Vicodin

Suspecting a pinched nerve in my neck, my doctor prescribed vicodin. I undergo a MRI tomorrow.

Pushing through the pressure I feel between my eyes, I fall into a pleasant journey. I’m on a barge propelled by unseen engines that purr quietly enough that I can hear the languid current of this river swirl against the side of the craft. Towering trees of blossoms line the shoreline, and a garden scent floats on the air.

On board, a gazelle gently nuzzles my hand. Peacocks parade on the deck. I pass beneath the dark eyes of lemurs murmuring blessings. I’m uncertain of the destination, but having embarked from a place called Pain any other venue is fine, fine, fine.

The Lie: A Short Story

"You'll all be glad when I'm dead and gone," Vern told his family.

They laughed and turned up the volume on the T.V.

Vern returned to his garden, talked to the beans, caressed the tomatoes.

He died when the pumpkins broke into smiles.

His family ate weeds.

Some Thoughts on Writing Near the End of My Vacation

“Write smart now, Greg,” Rick said. “You’re getting hand-written rejection slips because your stuff stands out. Knuckle down. Bring it up to the next level.”

While it was pleasant to hear such encouragement from a published writer, my heart sunk. While Rick’s words rang true, and I knew intelligence and effort were required, I despaired at what it would take to follow his advice. The next day at my desk I reached down for that something extra and found….nothing. I packed away my manuscripts and turned my attention to earning a living.

For a number of years since then I’ve made forays into writing. I’ve done some good work, yet I did so without the corresponding thrill I’d felt previously. I felt split somehow, that all of the relative ease of creativity had been replaced by hard work that I lacked the heart for. On top of working a job and meeting my financial responsibilities I felt old and weak against the demands of the page, the drive of a narrative.

I do not mean to dramatize my situation, or to elicit sympathy. What remains with me is the desire to write. It is bedrock I return to again and again; it is a way for me to be present. It is something I can’t not do.

As I return to Rick’s words, I get hints of meanings I didn’t at first discern. Perhaps writing smart is taking care of the story AND my self. It is about being present on the page AND in my life. It is about traveling with awareness from doing the dishes to writing dialog. And that kind of awareness in the midst of the activities of my life—be it writing or employment—IS knuckling down.

She Loves to Watch (how do you watch?)

In a previous post of a collage my friend Anno suggested some commentary accompany the piece. I'd prefer the viewer be allowed to read what, to me, is a strong narrative inherent in the images.  I realize, however, those images might not be as obvious in the posts as in person.

I'll resist dissection of this post, but offer by way of explanation the following by Charles Simic:

Everything's foreseeable. Everything has already been foreseen. What has been fated cannot be avoided. Even this boiled potato. This fork. This chunk of dark bread. This thought too....

My grandmother sweeping the sidewalk knows that. She says there's no god, only an eye here and there that sees clearly. The neighbors are too busy watching TV to burn her as a witch. 

All Those Who Strive For Freedom Deserve Our Remembering

Myth and Torture

 

I suspect that Obama’s recent about-face on the issue of releasing the so-called torture photos is more about preserving cherished cultural mythology than the stated “protection of our troops” from attacks in the far-flung reaches of American Empire. Shaken by the revelation of the torture at Abu Ghraib, the mythology that argues for American high-purpose on the world stage is shaken. Thus shaken, the debate has devolved into particulars; that is, Abu Ghraib, extra-ordinary renditions, and Guantanamo were aberrations occurring during the watch of a cowboy president and the only debatable idea is if such methods were effective in protecting the American people.

 

On one side of this debate is the bloviating former vice-president Dick Cheney claiming that the premium the Bush Administration placed on security trumped bothersome restraints such as treaties, human rights, and humane values. On the other side, President Obamarefuses to release the photos, breaking a prior commitment to do so, justifying his about-face with the platitude that “nothing new is revealed in the photos.”

 

In a sense, Obama speaks the truth. Even a cursory review of the history of American imperial development reveals that torture has been a constant feature, yet a feature obscured by an elevated rhetoric of divine providence. As Noam Chomsky reminds us in a recent article from Alternet, our national self-concept is framed by the phrase “city on a hill”, borrowed from the Gospels by the Puritan John Winthrop in 1630. Something of the “divine right of Kings” entered the American psyche, blinding us to our own worse excesses and providing a “civilizing and humanitarian” rationale to our expansionist project. In other words, the poor blighted peoples of the world need our intervention, and woe to those who resist. One need only consider the genocide of the Native American peoples to realize that as regards our national destiny, nothing will be allowed to stand in our way.

 

Yet examples distant from us in time are often met with dismissive shrugs. Even the more recent record from the 1980’s in Latin American—the disappearances, executions, torture, and death squads that operated and were funded by the Reagan Administration—cannot penetrate the distorted mantel of heroism with which Reagan has been draped.

 

Torture, as Chomsky reminds us, is a tool of empire. And for all of our embrace of “American Exceptionalism” as an animating force, we have in the past and continue through today to behave as interventionist thugs.  But like a knight of old defending the honor of a maiden, our national mythology will survive whatever revelations are allowed and the illusion of our virtue will remain intact.

 

 

Picturing Hell

 

 

GQ Magazine recently published a story with accompanying photos regarding intelligence briefings originating from the Department of Defense and furnished to The White House. The cover-sheet photos of these reports showed triumphant images of US. Military actions in the Iraq War appearing beneath biblical quotations. Frequently, these reports were hand delivered to The White House by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield.

 

Having endured several years of Rumsfield pronouncements I was familiar with his self-righteous rhetoric; with the revelations of these bible verse laden reports it is apparent that what I had considered self-righteous, Mr. Rumsfield himself (and presumably other top officials in the Bush Administration) considered RIGHTEOUS.

 

Certainly, Rumsfield isn’t the first government representative to seek to ally The Almighty to military adventures. The Bible itself is full of armies putting the unbelievers to the sword. A central symbol of Christianity—the Cross itself—moved to representative prominence with the vision of the Roman Emperor Constantine who, it is said, was granted military victory by his embrace of Christianity and by emblazoning the shields of his soldiers with the Cross prior to battle. Prior to this peculiar alignment, the religion of Jesus represented itself with symbols of life—fish and bread. From Constantine on, however, Christianity became known by the Cross, an instrument of torture.

 

The critic George Steiner in his book “In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Toward the Redefinition of Culture” implicates monotheism in providing psychological wounds to human kind still being worked out in our civilizations. The graphic representations of hell-fire and damnation, prominent in our Western Tradition provide the “rough sketches” for Inquisitions, pogroms, Death camps, and the current idea of a “permanent state of war” waged on terrorism. In a linear conception of Time such as we understand History, all life moves toward a final reckoning, an Apocalypse, an End-Time.

 

The dangerous hubris of what the Rumsfield reports reveal is the identification of narrow national interest with complex symbology, manipulated for geo-political gain via the U.S. military. The military itself, having been evangelized, increasingly views itself as doing “God’s Will.” Theology these days comes form the barrel of a gun.

 

Religious language of any religious tradition is laden with metaphors, which, if taken literally, become dangerous realities of degradation and domination. Subtleties of language are ignored at great peril. Onward Christian Soldiers marching AS to war—a reference to spiritual battles, becomes in the zealot’s mouth justification for holy war.

 

As the poet and novelist Jim Harrison remarked, “There is no such thing as a free metaphor.” I fear we will be paying the price for the appropriation of these metaphors for generations.