21st C. Writer

Symbolic Sight -- An Energetic Practice

2010-04-14T20:39:00.001-07:00

The following is a recap of my experience in a recent class at the Healing Cave, part of the Institute for Shamanic Arts in Tucson, Arizona.

For Gigi, who asked about Symbolic Sight. First off, the teacher is a gifted young man who has written four books in the past seven months. You can go to his web site at TDJacobs.com to learn more about him and his work.

Symbolic Sight is based on two commonly accepted principles: First, that everything comes from energy due to the relationship between energy and matter as shown by numerous physicists over the past century; second, when an energetic imbalance exists for a long enough period of time it will manifest physically, because of the first principle.

Symbolic Sight allows us to see a ‘thing’ (physical manifestation) and the cause of the thing (energy imbalance) at the same time.

There are two ways of looking and both are part of the process. The literal route is the physical manifestation (illness, injury, emotions that overrun reason, etc.). The symbolic route is seeing the thing through an energetic practice (meditation, chakra work, yoga, tai chi, chi gong, etc.). The purpose of this is to understand the energy behind the physical manifestation, process and release it and in so doing, heal both the imbalance and the manifestation.

Here’s an example (my personal experience in the class): I participated in a twenty minute meditation with a group of four other people. We began with an intention centered on something that felt out of balance in our lives. I chose my relationships with family. We attempted to establish an energetic circuit, taking in energy on our inhalations through both the crown and root chakras – tapping into the earth’s core and the infinite cosmos – connecting the two energies at the heart, where they could be combined and transformed and released as love during the exhalations. We were specifically instructed to pay attention to blockages in the path, not only in the crown, heart, and root, but any of the other chakras as well. These would give us clues to the imbalances within us.

Once we either completed the circuit or identified the blockages (or in some cases, saw the blockages as slow down points) we then silently asked for guidance – Tell us what we need to know but don’t know about this energetic path. We then waited, focusing on the circuit but listening for a message from the subconscious mind.

I immediately saw a vivid image of two bare-chested warriors facing one another. Both wore buckskin pants and identical bear claw necklaces. Each of the necklaces had a bronze medallion hanging from it. An iron shaft joined the two warriors, piercing the medallions and their bodies. I knew a broad head arrow point was lodged in each of their hearts. Both bled copiously from the wounds. A series of satin ribbons wrapped around the shaft and extended out into the darkness where unseen hands pulled alternately at the ribbons, causing the arrowheads to twist in the hearts of the two warriors. All this time, the point of view was such that I could not see the men’s faces. The image finally expanded and the two warriors’ faces were revealed. One was me. The other was my son.

Shortly after, we came out of the meditation to describe our experiences. Tom helped us to interpret them.

The symbolism of the painful connection at the heart represents the love I feel for my son. At the same time, because of differing world-views, I feel that I am not very effective at expressing that love. There is a painful rigidity both in my expression and his acceptance. The identical necklaces show that he is my equal and there is no longer any need for me to take the lead in guiding him in the ways of the world. He has found his own path and is succeeding on it. It would be wise for me to let go. I don’t do this because of fear that letting go (pulling out the arrow) might kill either me or him. So instead, we bleed together. The ribbons represent the desires and influences of others, who are equally conflicted as to what we should do to have a loving and productive relationship.

I asked Tom how to heal this. He said that the first thing I have to do is cut the ribbons. Others have no place in this situation. He then explained that energy can be consciously transformed, that I have the ability to change the material of the shaft into anything else. I can make it into something that binds us at the heart, but allows us the freedom to be who we are as individuals. He suggested I repeat the meditation a few times and ask for guidance on what material would best serve that purpose, and when it becomes clear, make the change.

The others present had similar experiences, some with more detail, some less.

This is really a thumbnail sketch of what the experience was like but it was powerful enough that I wanted to share with any who care to know.

Infinite Love, based on a shamanic journey

2010-02-16T21:51:00.002-07:00

Infinite Love

By Stephen Russell

One of the tribe returned from a journey with an ecstatic smile on his face. He was the eunuch, the castrato who had slipped away early in the morning of the day of Love’s Expression, when couples gathered to celebrate their passion. Those whom romantic love had smiled upon exchanged gifts, dined lavishly, and joined in conjugal bliss, in commemoration of their discovery of the most elusive and ill-defined of human emotions.

The castrato had no one on this day and like many others who found themselves uncoupled, experienced a complex and widely opposing range of emotions. Most remained hopeful that love would find them willing rather than wanting, however, a few felt the weight of loneliness more acutely than usual. The hopeful ones offered sincere wishes for continued happiness to the coupled members of the tribe, all the while keeping an open eye and eager heart for another unattached person to join with, thereby gaining the keys to the circle of Love’s disciples.

The castrato had long since abandoned hope, falling into a deep depression followed by a towering rage that led him to run down the back trail, into the wild lands North of the tribal encampment. There, exhaustion overtook him and he fell heavily in a sandy place alongside a stream that bubbled out of a fissure in the cliffs of the Moon King a day’s ride distant. Perhaps it was something in the waters that infected the castrato’s mind as he slept, the moon being the goddess of love, and allowed him to slip into the world of the journeyer, the one who sees outside reality and experiences wisdom from the ancient energies. In any case, something happened during the long night and when the castrato returned to the tribal encampment the next day, his face glowed, his stride was confident, and he seemed about to burst with some news that brought about a rapturous elevation in his mood.

The tribal elders quickly received word of the castrato’s strange behavior. Hearing that the depressed man was so cheerful so soon after the day when he usually experienced his greatest sadness concerned them. Perhaps the man he left his sanity out there in the wilderness along with his sadness. A hasty conference took place and a squad of strong-armed men was sent to bring the castrato before the tribal council that he might be questioned and the state of his fitness for intermingling with the general tribal population determined.

“Noble elders,” the castrato began, genuflecting deeply before the panel as they eyed him suspiciously. “You honor me by allowing me to kneel before you today and share my joy at a discovery I have made just this past night. Surely the gods are smiling on us as they have not only sent me back with a message of great importance for our people, but in particular for those such as myself, afflicted in some manner and cursed to remain separate from the coupling that is the source of our tribe’s renewal.”

“He’s either mad or filled with liquor,” one of the elders whispered to another. The castrato heard him and laughingly leaned over to breath in the man’s face.

“Smell you nothing but the sweet scent of love on my breath, oh wise one. But it is neither madness nor strong drink that has made me like unto a field of sunflowers on this day. Bear with me but awhile and all shall be revealed.”

“Speak then,” the chief of the council said impatiently. “You have journeyed outside the tribal boundaries and returned in a most mysterious good humor. Speak so that we might all enjoy the reason of this … elation.”

The castrato bowed and returned to the center of the room. A chair was brought for him and a pillow to sit upon the chair. He made a great deal of fuss over getting settled just right, adjusting his wrinkled cloak about his body and turning his face to and fro with his eyes closed, as if trying to feel the light of the sun pouring through the high windows of the council chamber, seeking the perfect angle to reflect the incomprehensible joy in his face.

“I will speak now,” he at last said. “I traveled out the North Road, last night, following the winged horse and his warlike rider as they circled round the pole star. I was in a funk and then a rage as I ran, both resentful and envious that I should be cursed not only with the loss of the desire for the physical act of love, but also cursed with a voice that is required to sing for the pleasure of others at this festival each year. It has always been torturous for me to do so and last night was simply the final in a long series of frustrations concerning the matter. I intended to run away and never return.”

A disapproving murmur filled the room at this declaration but the chief stilled the elders with his uplifted palm, then gestured for the castrato to continue.

“I thought to make my way to the Moon King and offer my services as a harem guard. I have heard that his is the finest and largest harem in all the world and I thought perhaps by being among so amorous a collective I might, by some trick of imagination, fall far enough into madness to live vicariously through the old king as he worked his conjugal way around the beds of his many, many wives.”

An amazed gasp emerged now from the elders. A sense of outrage came over their faces. Even the chief of the council felt his mouth tighten into a sneer, his eyes hooding with disapproval. Nonetheless he beckoned the castrato to continue.

“Of course, the story of the Moon King and his many wives is all but a legend, as no man who has sought the harem has ever returned from the Moon King’s castle. This should perhaps give some indication of the degree of my desperation!” the castrato said with a wink.

“Tell us, castrato, did you in fact make it so far as the Moon King’s palace and are you now going to tell us of the fabulous pleasures that await there? I warn you, we’ll not be taken in by fancy lies here. This is not madness, but mockery,” one of the elders said, shaking a long finger at the castrato.

The castrato gave the chief a look that begged indulgence and the chief, frowning at the interrupting elder ordered the castrato to continue, admonishing him to speak only truth or suffer more than seclusion until his madness played out.

“I assure you, great warrior and chief of our tribe, I would never waste this council’s time on madness or mockery, nor will I utter a single untrue word in your presence. I have a message of great importance, a message that will have you rejoicing.”

“Then get on with it!” the chief said impatiently.

“As is well known, the gateway to the Moon King’s land is guarded by a fearsome dragon. Well, by the time I reached the stream that marks the boundary between the wild lands and the Moon Kingdom, I had exhausted both my despair and anger. I crossed the creek and suddenly found myself unable to take another step, so great was my fatigue. I found a soft patch of sand beside the stream and promptly collapsed in an unfeeling sleep.

“After some hours the chill night air woke me. I sat up and found myself alone in a strange land with no cover, no companion, and a deep sense of shame at my behavior. It was at that moment that I noticed something very peculiar.

“There was a sound like a tremendous drum beating that filled the night and when I looked around for the source of it, I discovered that the sky was black, entirely. Not a single star so much as winked overhead. I reached up and to my amazement, my hand pressed against something leathery and warm. It was then that I realized the drumming sound was the stomping of a large foot and that the foot belonged to the leathery warm thing whose great wings were spread above me like a domed tent. The Moon King’s dragon had found me by the stream and was stamping its foot while it sheltered me beneath its outspread wings.”

“Enough of this nonsense,” one of the elder’s said. “The man is obviously mad, but I don’t see that he presents any danger to himself. In fact, some of our simpler members might find him amusing. In any case, we have a day’s work to do. Let’s end this and get about the important business that waits our attention.”

“Not so fast, brother,” the chief spoke. “I have journeyed across the wild lands and seen the dragon the castrato speaks of. It’s wings are indeed leathery, rather than scaled, as we might think. And it does have the peculiarly annoying habit of stamping its foot pretty much all the time. I cannot explain this odd behavior, nor can I account yet for the state of the castrato’s sanity, but I will hear more, as will you all. Now sit down and listen.

“As for you, castrato, I will ask you one question, and from it, I will know the truth of all that you have spoken, thus far.”

The castrato took a deep bow, having risen from his stool while the chief was talking.

“Please, great chief, test me.”

“What color are the dragon’s eyes.

The castrato stood very still, holding his hands together with his fingers steepled as he smiled up at the council.

“They are blue, my chief. But not ordinary blue. No, they glow blue from within, a deep cobalt that highlights the alternating bands of turquoise, celadon, robin’s egg, and midnight that surround a glistening golden pupil. And the dragon stomps its foot because it itches and having no hands to scratch with, it is mad with annoyance.”

“And how do you know this?” the chief asked.

“I scratched the offending foot, my chief. The dragon, being appreciative, told me so.”

Another murmur began but was stilled at once by the chief.

“I will hear all of this, without any more interruptions. The next man who speaks other than the castrato will be sent to see the dragon in person!”

A heavy silence fell over the council chamber. The castrato asked for a drink of water and took a long minute to quench his thirst before resuming.

“I saw the eyes very near to my own, my chief. The dragon had its head immediately to my left, resting it on a stone near where I slept. When I touched its wing, its eyes opened and I thought that I was surely doomed. I ran the opposite way and in so doing, ended up directly under the descending foot of the dragon. I was nearly flattened but managed to dive out of the way and holler ‘Watch it!’ just in time.

“The dragon, by the way, is a most polite beast. It apologized for nearly smashing me and then explained its predicament. Apparently the Moon King is a poor caretaker. The beast has had the itch in its foot for more than twenty years. At any rate, I offered to scratch the offensive area and the beast gratefully acceded.

“Once the itch was gone the dragon began to speak quite freely, telling me it had been waiting for me to come along forever, and that it had wanted to make my acquaintance for years, and that it could only feel love for me, both on account of my singing voice, which is perhaps my greatest asset and the fact that I was thought to be a compassionate man. This I laughed at.

“You laughed?” the chief said, incredulous, “At the dragon?”

“I had too, you see, I was terrified. If I didn’t laugh I undoubtedly would have done something horribly embarrassing like faint or pee on myself or something even worse.”

A slight laugh of amusement rippled around the council table.

“So, there I was on the border of the Moon King’s land with a relieved but still very dangerous dragon, especially if it learned my true purpose in coming. I decided to take an indirect approach.

“Dragon, I said, I’ve come to your land because I am a eunuch, a castrato, and I would that I might be allowed to sing for your master, the Moon King and his fabulous harem. At this, the dragon began to chuckle, which is not unlike the sound a volcano makes before it erupts. And then it began to howl with hysterical laughter, falling on its back and kicking its feet high in the air.

“Please, dragon, I begged, tell me what it is about my quest that is so amusing. The dragon slowly regained his composure, and then sat up rubbing tears from its eyes. It looked at me and slowly shook its head before politely refusing to answer that specific question. But you may ask me any other and I will not refuse you, the dragon said.

“After pondering for a bit, I decided to ask about the thing that had driven me mad and into the dragon’s space. All right, I began; tell me about this thing called love. Tell me what it is. I never seem to be able to find it. Perhaps I’m looking for the wrong thing.

“Love, the dragon said musingly, begins with desire. Yes, you must desire love to find it. But no ordinary desire is this which I speak of. No, this is desire that burns, consumes, and turns you to ash with its power. It is something that unrequited sustains you and feeds the whole world with its energy. It is the positive desire of the lover waiting for his beloved, the beloved in an equally powerful state of expectation. It is the closest to heaven and hell that you will ever be while alive in this world.

“I thought about the sulfurous flames lurking in the body of the beast that spoke so eloquently to me. I thought about my wanting for love, about my desire and need and hunger for it. I knew what the dragon meant, but I needed more. I needed to literally feel that burning sensation. Call me mad now, but I asked the dragon if I could be burned up with desire right then and there, on the spot I stood. I said it with such sincerity that the dragon seemed to choke up for a moment.

“You truly do have a burning desire, it said to me. I do, I answered, I want to be burned on love’s altar and my ashes scattered to the four corners of the earth that I might find love’s essence. Will you help me dragon, please?

“And the dragon could only nod. It watched as I lay on my back, my arms spread wide, ready for the scorching flames that would incinerate me and allow me to be reborn ready for love. The dragon helped, exhaling its super-heated breath on my prone body, but I know that it was my own wanting that at last caused me to burst into blue flame and wither away to ash beside the Moon King’s stream. And then I found out the real power of the dragon.

“Taking in another lungful of air, the mighty beast exhaled through its nostrils this time, and my ashes whirled aloft on a cyclone of heated air, sparking to life and becoming a million stars that formed the shape of a new constellation, a dragon equally as ferocious and huge as the one that had aided me to feel love’s burning desire. I sat in the heavens and I looked out on the whole land and I waited. Love come to me, I waited. Love? I waited some more.

“I don’t see it yet, dragon, I at last said.

“The dragon thought for a long time, and then it spoke very softly to me. The blue eyes glowed like a gem lode. Tell me what you think love is, the dragon demanded of me.

“I had to think only a slight moment, for I knew precisely what I had been missing out on for so many years. Love, I said, is the unconditional acceptance by another, no matter who you are, what you have done, or what might become of you. Love acknowledges you as valid and allows you to become all that you can without judgment. More than that, love gives back to you its strongest feelings of approval, validation, and acceptance. It gives all in service to you and in so doing, the lover is also served, allowed to shine in the presence of the object of love.

“An enormously high expectation to put on someone, don’t you think, the dragon challenged me. Not at all, I said. I would feel the same way toward one who loved me. The dragon smiled. It was a truly frightening smile, not only because it came from a ferocious dragon, but because the mental process behind it was so plain. The dragon had led me into some sort of linguistic trap and was about to spring it. Or so I thought.

“Well, castrato, the dragon said, based on your definition you must feel very loved right now. The dragon then waited for me to reply.

“How can you mock me, I said, feeling hurt. I am utterly alone, cold, and unwanted. Nothing and no one shines on me. I am accepted only with conditions, that I sing and that I not become to morose during this festival. How can you possibly think I should feel loved?

“By your own definition, the dragon said, you are loved. Consider if you will the stars. Night after night the heavens glow with a billion points of light that not only illuminate you in your so-called loneliness, but are the source of the minerals that formed every element on this planet. The stars glow and glow no matter what you do, who you are, or what you might become. They illuminate you and based on all the known signs, they are unwavering in their shining fully in your presence. You have as many lovers in the stars as the Moon King, who incidentally already knows this truth and his famous harem is nothing more than what you can see overhead. With that, the dragon folded his great wings, revealing to me the full splendor of the night sky and indeed, in that moment, in the glow of those billion suns washing over my own star body, I felt joy like I had never known. I was not alone. But of course my brain interrupted with a dampening thought.

“Fine and well, dragon. But that’s a bit grandiose for my needs. How about something a little closer to home.

“The dragon immediately blew on me and I found myself back by the stream. The beast picked me up by the collar and dunked me in the water. The stream, it said, loves you too. See how it parts to admit your body, yet at the same time, its glorious flow and melody remain unabated by your presence. The same could be said for wind, rain, even the sand where you slept. All submit willingly to any behavior you care to exercise without so much as a hint of slowing down their own grand gestures of existence. All accept you just as you are. All allow you to become whatever you will.

“I stood shivering and wet with my billions of lovers overhead and the long silver stream of my lower love below. The water felt good on my weary feet. It caressed and soothed them. The light of the stars and the stories told within them indeed seemed grand. But still something seemed to be missing.

“I still feel an empty place, here, I told the dragon, touching my heart. It is because you desire to share your feelings of love with others, the dragon said. Again I became a starry constellation. And this time I truly felt connected to all the other stars. We shone into the night, we felt each other’s presence. We loved and were loved by humanity and gave love in return. And would continue doing so for billions of years.”

The chief scratched his chin.

“And yet here you are, a man, standing before this council, not a constellation overhead.”

“This is true, my chief. You see, I realized that if I remained as a group of stars, no matter how joyful that felt, I would miss the greatest opportunity of all, that is the opportunity to share this story with all of you, to let you see how loved and accepted you and everyone in the tribe are by all of nature, and how that love accepts us no matter what we do. For the real lesson of the dragon is this, if the stars can love us that way and feel that way in their love, then we too can love one another unconditionally. And in doing so, we become stars. We become grander than any king’s treasure. We become all that we can and will bring all of our fellows along with us.”

As he spoke, the castrato began to glow. His chest in particular, in the area of his heart, took on a golden sheen that suddenly burst out and filled the whole council chamber. The light blinded all present and then faded, leaving only an empty chair in the center of the room. But that night, when darkness fell and the stars came out, a new constellation filled the northern sky. A magnificent winged dragon with a ferociously smiling face was outlined in the stars.

All the tribe turned out to see it. Some, especially the uncoupled ones, claimed that they could hear it singing.

A New Mythology

2010-02-13T12:36:00.004-07:00

This post serves as a beginning point. I hope there is some force behind my spending time putting thoughts on paper. I don't know if there is and if I should someday find that my hopes are in vain, I still would continue to do so. After all, if it's all pointless, and we know it, then at least we can choose how we spend our meaningless time.

I've been reading posts at the Joseph Campbell Foundation website. If you want to get involved in some heavy philosophical discussions about life, the universe, and everything, I strongly encourage you to visit there. At the same time, be warned, it's a thoughtful, well-educated, and sometimes infuriating group that actively participates in the forums. This explains my decision to simply read for awhile. My point in referencing Campbell, a man who devoted his life to the study and application of mythology to human existence, revolves around my own search for meaning in a universe of infinite possibility.

It has been suggested by a number of thinkers, among them Carl Jung and the aforementioned Joseph Campbell, that mythology is our connection to collective consciousness, that is to say, to collective truth as reflected in our perceptions of the universe. Whether those perceptions are sensory and/or extra-sensory is one of many points of contention in this work. To resolve any of that is not necessary for this 'beginning.' Instead, I want to introduce another common idea, that mythology is so pervasive, so consistent, and so deeply interwoven with all known human cultures that it might be offered to us from the creative force of the universe as the gateway to answering all of our questions about existence.

With that said, I'll move to the beginning place. What would happen if we were able to erase our collective experience, to be reborn in the sense of purifying our belief systems, eradicating our fallacies of thought, and approaching the universe of our personal existence as a new arrival? What if we then could seek our personal truth absent the influence of others, simply by extension of our own thought and experience rather than the opinions of others? If mythology is indeed the gateway to the truth, and it is a common feature for all of humanity, then purging ourselves of all knowledge of it ought to lead to, as Jung suggested, a recreation of the very same mythology over time. Perhaps coming at it from a place of openness, without all the false and unsubstantiated ideas that have filled volumes in our libraries for centuries, would allow us to discover the underlying story of us that is surely the place where we will find solace and satisfaction to the questions that have filled us with such fear, wonder, shame, awe, etc. for all the centuries of our time as a species.

The beginning then is this:

Close your eyes and allow yourself to drift into the silence.
Feel the 'you'.
Know that you are thinking, therefore you exist.
You are breathing and your heart is beating, therefore you live.
You hunger and thirst, in ways physical and non-physical, therefore you wonder.

Take it from there...and anytime you think you discover something true ask yourself, is this really true? How do I know it is true? If it isn't true, how would I know that? What are the consequences of it being true or untrue?

Don't get locked into anything as 'true' or 'untrue' until you can prove it to the satisfaction of you as an individual and to the collective whole of which you are a part.

For example: We can all agree that living brains think. We can all agree that living humans breathe and living hearts beat. We can all agree that we have physical needs to be met, specifically hunger and thirst in order to supplement the breathing and remain alive. We all agree that we seek something beyond that...and that is the point that we pretty much stop or head down such divergent paths that we ultimately end up in a place of violent disagreement, either individually or collectively within our circle of seekers.

Somewhere in between what we agree on and what we don't agree on might be the truth. That is the role that myth, the stories we create out of our inquiry, might play in this reimagined universe.

This is only a suggested beginning place. I'm starting there. I wonder where it will take me?

Avatar and My Personal Soundtrack

2010-02-03T19:06:00.006-07:00

Just in case you are one of the three people in the world who haven’t yet seen AVATAR, be warned…THIS POSTING CONTAINS MANY SPOILERS…If you want to be surprised, go see the movie first. STOP READING NOW!

Actually, the movie telegraphs its major scenes so thoroughly that I’m not sure my comments will detract at all, but just in case…YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I’ve got a soundtrack playing in my head. It varies in tempo and intensity and the music is as diverse as the ideas wrapped within it. Currently it’s Carl Orff’s oratorio Carmina Burana. I like the recording Ozawa’s Boston Symphony put out in 1969. The choir is spot on and even rolls their r’s properly, that is to say, in unison and on pitch. The symphony under the maestro’s baton is as precise as the chorus; in particular the horn parts are crisp, bright with just enough resonance to magnify the percussion that underlies most of the staccato trumpet parts. Tension comes through the piano and low strings.

Before Carmin Burana woke from a many months slumber my neurons were firing on the opening licks to Derek and the Dominoes’ hit Layla. That bit of thunder leapt to the forefront as soon as I exited the theater this afternoon from a showing of James Cameron’s Avatar.

The natural question here is “What did you think of the movie?” I’m still working on that, and a large part of this writing will undoubtedly be my processing. To begin with, I’m not a fan of big budget pictures like Avatar. Too often the characters and story get lost in the special effects. Too often, these films are just a rehashing of other similar pictures. I also think my emotional state going in has an effect on my like or dislike of a particular film.

Avatar is a big concept picture. Without special effects the story could not be told because the setting for the story doesn’t exist outside of the mind of the filmmaker. The race of forest people, upon whose survival the story’s narrative thread depends, don’t exist. With that settled, I can now perhaps think about my impressions of the picture.

It is a partial myth, a hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his work. I say partial myth because the journey never comes full circle. Rather than returning to the world he left for his adventure, bringing with him the boon or blessing obtained there, the hero stays behind, becoming one with the beings whose way of life he saved. He wasn’t killed in the attempt, as tragic heroes often are. So there’s a piece missing. The earth people are banished back to their failing world and the forest people will, it is assumed, rebuild their village and their lives. Of course, the missing ending leaves plenty of room for a sequel, maybe several. After all, George Lucas milked the Star Wars saga for six films. I can’t imagine that possible comparison has escaped James Cameron’s ego-eyed watchfulness. So that’s point one, the story isn’t done. (Who really believes the mercenaries would leave with their tails between their legs, and the corporation that paid for it all would just abandon their investment when the rarest mineral in the universe remains beneath the planet’s surface?)

The story, as it is told, doesn’t break any new ground either philosophically or in the science fiction genre. Cameron has done a nice job artistically, pulling together all the science fiction elements of the last sixty years that we so love here on our third rock from the sun. He’s got flying dragons ala Anne McCaffrey, a planet whose indigenous people are so linked to the ecology of the place as to be literally bound to it like Frank Herbert, the militarism of Robert Heinlein, the empire building of Asimov, the corporate mentality of the Matrix, and enough gadgets, guns, and cool transport vehicles to match anything Lucas’s empire ever threw at the rebellion. But all he does with it is tell a predictable story that sadly still has relevance to our world and society.

The preceding point is where I have to get thoughtful about Avatar. Tell me why the “solution” to conflicts among people is always armed battle? Why is war the alternative everyone is spoiling for from the moment we determine that these two races have fundamental incompatibilities? The forest people want to kill the “dream-walking demons” and the military mining corporation prepares for the inevitable war, the act of “last resort,” from the moment humans arrive on the incredible biological treasure of Pandora. Even the name given to the planet by the explorers implies that war cannot be avoided. Pandora is a box of evil, the place war came from. As the rogue colonel in charge of planetary security tells the new arrivals, “If you know the way to hell, you might want to head there for some R & R after you rotate out of here.”

At the point that diplomacy broke down, which is almost immediately, the threat of armed conflict became the dark force driving the picture. Cameron goes all the way down the trail, tying up all the loose ends in a neat package by killing off most of the principle combatants and leaving the hero and heroine to remake the world in their image. Sadly, they too are of the warrior breed. They are fighters first, lovers second, and naïve children in terms of the soul’s journey to love and peace. The harmony with nature thing is great but isn’t humanity part of nature too, albeit an at times arrogant and abhorrent bit of life?

I’d like to see someone tell a hero’s story where war isn’t the inevitable outcome and profit the objective. Or is that how we define heroes in our world? Is it in our soul-DNA to be violent to the point of self-destruction? There’s a very telling scene in the film, when the overzealous colonel orders huge fires to be set to drive the forest people from beneath the enormous tree that is their home. “That’s how you scatter cockroaches!” he laughs to the soldier who launched the incendiary assault. It’s an ironic statement because the film tries to teach us that living in harmony with nature is the key to survival as a race. And cockroaches, perfectly adaptable to whatever nature tosses at them, will in all likelihood, be feasting on the refuse of our remains long after we have departed this world.

That brings me to the following suggestion: Why can’t we begin to tell a new story, a better story, a story where war as an option is off the table. I’d like to see a story where humanity has evolved beyond the need to learn this sad lesson over and over and over. As I think about how this might happen, I realize that without the threat of violence most people have a hard time imagining any conflict in a big story like this. Maybe that’s true. Maybe if we ever evolved past the need to be violent, then the need for heroes would evaporate. And maybe it’s hard-wired into us after thousands of years of adrenaline rushes, of flight or fight responses, and of competition and commerce being the benchmarks of success or failure in life. We love our heroes from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker to Neo. But what if they were no longer necessary? What if we all learned to get along and work cooperatively to understand life, the universe, and everything? There is a moment in the picture when Sigourney Weaver discovers a mysterious energy signature flowing out of the most sacred spot of the forest dwelling people that outlines what the new forms of conflict might be about. She eventually comes to the sacred ground, though she is moments from death when she arrives there, and wants to take samples. She is, after all, a scientist. She doesn’t want it for the profit it will bring. She wants it because she wants to know if there is something biological that drives the impulse to eternal life, to spirit, to a soul’s journey that most of us sense, even if we have repressed it to the point of extinction or corrupted it by our malformed organized religious orders.

The conflict in a story like this is internal. If, as Buckminster Fuller believed, we are born into this universe to learn everything there is to know about it, then we have enough challenges to keep us working cooperatively for millennia. And that is a conflict of a different sort, to learn to cooperate with the whole universe. But since we haven’t learned to get along with each other, it’s a difficult one to explore in film or story. If we don’t try, I fear we may never get to see the reality of it.

My final comment might seem minor in light of the bigger questions posed above. I don’t think it is. The characters are portrayed as caricatures rather than believable flesh-and-blood beings. Sigourney Weaver is simply an older, more passive version of Ellen Ripley. The war-mongering colonel is a joke with lines like “Come to Papa,” and “I want this operation high and tight. I want to be home for supper.” The CGI aliens have the disturbingly lifeless fault of never having the pupils of their eyes change size. They appear like characters in a video game, blue striped versions of Jar-Jar Binks. I think that may be as disturbing as the ultimate solution theory of the movie. We have a generation of video game players being marketed to by our military branches. What do they see? Weapons, tactics, and portrayals of the enemy that resemble the villains in the video games that occupy more of their time than television. We glorify video-game violence in a way that makes it not seem real. But all violence begins in the mind. Imaginary violence is one blow from moving from thought to reality, as are all ideas, whether constructive or destructive. The flat, archetypal caricatures in Avatar are like Wiley Coyote. They are smashed, shot, immolated, and blown to bits. But for $8.25 and two and half hours of your time you can see them whole again, and again, and again. And now you see them in 3D. We are transforming our most violent fantasies into reality without having any real sense of a reasonable stopping point. How this raises us up in the grand scheme of things is something I can’t begin to explain.

If you stayed with me this long, thank you. I’m not interested in having a debate about this. I am very interested in hearing about ideas for stories along the lines of the new mythology I alluded to, a mythology where heroes aren’t compelled by an inevitable drive to violence and where cooperation, not competition wins the day, as well as the hearts and minds of those who will shape our world for future generations.

Two following items: the definition of avatar and the poem O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana, which has been played in movies, shows, and spectacles since the days of Nazi Germany.

av⋅a⋅tar

1. Hindu Mythology. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.

2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.

3. Computers. a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.

Poem – O Fortuna from Carmina Burana

English

O Fortune,
just as the moon
Stands constantly changing,
always increasing
or decreasing;
Detestable life
now difficult
and then easy
Deceptive sharp mind;
poverty
power
it melts them like ice.
Fate—monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
stand malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game,
my bare back
I bring to your villainy.
Fate, in health
and in virtue,
is now against me
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating string;
since through Fate
strikes down the strong,
everyone weep with me!

Latin

O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immani
set inanis,
rota tu volubilis,
status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris.
Sors saluti
set virtutis
michi nunc contraria,
est affectu
set defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite;
quod per sortem
sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!

The Golden Buffalo

2010-02-01T22:05:00.004-07:00

This story is largely based on a shamanic journey on January 31, 2010.

Gristhorpe felt Viriugum's tremendous girth swaying between his thighs. Viriugum, the golden bison, had carried Gristhorpe for more than twenty-years. Together, man and beast ruled the Ciniwavi people with a strong but compassionate hand. Gristhorpe felt his heart and that of the great animal beat as one. He felt that they shared breath and muscle and mind through the hardships and dangers of life in the great stone wilderness. Were he and Viriugum to be separated, Gristhorpe felt certain that the greatness of the Ciniwavi people would slide precipitously towards oblivion. But today was not a day for such dark thoughts. Today was a day for rejoicing, for Gristhorpe had at last found the fabled falls of Soul Reflection. While his people waited in long lines on both sides of the high cliffs surrounding the hidden canyon, Gristhorpe gazed deeply into the rippling silver surface of a broad sheet of water as the sacred river spilled over a stone ledge some twenty feet above him. He had never imagined anything like the Soul Reflection falls. From where he and Viriugum stood, the image in the water seemed to have a life of its own. He could see the long, dark hair of the warrior falling over the muscular shoulders, the brown skin painted with ochre and henna in mystic symbols of the Ciniwavi people, telling their history. Gristhorpe's personal history reflected in the iconic images of battle stitched in the fabric of his leggings. The beaded headband bore an intricate design of his journey from orphan to ruler of a people as ancient and powerful as the mighty river that flowed all through the granite sepulchres of the Ciniwavi hunting grounds.

Gristhorpe eased Viriugum a step closer to the falls. The great beast shook his shaggy head as if warning Gristhorpe not to tempt the gods. Gristhorpe leaned over the massive black horns of his companion and extended his hand toward that of his reflection. He stopped just short of the shimmering image, not quite able to reach it, letting his fingertips dance in tandem with those of his silent doppelganger while the sound of the water filled the air with a steady, low roar.

"Off we go then, Viriugum," Gristhorpe said, kicking with his leatherclad heels against the heavy ribs of his mount. Viriugum turned and splashed ashore on the near bank. This was the west side of the river, the protected lands where the spirits of the ancestors hunted. Only the chief of the Ciniwavi was allowed to ride on the hallowed ground, and only once, after seeing his image in the Soul Reflection. The legends of the Ciniwavi foretold a great boon to be bestowed on one leader in each generation after he discovered the secret route to the falls, viewed his image, and retreated down river on the protected bank. It was a legend to be proved as no chief prior to Gristhorpe had ever successfully ventured down the treacherous walls from the stony heights of the granite canyon. Indeed, Gristhorpe had ridden out every day for nearly the entire twenty years of his rule seeking a navigable path to the canyon's bottom. Today, he had found it, and sounding a long note on the ram's horn trumpet, he had called his people to witness his triumph on this fine spring morning.

Now, having seen his image in the Soul Reflection falls, he felt his breath quicken and his heart beat in time with the trotting pace of Viriugum as they raced through the ancestral lands. What boon would Gristhorpe receive? He lacked for nothing of necessity. He'd a fine wife, two strong sons, three beautiful daughters, a contented tribe of warriors and their families, land to hunt in, and few enemies remaining. All this was possible, he believed, because he had learned well the teachings of Shiroakum the elder, the long-deceased medicine man of the Ciniwavi who had taken in the orphaned boy when he was found hidden deep in a crevice of a tree, his mother's half-eaten body lying nearby where a great cougar had attacked her and young Gristhorpe as they walked unattended through the Mid Woods.

"You must not dwell on sadness," Shiroakum had told the boy, "For it will not bring her back, nor will it serve to move you any closer to your destiny. Be busy always, pressing forward, doing, not thinking too much, and keeping your eyes on the possibilities for success, rather than the unchangeable blood of failure." It was Shiroakum's only lesson, repeated endlessly until Gristhorpe buried his sense of loss, hurt, and abandonment beneath a callus of activity, ambition, and limitless drive.

He had been six when he lost his mother. His father had been killed in an accidental fall into the sacred river from atop one of the sepulchres two years earlier. That death too, and the sadness of it, lay buried deep within the warrior. His mother had seen to it that Gristhorpe's mind and body remained occupied with learning the ways of the wilderness and the Cirivani people so that he had little time to miss his father. If he ever allowed himself to lapse into melancholy, he was rewarded with a double ration of chores, sometimes painful ones such as scraping moss from the flat stones of the foundations of the cliff dwellings of the Ciniwavi, until the sorrow passed. "Boys become men. Men who cry do not become warriors. They become prisoners and casualties of life and battle," his mother taught him over and over.

Gristhorpe and Viriugum both shared the drive, the ambition, and the boldness that had made them the finest hunters, fighters, and natural leaders of the whole Ciniwavi tribe. Gristhorpe knew his animal so well, and vice versa, that a simple exhalation of breath with the thought of command was usually enough to send the ton and half beast in the proper direction at exactly the right speed for whatever task needed doing. The present task was among the simpler and more pleasant of their lives, Gristhorpe thought. He and Viriugum simply had to ride down the bank of the sacred river and obtain the boon in full view of the Ciniwavi who lined the high cliffs overhead, their coyote hides flapping in the spring breeze as their howls of encouragement and praise echoed through the walls of the canyon.

All at once, the canyon grew silent. Gristhorpe, who had been daydreaming about the day when he would become a permanent member of the honored dead whose hunting ground he now rode upon looked up. A low murmur filled the air, like a second stream of water floating above Gristhorpe's head. It was the voices of his people as they pointed toward a bend in the river. Gristhorpe looked and saw the cause of the change in the people's mood.

Standing on a flat rock on the opposite bank, an enormous female cougar stared with hungry eyes at Gristhorpe and Viriugum. She was the length of two and a half men from the tip of her nose to the twitching end of her tail. Her jaws were wide enough, Gristhorpe saw, to take his entire head easily inside. Three spotted cubs sat attentively outside a den behind her.

Gristhorpe had come unarmed to the Soul Reflection falls, as the legend decreed. All that stood between him and the hungry cougar was ten yards of shallow river. Still, he thought, I am aboard Viriugum. We have fought worse with less and in poorer conditions. Like that pack of wolves in the dead of winter with blinding snow all around. He still got a thrill thinking of the slashing horns atop the massive head meeting charge after charge from the hunger-crazed drooling jaws of the great grey beasts. More than a dozen had died on those horns before the remaining three gave up the fight. Gristhorpe had the finest pair of wolf-hide blankets of all the Ciniwavi after that. Besides, he reasoned, cats dislike water, to the point of madness. He smiled at the cougar and gave Viriugum an encouraging kick. The bison increased his trotting pace to a gallop. The cougar bared her teeth and leapt lightly from the stone, running easily parallel to Gristhorpe, though she remained on the far bank. The Ciniwavi overhead held their breaths and watched.

Abruptly, the river narrowed, close set trees crowded the shoreline and both Gristhorpe and the cougar were forced into the gravel lined shallows on their respective sides of the sacred river. Gristhorpe could hear the sound of rapids ahead. He glanced over at the cat. She ran easily through the water and a low rumbling growl came from her throat. Gristhorpe snarled back, thinking to his size and ferocity might chase her away. She moved toward the center of the stream.

"I see you, warrior-chieftan," a voice in his head said.

"Who are you?" he thought in answer. "A god or an ancestor?"

The low growl grew louder as the cat reached the center of the channel.

"I am the boon you are to be given. I live in the mind of this cougar," the voice said. Gristhorpe shook his head and frowned, looking at the cougar who now ran on a diagonal path that would intercept the warrior in just a few more paces. "I'm here because there is an important lesson for you to learn."

"I followed all the requirements. I studied the legend, found the trail, bested the cliffs, and went to the sacred fall. What sort of boon is this? To be eaten, as my mother was?"

The voice fell silent and Gristhorpe kicked vigorously at Viriugum's sides. The bison was panting, his huge size a disadvantage in the fast flowing waters of the rocky bottomed river. The cat closed. Gristhorpe turned and raised a hand when the cougar leapt. The cougar hit the warrior with both front paws and knocked him into the waters just short of a long series of rapids. Gristhorpe had an image of Viriugum whirling toward him and then slipping on the treacherous bottom of the river, falling with a tremendous splash as the weight of the cougar pressed Gristhorpe's head beneath the foaming waters. The world went black for a few terrifying moments.

Gristhorpe opened his eyes. He was still underwater. The cougar stood atop him. He could see her face, mouth open, canines at the ready, directly above him. He struggled to move but she extended her claws and pressed them into his chest, breaking the skin. If he moved, she would rip him open.

"Now comes the lesson," the voice in his head whispered.

Behind the cat a massive shadow filled Gristhorpe's vision. Viriugum had regained his footing and charged the cougar, head high, ready to lower it and impale the cat on the heavy points of his horns. Suddenly, Gristhorpe was free. The pressure of the claws on his chest was gone as if carried away by the current. Only it wasn't Viriugum's horns that had removed the predator. The cougar, timing her whirling leap perfectly, had turned and launched herself, jaws open, at the loose skin of the bison's throat. She bit, hard and deep, ripping a half-yard of fur and flesh as she settled on all fours in the water in front of the surprised bison. Viriugum whirled and again lost his footing, falling hard at the same time the cougar again attacked, this time aiming for the exposed flesh of the bison's belly. Her razorlike claws disemboweled the animal in an instant and with a tremendous bellow of pain and rage, Viriugum thrashed and kicked and bled into the sacred waters until at last he lay still against a rock while the river flowed around him.

The cougar turned to see Gristhorpe staring, horrified at what had just occurred, then turning her back on the man, she swam easily to the far shore and trotted back to her den, the cubs following her inside.

Gristhorpe felt the grief building. His heart filled his throat, his head pounded as if being beaten with the boulders creating the rapids in which he and Viriugum had fought their final battle, and lost. It was too much, the grief. Shiroakum and his mother's faces filled Gristhorpe's eyes, pressing back the tears. He rose to his feet and ran, faster than he'd ever run, onto the riverbank, down the river past the rapids where he leapt into the deeper waters and heavy current as the stream widened. He began to swim, mindlessly, the blood roaring in his ears, drowning out the echoes of Viriugum's death cry that reverberated endlessly.

By the time Gristhorpe felt the first pangs of fatigue the river was a quarter mile wide and he was in the center of it. He'd been carried far from the traditional Ciniwavi lands into unknown territory. He saw a cloud of mist in the distance, downstream, and heard a new roaring sound, a sound that terrified and intensified with each stroke of his strong arms. He was heading for another waterfall, and from the height the mist rose and the volume of the sound of falling water, it was a fall that he would not survive a trip over.

Immediately he began to swim diagonally toward the nearest bank. He knew the current was too strong and he didn't have enough strength left to make it. His grief weighed him down like he was pulling the body of the bison behind him. Not just the bison, but also the unshed tears for his mother and father as well. He was a warrior. He'd locked away the parts of himself that hurt and now they had all gathered themselves into the dispassionate flow of this river and were carrying him to his demise. He suddenly felt very afraid. And then, the gods gave him a real treasure. Seconds before reaching the head of the falls he came upon a narrow sandbar some thirty feet from the shoreline. Lying full atop the sandy surface, Gristhorpe hugged the wet earth and gasped for breath. He would have to remain here for some time, perhaps even overnight. He was totally exhausted. As he regained his breath, the grief that he had been eluding for all of his life caught up with him, surrounding him in a cocoon of pain like being slow-roasted over hot coals. He was too tired to swim, he would either have to endure this grief or drown.

"So be it," he thought, surrendering to the tears that after what seemed hours, released him to the oblivion of sleep.

Shiroakum and his mother came to him in a dream. They sat atop the broad back of Viriugum and smiled down at Gristhorpe as he tried to reach them. But although they seemed right on top of him, they were always just out of range of his outstretched hand. It was the same as when he had reached for his doppelganger in the Soul Reflection falls earlier. Nothing to touch.

"Gristhorpe," the two riders said in unison, "We were wrong. By his sacrifice Viriugum has helped all of us to see and to learn."

"To learn what?" Gristhorpe heard his dream self ask.

"A warrior isn't a true to himself or his tribe by suppressing grief. For it is still with him, like an unseen millstone that will eventually drag him beneath the waves to his ruin. Grief must be expressed, not suppressed. Only when he has purged his soul of the anguish of loss and replaced it with the love of the memory of that he has lost will he be whole again."

Gristhorpe remained on the sandbar for many days, grieving the losses of his life. When he was at last free of his tears, he swam easily ashore, returned to the land of the Ciniwavi, and ruled wisely for many more years, carried on the memories of those whom he loved and lost and strengthened by the knowledge that even though they were gone, their love for him was indestructible.

Shamanic Journeys: The Pantheon and Creation Myth

2010-01-25T21:24:00.002-07:00

These are the journeys I experienced during a shamanic circle this past weekend.

The Pantheon –

The first beat of the drum seems to instantly awaken shamanic consciousness in me. My internal eyes open and I am … in a vast, domed building. The floor is marble, with a many sided star filling the center beneath the high ceiling. Corinthian columns support the dome. Between each of the columns a marble statue beckons.

My eye first lights on Michelangelo’s David. But it is not the perfectly sculpted figure. It is David’s gaze I am drawn to. He is looking at a statue of Uncle Sam in his familiar I WANT YOU pose. I don't want him and turn my back only to see Blind Justice holding her scales. All of this is too heavy, too politically problematic for me. I want something else, a gateway to the lower world. There! In the shadows on the far side of the room, a small statue of a man in a rumpled suit with wild hair and a mischievous grin winks at me. Hello, Dr. Einstein. The statue swings away, revealing a tunnel lit by candelabras. A polished floor descends down and I begin my journey.

The walls of the tunnel are lined with mirrors. The descent is rapid and although I am passing down a narrow passage the mirrors reflecting mirrors create a sense of infinite, receding space to my right and left. At last the tunnel winds into a vast cavern where tongues of flame whip out across the floor. I hesitate. GO ON! An imperative voice demands. YOU CAN CONTROL THE FLAME. GO ON! So I press forward, quickly gaining control of the fire with my hands. A path appears. The cavern is rocky and at its end a sharp turn leads me outside, into a jungle. There, peering over a cluster of palm leaves held in a leathery fist is the ugliest ape I have ever seen. He appears to be a gorilla, but his bulbous nose, bulging eyes, and wart covered chin along with a yellow-toothed grin and a broken coconut shell atop his head like a homemade crown mock those noble animals. He throws the palm leaves at me and dashes off into the jungle. Unable to resist I follow.

He leaps into a tall palm and climbs quickly to the top. I come after somewhat more laboriously. From his place in the crown of the tree he begins to throw coconuts at me. I bob and weave until I get angry and extend a hand, catching a coconut and throwing it back at him, narrowly missing his taunting face. However, he ceases throwing coconuts at me, beats his chest and waits until I join him at the top of the tree. I am out of breath.

“Who…are…you?” I ask.

“You know my brothers, you know, you do!” he answers. He pantomimes their names as he speaks in a rough tone. “See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil.”

I scratch my head.

“And you are?”

He grins and leaps off the tree grabbing a vine.

“Why I’m EVIL!” he shouts, swinging away.

The chase resumes. Soon we are side by side on a tall branch of a Banyan Tree over a deep emerald pool. Evil dives in. Beautiful swan dive, I think and follow. When I emerge from the pool, he is gone, but a long stone staircase leads out of the water and up to a cliff where a waterfall obscures the top landing.

A large group of apes are on either side of the stairs, dancing and encouraging me to come out and up, up, up. When I reach the waterfall they push me through and there, seated on a makeshift rock throne is Evil. He grins. I demand to know why he has brought me to this place. He shushes me and then places a huge hand on my head and forces me to my knees. It feels as if he could crush my skull as easily as he might an egg. I am soon nearly face down on the step, staring at his bare and very smelly feet. After I stop resisting he releases me and I stand up, demanding satisfaction for the indignity he has subjected me to. To my surprise he is wearing a mask, the surface of which is a mirror and I find myself screaming at my own image.

The mirror draws me closer and quite suddenly, Evil and I become one being. I am now the one sitting on the throne looking out on the apes dancing on the stairs. All of them now wear the mirrored masks.

“Why have you brought me here?” I ask, able to sense his consciousness sharing the hairy body with me.

“I’m lonely,” he says with a sigh.

At this utterance, the mirror masked apes all vanish and we are truly alone.

“I’m getting out of here,” I say and find myself, still in Evil’s body, climbing the cliff face. When we reach the top I see a vast city spread out in the jungle below. It is all white. Marble! I think. A city made of marble. Evil laughs.

“It’s not.”

Atop the three tallest towers in the city are enormous statues of his brothers in their iconic poses.

“Then what is it?”

“Salt!” he says, taking control of our body and quickly bashing the whole city into fine white dust that settles into a long river, snaking away toward a distant sea.

“Hey! You’re destroying the city of men, the place where there is no evil.”

“Go after it if you like,” he tells me.

When I leap, I emerge from his body and find myself carried along in the salty current. Presently I emerge in a dark and frigid sea. Overhead a dim sun looks down, lighting only a portion of the waters. The salt remains of the city sink beneath the waves. I hear voices to my left.

“Over here, come over here out of the light.”

“Who’s there?” I ask, trying to see in the darkness.

“We are, the men from the city. We’re hiding here, where Evil can’t find us.”

I laugh.

“Evil knows right where you are. He’s destroyed your city. Come out into the light. It’s the only way to fight him.”

“Oh no,” weak voices say in unison. “We like it here in the dark. It’s safer here.”

Realizing that they are simply pretending Evil doesn’t exist and won’t ever find them in the dark I swim into the shadows. They are all huddled in huge rafts. I grab the first one and push it out into the light.

“You can’t stay in here, because I…won’t…let… you!” As I shove the first raft into the sunlight the drum calls me home.

Creation Myth –

The drum sounds and I am looking down into an enormous pot of water hung from a tripod in a forest clearing. Strong arms grab me and drag me back as the leader of a tribe of humans tips the pot, spilling the water onto the bare dirt of the forest floor. The tribe leaps into the mud, stirring it with their feet until it is thick, black, and putrid smelling. Then they begin to throw chunks of it at me. I try to duck but the hands holding me are too strong. Several members of the tribe run up to me and smear the foul-smelling mud on my face and body. I fight until I am nearly exhausted. Finally, I surrender to it.

“Go ahead, cover me with your filthy mud. See if I care. I don’t.” I allow myself to go limp and instantly the torment stops.

“Well, that’s no fun,” the leader says and leads his tribe back into the forest. The strong hands release me. I fall to my knees, wiping the mud from my eyes and nose. When I look up a small boy is standing before me.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Tell me a story,” he says.

I shake my head and stand up, looking at the shambles of the clearing.

“Help me pick this up and we’ll see,” I say, starting to lift the pot back onto the hook.

The boy shakes his head.

“No sense picking it up. They won’t be back and no one will care if you leave it messy. That’s the way this world is. Everything is messed up and then abandoned. Now, tell me a story.” Something in the way he asks gets my attention.

“What kind of story?” I ask.

“Tell me how to make a world.”

“Yes the creation story!” another voice says. I am astonished to see a large group of children around me, all demanding to be told a story of creation.

“I don’t know that story,” I say, feeling more intimidated by these children than by the mudslinging adults.

“Of course you do,” the boy says. “To make a world you just take some mud and rocks and stick it together into a ball, and you keep adding more and more mud.” He acts out his description and soon all the children are helping him build what will turn out to be a mudball some twenty-five feet in diameter, nearly filling the clearing.

“That’s just a giant mud ball,” I say.

“No it’s not, it’s a world, our world. And I love it!” a small girl yells, wrapping her arms as far as she can around the giant mud ball.

Just then the adults emerge from the woods, staring up at the giant mud ball.

“Come on children,” they say, grabbing for the kids.

“No, I won’t go!” the little girl says and before anyone can stop her she scrambles up the sides of the mudball and stands on the top. “This is the world we made and I love it and I won’t let any of you take me from it!”

She leaps up and down on top of the ball and almost immediately sinks into it, disappearing from sight.

“We have to help her!” I yell, trying to claw my way into the mud ball. To my amazement it is as hard as stone. The mud has dried and resists all my efforts and those of the other adults to break into it.

Suddenly the girl’s voice comes from the interior of the mudball.

“This is my world. You’ve made a mess of yours. When and if you clean it up I might let you come visit me on mine.”

“Whose child is this,” I ask. All of the adults look around and shrug. They all have their children.

Darkness falls, we sleep for the night, determined to attack the mudball again in the morning and rescue the girl.

Dawn breaks and we are shocked to see greenery growing over the surface of the child’s world. Not only that, but rivers and oceans appear to have formed on the surface. As soon as I reach out to touch one of these new formed seas, the mud ball rises several inches off the forest floor and moves away.

“This is my world,” the girl’s voice says. “When you clean up yours, you can come visit. Not until.”

And with that the newly made world, the child’s world, rises into the sunlit sky and soars away.

“Come visit me!” the girl’s voice says as the new world fades from sight into the distant sky.

Haiti, a sorrow repeated, a lesson still waiting to be learned.

2010-01-25T09:46:00.006-07:00

To all the men and women who are helping with disaster relief in Haiti: I'm sure many of you have your hearts in the right place, and to turn our backs on so much suffering would be unforgivable if there is any kind of divine justice in this universe. At the same time, I wonder if we will learn the lesson this time, the one that has been playing out for thousands for years and that we just don't seem to quite figure out... it's a lesson in time and ignorance. That's what this posting is about, the affects of time and ignorance.

Oh no, Haiti has been decimated by an earthquake. Hundreds of thousands are dead. We have to help them! Oh look! The United States military is going to help. We're sending doctors, money, hospital ships, food. Look, even China and Russia are helping. Isn't that wonderful! Give yourselves a pat on the back world. One of our neighboring nations is in need and we are responding.

Wake up, people. What we are doing is not for the Haitians. It's not humanitarian. It's political. It's economic. It's to save face in the face of something unsalvagable. Before you take me to task, learn a little bit about what's going on, not just in Haiti but with the 80% of the world's population that lives in Third World conditions of poverty, starvation, and oppression. Take just a few minutes to discover that the earthquake was only the coup-de-gras to a terminally ill nation that has been ravaged in every way for decades. Then tell me this is a humanitarian effort. If it is, it is one born out of ignorance.

Haiti became the first republic in the world to have a black leader following a successful slave rebellion. Because it has suffered under the leadership of dictators, para-military tyrants, embezzling diplomats, and criminal thugs since its inception it is, and has been for many decades, the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Attempts to aid Haiti have all fallen short for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the conditions tied to the aid. We'll send food but not birth control supplies or education. Guess what starving people do when their bellies are full! They procreate! Population pressure on Haiti along with rampant poverty has led to two conditions that doomed the nation years ago. 1) More than 98% of the forests in a country that was once 60% forest have been cut down for fuel to keep the population warm. 2) the deforestation has led to salinization and erosion of the soil that has destroyed nearly all of the cultivatable land. In other words, there is no fuel and no food unless the Haitians buy it from outside their country.

The country's economy consists of subsistence farming on tiny plots of land and a few coffee plantations and mango farms that make up the exportable goods of a miniscule economy with a GDP of less than $7B/year. Most of the people live in conditions that are worse than when they were enslaved in the 18th C.

No land, no money, no trees, no economic growth in an already devastatingly poor economy, plus a string of bad leaders stretching back two centuries equals a failed civilization. And it's not like this happened behind the world's back. We've known about Haiti and the problems there for a long, long time in this nation. That's what the media has been reporting as far back as records go. Is anyone surprised at what happened when the earthquake hit?

The interesting thing is, we are pouring billions of dollars of aid into Haiti now but really don't have any strategy to help people beyond digging them out of the rubble and patching them back together. And there's not a lot that can be done in such an overpopulated and raped landscape.

Most of Africa, much of central and southern Asia, nearly all of Indonesia, including the Phillipines are in nearly the same sad shape Haiti was before the earthquake got the world's attention. What is being done there? We're waiting for a typhoon, hurricane, or newly discovered genocide to bring attention to the problem so we can 'send aid,' feel good about ourselves because we were there in their hour of need. And then we can go back to our overpriced fuel wasting cars, our overblown, over-mortgaged McMansions, our big screen televisions, over the top sporting events, Venti Lattes, extra 1000 calories per day diets, huge CEO bonuses, tax dodging organizations, and self-serving party politics until the next disaster allows us to send a few dollars and few men for a short while so we can all feel good about helping our neighbor in need.

There's a lesson here but most of us are too blind or choose not to see it. What happened to Haiti can happen anywhere. All it takes is time and a population willing to look the other way when the trouble starts. By the way, deforestation, losing tillable land, corrupt government and industry, and an uncaring population that just keeps on using up without putting back...there are growing elements of that in too many places within our own borders. Time and ignorance. Something to think about.

Journey to Power

2010-01-24T13:51:00.004-07:00

The journey began, as so many do, with a question. What is power? Specifically, what is personal power? Something felt, certainly, but can it be described using language? Can it be quantified and deconstructed so that it might be sought after in a meaningful way. A thought that arises at once is this: In the presence of the divine anything is attainable. This leads to the conclusion that the quest I was undertaking required an examination of my motives. Why personal power? To better the world for me and those who will come after is the instinctive answer. There is much subjectivity in these questions and answers. When I encountered these sorts of definitional dilemmas, my experience had taught me to press forward with the inquiry but to do so with an open heart. In the open heart is found only love and the answers given through that filter have the resonance of that love. Therein lay the wisdom I desired.

My journey to personal power certainly began with questioning everything I was taught during my formative years by teachers, parents, preachers, and lay people. The protestant work ethic, patriotism, blind faith to an invisible, and to my untrained eye, absent God seemed more like chains than free inquiry. There were times I envied those able to embrace these values and live their lives without ever appearing to doubt. I now suspect that they are either caught in some grand illusion or so strongly in a state of denial of the impulse to question why things are as they believe that they are living in a state of semi-consciousness and will either depart this world in ignorance or perhaps have a terrifying epiphany in their final moment that they missed something important during their lives.

Having rejected the God of our Fathers and the attendant values by the time I entered college, I began to seek higher truth through other channels. Undertaking the study of the world’s religions I accidentally, or perhaps by some unseen hand’s guidance, stumbled onto anthropology and the rites of ancient peoples. Man arose out of natural selection, evolution, and the nature that he now defies. Or so it seemed to me. Those peoples who lived in close proximity with the natural world may not have developed the technological advances that allow people to endure disease and suffering for years beyond their untreated capacity, but they did seem to be in touch with powers and abilities to influence the world that are rapidly disappearing from human memory. And as for disease and death, the ancient ones seemed to not be plagued by nearly so many influences that could cause one to slip free, against one’s will, from the mortal coil. What Stone Age man would have succumbed to Legionnaire’s Disease, HIV, Hepatitis, or diabetes? How many drive by shootings occurred in the outback of the Aboriginal tribes? Did the natives of the South American jungles concern themselves with health insurance or malpractice insurance when their plastic surgery went awry?

My task became clear in my early 20’s. I was to conceive and help create a world where magic, science, and religion all coexist in harmonious workings with the ambitions, purposes, and ideals of man. To that end they would have to be one and the same. This fit nicely with my growing understanding, as taught by eastern philosophy and confirmed by the new science of quantum physics, that we are all part of an energy matrix, interconnected and interdependent in ways we are only beginning to imagine.

Others in the world seemed to be doing the same work, indeed many of them advancing far beyond my personal search both in terms of method and results. Notable among these is philosopher, scholar Ken Wilber, whose Integral Life work answers most of the questions I raised early in my learning and whose goal of integrating all the disparate “-ologies” matches my own greatest desire. When I watched Wilber’s You Tube video where he was able, in meditation, to flat-line an EEG of his own brain, I had found my guru and began to study his work in earnest.

This led me at some point to shamanic journeying, by a circuitous route that is not relevant to the present discussion. I’m sure I entered the practice with a healthy dose of skepticism just waiting to leap in and defend my open heart against too much hocus pocus. To my great surprise, the work of the shaman turned out to have already bridged many of the skeptic’s gaps. A scientific basis exists for the work. Drumming and other rhythmic sounds alter brain waves, bringing about the delta and theta states where dreams occur, only the dreamer remains fully conscious throughout the practice. The principles of parallel universes, arising on the energy grid out of conscious thought merged quantum physics with shamanic practice. Finally, the physical sensations I experienced and continue to experience during each shamanic journey, are the kind of first-hand knowledge that believers since Moses have begged the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their successor prophets to provide for millennia.

Personal power, I believe, is the mastery of one’s mind. It is the ability to take the organ that recognizes universal symbols and patterns in nature and in human behavior and to consciously name what is happening so that the power of the imagery is not lost. If everything man creates begins with an idea, and living a half a century has all but convinced me of the truth of that statement, then ideas are the treasure, the direct line of communication from the energy grid that is the universe to the conscious beings that we collectively represent. And as thought becomes word and word becomes deed, deed transforms thought into reality. So it is with the quest for personal power.

I realize a great deal of what I have set down here is personal opinion based on personal experience. I know that much of it would require substantially more evidence to pass muster with even the simplest level of scientific inquiry. My purpose was to start a discussion and dialogue on this matter because in the discovery of our personal power we will find the means to change the course of human history from one of war, death, and servitude to amoral beings to one of peace, shared joy, and harmonious coexistence with the world we inhabit. And from there, one can only imagine where our journeying might take us.

Here are two more points of note. Yesterday, without consciously planning to do so, I wrote an essay where I used the shape of a pentagon to symbolically represent myself in a state of wholeness. In looking up the symbolism, both online and in the various reference books I have I quickly discovered that such a use of that exact symbol has been embraced by many thinkers and seekers through the ages. Connecting the joints of the pentagon across the interior of the shape makes a five pointed star, or the head and limbs of a man. This was also an early Christian symbol for Christ. Turn the pentagon one fifth of a turn, a practice the early church called “corrupting the symbol,” and connecting the joints as before now creates the horns, ears and chin of a goat, a traditional pagan symbol. The second point concerns the first of my power animals, met on an early shamanic journey. I encountered a red squirrel living in an enormous tree. The squirrel has remained with we ever since, acting as a messenger, bringing me to places where other beings in the shamanic world have conveyed wisdom and helped me to shape more questions for my explorations. In looking up the red squirrel today I discovered the Norse mythology concerning Ratatoskr, the red squirrel, who lives in Yggdrasill, the tree of the world and shuttles messages, and sometimes insults, between the nameless eagle in the heavenly boughs and the dragon Nidhogg, who is trapped beneath and eats at the roots. My personal mythology, built around the King Arthur legend, has a dragon whose many limbs and tail lie trapped by Merlyn, beneath the great mountain ranges of the world. This beast’s energies are the source of natural disasters and dark deeds by both nature and man.

Mythology, then, for me, contains the answers to the questions I have been posing. Tapping into the universal source of myth seems the path to the integration that can heal the world.

What is a whole person?

2010-01-23T20:02:00.003-07:00

This question occupied a good part of my day. It's obviously very broad and any answer I attempt here will likely be incomplete. My purpose in engaging it was to help me reestablish my place on the path of my life. The trail has become harder to see and the going more difficult as I pass through midlife. At the same time, the need for staying on the right path calls to me in an ever louder voice. Having a sense that life is half done and embracing that, rather than creating some illusionary denial, brings about a heightening of the senses. I see more, if not more clearly. I hear the ticking of clocks. I feel the turning of the earth and the changes in my muscles and bones. I smell both decay and new life more acutely. When I touch something, I recognize the impermanence of that moment. And I am grateful for these sensations. They draw me nearer to the present, which is the only place I can really experience life. Youth so often was distracted by looking down the road, trying to see the next exciting turnout. Age may become an exercise in looking back, hopefully with satisfaction and wisdom rather than regret. But now is for living. Now is for joyfully expanding my vision and reaching higher than I have ever thought to. That requires choices. That requires a straight path, in the sense of always keeping my intention before me. I intend to be a force for change in the world. I intend to be visible and known. I intend to manifest something other than corporate divisions of class. I intend to leave behind a place where my descendants can realize their potential as creative beings.

There are five elements in my becoming a present person, someone who is whole in the moment. I see these as a pentagon with myself in the center and the five walls representing each of the elements of my personhood. Beyond the five walls are five gardens where grow the ideas and activities that make up my life.

The first element is physical health. This is the both the cause and effect, the instigator and consequence of living a well-rounded life. In the garden of health are proper diet, rest, and exercise. Tending the garden is one who keeps the remaining elements in their proper proportion, for each of these other four can spread pollen or weeds in the garden of health, as will become apparent.

Next is the life of the mind, the mental process, which for me is the joy of learning and intellectual activity. This garden is filled with the ideas of great thinkers who have come before and my own critical interpretations of those ideas. Through these interpretations new ideas and connections between those ideas and this life manifest in the world. Wise and moral ideas leading to noble and heroic actions, both great and small, are the fruit of this garden.

The third element is financial security. This is not abundant riches, material wealth, or dreams of lottery winnings. Financial security is simply having enough to meet basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication, and health -- as I learned in 6th grade social studies -- with enough time remaining to do everything else; time to stay healthy, to learn, and to tend the remaining two elements.

Emotional stability, balance, and awareness make up the fourth wall. The garden beyond contains seeds of awareness and an atmosphere where I act and react with reason even in the grip of an emotion. Most importantly, emotional stability means being able to balance the imperative to react in the face of real danger with the discretion to overcome the false panic of imagined threats to my well-being, especially those that are but echoes of childhood fears.

Finally, the spiritual wall remains. This is the energy that emerges from silence. The garden is a quiet place of contemplation and stillness, without interruption, where the mind grows quiet and the world opens up the door to infinite possibility. It is a place where the only dogma is that of love, all encompassing and unconditional. It is a transcendant space where life and light merge and both the origin and ending of all things are known to be one and the same. It is a place of peace.

To build this edifice, to tend these gardens, that is my present task.

Return of the Red-eye

2009-09-02T13:44:00.005-07:00

Most of the time, I don't even remember that I have a blog. That's a shame, as I think I have a lot to say. I have a friend on Facebook who constantly posts...talks about his kids, his job, music, his ex-girlfriend who left him a month ago, his insomnia, music, his radical chic life as a high-powered attorney, music, his band, song lyrics, quizzes...you get the idea. His life is an open book.

How do I spend my computing time? I'm on at odd hours throughout the day and night. My work schedule is erratic, at best -- chaotic at worst. I get on when I can. I have fifty stocks on a watchlist that I look at every single trading day. I have two brokerage accounts. My net profits in 2009 are $237.00 and a wealth of education in trend trading. I'm determined to be an independent, financially free trader in three years. It's an ambitious goal. To not try feels like slow suicide. To fail is faster. I'm going ahead anyway.

I'm a writer. This babble may not convince any casual reader of that. I write poetry, song lyrics, and short stories. Those works I finish. I'm trying to become a novelist. To do that, I have to finish a novel. There are four unfinished novels on the hard drive of my computer. One of them has gone through at least twenty-five drafts and never reached the end. That frustrates me.

Perhaps if I discipline myself to post on this blog as diligently as I scan my trading charts, I might eventually get over whatever mental hurdle is keeping me from writing all that is in my head and heart. Then again, it might just make me crazy and I'll end up like Hemingway, only not famous, just drunk, and then dead.

I have not had a drink in nearly ten years. That's because every bad decision I ever made in my life was made under the influence of alcohol. Like the times I cheated on my first wife. Like the times I spent money foolishly. Like the times I nearly got arrested or killed while driving under the influence. I'm what is commonly called a recovering alcoholic. That means as long as I don't drink, I'm recovering. If I drink, I'm just an alcoholic and might end up suddenly dead. Not a pleasant thought for an unenlightened being.

Seeking enlightenment occupies a significant amount of my time and energy. I meditate. I practice yoga. I read a great deal from spiritual and not so spiritual but highly functioning minds. I exercise in a kind of zen trance. You really have not lived until you've completed a complete circuit training session without opening your eyes except to move between machines. Even better is to get on an EFX trainer, set up a challenging course, and run the whole thing with your eyes closed, counting your breaths and trying to 'feel' when you've reached the end. It's like going out-of-body and off planet for thirty minutes or so. It's definitely better than drinking.

There is no television feed into my house. I watch movies. I have a pretty good setup for that...plasma TV, Yamaha/Bose sound system...a great couch and a leather chair, depending on whether I want to be prone or upright while watching.

The Red-eye return in the title of this post is a rhyme with Jedi. I used to write late into the night...hence the red-eye reference. I think Jedi values are interesting. Now, I write when I can. When my schedule lets me. I manage a retail bookstore. It's a great job if only because I get to hang out with really smart, funny people who like ideas and aren't so caught up in their own values that they have closed their minds to reason and learning...People who listen to Oprah and Dr. Phil don't have closed minds, they have just stopped using them. People who say they are conservatives have closed minds. People who claim to share any fundamentalist religious belief have closed minds. At least, that's what I think. Marx missed the mark on what was ultimately best for the advancement of the human condition and quality of life. But he was dead on in his indictment of organized religion. At least that's what I think.

This is a chaotic post. Very random. Meanders and sways and makes sharp turns from topic to topic. It's a mess, but it's my mess. I posted the opening of one of my novels in a previous post. Here's the opening of another one...

BLOOD IN THE SNOW...by Stephen L. Russell

“The absence of freedom must never make us forsake the path of human love for the path of caged fury.”
-Dennis Banks, AIM Leader, 1984

Prologue – Late January, 2018
Duncan opened one eye. The other remained closed, pressed against the cold, urine-soaked tile along with his cheek, shoulders, chest, hips, thighs, and knees. His lower legs and feet were suspended by a thin length of nylon cord, looped and tied to the grab bars in the handicapped stall of the restroom.
A crushing headache radiated from the back of his skull in both directions, searing the top of his head like a boil and running like a river of lava into his cramped neck and shoulders. Three fingers on one hand were broken. His jaw felt as if it were dislocated. Despite his pitiable condition two facts remained clear in his mind: he was alive and the building he was in still stood. The latter provided a small comfort, powerless as Duncan was to preserve the condition of the structure against the conspiracy he knew to be unfolding a short distance away. The former was a certainty of dubious value. Really, he thought, I’m better off dead for everyone’s sake.
He tried to focus. His vision blurred. He opened the other eye and tried to move. Every muscle, joint, bone, and nerve in his sixty-five year old body screamed at the effort. Somehow, he turned onto his side, rolling from there to lie flat on his back. Duncan fought for breath as he gazed at the ceiling.
Dirty fluorescent lighting cast a bloodless glow over the room. The white industrial tiles reflected it in shadowless silence. Duncan glanced around, confirming that he was alone. A dark line under the door on the far wall might mean that the door had been blocked by something — perhaps a body — or that the hallway leading back to the stairwell was dark.
Stairwell, the word echoed in Duncan’s mind. He’d been looking for something or someone, in a stairwell of the Capitol Building. Who? Why? His confusion took the form of a sensation that a terrible truth was about to dawn on Duncan. Something awful, sinister, and conspiratorial had been unfolding and he was the only one with any power to stop it. He’d failed. Whatever the quest, he’d miserably failed and now would probably die in a pool of piss in a D.C. restroom while the State of the Union…
Duncan arrested all thought. The State of the Union was tonight. That was it. The conspiracy involved the President’s speech, no, something before that, some ceremony that was to take place in that hallowed congressional chamber where the myriad ghosts…Ghost Dancers! Duncan remembered. He had to stop the Ghost Dancers. He reached for the wet nylon that bound his ankles, felt something tear deep in his back as he struggled with the knots.
The lights flickered once, twice, and then the room was plunged into blackness followed immediately by a blinding flash of light that seemed to chase all the air out of the space. Duncan felt himself lifted as the floor of the bathroom bucked and then collapsed beneath him. His head hit the tile and he fell unconscious while the State of the Union altered irrevocably as a vast and horrible conspiracy achieved the unimaginably terrible and great purpose for which it was born.

“We become stronger through the pain inflicted upon us. If one does not become mean because of it, becoming an enemy to oneself, the pain can give strength to a person and add a feeling of victory to mere survival.”
-Dennis Banks, 1984

Chapter One – Year of the Locusts
Halfway across the country, in Duncan Proud’s Lakeshore Drive Condominium, his daughter, Allison, clicked on the LCD monitor and settled down with a drink: vodka, tomato juice, and a liberal sprinkle of habanero pepper sauce over ice. Her short-cut blonde hair and penetrating green eyes caught the last rays of the sun before it sank into the dusky winter twilight of the Illinois prairie beyond the city. Dressed in nondescript black and olive athletic clothing, her parka and gloves tossed over the sofa back, her cell phone on the small table next to the leather recliner, she might have been an attorney or school teacher or even a physician relaxing in front of the television after an early evening run. The leather wallet with its conspicuous gold shield that read “Special Agent – S.O.C.I.A.L.” next to the cell phone denied her any of the rights of those more prestigious and mundane lines of work.
Her clipped nails, tan and athletic body, and controlled breathing – coming as it did in long, steady draws that filled her lungs from the diaphragm up, connecting her body to the earth even in Duncan’s twenty-seventh floor home – spoke more fluently than any resume about her qualifications as a defender of some higher cause.
Allison sipped the drink, letting the bite of the pepper sauce comingle with a transient ice-cube that slipped into her mouth. She keyed the remote for the electronics and finally settled on Murdoch’s Wall Street World News Network where a talking head finished describing the latest violence in the Saudi Revolution and invited all the billions of viewers to stay tuned for the second State of the Union Address of President Spencer “Luke” Stratton, the former governor of Delaware who had dodged the press for weeks on what further measures he intended to take to insure the nation’s security, prosperity, and permanence under the auspices of the S.O.C.I.A.L. laws.
Allison guessed that just over two billion people would be tuning in to watch the highly anticipated speech. The rumor control had been excellent. Nobody, including the President’s closest advisors, had a clue what President Stratton had in mind. “Change is inevitable. Accept that, and nothing I propose to do will be impossible or intolerable,” Stratton had said during the many teaser feeds he’d given to Murdoch and the other members of the global news media over the course of the past month.
Allison was apathetic about the whole thing. She wasn’t so much apolitical as she was realistic. Events such as the State of the Union had long since lost their power in terms of policy-making tools. They had become a form of ceremonial theater, an evening’s entertainment for the great unwashed population of video game players, church goers, and/or conventional wage earners that comprised ninety-nine percent of the educated population. These were all people born after the dawn of MTV, nearly forty years ago. The sound-bite and the shortening of the human attention span to milliseconds of time in a world filled with digital noise replaced real news, analysis, and influence in shaping public opinion. The lower economic and social classes would watch, but even the simplest of Stratton’s ideas would sail right over their heads. They merely wanted to adore the charismatic and handsome leader of the world’s only superpower. The upper end of the spectrum got their data in a much more complete format on their own.
Allison coexisted within the instant message gobblers that humanity had evolved into, but she wasn’t like them. No way. She was analytical, skeptical, and smart – magna cum laude smart, ‘Top Secret’ state property smart. An asset of the government, a member of the S.O.C.I.A.L. surveillance unit, referred to obliquely as “The I,” and as dedicated an operative as ever carried a shield. Defending the United States against all enemies, by whatever means necessary, and doing so without remorse, pity, or regret took a depth of perception and a willingness to act that the soft-bodied consumers and psycho-dropouts could never imagine. Not that the rest of society lacked opinions, but Allison knew how to tune out that sort of thing. It was how she’d been able to turn away from her father’s fantasies for her life. It was why she’d been able to stay clear of him for so many years. And it was why, when the country needed her to, she came back to him, and now sat in Duncan Proud’s apartment.
No, the State of the Union was a drug, the drug of choice prescribed by the power structure to dull the population’s curiosity, creating the appearance of a formal statement of principle while administering a dose of societal laudanum, sedating the masses so that Congress and the President could continue to shit all over the Constitution while still maintaining the consent of the governed. It was a way to ensure that taxes, war, and the other occupations and blessings of liberty continued for the next generation without any undue interference from something as crude and ignorant as a free-thinking population of those whom government served.
The whole process had been seventy years in the making and was reaching its apex as the twenty-first century moved toward its second score of years.
Allison wasn’t bitter about any of it. Nor was she cynical about the methods and practices of “The I.” She was a realist. She knew that security and freedom had a price. Abuses of power for the preservation of the greater good weren’t, in her mind, abuses so much as expedient protocols.
Allison tuned in because she hoped to see her father. He should have been at home. He wasn’t and Allison now knew he was in D.C. and she thought she knew why he was there, which is precisely why she’d come to Chicago in the first place – to stop the old man from making a fool of himself and ruining a deep cover S.O.C.I.A.L. surveillance that was several million dollars and nearly two years in operation.
She’d risked everything by leaving her post and coming to persuade the man whom she despised perhaps as much as anyone on the planet from traveling to D.C. All she’d found when she arrived was an empty condo with a note pinned to the door telling the cleaning service that Duncan would be gone for several weeks and would call when he returned.
She considered immediately hopping a flight back to D.C. but determined that the risk of exposure from inadvertently running into Duncan in the nation’s capital was too iffy. If she couldn’t see him in the privacy of the condo, then she’d just let him make a damned fool of himself. He’d done that before, barely missing out on a long prison stretch in Super Max. Maybe that was the lesson he needed. Allison took another sip of the spicy drink, feeling it burn as it expanded in her gut.
“The State of the Union” appeared on the screen with an overlay of martial music.
Allison watched as a series of overhead shots of D.C. at night, provided by Murdoch’s armada of airships, established the fact that the most powerful goddamn media force on earth was going to inform the world of this broadcast in excruciating detail. Allison hoped so. If Duncan Proud was determined to disgrace himself for good, then it ought to be recorded for posterity. She’d set her father’s VidPro hard drive to capture all the network and independent feeds then settled down to watch Murdoch’s people do their work.
“Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.”
Good, Allison thought, no commentary to taint the announcement. She watched the standing ovation, noting with interest that a line of what appeared to be Native Dancers, Sioux from the look of their costumes, occupied a special row of seats near the front of the house chamber. Stratton strode down the aisle like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, his omnipresent smile and all-embracing wave taking in the whole assembled body. Both houses of Congress, the Joint Chiefs, the entire cabinet – except for the one designated secretary who remained home in the event of some catastrophe – heads of state from a half-dozen global economic and industrial powers, all the surviving past presidents and their wives, except for the peanut farmer – Carter – who was too aged and frail to make the trip.
So what was it with the Native Dancers? Stratton didn’t keep anyone waiting long as he mounted the raised platform and began to speak. Interesting, Allison thought, no notes. She knew Stratton hated tele-prompters and generally gave most of his talks extemporaneously, but this one was special. She thought he’d at least have a digital card to read from.
“Good evening,” the mellifluous baritone voice began. “I promised you that if you accept the inevitability of change, nothing I would propose tonight would be too difficult.”
Allison looked at the notepad that she’d automatically taken out when Stratton began to speak. She scribbled her impressions quickly. No notes, no greeting of any length, no acknowledgement of respect for the assembled audience, very uncharacteristic of the politician that she knew Stratton to be. What’s up? Her cell phone vibrated. She glanced at the number and ignored it. It could wait. Something odd was happening here.
“I’ve deliberately eschewed the protocols attending this address because I want you all to understand something: I’m not here tonight as your President. I’m not here as a representative of the executive branch to address the legislators about matters of importance facing our nation. Our nation is in safe and competent hands in every way. S.O.C.I.A.L. agents have secured for us ‘the blessings of liberty’ in a manner more certain than at any time in our history. There are no new threats to discuss.”
Allison frowned. Was anyone buying this? The cameras remained locked on Stratton’s face. She studied it. Took the remote and zoomed in close. He believed it. Every word he said. Allison scrawled another note: Is he an automaton made up to look like Stratton? He’s a hell of an actor.
“So, tonight, I thought I’d take a few minutes to do something that should have been done a couple of hundred years ago. I’m here, in all humility, to apologize and to try to make amends for a great injustice done to the original inhabitants of this nation that we call the United States of America.”
The camera pulled back and took in the Native Dancers along with the President. Stratton’s eyes rested on the ancient warriors. Allison got a good look at them. They were all old, at least seventy, and all appeared to be authentic Sioux Medicine Men. There were twenty-one in all. She knew some of their names from studies she’d done on radical movements in the United States during the twentieth century. Some of the dancers were members of the American Indian Movement, the group that occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building just down the street from the Capitol during the Nixon years, and Alcatraz, and Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Lakotah Sioux Dancers, medicine men, the caretakers of a religion once forbidden in the United States.
“One hundred and thirty years ago,” Stratton continued, “members of the Sioux Indian tribe were held under close confinement by officers and enlisted men of the United States Army. Hundreds of men, women, and children were herded into a camp in Wounded Knee, South Dakota in the middle of winter. They were held on suspicion of plotting the overthrow of the United States through the use of a mysterious and terrible power.
“The power that so terrified our government officials was called ‘the Ghost Dance’.”
Allison leaned toward the screen, zooming in on the individual faces of the dancers. They wore red and black paint. Some had blue waves across their foreheads. The fronts of their jackets were all open. The bare bodies were painted as well, though she couldn’t tell what the markings were.
Stratton’s voice echoed slightly in the house chamber. Duncan’s sound system captured the echoes perfectly. Allison felt as if she were in the Capitol with the President. Her breath quickened. She stopped taking notes, letting the pad fall to the floor.
“For the crime of dancing, the government ordered the Sioux to lay down their arms. What happened next depends on who is telling the story, but the outcome is clear. The Sioux, most of whom were unarmed, were slaughtered. Many were shot while attempting to surrender. Others felt the brutal Gatling gun shells take their lives as they fled the scene. Officers with pistols walked among the wounded and finished them off. For dancing.”
Allison now knew why the Native Dancers were present. Stratton told the rest of the world.
“A little over a year ago, prior to the inauguration ceremony, another group of fearful government officials, conspired to stop the orderly change of leadership that is the hallmark of our constitution. Through the use of Native American suicide bombers, these traitors sought to kill both the outgoing and incoming administrations, along with a great many innocent civilians.
“The conspiracy was uncovered and stopped. Those responsible were arrested and prosecuted. Because it was a matter of national security, many of the details of the conspiracy were not made public.”
Stratton stepped to the front of the podium. Half-a-dozen Secret Service agents looked uneasily around the chamber. The President extended his arms, palms up in a gesture of warmth, toward the Native Dancers.
“A part of the conspiracy involved the voiding of all treaties with the indigenous peoples of this land, something that has been happening one piece at a time for several centuries. It was unjust. It was wrong.”
Allison held her breath. She’d been an activist in her youth, seeing the world through the idealistic eyes of those who believed it was possible to change the past. But time and experience had taught her differently, taught her that you couldn’t undo a wrong once it was done. You could only learn from it and move forward. Yet Stratton had something in mind. A change – perhaps in the fundamental nature of morality – that could repay a debt owed to generations long dead by a people who had seized the lands and rights and destroyed a way of life that for tens of thousands of years had sustained a culture that intimately knew what was sacred. The sanctity of the earth, the bond between man and nature, the timeless perfection and unity of creation all lived in Native cultures.
What did Stratton have in mind?
“I met with the tribal leaders after those who sought to unmake them were safely locked away. I apologized. I asked forgiveness. I asked how this government could show that we are sorry, that we are truly sorry.
“What do you think they asked for? Money? Land? Power?”
Stratton shook his head, moving down the steps to stand in front of the Native Dancers. The Secret Service agents went nuts, moving all at once toward the President, but he waved them off.
“The leaders of the Sioux told me that they had met with one of our nation’s true heroes. And indeed he is. The man who uncovered the conspiracy and who saved our government had, on his own initiative, met with the tribes in their council and gotten to the heart of the matter.
“Chad Walker? Are you here tonight?”
Shielding his eyes against the glare of the cameras, the President looked out over the thousand or so dignitaries assembled in the chamber. Chad Walker, Secretary of Homeland Defense, former President of Walker Investment Group, and the alleged author of much of the language of the group of laws that became the cornerstone of the nation’s security, the S.O.C.I.A.L. laws, was conspicuously absent from the ceremony.
A Secret Service Agent approached the President to whisper something. Stratton nodded and grinned.
“Just like a great man. On the night of his greatest triumph, he draws the short straw. Chad is the cabinet member who stayed home in order to ensure continuity of our government in the event some tragedy befalls us here.” Stratton’s grin and laughing eyes offset the dark nature of his comment.
Allison began to feel uneasy.
“Well, Chad, I’m sure wherever you’re tucked away you’ve got us on screen.”
Stratton saluted.
“Congratulations and thank you for your service to the nation.”
A round of applause filled the next minute and a half. Stratton moved back behind the podium.
“What the tribes asked for was the opportunity to come to Washington, to one of our great councils, and to show us, through their most sacred rite, that they mean us no harm. That they have always wanted only to live with us in peace. They want to show us their peaceful intentions. By allowing this, we offer our apology for the injustices of fear.
“The massacre at Wounded Knee happened because government officials and the population at large feared a tradition among the tribes of dancing in a way that connected them to the wisdom of their ancestors. The ‘Ghost Dance’, banned until the 1940’s, along with the Sun Dance, make up the most sacred of Lakotah rituals. Even after the ban was lifted, Native Dancers generally refused to dance the Ghost Dance in the presence of non-Native peoples. It haunts them as it degrades us. Tonight, we hope to begin to heal the wounds of centuries, to form a new pact of peaceful cooperation, to make a new start with the wisdom of experience that our fearful forefathers never had.
“Tonight, we are honored to surrender the floor of this house, the seat of our government and the home of our constitution, to the Lakotah Sioux Ghost Dancers.”
Stratton stepped back from the podium as an anticipatory silence spread over the murmuring voices in the chamber. The Native Dancers stood as a unit, throwing off their jackets to reveal their hairless torsos painted with the sacred markings of their ancestors: sun, moon, rain, fire, bird, bison, snake, rabbit, and deer in stark white paint covering the slack brown skin of the dancers.
A public address microphone clicked audibly as a uniformed Marine stepped to the side of the podium. Allison zoomed in, her unease growing.
“We will be dimming the lights for the dance. Please remain in your seats,” the voice of the officer ordered. Allison gasped. Though the speaker kept his head down and his face hidden beneath the bill of his cap, the voice and the conspicuous Congressional Medal of Honor centered between the starched points of his collar gave away his identity. Allison reached for her cell phone. The lights in the House Chamber dimmed. The sound of a Native drum began, followed by an aged Sioux voice, chanting. Allison turned the LCD’s brightness all the way up. She could just make out the outline of the Marine. His right hand held the microphone. His left hand was moving upwards. He held something dark and cylindrical.
All at once a flash of light filled the screen. A scream of white noise forced Allison to cover her ears. In two seconds it was over. The picture vanished, followed in a few seconds by the blue-screen of a lost signal.
“What the hell?” Allison said. Her cell phone vibrated. She picked it up.

Boldness

2008-04-06T10:07:00.003-07:00

Another perfect day dawns in the desert. Jezebel, Cindy, and I enjoyed an early morning walk, marveling at the spring blooms accompanied by a full choir of bird songs. All live. All free for the senses to delight in. We met two other people and one dog on our walk today. Michael and his miniature Doberman Max strolled out a few minutes ahead of us. We caught them on the first long hill. Michael is in his 80's, old Italian blood, probably first or second generation, certainly still in touch with his native land. He smiles constantly, walks up and down the steep hills of our neighborhood without strain; an effortless ease to his stride, which like his laughter is long and melodious. Doris, the other person we encountered this morning, also appears to move without effort through the world. I wonder if the wisdom that comes with great age and experience translates into that grace of being that allows the ancient, wise ones to become one with their environment? Does that then make the moment of death a simple easing on, like water flowing over a stone?

My boldest move this week was to register for the Great American PitchFest, Twilight Productions June project. I'll be in Los Angeles for three days: two of them in class with such screenwriting teachers as Syd Fields and Blake Snyder and then a full day of meetings...as in "take a meeting." Producers, directors, studio execs, agents, writers, and financiers from over 100 Tinseltown insider companies will listen to pitches from 500 aspiring Hollywood career types, like me. I'm finishing the second draft of LUCKY BOY, my screenplay, and developing a pitch that I hope sells this spec script during those three days. At any rate, I'm learning a great deal about the craft of screenwriting and beginning my preparation to present, one-on-one, the sound bite that gets the words from the page to the big screen. It's not frightening, I got past that as soon as I finished the registration phone call. It's very exciting. And I feel the challenge, the exhilaration that comes from preparing for something that feels bigger than me.

Gavin de Becker's book, THE GIFT OF FEAR, reprinted this year, brought me another level of experience this week. There are enough ideas for conflict and drama in that book to fuel a hundred thousand scripts. I only hope to be able to pick a couple of the strongest and do them justice.

Jezebel is boldly barking at lizard on the patio. Fortunately, there is a pane of thick glass and a screen shielding the critter from her attention. Such wasn't the case when we met a rattlesnake on our walk earlier this week. I'm still processing that and will discuss it further in my next post.

SUN-day

2008-03-30T08:12:00.003-07:00

The west wall of my bedroom consists of a sliding glass patio door that opens into an Arizona Room. The west wall of the Arizona Room consists of two sliding glass patio doors that look out over a cliff on the edge of a ridge. Below, the city spreads its limbs across the calderra that lies between the mountain ranges. That's what I see when I open my eyes in the morning.

Dawn slipped around the house and tapped me on the eyelids at around 6:00 a.m. Dawn, as in daylight, clothed in golden lace with crimson highlights. As opposed to Dawn, the dark-browed, unsmiling loss prevention manager from a previous career path. My dog, Jezebel, an eight-year old cocker spaniel, crept up from the foot of the bed and curled herself tight against my left shoulder. I looked at her and she licked my nose before leaping, using my chest as a springboard to launch her into the morning's first and most important priority.

"DAD! TIME TO TAKE A WALK... I GOTTA GO!"

And so it begins. We walk about two miles through the foothills. I watch the sunrise on the plants while Jezebel sniffs every suspicious leaf, trembles with excitement at the sounds of bird calls, and tries vainly to escape her leash to follow pairs of gamble quail as they scurry like overdressed penguins hyped up on amphetamines across the narrow roadways of my neighborhood.

We jog down a long hill. A wash at the bottom carries a river of damp, cool air, the final remnant of the departing night. When we ascend the other side, there is a palpable sense that the day is going to break open soon. We walk in silence, enjoying the suspended moments before that happens.

It's been a few days since I walked Jezebel; owing to my work schedule that duty has fallen to my wife. Spring is not the time to skip walks in the desert. You miss so much. Plants that were dull, sage-green nothings blossom into bouquets of yellow flowers with smiling brown centers. Marble-sized blooms covering great hulking shrubs fall away and disperse on the afternoon breezes, leaving behind hundreds and hundreds of seed pods hanging in neat ornmental rows. Squat barrel cactus put on crowns of golden fruit. Cholla dangle their mysterious spiny chains, the almost invisible spines waiting to hitch a ride on the unsuspecting who venture too close. A great factory of life renewing itself.

Most amazing of all, to me, are the Ocatillo. The scarlet tips that showed only a week ago, burst forth in exquisite blood red cascades. Cone-shaped and sometimes a foot long, they erupt from the tips of the green tendrils like rich, warm bits of flame. I imagine a series of time-lapse photos and stand open-mouthed, lost in the brilliant images that play across my mind. Sparrows and wrens sit atop the flower heads, chirruping to greet the dawn.

There is one house, formerly covered in green ivy branches that have miraculously transformed themselves into magenta blossoms.

Jezebel is dragging me along now, the final leg of the walk, back into the walled safety of our yard. There's a big lizard living on the south patio. Although it isn't yet out, she knows it is there, somewhere, waiting, and if she can only find it...it will want to play.

The sun crests the ridge and the world takes on its familiar daylit form. We're going to Tubac later, to soak in the atmosphere and bathe ourselves in creative energy. Be present for everything, I remind myself as I hang Jezebel's leash back on its hook.

The smell of coffee, fresh ground and brewed in the french press, greets me as I open the door.

2008-03-29T09:56:00.002-07:00

Here's the opening 1500 words or so from my Novel in Progress...there's a little bit of adult language here...PG-13 in my mind.

A FABLED LIFE

Stephen L. Russell

Chapter One – Journal of Despair

The events I’m relating to you took place awhile ago. My name is John Kennedy Nolan. I hate fall, the South, and my name. My mother killed herself on my fifteenth birthday. Cheap scotch, valium, and sleeping pills, in case you’re wondering. I developed a taste for Irish whiskey---Old Overholt, if you want to buy me a bottle. No pills of any kind other than an occasional aspirin. I celebrated my thirty-eighth birthday the same year the twin towers fell. Like mother like son? Not yet. Mother would be disappointed. Her final words, raggedly scrawled on a postcard with a worn fountain pen: “It isn’t worth it, Johnny. Think about it.”
# # #
October, 2001 -- I was in Arizona, feeling sorry for myself while the world raged against an elusive madman in the mountains of Afghanistan. Civilization was distracted by its self inflicted chaos. The moment ripened for a dormant force beneath the sands of the Sonoran Desert to return to the world. Something older than human memory awakened on that night, and under cover of darkness, began a quest that nearly ended the whole party, for all of us.

I was writing in my journal, a black bound spiral, one of many, into which I dumped my insanity. Oberon snoozed beside my recliner. Whiskey number three reflected amber light through a sweating glass atop a side table. No coaster, the water ring outlined my drink like a bullseye. The fireplace remained dark. My mantle clock chimed 8 p.m. The television was tuned to the weather channel. Sound muted. Talking heads pointed at maps above a running strip of local conditions that showed the temperature still over ninety. It was hot, even for Arizona, given the time of year. Did I mention that I hate the fall?

As I reached for the whiskey glass a tremendous, fast, and sharp pounding reverberated throughout the house. Echoes of what sounded like a six-foot woodpecker with a ball peen beak trying to batter through my newly painted front door. It made me more angry than afraid. Irish courage, whiskey that is. I threw my journal in the safe, slamming the steel door, grabbed up my glass, and headed to the front of the house. Oberon raised his head just long enough to throw me a glance of disgust at allowing this disturbance to his nap. The laziest dog that ever burped a Milk Bone, that one.

When I looked out the peephole, I saw my ex-wife, Sandra. Dressed like a twelfth-avenue whore in a red dress that almost covered her surgically tightened ass, holding a sequined handbag in one hand and a red stiletto heel in the other. She used the heel to beat out her arrival.

Sandra leaned forward and licked the peephole lens. She’d pierced her tongue. A jeweled spike stood erect behind the leering veneers of her teeth. Her hair was a catastrophe. Some alien shade of purple. It clashed with the dress.

Feeling spiteful and figuring she was drunk, I flung the door open. I intended to get some satisfaction from the sight of her sprawled on the tile of the entryway. As short as her skirt was, I might even get a chance to spill my whiskey right on her hot spot. Send her home smelling like fermented fish. She’d pissed me off, beating up my door with her goddamned spiked heel. The door opened inward, outside the porch was empty.

“What the hell,” I thought. She couldn’t escape that quickly, especially not in one heel. I went outside and around the house. The garage door and back yard gate were both closed. No sign of her. No traffic on the street. I lived in a gated neighborhood with a fascist homeowner’s association that kept things quiet and clear. People got up, hit their garage door openers and went to work, came home, closed the garage door and disappeared until morning. There were few streetlights, no sidewalks, and high privacy fences around yards that served as moats to Mediterranean stucco houses with pink and red tile roofs. Nobody gave a damn about anything except what went on inside their own walls. Sandra and I learned this through the many nights our fights spilled out into the street. Nobody so much as cracked a window to see what the commotion was about. A thousand satellite dishes showed what held their attention.

The world became desensitized to the humanity inhabiting it about the time of JFK’s assassination. Things got worse in the following decades. This hot autumn night in 2001 confirmed it for me.

I thought about calling the gatehouse to complain to the guard for letting an obvious drunk into our peaceful enclave. Instead, I decided to go back inside, finish my whiskey, and hit the sack. I had a breakfast meeting scheduled with my boss where he planned to reveal his latest “how-to make us all billionaires” scheme. Being late or hung over would put me at a real disadvantage when he started the next phase of his ubiquitous power trip.

The porch light was on and I bent down to look at the damage to the door before going back inside. I frowned. The door was unmarked. “Good paint,” I said, patting the door, before closing it behind me.

The smell hit me in the hall. Before I turned the corner into the study, a stench like rotten potatoes mixed with sulfur and something else, something that made my eyes water and had a sobering affect. Oberon, the great guard dog, was pretty much as I left him, half asleep on his side next to my chair. My chair. Only something else sat in it.

A wreck of male indignity, lounged in filthy rags. My journal lay open in his lap. A complete impossibility, as the journal was locked in the safe. Then I noticed a stack of them, ten or eleven in all---bound in black with wire rings. No evidence of fire damage. The derelict, as I came to call him, didn’t even glance up as I entered the room. He focused on the long, yellowing fingernail with which he underscored the uneven snake of my handwriting across the page. His face reflected a peculiar cast that was something between olive-green and orange depending on how the light hit. Wrinkled and broad, it expressed great amusement, apparently at the words on the page. My words, it seemed, though all of it looked to be impossible.

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, tilting quickly past civility. He ignored me. I moved a step closer, though the smell kept me from immediately grabbing and tossing him from the chair. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

He raised a hand. His nails traced little smoke lines in the air as he waggled two fingers in front of my face. “Shush, John.” he said in a voice that rattled with phlegm. A burst of laughter followed by a hacking cough. He spat a long, yellow stream into my empty fireplace. It hissed when it struck the stones. Oberon raised his head and looked at me.

“Get the fuck out of my chair!” I shouted, grabbing at his shoulders with every intention of using the rags he wore to mop up the slimy coating in the firebox. It was like grabbing water, only I didn’t get wet. My hands passed through the molecules of his body. I felt the cloth, skin, muscles, and bones, but only for a second before they parted and I fell, nearly landing on Oberon, who licked my face when I hit the tiles beside him.

“Want something to drink?” the derelict asked, offering me the remains of my own whiskey bottle. I hate ironic statements. I wondered what happened to my glass and got lost for a moment, uncertain whether I had set it down outside or left it on the hall table by the front door. The long fingers offered the bottle to me. I could see through the glass, the distorted features of the derelict sharpening as he glanced up from his reading. “Clumsy sort, aren’t you,” he said, retracting the bottle and taking a long pull. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, shaking it so that I felt a cold spattering of saliva mixed with whiskey on my cheek. “You need another chair in here,” he said.

I sat up, crossing my hands on my knees and rubbed the back of my head where the beginnings of an ache throbbed just at the point where Axis and Atlas meet. “What the hell?” Bewildered? You bet I was.

Ignoring my question, the derelict laughed and tapped the journal. “This is great stuff, John! I’ve never found anything quite like it before. You ought to publish…” he paused as if considering that thought, “No, no, forget that. The world isn’t ready for this.” He shook his head and muttered to himself. I wanted to lie down and cradle my head in my hands. The headache was as real a presence as the derelict. “Sure you don’t want a drink?” he asked, waving the bottle at me again. I swatted at it, intending to knock it from his hand. He possessed hair trigger reflexes, pulling the bottle back and staring disapprovingly at me. “No need to be rude, John.”

Eight Years Late

2008-03-26T18:27:00.001-07:00

Start Here: January 01, 2001.

Pause...pause...pause...fast forward to March, 2008. Nothing lies in between.

What did the old Sith say about lack of vision? I'm behind the curve on this technology. That's a strange admission from someone who once described himself as THE cutting edge. Not on the edge. THE edge. Take that any way you like.

Take a word: technology

Put its letters in alphabetical order: ceghlnooty

What can you make of that? loot, not, note, goon, ten, yen, ley, cey, on, ton, tone, tool, tole, hole, hoot, gel, leg, gent, tog, got, lye, lent, get, hot, echo, tony, cool, eon, noel, hone, cone, con, cot, goth, ...lots of three and four letter stuff. You're at the first level of creativity...taking something and making something else of it.

Five and six letter words start to appear later...length, lengthy....if you keep looking. How far can you go? What's the biggest word you can make out of that?

There's abbreviations in here too: etc.

Put your words in alphabetical order: cey, con, cone, cool, cot, echo... etc. Use them to write poetry, to tell a story, to create rhythmic gibberish.

Misspellings can be fun: looce, tyle

AND made up words: chog, cenology

Cool? Not yet.

Got no con. Got no tool.

Got no loot. Hot hole.

Eon Echo.

Techno-gel,

Hot tone,

Tony gent,

Not cool.

Not yet.

Yeah, I'm behind the curve. But that's where we all start. Even the innovators. Infinity is that big.