us exists in a vortex between our own personal reality and Reality itself. When these two realities are in conflict, we have war. When conflict is absent, we have harmony. Luckily, harmony is what everyone says their reality is! But even if conflict does exist, for a time, even that can seem as harmony.


If a man jumps off a cliff and flaps his arms, he can - for a time - claim to be flying. And it's during this time before reality (literally) hits curious things can be observed! Two groups of people are drawn to such a person. First are the Blind Loyalists, "friends" of the Arm Flapper who cheer him on: "Don't listen to the naysayers, the defeatists and the small-minded men who say it can't be done! You showed them all you can fly!" Next are the Morality Posers. "We have come not to speak ill of this man, to judge him not and any idea of interference is off the table!" Thus did they hope to be seen in the right.


But the true tragedy was none admitted "Flying Man" wore a parachute - not even the flyer himself. So taken was he with the idea he could fly, the moron rejected any thought of opening his chute. He was falling to greatness, rewriting history on what was and was not possible! He was, quite simply, a god. This drove his Blind Loyalists into a frenzy, cheering him to "stay the course!" After a lifetime of losing, the Arm Flapper gloried in success beyond his wildest dreams.


The Morality Posers congratulated themselves for not engaging in such tomfoolery and proudly proclaimed how they had no ill will to destroy the Flapper's dream. But searing anguish did it cause when others insisted the Falling Man use his chute! Bitter rage and howling wails rained down upon these Insisters of Reality from the Flapper and his ilk in such fury that their venom could not be mistaken: to criticize is to declare total war. Upon hearing this, the Posers - self-styled patrons of peace - dutifully held their tongues.


But Reality - with a THUD a thousand feet below - made all this moot. No longer was there any right or wrong, traitors or patriots, sane or insane - there was only That Which Was: an irreversible Reality of doom. For in his (allowed) grab for ultimate power, the Flapper held secret the place he'd stored the summer harvest. That was his personal laughing legacy as his people watched the cold of winter slowly sap the warmth from their days. And in the frigid winds of cold starvation, no longer was harmony proclaimed.


Reality trumps all Man's claims of self-righteousness.

The Ice Always Comes

In wintry light
With crisis nigh;
I walk among
A wintry cry.

Heavy ice breaks
Each branch and leaf;
Revealing nature's
Inner grief.

A sea of trees
To navigate;
With broken limbs
To investigate.

Skying trunks once
Tall and proud;
Newly sheared of
Healthy shroud.

Overnight came
Winter's wrath;
An unsuspected
Icy bath.

Living trees reveal
Eternal souls;
Now most stand broken
Though some stayed whole.

My frigid hand sifts
Through devestation;
Laid bare before me
All prevarication.

In summer's sun
When all was well;
Who did suspect
This coming hell?


Who had inner eyes
To see inner rot?
Was bark's veneer
All nature wrought?

But when the times
Turned cold and colder;
And mosses dried
Upon the boulder;

Dreams of greenery
Disappeared;
Relentless ice brought
Fates most feared.

Piled limbs and brittle trunks
Stretch across the miles;
Rare the tree both firm and free
Who'd survived this icy trial.

Such doom and wreckage
Reeked of blunder;
God's nature beauty
Ripped asunder.

Ancient children
These holy trees;
No more to feel
Spring's warm breeze.

I burned the branches
Of no tomorrow;
Raging against
The needless sorrow.

Raising my eyes to the sky:
"From where did this hell come?"
T'was then I did remember:
The ice, it always comes.

Sith Lords Among Us

The cool thing about being a Sith Lord is you can rule over the people and the Imperial Congress and yet no one can see you as you truly are! People know evil is coming from somewhere, they just can't seem to put their finger on it. Listen to even those who rail against our President's policies, rarely do they connect the evil to him. It's always "bad advisors", the intelligence agencies, his sidekick Darth Cheney pushing him into it or the ever handy absolution: it's OK because he "truly believes this stuff." Bakana!

As Robert Tucker writes of the original Sith Lord of Darkness:

"Thus Stalin contrived to train his sights on the party leadership even while presenting himself as a force for moderation in the party purge, to identify himself with the simple people against the bigwigs, and to imply that the enemies were many even as he cited statistics on how few Trotskyists there really were, or had been, in the party. Just as he unloaded his responsibility for the miscarriage of collectivization on the grassroots collectivizers, so he unloaded his responsibility for much of the party purging of recent years on the "certain comrades" who had carried out his directives for the 1935-36 checkup and exchange - and now were being charged with abetting the Trotskyists wreckers by what they had done.

As they left the Kremlin after Stalin gave the concluding speech on 5 March, the plenum’s last day, some of the many doomed Central Committee members may have reflected that they had witnessed a performance by one of history’s grand masters of political guile, whose capacity for evil knew no bound."


The authorities were searching for enemies of the people. But such was Stalin's skill at tapping the inner lie, those arrested convinced themselves "they must be keeping this from comrade Stalin". A hidden, root evil had infested itself into the Soviet government and Soviet society and it had to be purged. In essence, they were searching for Stalin: a witch hunt being directed by a witch. Can you imagine the personal paranoia of such a mind??

Just as Stalin was able to disassociate himself from the purges he was driving, the same mind bending process is going on here. And through this process, all crimes are confessed. In a speech today, our Sith Lord was projecting himself when he said Iran needed to "come clean" regarding their desire for nuclear weapons. But the darkness goes far deeper than that. The "World War III" talk, the mushroom cloud reference in the State of the Union, etc. - the madman with the nukes is him! Those are his desires! Our President speaks so knowingly of the evil present because it's his own.


So as you listen to him continually accuse others of his crimes ("teenager with a credit card")- just as Stalin did a thousand times over - replace the word "they" in his speeches with the word "I" and the Sith Lord will be unmasked. As a twisted child, this Devotee of Darkness found great pleasure in blowing up frogs with firecrackers. Mark my words, sooner or later this enemy of the people will do a press conference with a "The world is my frog" T-shirt on. The truth ALWAYS wills out.