Pain

I spent the day yesterday just feeling pain. Like always I was surrounded with things that would like to be done, items to fix, clean up, renew, improve, and so forth, all of them quietly calling for my attention, to no avail. I did manage to feed myself. Mostly there was emotional pain of unspecified source, no reason that I could attribute beyond simple “balancing” after a series of successes. Perhaps there was some physical thrown in, I have drunk enough lately to begin to introduce a little dependency in my system, enough so that going without induces a little agitation and discomfort. But the emotional pain arrived first and was clearly insistent about dominating my attention.  I "wasted" the entire day, doing nothing that could possibly be construed as useful or beneficial to anyone.

Such an event won't move the Richter Scale needle in my life. My very first lover disappeared out of my life after a delightful summer. It was only a year later that I learned: she had parked her mom's car in the garage and gone to sleep in the front seat while leaving the engine running. Most likely intentionally. And so long ago  my second wife, the love of my life, the woman who was going to “save” me, well, she started to have an affair with my bestest best friend, actually a few weeks BEFORE we married, and, well, she asked me to teach her how to say “No” and that was a pretty tall order (even for her, over 6 feet tall ….), I mean I could say no to him but that's not the same thing, and they kept on, and kept on, and one day she took a paper clip, unwound it, and stuck it through her cervix to puncture the placenta and kill my only child … in good time, the pain that I expressed was finally sufficient to induce her to say “no” to me and leave my life …. so I have known some pain …

I was meditating upon my pastor's remarks, the previous day of rest. There was, again, that little issue that black folk can get up and speak in a crowded room and say something to one person that no one else will hear or understand, though all speak the same language. That little code which makes fools, again and again, out of our military or any source of arrogant, capricious power. He was angry with me on a couple of accounts, including my sinfulness but also including my rejection of his authority over me. While he was berating, his wife was massaging my shoulders from the pew behind me, which was kind of amusing too.

What he was saying to everyone is that there is this world and then there is the “other” world and he identifies this world, this carnal, temporal, chaotic world as being temporary and worthy of disdain while his “other” world is the world of salvation and eternal joy and peace.

Psychiatrists have long known that children who endure any kind of sexuality imposed upon them by adults, learn how to escape into an “other” world where their sense of self is fully protected and insulated from this world. Everybody has such a place in their secret souls, but its just that us'ns like me and pastor have had to spend more time in that place of refuge. It just means that while everybody can understand a little bit about a secret room, ours just happen to have furniture, particular paintings and even tapestries on the walls, mouldings, nooks and alcoves, rugs, drapes, windows, and probably a bookshelf or two with a selection of favourite works.

So it occurred to me that maybe here is where most or all Christians went wrong, starting of course with Paul. Jesus never, in fact, said that He was going to eliminate all pain for all of us or for all of us who “believed” in him. We misunderstood his healing and we totally misunderstood his resurrection. He did not promise to eliminate pain. He did not conquer death in that way, not any more than he defeated the Romans, as Judas had so fervently hoped and prayed that he would, he didn't even stop Nero from coming back a few years later and literally leveling Jerusalem, leaving no stone upon another, killing every single soul who wished to remain, and salting the earth. He really, really, did not ask us all to retreat forever into our personal private refuge.

It occurred to me that this is where “scientism” has failed and this is also where capitalism has failed. There was the promise, implicit or explicit, that either or both of those disciplines would eventually conquer all pain and make life to be eternally easy and blissful. And what those two have done is to take away all of the little irritations and aggravations of life but in their place, virtually everybody has succeeded in engendering artificial disputes so that we still have terrific arguments and discomforts with one another over issues which are total fabrications, such as the supposed differences between red and blue politicians, all of whom are on the take. And what they have decidedly NOT accomplished is to prevent total social breakdown and chaos, which is the reality that we all face today although quite a few are still hiding out in their “other” world, the fantasy one that we all have....

Me, I love life. I love this world, the real one. I happen to love booze but don't do that all the time. I love sleeping and petting my pussy and listening to her purr and keep my lap warm. I love new tools, clean, oiled, and ready to sharpen exquisitely. I love eating and I love the fact that I have enough food and drink in my house so that I can eat for the rest of my expected days, regardless of whatever happens to all you fools. I do not like pain. I mean, yes, I cut myself or get clawed or my muscles ache from exertions or arthritis or my nose runs or my head aches or whatever, all the thousand little nuisances which flesh is heir to, some of them can be rather debilitating. But none of them can completely snuff out life, or joy. Even, when mine passes away from me, I will die knowing that I have put in place things which will help to enable others survive and carry on. And therein is joy that is unquenchable. Therein is Jesus' joy, therein is his victory. NOT in the other world, but right here and right now.

just a reminder

to Polonius and all the other pompous asses and self-appointed apostles out there:

King James

was a faggot.

Scams

     Yesterday a good friend of mine reported something to me about an acquaintance of his.  He was fairly outraged about it but I was neither very surprised nor upset.  It seemed that this young lady recently turned eighteen and, after taking one very cursory look at the job market, went to see her doctor.  From him she procured a letter explaining "to whom it may concern" that she suffers from repeating episodes of severe menstrual cramps.  Taking the letter with her, she proceeded to visit the social security office where she filed a request for designation as a disabled person, and she was granted support payments for life.

     I do not know her name and I have no way of verifying the report for myself.  However, it is so consistent with the de facto goals of our present society, that I find it eminently believable.  First of all, this removes the woman from ever being counted among the "unemployed" so they succeed in reducing that statistic.  Second, it puts money in her hand which will be spent, increasing the gross national product and creating jobs.  Third, the source of the funds has to be a net increase in the annual federal deficit and added on to the federal debt, which, in turn, is increasingly "monetized" by the federal reserve.  In other words, the payments to her will not ever increase anyone's taxes, instead, the money simply will be printed and then spent.  Finally, since the woman can't, by law, work, and won't have enough money to pay rent on any place for herself to live, she will have to live with other people, and since she has so much time on her hands it can be pretty well predicted that she will spend a good portion of that time doing sex and drugs, which will undoubtedly make more babies to feed and more hospital and perhaps prison requirements, which will make for even more jobs and stimulus for the economy.

     Folks, don't fool yourselves.  No one can make an honest living in this country anymore.  The government wants everyone, from Jon Corzine on down, to work a scam, if he wants to survive and prosper.  The very  best ones are legal.

The Importance of Inflection

...just read these two sentences aloud.


"You can cook, dear."

"You can cook deer!"

Sin

     The rules that people live by must be fitted to the environment and situation in which they find themselves.  The main trouble with religions and religious leaders, not to mention governments and societies and laws, is that the rules that they are perpetrating upon their peoples are always behind the times, sometimes seriously behind.  Always adapted for yesterday's problems, never today's.
     Jesus did his best to overthrow all the rules and regulations and petty mores and manners which had grown up among his people and were so sanctified and holified by the levites and pharisees of his day.  Hde wished for all of us to pay attention to God's world, His reality, not our own make-believe constructs.  But tragically, Paul came along and gave the people a whole new set of rules and regulations which they dutifully went about setting into stone and shackling and burdoning themselves once more .... Paul, who hated women and did not care too much more for men, who never laughed a day in his life.

     In this day and time, the very most heinous sin which any man and woman can commit, is to bring a child, a new life, into this world.  It should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention to this world now, and what God is saying now, why this is so.  It makes no difference whatever whether the government involved has "sanctified" the union between the man and the woman, it makes zero difference if they ever see each other again.  the sin is in adding to the overpopulation, the Malthusian crisis which we have brought about with our holier-than-thou belief that reproduction is a human "right" and that we must save the children no matter what, all of them.  the bottom line is that every time a new baby is born, the whole system groans and squeezes to make room for one more mouth to feed, when too many are already going hungry.  The whole system cranks and creaks on the energy sector to produce more fossil fuels to use for fertilizer, plowing, harrowing, seeding, insecticides, weeding, harvesting, packaging, and bringing to the market.

     If people do not willingly stop making babies, then there will be bloodshed.  A lot.  That's God';s way of doing things.  You'd think we would have learned that by now.

Female circumcision

     This is on my mind this morning for some reason.  I've had these formulations in my head for many years but never passed them along to anyone.  Not sure why I'm thinking about sex so much at the moment, but heck, why not?

     I'm writing in rebuttal to all the horror stories on you tube and in other media.  The western white-perpetrated propaganda protrays this procedure as being close to butchery, extremely dangerous and with the sole purpose of preventing pleasure for the women.  Usually there are images of rusty knives, screaming young girls, and old veiled women who must be frustrated spinsters overcompensating for their own lack of sensuality.  There's always horror-movie music playing in the background as well, like for Psycho or Jaws or something.

     Well, I have (ahem) had up close and personal knowledge of more than one set of female genitalia which had been altered in this fashion.  I am just here to report to you that in my experience, the lowliest Ethiopian woman is vastly more beautiful, hotter, sexier, more playful, more seductive, wetter, and just all-around so much  sexier than the most polished white woman  that I have ever encountered.  I have asked them about the operation and none of them felt like it had been a big deal.  But having their clitoris exposed, not hooded, opens up all kinds of new sensuality for them.  Quite the contrary from the media portrayal, if anything the operation makes them even more desirable, not less.  As always the chief component is attitude, not physical equipment.   In that department, they know how to have fun.  Admit it.  Americans are typically miserable.
Always "going through".  Always "stressed".  Always complaining about the way other people treat them or the things they don't have.

     As a final comment, I'd just like to recommend to anyone who might be troubled by the horror stories mentioned above, see if you can pigeon hole an old Ethiopian man sometime and ask him what he thinks about American men having to using Viagra.  Chances are, the laughter will last him for days .....

Dream

     I had a long dream last night.

     I dreamed that I was in some kind of  nuthouse.  Vaguely it was a government institution.

    
     Some of the inhabitants were naked.  Ugly, grossly-distorted genitals, like something Dali might paint.  Exaggerated, lewd glances.  Others were hiding books in their diapers.  A few of them had private rooms, places where they could hide things or themselves, but as I looked around I realized that I certainly had no such privilege.

     Finally, I woke up.  Only to find that I am still here .....