Hey, Daisy!:
Today is your birthday and that is a fact
Not just any scribble or doodle, an absence of tact-
But a mere thought-
Wrapped and bowed and festooned with a tassel
Send via ether to avoid all the hassle
So over the castle under the moat
-Wirelessly- wait til you see what I wrote
It’s not very ample- but rules don’t apply
Happy birthday Daisy in the great by and by!
🌲🌲🌲
“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.”
-Henry Miller
A Certain Perhaps Non-algorithmic Coincidence
I regard this as a subset of the possible world of synchronicity: a mere coincidence, or a tech-related algorithm working out its marketing scheme. Who knows?
So my sister loaned me a book, which she found fascinating, about Hunter S Thompson, Savage Dreams, by Richardson.
She bought the book at an independent bookstore- it has the anti-theft device pasted to the cover, and no dust jacket, just the book in a plain board cover. She had removed the dust jacket, probably to preserve it from damage from me- all my books have coffeee stains and are warped from rain or sticky from Danish pastry or candle wax or whatever. So this book was unidentifiable by the outside cover.
We talked about Hunter, his influences and his activities in San Francisco and Big Sur.
We talked in person and never mentioned details that would denote a specific reference.
I’m aware that cameras and microphones in phones, as well as online posts, are routinely picked up by marketers, but this is rather a obscure remove from such specifics.
Henry Miller was one influence at Big Sur, of course. We may have mentioned him in passing, but in no detail.
So I read in the book from my sis that Hunter was a hired hand on a property that eventually became Eselen, the New Age vortex on the coast. Richard Price, Brautigan’s Confederate General, was there around that time, and Ferlinghetti had a place by Bixbie Ridge. Late fifties early to mid- sixties.
So one book Thompson espoused was a Henry Miller book called “The World of Sex.”
He tauted it, and sent a copy of this thin obscure volume to a friend. Maybe Norman Mailer. Back in 1966 or so.
So that’s what I read.
So yesterday I open FB and the first thing I see is a quote on a poetry feed from…
“The World of Sex” by Henry Miller. Surely one of his most obscure works.
Boinnnng!
What is that?
This is the third such coincidence. The last one was opening a page of a library book while a random song played on YouTube which contained an exact phrase from the page, in real time without any forethought.
The phrase in that instance was undistinguished and buried in the text. A complete coincidence.
The quote below, in photograph, from Henry Miller may be a key.
If I reverse the proposition, that rather than shut one’s eyes, or deny, or run away, or repress, but instead be willing to change course, by following a quiet little intuition, to be consciously open to a positive impulse, a little joyful inner voice- one might just be following the way.
So perhaps there is a bit of spirit guidance here, and not merely an intrusion of our weird weird world.
My Woo Woo life. Spirit dabble, table tapping Dept.
I play a little spirit guide game.
A theosophical friend and I used to discuss hints we sensed from the Other Side: cigarette smoke, for example, when no one is smoking; a song that reminds you of someone no longer with us; a bird appears on a branch and you just know; signals that suddenly get your attention that are associated only with a particular person.
My clue is coincidence.
I’ll hear a catching phrase, and at the same time it will repeat in another form. Then I’ll know it’s a spirit thing, saying hello.
It’s harmless. Don’t be scared.
Today on the news I heard a commentator use the cliche “best and brightest” in a story about today’s headline. It was just on and audible as background noise, really. It actually could be time stamped, if I wanted to. It’s just a turn of phrase. No biggie.
Anyhoo, at that exact moment- exact- I turned a page in a random book I was reading at a random time, and simultaneously read the phrase, “Why bother to try when the best and brightest have floundered?”
Then I raise my index finger and count one for my spirit guides. Word coincidence in multiple form.
It’s just a humble affirmation.
It’s not the content, it’s the simultaneity.
I’m not any smarter obviously. But it’s actually fascinating to me.
PS This morning out walking, we saw a goldfinch and Ingrid said, ”Oh, that’s my dad.”
My Woo Woo Life, continued.
I was just saying how simultaneity, word coincidence in multiple forms, synchronicity, is a little game I play with -what? Spirit guides? Guardian angels? Prankster spirits? Who knows.
Anyhoo. Here’s how slightly complicated this gets.
Just last week on vacation in Ohio we bought a tiny wind chime at a place we used to visit with Aunt Vera when we were kids in the sixties. Hixon’s Flower Barn, in Lakewood Ohio.
I almost didn’t buy anything but just before we left I saw the wind chimes by the door. It was the perfect souvenir! I really didn’t want to leave this beloved old antique hutch without supporting them. We had so many happy memories there back in the day.
Buying the wind chime started a lively conversation with the proprietor (up to then I was feeling sad and sentimental) and we were all laughing about being kids drinking water from a garden hose and cleaning tar off our feet with gasoline and all the crazy stuff we would never do today. It was so much fun, we left laughing.
I hung that wind chime from Hixon’s in the garden deck when we got back to San Francisco and was just admiring it now.
So when I sat down to drink coffee just now, I opened up social media and randomly scrolled to a little short video posted on Mother’s Day a few days ago. In it, the mom’s young son had just made her a … wind chime.
(On another level, while driving in Ohio we accidentally set our navigator app to the wrong city! so ended up taking a turn off the freeway and down country roads to correct our course so a. We missed a horrid traffic accident that tied up traffic ahead; and b. the alternate route we corrected took us through the most beautiful countryside in N Ohio and quick and easy back roads all the way home. So was it really a mistake? No. It was little gift.)
***
My Woo-woo Life continued
I’ve shared a running game I have with The Other Side.
It’s not a Ouija board or a table-knocking session or a séance, but it is kind of funny.
If an obscure phrase comes to mind and then within a day that gets repeated randomly from some other source I’ll chalk one up for the “spirit guides”.
(Don’t do this at home.)
So today I was describing the earthquake we had yesterday to my coworkers. Although small on the Richter scale it felt like a giant stump-digger burrowing under our four-story apartment building and it sounded like a hundred maracas shaking the furniture.
So, enchanted with my exciting tale, I went to assist a patient at dinner time.
We watch tv and I feed him little portions.
“I Love Lucy” was on tv- looked like a pilot episode with Milton Berle.
Lucy had a book under her arm on the show that she was going to have signed by the author in the scene. I didn’t watch closely but I looked up from the spoon and the book was called
“Earthquake”
So there ye be.
***
I collect coincidences. They have a spooky/ spiritual component I find intriguing.
I’m reading a literary study of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, which delves into Homer’s Odyssey, and Joyce and Pound. It includes the outline of the discovery of archaeological sites that, at the time Joyce and Pound were researching, gave evidence that the ancient texts had a basis in actual places and events, so was breaking news at the time.
I’m reading an old used book from my storage in the garage – a book I haven’t touched in decades- so no online interface. It’s a rare book too and came from a free box decades ago. (Water damage.)
While reading I glance at some online news and see this week’s lunar landing story.
I guess I have to ask Nicholas Cage what it all might mean.
Edit
Space Oddites
I collect coincidences. They have a spooky/ spiritual component I find intriguing.
I’m reading a literary study of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, which delves into Homer’s Odyssey, and James Joyce and Ezra Pound. It includes the outline of the discovery of archaeological sites that, at the time Joyce (writing Ulysses) and Pound were researching, gave evidence that the ancient texts of Homer’s Odyssey had a basis in actual places and events, so was breaking news at the time.
I’m reading an old used book from my storage in the garage – a book I haven’t touched in decades- so no online interface. It’s a rare book too and came from a free box decades ago. (Water damage.)
While reading I glance at some online news and see this week’s lunar landing story- the touchdown of lander Odysseus was two nights ago, but the coincident post for me was just now. (Full moon today, in the sign of Virgo.)
As for the moon, an astrophysicist noted that
the landing represents a new era of exploration. Like every adventure, the consequences of ramping up exploration-not yet written.
I guess I have to ask Nicholas Cage what it all might mean.
***
Synchronicity is the divine organizing principle at work and indicate spirit is present and you are not alone
***
My Woo-woo Life continued.
“I never get respect.”
-Rodney Dangerfield
When you read to yourself do you hear the words in your inner ear? I do. Sometimes I borrow voices of famous actors.
I pick up books from my library that call to me and read chapters at random. I read deeply and take my time. Apply imagination.
In my imagination yesterday I used the voice of Rodney Dangerfield to internally vocalize the text of Higher Laws by HD Thoreau, so Dangerfield was performing it as a stand up routine- it works.
Stand up comedians and Thoreau have the same general approach to material and transmission. Plus it was very funny, Dangerfield reading Thoreau. So I read Higher Laws from Walden and final word in Thoreau’s essay was …
“respect”
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy,
and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs,
is more elastic,
more starry,
more immortal
-that is your success.
-Thoreau Higher Laws
1. Hands of Time
Welcome, October.
Do you believe in spirit communication?
I do.
For me it’s coincidences.
Example.
I had the opportunity to visit artists in studio, and one of the artists, while painting, told me she pushed her students in a strident way by clapping her hands to urge them to get busy. “Chop chop!” Let’s go! Get to work!
We discussed how weird and jarring and probably racist that old hackneyed expression is. We laughed about it.
Well, a few days later my wife and I were watching tv and a random program I wasn’t paying any attention to was on in which a character was killed by bad guys, but was awakened by magical powers and the first words the character said coming back to life were: “Chop chop! Let’s go!”
-What?!
I’ve heard psychics say that those weird word coincidences, well, that’s your spirit guides letting you know they’re there.
This happens all the time now.
So tonight I was listening to a nice song called “The Wheel” online -it just appeared while scrolling for a minute before bed. The verse goes “Let us off this Wheel of Karma, let us stop the hands of time.”
And, while listening to this “Hands of Time” thing in bed, I was reading my library book of essays from an art writer I’d never heard of which I just checked out at random to see what it might say about Joan Brown, an artist I’m interested in- (the critic is brilliant by the way- Ingrid Sischy)- I turned the page and the chapter, chapter two, totally random, was entitled:
“Hands of Time”
The random song was playing the exact same words at the exact same time as on the random printed page.
Welcome, October! Veil is thin.
Perhaps it all had something to do with the musician friend that I heard had passed, it happened years ago, but whose passing I just found out about, so new information.
(That would be just like him. Miss that guy. Old roommate. Poet, composer. Always had a band. Really had fun. Brilliant. Creativity everywhere, every minute.)
Or perhaps it was just about Daylight Savings Time. Turning the clocks back for no good reason. Who knows?
Oh now the coyotes have started howling. I like them, too. This universe is quite interesting.
***
Here’s another:
My Woo Woo life. Spirit dabble, table tapping Dept.
I play a little spirit guide game.
A theosophical friend and I used to discuss hints we sensed from the Other Side: cigarette smoke, for example, when no one is smoking; a song that you reminds you of someone no longer with us; a bird appears on a branch and you just know; signals that suddenly get your attention that are associated only with a particular person.
My clue is coincidence.
I’ll hear a catching phrase, and at the same time it will repeat in another form. Then I’ll know it’s a spirit thing, saying hello.
It’s harmless. Don’t be scared.
Today on the news I heard a commentator use the cliche “best and brightest.” It just was audible in the background, I wasn’t paying close attention. It actually could be time stamped, if I wanted to. It’s just a turn of phrase. No biggie.
Anyhoo, at that exact moment in which I noticed those words- exact- I turned a page in a random book I was reading at a random time, and simultaneously read the phrase, “Why bother to try when the best and brightest have floundered?”
Then I raise my index finger and count one for my spirit guides. Word coincidence in multiple form.
It’s just a humble affirmation.
It’s not the content, it’s the simultaneity.
I’m not any smarter obviously. But it’s actually fascinating to me.
PS This morning out walking, we saw a goldfinch and Ingrid said, ”Oh, that’s my dad.”
***
My Woo Woo Life, continued.
I was just saying how simultaneity, word coincidence in multiple forms, is a little game I play with -what? Spirit guides? Guardian angels? Prankster spirits? Who knows.
Anyhoo. Here’s how slightly complicated this gets.
Just last week on vacation in Ohio we bought a tiny wind chime at a place we used to visit with Aunt Vera when we were kids in the sixties. Hixon’s Flower Barn, in Lakewood Ohio.
I almost didn’t buy anything but just before we left I saw the wind chimes by the door. It was the perfect souvenir! I really didn’t want to leave this beloved old antique hutch without supporting them. We had so many happy memories there back in the day.
Buying the wind chime started a lively conversation with the proprietor and we were all laughing about being kids drinking water from a garden hose and cleaning tar off our feet with gasoline and all the crazy stuff we would never do today. It was so much fun, we left laughing.
I hung that wind chime from Hixon’s in the garden deck when we got back to San Francisco and was just admiring it now.
So when I sat down to drink coffee just now, I opened up social media and randomly scrolled to a little short video posted on Mother’s Day a few days ago. In it, the mom’s young son had just made her a … wind chime.
(On another level, while driving in Ohio we accidentally set our navigator app to the wrong city! so ended up taking a turn off the freeway and down country roads to correct our course so a. We missed a horrid traffic accident that tied up traffic ahead; and b. the alternate route we corrected took us through the most beautiful countryside in N Ohio and quick and easy back roads all the way home. So was it really a mistake? No. It was little gift.)
2. Woo-woo Friday!
-You’re Gonna Miss My Lovin’ -by Lou Rawls.
So this damn song was stuck in my head all day, and when after work I got to the Ferry Building for empanadas for Ingrid – (because a quiet voice in my mind was absolutely insistent, even though I didn’t really feel like it)-
Well, no sooner had I approached the Ferry Building, than this guy started playing the same damn tune that had been running in my mind all fricking day, live on the plaza. Total lounge-singer swank, completely convincing delivery.
He started playing the stupid song that had been driving me nuts all day- from the beginning!… I put $5 bucks in his hat- (I’m usually a cheapskate)- and that very minute the bell starting ringing on the Ferry Building.
It is ye top of the hour.
Spirit guides, if you’re there, hello. Nice job.
I can’t stand this song!- but now I’m having a great day!
“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.”
-Henry Miller
A Certain Perhaps Non-algorithmic Coincidence
I regard this as a subset of the possible world of synchronicity: a mere coincidence, or a tech-related algorithm working out its marketing scheme. Who knows?
So my sister loaned me a book, which she found fascinating, about Hunter S Thompson, Savage Dreams, by Richardson.
She bought the book at an independent bookstore- it has the anti-theft device pasted to the cover, and no dust jacket, just the book in a plain board cover. She had removed the dust jacket, probably to preserve it from damage from me- all my books have coffeee stains and are warped from rain or sticky from Danish pastry or candle wax or whatever. So this book was unidentifiable by the outside cover.
We talked about Hunter, his influences and his activities in San Francisco and Big Sur.
I’m aware that cameras and microphones in phones, as well as online posts, are routinely picked up by marketers, but this is a rather obscure remove from such specifics.
We talked in person and never mentioned details that would denote a specific reference.
Henry Miller was one influence at Big Sur, of course. We may have mentioned him in passing, but in no detail.
So I read in the book from my sis that Hunter was a hired hand on a property that eventually became Eselen, the New Age vortex on the coast. Richard Price, Brautigan’s Confederate General, was there around that time, and Ferlinghetti had a place by Bixbie Ridge. Late fifties early to mid- sixties.
So one book Thompson espoused was a Henry Miller book called “The World of Sex.”
He tauted it, and sent a copy of this thin obscure volume to a friend. Maybe Norman Mailer. Back in 1966 or so.
So that’s what I read. Basically an anecdote.
So yesterday I open up social media and the first thing I see is a quote on a poetry feed from…
“The World of Sex” by Henry Miller. Surely one of his most obscure works. (It’s not viral.)
Boinnnng!
This is the third such coincidence. The last one was opening a page of a library book while a random song played online, which contained in its lyric, in real time, and without forethought, an exact phrase from the page in front of me.
The phrase in that instance was undistinguished and buried in the text. A complete coincidence.
I know there may be no bounds to surveillance, but this may be… something.
The quote, from Henry Miller may be a key.
If I reverse the proposition, that rather than shut one’s eyes, or deny, or run away, or repress, but instead be willing to change course, by following a quiet little intuition, to be consciously open to a positive impulse, a little joyful inner voice- one might just be following the way.
So perhaps there is a bit of spirit guidance here, and not merely an intrusion of our weird weird world.
***
My Woo-woo Life, continued:
Watch Out For Quicksand!
I keep a Notebook of Coincidences and note the weirdest ones just for fun.
Coincidence/ Synchronicity must have a somewhat supernatural implication. Like a ghost knocking at the door, or a spirit saying “hi.”
Or perhaps they are projections of an organized mind. But we’re talking about MY mind, so not sure about that.
So today I did some lame smart-ass writing about- duh- Republican Party stupidity, and used “quicksand” as a satirical device.
And then, when I was feeding a patient dinner at the facility, he had on MeTV, with all the old tv shows from the fifties and early sixties. “Rifleman” with Chuck Connors was on. The last five minutes of the episode.
And the photo shows what? It shows what was on tv when I walked in the room. Scary quicksand finale.
This is random in so many ways, so many possibilities- including not selecting the program, the unplanned time I walked in to serve dinner, and that the patient wasn’t watching his usual station. And I never watch tv.
I arrived just in time to see Chuck Conners pull the people out of… quicksand.
I wrote this thingie below a few hours before going to work, but decided not to post it.
Here’s the editorial piece – really an editorial cartoon- that I had decided too stupid to post. I note that, as a little kid, I thought getting stuck in quicksand was a completely horrifying scenario for tv. Easy to understand if you’re a five year old, and hopeless in every sense known to a kid.
In it goes, to my file on spirit knocking etc.
The sign says: Quicksand.
Another sign says: Danger! Keep out! Quicksand Ahead!
A third sign says: You are in a Quicksand Zone! Turn back!
A final sign says: Quicksand Beyond This Point! Beware of Quicksand!
And then you see the Republican Party is stuck in… quicksand.
They are just about up to their necks in quicksand!
Do you hand them a branch? They are yelling “we got this!”
(Extra point if you are a Democrat.)
(Photo is the live screen coincidence as it occurred! Believe it- or not!)
Same day, coyotes again:
My Woo-woo Life continued
I’ve shared a running game I have with The Other Side.
It’s not a Ouija board or a table-knocking session or a séance, but it is kind of funny.
If an obscure phrase comes to mind and then within a day that gets repeated randomly from some other source I’ll chalk one up for the “spirit guides”.
(Don’t do this at home.)
So today I was describing the earthquake we had yesterday to my coworkers. Although small on the Richter scale it felt like a giant stump-digger burrowing under our four-story apartment building and it sounded like a hundred maracas shaking the furniture.
So enchanted with my exciting tale, I went to assist a patient at dinner time.
We watch tv and I feed him little portions.
So “I Love Lucy” was on tv- looked like a pilot episode with Milton Berle.
Lucy had a book under her arm on the show that she was going to have signed by the author in the scene. I didn’t watch closely but I looked up from the spoon and the book was called
“Earthquake”
So there ye be.
Coincidental symbol in a note on Ezra Pound and in a detail from Sherwood Anderson’s Horses and Men collection, “The Man Who Became a Woman”; Pound says poets are the centaur, Anderson, that writers would write like horses run. These lines were encountered hours apart but are intuitively interlocking.
(From The Cantos Project, online Ezra Pound studies.)
“He wanted to be a writer later and what he said was that when he came to be one he wanted to write the way a well bred horse runs or trots or paces.”
-Sherwood Anderson. “The Man Who Became a Woman”
***
A woo woo story
Three Angels
One day I woke up and wondered how much time I have left.
I thought about mortality and the challenges we’ve all faced lately.
So here’s the woo-woo part.
We took a Sunday drive to Pescadero, beautiful summer day, gorgeous, and we’re excited by our favorite little town. We took pictures of flowers and we stopped to look at the site of a restaurant we used to go to, that burned down years ago. A family place with a general store and a pizza oven and a big garden yard to relax in.
It’s rebuilt. Still empty, but a new building is complete.
Right then a gentleman came and answered our questions without being asked. He just joined us.
He insisted on telling us a joke or two. Usually that’s a sign to get walking asap, but he was really kind.
How come bananas have lots of friends? -They have a peel. You get the idea.
I’m eighty years old, he said. But I have friends who are over a hundred!
I was astonished- he actually was so healthy and fit he looked to be fifty.
He told us he walks the range of hills between Berkeley and Fremont and told us did you know you can find sea shells in the foot hills? It was once ocean floor.
He said look and opened his phone: here’s Mt Diablo, I walk with two waking sticks- and here’s a rock they call “Spock” because you can see a profile of pointy ears right in the crashing waves on the shore by Santa Cruz.
So ok, here’s a crazy old man who looks like he’s thirty but he’s close to one hundred and we’re starved let’s close this colloquy, am I right?
But he was so kind and generous with his positive outlook on life.
He walked us to the general store and there we parted to buy sandwiches and begin our outing.
While we were chatting I noticed he had dentures.
I’ve lost some teeth -part of my health challenges in the last 6 months; I’ve lost some of my uppers and it’s really tough- in this society we are all so harshly judged on our appearance and yes, I noticed he appeared to have dentures and noticed that they looked comfortable and like they fit well. I just noted that observation quietly to myself. It’s a personal anxiety. On my mind.
So that was a total interruption in our day, occurred as soon as we had parked. He just appeared there. And as quickly left.
So later I was thinking how in the morning I awakened with deep almost dangerous thoughts of mortality, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps sooner than later.
And within an hour we had met this guy, who put himself on our path, lifted our spirits, was a picture of health and vitality at an advanced age, and appreciated the ancient landscape of California as we do, and even the geology, which is kind of a hobby with me and he had the teeth thing figured out. And pretty quickly he was gone.
I thought that must be what it’s like to meet an angelic being. His message met the demand of the moment, my desultory meditation on death, with a message of life and continuing adventures.
Then I had the thought that mystics have asserted, that spirit-signs come in threes.
So right after sandwiches at the little general store, Ingrid bought a silver cookie cutter at an antique store right across the street- an angel. She loves it!
So I thought, well, possibly that’s the second angel but what about the third angel, if guidance comes in three?
I couldn’t see another angel sign, I scratched my head and thought.
Wait! What is the name of the country store where we all went and parted?
Arcangeli Grocery.
Archangel!
And -postscript -I shook hands (fist-bumped) with the gentleman and introduced myself and he told me his name: Manuel. Which is short for “Emmanuel” which is spiritual for divine presence.
You tell me.
Oh- later, while I was noting these things at home, I listened to a speaker online talking about our recent full moon and solstice (Summer!) and she mentioned the symbolism of how the deeper self seems to arise from the source as from depths of the sea, and the gentleman told us he saw sea shells up in the California hills.
***
(Later that same week)
Woo woo -ology.
These unpredictable things are becoming predictable.
What the…? Dept
So I was just musing about an art project for no particular reason – the Day of the Dead altar we do each year. I was at work where we assemble it in the fall.
Then on my desk someone left an old jewelry box; a bit later my supervisor said oh that’s for your altar this year. I’m having another one turned into a music box and I don’t need this.
Then 20 minutes later I went to do residents laundry and 1/2 way done with folding. All Saints Day. Which is part of the two-day festival for Day of the Dead. Completely random -two unrelated people’s objects- and nearly simultaneous too.
The resident just brought that laundry from his apartment this week.
Chief Justice John Roberts.
He took a rare opportunity the other day to comment on the opprobrium directed at the Court after the overturning of human rights, saying disagreements about an opinion do not reflect on the legitimacy of the Court.
That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard from a conservative- ever.
The Dredd Scott Court in 1857 was “legitimate.” That didn’t grant it integrity, when it upheld slavery.
It’s the decision, stupid.
To indignantly defend an opinion that was not set in precedent, that was written out of acrimony, and that includes hate speech, and was based in the thinking of an era of witch burning; that was issued immediately upon seating a corrupt court, with two stolen seats, nominations by presidents that did not reflect the popular will; that includes the spouse of an insurrectionist that lobbied for the overthrow of government, and then who ruled on her case.
John Roberts. He just ended the last vestiges of legitimacy with one word.
Americans are not in the mood, John Roberts, to be lectured on respect for a court that has not earned it or delivered justice and fairness and constitutional protections that are the right of every citizen- all without a hint of foundation in the actual reality of this year.
Totally illegitimate Supreme Court.
The problem is lack of respect for the opinions of mankind. Lack of respect for every American.
That’s how out of touch they are.
Roberts’ indignation proved the case against the Court.
-“For those on foot, there is a spiral staircase at the east end; for coffins, there is a shaft.”
-narration, a tour of the Royal Vault
Those meditating on the deeper meaning of today’s state funeral of Her Majesty the Queen, I wish you peace and solemn reflections.
But for the rest of us knuckleheads and death enthusiasts, here’s a fascinating look onto a passage of the final journey.
I was curious as to the logistics of this historic day, and my morbid curiosity paid off in this very informative piece which includes historical images and accounts of the Royal Vault, a very temporary stop en route to the actual final resting place of Queen Elizabeth.
No matter the high degree of splendor, death also includes dark passages, halls of ancient stone, and human error: Workmen long ago, during a renovation, accidentally exposed a hidden mystery, centuries old, amongst the monarchs interred there.
The intimacies and the uncertainties, the scrapes and lonesome moments of imperfection are also a part of what it is to be human, since the beginning of time. In fact, anthropologists say these imperfections define what it is to be human; how we think of death, of the Dead, defines us.
A Spirit Photo
This year when a friend died I realized I had a photo of the person that I could only call a spirit photograph.
A spirit photograph to me is not one of a ghost, but a photo of a person that expresses spiritual, ethereal qualities of the person as I imagine them after life, or the life beyond life. Or still right here in life, familiar, plus something never before noticed in such a clear way.
You see it and you think, “That’s it!”
They’re usually lovely, full of transcendent energy and, well, spirit. And there is no image like it, of the subject. Perhaps others would overlook it, but your own heart responds immediately with pleasure and appreciation and recognition.
I’m claiming this for myself as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s spirit photo. It’s really just an idea in my own imagination. I’m not a special fan, or adherent. I just notice things sometimes.
It’s not necessarily about the queen’s mortal passing; it’s about the love that exists in one’s heart, in a general sense.
I like the idea of a spirit photo. When you see one, you know. They are completely unique.
Perhaps you will notice a spirit photo of people in your life. When you find it, it will instantly take you there.
***
(…below, the photo that I recognized as spirit. My dear friend who passed in feb ‘22, with her daughter:)
It gets quiet of an evening. One thinks of constellations, cosmology, laws that govern orbits.
Somewhere out there is the energy of an Adams, a Jefferson.
-Impossible to imagine these dignitaries wouldn’t take an interest in human events now.
Be still.
I sensed Jefferson this evening, out in the Cosmos. Or right here, when the living room is quiet, at nightfall.
He has that jaw set. The wakeful dreaminess. The political insight of a street fighter. The intense interest in the scheme of government. All submerged in a deep, deep infinite contemplation.
Here in the living room for a brief time, beliefs and human schemes evaporate; out in America comfortable people dream, and the universe, our cosmology, assets its existence for a moment.
-I thought of slavery. I can’t mention the presence of Jefferson without mentioning the modern American polling data on a Jefferson of two centuries ago, regarding the horror of human bondage.
The impatient rejoinder from beyond is as follows:
“So are you willing to throw away car keys and walk? Because the energy usage is devastating to the environment and the workforce is paid half wages.”
Point taken.
So the issue before us is, that out there in Mar-a-Lago tonight is a former President, a virtual terrorist, willing to threaten the United States, asserting powers that are…extra-Constitutional.
Jefferson is referring to MAGA as “the Ultras”.
They were there in 1800, too. Personal empire, as a means to a personal end.
This is a fascinating stress test of a still-young republic, this Florida stand-off with the former president.
I sense a deep capacity for contemplation in Jefferson. A mind that is its own galaxy…infinite but focused. A natural bridge. Still. Quiet mind. Observing.
And the thought comes that we are what we believe we are, and at times those ideas fluctuate and the Nation is its own cosmos, with its dynamic laws, which can only be approximated in the Constitutional scheme.
Ideals exist. And these are expressed in a balanced design of government, of natural rights, of human rights.
And the former president Trump is now outside of that dynamic scheme. A “private citizen.”
Here is a description of tyranny:
“a condition imposed by some outside agency or force.”
Cosmology is our theme. Constellations. Satellites of governments. Rogue agents and astronauts, attempting to determine boundaries and corruptly acquire assets, from beyond the map set forth by the political explorers of the early United States.
Jefferson is pointing out that, as in the historic case of his Vice President Aaron Burr, Trump has become interested in empire, and so has stepped beyond the scheme of government.
With Burr, it was an empire in Mexico, which led to a trial for treason before a Supreme Court justice.
With Trump, a base in Florida, and documents he may use as bargaining chips to sell, extort or destroy.
To step outside of the scheme is a paradox: one loses power when one departs from the design set forth in the Constitution; it is a bit of a trap, a hidden trapdoor contemplated, devised by the Framers.
They told no one, that the Union, being perpetual, to step beyond which allows no leverage, so one tumbles to oblivion, by asserting powers that don’t exist in the Constitution.
“Perhaps that is the case before us.”
He said.
***
Just My Imagination…
So.
The spirit of Gore Vidal dropped by last week, in my living room. Still using the cane on the Other Side. A friend referenced his famous view of our politics, often expressed, the party with two Right Wings, so I’ll describe:
It’s kind of funny but hard to translate. I was sitting alone at midnight after the siege of Mar-a-Lago, the room in semi-darkness, thinking of how Man is actually an Island out on a distant crag, surrounded by the great infinite mystery and how the ship of state is headed toward its Great Destiny- or The Great Dark. I was alone, looking into the Vastness and blank-ness of our political situation, of the Bird with Two Right Wings, and I suddenly sensed the great presence, Gore Vidal. The Great One. And he gave a sinister eye-roll and said in spirit, “well what took you so long? You’re really not quick.” And then pfft he was gone. And that is true. And I felt somehow…reassured. Jynx was staring at that corner, too with her green eyes buggin’ out. I’m not sure what it means but I’ve learned to be grateful.
***
On Meeting a Biographer, a reverie.
I recognized the biographer of Joan Mitchell, Patricia Albers, coming out of the main library today. She had a name tag on, so I could run up and thank her for her book.
It probably disturbed her reverie, and San Franciscans usually don’t accost writers on the street-bad form- but her writing is great, and Joan Mitchell was here at the MOMA not too long ago. Her paintings- she passed in 1992.
Joan Mitchell is one of the famous people that drops by sometimes, when my mind is quiet. It’s imagination- or is it??
I was thinking of her paintings one evening and I thought, you know, what would be good, would be to be IN the painting, you know, to be walking around amid the color and forms and dimensions. Like a universe in there. Of course. To be within.
So at that moment, quiet evening at home, reverie, living room, I felt the pleasant tingles down my spine-energy- so I said thank you, and she said (or was it my imagination) “Go ahead- knock yourself out”- in a way both blasé and playful, and she was smiling and blowing smoke. For a second.
I believe some creative artists respond to their audience, those truly interested in their work. One doesn’t have to “be” somebody. You open the door, and inspiration may follow.
So you could say we’re friends.
My experience recurs when I’m aware of artists in the center of their work, within it, part of it, multidimensionally. Then, she’s there. See?
I snapped a detail from my walk through the Joan Mitchell exhibit last year. An art curator was in hospice at Maitri last year, and I intended to frame some details, but we agreed that nothing comes close to the experience of the actual painting- it’s not an artifact, it’s a personal experience, like visiting Yosemite. A picture of a painting isn’t It.
But the detail turned out to be the pathway in.
Joan is funny. She’s not mean. She’s generous.
The curator told me he met the artist at a dinner and though he was ”terrified” because of her reputation for histrionics, they got along well.
I never gave him the details I snapped, but he didn’t need them. I told him about the show and his eyes lit up.
Professor Albers wrote that for Joan Mitchell, letters were colors, sound was taste, emotions were right out of the tube: like illuminist poet Arthur Rimbaud, she had synesthesia, so, with Joan, one is confused at first, until the maelstrom, in stillness, in immensity, and with plunging infinite detail, invites you in.
I kind of laughed because seeing the author brought this encounter to mind. Then the light changed and The City moved on to the next moment, moving life in every direction.
Knock yourself out!
***Postscrypt:
It was on the 10 o’clock news that I heard the news of the death of Princess Diana. I know, let the eye-rolling commence.
I had just locked the doors at the haunted bookstore and drawn the shades and turned off the lights and breathed in the perfect peace of a bookstore at night.
Let’s stop right there. A bookstore at night is like church.
Ok.
I had no interest in Princess Diana whatsoever. Took the rattling streetcar home. It was a lovely warm summer night in San Francisco.
So, at home at midnight, I watched the pale dawn in Paris and London on television, and saw the beginnings of flower memorials outside the palace gates. The world was awakening to the sad news and blanket coverage was just beginning.
Then, lo, there was Di standing over by the window in the corner, just a step out of the light of the 60 watt overhead bulb of my room- which was a mess, as usual.
There she was in Appearance, an Apparition. Right there in my disorderly, usually cold low-rent room in San Francisco. I think I was eating a sandwich at midnight. Maybe it was a burrito.
-Then, she Wasn’t.
She’d completely disappeared from that ambient imaginative space. Could not reimagine her. She was gone.
So I asked The Great Whatever why a nobody like myself would have an Experience like that and TGW answered:
“The Princess acknowledges every person who has a thought for her everywhere the world over, and brings a message of peace to everyone who remembers her this night.”
So, there you go. I received an unearned gift of grace of some sort.
In the following days there was a great global outpouring of feeling for Diana Spencer, and the Royals were blindsided and had completely underestimated her now charismatic appeal for the masses, the whole world over.
I knew that the spirit probably touched everyone as The Great Whatever had explained.
Am I saying that Lady Diana from another time is a ghost?
No. She’s not a ghost.
But the world keeps turning and something ancient and venerable is always at work, and when a person stops and thinks, time stops and thinks too.
As Isaac Newton says:
“Time is its own thing.”
***
***
Welcome, October.
Do you believe in spirit communication?
I do.
For me it’s coincidences.
Example.
I had the opportunity to visit artists in studio, and one of the artists, while painting, told me she pushed her students in a strident way by clapping her hands to urge them to get busy. “Chop chop!” Let’s go! Get to work!
We discussed how weird and jarring and probably racist that old hackneyed expression is. We laughed about it.
Well, a few days later my wife and I were were watching tv and a random program I wasn’t paying any attention to was on in which a character was killed by bad guys, but was awakened by magical powers and the first words the character said coming back to life were: “Chop chop! Let’s go!”
-What?!
I’ve heard psychics say that those weird word coincidences, well, that’s your spirit guides letting you know they’re there.
This happens all the time now.
So tonight I was listening to a nice song called “The Wheel” from Todd Rundgren’s early cosmic days- on YouTube -it just appeared while mindlessly scrolling, and the verse goes “Let us off this Wheel of Karma, let us stop the hands of time.”
“Hands of time” is a repeated verse, in the form of a round, as when people sing together a disjointed phrase that harmonizes with itself.
I know, woo-woo. But it’s a nice song. I let it go.
And, while listening to this “Hands of Time” thing in bed, I was reading my library book of essays from an art writer I’d never heard of which I just checked out at random and which it turns out I love and I turned the page and the chapter, chapter two, totally random, was entitled:
“Hands of Time”
(I know. What?)
…While the random song was playing the exact same words at the exact same time. Totally random.
Okayyy.
Welcome, October! Veil is thin.
Perhaps it’s the musician friend I heard had passed, years ago, but that I just found out about. So it’s new information. That would be just like him. Miss that guy. We really had fun. Brilliant. Creativity everywhere, every minute.
Oh now the coyotes have started howling. I like them, too. This universe is quite interesting.
***
For Emilie
Hey, Daisy!:
Today is your birthday and that is a fact
Not just any scribble or doodle, an absence of tact-
But a mere thought-
Wrapped and bowed and festooned with a tassel
Send via ether to avoid all the hassle
So over the castle under the moat
-Wirelessly- wait til you see what I wrote
It’s not very ample- but rules don’t apply
Happy birthday Daisy in the great by and by!
🌲🌲🌲
***
Bad-Ass Beyond the Veil
Ok I had a recurring imaginative still picture in my mind, yesterday and again today, and that is of two major anti -imperialist bad asses on the same side of The Veil.
I’m seeing D Crosby, pointing at Mark Twain, with a mischievous look, and Twain is standing beside him- pretending to be dead.
Make of it what you will.
***
spirit photo
I collect what I call “Spirit Photos.”
Not apparitions, but portraits that tell us everything we can know of a person’s essential being.
And it can be a healing meditation if you’re into that kind if thing.
This a great one, the people’s pope that died two days ago- but made a final earthly appearance Easter Sunday. 2025.
My orders are to suggest you have a cup of tea before reading.
Ok.
I’ll tell you what I did on election night.
I turned everything off at sundown. No news.
Nothing serious had happened, yet the desired signals were dark.
So I sat in my darkened living room like Americans have done since 1924 and waited in silence.
But I was not alone.
Because I have a …vivid imagination, I daydreamed and in my daydreams in the dark you’ll never guess who showed up in my consciousness-
Benjamin Franklin!
I’m not kidding.
So we sat quietly for a while.
He turned to me and spoke in a confidential tone and said with a slight wry smile
“You know dear sir, I lived through three world wars.
Our effort was global.
Our home desk in London and Paris.”
He added –
“…in 80 years there was never one moment of certainty that things would resolve amicably.
Every moment persists as a courageous act on the stage of impossibilities.”
Then he was gone.
That was about 8 pm.
I checked my phone and a friend from Russia told the news indicating disaster- saying that mass psychosis had broken out.
And so early I went to bed, leaving everything aside except silence and peace and a deep dive into spiritual grounded space.
Please type or copy/ paste the desired title ( w/o number, just title) into the search box and it will take you there.
Once there, there are live links by title, so easier navigating between texts.
There is a book of California sketches, a book of seasonal pieces and five poetry chapbooks. The way they’re organized is noted at bottom.
1. California: A Book of Beginnings: in ten short essays (Plus “Sketchbooks Belong Together” – Photos and history along the Bay Trail.)
2. Ghost Walking with Richard Brautigan: San Francisco during lockdown.
3. A Year of Poems/ Evening Poems
4. The Imperfect Tree Survives the Ax (political poems)
5. Steamer Day (San Francisco history poems and rough drafts)
6. Pumpkinalia / & On Christmas Road (Four Christmas meditations)
7. Poems I Invite You (early efforts and photocopies)
8. The Fact of Breath/ CoEvolutionary Covid (archetypal essays on the Pandemic)
9. “Emperor Norton, Robin Williams and the Bicycles of the Afterlife”- a San Francisco Halloween Poem
10. Circles and Arrows and a Paragraph on the Back About Arlo Guthrie/ Pete Seeger/ & Bruce Sherman, Bookstore Balladeer; I met a Beatle
11. Red States Revelations: The Gospel of Larry. Meek and mildly offensive, so I’m sorry.
12. Garden of Stones: An Essay on Monuments and Murals
13. A Norwalk Ohio Memory/ Ballad of a Wolf-faced Eel, an anecdote for Uncle Obie
14. My Bridge: An Ohio Journey- With Thoreau
15. A Springtime Story for the Lincolns: a meditation
16. My Debate/ Pieces From the Crate: poems during wartime
17. The Little Book of Guns
18. Nickelodeon: A Niles Canyon notebook, San Francisco sites.
19. The Immaculate Kitchen/ and Everyday Life in the Ancient World: two spiritual bookends
20. On the announcement of the death of J.D. Salinger: a letter
21. The Day I met George Plimpton: a notebook on freedom of the Press
22. My Supreme Courtyard/ Heaven is in Your Pocket: Two Poems (by request)
23. Send Me No Magnets: a poem of Summer for your refrigerator
24. Hospice: a notebook. Poems and paragraphs.
25. My Meditation Shack: a novella awaiting a title an ending and a plot.
26. A Beatles Christmas: a poem for my sister Kate. (with help from OAK)
27. Dear Jelly Roll
28. The City From Space
29. Premier Menuet; Vexations! Satie; Summer: Bix Beiderbecke and Music in the Air
30. You, Ocean
31. The Tree is You
32. Hunter’s Point Notebook 1
33. “Suspicious Disappearance”: Molly’s sleuthing a family mystery
34. The Great San Francisco Earthquake (and Fire) Blues
35. Acts of Oblivion
36. Old San Francisco Bay: Hunters Point Shipyard Notebook 2
37. Peninsula Nature
38. Ocular notebook
40. Jesse Benton Fremont at Black Point- a photo essay (California Beginning.
41. Summer: Bix Beiderbecke and Music in the Air
43. Ida’s Mad Fandango
43. Afghanistan
44. Mission
46. Bipartisan Buzzsaw
47. The Radical Cheesehead Demolition and Religious Freedom/ The Great Awakening
49. The Queen’s Passing: I’ll Take the Stairs/ A Spirit Photo/ Jeffersonian/Just My Imagination, Gore Vidal/ Joan Mitchell
50. In Memory of… (Presidential)
——Note on Organization:
If I were to collect most of the pieces in this Table of Contents I would create two prose volumes and four poetry chapbooks.
Book 1 California:A Book of Beginnings would also include “Sketchbooks Belong Together: photos and history along the Bay Trail”: (1. Old San Francisco Bay; 2. Hunters Point; 3. Jesse Benton Fremont at Black Point; 4. Peninsula Nature; 6. I Get It, It’s Morning; 7. Embarcadero to Mission Creek; Ghostwalking with Richard Brautigan.) 8. Mission; These are really part of my “California Beginnings” book of essays.
Book 2 “My Book of Seasons” would contain my Thoreau essay “My Bridge”, plus four Christmas pieces plus “Beatles Xmas poem; Summer, Bix; my autumn pieces Redwood Rhapsody and Pumpkinalia and my autumn Woodstock essays Circles and Arrows and the Pete Seeger and “I met a Beatle” and Halloween poem “Robin Williams and Emperor Norton and the Bicycles of the Afterlife”; the John Fahey monograph; spring includes “Spring Story For the Lincolns; etc
Poetry comprised of 5 little chapbook collections: “Year of Poems”; “Evening Poems”; “The Imperfect Tree”; “Steamer Day.” plus Scrawls : early attempts.
On Meeting a Biographer, a reverie.
I recognized the biographer of Joan Mitchell, Patricia Albers, coming out of the main library today. She had a name tag on, so I could run up and thank her for her book.
It probably disturbed her reverie, and San Franciscans usually don’t accost writers on the street-bad form- but her writing is great, and Joan Mitchell was here at the MOMA not too long ago. Her paintings- she passed in 1992.
Joan Mitchell is one of the famous people that drops by sometimes, when my mind is quiet. It’s imagination- or is it??
I was thinking of her paintings one evening and I thought, you know, what would be good, would be to be IN the painting, you know, to be walking around amid the color and forms and dimensions. Like a universe in there. Of course. To be within.
So at that moment, quiet evening at home, reverie, living room, I felt the pleasant tingles down my spine-energy- so I said thank you, and she said (or was it my imagination) “Go ahead- knock yourself out”- in a way both blasé and playful, and she was smiling and blowing smoke. For a second.
I believe some creative artists respond to their audience, those truly interested in their work. One doesn’t have to “be” somebody. You open the door, and inspiration may follow.
So you could say we’re friends.
My experience recurs when I’m aware of artists in the center of their work, within it, part of it, multidimensionally. Then, she’s there. See?
I snapped a detail from my walk through the Joan Mitchell exhibit last year. An art curator was in hospice at Maitri last year, and I intended to frame some details, but we agreed that nothing comes close to the experience of the actual painting- it’s not an artifact, it’s a personal experience, like visiting Yosemite. A picture of a painting isn’t It.
But the detail turned out to be the pathway in.
Joan is funny. She’s not mean. She’s generous.
The curator told me he met the artist at a dinner and though he was ”terrified” because of her reputation for histrionics, they got along well.
I never gave him the details I snapped, but he didn’t need them. I told him about the show and his eyes lit up.
Professor Albers wrote that for Joan Mitchell, letters were colors, sound was taste, emotions were right out of the tube: like illuminist poet Arthur Rimbaud, she had synesthesia, so, with Joan, one is confused at first, until the maelstrom, in stillness, in immensity, and with plunging infinite detail, invites you in.
I kind of laughed because seeing the author brought this encounter to mind. Then the light changed and The City moved on to the next moment, moving life in every direction.
Knock yourself out.
It gets quiet of an evening. One thinks of constellations, cosmology, laws that govern orbits.
Somewhere out there is the energy of an Adams, a Jefferson.
-Impossible to imagine these dignitaries wouldn’t take an interest in human events now.
Be still.
I sensed Jefferson this evening, out in the Cosmos. Or right here, when the living room is quiet, at nightfall.
He has that jaw set. The wakeful dreaminess. The political insight of a street fighter. The intense interest in the scheme of government. All submerged in a deep, deep infinite contemplation.
Here in the living room for a brief time, beliefs and human schemes evaporate; out in America comfortable people dream, and the universe, our cosmology, assets its existence for a moment.
-I thought of slavery. I can’t mention the presence of Jefferson without mentioning the modern American polling data on a Jefferson of two centuries ago, regarding the horror of human bondage.
The impatient rejoinder from beyond is as follows:
“So are you willing to throw away car keys and walk? Because the energy usage is devastating to the environment and the workforce is paid half wages.”
Point taken.
So the issue before us is, that out there in Mar-a-Lago tonight is a former President, a virtual terrorist, willing to threaten the United States, asserting powers that are…extra-Constitutional.
Jefferson is referring to MAGA as “the Ultras”.
They were there in 1800, too. Personal empire, as a means to a personal end.
This is a fascinating stress test of a still-young republic, this Florida stand-off with the former president.
I sense a deep capacity for contemplation in Jefferson. A mind that is its own galaxy…infinite but focused. A natural bridge. Still. Quiet mind. Observing.
And the thought comes that we are what we believe we are, and at times those ideas fluctuate and the Nation is its own cosmos, with its dynamic laws, which can only be approximated in the Constitutional scheme.
Ideals exist. And these are expressed in a balanced design of government, of natural rights, of human rights.
And the former president Trump is now outside of that dynamic scheme. A “private citizen.”
Here is a description of tyranny:
“a condition imposed by some outside agency or force.”
Cosmology is our theme. Constellations. Satellites of governments. Rogue agents and astronauts, attempting to determine boundaries and corruptly acquire assets, from beyond the map set forth by the political explorers of the early United States.
Jefferson is pointing out that, as in the historic case of his Vice President Aaron Burr, Trump has become interested in empire, and so has stepped beyond the scheme of government.
With Burr, it was an empire in Mexico, which led to a trial for treason before a Supreme Court justice.
With Trump, a base in Florida, and documents he may use as bargaining chips to sell, extort or destroy.
To step outside of the scheme is a paradox: one loses power when one departs from the design set forth in the Constitution; it is a bit of a trap, a hidden trapdoor contemplated. devised by the Framers.
They told no one, that the Union, being perpetual, to step beyond which allows no leverage, so one tumbles to oblivion, by asserting powers that don’t exist in the Constitution.
Perhaps that is the case before us.
He said.
***
Tina Heringer The spirit of Gore Vidal dropped by last week, in my living room. Still using the cane on the Other Side. A friend referenced his famous view of our politics, often expressed, the party with two Right Wings, so I’ll describe:
It’s kind of funny but hard to translate. I was sitting alone at midnight after the siege of Mar-a-Lago, the room in semi-darkness, thinking of how Man is actually an Island out on a distant crag, surrounded by the great infinite mystery and how the ship of state is headed toward its Great Destiny- or The Great Dark. I was alone, looking into the Vastness and blank-ness of our political situation, of the Bird with Two Right Wings, and I suddenly sensed the great presence, Gore Vidal. The Great One. And he gave a sinister eye-roll and said in spirit, “well what took you so long? You’re really not quick.” And then pfft he was gone. And that is true.💙 And I felt somehow…reassured. Jynx was staring at that corner, too with her green eyes buggin’ out. I’m not sure what it means but I’ve learned to be grateful.🇺🇸
Just my imagination?
The spirit of Gore Vidal dropped by last week, in my living room.
It was kind of like having FDR drop by. That patrician energy.
Still using the cane on the Other Side. A friend referenced his famous view of our politics, often expressed, re the party with two Right Wings, so I’ll describe:
I was sitting alone at midnight, after the siege of Mar-a-Lago, the room in semi-darkness, thinking of how Man is actually an Island out on a distant crag, surrounded by the great infinite mystery and how the ship of state is headed toward its Great Destiny- or The Great Dark.
I was alone, looking into the Vastness and blank-ness of our political situation, and the government run by the Bird with Two Right Wings, and I suddenly sensed the great presence, Gore Vidal. The Great One.
And he gave a sinister eye-roll and said in spirit, “well what took you so long? You’re really not quick.” He was referring to the plight of Democracy, the drama of The Republic, the denouement of authoritarianism.
And then pfft he was gone. Leaving me in that rarified space of the Present.
And that is true.💙
And I felt somehow…reassured. Jynx was staring at that corner, too with her green eyes buggin’ out. I’m not sure what it means but I’ve learned to be grateful.🇺🇸
Just thought you’d like to know we’re being …observed.
Don’t read this, maybe. I have to write it though.
I had a friend who served as an army ranger, special forces, he said that he was stationed in many places “we weren’t supposed to be“ and he told me a story about Afghanistan.
He said that before 911, one of the most charismatic leaders In the northern part of of Afghanistan was rising in popularity. I guess he would be considered a warlord- but kind of a combination of war lord and Bruce Springsteen, for the militias in the north. Yes. Popular national leader, potentially. (It was Ahmad Shah Massoud, of the Northern Alliance.)
He may have been the most significant challenger to the Taliban- and the Taliban too was on the rise.
We’re talking autumn of 2000.
My friend explained that, just weeks before 9/11, this charismatic leader was visited by journalists, at a time in which he was poised to gain some control of the country and prevent the Taliban insurgency from taking over.
He was beloved, revered, admired- politically significant within the country.
The journalists who visited this leader were Al-Qaeda. This militia leader was assassinated. Murdered.
My brilliant, thick-skinned special forces veteran was practically in tears when he told me the story. A veteran frustrated with the ironies of fate. He knew the man, Massoud. He knew that it was a hidden turning point in history.
911 happened. A power-vacuum left ignorant young Taliban kids to negotiate the removal of Bin Laden with the United States of America. I’m not saying they’re innocent- but naive, clueless, as well as violent fanatics. And Bin Laden was a Saudi. An “unwelcome guest”.
He could not be removed without violent insurgencies igniting throughout the region.
And Bush/ Cheney were going to bomb the shit out of Afghanistan.
My army ranger friend was already hoping to return, to rebuild infrastructure, electricity, roads society. A failed state breeds terror.
But the hope was crushed by the assassination of what could have been a national leader with international support.
He explained that history is not always what occurs – it’s what opportunities are taken off the table even before what we think of as history begins.
A charismatic leader with influence in the country could have prevailed against the Taliban but, once assassinated, that opportunity was destroyed forever.
I’m just telling you what a veteran told me, although it is true that a militia leader was assassinated before 911 and it was known in the region how significant it was that he was killed.
I just can’t Google all this right now. It goes on the pile of all the comment threads that really mean so little.
Then the war came. We drop the mother of all bombs, we carpet-bombed the villages, the targets, donkeys and weddings, we chased in jets above unknown terrain looking for Osama bin Laden in a cave, not knowing our chance of prevailing was zero.
Our chance of success was nill.
If you don’t believe me, consider this : in the beginning of the invasion of Iraq by George W Bush, an international effort was being put in place by Sergio DeMello, and with that came hopes of truly international collaboration in the ensuing war against Sadaam Hussein Dictator of Iraq.
In the early days of the invasion the United Nations installation was just being put together in Iraq.
The initial invasion was complete, and the blueprint for the next stage of the conflict was just being begun.
And in charge of the UN effort, De Mello, brought diplomatic flair, objectivity, experience, and the possibility of truly building a coalition that might spare Iraq an endless war.
And the international effort was seen as crucial and would certainly be a necessity when combat ceased and rebuilding ensued.
The site was bombed- by what became ISIS, DeMello was killed and the international effort was destroyed forever.
The day of that bombing, president George W. Bush was on the golf course. It was a sunny day and he was informed on the cell phone- blackberry, back then -that the international effort was over- the bombing of the UN site in Iraq had occurred-
and, as I thought at the time, the true import of that phone call was that the US incursion was a lost cause; the international effort was over, and that the mission of George W Bush was doomed forever to failure – in the first months of the invasion.
It was over before it began. 100,00 casualties. Now perhaps a million. Who knows? They refused to count.
What was needed was removed from the table even before history began- and the reasons, the causes for that, are so complex, so tragic, so heartbreaking- we may never know all that has been lost, beyond the millions of deaths in the wake of this initial catastrophic pursuit of empire.
You don’t have to believe the story- you don’t have to Google anything I say- but I can tell you that this September 11 is going to be a deeply troubling reminiscence of more than what happened on that day – but how much lead up to that day – history we haven’t even begun to process.
Not just three thousand deaths.
Not just a plane turned around at Cleveland, my home town, loaded with passengers returning to San Francisco, my home town – crashed by heroes in a field to prevent the intended destruction of the White House.
Not just those. But millions. Millions of deaths.
I have no insight into this beyond books, conversations, and, like many Americans, I make up my own reality- and yet there’s a deep sorrow involved this time for Americans. We have a lot to think about, and there are no easy answers now -the easy answers were never there.
What was desperately needed – even for that fucked up mission in Iraq, which never should have occurred, was removed before the history we know even began.
Friends, can I say one more thing? It is true we have a Taliban in this country.
We have our warlords, we have militias. We have desperate uneducated people, angry, rejected, enraged.
We have cynical, well-educated people too, using them as pawns -As Osama bin Laden would do, as George W. Bush would do, as Donald Rumsfeld would do.
In Abu Graib, a war prison during Iraq, during the term of Donald Rumsfeld, it was the low-ranking servicemen and women who were accused of acts of torture- even while the secretary of defense played word games, denying the orders from the White House, denying culpability.
Bush /Cheney / Obama /Trump threw our servicemen and servicewomen under the bus.
Our kids were sent on a hopeless mission to remake the map, just as always, to get it down on paper, no matter what the cost.
And, by and large, most Americans said ok. They must know what they’re doing.
Wrong.
“It’ll only take six months, and then we run for President the next year, on a great quick victory over terror” -That’s what they said, anyway.
That’s what they always say.
A failed state is the cause of terrorism, they tried to tell us.
We need to make certain OUR state doesn’t fail.
Tragedy is not knowing the answer to that.
Samuel Alito made news through insensitive remarks but hey. There’s something here to think about.
I listened to Samuel Alito’s speech in Rome, on religious freedom.
It’s forty minutes, but here are the key takeaways:
-Alito remarks that, while it is usually hot in Rome in summer, this year is much more so. (It’s almost 100 degrees F at 6 am!)
Alito did not mention the obvious, that a recent Supreme Court decision struck down efforts to halt global warming. I’m certain the audience noticed this bland dismissal of climate change. Or maybe not.
Football is a bridge to understanding. (Really?)
-Alito drew parallels between religious belief and American football fans. (“Cheese-heads” and headscarves: the same?)
-Sunday football vs Sunday mass, quite leaving out the range of thinking and creativity of the rest of the population immune to these distractions. (See #1. Sun revolves around Earth.)
Yes, despite the fact that religious practice is protected, and that is clear in the Constitution, Alito blames “secular society” for what he sees as a limitation on religious freedom- that other people have different beliefs, too, he finds objectionable. (See #1, sun revolving around earth, again.)
-That belief systems must co-exist is not a battle, however. Coexistence is the opposite of a battle, in reality.
(If true, that religion is “embattled”, the judge has definitely chosen sides. He has a prejudicial view, and takes up the cudgel for a particular religion, despite law and precedent. Impartiality, what good is it?)
Alito acknowledges his own view that the religious question is for him adversarial. It’s a struggle for power. Nothing but.
Alito, in addressing religious freedom, ignored the fact that the US Capitol was attacked by those who consider themselves Christian Soldiers.
-Leaders, like Mike Flynn, spoke “evangelical” to rallies, in order to heat up the movement to the J6 assault on American Democracy. Many in the crowd were led in prayer for the miracle that would overturn the election.
The large Dec 12, 2020 MAGA rally in Washington, just one week before plans were put in place for the J6 assault, was led in part by evangelical activists and Alex Jones, one of the Space Laser Community.
-And yet, right now, states are figuring out how to enforce the Dobbs decision against women and girls and men and doctors and neighbors.
(Alito did not note that the power of the State to determine human rights based on religion was a foundation for totalitarianism in Nazi Germany. He did footnote the Holocaust, however, as something bad that happened.)
Alito did not explain the inherent bigotry of such a world view, how utterly parochial it is, nor that Republicans contemplate using military, national guard, martial law, to enforce it. No mention was made by Alito of the attempted Muslim Ban in USA.)
So who is embattled by whom, one wonders?
And then the Alitos had a really nice dinner while Rome burned in the summer heat.
There is one point implicit in Alito’s remarks on religious freedom. He’s not too keen on freedom of thought as an inalienable right. Perhaps he sees secular society as a lot of cheese-heads. Misguided fans of culture.
He sees believers wandering in a fallen secular world, unable to express the full extent of their personal beliefs. Welcome to Planet Earth.
Alito did credit those- James Madison among them- who surveyed human rights and included results from a wide range of approaches to government from ancient history to modern life, an effort to determine what rights of all are most important to include in declarations of human rights.
So we see that, historically, it was secular scholars who made provisions for religious freedom- not the other way around.
I’m certain Alito’s remarks were intended to be light in tone and not challenging to his audience.
But he signaled his dislike of society and his deep bias and the limited comprehension expressed of the real world- the world which many of us actually do cherish. Including the right to be free, truly free.
When I see Alito I’m not seeing freedom. I’m seeing social injustice and tanks in the street.
Vote Blue.
***
Chief Justice John Roberts.
He took a rare opportunity the other day to comment on the opprobrium directed at the Court after the overturning of human rights, saying disagreements about an opinion do not reflect on the legitimacy of the Court.
That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard from a conservative- ever.
The Dredd Scott Court in 1857 was “legitimate.” That didn’t grant it integrity, when it upheld slavery.
It’s the decision, stupid.
To indignantly defend an opinion that was not set in precedent, that was written out of acrimony, and that includes hate speech, and was based in the thinking of an era of witch burning; that was issued immediately upon seating a corrupt court, with two stolen seats, nominations by presidents that did not reflect the popular will; that includes the spouse of an insurrectionist that lobbied for the overthrow of government, and then who ruled on her case.
John Roberts. He just ended the last vestiges of legitimacy with one word.
Americans are not in the mood, John Roberts, to be lectured on respect for a court that has not earned it or delivered justice and fairness and constitutional protections that are the right of every citizen- all without a hint of foundation in the actual reality of this year.
Totally illegitimate Supreme Court.
The problem is lack of respect for the opinions of mankind. Lack of respect for every American.
That’s how out of touch they are.
Roberts’ indignation proved the case against the Court.
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