Christmas for me

The emotions are tangible.

I remember a Christmas when it was just enough to wake up and the magic was inherently part of the moment. There was quite literally nothing more exciting all year than the anticipation of Christmas morning.

For me, it was never about the presents. It was never about what I wanted or what I would get. It was always, and I think it still is, about the simplicity of tenderness. It was the one day of the year that I could always count on my family being kind. I longed for it. I needed it.

And I still do. But I'm not so naive as to think that I need to be handled with kiddy gloves any more. However, I still long for the quiet spirit of selfless love on this day more than any other. Articulating this need is therapeutic.

I went to midnight mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary last night with April and my mother in law. I'm always surprised by how comfortable I feel in Catholic churches. I don't know the prayers or the language, but that is all somehow comforting in its unfamiliarity. It feels like I'm discovering a richly devoted people from the outside, and it is strangely exciting.

The priest spoke of angels. Not heavenly hosts. Not the kind that watch over us and save us from ourselves. The kind that are human. He spoke of our desire to be more than ourselves, and how this can never be accomplished without the assistance of God's dream. He has a dream for each soul. He made us uniquely, specially for a purpose....Nothing new right? I've heard it before. But somehow, in the early passing moments of Christmas morning, he spoke to my intellect.

God created me. Standard. He has a plan for me. Well, yeah. He dreams for me...that made me think for a moment. I internalized that and let is soak. I thought of my unborn children. Not yet even created, and I have dreams and hopes for them that surpass my own... so much so that my dreams are quickly becoming linked to my future children. God was man. He understands this feeling at a human level. I can never understand his desire. I cannot become the Lord and dream for me. It must be the most rewarding, unique experience to dream for a soul. It must be so immensely powerful and beautiful to be our Lord. To create, adore and admire a soul. To hope and long for the love of that soul. The realization of the dream of a creator.

I am just so thankful today for that labor of love, so that I could return the adoration at the age of 17 when I gave my life to my creator.

That is Christmas for me.

Admiration

This is American politics at its most inspirational, rational, and intellectual. We can only hope that someday we will be blessed with a political mind so bold as Reagan. This speech, given as a political booster for Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy race in 1964, is one of the greatest examples of political courage and honesty ever recorded.

"

Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury--we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3 billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people." But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than the government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming is regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we have spent $43 in feed grain program for every bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater as President would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he will find out that we have had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He will also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He will find that they have also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but who are farmers to know what is best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights are so diluted that public interest is almost anything that a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes for the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he is now going to start building public housing units in the thousands where heretofore we have only built them in the hundreds. But FHA and the Veterans Administration tell us that they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosures. For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency. They have just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over $30 million on deposit in personal savings in their banks. When the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

So now we declare "war on poverty," or "you, too, can be a Bobby Baker!" Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1 billion to the $45 million we are spending...one more program to the 30-odd we have--and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs--do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain that there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We are now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps, and we are going to put our young people in camps, but again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we are going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person that we help $4,700 a year! We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who had come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning $250 a month. She wanted a divorce so that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who had already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary...his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65. The government promises $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now, are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis so that people who do require those payments will find that they can get them when they are due...that the cupboard isn't bare? Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provisions for the non-earning years? Should we allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under these programs, which we cannot do? I think we are for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program was now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate planned inflation so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents' worth?

I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation.

I think we are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We are helping 107. We spent $146 billion. With that money, we bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenyan government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought $7 billion worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier overplanted his rice allotment. The government obtained a $17,000 judgment, and a U.S. marshal sold his 950-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work. Last February 19 at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.

As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the part of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities.

Well, what of this man that they would destroy? And in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear. Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well, I have been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I have never known a man in my life I believe so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who in his own business, before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by floods from the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas, and he said that there were a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. Then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was this fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in the weeks before Christmas, all day long, he would load up the plane, fly to Arizona, fly them to their homes, then fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life upon that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all of the other problems I have discussed academic, unless we realize that we are in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much."

A Vignette

"But what about my hopes and dreams?" he asked.

"I think you will still have them." she replied.

"Well, I think I always will, or at least until they come true."

"Look around you. Look all around you and tell me what else you could want.", she said.

He paused, as patient people do, and thought about what she had just said.

"I think you must be the most brilliant woman I've ever met."
"Don't be sarcastic. I hate that" she scolded.
"No, no, no. I'm not. I'm very serious. I just had an epiphany or revelation or whatever."

She took a drag from her cigarette while she awaited this new wisdom.

"This American dream, this American promise of the better something. You know? The 'You can do anything that you put your mind to' mentality...I always loved that idea. But you know what I think I just realized? I think it might be bullshit. As a matter of fact, I'm sure of it. It's one hundred percent, grade A caca my friend."
"What are you even talking about?" she asked and then quietly giggled a bit.

"I'm serious. We always want something else. The cliche stuff aside, big cars and houses and all that nonsense...we were brought up to believe that life was something bigger than it is. I, I, what I mean is this: We were all told by our parents, then our teachers, then our friends, then our pastors and God knows who else that life is only what you make of it right?"

"Well, yeah..."

"And if we are always chasing some phantom life that is better than the one we have then we will keep chasing our tails, conceivably, forever. But what if life is just one second following another second until a lot of seconds add up to a bunch of decisions and then a personality and loves and desires and all that shit? What if we only accepted life as it is, and instead of buying into romance, what if we all just started to fully appreciate and dive inside, like scuba dive deep inside our own meaningless, stupid everyday lives? What if everyone was just thankful for the opportunity to take out the trash because the sun is outside and the ground is cold on your feet and you feel strong when you throw the bag over the fence into the big trash bin and the wind rushes through your hair when you turn around and head back to your front door and you can hear someone's dog bark in a yard somewhere and someone's kid cries about something and all of this combines into one giant ball of life that we couldn't even know about if we weren't given the simple gift of consciousness?"

"Well, the kitchen trash is full." she sneered.

"God, I love you."

"You fucking better."

He smiled and kissed her lovingly.

"We are happy." he thought "And nobody gets to know how but us."
"We are happy." she thought "And I hope he doesnt think I was kidding about the trash. I left some chicken in there and it smells like shit."

They stopped kissing.
"I think I just figured out how to be happy forever." he said.
"You're welcome." she smiled.
"We're like Hepburn and Tracy...little teamwork and all."
"Only in color." she corrected.
"Huh?"
"You know, cause I'm Mexican and you're white. I was being racist against Los Brownies."
"My dear God you are so ignorant." he said.
"And you are a dickhead. We are perfect for each other."
"Well, you're the only one who could put up with me...if that's what you mean." he said.
"I think you just quoted my wedding vows." she replied.

Reminiscence is classic...like hemlock or arsenic.

"The stars can't really get too bright here", she said
"Which is a comfort."

Droning, the sound of our city buzzes constant.
Soft light glows for miles,
a giant umbrella saving us
from vastness.

"My courage is never the opposite of fear,
but fueled by it", he said, realizing only after how brilliant it was.

Because being an American is about leaning into cold rain on warm nights,
hitting my open eyes stinging acid
(my black t-shirt sticks to my skin, steaming from my warmth.)

"When did I learn how to be this version of me?
And was it a slow,
soft,
deliberate change
from an American boy with ideals
blessed by ignorance and compassion,
to this American man
crushed neatly into disappearing arrogance and growing passion?" he asked.

("He cries a lot more now...about nothing in particular."
- The Witness)

Paul Westerberg summarized the thesis of our unlabeled generation into a crooked microphone stand before any of us cared about punk rock or irreverence or sex or anything really.

"Everything goes.
Well, anything goes all of the time.
Everything you dream of is right in front of you.
And everything is a lie."

You knew that already.
Which makes truth more evasive than all the lies.

So we try for it; let down, and angry
like mosquitoes with no wings and the promise of flight,

we can grow them by ourselves
but we forgot how.

Flightless, scared cocoons of what could have been forever,
So, we sleep a lot,
and dream about how things were supposed to be,
back when they were real
not just dreams.

"Wake up then. Stop worrying about how you got here", she said.
"Oh", he said, and opened his tired eyes.

It is all gravy.

I got a new job writing for Examiner.com

Check out my page.

http://www.examiner.com/x-7019-Denver-Indie-Music-Examiner

thank you

It is all gravy.

A Review

1. New Found Glory
with 2. Bayside, 3. Set Your Goals, 4. Shai Hulud
April 4th
Gothic Theater
Doors 6:30

It's tough to get excited about a show these days. Government grants and small business loans have given every two-bit hustler the funds to start up a music label. These inconsistent labels gain the empowerment to sign the musically impaired, package them with a pretty black and red bow and ship them off to the eager emo bangs waiting at the hippest, most-independent record store in town. "For fans of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Boys Night Out and Fall Out Boy" functions as a deft warning to the keen observer of the human condition; but most of these impressionable youths shell out the 16.99 for what turns out to be mostly pomp and circumstance. Thank God for the bands who just play because they love music.
New Found Glory has always maintained street credibility as a band who love punk music but want to make it a little more fun. They dont hide behind fashion or motifs, but rather assault the stage with the kind of honesty and kindness that only many years in this business can bring. With the release of International Superheroes of Hardcore last year, they proved that irony and humor are much more precise and difficult than just growing that hilariously ironic magnum P.I. moustache all the scenesters are sporting these days. They provided deft commentary about the lack of definition between real musicians and teenagers with pro tools, between "emo" and emotive, driving music. Basically, they provided what they always have; fun, provocative pop music written and played by punks and hardcore kids.
With their release of Mutiny last year, Set Your Goals placed themselves atop the pack. With much more talent and creativity than many of their competitors, they have crafted a very specific sound that incorporates many of the best elements of punk and hardcore music into melodic overtures. They may draw the black hair dye and uneccessarily utilized hooded sweatshirts that infect local venues these days, but that could be a good thing. A show like this would be a great chance for exposure to some of the cornerstones of the genre. After all, these emo kids are tomorrow's music critics. Bayside brings vibrant authenticity to an all too common equation of the exhuberance of youth and ignorance; but while most bands come off as overwrought, these guys manage to transcend the stereotype and create impressive songs. All the melodies and pop punk fun will come as relief after Shai Hulud takes the stage and totally destroys. Somehow, having such a seminal and authentic hardcore band tour with these three gives more creedence the affair overall.
Some of what happens at the Gothic theater will most likely be forgettable, and I'm certain the requisite chest-popping bad boys will try to so totally rule over the tiny waifs with flattened bangs. What makes this show more than essential viewing is the wide variety of talent in what is quickly becoming a music scene ruled by fashion rather than substance. Every one of these bands is singularly admirable in the fact that they actually love the music. And, although it seems strange to say out loud, not many bands actually worry too much about the music these days.

A very rough first draft

The small bump on the landing rushed me out of my dream and into the rude efficiency of the cramped cabin. The fog of the unconscious moved slowly away from me as my eyes widened and focused. I was seated in the window seat. Directly to my right was an old black man wearing bent wire frames and a black bowler. To his right, a whale of a woman spilled over into the aisle. Her pale white flesh was sneaking out of every secret little crevice in her halter-top. I often wonder how each plane flight is completed without incident. Racial slurs and stereotypical epithets find their way into daily life all over this country in every city, and yet the cordiality of proximity prevented honesty and emotion. In a more accurate representation, I imagined the old black man snickering to himself about the sheer size of this woman. Instead the man slept quietly, awaking every now and then to adjust his glasses and then falling back into that kind of waking dream we can only experience in flight. When the man had earlier excused himself to the lavatory, I envisioned the woman commenting quietly to me about her unexplored interest in being sexually dominated by a man of color. Instead, she leaned forward in a big awkward performance to retrieve a large bag of cheetos from her bag.
We all shuffled the slow dance out of the cabin and onto the jet way. The familiar scent of unrecycled air crept in through the opened door and I breathed in heavy. The cold air moved quickly and calmly into my needy lungs. I had not felt the comfort of cold for weeks now.

********

“Wake up!” he screamed as a bucket of warm, salty liquid stung my eyes and invaded my nasal passages.
“How the hell did you even get in here?” He was looking for answers, and all I could think about was how horrible I smelled. It all became a little blurred in the next moment as something struck me on my left jaw and I recognized the cruel taste of blood on my swollen tongue.
A single bulb was swinging slowly around. I could see no shadows of a corner which led me to believe I was in a large room. I heard only one voice. I was with one man in a large room who was hitting me and pouring mysterious liquids on my head. I did not know how I had gotten there, but most of the time that’s the wrong question anyhow. My hands were tied behind me. My legs were free. The echoes sounded like stone. I was in a cave or a cell of some sort.
“Thwack!” Again, with the hitting. How did this guy expect me to answer him with a mouthful of blood and a nose full of god knows what?
“This is a restricted access zone. You do not belong here. What were you looking for?” He was screaming. I could tell by the tone in his voice he was about to hit me again.
“Hwaytecha” I gargled as blood drained from my mouth.
“What did you say?”
I coughed a little and spit out as much blood as I could. I raised my head to look my new friend in the eyes. “I was trying to say, ‘Hey wait a sec.’ I don’t like to have my ass kicked for no good reason friend. So I was wondering if you could inform me, that is to say, I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”
Clearly not amused, he kicked me in my chest and sent me falling backwards onto my arms. I felt my right shoulder dislocate as I crashed to the ground. I could tell by the steel digging into my neck that I was tied to a metal chair. My legs flailed and flipped backwards over my head. I must have looked pretty ridiculous.
“You know I’m no contortionist friend.” Even in immense pain, I couldn’t practice a little self-control and bite my tongue.

way out of context

I: “Why have you summoned me my lord?” (Kneeling before the council.)
C: “Iza, you have been a loyal and powerful tool of this council for your entire life. You are revered by all other hunters. We regret that we have to call you to a task unlike any before.”
I: “I seek to serve your wishes.”
C: “Uzume has become nothing more than a rogue in our careful creation of a peaceful, united Otherworld.”
I: “Uzume…” (As she raises her bowed head.)
C: “Uzume has made her decision.” (He stands and slams his sickle with authority.)
I: to herself “Uzume, what have you done?”
I: to the council “What is it you would have me do?”
C: “You are a hunter Izanami. We wish for you to do what you are made to do.”
I: “I understand my lord.” – pauses – “You expect for me to…”
C: “I expect you to respect your revered position. I expect you to complete each task we decide to give you. I expect you to find Uzume and bring her to us. And I expect you to do it quickly. I expect you, as I always have, to do what needs to be done.”
I: “It will be done.”

As she leaves, tears begin streaming down her face.
I: to herself “I do not wish to betray you my dear Uzume, but you have brought this evil to yourself.”
As she exits the great hall she puts her back to the wall and strains.
“ It is true that I love you Uzume, but I love the Otherworld and its purity with all of my soul. I will do what needs to be done.”

Thoughts on the ride home.

The beauty of Christianity comes in its base acknowledgment of the presence of good and evil on this planet. More subjective faith systems fail to accept the existence of a binary moral code. In this simple tenet lies the subtle truth: a faith system and worldview based on the existence and marginalization of evil can account for and explain why bad things happen to good people. In this acceptance of evil lies an understanding that evil exists outside of good and in the absence of good. God is good, and evil is bad. They are not of the same cloth. Fairness, or our conception of what should be fair, is then nothing more than a creation of our minds to account for the discrepancy in our humanity. If evil happens equally to all, good or bad or otherwise, then surely there must be vengeance...surely there must be justice. Eternally, there will be. Of that we are all familiar. But, here on earth, an even greater truth emerges. In a world without fairness, there are no victims. In a world with no victims, there is only personal responsibility and choice. In a world of choice there is freedom. In a world with that kind of freedom, I wonder why people keep telling me that Christianity just seems so oppressive.

It seems that the more subjective faith systems of Liberalism and the like (and yes, they are indeed faith systems) and its supporters would be hard-pressed to find a more oppressive ideology than their own; a system that is based upon the belief and faith that established, robust, dynamic and fulfilling faith systems like Christianity are to be distrusted because of their connection and attachment to wars, hypocrisy and the like. All the while, they fail to acknowledge that the disapproval and distrust of established faith systems is a belief system in and of itself. If we seek to know truth for ourselves, and in our arrogance think that only we can understand the mysteries of reality, then the denial of all those who claim to have found truth before us...is a denial of their own validity. So, the very things that Christianity is blasted for: oppression, close-mindedness, denial of other salient ideas, logical analysis etc. are ironically all present in the faith system of denial. To espouse a belief that all beliefs are wrong is just logically ridiculous and intellectually boring.

So stop asking me why I don't care about fairness. Stop asking me to care about victims. These things are ludicrous within the context of my worldview...and I enjoy being responsible with my intellect.

A Jazz Segment

Their reflective distance dulls the shrieks and squeals of mothers and children. The men talk in muted voices about the day’s events.
“The cotton certainly is yielding high returns this year.”
“Yes, it is quite profitable. These niggers sure make it easier on all of us.”
The conversing ceases when two men begin to ascend the staircase. The faces in the crowd are focused intensely on the first man who is being led by a second man in uniform. The first man wears white cotton long underwear that has been cut in the front and back. The bloodstains are dried and crusted. His bottoms are torn completely at the groin and his penis slips in and out as he ascends each step. Some recent wound has left fresh blood dripping from the head of his penis. His movements are soft and slow.
Physically, he is strong and his toned muscles show through the rags that now drape over his torso. His chocolate skin is covered in sweat and glistens in the afternoon sun. The hair on his head has been recently shaved ruthlessly with a razorblade. Pieces of scalp dangle from his skull. The peaceful crowd is silent.
The man has been accused of senselessly raping a young white woman. She has recently become pregnant and says that it was the young, chocolate-skinned slave that had raped her and made her with child. Her face is shrouded in black. The material disguises her tears of sorrow, love and regret. The man at the top of the staircase told the young woman of his dreams that they would escape together. They would go north and utilize the more understanding laws to begin their family together. She was scared though. Scared of what people would think, scared of never seeing any of her friends or family again.


Her mother was the first to notice. The baggy clothing and overalls were unable to hide the growth any longer. The young white woman made her choice. She did not want to face the shame and scorn of the community.
She told the young man of her decision. She told him to run. She told him that it would not be safe for him. She loved him too much to watch him die. He said he would not go anywhere. He had done nothing wrong. The world would just have to understand or he would have to face the consequences of his love. She pleaded with him. She begged him to go north or west or anywhere. He looked at her, touched her face gently and told her to that the world was not fit for perfect love.
The next day, the white men heard. They ran, with belts and picks and whips. The young man was praying in the slave chapel on the south side of the plantation. The men broke into the church, turned over the pews, grabbed the young man and began beating him. The men’s shadows fell onto the crudely sculpted Christ figure at the front of the church. There, on the church floor, the young man was stripped naked, beaten with hoes and picks. He was whipped. His flesh was torn from his bones. The young man’s brave mother and his brother later cleaned the blood and decaying flesh; he cursed the name of every white man he had ever known as he scrubbed the blood-soaked wooden floors. The white men took pliers and held the man's penis tightly as they branded it with a cattle iron. His screams could barely be heard over the cries of the white men. The wailing, defeated animal and the shouts of victory sounded like the end of a foxhunt. The rich men took the young brown man to the horse’s stable and rubbed animal excrement into his cuts and his genital wounds. They filled his mouth with pig filth. One white man shoved the feces of a goat into the man’s eyes. All the while, the young man screamed and pleaded that the young girl was in love with him, that he had not done as they were saying he did. This only made the men’s eyes more intense, focused and determined to make the lying, disgusting animal pay the price. They told him he would be an example.


As the man in uniform slides the rope around the young man’s tight, muscular neck, his eyes rise to meet the crowd for the first time. Immediately, he sees his lover, his child’s mother, and focuses all that is left in his brain, all that he can bring up from his soul, into his stare. She bursts into tears, and covers her face with her laced gloves. Her mother puts her arm around the young woman, and tells her not to shed tears over this animal. Her mother says that he was only worth what her father had paid for him, and not to worry. The young girl begins sobbing uncontrollably.
The young girl looks up from her hands and moves out of her mother’s warm embrace. She stares into the man, and he stares back into her. His eyes are full of tears, and as he blinks, two tears roll down each side of his face. The pain of the beating, and the branding, and the shaving, and the whipping are all met with intense pride and courage. This brave, beautiful, brown man is now crying tears of joy. He sees the beauty of his unborn child reflected in the flawless, fair skin of his lover.
As he notices her skin, and the soft reflection from the afternoon sun, her face changes. She has a look of determination. She looks purposeful. Her mouth begins to open. In an instant the young man realizes what she is about to do.
He envisions the crowd erupting. He can see them carrying her to the front and leading her up the stairs. He can see another rope. He can imagine his lover, and his unborn child hanging next to his limp body.
As the words accelerate from her mind, through her tongue and onto her lips, the young man with the glistening chocolate skin turns his head to the man with his hand on the lever and screams like fire,
“I’ll rape a hundred more if you don’t get on with it!”

The young woman’s thoughts stopped at her lips at the instant the lever was pulled, the gate dropped and the young man fell through the hole. Her words turned to silence. In that moment, the sound of bone sliding on bone could be heard as the man’s neck popped twice. His body popped back up once and then swayed slowly back and forth. He was completely limp. The young woman fell onto the muddy ground below. On her knees, she placed her hands together and began to pray. At the very same moment, her child moved inside of her.

Classic: one of my favorite words

There is a clipper ship in the harbor.
Alone, not seaworthy.
Moss and calcium infect and warp the deck.

Sunny day. No fog.

The ship knows why it was made
and now it cannot love the sea.
The sea is no longer infinite;
The wax and wane of the tide
make a heartless joke
as the shore ropes creak and laugh.

No captain to shout orders,
no crew to follow them.
The gulls have made nests
and now command with their squeals
the poor old clipper.

Wood fills with water,
swells; stretches.

The falling sun and rising winds
bring in the other ships from fishing trips.
Tidal tricks make the solitary ship
bow and yearn
for freedom and adventure.

To the other ships
the lonely clipper is
nothing more than a reminder of their own future;
bored,
ruined,
and hopeless.

Our lonely ship exists now
in memories
of crashing waves, the shouts of men,
salvation from the storm.
Covered in filth without the faintest remnant
of the rapid rowers
that once found solace in
the hollow belly.

We do not beat on,
boats against the currents.
We fall asleep one day in a dirty harbor
tied to the dock with tight ropes
never to wake up again.

Worldview: an overview

I only write poems about things that matter once in a blue moon. My poems are usually about a feeling or an image in my head. But sometimes, I get so overwhelmed with my own thoughts and I have to write them down. I do it honestly. If I am angry, I will write angry. If I am resolute...etc. There is probably too much here, and its all packed in tight. So, read slowly, and maybe you will stay with me.


This Room Was Once So Still

Before, when mothers held the children softly,
we were never scared.
The house’s gentle noises let us know it was all settling down.
Fires crackled calm reminders of our safety and comfort.
We were going to be okay.

Then, not to be denied by our created consolation,
it crept in quietly.
The knowledge drifted over us like cigarette smoke.
We breathed the in the creeping mist.
It was inescapable.

Our hopes were so simple. New bikes for Christmas, family tree reports, and chalk to make foursquare courts. We chased the blonde girls in class and stood atop jungle gyms as kings. It was all so far ahead of us.

Now we test genitals for diseases
telling each other we will never love enough to make forever last for ever.
Our parents showed us just how important promises really are.

An entire generation of genius wasted on friend requests and about me’s.
Japanese bukkake and German women shitting in each other’s mouths…government secrets and conspiracy films…abortions and hangings…celebrity nose jobs and blow jobs

by clicking and pressing enter.

We know too much
and our lives are too long;
the apathy of post-modern philosophy is purely a reaction:

“We can become our dreams, but maybe dreams are lies to help us fall asleep. We can love, but maybe love is nothing like we were taught. We can elect change, but maybe change is nothing like we thought.”

It is counter-intuitive to have faith in things we cannot see.

It takes courage to be sure of what we hope for.

The greatest romance we have in this world of knowledge is belief in something greater than just what we know, faith that the knowledge is far more pure than the knowing.
What is true must be true because it was created to be true.

But, this world is not so still.

not like curt's blog

why does this happen to people?

http://www.wwtdd.com/photo.phtml?post_key=17081&photo_key=59291

also youtube bai ling sometime. that bitch is dumb.