Ode to the Spirit of Edward D.

Eddie D, RK, Bukowski and me
On a ship somewhere on the high sea
Sailors to the letter the four of us be
Owing to the nature of mysterious destiny.

Life arn't what you'd call easy on the ocean.
The boat reeks, the food stinks
And the concept of a shower is as alien as the slanty-eyed monsters rumored to live
Farther east than any of us care to contemplate.
A year at sea
And the yellow monsters, there they'll be
Well, no thank ye.

Still, it ain't all bad.
We've got the unknown ahead of us, the new world, as they say.
The old world smelled of death and an angry God.
In the new one, they say, God is more regular guy.
Because he wants to populate the promised land with white faces.
And then watch us all die.
One hopes not, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

At least we have each other.
Eddie D, with a place of prominence on the family tree
No one knows exactly why
He's what we euphemistically call a man of passion.
Drinking, fighting and, whenever possible, whoring are his life's work.
But then in moments when his guard is down
He'll quote something from Henry Miller
And venture a thought on the meaning of the stars
Which coat the night sky with near painful luminosity

Ed, as paradoxical as the sea
We have no choice but to follow his lead
In four hundred years or so, some of us will desperately depend on his ancient seed
In ways he cannot possibly foresee
Although according to Bukowski, Ed and the rest of us are all full of shit
He'd like to pick a fight with Eddie
Just for the hell of it
But climbing the tree to do so is not really an option.

So he chants from the deck
Pukes over the rail
Laments the absence of good-looking women on board
Demands a mutiny
Tells Eddie and the rest of us to go fuck ourselves
No one on the boat can figure out what it means
The new fuck expression is bandied about for days
Until a consensus of opinion decides that it can only mean, Go Pray to God!

Bukowski seems to think that words are weapons
Like harpoons, only more deadly
Pare it all down to the bare bone, he shouts into the wind
Get to the quivering skeleton and then suck whatever meaning you can from it

RK and I have invented the word metaphor to explain this
RK even wrote a song about it
Others are not so sure
They fear that Bukowski may be a cannibal
The last thing you want on a ship at sea with food on board even a dog would walk away from
Is a goddam cannibal
I venture that it may be nothing more than poetry in progress
Which provokes a veritable squall of protest and castigation from Ed
No ancestor of mine, he says, is going to go queer on me before we even reach
The new world
Now go fuck yourself. Maybe that will do you some good.

Nothing surprising about controversy during a long sea voyage.
We're all bored, dirty, starving and near death
We desire freedom, but it's so abstract
The freedom to do what, we all wonder
A clean pair of underpants would suffice at this point
To keep us going
Thank God for the grog on board.
Two cups a day
Unless a doctor verifies otherwise
In cases of extreme mental dysfunction, 3 cups might not be excessive
Both Eddie and the Buk have somehow convinced the doctor (they claim torture was never used)
That six cups a day is not unreasonable.

RK says he won't drink until the sun goes down
So here we sit, on the rolling deck, waiting
Trouble is, on our current heading and at our present speed
The sun never sets
How fast can a ship go, I ask the Captain
But he's too drunk to reply
We seem to be sailing off the edge of the world
At a speed only Einstein could explain
Who?
Never mind. Some guy.
Funny thing is, though we're all filled with dread
None of us seem to be getting any older

RK reminds me that time, anyway, is an illusion
Something I apparently said once while sitting around a kitchen table
In a modern suburbia, in a place called America, no less.
Later, RK tells me, we will visit something called a mall and shop for things we want, but rarely need
But never without a sense of irony
Now I'm actually getting scared

Some people on board have taken to calling all of us Pilgrims.
Not the mindless kind, who will some day flock to a place called Mecca
And crush each other to death in a frantic effort to be closer
To God.
Pilgrims in the sense of having no expectations and little to lose
Those willing to explore the cold, dark night of the heart
Idiots of the soul and the breeze
Corn eaters and lovers of animals
Dreamers and hopeless lovers
Poets, mystics and musicians

The true Pilgrims among us who honor the memory of Edward D, yet do not overlook the immortal words of the great seaman Bukowski... Go fuck yourself!


(Dedicated to Randall Leigh Kaplan, who remembers the important stuff. Without him, we would all be much less inspired)

Coffee, cigarettes and getting through the day.

For all of you out there (and I can count you on one hand) who have been eagerly anticipating a new posting on this site, my apologies. The site has been down, as they say. Through no fault of my own, it's suddenly back, as they say. Praise Jesus, or whatever cosmic forces we choose to believe are responsible for keeping the illusion of ourselves and our machines functional.
My own feeling is that things work, when they work, as a sort of punishment. Because it supports the illusion that any of us are in control, that progress counts and suffering makes some sort of positive difference. It doesn't, but it's okay to believe that it does.

I was perfectly happy wasting the day away, drinking, daydreaming and fighting with the dog. Suddenly the fucking blog is working again. I'm filled with questions that I almost care about having answered. Why now, why me, what should I do now, who am I, when will I make any money, when will I stop being angry, how will I cope with the rest of my life, does anyone really care, how often do I need sex to avoid the problem of a shrinking sex organ? Is sex the answer? What was the question, again?

But forget all this shit.
It's mostly irrelevant.
That our lives don't exactly work out
As we imagined they would.

Expectation is the culprit. That and an inability to focus. Possibly because nothing matters. Except, of course, being in the moment. Rememeber the days when we could say we were 'in the moment' and still keep a straight face? What the hell happened? For one thing, the moments we were being in kept getting shorter, less substantial as a venue in which to be, not to mention take some sort of stand within. At the same time, we kept getting larger, putting on the kilos, drifting across the margins, which we loosely ascribed to everyday stress, but has more to do with the inherent anxiety of overstaying our welcome on the planet.

Yes, at some point we began living longer than our prehistoric ancestors, thought it was normal, turns out it wasn't. Old age at 30, death at 35. It sounds harsh, but it makes perfect evolutionary sense. Life was meant to be short and sweet, or short and horrific, as the case may be, but brief, in any case.
Basically, get rid of the dead weight. Who needs 70-year-old zombies walking around university hallways in white lab coats, drawing enormous salaries, spending most of their time in the toilet, where peeing has reached the level of complexity of the unified field theory and all their conscious effort goes into not drooling in front of their students?
Clearly, no one. We live too long, our minds turn to mush, our bodies take on nightmarish characteristics and we can't even get it up on national holidays.
Ah, but we are overlooking the ultimate fear, for which we are willing to suffer all manner of humiliation and decrepitutde
to avoid. Death. Who made death the bad guy? Who came up with the notion that life, regardless of how mindless and dull, is somehow the optimal good? Overweight, dim-witted humans prowl the industrialized nations of the world. Their cause is consumption. They shop with passion. They eat animals. They fear terrorism and are therefore stupidly patriotic. They are willing to sacrifice freedom for safety, as long as it does not involve the cancellation of their favorite TV programs. They make reference to God just enough to ensure that, if there is a God and he's actually taking notes, they will be saved.

Praise the Lord and pass the porkchops.

Returning to the moment, the moment that should matter, we slip in and out of it in a trance. We confuse thought with actual experience, consort with imbeciles, are easily distracted. We spend most of the time in our own heads, but can no longer recognize the terrain.

It's some sort of salvation we seek, some confirmation that our efforts are not entirely in vain. a valid reason not to surrender, trash the machines and start watching television.

Wait a minute. Your television is a machine.
Touch my TV and you die.
Hey, you're no different from the rest of us.
I doubt it. And what the hell are you doing inside my head?
Your head? Hey pal, this is my head.
Fine. One of us is out of our heads. Let's move on.
Why bother?
Good point. Do you smoke?
Like a fucking maniac.
I'll make some coffee. We'll try to figure things out.
Now you're making some sense.

Not Every Chinese is an Evil Demon

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your comments: Gabriel Leigh (interesting that we have the same last name. hope we can meet someday), Aubrie Marrin (will I ever know you compeltely?), John Eckard (I know you well and yet I know you not), Randy Kaplan (I know you as well as any man, but less than so many women), Digger Dick (merely an imaginary friend; often the best kind) and so many others (the nameless ones, dwelling in shadow) who have made this blog what it is today. Namely, nothing, but in the best sense of the term. As in No-thing, the absence of a thing, which, in Zen terms, is the equivalent of unlimited potential. At least in theory.

Nevertheless, to show my appreciation, I'm suspending the usual flow of my own desperate attempts at irony and humor to bring to your attention an excerpt from my good friend Lucy Lee's new novel ( soon to be published and already copyrighted, just in case any of you uninspired writers out there are not above cyber-theft). Lucy, despite her on again-off-again mental illness and a rather well-documented history as a rather ruthless, albeit gorgeous, Chinese slut, has an undeniable gift. I only wish I could write as well, or at least be a gorgeous Chinese slut.

Hope you enjoy. Any comments to Lucy should be directed here.


"Or not. Getting a grip might also be a good idea. It's not every normal,
happily married young woman who sits in her car alone screaming. Could easily
attract unwanted attention. Correction, already is. Looks like a family of five
out for a fun day on the town. On foot, no less. Somewhere between the mall and
the amusement park they had the misfortune of running into an hysterical serial
killer, in an SUV, no less. The woman's expression confirms that this is
the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to her. It isn't, of course, but
pretending it is makes the rest of her hopeless existence easier to bear,
even brighter in some sense. Her two hands are clapsed firmly over the eyes of
two of the kids. The third kid is too busy picking his nose to care. The man, a
flat-faced giant with little or no hair, isn't quite sure what he's encountered, but
vaguely hopes it leads to his family suddenly and mysteriously disappearing and him
getting to have sex with me. Probably in the car. His eyes, needless to
say, are glued to my boobs. I'm tempted to pop one out just to shatter the apparent
tension, sending the entire episode spiraling out of control into the depths
of some psycho-serial-erotic-familial conflagration. The woman, not quite so far
beside herself that she has lost sight of her husband's inability to ever get
beyond the mundanely sexual, even in moments of real crisis, traces the line of his
vision, her lips curling into what must be a very familiar expression of disapproval.
She stares into the side of his large head with the intensity of a pissed off
viper, which snaps him nicely out of his sordid little fantasy. His expression feigns
innocence, as if to say, What? What did I do now? I don't know what you think I was
looking at, but it wasn't her big, lucious tits. Jesus! Give me a little
credit, will you?・She'd like to rip his eyes out, maybe pull down his pants and show
the world precisely why she has never experienced sexual satisfaction, but she
has the children to consider. I'm almost tempted to give them all a ride home,
maybe go in for coffee and cake, make some effort to get to know them as people,
rather than merely blobs of organic, dysfunctional annoyance.

Hi, I'm Lulu.・
Lulu! What a charming name. I'm Betty and this is my husband Ralph. And
these are our children, Debbie, Darla and Desmond.・
Hope I didn't scare any of you.・
Oh, not at all,・ Betty says. I know only too well the degree to which
hysteria can be a perfectly valid response to a variety of existential contingencies.

Wow! Betty has a brain. Either that or she reads way too much. Tends to remember
things which only make her suffer more at some later time. Or possibly she
is insane, on loan for the day from the local nut house. Ralph and the kids
picked her up, as usual, at 10:45. He and the children make positive small talk,
remark on how good she looks, how everything is proceeding smoothly on the home
front. Homework is getting done, baths are being taken, the TV is on only two hours
a night. Meanwhile, the kids would rather be anywhere but here. They fear
their mother because Daddy has told them repeatedly that Mommy is crazy. Although
it's probably not her fault. Ralph is wondering why he even bothers to come?
It's not like anything actually means anything, and he's weary of the whole
fucking pretense. Betty is insane. She wouldn't know her own kids from a
pile of dog shit. Look, see how she sniffs them before allowing herself to blink.
Not that she still doesn't have a body. Just too bad she never figured out how to use it.
He'd almost like to fuck her, but what would be the point? Where would the
connection be? No telling what a crazy woman would do while you were fucking
her. Might suddenly urinate, or bite your ear off. No thanks. Just get it
over with. Let her be with the kids, take her for a walk in the park, hope the
medication holds out.
I, on the other hand, already like Betty. She's been through hell, but
still has a glimmer of sweetness there in her eyes, beyond the conditioned
stiffness and hysteria. Ralph is the real question mark, as well as the obvious source
of Betty's discontent. How she ended up with him is probably not a story it
would be easy to listen to. Sullen and vaguely opinionated Ralph. Remote and
retroactive. Overweight and sweaty. His lives off the fumes of the
misunderstanding of others. Typical mass of male discontent. Loves it when
people don't get it. Betty never quite got it, never could give him what
he really needed. Which is? Less observation and more oral. Definitely less
analysis and expectation. Much less talking. More food and commerce. Life edged out on a
smooth surface of deceit. It wasn't the marriage plan he bargained for. He
wanted the raw pulse of things happening. Something he read somewhere, in a
magazine maybe, back in the days when he could still read without having a
convulsion. He liked the sound of it. Had no idea what it meant, except
that it referred to things which never happen, the things men need to know so that
they can blame women for their unhappiness. The predictable is what happens.
The plan carved in fake marble. Sex at sensible, regulated intervals. Kids
with dental problems and behavioral abnormalities. A job smelling of death. A shrinking
sex organ. Hair loss, love handles (the pain of irony), a diminished attention
span.
He blames it all on Betty; first for repressing him with imposed normalcy,
then for losing her mind. Betty doesn't blame Ralph so much as wishing he was
dead. Or, better yet, had never existed. If only his sperm had come from a
laboratory.
If only marriage had been purely theoretical.

Maybe I can help?・
That's sweet, Lulu,・Betty tells me, But really, at this point what are
the chances?・
You'd be surprised.・
I'd like that, being surprised, I mean, but I'm due back at the asylum at 3.

May I visit you sometime?・
I was hoping you'd ask."

Are all Evangelical Christians off their rockers?

I had the good fortune to turn on the TV yesterday just as Larry King was interviewing some of the most notorious - sorry, I meant to say notable - Evangelical Christian leaders in the US today. Needless to say, all of these people are enormously wealthy, which is okay because God, apparently, has no serious problems with Capitalism. A good thing, too, as according to one of these rulers of the Christian airwaves, Americans are now the chosen people. In which case I'm especially happy I left the country when I did.
The following, then, are some of the highlights of the show. In some cases, I have subsituted my own comments and questions for Larry's, who, at 70, doesn't really give a shit anymore and tends to be a bit soft on the people he's interviewing. Still, you can't help liking the guy.

The best quote by one of the distinguished Reverends: "Christians do not, per se, oppose clean air and water."

Well, that's good to know. Hell, I'm almost tempted to start going to Sunday services again.

The Reverend went on to explain that, from a Christian perspective, people were not created to take care of the environment.
The environment was created for people to use as they see fit.
All people?
People of faith, especially.

I guess that let's Dick Cheney and the entire holy hierarchy at Halliburton off the hook. And let's not forget Ken Lay, as devout a crook as we're likely to run into in a Texas church pew. And George W. Bush. Drilling for oil in Alaska's last remaining wilderness is a lot easier to stomach when we think of it in terms of doing God's work. After all, Bush was re-elected because he is viewed as a man of faith. This plus the fact that the invention of the "Terrorist Threat," striking the Fear of God into more than fifty percent of the electorate, was perhaps the most brilliant campaign stratedy in American political history.
By the way, what Terrorist Threat? Do we really want to jump on the right wing bandwagon and assume that the incompents in the US government have actually prevented additional terrorist attacks since 9-11?

But let's not lose sight of the Evangelicals.

On the question of homosexuals: "All homosexuals are sinners, but that doesn't mean God doesn't love them. He does. All they have to do is repent their sinful ways and accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. "

Okay, but then what about Christian homosexuals? Don't tell me there aren't plenty of them out there. Or is it all about pretense? Appear righteous and, needless to say, heterosexual, in public; what you do in private is of no concern to anyone but God, and since he automatically forgives you for believing in His Son, no worries.

"A Christian homosexual is an oxymoron."

Hey, nobody's calling these people geniuses.

"I'm sorry?"

Let's move on to another issue: Why do Christians oppose the teaching of evolution?
"For a number of reasons, but basically because it takes God out of the equation."

Nice answer, but couldn't God also be seen as running the evolutionary show?

"No. And all we have to do to realize this is read the Bible."

And, of course, it makes sense to be relying on a book written 2000 years ago, under what some would call dubious circumstances, as an effective way of interpreting present reality.

"Certainly, because the Bible is the Word of God."

But what about other, more contemporary, books, possibly taking a different perspective on things?

"Those would be the work of the Devil?"

So you also believe in the Devil.

"Of course! He is very much alive and active in our midst. And let's not forget that he is the ultimate deceiver, quite capable of appearing to us as God."

So god and the Devil are easily mistaken.

"God allows the existence of the Devil to both tempt and teach us. Finding our way to faith is not always an easy path."

But they can be distinuished.

"Ultimately, if not sooner. On Judgement Day all will be made clear."

But no before then.

"Unless one is truly faithful, I would have to say no. But let me add that the second coming of Jesus is at hand."

Like what, soon?

"In my opinion, quite soon."

Are you currently taking any anti-psychotic medication? (A question that should have been asked at this point, but wasn't)


Moving on to other issues: How does one get into heaven?

"There's only one way to enter God's paradise. Belief in Jesus Christ. Accepting him as our personal Savoir."

And everyone else goes where, Hell?

"I'm afraid so."

What about the Buddhists, for example?

"What the Buddhists do is their business."

But they will be doing it in Hell.

"Unfortunately."

Okay, but what exactly is Heaven? Is it an actual place? Is there shopping? Any sort of a nightlife?

"Being reunited with God is joy beyond our imagination. That there is nothing to do in Heaven in the conventional sense will not be a problem."

Tell me one thing. What's wrong with you people? (Thought, but not spoken.)

How about sex?

"What, now?"

I mean, is it okay for Christians to have sex?

"God gave us sex to enjoy, in wedlock, exclusively."

Lock perhaps being the operative phrase here.

"Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman. Without it we would all be Nihilists. No better than animals."

Sure, but how long can one enjoy sex with the same person, or animal, as the case may be?

"Read your Bible."


Anyway, I'm sure we all get the gist of the Evangelical position. Abortion, of course, did come up, but as I'm personally uncomfortable with it, thereby having no glib explantions for it, I've opted to avoid the issue.
Except to say that in a so-called free society, albeit one filled with idiots, what a woman does or does not do with her own body has to remain a personal, private matter. Politicians looking to suck up to bland, overweight, ill-informed constituencies bent on some watered-down version of sorry-salvation should take a long, hard look in the mirror, and then shoot themselves. Morality cannot be legislated.
Which brings us to my own personal view of some of the problems with Evangelical Christians and, by extension, all forms of religious fanaticism.
1) Their apparent total lack of imagination: Life, to be at all meaningful, has to be based on the idea of continuous and active reinvention of what it means for each of us, individually, to be alive. Sure, we're all full of fear, confused, depressed, in need of quick-fix medication to cope with the madness. The answer, however, is not the suppression of our basic impulses, instincts and intuition in favor of an externally imposed, artificial and restrictive belief system, which is aimed less at salvation, more at control.

2) The facile substitution of faith for social, political and existential responsibility. It's just too convenient and smacks of laziness. If there is anything God wants from man, it's that he be an active, creative participant in the unfolding of the experiment of existence. Perhaps the reason God no longer actively intervenes in the world (for example, by striking down all right-wing Republicans) is because He is bored out of his mind. Faith may be all well and good, but it's not substitute for art.

3) Dumbness: The vast majority of American Christians have nothing to gain from the policies of the Bush Corporate White House, aimed at dismantling soical programs, restricting personal freedom and underming the middle class, while further securing the position of the country's wealthy elite. So why did they vote for him in such large numbers? Are they masochists? Is suffering really a sign of sanctity? Is the hope for a Bush-inspired culture based upon constrictive, banal, moralistic principles really such a turn-on?
Where in the Bible does it say that accepting Jesus as our personal saviour requires giving up our ability to think?
Is intelligence a sign of the Devil at work?

One wonders. God yawns. Nietzsche (in Hell, needless to say) cracks a rare smile.