Sugar Burn

Editor's Note

Okay. This one's tricky. There's one aspect of disability I speak on in public but haven't mentioned it here as of yet. It's sexuality. More specifically, relationships and sexuality. I'm a PWD (person with a disability) that believes that sex is good, healthy and is a visible (somewhat ;) part of my life. Disabled persons ARE NOT eunuchs, nuns, asexual or "safe" because they have a disability. No need for mental pictures here. I'm just STRONGLY refuting a belief held by most persons without disabilities (PWODs) and by many in the disability community itself. It's HIGH TIME that people got this concept. PWDs ARE RELATIONSHIP MATERIAL AND GENERALLY LOVE SEX AS MUCH AS ANYONE ELSE! There. Now it's tricky because my current dearest T doesn't like to hear about previous dearests. Women are funny that way. LOL I'm doing it anyway because this episode in my saga has many points worth stating. If y'all don't hear from me before January, assume I'm grounded from the computer. HaHa. By the way, everything in this post actually HAPPENED to a PWD, namely me. Oh and no sympathy for me either. This chapter's been long closed.



Post Proper

Once upon a time there was a little Dustin...ahhhhh never mind. Inside joke. Here's my opening. Gwenyth. That's what I called her. Gwendolyn is just too long to spell a lot and I didn't wanna have to say three syllables. Gwenyth=two syllables=more better. I was 23 and staying in a dormitory on the University of Montana campus in Missoula. My friend Eric (also a PWD) and I moved from an apartment out on Riverside to campus to make transportation a non-issue for our class schedule. We stayed in a dorm mostly with four person "suites" and four single rooms with a private, accessible bathroom. I was ground floor in the female wing (SCORE FOR ME!) Eric was on a higher floor. I hung out up there a lot because he had a video game console. 'Nuff said.



Now we pulled this whole thing off by sharing care hours through a PA (personal assistant) agency. We usually ate together in the cafeteria. Then a PA would aid one of us to bed followed up by the other's routine. It worked for roughly two months until we separated hours for the sake of the PAs. Then we finished semester with different people.



Well, I started primarily with guy PAs. One stayed the entire semester. The other became "reassigned" in mid-semester. The agency hired a new person to help take the slack of the other PA. She was a 26 year old, redhead nursing student with light brown eyes. Gwenyth. She was hired primarily for Eric's hours yet we magnetically drifted until she became "my" PA (This was around the time we stopped sharing hours.)



My relationship with her started out weird and got stranger. The second day working with us, we were hanging with Eric in his room. E and I joked around while we watched movies and played video games. Somehow, I incidentally mentioned how I should get a haircut. Suddenly, she was asking if she could and I kinda said okay and fifteen minutes later I had a haircut (she kinda used E's scissors). Yeah, that was weird. As days went, she started to volunteer for my hours until she was my primary PA. Then she started to hang with me outside of work hours. I did like her so I didn't mind so much.



Early Spring turned late and she and I were together almost all the time. I had learned some about her but not a lot. I learned her live-in boyfriend worked hospital hours and was rarely around. I learned she was putting together a modeling portfolio because her looks fit that. I also learned that she had a child who was not in her custody and her goal was to get custody of the child. Yep, that's about it but I was influenced by other processes that blinded me to the obvious red flags.



I remember once when she was untying my shoes by kneeling beside me. She flipped her straight, auburn hair aside revealing a peaches & cream neckline. My heart skipped because I would have given a Kingdom to place my lips upon that flesh. That was it. I fell for her then. I will admit to being awkward about this falling thing so I didn't just blurt things out. Instead I indicated fondness and waited. Eventually she asked if I'd seen the movie My Best Friend's Wedding. I hadn't and said so to which she says I should because I reminded her of a character in the movie. I never saw the movie but I leveraged the comment into her admitting she liked me...a lot. I, being stupid, asked what we did next to which an "affair" was offered. I yearned for her so I consented. I was granted my wish of being with her although clandestinely. There were a lotta issues requiring secrecy. Her boyfriend couldn't find out (I actually thought she'd separate eventually). The PA agency couldn't know because PA/client relationships were fireable offenses. E couldn't know because he could tell the agency. It was a giant freaking mess and I was blind to it.



I was blind to the truth of things because, for the first time in a physical relationship, I found someone who wasn't scared of me possibly being too fragile or too inept or that the equipment wouldn't work properly. In the heat of the moment, things kinda flowed naturally and adaptation was presumed. That was the first time in my life someone treated me that way and it seemed worth it to me.



So we had the physics of the physical part down but I began to see another entire part of the equation. Although we shared our bodies, her mind started to frazzle and I was too inexperienced to know what to do. She believed that her boyfriend was spying on us, she started losing sleep over it and we distanced. Final straw was when the agency called her for a "meeting." She was POSITIVE I told them about the relationship. Then she did what shattered the entire thing: She accused me of PLOTTING this all along to get her fired and "ruining her life." Yeah, I lost it. I yelled that the idea of such a thing was insane and that I tried more than anybody to "protect" her. Suddenly she tells me about domestic violence she's experienced and that she doesn't know if she can trust me as a man. I cry about this and that she couldn't trust me to tell me earlier. Then she is crying because of her stress and I tell her that if she can't trust me after all that had happened, she never would and that I could do no more than I had. She got up and slammed the door on her way out. After that, we didn't touch non professionally again. We did find out that the meeting was about her taking more hours on weekends, but the "relationship" had ruptured and there was no fixing it. As the end of semester came, she informed me that her boyfriend proposed and they were moving to flatland somewhere so he could take a job there. Outwardly I said I hoped things went well. Inside I was confused, bitter and angry. When I went home to Superior for the Summer, we never saw each other nor talked again.



The other part of the equation was trust. We didn't have it. Also I missed a thousand red flags about the nature of things. Plus starting a PA relationship is not something I would recommend to everyone. Anyway, I got me in the mess but I also got me out. I learned things and eventually I met T and we worked together to get through problems. I'm not an inexperienced idiot and we've been together seven years. Wherever she is, I want to thank Gwenyth for teaching me what to do and how to approach an adult relationship with maturity. It's great knowledge to have. Well, now I'm going to chain myself in the basement. I guess you won't be hearing from me for awhile. Ah well. Women are funny that way.



D

A Distant Mountain

My soul crackled like brittle paper yellowed by the sun
alone in the sandy wind braced by my shadow behind
my silhouette wavered like a flag in the stillness
My will overcome by silence
I breathed without exhale
A ghostly caress of searing heat
Air rising in waves
I glimpsed a stony dagger
Obscured by vision blurred
The peak shined brightly
As if dipped in white blood
My curled hand clawed the air before me
Reaching to touch this mirage
This illusion
A dream
My ancient body of living stone
Staggered through the serpentine sand
To find that mountain that called to me
From so faraway

Look Ma, No Brain (function)

Creepy title apologetics
Okay. The title's a little creepy but it's intended humorously as most things are with me. You'll see. Sorry I haven't posted lately but quality before quantity, right? Anyway, here's a heap'o blogginess.

I'm writing about a mysterious time in my life. Not just mysterious as in hidden from others but mysterious as in mysterious TO ME. The reasons for that will become apparent but first I must rant and then take a quick trip back in time. First...the rant.

The Rant
THERE IS NO LIVING BEING MORE ANNOYING, GENERALLY PUKE INDUCING AND WASTEFUL OF VALUABLE AIR FOR WORTHWHILE HUMANS THAN ANN COULTER. NOBODY! Alright, here's the deal. She says MONUMENTALLY STUPID things. Not just stupid but MONUMENTALLY stupid. It's the kind of stupidity that archaeologists 3000 years from now will wonder at. Strike one? She called widows of men who died in 911 "broads." I assume the word "whores" made an appearance somewhere in the film cuttings from the interview. Strike two? She actually BELIEVES that WE ALL would be happier as Conservative lockstep drones. She really really believes that. Strike three happened last week. She was on a CNBC show called "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch." (Why? God only knows.) Anyway, he was interviewing her (Why, God?! Whyyyyyyyyyyy???) and she said that EVERYBODY SHOULD BE CHRISTIAN AND THAT...wait for it...JEWS SHOULD CONVERT TO BE "PERFECTED." Her words. Donny Deutsch is Jewish and she said it TO HIS FACE. Oh, and she laughed off his indignation. Piece'a work does not BEGIN to describe this chickoid. Yes, she is a chickoid...and a whole buncha shorter words I don't wanna use. However, I will say that the term "too stupid to live" actually applies to someone. Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time Travel
2001. I was in College at U of Montana and heavily involved in student politics and disability advocacy. I'd met my dearest T a year ago and we lived together in a tiny apartment while we slowly moved to our current home in EMo (East Missoula to the non-THUGS in da hizzouse). Health wise, I was okay except for strange respiratory attacks that were asthma-ish but I didn't have asthma. As months progressed to a year and beyond, my attacks got worse. I could barely breath, went unconscious for long-ass periods of time (days), I was always freezing and literally couldn't recall anything from one day to the next. The Docs had me on Oxygen, nebulizers and a preliminary diagnosis of dying to death. Okay, okay, it was actually the idea that my breathing muscles were too weak to breath and I couldn't get enough O.

2003. My lost year. Out of 365 days and 6 hours in that year, I remember maybe 20 or 30. Basically, I remember maybe a day out of that year. I was passed out more than I was awake. I was skeletal because I couldn't stay awake to eat. I call this my "smurfy" phase cuz I was mostly blue. December of that year, I recall asking T to come lay with me in home/bed.

"How long have I been asleep?" I asked because last I remembered I was up in my chair and didn't remember being put in bed.

"Since Tuesday," she said while brushing my cheek with her fingers. Tuesday. It was Thursday. I'd slept 2 days straight without being aware of it. It was like an alien abduction story: I had missing time. It hit me how I'd been living, what I'd become and I broke. I cried, sobbed, babbled in confusion and fear. She cried with me, held me, feeling the same fear. Eventually, I calmed. I looked straight into her wide blue eyes and told her straight that the odds were against me surviving the winter. I said it amazingly calm for as terrified as I was inside. Saying you aren't afraid of death ain't the same as staring it in the gaping maw. I was scared. She was scared. We were both losing me and helpless to stop it.

I don't know how I lived through that winter. I stayed unconscious, got thinner but lived. I guess it's the steel inside, the core of pure will that makes me both a blessing and a rather stubborn curse. Ask T. Really. I couldn't leave her here without me but, also, my brother perished in July 2003 (naturally during the year I could remember least) and I wasn't letting anything take me that same year. It would've broken mom and my grandmas hearts to lose me too. I never ever wanna hurt anyone that badly. So, with will, T's love, Docs help, I survived.

I got better or I wouldn't be writing this. Long story super short, it wasn't lack of O killing me, it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much CO2 stuck in my system because I couldn't exhale it out. I was dying of Carbon Dioxide poisoning. DUH. Any idiot (especially this idiot) should have figured THAT out. April 2004 I got a non-invasive ventilator that helps pull O in and blow the other crap out. In three months I became me again just skinnier. I began to rebuild my life and bang-zoom, here I am writing this.

Dying was scary. Not knowing why was scarier. I now believe that the mindset of a dying person is vital to the legacy they leave and perhaps the experience they have. Our minds frame everything from how we process senses, to personality and choice, even how we shape the world. It absolutely effects how we die. We imagine death as a "known quantity" as if we truly understand what it means and how it happens. I now believe it's not "known" at all. If our mind frames our knowledge and experience of death then death is as wide and deep as the human mind. Though we all possess mind, do we really understand it? I say maybe on the very surface levels but there are entire UNIVERSES underneath that we glimpse and can never grasp. Our mind creates our life as well as our death. Therefore, I think that to ensure our peaceful passing we should learn to cultivate peaceful mindsets and apply them to our lives. From there, serenity would become a natural part of the daily flow (wolf) of our lives. How could we not carry that peace with us as we flow beyond into the Great Next? How could fear or pain ever truly intrude on the sacred space we'd create for ourselves?

D

The Echelon

Redux
I began this topic aeons ago. I gave a cursory picture of a modern master class: Capitalist, Revisionist and American. I promised a future entry to explain the Echelon in detail. This is that work.

There is no more dangerous group of people on Earth than the Echelon. In the long run, the actions and values of these elite "leaders" can and probably will be the downfall of civilization as we understand it. As a side note, the single most dangerous thought humanity can embrace is the idea that we can control or heavily influence nature or a part of the natural world. Simply put, if it's man versus nature, nature wins. Always. As a species, it is a matter of being a compliment to the world, fitting in as the part of nature that we are. We are not nature's masters. We NEVER were.

Now, back on topic. How can I say the Echelon is dangerous, you're asking yourselves. Hell, you're probably wondering what this Echelon thing is at all. Let me preface this. The Echelon IS NOT a political party or idealogy. It IS NOT an income bracket. It's not a club, government or religion. The Echelon is a mindset and perspective of the world. They are economically progress oriented above ALL else. They are microcosmic, short term thinkers of the highest order. They have unshakable belief, almost faith, in heirarchy and rational systems of large size. They also tend to be egocentric or at least highly self-involved. Status matters greatly to the Echelon and they tend to value themselves and others according to status. Another general characteristic I've noticed is the complete and utter CLUELESSNESS about what harm they can cause to others by actions or just lifestyle. The Echelon is also very enamored with their judgments (i.e. judgmental) and their vision for how others should live forward into a specific future that matches the aforementioned judgments. There is also a very pronounced elitism within this group. This is a basic profile of one who is Echelon.

Here I will point out some demographics of the Echelon. They are predominantly white males of middle age or older. They possess wealth (upper middle class and above), beauty (as defined by whatever currently sells the best), power (either gained through the political process or as figures of authority, often represented by self-important Plutocrats) and/or fame (sometimes gained by looks, entertainment talent or by some spectacle that casts a less than stellar light on people). Of course, another way to become Echelon is to flush your soul down the Corporate hole to become an insanely, ridiculously overpaid Executive wonk. Kind of difficult, that last one. 'Tis far easier to simply be close family to Echelon (spouse, child, grandchild or even pet, if so inclined). Another general demographic is that Echelon tend to be Judeo-christian in belief and are far and away Conservative.

So, what's the danger? Well, if they are Echelon, what does that make us, the non-Echelon? We are the poor, disabled, minority or female, slave...er employee, burdensome public. In a word, we are Biomass. We are tools to help the Echelon attain wealth or status (ask yourselves this: for all the time you've worked, have you gotten wealthy? If not, take a guess who has. You're CEO thanks you. Kinda.), we are a market/herd to buy their stuff, we are the excuse for every crooked politician ever (I did what I thought best for the American People...), we are expendable military units who die while they play their global game of Risk, but most of all we are frightening. Frightening not because we have any power in the Echelon's opinion, but because we are LESSER in their eyes. We're envious they think. Individually we're just rats but if the smelly, diseased vermin gather, they could soil those in the shining fortress. Their less-ness could infect. Plus, we place SUCH a BURDEN on the scarce resources that the Echelon are self-entitled to. Eventually, it ALWAYS comes down to us (Echelon, wealthy, powerful, entitled, clean) versus them (Biomass, poor, limited power, beggars, unwashed). That spells danger right there. However, there is a far greater danger. The Echelon represents a hoarding, use-it-and-toss-it attitude (after all, in the long run we're all dead, right?). They strip land, resources, food & water. They need it FAR more than we, after all. In the name of progress & lifestyle, the Echelon has destroyed forests and races, poisoned the rain and soil, perhaps sent the world into a death spiral of chaos and extinction. But why should this bother them? THEY won't have to deal with consequences. They get all they can now even though their descendants may be consigned to a hellish world. Such an irresponsible disregard for life. There, the Echelon defined. Disregard for life. Somewhere, in a paneled, windowless room, a white-haired man hunches over an exquisite mahogany desk and smirks as he signs a declaration of war. Should call the economists, he thinks. Things are looking up.

Dustin J. Hankinson
9/12/2007

Before the World went Crazy, A Man Poured his Soul onto the Sacred Ground

Authentic text of Chief Seattle's Treaty Oration - 1854[Originally published in the Seattle Sunday Star, Oct. 29 1887]

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume - good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old [men who stay] at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Our good father in Washington-for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north-our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward - the Haidas and Tsimshians - will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children.
But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moon, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land.

Society would be perfect if it weren't for "people"

Hello my faithful and benevolent friends. I know some of you are cringing at this expecting that this will be the continuation of my last post. Well, lucky for y'all, it's not. That's next time. This one is more of my patented ranting. I will, however, leave you with one fact I've learned since my last post. It seems that in the Signals Intelligence Community (SigInt), there's an International surveillance program called Project ECHELON. It's generally administered by the NSA and gathers data from ALL correspondence, both foreign and domestic. Essentially, we've been being spied on without implicit knowledge for years. Just an interesting piece of info I found. On with the show.

Why do stars, celebrities, athletes, politicians and public persons in general need "people"? There's always statements made like "his people must have had him retract his (usually stupid) remark." Okay. Who are "people"? Where does one get "people"? Did the Founding Fathers have "people"? Did Lincoln have "people"? I don't recall the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement being responsible to any "people" during their struggles. "People." It's short for P.R. people. All these P.R. people and personal injury lawyers and "handlers" and Press Secretaries and publicists and spokespersons. Good god. When did all these people become the lubricant for the engine of popular culture? Why are most of them necessary at all?

Here's what I see as the reason for this exponential propagation of "people": a complete free fall of responsibility in American culture. I'm not referring to the "responsibility" batted around and spewed out by (mostly conservative) politicians, plutocracy and the narrow-minded. That's a type of "responsibility" that's suggested solution is to "not be the problem," hence you should be able to handle anything with privatization or just die. It really doesn't matter what somebody does as long as they're NOT OUR PROBLEM. That kinda responsibility is just a cop-out and device to maintain an ideological position that is untenable in human terms. It's a viral perspective so don't be infected.

The responsibility I'm talking about is something far more vital. It's taking responsibility for one's life and the consequences it incurs on others and the world. It's also, more specific to this post, taking responsibility FOR WHAT YOU SAY AND/OR DO. The "people" are hired as a way to circumvent this responsibility. They are sentries who wait for statements or events and then rush in to spin them, revise them or deny them. They would probably erase the public's memory with the blinky thingy in Men in Black if they could. But they can't. (Can they?)

Basically, if you say it, stand by it. Or don't say it. Wow, isn't that complicated? What a unique concept. Don't hire fake people to bury a statement which makes you fake by association. Just think before you speak publicly. (Memo to Imus.) Just think. Then you won't need people to rescue you. Life is really NOT rocket science. Tread mindfully and all things are your ally.

Let us eat cake

**EDITOR'S NOTE**

Exciting news! Your favorite blog has become it's own page. Now you can access this blog at anytime by bookmarking http://www.speaking4thedead.com/ . I've also added content at the bottom. After reading the latest post, scroll down to learn interesting things. Just diversifying a bit. More changes to come. Hang with me.



Main Entry

Okay. It's been a while. I've been waiting for the muse to gently whisper in my ear. Well, apparently, she's on vacation in Cancun. I'm on my own while she's drinking Margaritas at the beach. Oy! Given this unfortunate circumstance, I have to improvise. Falling back on my motto of "when in doubt take a Jello shot" I'm going to...wait, silly me. I meant the OTHER motto: "Think globally, act globally." (There's also a third motto that's more esoteric than the others: Love is its own justification.) Anyway, I'm going to espouse a cultural critique of Capitalist America. Be aware that THIS IS NOT MARXIST! I repeat this is NOT Marxist. While I generally find Marx's critique of Capitalism accurate, his prescriptions for the negative aspects of Capitalism are horrendously problematic. As example, refer to the recent history of Russia. That's a failed Marxist system. I, in my brilliance or madness depending on how you choose to perceive it, have begun to develop my own critique and prescription for our Capitalist culture. This post is the first in a series I've titled the Neo Systema or "New System" roughly translated. This first entry lays out the primary problem with Capitalist America as I see it. I call it the Echelon.

Echelon

There is stratification in society. There always has been. From Ancient Egypt with the Pharaoh and attendants to Greece with the Publicans to Roman Emperors and Senators through Feudal Europe with Manor Lords all the way to the present day. Societies, like soil over time, settle into layers. The mechanisms that cause the "layering" of society are various and culturally dependent. India's caste system is deliberate and separated by societal function. Priests will always retain higher status than artists in India because religious function is prized more than artistic function. In the West--Europe specifically--people have been sorted by level of wealth. Landed Aristocracy are generally highest and the homeless (beggars in old language) fit the role of Chandala or "unfit to be touched" in Indian. I'm referring to Feudal Europe so that I can create a contrast to contemporary America because our class system has evolved into something different than anything that came before.

America (U.S.) emerged from England and Holland primarily. We began with the English Aristocratic system with Monarchy and all. We were colonized and at the mercy of the British Empire's legal, economic and governmental system. The Revolutionary War was about throwing off the shackles of England to determine our own fate. After the war, we created a society that was deliberately anti-England and anti-aristocracy. We could not, however, cast away the mindset that created Aristocracy in the first place. Slavery was still an American institution, people began to seize land to assure themselves of status and wealth still mattered as a deciding factor in one's place in society. We had, in essence, created a feudal system here. Plantations were like Manors, slaves were like serfs. Society was stratified into white overseers, poor or foreign white people, a handful of free colored people and enslaved people of color at the bottom. It was very similar to Feudal times.

America remained this way until the Civil War which was essentially another revolution. The Confederacy wanted to keep the societal structure that had worked for them for 200 years. The Union was becoming more industrialized and depended less and less on slave labor. The North wanted the South to "catch up" industrially and move ahead as a unified nation. Ultimately, the Confederates lost and the Union forced it's will upon the rebel South. Now, we could analyze this result as the victory of humanitarians who wanted blacks treated equally over the tyrannical Southern slavers. There was that aspect to the war and many had the best intentions while liberating the slaves and reworking the labor system. Yet, I submit that humanitarianism wasn't the primary driver in the Civil War. My conception is that, like all societies, the driving factor was economic. The northern industrialists needed workers for the scads of factories popping up and they saw the southern slavers as capping what was a lucrative labor market. My assertion is the slaves were freed from the fields to become impoverished factory workers. It's a sort of "freedom," I guess. Poor whites were treated much the same as people of color at this time.

The era of tycoon had dawned. Names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford and Roosevelt became iconic. Strangely enough, while these families built estates with more-money-than-God fortunes, the life of the average worker was a struggle. Their lives were short, cramped and generally hard. They survived and did their jobs, raised their children, so life really wasn't THAT bad. It's just in comparison to the tycoon and family that things get ridiculously disparate. By their example, the tycoons unleashed a trend of entrepreneurship and wealth building that the World had never seen before. This economic explosion was based on certain values that can be detrimental. One is the division of people into employers and employees, wealthy and poor or great and average. The tycoons became viewed as a better "stock" of people who deserved exceptional treatment because they had amassed huge fortunes. It's somewhat akin to "Divine Right" except instead of kings it became the rich. Another problematic value that helped form the Echelon is the Objectivist idea that the "Great" and creative (and wealthy incidentally) have no real responsibility to society as a whole because society consists of "the mob" as presented in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and "looters and moochers" as presented in Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Basically, Objectivism's message is that society impedes the liberty of "Great" people to be "Great." It also transvalues the great and wealthy into victims of society who give their greatness to the thieving mob intentionally, knowing that they must "sacrifice" themselves to their greatness. This concept is called the "Sanction of the Victim" and one Objectivist goal is for the great and wealthy to abandon this sanction and follow individualistic paths of collecting more wealth (hoarding) and looking after their interests and the interests of those like them. In this one philosophy, born out of literature, the Echelon as a practical concept emerges. The final detrimental value is a business term called "run to failure." This is a management style in which the equipment of a factory or the site of resource excavation or human capital (i.e. workers) are used until they fail. This is done to extract maximum profit from a business venture. When failure occurs, the business picks up and moves on to the next thing. It's almost viral. The "run to failure" methodology pairs nicely with the inherent short term vision of Capitalist economics. As long as one gets as much as one can in their lifetime, screw the future, or so goes the thinking. For examples of this mindset, all you have to do is look around modern life. Global climate change is OCCURRING and some factories keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere. CEO's keep gouging corporations for insane compensation packages while the corporation itself sinks into bankruptcy leaving shareholders out in the cold. We know that fossil fuels are running out but we don't care because it's the future's problem, which is okay, unless you're IN THE FUTURE. These values form the destructive foundation of the Echelon. If things continue as they have, the Echelon could kill off humanity because the future comes sooner or later.

This is my opening statement for the Neo Systema. I realize it's long and I greatly appreciate those of you who have read to this point. The next post will clearly define the Echelon and how it operates and what dangers we truly face. Until then, take a gander at the graph below. It shocked me. We spend nearly 500% more on the military as the next biggest military spender. We could cut military spending by $150 Billion and still be spending twice as much as the closest spender on military items. Priorities a TAD misplaced?

Crying Out in the Wilderness

Editor's Warning: Okay, I'm jumping into this one with both feet. I apologize in advance for any offense to anyone that this may cause. It touches on race, hate and history. It's about remembrance and its redeeming value to humanity. The main topic is a word that I personally abhor because it's ugly and raises images of sneering pale faces. I write about this word not as a apologist or defender of it, but rather as a term that has historical value and should not be screened from the historical context it arose out of. Enough said.

I admit it. I watch those forensic crime dramas on television. It is true that most of the time I can't really tell one from another but if it's got a dead body, I'll watch it. In this blog, I'm speaking about one of these shows called Cold Case. It's different in that it is about solving crimes that happened in the past and remain unsolved. There are two primary reasons I like the show. One is that the woman who stars in it (I don't recall her name) is hot in an almost-looks-like-an-albino-but-is-really-just-intensely-pale kinda way. Two is the way the show creates historical context through the use of flashbacks as it goes. The episodes are generally spot on. Okay. I said all that so that I can say, and I'm not ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE about this, that the last episode I saw was problematic in that it was about a black family moving to a white, rural town where a crisis arose over a black girl and white girl being friends in a relationship termed derisively by the white folks as "critter love." Now, the problem I have is that the era of the episode was the 1970's and I PRESUME that the use of the word "critter" was a politically correct replacement of another word that begins with an "N."

Yep, I'm talking about that word. Here, I'll even be brave and write it though it really makes me cringe. The word is nigger. (CRINGE) God I hate that word. My point here is that "nigger" was removed from the episode in favor of "critter" even though the former was much more likely to be used. That's a problem to me and it extends beyond this show into society generally.

My argument is that we should not take words like "nigger" and erase them from historical portrayal or, even worse, striking them from the historical record. Now, I understand the controversy surrounding these words and I agree that we shouldn't tolerate let alone encourage their use in contemporary locution. Does that mean they will vanish? No, especially considering their use by the very populations that white society labeled them with. That's beyond my scope here.

My message is that we can't erase bigotry and hate from the historical record. It's an ugly truth, but up until around the 1960's, it was accepted to use the nigger word openly, especially in the South. If we as Americans can't look in the mirror of historical analysis and accept the ugly scars we see, we are in great danger of recreating the events that caused the wounds to begin with. Humanity cannot afford to compartmentalize it's dark nature. We risk edifying ourselves unrealistically and deluding ourselves into believing that bigotry, hate and intolerance happened "back then." It's now. It always has been and always will be. The ugly and dirty MUST remain in portrayal to stay grounded in what we are capable of doing to each other. It's a large part of what can deter the arising of intolerance in society. These horrible words must remain in historical context so that we as a society can choose what we DO NOT want to be.

Never See It Coming

Okay, it's been a while. I've been busy but that's not why it's been a while. It's dread. I've been dreading this recounting. Not the existential dread of Kierkegaard but actual uneasiness. When I began this blog, I dedicated it to my brother and dedicated it to personal divestment. This is my place to divest myself of private personal information. I dream about this still and it's been sixteen years since it happened. The dreams ARE NOT pleasant. The memory is not pleasant. The event was not pleasant. Be prepared for some strong language and an ugly, ugly truth.

They went out on the evening of my Eighth Grade Graduation. Gram was supposed to take us out to her house for the weekend but her work schedule changed and she worked late that night. They weren't about to change plans so they found someone to stay with Mike and me so they could go out anyway. The sitter was a good guy and a friend of the family. We watched T.V. and stayed up late and then we put ourselves to bed (we were both still strong enough to do that then). We fell asleep for a time (don't know exactly how long) and were wakened by the backdoor shutting and fast footsteps into the kitchen. Then the front door opened, was slammed shut followed by heavy footsteps into the kitchen. They spoke.

"I love you," she said breathlessly.

"I hate your guts," he replied coldly.

I was in bed, lights off except for the half-light that stretched down the hall into my tiny bedroom. My manual wheelchair was out of reach which REALLY sucked because this kitchen exchange sounded soooooooooo not good. My mind raced through scenarios like lightning until I hit the one that made the most sense. It literally took two seconds and here was the output: They went out to the local dive called the Montana, they drank waaaay too much of liquor that was waaaaaay too hard, passive-aggressive games ensued, she apparently made a "mistake" and the situation was about to settle itself within ten feet of me on the other side of the wall. Yippee.

This next part is amazingly difficult to explain because it's all sooo irrational. To people who have never experienced violence or had to live with it, this will never be truly understandable to you. It just won't. I hate being able to understand it or comprehend it myself. There will be no apologetics here or no deep explanations. I will only tell you what happened.

They began to argue in the living room. I couldn't hear what they were saying because it sounded fast and garbled. I could, however, hear tones. Hers was fast, explanatory and slightly fearful. His was accusatory, escalating in volume and dripping with rage. Okay, I thought, this could be really bad. They moved back to the kitchen and I could hear details.

"...didn't do anything with him. We just drove by the cemetery," she said.

"You know you fucking left with him to piss me off. You are lying your fucking face off telling me you didn't do SOMETHING up there. Tell me the fucking truth," he yelled.

SLAP! A soft groan followed. Then heavy footsteps.

"Let go of me motherfucker. I'll fucking call the copshop," she said slurring.

"No you won't, bitch. You'll get your stupid ass arrested again. Tell me what you fucking did up there or I'll fuck you up. TELL ME," he screamed maniacally.

I heard her say no kind of muffled like he was holding her jaw clamped. Then I heard scuffling and a massive THUD in the living room. Suddenly, she was screaming hoarsely and he was laughing while he intermittently said stuff.

Well, Mikey awakened when I did and was listening too. "Dust," he said. "What's happening?"

Hmmmm, I thought. I wish I knew. I was kinda petrified but I couldn't let my younger brother know that. Somebody had to be strong at the moment and I was self-nominated.

"Mikey, it's just a fight. Pull up your pillow and drown this out. Try to sleep and it'll be okay."

I still laugh so hard at myself for saying that. What business did I have as a scared shitless kid lying to my brother saying it was going to be okay? At the point, I DIDN'T BELIEVE IT WAS GONNA BE OKAY. How could I fake like that?

Anyway, he must have tried because he didn't say anything for a while. Meantime, the horror continued. More thumps and thuds but she stopped screaming. Eventually they struggled back to the kitchen. Oddly, the conversation had completely changed. It was now all about that some pot was missing or lost and he was sure she'd done something with it.

"Where's the shit? What did you do with it. Tell me or I'll fuck up your face," he maniacally babbled.

"Fuck off," she kept saying between these sickeningly meaty thumps. She was talking in this creepy, throaty way that she enunciated every word in. I swear I heard her spit in his face which set off a chain of him saying "fucking bitch" between every punch.

Somehow, they ended up in the utility room across the hall from me. They were both spewing nonsense now but I got the impression he was on her, pummeling as hard as he could. I decided that reason could win out if I made them aware of their behavior. Stupid.

"STOP IT! YOU'RE BOTH ACTING LIKE CHILDREN!" I said. What did it get me?

"Fuck you, Dustin," he said in this whiny, nasal voice. It was like a kid telling me to come and make him. Then, ooooohhhhhhh then, she screamed the words that ripped my beating heart from my chest clear up to this day.

"DUSTIN...HELP MEEEEE!"

I'm in bed, wheelchair out of reach, no phone, no anything and she asks ME to help. That still makes me feel the most helpless that I've ever felt being disabled. Ever. I couldn't save her. Hell, I couldn't HELP her. I started to cry and somewhere inside, I don't think I ever stopped. But I didn't have time. Mike needed me.

"Dust...what should I do? What's gonna happen?"

Okay. Here comes the ugly truth part. At that point, I had no answer. None. I had lost hope because she was getting pummeled, knocked into the washer and dryer, she asked for MY help, I mean...c'mon. In my young mind, it was a very real possibility that this could be the time he kills her. I knew he had a pistol in their bedroom. I also intuited that if he killed her, it would become possible that he'd shoot us and finally himself. This was my thinking. This is why I said:

"Mikey, listen please. Cover your head with the covers and pillow, close your eyes and ignore this. Please try. Please."

I was in bed, tear-streaked face, fearful eyes wide open. I somehow managed to be even-toned and steady. I told him this for one reason, protector to the possible end. I told him to cover so that if psychoman came in to shoot, Mike would never see it coming. I knew Mike. The anticipatory fear alone would be unbearable to him. He needed to be unaware and pass quietly if that were to happen. I don't know if he did it. I want to believe he did, that he trusted me that much but I will never know.

As for me, things were completely different in my mind. If he came in at me, I was gonna make him LOOK AT ME when he did it. In my less-than-clear mind, he was gonna KNOW what he was doing if he killed me. I wasn't going to run, hide because I was going to face him and force his own damnation. Yes, I was a melodramatic boy but it's how it happened.

After I told Mike to cover, the fight continued. She somehow got out the backdoor and threatened to go to the cops. He was still obsessed with the "missing" drugs. She came back instead and scratched his face drawing blood. He threw her around more. Then it broke into pure verbal abuse. The last physical attack was a forced sexual attempt by him but she got away and went outside again. He apparently ran out of energy and passed out in the bedroom because I heard nothing else from him until daybreak. Things were silent for minutes, then she came back in and slept on the couch. The worse case never materialized but I decided right then that Mike and I were going to get out. Within weeks, we were living with Gram as Wards of the Court. It was a survival action. I would have lost it sooner or later and Mike would have suffered. I tried to be protective and mature and...adultified. It was hard but I hope I prevented something through my actions. The ultimate result is the domain of time and time alone.

Of The Earth by Dustin Hankinson

The Painted glass shimmers in song
Shafts of light pierce the empty spirits sitting
Beneath a blazing eye, jealous and spiteful
A curse, A prayer, A calling of fear
Emerges like a cancerous bliss
rises like a mushroom cloud

Rain floats down from ebony eyes
pooling like blood in a wasteland
blinding bone-white
clean and full of grace
To drink the chalice of a sunset red
To be refined in rivers dirty and dark

Broken hands reap what holy flesh sowed
Treasure or trash or something unknown
Separate we search, united we find
Human and deaf and weary and blind
We go on because we must
This and this alone is life

Everything's Eventualism

Editor's Clarification: Okay, because of a post made a few weeks back, some may have drawn wrong conclusions about my mostly imaginary relationship with a certain obscure talk show host/icon. For all records, I like Oprah. I really do. She's compassionate, enthusiastic and purpose-driven. I merely, for sake of my own amusement (It's funny...to me.), pointed out some peeves I have with the show. (And yes, I do have a lotta peeves about a lotta things. Nahhhh. *sticking my tongue out*) The point of the post was to ridicule The Secret. Mission accomplished. I'm going to go take off my Navy flight suit now. Uh....strategery. Yeah. On to the topic of the hour.

Alrighty. Eventualism. I stole the term from a Soderbergh movie called Schizopolis. It's used as a parody of "religions" like Scientology. Well, with all apologies to Steven, I'm totally stealing the term for a definition (redefinition?) that better suits me. (Hey, it is my blog so it can be ALL about me. Heh heh.)

There is a movement afoot in America. It involves purple bracelets (purple?!) and a solemn vow to not complain for like eternity. I found out about this on you-know-whose talk show. It was started by a preacher and kinda took off. Now one quote stuck with me from this show that set alarms off in my head and unloosed a frantic robot in my brain shouting "DANGER WILL HANKINSON! DANGER!" Okay, it didn't actually say that but you get the picture. The preacher said that "complaining is a bad habit that stems from people wanting things to be different." This is paraphrased but the meaning is intact. For us simple country folk, what he is saying is that we should accept things just like they are and not "complain" in hope of eliciting change. Complacency anyone?

Simple truth: change happens all the time. From weather, to our bodies, to places, to all things great and small. I'm asserting a viewpoint that now is a culmination of all thens and the future is a hope pulling us forward, ultimately fulfilled when we accept change and react to it ethically in the successive series of nows. Eventualism. Now, I may have just caused aneurysms in some people and I believe I'm suffering one myself having just written this. Basically change is the natural state of existence, we must accept that and attempt to be ethical beings regardless because it's the only path to a worthwhile future for ourselves and humanity in general. Eventualism. There, I tried it again.

Now that we all have regained consciousness from our blown-brain moment, I can explain the difficulty with living eventualistically. Simply put, in some cases, change hurts. Badly. Our bodies and minds break with illness, people we love live and die and emerge and vanish, the stability we've created in our lives can be erased at the whim of natural occurence. It's life. Some attempt to run from change and the associated pain. Blaise Pascal says in his Pensées that if we didn't move, chance, risk or act, we could avoid the pain of life. So, if we become turnips life would be ducky. Not practical. We cannot refuse to move because there might be pain. We also cannot run from existential pain because it will hunt us down and try to break us. I know of what I speak. I've been prey before. As hard as it is (but hey, it sounds easy), we must walk through. Accept the pain as the natural price for living a full, glorious life. For the Runners who read this, you cause yourself more pain than any person should bear. At some point of wisdom, you will realize this and truth will reveal itself in all clarity. For all who read this, I send peace, empathy but mostly hope. Never give in, never fade away. All things pass and everything is eventual.

A poem I appreciate greatly

Crucifixion
By Phil Ochs

And the night comes again to the circle studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
'Till the universe expodes as a falling star is raised
Planets are paralyzed, mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the briliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity, then he dies.

In the green fields a turnin', a baby is born
His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn
An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard
Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard
And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars
But to the silence and distance they are sworn

So dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
'Cause we love you

Images of innocence charge him go on
But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn
To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate
And a blinding revelation is laid upon his plate
That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate
And God help the critic of the dawn.

So he stands on the sea and shouts to the shore,
But the louder that he screams the longer he's ignored
For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs
And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged
'Till the giant is aware, someone's pulling at his leg,
And someone is tapping at the door.

To dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
'Cause we love you

Then his message gathers meaning and it spreads accross the land
The rewarding of his pain is the following of the man
But ignorance is everywhere and people have their way
Success is an enemy to the losers of the day
In the shadows of the churches, who knows what they pray
For blood is the language of the band.

The Spanish bulls are beaten; the crowd is soon beguiled,
The matador is beautiful, a symphony of style
Excitement is estatic, passion places bets
Gracefully he bows to ovations that he gets
But the hands that are applauding are slippery with sweat
And saliva is falling from their smiles

So dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
'Cause we love you

Then this overflow of life is crushed into a liar
The gentle soul is ripped apart and tossed into the fire.
First a smile of rejection at the nearness of the night
Truth becomes a tragedy limping from the light
All the (canonsheavens) are horrified, they stagger from the sight
As the cross is trembling with desire.

They say they can't believe it, it's a sacreligious shame
Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?
But you know I predicted it; I knew he had to fall
How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small.
Tell me every detail, I've got to know it all,
And do you have a picture of the pain?

So dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
'Cause we love you

Time takes her toll and the memory fades
but his glory is broken, in the magic that he made.
Reality is ruined; it's the freeing from the fear
The drama is distorted, to what they want to hear
Swimming in their sorrow, in the twisting of a tear
As they wait for a new thrill parade.

The eyes of the rebel have been branded by the blind
To the safety of sterility, the threat has been refined
The child was created to the slaughterhouse he's led
So good to be alive when the eulogy is read
The climax of emotion, the worship of the dead
And the cycle of sacrifice unwinds.

So dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
'Cause we love you

And the night comes again to the circle studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
'Till the universe expodes as a falling star is raised
Planets are paralyzed, mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the briliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity, then he died.

Speaking for the Dead

My brother Michael died on July 4, 2003. It was five days after his 26th birthday. He died of pneumonia and heart failure caused by the weakening of his heart by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The same disease I have. Our Perfect Enemy.

We didn't always get along because there was only two years between us. I must admit that being the older one did have its privileges. Primarily picking on the younger one is the biggest privilege. I really, really pushed that privilege. Mike had cognitive delay issues as well as a plethora of learning disabilities. His temper was thermonuclear, but it was easy to find his "big red button" and push it. I caused quite a few meltdowns. His brown eyes turned darker brown, his Italian complexion shaded red, his voice became tight and he stuttered. The relationship we had in our youth was natural, but like all things in nature our relationship evolved. When we entered our twenties, we fought no more. We realized that we were the only brothers we had. From there, he became my best friend. I could tell him anything and he could count on me to listen to anything. I had a treasure and I knew it.

I don't remember when the conversation with God happened. After high school graduation I'm sure. I had it all figured out and I was laying out the plan. When I used to speak to God, I didn't bow my head with eyes closed. I always looked up and spoke aloud in a quiet place locked away from the world. The plan was simple: I would die first, then Grandma who was our caregiver and Mike would go last. It was fair, straight and statistically likely. It was my only askance.

Michael went to the hospital in June 2003, one year after having an episode of pneumonia that hospitalized him. He recovered then. I knew he would. I knew. In 2003, I knew he would fight and win again. In 2003, I was wrong. He was gone and ooooooooooooohhhhhh God there was pain. Now, hollowness. Then, rending pain. I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO FIRST. ME. Not him. Me. I was older, weaker and sick more often. Didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was GONE. Taken. Taken from me.

I understand survivor's guilt. I understand it wasn't my fault. Yet I still feel betrayed, cheated and even rage sometimes. He should be writing here and I should be in the next place. It is only fair, but life's not fair. So I live. I move along. There is a caveat, however. A vow I made to myself, the universe and Whoever is listening. I live FOR him. I will speak FOR him. He always trusted me without question. He believed in me, believed in goodness, believed in justice. So, as debt to him, I will live to try to create the world he wanted. When I speak of compassion, empathy or what is right, I speak for him and the power of his spirit. I will speak for the dead because they can't speak for themselves. I speak for him. I am proud to do so.

Clearing the Secret-ion

Okay. There's a book out. Saw it on Oprah. Now, usually, my reaction to Oprah is to throw a tantrum and tell her, through the T.V. , to STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO. After all, she's not my mommy. (Mental note to self: Clear my summer schedule for whatever books Oprah tells me to read.)

Anyhow, my relationship with T.V. Oprah is complex and perhaps slightly psychotic, but occasionally I get sucked in. On one such occasion, they were talking about a book. (A "fabuloussssss" book according to Ms. Winfrey. Kinda creepy how she stretches words out like that.) The book is The Secret by some whacked out Australian woman who may or may not be crazy with a "K." (Guess which one I think. Heh heh.)

Now, the book. It basically says that you can have ANYTHING you want if you know "THE SECRET." (Creepy echo ensues.) For those who don't wanna know this, heed the following SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! Still with me? Good. THE SECRET is....should I really be telling you this? I mean, it might ruin things. I don't wanna ruin things. I mean, I'm not the kind of guy who....(SMACK!) OK, having just slapped myself silly, the Secret is that you can have anything, literally ANYTHING, if you think about having it a lot. It's called the "LAW OF ATTRACTION." (Once again, the creepy echo. Where is that coming from? Weird.) To distill things further, the essence of this is that if you lose ALL touch with reality and slap a crazy-ass (my favorite adjective) grin on your face while obsessing over that 55 Gallon tub'o Cheez Whiz at Costco, eventually, and I do mean EVENTUALLY, you'll be up to your ear hair in Cheez Whiz. (Really gross image. I apologize on behalf of the Editor.) Now, the only thing between you and your industrial sized barrel'o cheesiness is the slightest negative thought. Hmmmm. Can anyone say "hyper vigilance" and "OCD"?

Alright. Ya got me. I'm not a fan. This kind of message can lead people to a delusional sense of life and entitlement. C'mon, do you really NEED 55 Gallons of Cheez Whiz or 50 Gajillion Dollars or that guy/gal from the Bowflex commercials? The real "secret" to attain happiness is to realize the blessings and small miracles already present in our lives. If we're all honest with ourselves, the good in our lives far exceeds the bad. It's only when we lose perspective that we REALLY REALLY NEED the Playboy Mansion, Bill Gates' checking account, a bacon-wrapped Dove Bar or that gardener guy on Desperate Housewives. (Personally, I think that Teri Hatcher is H O T.) Live in the real world of small miracles and everything else is icing. If you NEED this book, go ahead and get it. It might make a good door stop. Otherwise, we already have what we need to be happy. It's all within.

"The laddie reckons himself a poet." (A line from "The Wall".)

Vapor Trail

A sort of gravity alive in time
when what is and what flows
are not separate but united
in mind, alive in space
in air exhaled from the depth
of a fleshy, angular temple,
whispered in that sacred cleft
echoed through smoky light
and tinted shafts, along pale lips
and darkly granted eyes.

A fire lies within this truth,
the gaze of which I pray
never falls upon the
shining visage of a child,
but upon the withered
patterns of blood-stained flags
buried in sand too dirty
to hide in the glass of time.

Tiresias

I wanted to burn with the fire of pride,
To become a burnt offering to
the God inside.
I wanted to feel alive, away from this,
To arrive in a world free of pain.
I gathered vessels of repentance divine
and felt as though their burdens were mine.
I drank the blood, ate the flesh, carried the tree
To a place of decay.
The path, the Truth and reality of this
cannot sustain ones such as I
who refuse to be skeletal souls,
Peering into blinding light,
Reverent for the gift of death.
To say I want to be free and crushed beneath
An eternal gaze is not a simple scream.
It requires the talents of those stored away,
In rooms made of pillows
And sanitary corridors,
Places where doctors can’t see the moon.

The Lady

Hath not our eyes laid weary
upon the face of earth
that all inherent beings
retain their basic worth
and none that effort cast
can be for evil saved
until the moon has shed it's blood
and the ocean speaks its waves
in whispers
in whispers
to her that shines fairly
within this living dark
a ray of light so nobly born
the place that vision marks
with stars
with stars
to whoever claims her truth
a chest in treasure wrought
the blessing of her wisdom
is all that I have sought

The Noose -- A song by A Perfect Circle

So glad to see you well
Overcome and completely silent now
With heaven's help
You cast your demons out
And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you off your cloud
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends to the dead
To the dead

Recall the deeds as if they're all
Someone else's atrocious stories
Now you stand reborn before us all
So glad to see you well

And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you to the ground
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends to the dead
To the dead
To the dead

With your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping
Your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping down [repeated]

With your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping down

Your halo slipping down to choke you now

Yesterday, Tomorrow and the Time In Between

On a sunny day years ago, I talked to a dying man. He was tall and lean and spoke with a slow Texas drawl. Though his hair was faint and bone white, there was a clarity in his misty blue eyes. It was a clarity age could never touch.

I had failed. That's why I met him. Like a young, nested bird I tried to fly too high too soon. I ran out of College in Missoula. I ran back home confused, sick and furious. I ran back to Superior. It was time for my transfiguration.

We walked the road slowly passing houses and the high school until we reached the edge of the woods by the river. He picked an old pine stump half-torn from the ground and leaned against it. We talked about destiny and futures decided and incomplete pasts. I told him how lost and dead and cold I felt. I failed and I hated myself for it. Hated. I couldn't even look in a mirror for sheer desire to scratch the eyes out of the failure looking back at me.

It's strange how casually some of the most important lessons are passed from one person to another. Just conversing. In a coffee shop or a street corner or the edge of the woods in Superior. I needed to find a way to forgive myself but I also needed a direction to follow through the winds of uncertainty swirling around me. I needed something to make it okay for me to leave on that future day when I could stay no more. So, although I didn't ask, he told me a story.

He was a G.I. in the Korean Conflict. In the tent that he and another soldier stayed, he collapsed to the floor. Things got blurry and faded and mixed up. Then, like the picture on an old television, everything narrowed to a point of light, then, darkness. The awareness he said he had was impossible to rationally explain. It wasn't the same as the awareness he had while telling me this but there were no real parallels either. He said that the dark began to lighten and he felt warmth like when he slept in the sun. There was a cacophony of strange sounds like a group of people talking in an underwater echo chamber. Fear wasn't exactly what he felt. It was more resignation. Whatever was whatever. Then he felt a single strong whisper inside. It didn't say much. It just asked him one question: What have you given? Over and over it echoed. What have you given? In a kind of mouthless paralysis, there was no answer he could give. Then the darkness returned and swallowed him whole.

Sitting in the shade of the pines looking at the mountains reflect in the river, he let me interpret what he said in silence. All I did was let the question bounce around my skull. What have I given? What could I give? What was the right answer? I flashed through a thousand trite answers that you'd find written in the "Spirituality" section of Barnes and Noble. I got lucky, however, because he spoke before I was going to. He said that he woke up in a Japanese hospital. He spent 25 years in a Bourbon bottle trying to forget what happened on the battlefield. He ran too. When faced with something as overwhelming as yourself in the unchangable past, you run. It's what people do. But when the Bourbon wore off, the question was always there waiting. Finally, it occurred to him to maybe look for an answer. Travelling the country, getting married, having children...all the while trying to answer this riddle from his past. Then he said that an answer came one day and he didn't even remember when, where or how. He just had an answer that he was willing to bet it all on. What can you give that would ever be enough? Yourself. He left it at that for me to interpret. He at the point had spent years as a case manager for mentally ill children. I thought I understood and here's what it means to me: For my life to be acceptable to me at all, I had to give myself over to the purpose of allowing others to embrace life in this world of small miracles. I had to let the fire of empathy consume me. I could dedicate my time here to nothing less. I'd found the beginning of my path.

Now, I still fail, mind you, but I always try. I need to try at least, then failure can be an acceptable consequence. It is my path and on that day, my last day here, if I've tried and left this world even slightly better than if I'd never existed, I say let the wind erase me. And maybe I'll see you somewhere on the path in the future.

What's the point?

What's the point? Is this pointless? Are we getting to the point? And my point is...?

Well, my point is points. Why are we so compulsively obsessed with "the point"? Why does everything need a point? Why can't we just be? Sometimes we chase points like race dogs chase the mechanical wabbit. What if the presumed point isn't actually attainable? What if you can't know that until you get there?

Points aren't ends in themselves. They are guideposts along the way. Does lack of a sign make the trip not worth taking? I say no. It's perfectly fine to enjoy the scenery even if you are lost or technically between points. As a matter of fact, I believe that the most important time we spend is without a point. It's when we enjoy existence the most. It's when we can truly discover who the little green person that runs the control room in our brain is. It's when the Truth can be realized. So much important stuff can happen without "the point."

Okay. In summa, quit obsessing over points and start living for Rasputin's sake. Do you get the point? Good. I don't either. Ta ta.

D

If there is nothing you're willing to die for, are you really living?

Why do I do what I do? Why do I go before people of status and importance to tell them flatly that they are wrong? Why do I pay the price of isolation, alienation and minimization for stating my beliefs? In the end, does my action avail anything?

The answers are that I don't know. I don't know any of the answers. So, why am I writing this at all? I write this to speak for people that can't speak themselves. I am an Advocate. I've been called a hero and a champion and a warrior but all I really am is an Advocate. I speak for the interests of the vulnerable and marginalized.

The question now has to be asked what makes someone an Advocate? Is there a school with a degree program? Is it having the word on a nameplate on a desk at work? Sure. These things are part of it but what's at the heart of the work? Is it a characteristic or a trait that allows me to speak forcefully in front of others? Are there well-outlined techniques I've learned to Advocate? Perhaps. I might even say that traits and technique are vital to Advocacy. Are they the heart? No. To me, having little talent or education in Advocacy can be made up with pure, blazing conviction and the determination of people who are fighting for their lives. That is the heart of Advocacy to me. I act on what I believe is right and I refuse to give ground until death. Advocates dedicate their lives to making society better.

To put this as simply as I can, I will end this with a lyric from Rage Against the Machine's cover of The Ghost of Tom Joad:

wherever someone's struggling for a place to stand
for a decent job or a helping hand
wherever somebody's struggling to be free
look in their eyes Ma
YOU'LL SEE ME

D