WALKING ON THIN ICE

cops, cops, and more cops - foto by smith

Lady and I wrote this for a new Canadian magazine, but then they decided to use a couple poems of mine and fotos of ours instead, so i have a free blog.

The Red, White, Black & Blue
- by Steven B. Smith & Lady K

We’re taught simple values as children. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. Don’t twist other kids. They tell us these rules will prepare us for the real world.

Yet we know politicians consider all these don’ts as tools of the trade–not something NOT to do, but something not to get CAUGHT doing. They promise not to do bad things, then they do do them and then they lie about having done them.

You can say the same about the police, priests, CEOs, corporations, organizations, business and the military. A thorough reading of news and history reveals most institutions are and always have been bad.

Our world is run by people who hurt, lie, cheat, steal, kill, bully, and slander. They kill women, children and the old for money, for bottom lines, for oil, and to get reelected. In Congress, Republicans don’t even pretend to tell the truth, and Democrats play both sides of the lie. While claiming to represent progressive, anti-imperialistic values, the Democrats continue to support the war in Iraq, vote ever more stupendous amounts of money for the occupation, and refuse to exercise their power to close the purse strings. They rationalize this as a pre-election strategy to ward off allegations of weakness. In effect, they murder more Iraqis and more US soldiers for the sake of an election. Murder for money, murder for oil, murder for votes.

Not all the ruling rich are bad, but most are. Not all priests molest children, but too many do. Not all cops are crooked, yet cops kill other cops for not being on the take. This is all stuff you see in mainstream news, so if corporate flack hacks tell us this much, it’s probably much worse

Even our field of “honor”–sports–is a pit of lies. Baseball considers cheating a trick of the trade, what with spitballs and spiking and of course the ubiquitous steroid use. Same’s true in track. Doping is rampant in bicycle racing. Anything for an edge. Skating judges are repeatedly caught favoring one competitor over another for love or money. In recent Olympics events, Chinese officials rattled gymnasts by speaking to them just as they began to compete or making them wait extra long times before performing. The Chinese gymnast team includes two 14 year olds, but the legal age limit is 16. The Chinese are so riddled with corruption that during the opening night of the ceremonies they used a beautiful child lip-syncing a song in lieu of showing an ugly girl with a perfect voice.

On our other field of “honor”–the Iraq war–our soldiers lie about who and why they kill. American soldiers rape 14 year old girls, then murder their family to cover it up. High percentages of female soldiers are raped by their fellow Americans. Officers lie about what happens. Our government says torture ain’t torture, murder for profit ain’t murder for profit, and the torturers at Abu Ghraib were just a low rogue few.

Even as citizens, lying is one of our main activities. We lie on income tax forms, expense accounts, to our spouses, our children, our co-workers, ourselves. We refuse to acknowledge our government has killed over two million Iraqi civilians during Bill Clinton’s and Dick Cheney’s presidencies.

Since the beginning of time, truth, honor and fairness were words for wishing for what never was and never is. The GOTS did what they wanted from day one while the rest of us paid their price. In The Beginning, the Strong took what they wanted and became the Gots. The Gots have. The Gots make the rules. The Gots hire their official enforcer thugs called Police, Army, Navy. The Gots steal from the Ungots and build Prisons and buy Weapons and more Police Thugs to make sure the Gots keep their gots and get your gots too. The weakness in their plan lies in us. WE outnumber them. Their power rests in our acquiescence. They get away with what they get away with because we let them.

We all know the people and corporations in power lie to us, steal from us, spy on us, kill us, use and abuse us, and we don’t do a damn thing about it except mill about the pen like good little sheep following orders. Ain’t much us in U.S.

We teach do not lie. We preach do not lie. Make movies and write novels about honor and honesty. Yet we walk, talk, act, live, breathe lie after lie in a country of lies in a world of lies. It’s always been a world of greed, lies and violence, and it’s getting worse.

But all is not doom and gloom. We each still have our own life to live. And we can live it better, or worse, spreading laughter and light, or darkness. We’re going down the tubes anyway, so we might as well do it with as much style, grace, light and kindness as possible.

It is up to us to provide these necessities. If we can slow the bad, maybe we can find some good.

oaxaca lives - foto by smith

a hole in the wall - foto by smith

Answers

New morning light
On yesterday’s shadow

shadowz - foto by smith

All the cultural things I picked up along the way from film noir, beat books, etc., Europe was always a part of the Path. I wanted to go.

I had a chance to go to Europe with a group of midshipmen summer ‘66 and I chose to take my fiancee home to meet the folks instead. Mom didn’t like her. Marriage didn’t last. Never got to go.

Later in life I had another chance after I stopped drinking. I realized I couldn’t continue working for BP as a consultant, sober. Gave six months notice. They didn’t give me anybody to turn my projects to, so I walked out the door a year later. It’s funny, I went to Boston to visit Wilson, and they took me to the airport. When they got back home, there was a phone message from BP asking how to do something. Wilson said, “You just missed him.”

I really fucked up the first visit, too. I had money before I went. But for almost a year I’d been doing $150 worth of coke every Friday night. Snorting half while watching a movie with Mom, shooting the other half every twenty minutes for the next four hours. So when I got to Amsterdam, I had a lot less money than I needed. I stayed for two weeks or less.

It definitely filled a hole in me. It was something I wanted to do for twenty-six years. It had assumed a magic specialness. And Amsterdam actually lived up to my hopes. Had a marvelous time. Landed in Luxembourg, had to take a train across Belgium and into the Netherlands. Couldn’t speak the language, somehow got off at the right place and on the next train at the right time. People helped me who I couldn’t understand. And European trains are really comfortable, clean, fast, on time. Too expensive. But so’s Amtrak.

Moving to Europe was Lady’s idea. Getting rid of stuff and backpacking and going behind the old iron curtain was nice. Going to Morocco was nice. surviving on the road for twenty months… having an overall fantastic grand adventure does fill a hole. But Europe and Morocco were just part of the detail; it’s the adventure that counts.

Finishing our book CRIMINAL fills a hole. I don’t have to say, “I’m going to write a book some day.” I can say, “we’ve written a book.”

Basically this whole adventure was Lady’s idea. The book was her idea. Where we went and ended up was her direction. I’m a flow surfer. I’m just flowing a larger surf; that’s all. I’ve moved up in the competition.

Living in Mexico is just part of the adventure. We’re just keeping the adventure going. Theoretically the future is just a whole bunch of discrete adventures within the larger, greater adventure. And they could still fill smaller, little crevices. Like I want to see the southern lights. I want to go below the equator. I’m looking forward to seeing monkeys and parrots in the wild. But none of those things are going to fill holes because I’ve filled most of the holes. I’ve gotten acclaim and respect from my peers for poetry, my art, and ArtCrimes. I’ve gotten press, hundreds of shows. When I stopped drinking, that filled a hole. Actually, stopping shooting up filled a hole of self-respect. Going to Europe, graduating from college, and standing by Mom. I don’t think there’re a whole lotta holes left; I think it’s more about fine tuning now. I’ve been me a long time. I’m just trying to be a better me.

I’m becoming more world weary and cynical. My analysis of the world situation does not leave any happy ending, or much of a future or very much time. And before Lady I had sort of lost my poetic hope, because sometimes I think a poet’s job is to provide hope, or a spark, for dreams. In fact I was wrestling like that just before Lady because at the Ingenuity festival I’d seen poet Major Ragain read and three times during the reading he brought tears to my eyes from hopeful outlook during dark situations. I realized I’d become an attack poet.

Lady returned hope and positiveness to my life for a good while, but the world is still weary, and my future analysis still bleak, and I’ve had 62 years of this shit, and it ain’t getting better, it’s just getting worse.

So I keep coming back to my only possible brightness. And that is the Zen goal of living a happy life in an unhappy world, cuz it’s always been an unhappy, unfair and unequal world, and it’s always going to be. If we can create a little circle of light and happiness, we’ll be doing what we’re supposed to do. It’s our function. It’s the only thing we can do. We live right, try to spread brightness and light and laughter or smiles, and try not to do harm or send out bad vibes.

The Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering has its basic premise: before the Big Bang, there was Oneness. We were all part of Oneness. After the Big Bang, we’ve been blown into bits and pieces, male, female, old, young, yellow, red, black, white. We are broken into pieces. We cannot be fixed until the Universe collapses into itself once again and we reunite into Oneness. So until the end of time, we are fucked. We can’t be One with a broken universe. You cannot be fixed.

The premise of the Church is you can’t be fixed; it’s not your fault; get over it! Now, most people insist upon suffering. That’s their fault. So our number one rule is, “Go thee, and suffer less.” If you suffer less, you’re doing better than you were doing. We can’t fix you but we can make you feel better about being broken.

Right now, there are two members, Lady and I. We are the church. We are both the preacher and the congregation. (And we’re going to have to talk to ourselves about tithing some more money. We need some more bread.) Yet every person is his own church, responsible for his own upkeep and maintenance.

There are four precepts:
* Go thee, and suffer less
* Do as you would be done
* This It is the It it Is
* This too will pass

Our communion bread and wine is marijuana, the green green grass of home.

woman thought - foto by smith

excerpt from Endless Letter 97

YOU MAY ALREADY BE A READER!

Truths du Jour:

>>>Women use more of their brains: “when a male puts his mind to work, neurons turn on in highly specific areas. When females set their minds on similar tasks, so many brain cells light up that our brain scans look like a night view of Las Vegas…the female’s thicker corpus callosum allows more crosstalk between emotional, intuitive right hemisphere & rational left.”

>>> Female brains respond more intensely to emotion: “The differences were so huge I hesitated to report them…melancholy feelings activated neurons in an area 8 times larger in women than men…the female brain also detects others’ emotions more accurately…men had a much harder time recognizing sadness, especially in women.”

>>> The female brain is wired for expression, not aggression: “when studied in states of relaxation, men idle in the evolutionarily ancient reptilian areas of the limbic system which give rise to unsubtle active expressions of emotions like aggression and violence, while women rest in a newer higher region related to symbolic forms of expression like gestures and words”.

>>> The female brain is twice as sensitive to sound, half as sensitive to light: “Women can hear whispers & whimpers that never even register on a man.”

>>> Female memory sharper: “At every age, women’s memory outperforms men.”

>>> Women notice more, navigate differently: “men are best at 3-D, women excel at disembedding; men see direction & distance while women see landmarks.”

- facts from a Cleveland Plain Dealer daily newspaper, fall 1998

sockholes - foto by smith

I don’t believe in a long haired Dude sitting up there knowing everything, judging everybody, picking at his penis. I mean, if there this is this god and he says, “You’re born weak and broken, but if you don’t shape up and do everything We say Our way, we’re gonna kick you around your entire life, and you’ll burn in Hell forevermore after you die,” that presents two problems. God didn’t know enough to make us right, or if he left something out, he really shouldn’t punish us for not fixing it ourselves. Kinda like a manufacturer’s warranty, except there’s no return. There’s no repair shop. There’s no frigging manual, and it’s very badly designed, this body of ours. We’re essentially piss and shit machines. And like any idiot engineer, God runs the sewer system right through the pleasure park.

The Gnostics believe we’re ruled by an insane god named Samael, and there’s a smarter, kinder, more gentle compassionate god above him who wants to help us. But being further up the chain of command he can’t very well let Samael know he’s not doing a good job. So he sent the Snake to the Garden of Eden to tell us the truth. We need to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Of good AND evil. Just like shade without light, you ain’t got one without the other. ‘Course, good old Sammy’s been punishing us ever since for that one.

Gnostics also think Good God tried to run around Bad God with Jesus Christ. But we fixed Him. Killed him and turned him into a church run by sickos.

Saw a movie called Virus once. Pretty good sci-fi horror. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland. Energy being came along, saw what man had done, studied history, saw the Middle East was once a gorgeous forest but we came along, ate everything, killed everything and poisoned the rest… decided Mankind was a virus, a cancer. Decided to save the Earth by wiping us out.

I have to say, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, I was rooting for the virus killer. And even tho it’s too late now to save the earth, even if we tried, which we ain’t gonna, it still comes down to how long we can keep our nest livable. And how miserable we’ll be during this time. Do good, last longer, suffer less. Makes no difference to Mother Earth, cuz after we’re gone, she’ll rest a while and seed a new garden.

We’ve turned the Garden of Even into the Valley of Odd. So if we’re wiped out, fair is fair.

“My death doesn’t really matter to me. But the idea of mass death is horrifying.”

I don’t much care about either, mine or mass. The only sadness I have would be your missing me. And we’ve had a close and good enough time, you have part of me always. We already have more in a short time than most get forever.

“I know I’m satisfied. I finally have love, faith. I discover another universe in you.”

I’m never satisfied. I can always do more; I can always be better. Like Camus says, ‘the sentence starts the day you’re born; it ends the day you die.’ See, I’m committing one of his sins. I still hope for inner peace, to live up to myself, to do it right. And hope is one of his sins, because there is no hope. There’s only living this life as aware as you can, as full as you can, in as many aspects as you can. I got that part down fine. If I could just get rid of the fucking Hope.

“Well, that’s back to your question again.”

What question?

“The question you ask determines what you receive.”

I hope for the best; I look for the worst. And I found in situations where there’s no time to think I do everything I can to stay alive. Yet I would not keep my life if I had to dishonor myself with another’s death unless the asshole were attacking me.

“Your philosophy actually helps me, you know that?”

This is the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering. Maybe there’s a reason you feel helped.

LADY K

If Eve hadn’t given Adam that apple
I wouldn’t be smoking today.
Even so,
I tried to serve Sky God
but was drawn to that old Debbil Weed.
I became a happy pappy
papa puff daddy
gadfly to gladly
nouveau bohemian in old school crowd.
Sir Laugh-a-Lot of Pot-a-Lot
Queen MaryJaned
Lady Day to Lady K
Kafka to a kiss

- to be continued -

THE UNIVERSE KNOWS WHAT’S GOING DOWN

If you’ve noticed, in movies, there’s always a parking spot in front of the place the stars need to go, there’s always a full moon, there’s never any horseshit in the street no matter how many cowboys or cattle pass by, and there’s never frosty breath no matter how cold it is.

This is what it is like to be me. Things never get so bad that there’s total collapse. When money runs out, something magical happens, and I get more money. Cancer may appear, but I get it fixed, and it’s done with. There’s always a way through, up and out. I’m a special entity. I find I can talk to Reality. Sometimes it answers. Frequently it plays jokes on me. And it seems to appreciate when I laugh.

I find the Cosmic Order or the Universe or the Big It to be aware, with a hell of a sense of humor. It communicates with itself along channels we do not know, but do have scientific proof of. I believe it was the Bell experiment, run with colliders. There’s a disagreement between Einsteinian Physics and Heisenberg Physics. Einstein says, “nothing can be known outside of locality.” Locality being if an event happens, the carrier wave that takes that data away cannot get further than the speed of light times time duration. Heisenberg Particle Physics says that information is available to the Universe immediately, even on the other side of the Universe.

The Bell experiment tested this. They separated paired electrons, probably using divorce lawyers, smashed the shit outta one of them with really big hammers and reversed its spin. Whereupon the separated hostage electron really far away immediately reversed its spin. Ergo, the Universe has some way of communicating with itself that is faster than light. Much faster than light. The implications of this are astounding. The Universe knows what’s going down.

So, to get back to Science. The Heisenbergian Universe: everything is true simultaneously all the time. You have your famous experiment with Schroedinger’s Cat in the Cat box. You seal him in a box with a vial of poison and a decaying atom. The atom decays at a known rate but you have no idea where the decayed particle will go. If it hits the glass vial of poison, you have Dead Cat.

Heisenberg says until you open the box, the cat is a) alive and b) dead and c) at every other possible point in between. It’s not until you ask the box, “is the cat dead or not?” that Reality collapses all the realities that are into one specific result to answer your question.

Another good example of this that they’ve done: a star blows up really far away. The light heads for Earth. Now, I don’t know the intricacies of this, but light is both waves and particles. Totally different constructs; they act different. So, if you choose to ask a question about this light using particle measuring equipment, you get one answer. If you choose to ask the same light the same question using wave measuring equipment, you get a different answer. It takes millions of years for that light to get here, so certainly your question isn’t going to cause something millions of years ago to do one thing or another. So both things are true simultaneously. Your question forces reality to collapse to A or B. Now, this is all very very crudely put. I’m not a scientist and I’m not really a philosopher. I’m more a class clown. But everything I’ve said so far can be checked and verified by the unafraid.

So, I started off praying to God, then I turned Atheist. Then I turned hippie-dippy flakey. And then I more or less turned into a Flow surfer. I’m some kinda funky holy man. I got holes all over. My own life causes me to question my incredible string of luck and adventures. I shouldn’t be alive, and if I should have been, I definitely shouldn’t be here having this much fun. I got more stories than anybody. My first motorcycle ride I left the road at 100 mph and didn’t get hurt. Fell off a cliff when I was seven. Jumped off rooftops when I was four. Fell out of trees, rolled my car in my own driveway… I’ve shot up for thirty years, I’ve overdosed, I drank myself to death, ran from the cops ten times, got away nine, two armed robberies. Yet I’ve had wonderful friends, accolades, art shows, poetry readings. And the best friend and wife in the world.

- to be continued -

street graffiti oaxaca mexico - foto by smith

laughing’s a pleasure. sneezing’s a pleasure. stretching’s a pleasure. maybe i’ll get someone to tickle me while stretching me on a rack and dusting my nostrils with black pepper snuff. triple the physical pleasure. though i suspect the three as one would hurt. part of me would end uneven.

they use yesterday’s newspapers to wrap fish. what do we do with yesterday’s blogs?

i was wrong about the bogus sarah palin quotes quoted in my blog yesterday. here in fact is what she actually didn’t say:

“I don’t believe in political relationships, I was born in Idaho and raised to believe that citizens and politicians shouldn’t mix or date each other ” ( 1986)

“Here in Alaska, we don’ t have hardly any Democrats, I never talk to them, so I was surprised that they allow those kinds of people in Washington DC.” ( 1988)

“I want The Shock Doctrine as the only theory taught in our schools” ( 2001)

“The bible will at some point be in every junk yard in our great state if I have my way” ( 2005)

“Odd and I talked about Hurricane Katrina as God’s way of cleansing New Orleans of the crooked cops and politicians that infest the place” ( 2005)

“I don’ t know a lot about Republicans, I just heard that they are bad people” ( 2006)

“He can say he is a christian but as far as I’m concerned, George W. Bush is a war criminal, look at his middle initial” ( 2007)

my apologies for doubting her.

the wicked witch of alaska - foto by smith

where republican political policies lead: DEATH - foto by smith

they lied to me. they said a watched pot never boils. bullshit. i was chilled and wanted my morning coffee so i held my hands over the heat and watched the water. took forever, but slowly molecule by molecule, the water roiled and boiled. so there. lies everywhere. can’t trust no cliché unchecked. gotta verify.

on the other gland, a watched presidential election continuously boils over in collective filth.

they say these following quotes are “VERIFIED QUOTES FROM GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN.” but i’ve researched the net and they all lead back to the same source which gives NO VERIFICATION WHATSOEVER. if these statements were true, they’d be multiple sources on the net. gotta be suspicious when somewhat shouts VERIFIABLE and then offers no proof whatsoever. however i’m including them here because every statement–bogus or not–is compatible with the unpalatable palin’s publicly stated beliefs. i’m much more concerned with her flat-earth religious-wrong beliefs and her statements that global warming is not caused by humans.

suspect sarah palin quotes:

“I don’t believe in interracial relationships, I was born in Idaho and raised to believe that whites and blacks shouldn’t mix or date each other ” ( 1986)

“He can say he is a christian but as far as I’m concerned, Obama is a muslim, look at his middle name” ( 2007)

(ps - i was born in idaho too, mz anal office, and i’m not a racist)

and speaking of alaska and liars and misfeasors in office, ex-secretary of state and liar colin l. powell told jurors in the corruption trial of alaskan senator and liar ted stevens that the stevens had a “sterling” reputation among the nation’s military and political leaders.

powell stood before the united nations and lied to the world about iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the behest of the world’s biggest liar and greatest living mass-murderer george warcrimes bush. stevens has been lying and stealing his entire political career. why would anyone in or outside a court care what one professional liar has to say about another professional liar and thief?

re sarah palin, i’m overjoyed with today’s news item (which is easily verifiable):

Investigation finds Palin abused power in ‘Troopergate
By James V. Grimaldi and Kimberly Kindy

“Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” said the report released by a bipartisan legislative committee.

perhaps this determination of malfeasance in office combined with mccain’s mental and ethical death will finally drive a stake through the heart of this frankenstein mccain/palin monster known as cheney-bush-beast II.

sarah palin & john mccain - foto by smith