Stuck on the Highway of Dreams

From the Protests in Madison, WI

2011-03-07T11:11:00.002-06:00

Here's a link to an article I wrote about the protests in Madison, WI.

http://headwatersnews.net/economy-opinion/witnessing-the-battle-in-wisconsin/

I think It's Something More

2008-10-01T16:21:00.001-05:00

It's weird, but I've been feeling a major up-swing in the good-vibes department of late, despite the economic meltdown and all the fallout from eight years of Bush and co. It's not just that Phish is getting back together, or that I received a major shipment of the Dead yesterday; it seems bigger than any of that, but somehow including it all at the same time.

Like for a while, I found that I couldn't connect with the Dead like I used to. Sure, I could listen to the tunes and sing and have an enjoyable time as I tooled on down the road, but that sense of ecstasy that has always been a hallmark of Dead music for me was somehow missing.

But then, the other day while I was on my way to work, the Eyes of the World from the Grateful Dead Movie came up on my mp3 player, and suddenly I felt that old joyful wonder returning, as if I had reconnected with the infinite Source--dust blown off the Over-Soul.

Maybe it has something to do with the return of Autumn, a time of year that, for whatever reason, I feel more alive and in tune with Nature and the Living World around me. But it isn't just the sunshine dancing off vibrant leaves--it's something more, something intangible and yet more real than the seen world.

Whatever it might be, I feel Big Changes in the air. And while I know the evening news is against me in saying this, I feel that the changes coming are good. Maybe a more enlightened leadership is on its way. Maybe everyone will start getting their act together and realize we have to change our ways and stop the Great Mother Nature Rape. Maybe Terence McKenna was right and December 21, 2012 (Jill's birthday) will bring about the next huge evolutionary stride forward--one of those Space Odyssey moments. Or maybe I've just been in a really good mood lately. But I think it's something more.

Be looking for the great monolith outside your front door.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna

Independance Day

2008-07-03T15:13:00.001-05:00

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of the red, white, & blue,
& the Rockies, Wobblies & Woody Guthrie too

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of Monk, Miles, Coltrane & Bird
Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins
Bob Dylan before the Escalade
back when that wild mercury sound
boiled the air with an electric dawn
that called to me on
Highway 61, 1987

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of Howl & On the Road,
Tropic of Cancer & Capricorn too,
Bound for Glory down through my own pen,
the rivers of Li Po through flourishes
of ink on page

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of the unfettered soul,
of the Free Man unchained
from capitalism
from Stalinism
from Maoism
from the whole shit-load of isms
loaded high on the toiling's backs,
to breath in the air of a new day unbound
to never bend the knee to another man,
neither King nor Kaiser
but stand unbent before another
neither crippled by the crushing machine
of cash registers and assembly lines
or cubicle prison cells--
the war for humanity still raging
in the hot iron ovens of our souls

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
that Emma Goldman called us to,
that Proudhon and Bakunin dreamt of
and Gary Snyder points to

I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of the spontaneous anarchism
of Deadhead caravans arrived
in some Midwestern town,
of Kerouac's rucksack revolution
& Thoreau standing silent in dusk's field

& I'm celebrating the Independence Day
of samara's end,
of the enlightenment of all sentient beings
of sitting zazen before a campfire,
breath rising toward the heavenly furnace
bathed in the dance of gentle flames
as the stars burn up the eternity
of all that has passed
in silence
in dreams

Strike Another Match

2008-05-19T11:13:00.010-05:00

And so, life starts anew. The Spring finally thaws the permafrost of my soul and the wonder that is existence fills me with its vibrancy once more. Finally, the new year takes hold.

And time to pull up stakes. My wife and I soon to move to a country cottage, which has necessitated a much needed thinning of possessions. Time to get down to the basics (or as close as I can come to them)--a few Buddhist books, some volumes of poetry (East and West), my Henry Miller collection ("always merry and bright!"), some good old Grateful Dead, my old zafu, and of course, Henry David Thoreau. He has been there always, shinning like a morning star on the horizon of a newly born day. If I owe anything to Clinton High School, it is for introducing me to Thoreau and Emerson. They began the puzzle that the Buddha-Dharma completed.

What a disconnect I felt sitting in church as a child between that place of worship and God's living creation outside! Instead of showing reverence for the miracle that is the living world, we raised a brick-and-mortar creation by our own hands and had the audacity to call it "God's house," when we were really separating ourselves from the true abode of the Holy; cutting ourselves off from the spring of life so we could more clearly hear the belchings of the pipe organ.

And I still remember that day in Catholic catechism when we were asked to go outside and go to that place where we could more clearly contemplate God. While others confusedly meandered around the parking lot, I instinctively made a bee-line to the woods--that place of worship I had always returned to since the time I could walk.

Then I was confronted by the dilemma of existence, the dilemma of self. The Buddha-Dharma appeared to me "of itself." Almost by accident, I glimpsed the Ultimate Reality, entering that place where "I" no longer had any meaning. For a moment, I was released from the burden of the self, as if waking from a long dream and seeing the world as it is for the first time. All contradictions fell away; all the horrible questions brought on by ego dissipated before me. I saw, ever so briefly, the One from which there is no separation but is all things as all things are one--the Buddha-Nature, the Tao!

The Transcendentalists were very much signposts on this road of awakening that I am still very much traveling on (still glimpsing, waiting for the pin hole of light to open up and forever envelop the delusion that is that traveler walking the road of awakening). When I read The Over-Soul in High School, I knew exactly what Emerson was writing of--it was that which I had felt my entire life growing up, daily disappearing into the woods to unconsciously pay homage to the living force I felt run like a current through all things, that current that all mystics and holy men feel course through themselves--that current that runs through us all, whether we are able to acknowledge it or not.

And so, in less than two weeks time, I will return to the country. And hopefully return to that place where I might once again more fully feel the pulse that runs through us all. Rest assured, Thoreau will be there with me, loafing away the days beneath the bright summer sun, surrounded by ten-thousand things that are the faces of the One.

feelin' down & dirty

2008-03-07T11:57:00.003-06:00

Not a good day today. Our cat (my wife & I) is not doing well, and I think the reality of that sort of hit me today. I also find myself missing good friends who have seemed to have all but disappeared from my life.

I profess to be a Buddhist, but I am constantly reminded how poor a Buddhist I am. I have a lot of trouble with that whole detachment thing. And I admit it, I'm not too good with the Loving-Kindness either; not good at turning the other cheek. I guess the one thing I can say for myself is that I'm not deluded about who I am. Still, I frustrate myself.

Perhaps the current lesson before me is the lesson of letting go--honoring the friendship of the past while acknowledging that things change. But it's a hard thing to do when people who have had a pivotal influence on your life disappear. But then again, I know I'm not the person I was then. I have gone through my changes, and so have they. I guess I somehow always thought that they'd be there, though, in some capacity. At times like these, I am that much more thankful for my wife, knowing that no matter what happens, she will always be there, standing right beside me. That is the one overwhelming consolation I have in the midst of it all--the one person whom I love more than any other, who is my best friend, is the one that will not disappear. For that, I am thankful.

All Things Must Pass
by George Harrison

Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up
And has left you with no warning
It's not always been this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away
Sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this
My love is up and must be leaving
It's not always been this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
None of life's dreams can last
So, I must be on my way
To face another day
And darkness only stays at nighttime
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good
At arriving at the right time
It's not always gonna be this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
All things must pass away

Snowy Day Thoughts

2007-12-11T13:31:00.000-06:00

I was on my way out the door to work when my wife, who had just driven to her workplace, called and told me not to chance it. "Everything's closed," she said, "no point in risking your life." "Fine," I said, and promptly called into work to inform them that I would not be making the trek in.

There is something about a snow day where one cannot help but feel like a child again. Perhaps it's that cozy feeling one gets while watching the snow pile up outside while one is in the warmth of their home. I can't but help feel sorry for our cousins to the south. They will never know that sense of gentle peace that accompanies a snowfall, that warmth that comes with the cold that warm places never suspect. So many holiday songs must be incomprehensible to them--those that dwell in the sweltering swamps of the south.

There is also something contemplative about the winter. It's not just a matter of being hold up with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company (though I suppose that helps). There is more to it than that. It's as if the entire world has turned inward. The trees shed their leaves and become almost dead to the world, all the while filled with the life force waiting patiently to spring forth once more in a few months time. The squirrel, having made his store during the warmer months, now retires to the hollow of a tree, made warm and hospitable by whatever was scrounged from the forest floor. The fox dreams in this den; the bear slumbers in his cave. And we humans turn to our own abodes, as if following an ancient ancestral instinct of our forebears gathered around a fire while the world around them fell off to sleep.

For all our efforts at "modernizing" ourselves, we can never, despite our best attempts, cut ourselves off from nature. Even as we race to some unseen future at breakneck speed, our feet are anchored to the earth beneath us, no less so than the maple or oak. Even if we ourselves have forgotten that gentle language of a newborn sun's light played over the skin, our bodies have not. Though we may deny our place in the world around us, our physical beings stand to give testimony to the contrary. We are not merely a part of the world around us, but in a very real sense, we are that world itself, both inside and out. Any talk of separation is only a delusion that we indulge ourselves in, to our own detriment. To speak of ourselves and the world in which we reside as being separate is like saying electrons are separate from molecules, or that oxygen is separate from the air or water. No one would think to make such a nonsensical statement, so then, why is it that we continually insist that we are somehow separate from the life that constantly burgeons forth all around us--the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat. Aren't we made up of the nutrients we absorb from our food and drink? And when we examine the world on the molecular level, isn't it that much more difficult to definitively say where one thing ends and another begins? When such things are taken into account, is it really that far of a stretch to say that the perception that everything is a separate entity is really illusory?

As science continues to peer closer and closer at both the infinitesimal and that astronomical, it is becoming increasingly apparent how closely related everything is, from the cosmos down to the molecular--everything is intertwined. When one considers the vast forces of cause and effect at play in the universe, talk of an individual self, separate from everything, suddenly seems almost laughable.

We live at a time when we are seeing the fruition of the effects caused by humanity's delusion that it is somehow separate from the world around us. We have thus far collectively failed to truly comprehend our place within the world, to devastating effect. That so many peoples of various religions have interpreted their respective holy texts as placing them separate in the creation, and that the world is more or less at their complete disposal, cannot help. That we are beings of a certain intelligence cannot be denied. But with that innate intelligence comes a massive responsibility, one which, so far, we have failed utterly.

Until we learn to live at one with the world, and not try to bend it to our own narrow ends, we will have failed at the great lessons of life. That there have been sages such as Lao Tzu and the Buddha throughout our history that have taught a different way of not only living, but of looking at the world around us in new and revolutionary ways, is a sign of hope. That we are victims of technology, prisoners and wardens both, cannot be denied. Our advancements have far outdistanced our understanding of ourselves and the world of which we are a part. Until we glimpse our true natures, and the true nature of reality itself, we will continue to be captives of this cast iron reality we have forged with our own hands.

On Ryan Adams & The Cardinals' Easy Tiger and Follow the Lights

2007-10-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

Through that fast-paced year of 2005, Ryan Adams (with and without his band, the Cardinals) released no less than three albums: Cold Roses--a double album that captured the raw, immediate beauty that rock music once caught in the able hands of such masters as the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and others, which was followed up by the unexpected, unadorned honky tonk mastery of Jacksonville City Nights, recorded in exactly the same way that they used to cut records down at Sun Records--and it sounded like it too. Next came an album that was actually recorded before the two preceding it, but was the last released. I guess Lost Highway felt that somehow might ease the blow of its dark, delicate majesty. Alas, to no avail--29 is a sonic travelogue through the shadow lands of broken ties, loneliness and addiction, a sort of Danteian warning for all those who might follow down the bleak abyss of empty bottles and crystal-encrusted baggies. It was the most produced work of the triad, but the production seemed to serve a purpose--a sort of sonic architecture of a damaged soul.

Then came the silence of a year. "What had happened?", we all wondered. The creative torrent, all those signposts down the ragged road cut through the night at breakneck speed had suddenly, seemingly run out of gas. Was it the quiet before the storm? Was he readying a country-rock magus opus that would bring tears to Gram Parsons' blood-shot eyes?

And then the announcement was made. After all the waiting and expectation, a new album was indeed to be released. It even had a write up by Stephen King to whet out collective appetite. Hot damn! He says it's even better than Cold Roses and Jacksonville! The appointed day came. We all rushed out and bought the CD (and completists like myself got the record as well--nothing beats vinyl, right? And orange vinyl to boot! Why not? It was a new Ryan Adams album, like manna dropped down from Heaven itself! Might as well go the whole nine yards). We gathered around stereos and record players to feast our ears.

And what did we get? Easy Tiger--a decent enough album. But to my ears it was lacking a certain umph. The ragged beauty of Cold Roses and JCN had been replaced by a rather slick production--a little too slick to my ears, as if Ryan wanted to stoke the fires of Grateful Dead comparisons a little more by presenting to the world an album of songs that had been sterilized in the laboratory of the studio much like the Dead's post-early seventies output.

Again--this is not to say it's a bad album. It is anything but. But the passion, the outright balls-to-the-wall daring of Cold Roses isn't there. The thrill of hearing the buzz of the amps before Beautiful Sorta is missing. Goodnight Rose is there, but its not the same electric affirmation we had grown to love from the live recordings.

The one song that really shines from the production is Tears of Gold, where the voices of Ryan and the Cardinals blend and take flight in a way that you have a very hard time getting in the live setting. And I did dig the simple, folkie elegance of Pearls On a String.

In short, Easy Tiger is an enjoyable album, but not the kind to rip your ears off and leave you salivating for more (like both Cold Roses and JCN did for me).

And then the EP Follow the Lights was released yesterday. And I know you shouldn't expect the Second Coming in the form of an EP, but this is Ryan Adams and the Cardinals we are talking about, so you will forgive me if I may have glanced skyward once or twice.

Well, it wasn't the second coming. But it did have its moments.

The song Follow the Lights itself sounds more like it belongs on a soundtrack album than anything else (I think I read somewhere that it actually is going to be used on some television show). But there was nothing in it that really grabbed me.

My Love For You Is Real has a little bit more going for it. It would have fit in nicely on Easy Tiger. Production wise, it was definitely born of the same sonic womb.

Blue Hotel is a song that I had already fallen in love with through the live recordings I had heard of it (and Ryan had already loaned it out to Willie Nelson). It is presented here as a more acoustic affair (as oppose it its more electric siblings that have graced stages near and far). It was a little more restrained than I would have liked. A good rendition--but where's the bite?

The cover of Alice In Chains' Down In a Hole might earn Ryan a place as vocalist in their next tour, if he'd be down with that. It is the first time on the record that we get a little of the old Ryan Adams' yarrah. And who else could have made a steel guitar sound so natural on an Alice In Chains' song?

The rest of the EP is comprised of new recordings of old songs. This Is It, originally off the tongue-in-check "fuck off, Lost Highway" record, Rock N Roll presents an interesting new take on it, that, for whatever reason, sounds to my ears like it could have been recorded in the mid-nineties (is it because Down In a Hole precedes it?).

The new version of If I Am a Stranger (originally off of Cold Roses) lacks the sense of desperation the original had. It does evoke a sad sort of quiet, like acoustic guitars being gently strum in a distant room on a dark October afternoon. It is one of the high points on the album: but again, it seems a little too, in a word--safe.

The EP ends with a new rendition of Jacksonville's heart-breaking tale of death and the loneliness of survivors, Dear John. This may be the best song on the collection. An acoustic solo adds a new twist to an old beauty. But this new one lacks the ragged heart-wrenching glory of the original.

To sum it up--it seems like Ryan & the Cardinals are playing it a little too safe in the studio. (I recently saw them live twice in the same week and I can assure you that they are in no way in danger of making this mistake on the stage. They are quite possibly the best live band around right now.) Their recordings seem to lack that haphazard brilliance they bring to the stage. Don't be afraid to tear it up! Break a few goddamn guitar strings! But be your wild and wonderfully chaotic selves! And fuck what Lost Highway (or any other record company) thinks. And fuck the critics too! Be Ryan Adams & the Cardinals!

Book Notice

2007-09-14T09:29:00.000-05:00

I hope to begin a book on my travels through Europe within the next few days. It will use the movement of travel as a vehicle to explore life in all its multifaceted brilliance, touching on an array of characters and experiences that I encountered as I traveled from Ireland to the Czech Republic and back in the space of a month.

Wish me luck.

2007-09-08T10:08:00.002-05:00

I believe that once we find our strength as a people, everything will flow from that great realization. We will no longer have to grovel for work, for the work itself will be in our own hands. We will no longer have to entrust some swindler of a politician with the powers of life and death over our lives, for we will be our own masters, and know no slaves! But most of all, we will no longer have to reside in this miserable, hopeless condition--a piece of clay formed by forces we feel are out of our control, for we will realize that hope does exist--that we are each other's hope, and that we have it within our power to fashion new chains--the chains of our arms interlocked, that cannot be broken by threats of an impotent power, for we will have revoked its power through our solidarity! We must return to the center of that wheel which all spokes lead off from--community. And through taking back and refining what community is, we will regain ownership of that most precious of things, our very souls!

A Shattered Generation

2007-05-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

Man, we're all Bedouins now, looking for a foundation after the fall, but it's all been blown to yesterday, and yesterday never was.

Looking for a place to make a stand and not get hassled. Write a few books or what-have-you and make love to my wife at night.

So how does the thirties fit you? I'm falling gracefully through time, thank you very much. Don't have half as much figured out as I did before, but then, I guess that is the mark of some kind of wisdom.

But man, how did we get here, and has it always been this weird? I look around and I know the trap-door could fall at any instant. It seems we've entered some bad space, and there is no politician that can lead us out, no holy Moses, no Joan of Arc, no Michael Collins and no Abraham Lincoln. I'll have to be my own Emma Goldman. Or you can be Emma and I'll be Alexander B. (note to J.). We'll have our own soap-box love.

Thank God for Buddha. (This Pig's aflame)

A.

Yet Another Grateful Dead List

2007-05-17T17:26:00.000-05:00

This was surprisingly easy. In no particular order:

1. 8/27/72, Veneta, OR. No question--this is the greatest Grateful Dead show ever. There was just something in the air (or was it the water) that day that made the legendary Grateful Dead gestalt form as never before or since. The Dark Star alone encompasses life, death, and everything in between (and then segues into El Paso!). But many songs that day were played in a way that made them beyond every other performance. Listen to the Bertha, Bird Song, Sing Me Back Home, or the China-Rider and you'll know what I mean.

2. 2/13/70, Fillmore East, NY. (released as part of Dick's Picks Vol. 4) Because of the unimaginable Dark Star->That's It For the Other One->Lovelight. Would you believe that I first felt the True Reality while first listening to this Dark Star? The Buddha appears in many guises.

3. 5/2/70, Harpur College. (released as Dick's Picks Vol. 8) One masterpiece of a show. The acoustic set was everything acoustic music aspires to be; the electric set was a fire-breathing psychedelic dragon. That's It For the Other One swallows you whole.

4. 2/15/73, Madison, WI. And not because it was played in the city of my birth. The segue between Dark Star and Eyes of the World reaches a place of such serene beauty that one cannot but help imagine a newborn Spring sun rising through a dew-speckled morning. The China-Rider is easily one of my favorites from this period, with the Feeling Groovy Jam in well evidence.

5. 6/28/74, Boston Garden (released as part of Dick's Picks Vol. 12) The most wonderful example of the Mind Left Body Jam, played as part of an amazing sequence that begins with a Weather Report Suite, ends with perhaps the greatest U.S. Blues ever, and has a Dark Star Jam along the way! Careful folks--this is one of those "gateway" recordings, and may lead to heavier stuff!

6. (I know this was supposed to be five, but what the hell!) 4/28 & 29/71, Fillmore East, NY. (both are part of the Ladies and Gentlemen . . .the Grateful Dead release) Simply put, these shows were what 1971 was all about. The Alligator->Drumz->Jam (with big time hints at St. Stephen)->Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad->Cold Rain and Snow from the 29th still fills me with such a golden sense of glee every time I hear it that over the years I've turned to it time and time again in melancholy periods. Never once did it fail me. Also--The Hard To Handle reaches such an amazing climax that is has to be heard to be believed.

I'd just like to end this little list by saying thanks to my old friend, Joe Drennan, who turned me onto all of the above recordings back when all we had were Maxell XL II 90s traveling through the post or unassuming couriers. (Does that qualify as the old days?) You can either thank or blame him.

p.s. Ye Gods! I almost forgot 9/19/70, Fillmore East! Find this on Archive and listen to it now!
The energy present during the Dark Star->St. Stephen->Not Fade Away was live-wire electric! Meaning? They were smokin'!

A Reply to Mr. D

2007-05-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing this was from you? Anyway, yeah--I agree. Hindsight only appears to be 20/20, but time has a way of warping the past. The only real thing is this moment before us, everything else is unreal. The future is never reached and the past is never what we think it is.

I don't think it's tapes vs. being at a show--each is its own reality, its own separate experience. My greatest Grateful Dead moments were listening to recordings: The great 2-13-70 Dark Star Satori, for instance, or the time I was listening to that Weather Report Suite tape you made for me on my Walkman while walking through afternoon early autumn fields on a sun-drenched day, and again feeling the boundary lines between the "I" and "Everything Else" melt away once more--glorious experiences that not only forever altered my life, but how I viewed reality itself.
I don't think you can put a hierarchy on experience; experience is experience, no matter what you happen to be experiencing. What matters is how you interpret experience. Henry Miller was right when he wrote something to the effect of "every moment is a golden one for the person who has eyes to see it as such." And I do believe that the Eternal lies just beneath the thin veil of the transitory--to see beneath the veil--that is the trick! That to me, is the highest experience life has to to offer--and it's available to us at every moment of life, every breath we take. The holy, if you wish to call it that, is all around us; it permeates our reality. We need only have eyes to see it--to see the world through the right kind of eyes--to open our eyes and see the world as if for the first time. After the world has been glimpsed in such a way, everything falls into place. Life itself is reordered. Everything has changed, utterly, for the gray world of sleep has forever fallen away like a dead husk, and from it, rising like a newborn sun from the darkened horizon of the east, is life--life revealed in all its multitudinous forms, but all life just the same--tributaries all flowing toward the same vast sea--the womb of Being.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Wind-Clock Ballet":

Good to see you are still connected. I just finished a great read, THE LAST SEASON. One thing I took away with me was MEMORY IS NEVER EQUAL TO EXPERIENCE. I've been mulling that over for several days. Tapes vs. Being At The Show? Written Recollections vs. The Experiences Themselves? What do you think?

The Wind-Clock Ballet

2007-03-22T09:40:00.000-05:00

i'm sitting here listening to Ryan Adams' Hard Way To Fall with the first tentative breezes of Spring blowin outside/inside my soul, a new feelin surgin through the air, a new sense in the sunlight as it lights the land in new hues, a new chapter cut in soil and peculating 'neath winter's dead dreams now feedin the new dreams of the children of the land as they wait to bloom from the dark womb of beginning.

now the Band's version of Tears of Rage is on and thoughts turn to basement gigs--remember Matt & Chili? that night our guitars howled in mourning entwined with Chili's voice, Children of Haight, how it reached its preordained spontaneous crescendo, sending that moment named Jerry Garcia back to the Unborn Great Beyond a few short hours later, one last blazing farewell before departing. and he died with a smile on his face. "and life is brief," (just played over the stereo--synchronicity alive and well, as It's All Over Now, Baby Blue comes on . . .)

Yes--it's all connected, whether you want to admit it to yourself in night's darkness or not. every day i live, every breath i take is a conformation of that shining fact. the universe is an immense clock ticking away eternity, and everything it holds are the gears that run the daylight through our souls. and God is the coo-coo sounding out high above. quiet the noise of your brain and get in sync to its hidden rhythms played out all around as the stars and planets and moons dance and circle high above and all around. Do the cosmic dance till the wind collects your bones and blows the dust back to the Earth's black womb.

Thoughts on Freedom

2007-03-18T20:31:00.000-05:00

I have lately been thinking that the greater (meaning more powerful) the government, the lesser the individual--meaning that there is an unnatural dependence there upon the government, to the extent where it almost acts as a parental figure, thereby weakening the individuals will to think freely for his/her self. I see this as being the chief danger of our time--East to West, North to South. When we give up our ability to think freely for ourselves, we give up our very humanity. I believe the world would be a very different place if each person were less dependent upon their rulers (this being any organization that dictates thought, whether it be a governmental organization, or media, or what-have-you). Freedom isn't free; as a matter of fact, true freedom is a very difficult proposition. But what a wonderful proposition! And can we not, as individuals (on the whole) think better for ourselves than any group or institution? Throw off the shackles of mental slavery! Stand tall and assert yourselves as individuals with minds free and unfettered! Only then can freedom be realized!

I include the link because I feel it thought-provoking. While the broad-swath of my being may be "anarchistic," I am not quite convinced society is ready for it (mostly for the reasons I have given above). At any rate, it is worth it for the Thomas Jefferson quotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_anarchism

p.s. I still don't think society is ready for anarchism, but I am now of the opinion that we should start laying the foundation now. Don't look to the future to save us, it will never come. Live in the day at hand.

Getting down with Gordy on a March Morning

2007-03-01T10:49:00.000-06:00

It's a snowy March morning as I'm listening to Gordon Lightfoot sing about this land before the white man stepped foot on it--the primordial wilds of North America before being choked by the thousands of smokestack attacks of big industry, before the highways rolled over the skeleton of ancient America. Did the Indians have a name for it, this land that we now toil on? Do people wonder what happened on that tread of land that they travel to and from their jobs on 200 or 500 or 1,000 years back? Or do they never dig beneath the suburban surface? Does the land itself have a memory and utter silent prayers to all the people who passed away on its surface? What dreams will fill it a thousand years hence, or will the consciousness Earth be long departed 'neath the nuclear haze?

Anyway, Gordon Lightfoot is on in the background, as I've previously mentioned, filling me with the strange, soothing comfort of childhood records crackling over the parents' hi-fi; that cozy blanket'd feeling that only a thick layer of snow can provide that southerners will never know. The seventies live on in my turntable consciousness, along with the blue shag carpet I used to roll around on before I was able to walk or crawl (it's true). But there will always be Gordon Lightfoot, always be the White Album playing on perpetually somewhere there in the background on memory's horizon, somewhere passed the shores of Gitche Gumee.

Yearnings for the Eagles on a Sub-Zero Wisconsin Morning

2007-02-06T10:14:00.000-06:00

Well, I was going to listen to the Eagles, since I had some strange, inexplicable yen to do so, but I can't get the damn computer to play the disc so I guess that's out. I don't even know what possessed me into wanting to listen to the Eagles. My parents don't even listen to the Eagles anymore. The last major reference to the Eagles that I can recall is from that cab-ride in the "Big Lebowski," and he hated the fucking Eagles.

Perhaps it is not the Eagles themselves, but all that their music seems to conjure up--those carefree southern California scenes of sunshine and tequila. Or maybe something is making me nostalgic for my early childhood of riding around in the family car on hot vinyl seats that your ass would stick to on humid summer nights while "Take It Easy" played on in the background. Who knows? I think its my psyche trying to somehow thaw myself out of this inhuman cold. And it is cold here, have no doubt of that in your mind, gentle reader. Jack London cold, where if you were one of those inclined to chew tobacco, you would soon find that the thick brown stream of tobacco juice would freeze to the side of your face. Not a pleasant thought. But in the dead of winter, Wisconsin is not a pleasant place. The gods of natural selection are at the helm and do not know the word mercy. If one is foolish enough to venture out of doors for any length of time, they soon find that Nature is in no sort of mood for "communion." They'll get the idea after a few lashes in the face by the cold whip of wind. So go stuff your naive hippie ideas about achieving oneness with the goddess--she wants no part of you, and will tear your arms off if you are so impetuous to approach her on your own terms. Nature is not about feel-good; it is about respect. And don't dare venture outside until you can do so with the proper reverence winter demands, unless you wish to end up like some ill-fated British explorer searching for the Northwest passage. Until then, best not leave the safety of your local outfitting store. And watch out where the huskies go . . .

Little Poem Written After Zazen

2007-01-30T11:17:00.000-06:00

In darkness all penetrating
we stumble about
groping for something
to hold--
But rivers keeps flowing
never ceasing
metallic colors dance
over metamorphic faces

Remember the candle
held within--
a little brightness
to light
crossing black vast sea
(Unborn hidden
in dream-depths paper-thin--
reach through!)

To Take America Back

2007-01-26T11:03:00.000-06:00

I am proud to be an American (though I do not believe in nations or states--but in a character that is fundamental to North America, though always in such short supply!), if only because I am a proud descendant of such forebears as Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emma Goldman, Henry Miller, Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson. These people were, to my mind, representations of that which is truly American--that they were free-thinking, individualistic, suspicious of anything that gave even a faint odor of the herd--and above all, had no faith in institutions that placed limits on their lives. They were not sheep. They did not look to the nightly news, the editorial page, or the State of the Union to form their opinions for them. They did not need a church or temple to inform them of the miracle of life that is so obviously present at all times in so many forms. There existed no label so large as to encompass their being. Nor were they swayed by the currents of the moment. If they could be said to be patriotic, it was not to some abstract concept of nationhood, but to a higher order--that place where humanity and the natural world around him meet in communion. They knew that most, if not all, wars have been fought over riches and power; that if the man or woman in the street had their way there would be no need for wars, to go to some other land and fight some other man or woman in the street. In short, they stood not with the throng, but on their own two feet. And as I look about me now, here in the 21st century, I have to wonder how many Americans of this sort still walk the earth. In an age that seems to be pushing toward mass collectivization; where humanity, once creator, has been recast as consumer--a mere cog in the vast machinery of supply and demand, I wonder how much longer places will exist where the truly organic human being can stand, and perhaps more importantly, make a stand. Is this the destiny that was to be made manifest? It does make perfect sense--the horrible logic that the American Indians' destruction was not only a precursor to our own, but was in fact hastening it. I have to wonder if the soul of this infant nation passed away with all those other bodies at Wounded Knee. In a world being filled with steel and concrete, my soul cries out for the open spaces. That we are slowly murdering America inch by inch (to say nothing of the rest of the world), seems a point the patriotic are silent on, unless it won't affect profit margins. We sold our souls long ago; now we are bartering with the blood of future generations. But there is still time to take a stand . . .

Africa

2006-12-14T11:48:00.000-06:00

I read
the other day
that scientists
had traced back
all humanity
to one common
ancestor--
a man
in Africa
60,000 years ago

Think of
the implications
of that
for a moment--
how many
millennia of thinking
that single fact
destroys

With this one fact,
the globe itself is
remade--
no more
American
Russian
German
Frenchmen
Englishmen
Chinese
Japanese
Iraqi
Iranian
Israeli

No more
Europe
or Asia
or Middle East

No more
Jew
or Gentile
In fact,
no more race

With this one
single fact
we have to confront
the beautiful reality
that has always stared us
straight in the face--
we are family,
a single tree
with many branches

So now,
tell me--
who amongst you
puts country
before family?
Who amongst you
even puts ethnicity
before family?
How can we even
speak of such things
any longer?
Draw a line
between yourself
and your brother,
your sister?
Then call them "other?"
no longer can we
afford such ignorance,
not with our father
staring us in the face
every time we look
into another's eyes
and Mother Africa
running through
our veins

Henry David Thoreau Wrote:

2006-12-06T10:31:00.000-06:00

The winter was not given to us for no purpose. We must thaw its cold with our genialness. We are tasked to find out and appropriate all the nutriment it yields. If it is a cold and hard season, its fruit, no doubt, is the more concentrated and nutty. It took the cold and bleakness of November to ripen the walnut, but the human brain is the kernal which the winter itself matures. Not till then does its shell come off.

He also wrote:

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

I will write more with this in mind in the near future.

AMC

Sitting Zazen Before a Snowstorm

2006-12-01T14:49:00.000-06:00

Snow-flooded scape
so deep
I lose myself in
vast expanses
of never-ending white--
a hollow ghost
in heaven's robes

So many forget the quiet joy
of shoveling snow,
They shatter
white silent sanctuary
with snow-blowers
when they could follow
the delicate song
of snowflake falling
on snow

Or they tear apart lake's quiet
with motor boat blades
Instead of becoming entranced
in paddle rhythm,
spirit mirroring sky

Looking out my window,
Everything gone--
white merging with white

Armistice Day

2006-11-11T10:54:00.000-06:00

Today, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, World War I came to an end. I always marveled at the poetic license used by the various diplomats of the warring nations in bring to an end this colossal waste of life--forcing the combatants to continue the slaughter that much longer so historians could write about the curious timing. I wonder what it must have been like in the trenches, what the reaction of the soldiers must have been like. After having to had endured hell on earth for so long--the mounds of mutilated, rotting flesh, the very earth itself torn and upturned beyond recognition, I can't imagine it was met with any sort of enthusiasm.

"They want us to fight until 11 A.M. on the Eleventh? Well, why the hell not? Makes as much bloody sense as everything else in this war. Why not let the meat grinder eat up a few more hundred or thousand bodies, especially after the millions already offered up in the great patriotic struggle!"

I wonder how many more deaths occurred between the time it was agreed to end the war and when the final shot rang out. It would be interesting to get some sort of figure on that. Can you imagine being that last poor son of a bitch cut down; the final corpse laid down upon that stinking mountain of death? And to die with the knowledge that your death meant fuck all? That while your life's blood came pouring out upon the diseased-ridden ground, off somewhere in some great official hall corks were being popped off bottles of champagne? But that is war for you. The soldier eats it while the politicians that started the bloody war so easily celebrate its ending. And how many politicians that start wars know their horrors close up? TR did, Eisenhower did (who warned us to "beware the military-industrial complex"), JFK did (who was going to pull us out of Vietnam before he was assassinated). George W. Bush does not, and neither does Cheney. There should be an international law passed that only those that have seen war close up should be able to start them. Bush's father flew and was shot down in WW II, and he wasn't about to march into Baghdad and destabilize the region (besides, that may have brought very uncomfortable questions to light about who exactly was supporting Saddam while he was massacring his people during the 1980s).

Make no mistake about it--too many soldiers are still waiting for the coming of the eleventh hour while politicians and diplomats are still off playing their chess games far away from the stench of war.

What has changed?

Face the Strange

2006-11-08T10:38:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here this morning with the words of Diamond Joe, sung by Ramblin' Jack by way of a Vanguard collection, which seems as fitting a soundtrack to this moment in American history as any, for Populism appears to be alive and well, to judge by the election returns.

After six years of wondering what paper this country was reading, I have regained some small measure of faith in my fellow country men and women. After all the lies, fabrications, back room dealings and bad cash changing hands, the American people finally stood up and said their will be no "full steam ahead" over our wishes--we will not be discounted from our own county's political processes.

But I caution the Democrats--this was far more a vote against the prevailing dynasty than a vote for you--do not let it delude you into thinking we will role over for you. And you had damn well do something constructive with the power with which you have been entrusted. It is a far easier thing to be the opposition than to lead (just ask Big Ian Paisley), and 2008 is not that far off. If you show that you are unworthy of the trust given to you, you can just as easily be voted out.

It seems one of the big treads of the conservative movement of the last decade or so is the rise of the so-called "Religious Right" within its big tent theatrics. I was brought up Lutheran (though no longer cling to any creed but my own). One good thing I can say about the Lutherans is that religion is a personal matter, not to be drugded up and dragged through the streets and gutters of the world. You profess your beliefs amongst a body of believers, and quietly live your beliefs within the greater world--professing through your actions, as it were. No soap boxes, no shrill screams of holy fire, and above all, no going off and mucking about in people's personal affairs.

Here in Wisconsin, we had one of the referendums on the definition of marriage. Many on the Right played it up as preserving the sanctity of marriage, as a repudiation of homosexual unions. But in reality, it went much further than that, actually chipping away at rights already in existence regarding civil unions.

I grew up in a fairly conservative household as well. And one of the things I grew up believing was that one of the foundations of conservatism was to keep government intervention out of the lives of the people (remember Barry Goldwater, anyone?)

I'm skiddish about labels. They have a way of painting you into uncomfortable corners. As things stand in this country today, I could not, in good conscious, call myself conservative or liberal.

Let's see where I stand though (as everyone has to stand somewhere). I believe that we humans (to use the Christian terminology) are stewards of the Earth, and have a responsibility to make sure we leave it at least in the same condition that we originally found it in. I believe in worker's rights (a living wage, health care, etc.). I believe responsible people have a right to gun ownership (and let me say that it is a Republican myth that most on the Left are for gun control--I have heard moderates to far Leftists who realize the value of gun ownership in a free society). I also believe that the government (whether Left or Right) has no right whatsoever in dictating to us how to live our personal lives. Which also means that I think cannabis users should have the same rights as alcohol and/or tobacco users. (Don't cops have better things to do anyway?) That simply is not part of their job. I also have no trust in large corporations and am very leery of capitalism. So I guess that leaves me somewhere to the right of Emma Goldman, but left of Harpo Marx. Which, I suppose, makes me a libertarian with a social conscious, meaning an anarchist. And that is all fine and good if I'd like to drink red wine with Noam Chomsky and discuss theoretic, but I am interested in what is progressive and works. And there is wherein the difficulty lies.

What I put to you who term yourselves conservatives is this--are you against government interference in the lives of individuals or are you for legislating morality? Or is it that you are against "big government" only when it's the other team in charge? Please tell me which, because I am a bit confused on this matter.

Anyway, it is November 8, 2006, and we're still knee deep in big muddy.

A Hair's breadth

2006-10-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

for Jill, & the story we have written together
& the pages before us yet to be filled

Getting in my car
off to work
half asleep
My eyes suddenly caught
off guard
by a small, unexpected
miracle--
morning sun
shimmering
in a strand of
long reddish-brown hair
suspended
from my rear-view mirror--
A door opening
just a crack
before slamming shut
again

These histories we hold
in each other's arms
and write in the silent languages of
our eyes
that keep us sane
in the dark distances of
the world's blank pages
as its winters of tears
quietly rage

In our rings interlocking
we have forged a shelter
against the blood-wind
outside, howling,
unanswered,
unable to break
the impenetrable bond
of dream's light
diffused

The Night is Dying

2006-09-14T15:08:00.000-05:00

the night is dying
and the quiet light
is invading this palace
of silence
where the water is but a mirror
and the waves on its surface
our tears
at our progression
into the cold machinery
of night
that has forgotten
the human touch

the night is dying,
let us bath in its death
the day calls us to its
patchwork song--
let us embrace its
mulicolored brillance,
let us dance
in its seas of golden fields
let us go!

Listening to Ryan Adams

2006-09-14T14:01:00.000-05:00

Listening to Ryan Adams sing Dear Chicago,
Thinking there has to be a bit of angel
in this madman's soul

We Ourselves

2006-09-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

The fields aflame
with dark-granite laments
of the soil once ours
green and free 'neath the sky
Plague-driven soil
rents and tax
to a foreign lord
The land that our father's blood fed--
do you hear it's cries in the wind?
unchained,
lifted out beneath
St. George's bloodied cross

How I miss that green-golden land,
the way the valley danced with light and shade
County Cork, does that wind still speak
that yesterday shook the barley free of dew?

The blood that soaked Beal na Blath
still runs through Ireland's soul

2006-09-08T11:42:00.000-05:00

Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps is on now and the air is turning cool, carrying with it autumn's first exhalations. Something in it all takes me back to being a kid--red shag carpet absorbing guitar distortion, the dance of leave-shadows against the golden sun flowing over floor, surrounded by my own private pantheon of faces masked in brilliance--Dylan, the Beatles, Hendrix, Zeppelin, the Dead--the safety of my headphone-electric-womb world, the fragile security of the fleeting moment, now suddenly flooding the mindscape with bittersweet sensations. (If only Proust owned a copy of American Beauty!) The weary load loosed once more.

My Light Illuminating

2006-08-30T10:58:00.000-05:00

im listenin to the new Bob Dylan album, feelin like death--ribs like a cast-iron tomb. but im thinkin of you this morning, loving arms wrapt together like celtic rings that will dance forever through our fingers; the intoxication of the morning light reflected in your hazel eyes--ah, love! to know that our futures are bound together, interlinked, it makes all this disease and darkness i must traverse worth it. to know you're by my side thru the worst of it all, illuminating, casting the shadows aside. thank you, my love, my Jill.

The World a Dream Held Within a Horn

2006-08-19T20:56:00.000-05:00

Miles Davis' horn's slashing volcanic metallic through the humid August street heat while my brain bleeds torrents of images, the distance of dreams collide with the waking sleep-marchers--armies of zombies choke freeways and subways--this ant farm beheld by celestial eyes, this maze, this tv with its tits and ass and perfect orthodontic smile lulling the sleepers into a deeper sleep.

Billions of sleepers and no dreams. We have raised a generation who has forgotten how to dream. Dreams made commodity. The great soul insurance scam--the Christ with neon dollar signs above his head. Christie telling me on the train how Ireland had sold its soul and how he'd rather be back fighting in the 'Tan days. There are no more fighters, no more men throwing their fists up into the night. No more Resistance, no more anarchist-saints. The triumph of the free market economy when everything has a price tag and the only question is not if something is for sale but how much.

Was there a time when the mountain streams ran and the mist rose above the peaks, when Han Shan wrote poems on the sides of mountain walls? Li Po--where is your Yangze now?

found in an old notebook

2006-08-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

To return to the land that bore us,
the land the blood of our fathers' fed--
the ground that caught the afterbirth
of civilization

The Moment Between Steps

2006-08-16T09:14:00.000-05:00

It is a bright, clear summer's day outside and the joyful sounds of "I Know You Rider" fill the apartment. I will soon leave this domicile to go and greet the day, arms open wide, song issuing from deep inside the lungs and bellowing out the mouth.

Each day brings news of death. There is no escaping it. We are surrounded. There is no way to avoid it. Death hounds our ever step. But the forgetful neglect the fact that every step taken is a step forward, a step toward birth.

Everyone knows the birth of placenta and blood. Few know the birth that comes at unexpected moments, without the warning of nine months. The true irony is that this birth is far more significant than the first. Everyone knows what leaving their mother's womb means, for every last person on the face of the Earth has experienced it. Far smaller is the number of those that have had the other birth, when suddenly they look about at the world around them and realize they no longer are living in the same world they knew but a moment before. The greater shock is that they are still within the world they have always known, that it is not the world that has changed utter, but themselves. Everything looks different because they see with new eyes, with a new mind--a new person has been born, and in the moment between steps!

Between breaths, everything they thought they knew about the world around them has been turned on its head. They find that every assumption they took for granted has been false, that every last truth they leaned on for support is so much straw burned away before the light of day.

To many ears, this prospect must sound terrifying. But this is only because they have become so entrenched in their assumptions. To have any movement forward, one must loose the bundle of certainty. The only certainty one can hold tight to is that the breadth of human knowledge, compared to all that which is, is hardly enough to cover one's head. How can such a feeble scrap be expected to offer any sort of protection at all? One might as well be naked, and why not? Is that not how we were born the first time? So why not again? Wash the afterbirth of the womb off you so that you might step into the new life fresh and clean. To see, one must have clear eyes, and a clear mind.

It is not old men and women that we should strive to be--those people so set in their knowledge of life that it clouds all possibility. It is the newborn that should be our greatest example. To awake every morning as if it were the first time ever and see the world before us with those wondrous newborn eyes--that is they way of the journey of the spirit: that journey that encompasses all others.

2006-08-12T20:48:00.000-05:00

The sound of genius is seldom pleasant.

4 New Lives Enter the World

2006-08-11T10:42:00.000-05:00

Images of sand speckled with blood keep revolving through the back-door of consciousness--the chilling feeling that we're all tied to the desert winds that twist and distort the words of prophets, turning holy men to murderers. It is not the blood of the lamb that covers the ground, but the promise of humanity spilled; children ripped apart by the tools of greed, the nightmare of religion married to the nightmare of science filling the sky.

How can a parent explain this world to a child when it can't be explained to the self? The beautiful gift of life perverted by the free market and / or the uniforms at the door.

In the last 4 weeks, 4 friends have given birth--4 new lives in this world. And life is beautiful, but it seems that the greater energies of Man are spent in making it ugly, turning nature against itself. Always meddling in the province of the Way, never content to let things be.

Freedom is the morning bird's song & wars have always filled the air as there has always been birth in the midst of death, ceaselessly stumbling toward nirvarna as the world rages on. . .

Discoveries in Jazz/ Remembrances of the Dead

2006-08-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

It is a bright summer morning and I'm listening to John Coltrane's Coltrane's Sound--a fantastic album that always seems to bring back memories of my college years, back when Jazz was a new discovery that we turned each other on to like it was some new amazing insight into the human capacity for creation. And for us, it was.

It was sometime during my freshman year that I wandered into a bookstore not far from my college (the only one for miles due to the fact that I went to a rural outpost of a university), and after aimlessly browsing around for about a half hour, discovered a tape rack (this was around 1994-1995) that contained a few Jazz and Blues cassettes. By this time in life, I had thankfully encountered the work of a few Bluesmen, but had yet to have any sort of real exposure to Jazz, other than knowing that it was a more or less improvisational music that tended to involve trumpets and saxophones. I casually turned the metal carousel, examining its contents for anything of interest. Vaguely recognizing the name of Miles Davis, I picked up a cassette entitled Kind of Blue. Seeing the word "blue" in the title, I assumed it must have some sort of relation to the Blues, and decided on the spot to give it a try, not having any sort of inkling as to how the recording I had in my hands would utterly change how I viewed Jazz, or music in general, for that matter.

Let me back-track here; I have to give credit where credit is due: Around the time of my sophomore year of High School, I had encountered the Grateful Dead. A fellow of Irish extraction named Joe Drennan, whom taught in the same school as my father and possessed a strange twinkle in his eye--as if to say, I know a secret, and if you are patient enough, you just might find out what it is--sent up a tape to me as a birthday present, of recordings he had personally culled from his own Grateful Dead collection, of them performing Bob Dylan tunes. I listened to the tape patiently and with care. And could not stand it. I think part of it had to do with an unfamiliarity with the quality of concert recordings. A lot of it had to do with growing up with studio performances and an expectation that everything had to be musically perfect. But mostly, I think it had to do with a basic ignorance of the Dead's music. Worst of all, I actually wanted to like what I was hearing, but just could not get myself to embrace it. Except for one notable exception: there was an acoustic performance on the tape of Jerry Garcia performing with the bassist John Kahn, doing a stripped down version of When I Paint My Masterpiece. There was something in the sparsity of the performance that somehow touched me deep down to the depths, almost in spite of myself. Here was a man armed only with an acoustic guitar and a rather tobacco-scarred voice, backed only by a stand-up bass, and I found myself becoming utterly entranced by his obviously heart-felt performance.

A few weeks later, I found myself up in Madison with my mother for some reason now lost to time. I remember being somewhere out in the suburbs. She is a real quilt enthusiast, and wanted to check out a quilt show that was going on in the area. I, being a male teenager, had no interest in the proceedings whatsoever, and informed her that I was going to walk over to a music shop I had seen a few blocks away as we drove in.

I had already formed my typical music store routine by this fairly early stage in my life, which was to meticulously go through the store tooth-comb, searching (forever searching!) for that album to unlock the secrets of the universe. On this day, I found at least part of that key.

Despite my overall negative impression of the Dead-Dylan tape Mr. D had dubbed for me, I found the Masterpiece rolling through my mind as if it was on a mental tape-loop. I could not get it out of my head, and so found myself pulled to the Grateful Dead bin, almost as if I were the Millennium Falcon caught in the Death Star's tractor beam.

I think I went through the entirety of the Dead bin's contents close to ten times, debating which cd I should get, or even if I should purchase any of them at all. I remember I even left the store at one point empty handed, only to be mysteriously pulled back inside by that wonderfully raspy voice of Garcia's, along with those guitar lines unlike any I had heard before.

I don't think I could have necessarily articulated it at this point in my life, but I knew that I had heard a guitarist who had managed to turn a major corner within the confines of popular music (as if the Dead ever acknowledged those "confines!"), and had broken completely free of the standard blues-based lead guitar. (I was to later learn that Coltrane had been a major influence on how the Dead in general, and Garcia in particular, viewed music).

I walked back into the store (under the bemused view of the store clerk, whom had been watching my silent deliberations for some time now), and made a bee line back to the Dead bin. Not having any reference to speak of, I had to rely more or less on the covers of the albums as a guide. Using this rather dubious method, I could tell that Axoamoxoa was probably a psychedelic album, while American Beauty was perhaps more traditional. I ended up with Beauty, in no small part due to the Masterpiece that was still playing in my head.

The entire ride home was filled with expectation (this was back in the day when most vehicles still had tape players as opposed to the cd variety). We finally arrived (it was a good hour's ride), and I immediately raced to my bedroom to put this cd on, not having any idea what would emanate from the speakers once I hit play. I settled back in my bean bag chair (yes, I admit it, I once owned a bean bag chair), and was instantaneously hit by the opening chords of Box of Rain. From the moment I heard "Look out of any window, any morning, any evening, any day," my heart welled up with joy--pure, naked, unabashed joy. I had never heard an album that seemed so utterly and completely RIGHT from the first note to the last. It was like finding on old friend that you had never known before.

I don't want to give the impression that I became on outright Deadhead in that golden instant, but the seed had now been firmly planted. I now had the incentive to follow the band out through those nebulous clouds of cosmic dust and see what lay out there beyond the outer reaches. But it took time. Mainly, I think my ears and mind had to become accustomed to that sort of travel, but once they did, whole new worlds opened up before me. What the Dead had done was loosen my ridged ideas and expectations of what music was and what it could be. Suddenly, anything was possible, and I found myself actually hoping to encounter the new and unknown rather than running from it in confusion and disgust. Simply put, I heard with new eyes and a new mind.

In many respects, the Dead had readied me for much of what was to come, for this new way of hearing was also a new way of seeing--a new way of looking at the world as a place of infinite possibility, where you could actually interact with that possibility to the point where life itself became an improvisational act and the outcome was often much more interesting than you could have possibly have imagined.

And so, when I brought back that cassette of Kind of Blue back to my dorm room and popped it in my tiny stereo, my ears had already been primed for Miles' genius. And again, I discovered another old friend who utterly amazed me from the first note to the last.

There might be some out there who puzzle at this correlation, but I honestly don't know how, for the same spirit that moved the Dead on stage night after ecstasy-inducing night (well, a good amount of them, at least) was the same spirit that guided Miles and 'Trane and the rest during those magical sessions that produced Kind of Blue--where the songbooks were thrown out and they just BLEW off a few bare-bones chord changes. And something unspeakably fragile and brilliant was born. Should every instant of life be any different?

The Day the Doors Went Unlocked

2006-08-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

I remember the day
the doorways went unlocked
I peered into eternity's root
and saw the skeleton of the cosmos
replace the sky--
Vast mandalas of darkness and light
unfurled like flags
of fire and starlight

Thousands of leaves
pulsating with wind--
green sails filled with life,
distant lights
trailing over
sea's dark mirror

While Africa spirit-voices
reverberated through soul-wells
and I passed through
Sahara plains generations
and followed the ecstatic rhythms
of the drum migration

A celestial veil
filled my vision with
heaven's sharp light--
I looked with Adam's clear eyes and saw
A morning web
burning with dew

2006-08-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

Nah--it's like Jazz, man, it's got to come out of your soul, straight through with no restraints, no intellectual hang ups or worrisome conceits, but to shed the armour that we shackle around the soul, those bizarre high school meter sticks wondering if we'll measure up and look like a fool (like my freshman year of college where I decided to myself that it was better to shut up than risk getting seared with the scarlet S for square). All those little worries when life is risk, when getting up in the morning might mean death. But are you going to live your life on the lamb? Better to be one of those "constantly risking the absurd."

But just to let it flow like a conduct, to get yourself out of the way and let it come pouring out, to stand naked and say THIS IS HUMANITY! We need to do this, uncover the human within before we're all buried beneath at least two thousand years of machine pretending. To see the seed of life within, then see it in the next person, and realize we are all part of the web. Who could fire a rocket then or pay their workers starvation wages? It is time to awaken while we still can.

Laissez-Faire

2006-07-31T09:52:00.000-05:00

Search lights echo out eyes
blades cut through humid air,
white heat reflections played out
on night's blank black canvas--
streets of maze-rat processions

Rocket-fueled fury blots out
the child's solitary scream
diplomats play chess in the park
excusing themselves
While desert stars multiply
in the dead's eyes

the silent throng march on
beneath banners of ancient prophets
assembly lines fill death-plots,
the human hand driven,
Lulled to sleep by a burning violin--
The Temple fallen to money lenders hands

The dream that graced the wine-colored horizon,
those jewels that sprang from sun on sea
in that eternal twilight
where gods hands moved among men
buried deep within the unhealed wound
as the advance forward, unceasing, continues--
A Nazarene's footsteps crushed
beneath tank tread

2006-07-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

It is late in the morning on an early spring day as Jimi Hendrix swirls through the air and I watch a child-size flag flutter in the breeze hanging from a telephone poll in an alley looking like the remnants of a defeated army, the last fragments of a fallen empire clinging tenaciously to the present. I wonder if the person who placed it there was conscious of the irony of it all. It is a symbol of a security that has been forever whipped away in the smoke and ash of that brutal September day back in 2001. Mine was one of the few faces watching the Twin Towers come crashing down on live TV that was not filled with the look of hideous surprise. Anger, yes, but not surprise. I was angry with the whole stinking world that day; angry with the perpetual cause and effect of ignorance born of overgrown children I had never bought into the myth of security, that the big boss in the oval office had everything under control. Security is a lie told to the self, an illusion that evaporates as quickly as a desert mirage when one gets too close, and I find it best not to indulge one's self too deeply in illusions, and eventually you have to come to the conclusion that most things taken for granted in this world are illusions of one sort or another. But then again, maybe I'm wrong. It does seem that billions get on in their daily lives by buying completely into illusions. Perhaps it is easier that way--easier in the short run, at least, but life is not a sprint, it is the iron-bitch of marathons, and those without endurance quickly fall by the wayside. The question is more one of fortitude than anything, but one must have a certain degree of humble sympathy at all times, for life beats even the best of us down at one time or another--what separates the runners from the fallen is how they whether those times of defeat, whether they have the strength to make through those times when every safety net is pulled out from beneath them. But it is in making it through that they see that those safety nets weren't really as safe as they thought.
But Jimi's guitar is screaming "Hear My Train A-Comin" now and a cool breeze is running over my face. That is all I need from the world--the security (if you can call it that) that there will be music to fill the air and cool breezes to rush across my face. That is enough. Everything else can go as it will, as it has been going since time immemorial. And so I go on, waving that flag for all its worth, and I'm not talking about the stars and stripes here--I am talking about the flag of survival in this world of steel and blood. You go on and wave that flag too, after all, you've earned the right, haven't you? Yes--wave that damn flag for all its worth, put your head back and bellow at the sky! Life may have kicked you to the ground, bashed your teeth in and left you for dead, but you gave it the big "fuck you!" and got back up. And that, my friend, is what counts when the tally sheet of life is added up, that when the road ran out, you screwed it on and punched the accelerator, cutting a broad swath through the wilderness where no foot had tread. Hot damn! Keep at it! Forward with flag in hand!

2006-07-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

The road is its own sort of drug–something about that mixture of hot asphalt sun, saddlebags hanging from metallic thunder biker leather, the lopping backs of eighteen wheel wagons following the buried ruts of old weather-beaten schooners now the winding arteries of this road-mad nation racing over the plains in a day, over the same hallowed ground that holds within its earthen embrace the bodies of untold settler children that were left in the dead womb of dry dirt plains as family, teary-eyed and aged by the merciless winds of the wastes, headed on west to whatever was out there to great them–maybe the promised land of California golden hills, maybe death itself; the only thing to do–carry on west, whatever may come.

And so I headed west to greet whatever may come, through rainy morning Illinois, over the Mississippi bridge and into preliminary west of Iowa cornfields and blue-hill misty distances. Iowa–the maternal heart of the mid-west, don’t ask me to explain–something about those rolling hills and gentle green reminds me of apron strings and childhood worn Amish quilts. Iowa, like the smile and giggle of the girl next door. Then the next glimpses of the real west of the furnace of hellfire plains and sulfur water–Nebraska: the death of many a settler’s dreams and desires, going from innocent green of eastern cornfields and slowly showing its ragged fury as you travel further into the empty abyss of the great plains–dry grass blowing harsh warnings through malevolent winds, dry and hot like the curses of Sioux ghosts rained down upon the white invader. Nebraska, who would on my return throw her full fury down upon me, trapped in rain-drenched and wind-blown car uttering libations to strange deities, who, like southern Wyoming, reminded me of slow death, robbed of the dignity of privacy, just out in the open beneath the oppression of the white-hot sun.

But how I dreamed of those mountains, and how many rises did I ascend hoping to see those far-off granite gods in the blue-haze of plains Colorado distances? So many times only greeted by the bone-dry miles of ranch grasslands and ghost town windmills pulling mud infused water from the tired earth while grappling with the wind’s talons. Such emptiness I never dreamed of there before me like a memory of complete defeat that stabs at you in the middle of the sweat-drenched night. Mile after innumerable mile, the hours passing like chains in a never-ending link of a prison line. But then, just when the last droplets of hope were about to evaporate into the desert wind, there they were, hidden by the haze so that I mistook them for looming clouds until only a few miles lay between us. My mountains, found again after the elapse of a decade and a half, when last I looked upon them with unsure adolescent eyes, now, with almost fifteen some years passing through the stream of time, again they greet me with their stoic majesty–the impervious Rockies rising like a prayer from the wastelands of the plains.

It seemed so utterly incongruous, to be walking down the streets of afternoon Colorado Springs after having spend hour upon hour traversing that deserted wasteland of the Plains. Though I had experienced it all firsthand, it seemed to me utterly astonishing that I was now at the doorstep of the Garden of the Gods. I can’t imagine what this almost otherworldly transition must have seemed like to the early settlers–it must have been nothing less, I suppose than going from hell to heaven in an instant, or at least to spot heaven’s gates in the darkest corners of hell.

And so it was that I went from dusty roadside cafes of Nebraska and eastern Colorado where it seemed that Hank Williams sr. should have been emanating from some distant, unseen transistor radio to nothing less than the Grateful Dead greeting me as I stumbled through the door of the sushi bar where Josh worked, haggard by the long sun-drenched highway. And it seemed no less incongruous to have Josh stand before me, old friend of way-back Milwaukee, greeting me with a back-breaking bear hug. He sat me down at a place at the end of the bar and before I my eyes could adjust to the lighting, he set down before me a bottle of aged scotch whisky. I was in the Rockies, and they were greeting me with outstretched arms.

2006-07-30T16:14:00.000-05:00

The night is falling from the sky. I can see it coming through the blinds, cascading down like molten fires erupted from some fiery interior world. It will bury us all, this never-ending night. There is nothing more to do than to face it head on with the certitude of the condemned heading for the guillotine. Am I the only one that sees this nightmare come to life? I walk the streets alone. I cannot find another man or woman there, no one to look me squarely in the eye. All I see are pale apparitions clouding the streets with their dead languages. It amazes me the words I hear used. There are floods of them spewing from rotten mouths. Their movements carry the grace of pale-bearers. They move in and out the shops, going about their daily business, rising every morning at the appointed time–a legion of zombies clogging the highways. But it is all a farce! They build their mausoleums higher and higher, trying to scrape a bit of heaven from the sky, but the dead piled on top of one another can only reach so high.

Is there anyone out there to hear these words? Am I the last man alive in this land that stinks of death? Where have the others gone to? What route of escape did they find? Have they found a place where the earth still breaths, where the waters still run pure and golden?

I watch the stars rise and fall from this bare cavern of a flat. The days and nights bleed into one another. Still, the idea obsesses me–a way out! There must be an exit from this graveyard of glass and steel. The winds rustles the dried up leaves. The sky looks like an endless void. How did I enter into this prison? Is this the price for losing Eden? I cannot forget the promise of Paradise, even as I stumble through the bile of these dead streets. There must be a way back! Even though we have ventured this far into midnight, we cannot have completely lost the memory of the path from where we came! To regain the memory of our ancestors, to know their honest glory once more! Dash the chains against the rocks so that we might return to the spring of life, that seed hidden deep within the barren soil of our being.

Improvisation from Spring

2006-07-30T16:02:00.000-05:00

Spring is just spreading through the air as winterÂs grip is slowly seeping away from the land. I sit here in my apartment, music unwinds itself through the atmosphere as I peer out the window, lost in the continuous processes of the earth, the source and giver of life for which we are forever tied.

How futile our flight from the land is! As we extol it with our mouths, we simultaneously lay it low with the lemmingsÂ rush toward progress. What a mad, dumb beast we areÂand what other creature in this world has ever known insanity or the slaughter that has defined humanityÂs short reign on this small speck of space that has been forever called GodÂs crown jewel? The pomposity of the higher order of ape. We are the spaceorangutanutangÂthe grunting simian of space stations and shuttles. 2001 come and gone, the weapon of bone never far out of reach.

The twenty first centuryÂwhat promise it held in those decades leading up to it. A world of peace and hope lay before us, a brotherhood and sisterhood of understand. All those dreams wiped away in the blazes of that cruel September day, the smoke from the towers blinding millions to the causes of their implosion.

A brotherhood of man! How ridiculous those words seem now that weÂve entered the age of nationalism unleashed once again! Athens and Sparta hot on the boot heels of progress. The new dark ages spread against the sky in a curtain of burning oil. The Empires of old rumble over the land once more.

And so, I sit here, lost in the earthÂs nurturing womb as the surface currents play themselves out over the face of the sea, while truth lurks below in the depths, down where the jellyfish dance free. We hold the lion and eagle up as kings of the animal kingdom, but they are as much slaves as the most well paid CEOs. The jellyfishÂnow there is a prince among animals! It has no need to come screeching out of the sky or roaring out of the bush to rip a rodent or gazelle apart for a mealÂit survives simply and contentedly just wobbling through the sea. The scientist tells us that the jellyfish is a lower form of life, but the scientist is wrong. Evolution has equipped the jellyfish to get by on less, and so it has no use for spending so much of its life chasing after meals. It simply exists, contented to be carried by the currents of the sea where it will. I declare the jellyfish as a new symbol for wisdom and contentmentÂhumanity has followed the lionized path long enough.

The mechanized apes lurch about, measuring success by the length of cars as the ape technology has advanced from the skull-crushing femur to mass destruction at the push of a button (the wonders of convenience!) as the clouds float by overhead and the rivers empty into the sea, as we float through the vastness of space, a petri dish worth of wonder, as I breath in the first stirrings of spring and am content as the music plays on.

A Broken Silence

2006-07-28T12:14:00.000-05:00

There are times when the thunder of war silences all else, when all you can do is look dumbly on as news and footage of the carnage rolls in. How can you form any sort of rational response to such insanity?

The worst is desperately wanting to say something, to speak out against it, to wish vainly that you could take any number of world leaders and somehow shake some reason into them. That sense of utter frustration has silenced me in the past few weeks. And, for all I disagree with him on, I have to say that my father was right in that the older you get the less you know, and the less answers you have. And so I have watched, as I'm sure many others of you have, as the images of unbridled brutality continue to rain down onto our computers and television sets from unseen satellites in the sky. And the question keeps coming back to me, how do you erase thousands of years of animosity? We are all children of a lesser god, for the True God, Its Holy Name Unknown to mortal ears, would never condone so much blood on Its followers hands. And no one is above the slaughter.

We have this insanity we have agreed to call reality. I am now very tempted to break the agreement. Whatever agreement I have to break to find True Reality, I will.

2006-07-13T10:50:00.000-05:00

The world is held captive to the whims of madmen.

The Fruits of Ignorance

2006-07-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

The Allman Bros. are on in the background, filling the bright, summer air with their hot 'Lanta licks. As much as I love the soul of their guitar notes, it does little to change the grim mood that has suddenly descended down upon me. Forget freedom, friends, it is insanity that is on the march, and it is rolling over every corner of this globe where humanity's reach extends. The bodies never cease piling up--where there is a will, there is death.

And what is the cause of all this goddamn death, this stinking mountain of stupidity? Well, the Buddha is right when all is said and done--the root of it all, at least, is ignorance. But what are the fruits of this ignorance (for ye shall know what sort of tree stands before ye by what fruit it bears). I'd have to put greed near the top of the list (Ezra Pound may have been a damn fool throughout a good deal of his life until expressing contrition to Allen Ginsberg in Rapallo, but he was right about the cause and effect of greedheads and war, just ask Halliburton). Avarice is a cancer. It has been with us (humanity) from the start. But is seems that as humanity has developed, its impact upon us and the world in which we inhabit has grown exponentially. Not only has it lead to the war-machine feasting upon our young, but now chokes the planet with its toxic belching. Moloch is alive and well, eh Allen?

And I still stand by my statement that football/soccer is the world's second most dangerous spectator sport, next to religion (even if my information on Pat Sayjak might have been less than accurate--damn that tricky Curveball! Never trust an Iraqi cabdriver with gold fever! He's burnt me for the last time!)

So hold tight, folks. This roller coaster ride has just started rolling, and we aren't even down the first slope yet.

Thoughts of Dublin In Your Eyes

2006-07-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

. . .and I have this sinister scrap paper in mind when suddenly I realize I miss the damp streets of Dublin filling with soft lullabies beneath the drunken waking sun.

To see that sunlight that stirs the earth from its star-blue sleep in your eyes--a mirror forever reflecting the living universe revolving, a pool of moonlit dew, the street lights of O'Connell, the quiet outside the post office before the storm blew through, the faint feel of the West, of Connamera brushing the face in the breeze--an epitaph to all my yesterdays & a wide-eyed embrace to all my tomorrows spent outside the steel box of time, inside the Buddha-mind. To see it all with you!

God

2006-06-24T10:05:00.000-05:00

I remember
when I was a child
and we would go
to the temple
of stone and glass
and sit in a quiet
reverence
while being told
of the gate-keeper
to inner-soul wisdom--
the magic syllables
that would unlock
a Paradise as of yet
unattained

In the pews
faces filled
with the grey-world
of brow-sweat desperation,
Ears dulled
to the calls of Heaven
by the hot-iron battles
of innumerable factories,
Who had forgotten
the sun's soft touch
or the feel of grass
beneath the feet

After the sermon
had ended
we would pile back
into the car for
the trip home,
where I would
rid myself of
the confines of
Sunday clothes
and go and let
my mind follow
sun-filled creek
downstream
to the place of
worship--

Ears filled
with whispering pines
and sky's blue-eternity,
The lightning of illumination
opens my eyes--
what man can put a
name on God?

Heaven
starts
where words
end

Tzu-jan

2006-06-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

I actually happened upon the following quote just a few moments after having finished the blog below, but thought it apt:

"This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial--more than a terrestrial river--which might have suggested that which surrounded the shield of Homer. If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? Have I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life's current?"--Henry David Thoreau

I walk down the street, but I feel always as if I am floating on the silvery face of a stream, as if time were a vehicle and the mere act of existence itself was a continuous act of movement with everything constantly in a state of flux. And as the stream wore the great chasm of the Grand Canyon into the desert floor, so too does the current of time run across the surface of existence, wearing its signature into everything it comes into contact with.

We are all pushed forward by the current, whether we wish to be or not. Even trees and mountains cannot escape the forward flow. Perishing and rising again, we move in rhythm to the jade pattern.

The memories of all those days spent in the bow of a canoe come rushing back to me, when I observed the beauty of the paddle cutting into the quiet stream, or the churning roar of the whitewater. I learned how to read the river, to see in advance the easiest path, which was always the one where you rode on the back of the river and let it guide you through. I don't think that this life is much different. It's all a matter of following the current and knowing where to position one's self at the right moment--a sort of dance where everything is in perfect rhythm and synchronicity, for we are all children of the stream, all set to the beat of that wonderful dance called life.

and on keyboards . . .

2006-06-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

Billy's gone--miss him, man, miss him.

R.I.P. Vince Welnick

2006-06-03T19:53:00.000-05:00

Sad news came to me today when I learned that Vince Welnick, the last in a (all too long) line of Grateful Dead keyboardists passed away yesterday.

For those Deadheads of my generation, those whom were too young to have heard Brent Mydland in action, the Vince Welnick line-up of the Dead was the only flesh-and-blood band we were ever luck enough to see. Between Mydland's passing in 1990 and Garcia's in 1995, Vince Welnick served as a more than competent keyboardist, given the Dead's never-ending urge to take it outside and open up the music. In addition to his musically ability, he will be remembered for the spark of enthusiasm he brought to the band, challenging them not only to revive long forgotten Dead classics such as Here Comes Sunshine, but to delve into new territory by covering such classic songs as the Beatles' Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, It's All Too Much, Tomorrow Never Knows > Baba O'Reily (both of which he sang lead on) and Rain. His tasteful accompaniment on the later-day Dead classics such as Lazy River Road, So Many Roads and Liberty meshed perfectly with Garcia's winsome guitar playing.

As one of those last-wave Deadheads who was lucky enough to catch the show just before the lights went up for good, I'd just like to say thanks, Vince. Never had such a good time.

My Happy Death (The Hidden Spring) Part II

2006-05-31T20:59:00.000-05:00

We carry within us the miracle of Christ's transfigured--in that instant our eyes locked and our minds entwined, I felt a new beginning well up inside. Somehow the old book had suddenly ended and the first sentence in the book of Life had been set down for all time. It was like absorbing whole histories of forgotten people on the sudden brush with a relic from their buried civilization--languages not spoken for a millennia course through the mind as one sees through thousands of long-dead eyes. Except that I was not looking upon the distant past but my own future. How many times has the "love at first sight" speech been rolled out, but I am here to testify, my hand on the holy stream, that it is true--all of it. I looked into her eyes and saw the face of my wife.

And all of this is made all the more miraculous by the fact that I had already stood on the edge of the cliff and looked over into the void. I had relinquished all hope and given myself up (is that not the key?)--a storm-tossed vessel lost on the seas.

But rolling back over the continent, I kept getting the unconscious feeling that I was headed toward something inexplicably important. As if somehow, I was passing through the mirror of time. And the whole way back, my consciousness continually pierced by Cold Roses--the thorns of truth cutting through the world's illusion; the storms of Lincoln, Nebraska--sight-blinding rain and semi-rolling winds: traffic pulled over as the fury of the storm played out over the face of the Great Plains, making me feel like some kind of Midwestern Odysseus. Back over the highway of dreams covering the schooner's rills, back home to meet my one true love for the first time. 2,500 miles, and at the end of it all, your starlight eyes and moonlit smile--my Jill.

My Happy Death (The Hidden Spring) Part I

2006-05-30T09:44:00.000-05:00

Summer now and the feeling of new beginnings all around like the feeling of rain-water pouring down--something buried deep in the pagan blood, inexplicable except on the most basic of levels: the wheel turned 'round.

Where was I when lilacs last bloomed? In some distant sleep, waiting to wake from reptilian dreams. Lost in late nineteenth century hallways, tears of humidity running to the stone ground like an antebellum play. I had lost everything; forgotten my own name. Shuddered inexplicably whenever I passed my shadow in the street and seeing strangers in every mirror. The memory of the star-lit lake had been lost in the dust-covered distance, miles passed unnoticed, but not like Li Po drifting down the Yangzte; more like a hobo refugee leaving behind the smoking crater of a life, whatever remnants remained carried on his weary frame.

Funny to think how I was reborn from a smile and everything leading up to it with the precision of dominoes. Sometimes the universe showers you with blessings, and others times burning hale; and all of it is beyond our grasp. We are all little players in another play of which we are only vaguely aware; suspicions aroused for a brief moment while waiting for a bus, but then suddenly dispersed with a voice asking for a ticket or exact change. You've walked this road as well, right?

Anyway, I had gotten to the end of one road, feeling like a trapped animal cornered by Fate. But as always, another door suddenly opened and I found myself headed west in the bright month of July, not too long after Independence day. I was originally going out to see an old friend in the foothills of Colorado and lose myself for a while in Denver's neon swirl, then head on to Bay Area San Francisco to pass a few days in a small house in some other friends' back yard and gain some much needed perspective on life and what it was all about. I was then going to take the coastal roads up to Oregon to reconvene with another old friend whom I have not seen in years (no, Tim, I have not forgotten your backroads wisdom), but at some point it dawned on me that it was a no-go in the time I had--life is too damn short and we our left scratching our ass for far too much of it.

(A whole new genre was given birth by Blonde on Blonde.)

And then, after the whole itinerary was formed, word came down the cyber-pike that Phil Lesh would be playing Denver and Red Rocks with Ryan Adams at the exact same time as I would be in town (and who doesn't believe in some form of God?). And this was back in the days when Cold Roses was still freshly ringing in my ears. So one rainy morning in the green month of July, I hit the road all alone except for the constant companion and counterpoint of a random soundtrack made out in large part by the Grateful Dead (perfect music for the highway with Robert Hunter's road-tested wisdom guiding you through the Great Plains), Bob Dylan and the legend of America, the Band with music out of some strange silent movie, the Beatles White Album straight through covering all sorts of ground, and listen to Dark Side of the Moon twice in a row one morning while following the white-hot line through the desert's canyon basement. The whole sonic menagerie weaved together with Cold Roses, which really took hold and grabbed my soul while out on the road.

(Charles Mingus' II B.S. is now on in the background and I just got another cup of coffee and am ready to write. To write you need to be fully alive, and yet, so much of this world kills you off in small bits. My battle is with the forces of death who constantly circle about waiting to rip off another piece of flesh. They killed Jesus but he came back--and we can all rise from the dead!)

But the smile! That smile I first saw turning around suddenly first day off the road--how did I know that my entire future lay ahead in that smile and those bright hazel-brown eyes? What is it that gives birth to those moments of supreme clarity, when one can see beyond today's horizon and into the murky distances that lie ahead? They say your life passes before your eyes when you die (did I die in that instant and was reborn?) Her name was Jill, and one traveling-road had ended, but a whole new road had opened up before my eyes like the Red Sea parting to show me the way to the Promised Land way beyond California--the greatest road of all-time, the road inward to that hidden spring forever flowing.

Silence

2006-05-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

Weary & lost in the iron veins
of the city's electric soul
illuminated by a dark dream--
the poison of fear
paints the night's coliseum

Always a prisoner
of the reflection of eyes--
The hoof-beat of years
rattles through the mind

The language of war scars the sky
The collision of dreams
written in the soil's tears
The cries of 3,000
entombed within the breath of history--

The stream of sorrow
continues
until the reign of silence
buries every cannon blast
and murder-cry--
fading ripples upon a sea
unending--
Sunlight piercing
the prison wall

I am in the Twilight of My Youth

2006-05-26T09:34:00.000-05:00

Thank God! The sun is setting on the tumult of thirty years of awkward strife! Amen and amen again I say to its passing--farewell to the demons of insecurity. The cracked mask of youth falls away as the sure face of manhood emerges. The weight of those thirty years knocking about in the darkness of confusion, the hurricane swirl of emotion sometimes almost paralyzing in its force. And goodbye to those years of constant struggle against my physical enemy: cerebral palsy. You were an adversary whom had much to teach me, and while you will still lurk in my muscles and sinews until my dying day, we know that I have won, that I have banished you to the no-man's land of defeat. But I feel still that you are an old friend, that I was formed as a result of our unending war. The scars I wear from our battle I wear with pride. They are more precious than any medals handed out by any army or government, they are not pinned to a uniform, but are forever seared into my flesh--they are the man that I am, a document of every foot advanced on the battlefield that is life. Thank God the battle continues!

I walk about the street and in the store windows I see the magazines that hold up the slaves of youth as mortal gods. Their Eden is illusion; the god they worship is a lie. The ones that wear the perpetual plastic smile of youth, the never fading smile, the doll house smile that sparkles in the incandescent light of a nuclear blast. I walk down the street and see their inhuman gladness unhindered by the journey of the soul. Ten thousand years in the grave and their smiles will still be shimmering up to the heavens while the corpse beneath rots away. Even today while I see them in their ghostly gracefulness wisp down the street, beneath the myriad smiles I smell the stench of rot. It invigorates me, sustains me, jolts me from sleep and reminds me that I am still living. It is a pungent flower, to be sure, and its beauty is that of the undying flower bred in factories--but we live in the assembly line age. Soon we will join with the undying flowers and taste the stale breath of eternity--never dying, never living, with our perfectly painted smiles uniformly stitched upon the face. The wonders of the future almost in reach!

Black Memories Fade Hard

2006-05-24T19:03:00.000-05:00

A stiff shot of Yukon Jack, for medicinal purposes (remember, Oscar?), a cold Augsburger Golden, and Frank Zappa's Waka/Jawaka--not a bad way to start out a Wednesday night, all in all. At least enough to lift me out of the perpetual swirl of weirdness that is Our World, God love it. Or is it? Where were you when the crazy shit started to go down? As I recall, I was safely installed in my efficiency apartment" (aka: a closet with kitchenette and head) on Kane St., Milwaukee, reading Henry Miller's Black Spring. It was a glorious morning, as I remember. The kind that moves poets to verse. I was lounging about, drinking my second cup of Irish Breakfast tea, when for some reason now lost to time, I had to call up my parents. Little did I realize when making that phone call that not only would my world never be the same, but no other Americans' as well. My father answered, and proceeded to tell me that a commercial airliner had ripped through one of the Twin Towers.

"Dear Jesus in Heaven," I thought, "could this be real?" But I knew my father to be a reliable source, since he is an amateur pilot. And I somehow doubted that any broadcast news station would be sick enough to play a joke like that, even though I found myself hoping that it were nothing more than that.

Since I had no television at that time, I raced over to the student union at the U of W, Milwaukee to find a television and make some sort of sense out of the bare bones details that my father had given to me. I arrived just in time to see the second tower hit, then the Pentagon. It looked like some bad Hollywood action movie, but I knew it was real. Many around me gaped at the screen in utter disbelief, but all I felt was a rising tide of fury, all the more so because of the sense of futility that accompanied it. I had never felt so goddamn helpless, and that's what really infuriated me.

We all know what happened from there on out. And yet, I still have not come to terms with the grim realities that were unleashed on that black day in September. If anything, that day only seemed to confirm my darkest suspicions of the human nature, that in the millions of years that have passed since we first took that bold step from the primordial slim, we have developed little beyond our pack animal simian beginnings. Still sequestered within our prides, still eyeing the others of our species with glances fraught with suspicion, still in blind competition for the mastodon.

I am not entirely certain what I had intended to accomplish when I began this screed, but it became what it was meant to be, I am certain of that much. And you will not blame me if my mind so quickly clouded with memories of that vicious day in 2001, for the dust and smoke lifted into the air on that day has yet to settle, and it will be a long time coming before it finally does. I think in many ways it was a doorway leading to a maze, and the only way out of that maze is to come together, not in any narrow nationalistic sense, but as one people, if that will ever be possible. We are all groping about in the dark and we will continue to do so as long as we are filled with such irrational loathing for each other.

I have no answers, no secret maps to get us out of this corner. I'm not sure what can be done as long as men continue to kill in the name of God--how can you reason with that? But even though 9/11 was a doorway leading into a maze, it was really just an extension of the maze humanity had been stumbling about in since time immemorial. To see beyond the maze, I think, is the trick. Perhaps even the key. To see beyond its walls while working within them. That's the best I can do at this time. Sorry I don't have more.

And don't forget that we are spinning around in a vast void on a little speck of space. That should put anyone who thinks that are the golden apple of God's eye in their place. We are one or two steps away from the ant--dig yourself.

OK--that'll do it for now.

Highway 61 Revisited Once More

2006-05-22T08:56:00.000-05:00

Mike Bloomfield's guitar is cutting through the air with it's wild metallic hale of howls--there's something about the whole alchemical mix, the combination of post-apocalypse Burroughsian imagery, honky tonk piano, Chicago Chess blues guitar on Owsley's finest blend & nightmare organ of Manhattan Bleecher St. midnight--something that hits your ears and tears up the synapse highway to the medulla inner sanctum of the brain that tells ya that somewhere in there between Like a Rolling Stone and Desolation Row a corner was turned, a tidal wave of change hit Plymouth rock, the black & white world went to technicolor in the space of a note being born, a bomb was dropped akin to Bird & Diz at Minton's, a page turned in the Big Book of Time imperceptible to intellectual slaves chained to Marxist/Captialist/Modernist analysis--flowers blooming in the big room of perception like Aldous Huxley's smile, the Alpha & Omega do the fandango while old gypsy women gaze into the crystal ball eternal & I recall Highway 61 rollin' from Duluth down to the shores of Mother Mississippi while the voices of bluesmen echo from the shadows of Tombstone Blues while Franz Kafka walks over the darkened Charles Bridge, Beatles singing "I'm A Loser"--there's a bit of historical perspective for ya. Who saw the shot out of the cannon coming? Not even Miles Davis had donned his pimpin' shades--the difference between yesterday and today, between Michelle and Nowhere Man, between the Kapitalist--Communist battles that buffeted the King of May and the gravity that holds the rainbow in place. The sergeant at arms has left his post, but we're still adrift in the sea of time, the escape pod carrying the silvery seeds to a new home somewhere beyond the horizon of the sun while Bob Dylan carries on the guerilla war through the stages of the world--This is American music, to be sure.

The Long March

2006-05-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

We are prisoners of commerce
wrapt lovingly in arms
of electronic warmth
by the smokestack queen mother
of our plastic desire--
A neon colony
shooting our fluorescent dreams
into the heavens
like headlights invading
a still dark

We have forgotten the soft whisper of pines,
Forgotten the field's gentle sway--
dancers beneath the stars
with minds unclouded by
the cancer of billboard dreams

Who was that person who first became discontented
lounging beneath night's gentle movements?
Whose ears desired more than
river-song
mingled with the lark?
Who was it that began the long march
toward a silicon god,
toward metallic perfection--
a mathematical equation,
everything in
inhuman symmetry
with no room left
for the flesh howl?--
The world of Progress
made complete
with one last
skyward-pointing tomb

The Wisdom of the Songbird

2006-05-10T19:36:00.000-05:00

I find myself increasingly drifting downstream, and the world around me falls away as greater vistas slowly come into view. The warnings of the news reports thunder from the screen, but it seems each new warning is just a reflection of the one before it. Nothing has changed. In a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years--nothing has changed. Multitudes bow before their gods, then pick up the blessed sword for holy slaughter. Rich men get richer, and with every dollar, more suspicious of their fellow man, the hunger gnawing deeper. Millions move about in the chains of futility, and yet their movement grows quicker. Empires rise up, gobbling up those smaller nations. And then the cancer of discontent spreads until the old order dissolves into chaos. The year is 2006 but is might as well be 2006 B.C. The only difference is the speed with which each generation marches onward triumphantly to the grave. The monuments to our collective idiocy have grown larger, and have been erected in far less time. And still, it is all incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I'm the idiot, the fool off to the side scratching his head. The world calls me a fool because I am content to be off to the side, content to live my life free of the virus of worldliness. I find my strength in my foolishness. If I were to be embraced by the world, then I would know that I have surely failed. So why then do I write these words? Because I have faith that there are other fools out there--those who wear the smile of the mountains. And so the songbird outside my window continues his song. He has no knowledge of who is in power, of what war is being fought or why. He does not even know the proper name of God. And yet he sings against the twilight. I deem him wise. To see the moment in eternity, and eternity in the moment! The gift of heaven's blue eyes!

"Cold Roses" On the Road

2006-05-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

for Jill

April finally warmly arisen
as trees begin to bud--
I sit comfortably at my computer
in an old Grateful Dead t-shirt
My company--the steam
emanating from coffee cup,
enveloped in that dark womb of distortion
of Ryan Adams'
If I Am a Stranger
As needle caresses vinyl

(flip to side two, record two)

Now the first harmonica strains
of Dance All Night
As I remember driving over
deserts and plains
from Wisconsin
to Colorado
(Red Rocks with Phil Lesh & Ryan),
then on down through the
Sierra Nevada to the Bay
All the way
listening to
those dark-blue
revelations
of Cold Roses,
wondering "how do you keep love alive?"
and what would become of me,
caught out alone
in the vastness of the world
like the last child standing
after a game of musical chairs,
Not knowing that that wild road
stretching like the dry skin
of a snake over the mountains
of the west
would lead me directly to
your warmth,
like an April morning,
That our eyes would first embrace
one another from across the room
the day after my western adventures had ended,
That as I drove on, Ryan Adams was pleading with me
not to give up on that elusive gift called love,
He was leading me to you,
That as I passed those sun-drenched miles
on the plains,
I could feel the well open
and rain-clouds swell
over Nebraska
And desert beds
begin to fill
that long road home
that lead me to this morning
of sunlight & lovemaking
to Magnolia Mountain
running like a stream
through lives
entwined

spontaneous poem of Spring love-joy, April 12, 2004. Thanks, Ryan--for getting me through to her!

The Soul of America Caught Naked in Ryan Adams' Voice

2006-05-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

A Saturday night and Ryan Adams' Jacksonville City Nights is on the turn table while the whiskey is in the jar and the sun is setting beyond the Great Plains, the Rockies spreading their vast shadows over the graves of gun fighters and the long forgotten bleached bones of outlaws. Ryan Adams has managed to do something that I was tempted to think impossible in this digital/electronic mechanized age--he has recorded an album striking in its originality while somehow hearkening back to an age that the prairie sun long ago set upon. Listening to Jacksonville, you here hints of Sun Records by way of the old crackle of Hank Williams sr. records on a dust covered jukebox in some lost west Texas town. He has constructed a sonic looking glass that possesses the magical power of looking upon past and future simultaneously--the pain of a lonely rain-speckled afternoon when your girl has let that front porch door slam behind her for the last and final time. And yet, your grandfather's sorrow is in there somewhere, caught between the subtle creek in the voice and the cry of the petal steel. It's the static of some half-captured radio station heard absentmindedly while cruising over wind-swept highways of the southwest where the cactus open needle-covered arms up toward the sky as if in quiet reverence to the silent master of creation. It's the midnight river swelling with a storm's ugly might and threatening the farmhouse that has been in the family for three generations and has outlasted even bankers covetous designs, the one that gave shelter to those dust bowl refugees and who knows if even Woody Guthrie himself weren't amongst their ranks. It's in the cigarette scarred voices of old men sitting around a honky tonk bar trading shots of Wild Turkey and stories of the old days when cattle roamed the range 'stead of telecommunication antennas. And it's in the eyes of the old women, bless their wind-burnt souls, hanging laundry on the lines at twilight.

Yeah--it holds all those things, like a sonic scrapbook of who we were when the blood of struggle shook the land, when Wobblies battled it out with the boss's hired cops on the streets so that making a living wouldn't leave ém in their graves. It's all those things, all those things that are so quickly disappearing from the scene to be replaced by another collection of plastic people (all apologies to FZ), all lookin' just alike in the same jeans an' same triangular glasses frames, readin' the same book lookin' for the same tired codes to lead them through to the same checkout line payin'with plastic credit cards bought with plastic souls.

So thank you, Ryan Adams, for casting a little bit of fading light on this long sun down on the American soul. Who knows what's gonna happen when that darkness finally falls? I hope and pray that there will be a few troubadours like yourself to shoot some sparks out into that godforsaken night to give us a little bit of light to see by, a little bit of light--just enough to look at that face squarely in the mirror and keep us honest, a little bit of light to look back upon our forefathers, into the future and out of the past, and keep a few outlaws alive until the next great awakening comes stormin' from the sky above.

Playing Dominoes With History

2006-05-05T10:56:00.000-05:00

I've been spending the morning listening to the web cast of Neil Young's new album, "Living With War," thinking back upon that awful row of dominoes that got us here to this point in time and space; back to those months after 9-11, sitting in the drug store cafe on Brady Street reading the reports leaked from the Pentagon on plans to invade Iraq, wondering to myself if it was just contingency plans, an awful joke, or if something more dark and menacing was on the horizon. But why take the eyes off Osama; why invade Russia, especially after Napoleon had gone down in flames?

Then came the big flight over the ocean and reading of the march to war from a computer in a little Czech library, everything so completely incomprehensible, nothing adding up--the saber-rattling soon to turn to lightning war ending in quicksand.

And then a few nights before the fireworks let loose, sitting in a Irish Bar in Karlovy Vary, young men sitting a table away wearing gas masks, Ïn case Saddam attacks first," they said jokingly. But no amount of whiskey could drowned that awful knowledge that fools across the globe were at the helm, and we were all at their mercy.

Then the morning dawned when I had to walk into my classroom and say something to my kids, who were only beginning speakers of the English language anyway. My country had just started a war. And I didn't buy the fairy tales that Uncle Rummy was telling anyway; I knew the bastards' heads had been cloudy by the most powerful opiate know the Man--hubris. We would be there a long time, and that it would change everything. I looked into their young eyes, all expectantly looking up to me. What could I say? I was the only American they knew, the sole representative of my country. And this was the hard reality that I had to come to grips with, that as much as I hated talking on behalf of anyone or anything besides myself, I was still "the American," and I had to answer for the actions of the country I had been raised in. I did not defend anyone, and I did not pin the tail of blame on any jackass (though I suspect in any world capital you can walk blindfolded in any direction and successfully hit your target). All I said was that, "This is an awful day. A war has begun." Unlike their elders who had seen war and oppression close up, both at the hands of the Nazis and the Russians, all these kids knew were the promises of the post-Cold War world. But looking into their eyes that morning, I could see the sad sense of comprehension that most, if not all, felt. War does not know good or bad, right or wrong, guilty or innocent. The bullet and the missile does not distinguish between ideologies. There are only those lucky enough to make it through the metallic hale, and those cut to bloody shreds. Somehow these children tucked away in western Bohemia could sense the demon box about to be opened upon the Persian Gulf, Pandora never looking back.

And so here I sit, April 28th of 2006, Iraq still a black hole, the tide turning against Bush (but so what?), and Iran comfortable enough to thumb its nose at the world. I take it all in, I see the pieces of the puzzle in its whole, and I am left infuriated with a dumb, futile sense of frustration. The question that starts as a whisper then raises above the din of war and lies--How in God's name did such a pack of terminally insane, two-faced, spineless jellyfish come to run this world? What man on the street would have anything to do with a nuclear missile, or use God's name (irregardless of the God) as a battle call? And yet, we elevate these criminally insane demagogues to the level of emperors. Dismantle the empire? Have everyman be a nation, a republic of the individual, with equality and fraternity towards all?

What do you do in the face of that, knowing that all our fates rest in the hands of such men? It would be funny if it weren't true, but it is. The Button in the hands of children, and the curtain can fall at any time. So drink up your wine before closing time and gaze at the night's sky. And keep praying whatever prayer it is that soothes your soul in the middle of the night. As long as you can hear your voice, you know your still here and breathing and there still might be some morning light to pull you through to tomorrow.

Remembering Bobby Sands

2006-05-05T10:50:00.000-05:00

It was twenty Five years ago this day that Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican hunger striker, passed away after over a month on hunger strike.

In his time, he and his nine comrades on hunger strike, galvanized support for their demands to be seen and treated as political prisoners, as opposed to criminals. Their plight highlighted the struggle of Irish nationalists and republicans in the north of Ireland to remove the British presence from their country and finally grant them that most basic right, the right to self determination.

It was while on hunger strike that Bobby Sands ran and won the race to become a member of Parliament, putting the British in the awkward position of having a sitting MP on hunger strike in prison. The successful act of running and winning the Parliament seat awakened the Irish Republican conscious to the possibility of waging their struggle through politics. It could be said that this event was one of the first steps down the long road of the peace process, which accompanied the rising tide of republicans in politics through the political party Sinn Fein (We Ourselves). Today, Sinn Fein is the largest republican and nationalist party in the north of Ireland, pursuing its goals of a united socialist and democratic Ireland through politics, both north and south of the border. Bobby Sands' role in the transformation of the Irish Republican Movement from physical force to politics cannot be underestimated.

May he rest in peace.

Poetry is the Music of Desperation

2006-04-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

Poetry is a survival mechanism--that voice that appears out of the darkness to make sense of the senseless. People do not decided to write poetry, they are driven to it. There is no choice involved. It's something you find yourself doing in the middle of the night that is a better alternative to putting your fist through a mirror or pulling your teeth out. There is very little honesty left in this world, and it its getting to the point where I'd rather someone shook their fist at me rather than shake my hand. The Modern Age has turned everyone into salesmen--and everything is for sale. There are no more prophets, no more sorcerers. Instead of warriors we have soldiers as diplomats (a poor fit). We are overrun by bankers who rob with a fountain pen and legions of accountants bleeding us dry on the installment plan. The sane are turned mad, and the mad called sane. Prisons filled to capacity while psychopaths use the words of holy men as litanies for vengeance.

Meanwhile the earth beneath our feet moves; tidal pools empty and fill. The order before order continues. There will be a time when all is laid silent, when the silence of space will again rule all. As men rise and fall in the game of samsara, there will be a few moved to take up a pen and scrawl a few parting words on a wall--an epitaph, perhaps, but always a prologue as well. Beneath the screams, beneath the cries, beneath the laughter--always moving onward, always becoming. And it is from the act of continual creation that the poet and artist dips his cup, drinks it in and is revitalized. To open one's self up to the stream, especially in the darkest hour, and feel life pulsing there, just below the surface, and to give that form--that is poetry, that is spirit made word.

When Winter's Scream is Silenced

2006-04-29T14:04:00.000-05:00

It is spring here in the city of Milwaukee, which always makes me feel like a child again. Those of you who live in the warmer climes probably do not have the appreciation for this transitory season that us northerners possess. There is something deep within the soul that stirs when the first green blade is spotted rising from the grey earth. It is difficult to put that feeling into words, as if the dried husk that had encased the spirit over those long wintry months is suddenly broken open to let the radiance of sunlight play over the forgotten fields that lay in wait for its gentle encouragement. This may seem as nothing more than a bunch of poetic nonsense to you if you reside in L.A. or Miami, but it is that you do not know what it is to outlive winter's punishing grip. And it is punishing. You do not know what winter is until you have had to scrape your car windows clean of frost in sub-zero temperatures--those merciless early mornings when you are running late for work and you emerge from the warmth of your home to discover the awful labor that awaits you. And then to feel the feeling slowly drain from your hands as the glass is vigorously cleared. That is nothing less than battle. Man vs. Nature stuff. I'm surprised Hemingway never wrote a story about it, but then again, he retreated to Key West. He let the winter win, and the knowledge of it crippled him for the rest of his days. So much so that he was relegated to playing tour guide to Castro and his buddies, lighting their cigars on command. Not even Ezra Pound would answer his letters after that.
Yes, the winter has been known to take vibrant people and cut them down in the prime of life, leaving them crippled and dumb. But that is the north for you--natural selection at its most primitive and unforgiving. It is no wonder that the northern climes have given rise to such crazed individuals as Dan Ackroyd, Vince Lombardi, and Pat Sayjak, who's violent carousing has been covered up by Griffen Enterprises for years. It is what, in no small part, turned the young Robert Zimmerman into the poet-seer of his time. Out there in the wastes of northern Minnesota strange visions come to you out of the interplay of drifting snow and sunlight. Few people realize that All Along the Watchtower is a retelling of the Native American myth of the Windego.
So when the hard winds of March start to give over to the slow trickle of green across the landscape, you will forgive us northerners if our responses should seem so brutishly emotional. We cannot help it, for this welling up of emotion is ingrained in our pagan mentality. We are children of the earth, and when the sun again showers its gifts down upon us, please forgive our brazen displays of nakedness
and animalistic howling. It is only the spirit thawing out from its cold hibernation. One could almost forget the world is insane, forget that one madman could end it all in a moment, forget that football/soccer is the second most dangerous spectator sport in the world next to religion--the world is alive and beckoning us to her. The white garments of winter have been removed--let us join her!

Foundation

2006-04-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

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