Wedding Toast 20170422

Maybe life is a mirror inverse to our dreams. As men we visualize tasks, to do, to be, to set foot into position to be worthy in stature. We study. We play. We work.

Older brother takes us to see Green Day May second 1998 on the Nimrod tour eleven years old on Canal Street in New Orleans and a seed begins to germinate. We rollerblade with a kid we met in kindergarten and he gives us a hug at our bachelor party as adult musicians. We put in hours of worry to make sure the world gets its hug. We show up and juggle logistics in guitar picks and coffee cups. We meet a comrade bandito at Loyola blowing trombone and go Community empire of one day at a time with others in mind.

That manly provider part of you sees a Latin American man picking a coffee bean on the mountain and says I want to be able to feed both our families. I want an Earth where the air we both breathe is not flustered in smog that is worth giving a damn. Praying I can try against the grain. We find a comic caricaturist sketching Alabama sun-worshipers spying Magazine Street and make a pact. Maybe we stand behind a counter hands pressed for a hot cup in a city that feels like the inside of a dog’s mouth crunched and wondering how the hell does this work, how to be a person when the whole damn place seems to say stay afraid, do not put your heart into the fray, and maybe a woman walks in and alters the scope and terms of the game.

Maybe she comes back in and smiles and you muster the nerve and you tell your older brother her name in a nadir spot that you know her name feels like light, warm and knowing that there is a softness and embrace in her caress that makes this boat upon life’s waters steady. Maybe she looks at you standing on a speaker at a rock and roll festival you co-organized in the streets of New Orleans like a preacher man worthy of her as a helpmate. That she’s professional, smart, capable to care for her own self, and breathes a relentless faith and a watershed feminism of what the word punk means that she is intrepid to love that man back.

Maybe we get together in this world to honor that, to toast the brave sailors tattooed and writing songs and sketching buildings for art to bloom out the seeds to say yes. Yes there are storms in the seas and brilliant horizons and we will sail them. That maybe you both stare down into the mirror of that ocean’s surface into the cauldron of adulthood and realize these great big plans of us having to fix ourselves to be worthy or valid was never it; it was the other readying to make space for our magnanimity in our mutual audacious light. Joy and wonder stares back at us in that deep well human place of Truth. The tangency of our spouse’s touch does not shatter the glass of our illusions, but as we approach the other, the fabric of the universe seen at a distance is made intimate permeated by true presence.

Your whole damn world changes. You smile like water. You are no longer parched, not from what the other gave you, but by that deep resonating Truth that has always been inside you about what love is. There was another mariner out there sailing hoping to find you and now you are here, entwined, staring down that brilliant horizon together.

G, R. Congratulations.

I love you both. 

Neck Tags

Father and son attend John Prine Concert

Boy I’m going to get you a souvenir, t-shirt?

Dad I would like a medium

Dad returns with two large Spring Tour 2017

Stare at father, “I cannot wear this. It’s too big.”

Father at son, “   “ hands shirt with beer in hand

Sees never-worn fabric on a shelf

As he zips shorts to go to yoga

Son eat the chocolate chip cookie

Dad I do not like the cookie

Eat the cookie

No

Eat the cookie

No

Why can’t you eat the god damn cookie?

Postmodern malaise who gives a shit

Watching Seinfeld junior mint fly into surgery patient

Laughing with father at 1993 Mulva

Nothing matters

Post-postmodernism, some things do matter

Not caring is no longer an acceptable strategy to avoid extinction

Jerry never falls in love, never cares

Meaningless sex, lobster-handed guffaws

Cubans sleeping in a dresser drawer

Big salad munch-munch

Son quit thinking so much

Get out of your own head

Who has time for poetry?

Giving a shit, saying yes to intimacy, presence

What is your story?

Everybody has a story

There are no unimportant people

Son no one man can make a difference

Eat the cookie

No

Reads a poem at his brother’s wedding 2017

Here’s the older brother perform in his natural tongue

Maybe for the first time

Father weeps, sees, maybe?

Truth like a bauble hanging on resonance of poetry is

What poetry can be when one speaks in naked language

Stands behind a microphone and has nothing left to lose

A relentless love, a strident will for a war of the heart

For this world, that there are others willing to do it

Speak truth to power

To leave the cookie on the god damn table

To leave the gun on the god damn table

To listen to the stories of every human

To see inside a bauble of heart this pulsing blood

To connect, to juggle fear and love

To stand in the fire this time

Bellowing into that good night yawping into dawn

Digesting the U.S. missile strike in Syria: morning after 20170407

The second Syrian chemical weapons attack created a window for Trump to look tough where Obama was impotent. Obama in 2013 in the first attack wanted to do a version of what Trump did, but went through formal channels and was denied. Trump is a sexual abuser. He grabs and does not ask.

Trump has ties to the Russians. At initial reaction, my head considered coordination to bigger militarized escalation to rationalize conflict between Russia, potentially Iran, and the United States.  Iran and Russia do not want to fight the U.S. Russia wants to keep their naval base in Tartus and an ally in Assad in Power. Russian Syrian alliance goes back through Assad’s father. Russia does not want Syrian airbases destroyed. Iran's military is too weak and concerned with their domestic agenda. 

So if this strike is coordinated with the Russians where the Russians protest it, because it has been decided in back channels between Russia and America that the time has come for Assad, then you have the U.S. strike Syria. Russia publicly protests, but then Russia and America negotiate how the Russians will pull support for Assad in exchange for some manner of replacement in Syria conducive to Russia keeping their naval base and a regional foothold. That is most of what the Russians care about. That happens and Trump and Putin come out looking like their asses stink less, Syria is still a mess, but some sort of formal blessing by the white-powers of America and Russia have told another country in the Middle East how it is going to be, because without an effective domestic airforce or the Russians Assad has no airpower. Syria has other airbases, but Syria does not go down that road if Russia does not back them. If Russia withdraws support Assad is done. 

Trump’s logic is chaotic, but ultimately egoic. He is a narcissist. Putin helped Trump get elected. He probably has oil and property deals with Russian oligarchs. Putin has a degree of leverage on him. Flynn is probably going to testify at some point. His potential path to impeachment is staring America in the face. He is flaunting that the rules do not apply to him.

Trump can launch missiles, be the strict father-figure his base loves. Obama in this parallel 2013 was  weak and asked for permission, even though Obama has drone bombed more foreign civilians than any president. Trump in 2017 just fires. It’s illegal, dangerous, and self-serving. You do not disrupt policy on a conflict going back to around 2011 because your opinion changes because some Syrian people died in what Obama called a redline event before it happened in 2013. 

The reason I say that is because none of these governments care about the Syrian people. Trump has banned all Syrian immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of people have been dying. Syria is a quagmire. So this is a window where Trump can potentially signal Russia, yes you may have leverage on me, but I have power to create leverage on you. Trump is in a way asking Putin if this act is uncoordinated, “How much do you value that naval base and keeping Assad in power? Are you going to assist in getting me impeached, because I can preemptively fire back now?" If the act is coordinated with Putin, which given everything we know seems plausible, then Putin will follow the game plan described or some derivation there of where the U.S. and Russia do not escalate against each other, but like Putin faking to take Assad's chemical weapons away after the 2013 strike, Russia serves as the mediator when mommy and daddy are fighting. 

Trump is repealing domestic civil liberties, appointed jokers to dismantle federal agencies in this totalitarian degradation of democracy. A boy disobeys authority and sees how the authorities react. We the people are supposed to be the authority. If we say,"Oh this strike is appropriate," which I have heard reported from both Paul Ryan and Theresa May this morning then you have to translate how that affects Trump’s overall agenda.

Trump has hinted at conflict with Iran. This is a direct attack on an ally of Iran. Trump wants to use the military to put his stamp on the world. You might see Iran do something regarding the nuclear material in response to Trump abandoning the negotiated sanctions removal and then the U.S. fires missiles at some base in Iran without approval. It’s not troops on the ground initially, but it is like let me try to touch her and see how she reacts. He wants to get away with it and have no consequences and be the alpha. Look I can do this to your woman, what are you going to do about it? 

So the question really is, “Is the American President above the law?” Trump needs Congress to go to war. We have not declared war on Syria. This is a direct strike on a Syrian military base, which if any country does that to another country it is universally understood that the country attacked is going to take it as an act of war. Americans would.

So liberals may react and condemn Trump as horrible for everything, but we know what Trump did is what Obama tried to do and something Clinton would likely have done, except they did or probably would have gone through the legal channels of the U.N. or the U.S. Congress to facilitate that act. That is the issue when you understand none of these parties give a shit about the Syrian people.

So Trump is set to answer for many things as the honeymoon quickly dissipates, but the multiple members of this administration with Russian contact prior to the election, threaten to get him impeached. You’ll hear newspeak out the ass about what happened, what this is and is not, but to me it all comes back to the Insane Clown President’s ego, how sexually abusive men act, how pathological liars act, and how his ego comes before American safety or international rules of engagement or diplomacy. 

The Philippines are brushing conflict with China. Iran remains in conflict with Saudi Arabia. Israel is still committing systematic genocide on Palestinians. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is raging in the vacuum of power in Iraq and the Syria. Latin America is in economic crisis. Northern Africa has massive number of deaths due to water shortages and conflict. Putin is using the internet to sway Western democracies. America has an idiot king on the throne.  

Americanism breeds the image of the indestructible white man and the immaculate white woman who answer to no one. If you poll the world and ask who is the biggest threat to international security the United States is the grand champion. Acts like this unilateral and without formal channels of approval, even our internal ones, send out shock waves. It scares the rest of the world, who are already scared of us. Conservatives may applaud, good for the world to be afraid. 

That leads to war. Dead bodies. Melted bodies. Mangled bodies. Economies decimated financially. Peace and human connection are abdicated for fear over love. That path is dark and madness. 

Brain Uploading

I developed a digital, auditory, tactical, vison manner of multitasking growing up in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. I recall laying on blue carpet with Nintendo on this thirteen-inch television, a punk cassette on the stereo, cartoons on another television, and my homework on the floor, book open, with some poetry notebook not far away. I rigged this pre-internet A.V. room inundation of stimuli. Somehow I grew to be more productive this way. Collages of sound, and sight in a neural racetrack of prioritization. Grades prevailed well, scholarship to college came. INTJ side of me rooted maze-maps of logical optimum data upload into the computer brain.

The adult version of me has jettisoned television and video games entirely. Music remains, homework has transmuted into my self-assigned public library graduate school program of ten dvd’s a week typically documentaries or films of substance, but a hodgepodge to balance mood and subject matter stimuli gauged on how well I calculate I will need to pay attention to acquire appropriate neural memory pattern addition for the art form. Spock-me can rarely just watch a movie anymore if I am home alone. DVD goes on the laptop on the left side of the desk.

Giant center desktop computer monitor functions as a second visual source that alternates between Microsoft Word for writing, Chrome Internet Browser as I need to google words, sources, anything to cycle through the brain. I may get sucked into you-tube Ted talks or doc-films and have two movies going at once. The Microsoft Word will usually have three versions, one for poetry, one for notes, and one for the book I have been working on for about four years.

All the stimuli somehow relates to affect the book. How it all works, art, politics, psychology, economics, sexuality, sociology, religion, physics, pop-culture, philosophy, personal human experiences. I try to invest at least four sessions to practice yoga to physically reset per week to process in the subconscious and let the thoughts bubble to reset the mental cellphone between day at work and night of art.

I work full time and on the commute. I have my iPod of constant audiobook in my earbuds. I have my notepad ready while monitoring the road. I try to listen a few hours a day. Grocery store, cooking in the kitchen equal audiobook or laptop on the counter while chopping vegetables. I do not buy audiobooks, but I have gotten about a thousand from public libraries and Librivox.

I actively read two books on my kindle with a backlog that will take me years. Physical books are all non-fiction from the public libraries or the occasional purchase. Staff picks of new non-fiction are helpful ranging race, gender, revolution, economics, psychology, history, etc. My weekly goal is three audiobooks and a combo of there paper/audio books per week.  So that is six total per week if the system is going well, but this can alter depending on the length of the books. The intensity is more this past year while I am researching for the book I am writing, before that it was one book a week and I didn't start audiobooks until about a year ago. 

So as an adult I have the laptop on the left side of the desk playing a film, the physical book goes directly in center of the desk. Audiobook earbud in left ear to have all audio to left brain to pull this off, and then computer keyboard and monitor to take notes in the front. Also a small notepad and ink to take notes on the right.

So this gives me two auditory stimuli sources and two visual. My eyes center on the physical book, and spot the movie occasionally on the prereferral. I find that yoga has enhanced my ability to let go of my mind. To use my mind in dual hemisphere consciousness. My left brain for the auditory and my right brain for the visual.

You might ask how the hell do you do that. What is the point, you must not be able to focus on anything and get nothing? I figure time is the most precious resource we have in these bodies. This system maximizes it. When I am with another human being I am fully present with them, when I am alone, in my head, in my time, all of this going on and would rather make the best use of that isolation.

I have been fixated on speed reading for a while. I read a two-page physical book in six eye snapshots, three on each page grabbing the top leftmost and bottom right most borders absorbing and honing in on odd words reading the entire paragraph block at once. If needed I take a break, write a note in the Word document or the pad depending on length or context. The notepad has access to a black and a blue pen to indicate a check mark or underline in the opposite color for what has been transferred digitally to the book in some form.

Yes, I am faster just reading one book at a time and I can pay attention better to the audiobook if I only listen to that, but the reason I do it this way is because I do not want everything. I only want to remember the important pieces of the equation pertinent to human existence, the pulp of the art or science. Most of the films or books I remember enjoying there are piths, snippets of pertinent synopsis to pair the art in context with everything I have ever been exposed. Uploading an audiobook, film, and physical book is more productive to do all at once. 

This contrasts with writing. To write I want my full attention, sometimes music, an internet browser to pair thought analysis, but focus. I focus one line at a time. Edit. I find exercising my mind in this way makes my brain stronger to focus. It makes my actual job doing accounting or analyzing data like child’s play.

Accounting feels like sixth grade homework at this point. It’s simple. It has to balance. Other people pay you for it, but there is no rule it has to be hard. I think the contrast allows my work life to drive in low gear and think about other topics, to be, but not really be in a place if I desire. There is a blend of masochism in the banality of thought in comparison.

The writing the upload I figure you can always re-watch a film, or just find another, same with music or most audiobooks, just replay it if you want. I go with the Darwinian concept is that a shitty blurry eye is better than no eye, same with a wing or evolving aid. Even if I only get a piece out of the audiobook or film I am getting something and that something is better in time, making both sides of my brain able to sort it.

Does anybody else out there absorb / make art like this?