wrapping up the issue

Like some earlier time when fractious psychos were wrapped in wet sheets, I have spent the last couple of days struggling to pin down and make socially-less-disruptive the soaring irritation I have felt when it comes to the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision of 2010.

The effort was in aid of a monthly newspaper column. Except in children and psychos, it really isn't enough and it hardly communicates much other than self-congratulation to soar and swim and swear about the deleterious effects of buying and selling political offices.

OK, it pissed me off. And the lightness of being that wallowing in pissed-offedness instills is hard to deny. God, it feels good and feels so convincing to feel something. To capture and explain a feeling is damn near apostasy from a feeling point of view: Feeling wants to, loves to, and demands to be heard and recognized and seen as true as true can be. That's the way it feels inside: True. It may be messy and confused and unfocused as a kitten in a ball of twine, but I just know it's true. Ask any teenager ensorcelled by true love or the revolutionary on the barricades and you'll know what I mean. It's clean and clear and true and I am dying to say so, to share and transmit and dance with others in this undeniable light. A veritable saturnalia.... It's true because I know it's true and it's true because I say it's true and it's true because there is no contradicting it.

But then, of course, the self-centered mish-mosh needs to be brought to heel if, for some reason, you want to transmit it. I may be convinced, but somehow I need to find the tools with which to transmit that conviction. Enter the wet sheets of language and analysis and logic... wrapping up tighter and tighter, shaping and stilling the flood waters, adding a format to the format-less.

And in much the same way that the passion can insist on going off some deep end of delight and certainty, so the wet sheets of argumentation can claim the day. It's so much easier to find an "explanation" or "meaning" or "logical progression." If I just explain with enough detail and with enough care -- if I just wind the wet sheet tight enough -- then the passion will be encased and not at all so higglety-pigglety. It may be juiceless, but my reasoning makes me less of a social wack job.

What impassioned person has not chafed or scoffed at the steady-Eddy questioning and probing and shaping of wet sheets? And what steady Eddy has not scowled at the flailing and volume of an impassioned soul who threatens to bring down a house of logical cards? Passion does not fare well within the enfolding sheets of "thoughtfulness," and thoughtfulness can turn into a flavorless addiction where, seemingly unbidden, laughter and tears start to flow.

I could feel myself chafing and balking and wanting to escape from a kindly-disposed ACLU lawyer who agreed to vet what I had written about Citizens United. He knew the law, he knew the tendrils, he wasn't about to lie down and spread his legs for impassioned conclusions based in self-congratulatory enjoyment. I needed him -- or at least his slow-down-and-take-a-look approach -- so as not to be utterly wrong or foolish-to-a-fare-thee-well. I wanted to get my point across, but I didn't want to be lazy. I didn't want to be lazy but I hated being energetic. Parsing and dissecting and adducing 'evidence' never stilled the liveliness of passion. I hated it ... and did it anyway.

Bit by bit, the wet sheets were applied to the column. And the result, when I finally gave up in disgusted exhaustion -- was somehow dull. Smart -- or smart-ish -- perhaps, but dull.

How I dislike mindless passion passing for truth.

How I dislike mindful argumentation passing for truth.

I guess I will have to learn to make my compromises ... about like anyone else.

left behind

I don't need some scare-the-shit-out-of-you Christian to let me know that I have or might be "left behind."

Yesterday, I was reading some Internet to-and-fro about some hot-button topic. I forget what the topic was (gun control? abortion? war? acceptance by God?), but what struck me was the tenor of the comments the topic elicited. They were loud and they were rude and they made assumptions that seemed unable to excite research or reflection. Boiled down, they might have read, "You're an asshole and I'm not."

Somehow the tenor and volume really shocked me. How had all this happened? I don't generally read such things and somehow, in my absence, everything had gotten out of hand... all Facebook and Twitter succinct without visible substance. The other kids were playing out in the street and I, as a fellow human being, wanted to think I could go out and play too. But I couldn't: I had been left behind.

Even the moderating, oh-so-conciliatory remarks -- and there always seemed to be one or two of those -- agreed with the premises posed by the high-volume participants, tried to smooth things out and unwittingly contributed to the nonsensical nature of the discussion.

Where have I been? How did this happen? Really -- where did the notion arise that because I say so something is automatically true? Someone will have a long and well-lubricated explanation, but I guess it boils down to choice: You either play stupid -- loud and self-serving -- or you take your toys and go home. Faux (or Fox) news is the way of the world, it seems, and I am disinclined to bend a knee to the stupidity.

My bad.

it's a dream and ain't that something?

All composite things

are like a dream, like a fantasy. Like a

bubble and a shadow. Like a dewdrop

and a flash of lightning. They are thus to

be regarded.

-- The Diamond Sutra

In the past, I have viewed this Buddhist nutshell as somewhere between a gentle nudge and a fiery kick in the ass: Stop putting faith in that which will prove faithless in the end; stop deluding yourself; stop relying on what is unreliable and, worse, painful.

Running on a set of parallel tracks was the plaint, "Oh, if only I could see clearly!" If relying on the ephemeral doesn't work, what does? I fled (to the extent anyone can use that word) my own dreams and fantasies and immersed myself in a Zen practice that -- please! please! please! -- would steer a reliable course. I wouldn't be tricked any more. I'd be clear-eyed and happy and ... well ... you know ... better.

But today I am inclined not so much to lay down some critical assessment -- some make-better critique. Today it occurs to me that the Diamond Sutra was right, but there is no need for criticism or the fears that attend upon critique.

Today I think that dreams are really pretty good things. They are, when asleep, crystalline in their directness. No one sits around in a dream and applies some Zen Buddhist critique, some Diamond Sutra, some potentate's wisdom. Hell, you just dream and it's clean as a hound's tooth ... scary, delightful, dramatic, elevating, laughing, crying ... without any add-ons. It's not 'just a dream' ... it's 'just a dream.' Later you can wax wise or write a sutra, but in the moment, is there a better instructor than the directness of a dream?

Just munching ... today, as occasionally before, I think it is somehow important to acknowledge the fruitfulness of what otherwise may be deemed fruitless.

F-16s for Iraq ... weird and weirder

It's a hot day and I freely admit that my mind is mushy today, but I found the following story from Fox News ... uhh... peculiar, to say the least:

The lede paragraph seems to sum things up:

The first batch of U.S.-provided F-16s has arrived in Iraq, following a string of delays over security and other concerns.

A later paragraph seems to ask more questions than it answers:

The Iraqis purchased 18 F-16s in 2011 for $3 billion, and another 18 for $830 million two years later, for a total of 36 aircraft.

Am I wrong or could the Iraqis have saved something more than $2 billion if they had delayed their initial purchase by two years, a period during which inflation might have taken a toll?

And later still, the reporter seemed inclined to suggest that the whole exercise -- hardware, money et al. -- was an exercise in big-bucks futility:

Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who helped to design the concept that led to the original F-16 in the 1970's, told FoxNews.com, "It takes an entire culture to make a fighter pilot. Here we go starting these guys off on F-16s, and there is not a chance that in the next 20 years they will be able to fly them effectively."   

re-enactment

The "thousand-yard stare" perhaps....

Repetition and re-enactment ... whether anyone can do something once is not so much the point: It's being able to do it again ... and again ... and again. But of course there is no doing anything again. Done is done... good, bad or indifferent.

Still, there is practice and pretense to move things along.

Here in the U.S. July 4 is dubbed "Independence Day." Fireworks go off, hot dogs are grilled and there is often potato salad. A national celebration: The tawdry revolutionaries, with the help of the French, beat the civilized Brits in a war ... an activity at which the Brits were past masters.

The Fourth of July is also a time, among others, when Civil War re-enactors may put on a replication of one battle or another. Great attention and detail and money is ponied up for these events. The uniforms, tents, weapons, battle configurations and movements are lovingly attended to.

In looking up "war reenactment," I found that re-enactment is hardly limited to the Civil War here in the U.S. Pick a war and there is likely to be a re-enactment. Revolution, War of 1812, World War I, World War II ... the list goes on and on. And the United States is hardly alone.

Strange how all this loving memory aids nothing so much as determined forgetfulness. How can anyone re-enact the thousand-yard-stare, the underfed narrowness of frame, the just-plain-horror, or the shredding of everything combat soldiers are told they are fighting for ....? How could anyone depict the love or fear or bestiality or honor?

Much, if not most, of what made the situation memorable is left out in the representation of a memorable event. It cannot be adequately replicated or re-enacted. So let's skip over the hard facts and stick with the comprehensible and quantifiable and tell a good tale. And then, as if our stories are not enough, engage in a new war.

I guess it is left to individuals to separate tale-telling from the tale itself.

Spiritual life, for example, can paint a wondrous picture ... right up to the moment anyone actually tries it out. In order to understand the crucifixion, I have a hunch Christians are forced to forget about their very own Jesus or God. No book or movie or holiday could ever tell the tale, although there may be a hell of a tale to tell. And what, to use another example, would a Buddhist do with anything as creative as "enlightenment?"

Re-enactment and replication ... very informative ... and as useless as teats on a bull.

go wide!

It may have been the muffled, post-party alcoholic symphony in the upstairs bathroom that woke me at 4:15 this morning. My younger son had returned who-knows-when from what was probably quite a lot of fun in the midst of it. But now there were only wretched retching memories.

It was not yet light. I got up and then went back to bed. After a while, the retching stopped. My younger son had National Guard training today, but his car is still in the driveway and he seems to be in bed. I don't know if he is allowed to cut classes and if so what the penalty -- with or without the retching -- might be.

My older son and I went to a Chinese smorgasbord/buffet for dinner as my younger son headed out to his engagements. I was really, really tired of playing kitchen maid -- conceive it, prepare it, clean up after it -- so we went out and paid to have someone else do the scut work. Over dinner I asked him what he thought of books, both literally and implicitly. He said he seldom read anything in a book and a puff of sad wind passed over my plains.

I was not sad in some righteous-education sense. I knew all too well the frigid lash that "well-read" or "well-educated" can apply. Both of my parents were well-read and well-educated and were so taken with the realm that things like children tended to be more hindrance than focal point. Naturally, I thought something was wrong with me. So I got educated too, though I never found out what was precisely "right" about it... never felt my approval rating or peace of mind rise.

No, the sadness I felt for my son was more along the lines of the interaction between book and reader. Open a book and a contract is struck: There is the tale told and there is the wide open space of imagination and experience that is called on and called out. It has no edges and it can go and flow anywhere, enriching silly, stupid, or enlightening moments. There are no pictures, still or video, to limit the scene, no thin-substance actors with deliberately-tousled hair or uplifted boobs on display. No Wikipedia or Twitter or Facebook.

"Beautiful" and "ugly," "sad" and "joyful," "complex" and "simple," "hard-on" or "soft-off," "strong" and "weak" are suggested by the book. The book is the runway but the takeoff is the reader's. The same used to be true for radio dramas in which the only faculty employed was listening, imagining in harmony with the suggestions ... and takeoff. "Go wide!" the book seems to say and the reader does "go wide" in whatever way or at whatever pace s/he chooses.

To enthrone such a capacity -- to command and demand its exercise -- is too much. And yet to neglect it is equally demeaning. To untie, for some small moments, the socially-acceptable and limiting knots of life is a good idea. What if you could fly or disappear or have four spouses or receive a Nobel Prize or become the fastest gun in the West or invent peanut butter or come-to-Jesus or be calm, cool and collected in a situation in which you knew you were going to screw the pooch?

Go wide ... not because it's true, but because going wide, entering a limitless array of possibilities, is in accord with the way life works. It may not be true -- and it may be scary -- but at the same time it is true. Never mind what the book-savvy say, pay attention to what you say in response to the book in your lap.

Soon enough you can return to the dishes in the sink or the car's balky alternator. But there is no point in selling out the capacity to go wide any more than there is much point in trying to grasp and enshrine it.

Maybe, at some point, my son, like me, will decide that other things are just too familiar and ... well ... what about reading a book?

psychologists lend a hand with torture

The top U.S. psychology association [American Psychological Association] has apologized for the group's collusion with the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA to issue guidelines that supported torture, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation, following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the country 14 years ago.

Sorta reminds me of the U.S. Supreme Court colluding with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Is there anything so good that it doesn't fuel bad fallout ... or vice versa?

a Greek bid for relief

A pensioner leans against the main door of a branch of the National Bank as he waits to receive part of his pension in Athens July 7, 2015. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

the delicacies of slaughter

The Confederate battle flag has become a focal point in the wake of the fatal shooting of nine black people in a South Carolina church. It is easier to argue about a flag -- is it an implement of racism or is it an historical artifact -- than it is to enter the tortuous chambers of racism.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The Confederate battle flag no longer flies at South Carolina's Statehouse, now relegated to a room filled with other relics of the state's secession. Other vestiges of the Civil War-era South are unlikely to vanish so soon.

Several states have taken or are considering action to remove the flag and other Confederate symbols and monuments since the massacre of nine people at a Bible study inside a black church; police have charged a man shown in pictures with the flag who they say was motivated by hate....

Still, the region is full of monuments to key players in the Confederacy and even the Ku Klux Klan. Confederate flags remain a common sight on license plates in the South, and the flag is a part of Mississippi's own state flag. Georgia's state flag is based on the national flag of the Confederacy known as the stars and bars.

Two men enjoyed the limelight in America's bloodiest war -- the Civil War. Both men, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, attended the same military school -- the United States Military Academy at West Point. Lee would later lead the South. Grant, among others, would lead the North. Following a long family tradition, Lee excelled at West Point. Grant was an undistinguished, middling student.

In Mexico, the careers of Captain Lee and Lieutenant Grant intertwined for the first time. Each would later question his nation's right to invade its weaker neighbor [1846-1848], but at the time they welcomed combat as an opportunity for career advancement. Appalled by the carnage that they witnessed in Mexico, both Lee and Grant would strongly oppose the idea of war in 1861 [the beginning of the Civil War].

To oversimplify, no doubt, two men attended the same school whose axiomatic existence rested on the role war played in human interactions. Before the battle flags, before the patriotisms, before, even, the fashioning of racism in whatever format ... there was bound to be war. And perhaps, when it comes to such matters, the cart has been put before the horse and the argument advanced that because of patriotism or flag or even economic advantage, war is inescapable. Perhaps it is better to turn that around: there is war and only later are patriotism and flag and economic motives adduced to shore up and excuse its horrors.

Do military personnel "fight for flag and country?" I doubt it. I challenge anyone to find a combat soldier who has been where the bullets flew and fought to shore up some abstract concept. I imagine they fight to stay alive and to help their nearest companions to likewise stay alive. The whole situation is too searingly insane to inject patriotic or flag-waving nostrums. That stuff comes later -- in the run-up to the next war planned by those whose skills are exhausted ... the old and well-manicured whose children are unlikely to be touched by the inescapability of war.

Grant and Lee -- same school, opposing sides of the war. I think maybe this is one of man's greatest tests -- to stand up to what is inescapable and ... escape without recourse to fairy tales. When war won't cut it and pacifism won't cut it, what will cut it?

messin' with the Mona Lisa

Passed along in email:

what is belief for?

Anyone who reads this blog knows that the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of management. They are just my own -- at least for the moment -- and from your point of view may be more full of shit than a Christmas turkey.

That said....

What is belief for? I am thinking of spiritual endeavor, but I suppose the question might be posed to other sectors of human cud-munching as well.

If the broad-brush purpose of spiritual endeavor is to dispel doubts and the fears that can attend upon them, then belief is precisely the wrong tool to employ. Belief, when examined, rests ipso facto on one doubt or another and thus merely compounds the problem rather than assuaging it.

The tricky part is that there is unlikely to be any solution discovered without, at first, employing belief. Belief is inspiring and really quite cozy. After a bit, it can even soar like some wondrous hymn. But make no mistake, the greater the belief, the greater the ocean of shimmering doubt.

The greater the doubt, the greater the crying out for some tangible belief. The greater the belief, the greater the vortex of doubt. Cloak it in hope, cloak it in hosannahs, a pig in a purple robe is still a pig.

The key to escaping this box canyon is the willingness to investigate and reflect -- to stop praising and blaming; to stop even imagining there is a solution ... bit by bit and little by little, be still and examine the most heart-warming and heart-wrenching artifacts.

This tool -- this literal, physical, focused stillness -- is not fairy dust: Nothing happens over night. Taking a tentative belief in stillness, then put it into practice and see what happens. Use the belief to inspire the continuing and continued effort, day after day, week after week, year after year. Cussing and praising are permitted, to the extent they can help.

So ... from where I sit, belief can get anyone off the dime, get them making an honest intimate effort. Belief is a pretty good tool, but when was the last time you saw a carpenter going to sleep with a hammer clenched in his hands?

So belief is as good as it is necessary for starters. I say, welcome it. Wallow as necessary. But let it inform the day by day activity of investigating, looking, seeing, being ...  whatever. A little at a time people outgrow their beliefs. Why? Because beliefs are limited where life is not.

Belief...
Good stuff...
Forgetaboutit!

Pope apologizes for church sins/hypocrisies

Pope Francis, currently on a South America trip, made a public apology for the indignities heaped on indigenous peoples of the past by the Roman Catholic Church:

"...I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America," he said to applause from the crowd.

Then deviating from his prepared script, he added: "I also want for us to remember the thousands and thousands of priests who strongly opposed the logic of the sword with the power of the cross. There was sin, and it was plentiful. But we never apologized, so I now ask for forgiveness. But where there was sin, and there was plenty of sin, there was also an abundant grace increased by the men who defended indigenous peoples."

There have been so many savvy, well-lubricated and mendacious statements of concern from the Vatican in the past, that it is hard to take the pope's words at face value.

I once knew a priest who lived among Brazilian Indians for years, came to love them, tried to defend them against logging interests, and found his holy mother church -- as is frequently the case among power brokers -- on the side of the timber interests. It broke his heart.

For all that, Francis' words -- assuming they will be backed up by a similar caring in future -- have a hopeful timbre at least in my ear.

Let's hope it's not more of the Peanuts effect.

"Gropecunt Lane"

Passed along in email by a friend who is aware of my sometimes salacious, sometimes giggly mind that really does appreciate a more straightforward and less-sissified approach to life.

Magpie Lane in Oxford, once known as Gropecunt Lane

Wikipedia states in part:

... It was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it....
Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its replacement by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane.

making things photographically 'better'

Before it got mangled, the Chinese observation used to be, "One picture worth 10,000 words." There was a time when 10,000 was a figure used to indicate incalculability.

Now the number has been reduced to 1,000 -- a comprehensible figure that indicates relative, rather than vast and absolute perspective.

Either way, I guess, a picture does often leave all the chit-chat in the shade: The photo of a starving child transmits in a trice, where a disquisition on "starvation" tends to numb with its litany of facts. A visual image doesn't lie ... sort of.

But now, in New York, there is an exhibition of photo images that may be iconic but are also doctored for greater effect.

[Michael] Kamber is so troubled by the rise in manipulation of press images that he has co-curated a new exhibition in New York. Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography reveals more than 40 photos that have been faked, posed or manipulated, from 19th-Century propaganda to 21st-Century digital trickery.

No longer is the truth enough. There needs to be my vision of the truth. The arrogance of the digital-age is disheartening. When things get serious, your opinion and mine, your vision or horror and mine, can go suck an egg. Photos were once a touchstone for getting a 'true' story. Now, because manipulation is so easy, the 'truth' is not enough.

Kamber decided to mount this exhibition after controversy surrounding this year’s World Press Photo competition, in which a fifth of the finalists were disqualified for manipulating their images.

The resulting mediocrity of thought and creativity is breath-taking.

True, "let the buyer beware." But is there some emphasis that can likewise be placed on the value of an "honest broker?"

let the purity dissolve......

Bumped into this meditation encouragement

endangered species status for 'Agricola Americus'

A $30 billion interior and environment protection bill has garnered a novel amendment -- a clause that would protect the endangered American farmer ("Agricola Americus") with $50,000 bonus payments. The Latin doesn't look right to me but if Latin were the worst thing politicians got wrong, we'd all be in clover.

The amendment is a humorous attempt to draw attention to the burden that the EPA places on the farming industry.

spiritual wisdom...

Passed along in email:

Greece, China and financial mayhem

Fidgeting about Greece and its financial woes is a staple on news programs these days, but it seems to me that far more important is the dysfunction gaining traction in China. 

China's tumbling stock market showed signs of seizing up on Wednesday, as companies scrambled to escape the rout by having their shares suspended and indexes plunged after the securities regulator warned of "panic sentiment" gripping investors.

Wherever the financial difficulties, it's the working (wo)man who will be unable to pay the rent or afford the medicine or fill the grocery bag. Still, those scrambling to resurrect the house of cards they built wear such handsome clothes.

I wonder if a college education is really necessary when the goal is to fuck the other guy before he fucks you.

North Korea's mighty example

Anyone wanting to get a sense of North Korea's shaky insularity probably could do worse than considering the case of  Kim Cheol-woong, a competent pianist who was turned in for playing an elevator-music tune -- A Comme Amour -- in his own home.

... Only in North Korea could playing it in one's own home be dangerous. Someone passing by overheard the French music and filed a report to the state security department.

One thing led to the next and he fled North Korea and now lives in the south... and all because of a piece of music that may appeal to some, but strikes me as hardly worth criticizing. North Korea can't feed its people, flouts its nuclear weapons and, like a cherry on top of some grotesque sundae, declares mediocre music politically apostate.

If this were fiction, no one would believe it. Listen to the tune: I can't imagine willingly staying in an elevator to listen to it.

It reminds me a little of the ethereal lengths to which the West is increasingly inclined when it comes to potential 'terrorist' activities. We haven't gotten around to music just yet, but with leadership like North Korea's, there is hope for us yet.

old news

Yesterday's thoughts....

-- Where the latest gods are distinguished, religion flourishes and trouble begins.
    Where the gods go undistinguished, nobody pays attention and there is an mediocre peace.

-- "My take is that only God can know God, but that's no reason why individuals shouldn't know who God is."

-- In the few minutes leading up to the women's World Cup soccer/football match at 7 p.m. yesterday, I put the TV on "mute" and did something-or-other on the computer. I didn't want to hear all the ads for drugs that would cure you but had side effects that included suicidal thoughts, anal seepage, mental dysfunction, partial paralysis and whatever all else. I typed in the sure and certain knowledge that by the time I turned around from the computer, the game would be under way. By the time I did turn around, several minutes late, the United States had a 2-0 lead in a game best known for its low scores and close-but-no-cigar kicks. How the hell had they managed that?! The U.S. eventually beat Japan, 5-2.

-- Burt Shavitz, the topic of an interesting documentary I can't seem to dig up for free watching ("Burt's Buzz"), has died in Maine at 80. The quirky bee-keeper and man others were determined to describe as a "hippie" seemed an interesting if quixotic personality ... someone you might not want to know but someone who improved the gene pool of the human race.

'terrorism' countermeasures

At least Great Britain appears willing to reassess its security measures:

After 2005, police were given power to hold terrorism suspects for four weeks without charge, or to place them under a 16-hour-a-day curfew. It became a crime not just to commit or plan for terrorism but to glorify terrorist acts. The government moved to deport extremist preachers who had made their home in Britain. The ability of intelligence agencies to scoop up Internet users' electronic data expanded vastly, and British spies began collecting information on their own citizens on a hitherto unseen scale.

Have I got this right? -- in order to assure security, it is necessary to disseminate and ballyhoo a sense of insecurity... not to mention sweeping various human rights under the carpet.

Sometimes I think every high school student and political wannabe should be required to watch the movie "Brazil" and -- who knows -- maybe even think about it.

Islamic State Christans ... et al.

On a grey and cool morning, with the neighborhood ground hog wiggle-waddling unafraid and undisturbed across the macadam street, I wonder who confected the phrase "dead to rights."

It's not the meaning that eludes me -- all sorts of Internet parsings and definitions more or less agree ... but what inspired the chosen words initially? I suppose it's unanswerable, but it was wiggle-waddling around in my mind.

And with it, the mind also returned to Montana, a state that, as far as I can figure out, is the only one to seriously challenge the U.S. Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision that allows corporations to support politicians with unlimited ("free speech") donations. If Montana persists, as it has despite being slapped down, why is it (or is it?) the only state to do so? It's a losing battle that only Montana has taken up. (Is that true?)

A fight worth losing ... now there's an interesting principle. Where else is this sort of backbone to be found? Why has Montana collectively taken up this challenge where, in the sissified East where I live, the only liberal or democracy-prone whimpering is done over white wine ...

Who would rather lose for the right reasons than win for the wrong ones? Who, these days, plays to win but takes the responsibility for losing? Everyone seems to want to win, but if that doesn't work out, they back-pedal swiftly in an effort to look good nonetheless.

Feather merchants.

It's all just wiggle-waddling around in my mind. I hate the idea of doing a newspaper column about Montana -- it requires an explanation that Twitter-ites might find less than engaging -- but I love Montana enough so that I may end up doing it.

And ... as one last component of the wiggle-waddles: I kind of like the phrase "Islamic State Christians." What's Qur'an for one is Bible for the other.

glow worms in New Zealand

It's a little hard to get the context and science of it all, but these photos of glow worms in New Zealand caves seemed to contain some magic.

"nationalism"

Passed along in email, perhaps as a footnote to today's Independence Day in the U.S.

stitching up a seamless life

Today so-called spiritual effort occurs to me as....

Come out of the shadows where secrets crouch,
Tuck in a favorite doll or teddy bear,
Surrender to some great yawn or laugh,
Sip honeyed tea by the warming fire
And leave to others the endless task

Of stitching up a seamless life.

"relative," my ass!

An old army buddy of mine, William B. McKechnie III, now dead, once observed that the sole usefulness of the Internet lay in its ability to share humor with others. And it was in  keeping with that suggestion that I passed the following along to several others after receiving it yesterday:

In keeping with the ridiculous aspects I had intended to transmit, my sister flashed back in an instant: "The next time I rob a bank I will refuse to give any identification!!" But another recipient took a different tack: "It is all relative, isn't it ... ??" he wrote.

For some reason, this latter response set off a flash of irritation in my mental skies. So smooth, so freighted with WASP-y savoir-kool, so with-it-dontcha-know ... as if one more easily-mouthed philosophical fortune cookie could sum or make manageable the onslaught of life's rambling and raucous offerings.

It's all relative ... go suck an egg!

The carefully-manicured distances of "it's all relative" are understandable, I'd say. If every bit of incoming information in this life were treated with equal care and equal attention and equal fervor, how the hell could anyone sort things out? how the hell could they proceed? how could the accomplish? There would be too much to swallow, let alone digest, if the mind did not do some high-stepping triage. It would be overwhelming and somehow frightening if things didn't get parsed and boxed and controlled with lines like "it's all relative."

Perhaps the necessity of asserting a distance is the focal point of "it's all relative." The alternative to distance would be to drown. The upside of distance is an imagined salvation and safety.

But trouble with slick distances is that life doesn't work like that. In any given moment -- even when robbing a bank -- there is no relativity. This -- from a cup of coffee to a sneeze to bitter tears or fall-down laughter ... this is IT. Trying to hold life at bay -- to mold and shape it, to perform triage -- means that life is held at bay ... and it doesn't work.

And, worse than that, even the slickest, most-philosophically-inclined fortune-cookie addict knows it doesn't work: I do my best to control what I know cannot be controlled. It is an unsatisfactory way of life, edgy-making and second-hand and stale: When I hit my thumb with a hammer, check out the 'relativity.' When the sorrow comes calling, check out the tears. Where laughter fills the mind, what else could there possibly be?

It's a koan without the Buddhists to make up the koan: Information needs to be processed and made orderly and no one can make order in that which defies a well-shaped order.

What then of the fear that arises -- the one that inspires the wispy, WASP-y nostrums? Am I simply a smudge on some cosmic windshield?

Nah. That's too self-centered, too self-referential, too protective and whine-y.

The only way I can figure out to whittle away the smug nostrums is to learn to enjoy things more and demand less of them. The enjoyment is there for the taking. The demands are too second-hand, too distant, too moribund from the get-go.

Everything is relative?

Go suck an egg!

And rob a bank with care.

the luxury of anger

As a soporific-cum-entertainment, I pulled "Soldiers of '44" by William McGivern off a dusty shelf the other day. The novel, which is set as World War II's Battle of the Bulge gets under way, was first published in 1978. The writing is easy and the author takes some pains to paint credible characters with credible flaws and strengths that he does not over-paint. Understatement is a pleasant characteristic when compared with the latter-day fawning over various sissy versions of "heroism" or "love" or "character" or circumstances that damn the human spirit.

In one scene that caught my eye, a French woman is describing to the American protagonist how she was twice raped by the Germans who passed through her town. It is a relief to be able to talk to someone about the events. In describing her horrors, the author also gives his character leave to observe that of all the luxuries imagined in war, the most luxurious is .... anger.

Luxury is what is rich and extra in life. It coddles. It is not necessary but it sure is delicious. It's the tip-top and burnished and others envy its environs. You won't die without it, but it sure is nice to get it.

War -- a time so awful that standing at a distance is not an option and hence ....

The luxury of anger.

It made me wonder if there were ever a time when anger is not a luxury.

the status of marriage

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in the United States, I wonder...

The United States tends to frame marriage in religious terms. Ministers and priests usually officiate and various bits of language exalt the union in other-worldly terminology. Other cultures view marriage as more of a social function -- something of which to take note and a reason for a party, perhaps, but not so much as a forever-and-ever assertion that comes from on high.

What I wonder is if marriage itself is sliding into a less-aggrandized status. Yes, there is commitment. Yes, there are creatures that have a single lifelong mate. But there are also creatures that cruise and philander without compunction or guilt.

My Zen teacher, who was never married, once observed conversationally that a man should marry for about ten years and then move on. He was Japanese, so the male-centric cultural focus needs to be factored in, but still.... And then there's the impact on the kids.

I just wonder if a more tribal (or perhaps just "social") easiness were on the horizon... whether the vows anyone might agree with on a particular wedding day weren't beginning to factor in other realities.

I don't wonder about "gay" marriage or "straight" marriage. I just wonder about marriage.

I just wonder.

robot kills man... "human error" cited

A robot has killed a contractor at one of Volkswagen's production plants in Germany, the automaker said Wednesday.

The man died Monday at the plant in Baunatal, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Frankfurt, VW spokesman Heiko Hillwig said.

The 22-year-old was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate, Hillwig said.

He said initial conclusions indicate that human error was to blame, rather than a problem with the robot, which can be programmed to perform various tasks in the assembly process. He said it normally operates within a confined area at the plant, grabbing auto parts and manipulating them.

Strange how, as time passes, an increasing number of events defy and decimate sage commentary.

learning to ski slow

Once, when I was in the sixth or seventh or perhaps eighth grade, I was skiing on a minor slope with a group of classmates and other members of the public. And as I climbed back up the hill at one point -- yes, Virginia, there are slopes without tows -- a man I didn't know beckoned me to him. I went because that's what kids did when adults beckoned.

"Kid," he said without preamble, "any skier can ski fast. It takes a good skier to ski slow."

I don't remember that there was any further intercourse between us. He just returned to his skiing and I returned to mine. But his words had struck a chord -- or perhaps it was just a challenge -- and for the rest of the afternoon, I practiced skiing slow. Never, before or after, did I ever spend so much time on my ass.

The zoom and zip that I had longed for in the past -- it's kool, professional and adult, right? -- took on a whole new perspective: It was fun, yes, but likewise it was childish and uninformed. If you can't ski slow, you don't know squat.

In the local newspaper here, there is an occasional column in which individuals are asked various questions about themselves -- where do you live, whom do you live with, what's your job, what's your favorite food, etc.? And spliced in is the question, "Best advice you ever got?"

I wonder if there is a difference (this morning I think there is) between best advice anyone ever "got" and best advice they "took." Good advice swirls and eddies like some midwinter snow squall, but how much of it does anyone take. Sure, there's lots of parroting holy scripture or historical accuracy or psychological nostrum, but skiing slow is a different matter and sometimes I think that these days it is harder to slow down: The Internet provides such an avalanche, that sorting out which item is worth skiing slow for takes an inordinate amount of energy. And yet, if there is nothing worth slowing down for, nothing worth falling on your ass for, how flimsy and filled with mimicry does life become?

In schools, of course, there is some emphasis put on "knowing more." And knowing more has the capacity to reduce cruelty, I suppose. Knowing something about the anguished dyslexia of migrating annelids or some other, less fictional, bit of information ... well, it has its Jesuitical uses. Information piles up. Libraries or the Internet bulge at the seams. But information comes and goes in a trice and, though there may be less cruelty, where's the joy or peace or happiness?

What's the best advice you ever took?

Sometimes, in frothy moments, I think everyone -- and I mean everyone -- has all the information s/he needs in order to lead a happy life. Precisely complete. There is no need to learn more. There is only the need to ski slow. I say this with some trepidation since, of course, there are myriad examples of vastly cruel philosophies and religions and persuasions that loll about in their own limited satisfactions. They have no need to ski slow -- they have their version of the Answer or Bible or Quran or playbook and woe betide those who get in their way.

What's the best advice you ever took -- the one that put you on your ass over and over again and yet slowly, bit by bruised bit, became a companion worth having? Right and wrong are not a big deal ... of course you're wrong. Picking one thing in a life full of many things is always wrong. But still.... Agreement and disagreement are not the point: The point is skiing slow... and smiling.