God Has Given Men

His mother had taken all his toys away because he kept kicking the dog,

being far too rough and violent with just a puppy, as boys his age tend to do

(knowing not the responsibilities God has given men).

I crouched down and tried to tell him why we shouldn’t be that way with animals,

why his mother did what she did, but of course he wasn’t listening.

He simply stared me in the eyes,

without a blink, only a smile.

He interrupted, asked why are your eyes green?

and naturally I continued as though I did not hear the question.

Soon, he asked again Brian, why are your eyes green?

I stopped mid-sentence and said because my daddy gave them to me.

Children have a way of doing this.

Of reminding us of our past,

of turning our flesh inside out, exposing things long forgot,

things long held at a distance.

Much like God tends to do as He stared at me through this little boy saying,

You fool.

You arrogant fool.

What the hell are you doing?

The boy then asked why did your daddy give them to you?

I don’t know, little man, I do not know.

- for Zion

To Scream at the Moon

When I first held you,

a warm and glowing bundle you were.

Newly taken from your mother.

Red.

Slimy.

You said not a word.

I knew then how God must have felt,

and the beast and the tree

and the mountain and the water

and all the angels, and Satan too,

all of them, all those many years ago,

standing silent in the sweaty still cave,

waiting for a Son to scream at the moon.

Nowhere Near the Sea

On that day that God came to him,

I can see Noah sitting under a tree,

eating a sandwich,

lettuce hanging out of his mouth.

Yes, lettuce and crumbs on the belly and he startled.

Round-bellied Noah,

six hundred years old and talking to God,

mouth full of sandwich and lettuce,

no water on hand;

I wish I was there.

Thinking God crazy,

and himself,

he decided to build the big boat anyway,

do what God said,

even having never seen rain in his six hundred years

nor the sea.

I do wonder what his friends said of him,

and his family,

with such a story.

After it was over,

his friends were dead.

Maybe their ridicule was left in his ears,

maybe.

Its those kind of I told you so moments that are really bitter,

them all being dead,

though I wouldn’t know.

When all was dry,

and the beasts gone their own ways,

Noah got drunk,

woke up hungover and

cursed a son for clothing him in the night.

Out of the son’s apparent rashness, American chattel slavery.

This is many years later though.

The crazy part to me is still the boat,

not the slaves.

This big boat built in the middle of a dry land,

and the builder, having never seen rain.

This is the third rule of business, son:

build the damn boat,

even if you think God is crazy.

The Way of Commoners

Its been two weeks since I’ve written

and even though I’m waiting to board a plane to Portland,

some place I’ve never been,

all I can think about is going home,

where I can be alone,

to write and think and breathe,

for I haven’t written in two weeks.

Did I already say this?

Yes.

Yes I did.

She asked me if I was lonely,

I said, it goes without saying

she then asked if I was okay with that

and I said yes, I’ve learned to be okay with it.

Being lonely is a matter of perception afterall.

I am most lonely when I am in Texas,

around friends and family and the stress of duty

and the pagan-rich holidays.

In those two weeks of December,

it is the loneliest for everyone.

We all know this.

Especially the commoners.

So anyway, I’m going to Portland for New Year’s.

It’ll be rainy and cold and I will drink a lot of coffee

and beer and watch a different kind of American.

I’m sure we’ll dress up too, and cheer

and get terribly drunk on the night of the 31st,

kiss strangers and be hopeful about 2010.

2010 will one of the worst years this world has ever seen,

if you are commoner, that is.

If you are not a commoner,

this will be a great year,

as all the other years have been,

up to this point.

We will get drunk and kiss and cheer,

and make glory of our ignorance, of our commonness,

having no idea who we are cheering for and why.

Such is the way of commoners,

such is our way,

we who are drunk with conventions,

solace,

and the perception of peace.

Liberty Without Arms

There’s an old round Polish couple that always sits in the corner of my coffee shop, and I watch them proudly. The man is short, values khaki, is seldom without a light gray coat, and is very proud of mustaches. She’s a tad shorter, prefers wool, is thinning on top, and has sparkling eyes. In their days of dreaming, they dreamed of freedom and America and of house and a job and however else freedom looked. This couple was lucky, for they managed to find a way in to America, probably because they knew someone rich, or knew someone who knew someone rich. He drinks espresso, takes small sips long after going cold, and she drinks tea, with honey, I think. They sit in the corner, seldom with books, seldom in speech. They just sit, side by side, watching all of us as the ages go by overhead. They don’t see it, and it doesn’t really matter that they don’t, for they will soon be dead, by natural causes, hopefully. As for the college kid next to them, the one with the stack of biology books and those on psychology and economics, he’s fucked. The age is upon him, ravenous, full of lust, already feasting, and he, reading those unadaptive writ of stones, is without hope or mind or will to resist.

In this place are many windows. There is a world outside that comes and goes, and at night, sometimes the brightness of the lights obscures and distorts the goings on outside. When standing afar from the windows, we only see our reflection, sparkling against the black backdrop, but dim. I choose this venue for writing and thinking because of the people. There are many types: young, old, healthy, sick, Asian, Indian, Arab, Persian, Hispanic, white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestant. I could spend my whole life writing about them and never run out of things to say.

Humanity, with its soft outer layer and fragile soul, all bound up in some kind of fear, is a beautifully treacherous thing to behold. We can spend all our days thinking and hoping and trying to be that dishonest something, unaware of the slave-drivers and opiates making us go along the way, to a certain way, to think a certain thing. Here, in the belly of the allusion, Orange County, California, the predators of the sky are always ahead of us, dropping barbiturates from flight. Clive Lewis said we are far too easily pleased; he was right. And I say, we have no idea what true pleasure is, and as such can only live through our medications.

I call this the Invisible Age, because in the air are whispers and signs of a terrible storm,

though the people are still making preparation for good times, normal times, as they always have,

as if normal times is such a thing.

We feel something though.

Its moving under our feet.

Its moving our feet.

We are afraid to ask the guy over there if he felt it too because we know he will say he did.

Then we would be forced to talk about it.

No keep quiet, I’m just tired, going mad.

There is a unsaid exhaustion among the looks of lovers, and friends too.

Its tingling skin, heavy sighs, red eyes averse to contact with other red eyes.

They itch.

Its invisble.

The Invisible Age is not really an age, for it has superseded all the ages.

Its the sum of every age.

Its what all the ages wanted to be.

To encompass everything.

Its floor underneath us, drawing us forward, into this great dark opening,

into serfdom.

On the walls shine our many distractions,

and on we go being distracted,

never fully knowing ourselves,

knowing human nature,

not really caring either way.

The predators of the air are circling above the dark opening.

They already have all the money they could ever want, now they want all the power.

Power is in our blood.

The blood is on the ground, as it has since Abel was killed.

Don’t worry though, down in that dark opening are drugs of all sorts, so we won’t care much. I wonder if we will even care when our toes and fingers are nibbled off. Maybe when we only have our elbows left, maybe then we will cry out to God for our liberty.

Liberty without arms. I don’t know.

The old round Polish couple is leaving which tells me its nine o’clock. I will see them tomorrow, and the kid too, and regardless of everything I have said, they’re all beautiful. They’re all beautiful, even as they try to outrun the guy next to them to keep from being eaten.

I hope, that when the age is revealed, we don’t think like that,

like outrunning our brother will bring us salvation,

because in many respects,

that is how we got here in the first place.

In America anyway.

Revolution vs Renaissance

There is a growing, invisible movement spreading across the country. It has been building only slightly over the years amongst the people but now, no doubt due to the economic recession and many of Wall Street and Congress’s plans have come to light, it is growing exponential in size. While the glaring, overtly vocal distrust of our government and its collusion with Wall Street, the central banks and the large corporations is still relatively limited to the ‘fringe thinkers’ in our society, the subtle, and thus wide-reaching distrust is starting to be murmured in the living rooms of the typical American home. Some are calling this growing distrust the beginnings of a revolution. A revolution unto what is what I question. And who will do the revolting?

While it may be argued that a social, intellectual, artistic, economic and/or political revolution of any kind will be a positive thing for our country by means of waking and mobilizing a generally benign populace, I do not think that revolution by its very nature a wholly good thing for the masses. Here is my thinking:

Most revolutions are passion-filled outbursts of collective emotion shared by a willing, though poorly organized and poorly led people, who tend to lash out at a system with the hope simply to overthrow that system which that deem to be the cause of all their misfortune. Revolutions are often short-lived, poorly carried out and maintained, done mostly in a desperate form by desperate people who have nothing else to lose.  Revolutions are often over as fast as they begin. Modern revolutions have been squashed quite easily by well-placed media, military, law enforcement and government operations. Revolutionaries tend not to look at the long fight; they instead want and plan for a short overthrow, which rarely happens. The power-holders know this; they fight the long fight, which is how they attained such a position of influence in the first place. Revolutionaries also tend to be young and, well, immature. Their leaders are often only a little less young and a little less immature than those they are leading, which often takes away from the legitimacy of a sustainable alternative to those in power. Oftentimes, the revolution takes a long time to actually affect sizable change (and it ends shortly thereafter), as would be the case in a highly Socialistic society such as the United States, whose power elite have deep, nearly impenetrable roots. This means that most of those that are doing the revolving eventually get sucked up into the very system that they are speaking out against. A good example of this are those who are between 55-65ish, those Vietnam War and civil rights revolutionaries. They’re my generation’s parents and their friends. Furthermore, revolutionaries are easily targeted as militant, lunatic, or fringe elements of society who mostly desire anarchy, making them easier to cast off as such by the general public.  In this day and age, they will most likely be label terrorist, allowing the government to anything they deem necessary to these people, up to and including imprisonment, torture, and execution with the general consent of the people. In the past, the government could do such things if they labeled someone a Communist, in our day, its terrorist. [I have recently seen a video from a police academy course on counter-terrorism in which they labeled the founding fathers as terrorists. I suppose they were to the British ruling elite in a limited sense, even though the colonists and the founding fathers revolted peacefully within the given confines of the political system of the colonies. I'm pretty concerned about the eerie foreboding of this kind of doctrinal thinking that is starting to be taught throughout the law enforcement community.]

Revolutions to me, bring to mind that of the French Revolution and the guillotine, Che and Castro, America in the 1960′s and early 70′s, the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, and Maoist China. Sure, some of these have lasted a long time, but look at where those particular revolutions are today, look at what they revolved into. I’m not saying that all revolutions are bad, some have produced good – the American Revolution and Indian independence inspired by Gandhi – but even those take the form of a renaissance, more than a revolution.

Renaissances as a result, seem to have to work in opposite logic to revolutions. Renaissances by their nature are concerned with the long fight. They are ground in history, art, rational political and social thought, education, the belief in liberty and measured assessment of where we are as a people and where we need to go in the long run. Renaissances start slow and build momentum, not by initially going after the heart of the people, rather the mind (which in turn leads to the heart). Renaissances have a respect for the precedents set forth by a historic standard, giving them a clearer vision for what can reasonably be achieved in a renaissance. A renaissance would look at both the good and bad objectives and outcomes in revolutions and other renaissances in order to apply lessons learned from history. A renaissance would put a high premium on art and artistic expression as a means to communicate goals of the renaissance, to communicate the heart of the renaissance, to give it a soul, constructive thought and a respect for the individuality of each person. What this also does it to allow future generations to look back upon the works of renaissance art of that period enabling them to learn a great deal more than history books can convey, not only adding to that country’s cultural legacy, but worldwide legacy as well. Additionally, a people united in an appreciation and practice of art are thinking people; these types are far less likely to let the same system that formerly enslaved them overcome them again (though that’s not always the case). A renaissance would force us to take hard looks at ourselves as individuals and communities. By doing this, we would be able to make the necessary, though difficult, changes that need to occur in our lives and in the lives of our children. And because of the art and the knowledge of history, we would be students of human nature, thus enabling us to foresee what would be best for a nation and its people based on our own thinking and judgment. The same goes for politics and commerce.

A renaissance is appealing to the general public. In fact, it is almost irresistible. While a revolution forces a person to a side kinetically, either by coercion, disgust or emotion, a renaissance inspires people, usually inspiring change in the individual and later urging him to change the community; this inspiration comes from the solid personal example practiced by of the leadership of the movement. Renaissances are fully aware of the influence of the power-holders and the influence that power-holding positions have. As a result, in a renaissance concerned with the long fight, they would infiltrate the centers of power: the large cities, local and national government, arts and entertainment, the media, the education system, universities, cyberspace, the marketplace, Wall Street, corporations, large and small businesses, civic and social organizations, the military, the church (or whatever religious community), and foreign representative positions. Once infiltration has occurred, combined with an informed, educated, well-led, thinking population, it would create an almost unstoppable social force. All attempts by the government to blaspheme or single out those of the renaissance would be met with stern resistance in and among the very apparatus that it created to maintain the power over the people. Along the way, those of the renaissance would continue to inspire others in the power centers and those of the populace as long as they remained focused on the long fight, while keeping the intent and conduct of the operations transparent, and the goals just, accessible and dedicated to the causes of freedom, liberation, family and community. With all of these factors working in conjunction, a positive, sustainable change that provided a viable alternative would be available, hopefully without the bloodshed common to most revolutions.

Who can argue for a revolution over a renaissance? I’d say there is justification for revolution only if the long fight be deemed impractical. If we do not have enough time to wage the long war before the power elites exercise complete control over the populace via a dollar collapse, economic collapse, or laws being passed that severely hindered the individual liberties of the people, disabling them from even having the freedom to start a peaceful renaissance, then we would need a revolution. Sadly, it may have to come to this if we do not start making changes in ourselves towards becoming a well-informed, self-reliant people.

How do we start a renaissance? Simple steps can be taken in your own life which would cost nothing and benefit you immensely. The first is self-education. One can easily implement this by turning off the TV for one to two hours a day, opting instead to educate yourself on our money and political system, to read classic literature, poetry, and current events publications (though I’d be careful with putting too much stock in these publications; all of the weekly and daily publications are owned by the large corporations. They filter who says what and what is said; we need to be informed what is going on in the world and our country, but only if we view the world with your own ideas that are not based in the old status quo, self-perpetuating, controlled mindset). Exercise is something else we all need to do. In my life, it establishes the base from which everything else flourishes (art, thinking, spiritual practice, relationships, fun). Once again, turn off the TV for 30 minutes to an hour and start off by simply walking around the neighborhood or park. Progression from here would be needed of course, but first things first, get off the couch and get a little bit uncomfortable. Solitude is also essential. It’s a conundrum that our lives are now so highly compartmentalized and isolated from our families, communities and neighbors, yet we are never alone, always being ‘plugged in’ to either the Internet or our cell phones or iPhones or whatever. We are always plugged into the very apparatus that the power-holders use to continually exert their influence over us. We live our lives behind these electronic devices, making false identities of ourselves that seldom see other people (especially those in our ‘friends’ list on the social networking sites) and yet we are never alone to think about who we are or who God is or whatever. I know that solitude can be a terrifying thing, but it is a necessary thing if we want to rebuild a society and a culture that demands a thinking populace. Another step is to cultivate the arts and music in our lives. Art gives a texture to life that is irreplaceable when it comes to experiencing the fullness that is life. We all have a creative leaning of some sort, to a greater or lesser degree; life is richer and deeper if we pursue this artistic expression in ourselves and inspire and enjoy it in others. This is what makes us human; the ability to share our minds and lives in community is one of the things that sets us apart from the beasts. If we do not cultivate this aspect in our lives, we are bound to medicate it with the myriad of drugs out there: shopping, sports, TV, movies, gambling, alcohol, etc.

What we can do collectively to spur this revolution is a little more difficult.  It is something that I am truly trying to figure out, it being much deeper and more complex than simply talking with your neighbor (though this is a good practice). I will have to write later on what we can do to connect with other like-minded people once we have started to remake ourselves. I need to find this out for myself first, which is proving itself difficult in our compartmentalized, busybodied, regimented world.

Do I truly believe that a renaissance can occur in our country? I think it can, but we may not have enough time to reverse the inevitable collapse of our economy before we can get to the position of power and over turn the system. I would say, riding on the backs of others that are far more learned in this prediction than I, that we have anywhere from 3 to 10 years before we see the ultimate demise of our economic structure via a collapse of the dollar. I don’t know if this is enough time. Nevertheless, we will still need strong, educated, intelligent people who love liberty even in a terrible economic, social and political environment. Especially in that kind of environment; especially if we ever desire to rise from those ashes.

Regardless of all of this, what I am advocating, and that which I will always advocate, is personal education, strong bodies, thinking minds, community involvement, relationship cultivation, art cultivation, travel and self-reliance. Of course, first is foremost in my life is a relationship with the Lord, and this is something we all need regardless of good or bad times. Below is a list of people I mostly listen to and read. Listening and reading them will challenge your thinking, so if you want to continue to shoo away all the things you know are not right, go ahead and continue to watch TV, neglect your body, consume, gossip, take in all forms of media, be a busybody, etc.

Most of them are economic and political thinkers, authors, commentators, experts. Google them:

Jim Rogers (investor)

Marc Faber (investor)

Gerald Celente (The Trends Journal editor)

Robert Kiyosaki (and the whole Rich Dad team – financial education, very accessible)

F.A Hayek (The Road to Serfdom, Austrian School of Economics)

Henry Hazlett (Economics in One Lesson, Austrian School of Economics)

Ludwig von Mises (the father of the Austrian School of Economics)

Peter Schiff (Crashproof author, Euro-Pacific Capital manager, running for Senate of Conn)

Richard Duncan (The Dollar Crisis author)

Mike Maloney (Robert Kiyosaki’s precious metals advisor)

H Edward Griffin (The Creature from Jekyll Island author)

R Buckminster Fuller (The Grunch of Giants, author, thinker, engineer, scientist, philosopher)

Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness author)

Ann Rand (Atlas Shrugged, libertarian, author, political activist, free market advocate)

Ron Paul (Congressman from Texas, End the Fed author, he leads a huge push to audit the Fed, ran for president in 08)

Alex Jones (radio talk show host out of Austin, somewhat over the top, a little simple, but very accessible; interesting views)

chrismartenson.com – The Crash Course

There’s more, but that should give you enough to chew on. Thanks for reading and God Bless.

A New Kind of Sadness

As I watched the City wake up from the airport window wall, I was the saddest I had ever been. A friend later said it was because you fell in love with the City. And that its like meeting a beautiful woman y’know? One that is complex and interesting and intelligent and artistic and edgy and exciting. Y’know, full of energy. Your kind of energy. But you only got to see the peripheries of her. Because you couldn’t see more. Because you were only there a few days. Because you live in California and she lives out east. Its a bittersweet kind of parting, huh? Maybe she was right. She was right, partly. But there was something else too. I have felt that kind of sadness, the kind that she said. Here was a new kind of sadness. One that I had never felt before. Rilke, when he first moved there, said that Rome makes one feel stifled with sadness for the first few days: through the gloomy and lifeless museum-atmosphere that it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, which are brought forth and laboriously held up (parts on which a tiny present subsists), through the terrible overvaluing, sustained by scholars and philologists and imitated by the ordinary tourist of Italy, of all the disfigured and decaying Things, which, after all, are essentially nothing more than accidental remains from another time and from a life that is not and should not be ours. Yeah, it felt something like that. That is how I felt and it lingered for days. Maybe I felt the pain of cities. Maybe being there in the queen of all American places, I became old like the cities, old for America anyway. I became anonymous and desperate and overlooked, overused. I became like a muted city, hooded, and spoken for by her myriad lovers. In the canyons between the buildings, the wind blew quick and fast. I was coldest then, colder than I had ever been, having not been prepared for such a phenomenon, for such wind. I had to buy a new jacket halfway through the trip, but got sick anyway. Standing in the airport I could feel the sickness coming in my throat and nose. She left it with me, and I am so so sorry that there was little I could do for her, for all of them.

There is a Clock in Me

There is a clock in me that moves forward in time because it has to.

It has to because we are human,

and humans are linear.

Linear things are always finite, and as such, so are we.

This clock is old and much more eternal than I

and in the solitary, silent moments, one can almost here it tick.

When this thing ticks, my heart grows older, harder.

Sometimes it moves forward fast and I wake up stony and unmoving.

On these days, I am at my worst,

full of anger, self-love, bitterness.

When it ticks slowly, I can almost envision a world full of peace, and know to lead it there.

If I could only make it stop.

If I could only make this damn thing stop,

then I would become the man that I want to be.

Then I would go and make all things right.

I know the ancients battled with this very thing.

Few found the answer.

The answer is secret, and can only be heard in solitude.

Solitude is man’s most terrifying road.

Its a dark and terrible place, where one must go to hear the awful ticking,

in order to make it stop.

The Outside

So I’m 26 now, and more confused about this world

than I was when 25.

Where I come from, its suburban and flat and humid

and one has to question why anyone would want to build a city on a bayou,

let alone live in it – but many did and many do.

Where I come from people grow up in neighborhoods

with streets like Eagle Trail and Tumbling Rapids,

though there aren’t any rapids or eagles anywhere close.

In the middle there is an elementary school

and churches surround the periphery,

and groceries stores too,

and a highway is nearby, which can either be a good or bad thing for the property value.

Where I come from we build parks to look like nature

and we dig large holes and put water and fish and fountains in them

and call them lakes or ponds.

Where I come from, booster clubs are important,

as are Christmas lights, and the local news

and the sitcom and what mischief the boys are getting into.

Where I come from the young work hard in school to get into a good college

and work hard in college to get a good job

and work hard in that job

before finding something else to do.

All the while, they’re trying to love someone

and hopefully find them in college

and if not, they take someone from their old neighborhood or somewhere close,

because meeting good people at pubs and churches and grocery stores is risky.

And like dust they come up from suburbs

And to suburbs they will go, if not headed there already.

Their wants in life are:

stable jobs,

kids – a boy and a girl -

a yard to worry over

and retrievers to clean up after.

They go to church on Sundays,

call themselves Baptists or Methodists,

and hunt in October and drink beer (if you’re a guy)

and go to quaint towns and antique shop in early May (if you’re a lady).

They’d like their children to grow up like them,

and have the things they didn’t have

and watch TV in the evenings

and football on Sunday afternoons

and movies on Friday nights

and God

and talk about sports and politics

and not think about anything important,

not think about anything at all really.

Folks where I come from like to be troubled over the weather

and those damn liberals

and the Media

and the Mexicans

and if they could put it to a vote, the earth would stand still.

Folks where I come from have never been outside the country.

Some have never been out of Texas.

I don’t say all that much around kin when I go home.

I didn’t say all that much around kin when I was younger either.

Its been 26 years, and I have a little more clarity of it now.

Outside, there is a world that hates our very existence.

Outside, the hoes and the pitchforks and the axes rattle upon our chamber doors.

Outside, our trash is piling high, high enough to look over and in,

almost high enough to be breached.

Outside.

I have seen the outside.

We are terrified of the outside.

What is Popular

Long ago in Holland,

tulips were very expensive, and the people

unthinking.

Evidently tulips were very pretty too.

So pretty in fact that in 1636 a lone Viceroy tulip bulb went for something like, 8000 pounds of wheat, 16000 pounds of rye, 4 fat oxen, 8 fat pigs, 12 fat sheep, 280 gallons of wine, 8000 pounds of beer, 4000 pounds of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, a bed, a full suit and a goblet. A silver goblet.

Choice property could be bought with a solitary bulb,

along a canal in Holland.

A year later, a Semper Augustus bulb could be sold for 6000 florins.
In Holland, the people made 150 florins a year.
On average.

This went on for a little while,
until they found that they could grow

tulips without end.

Soon thereafter, tulips were just pretty again,

and worthless outside of gardens and window sills.

Fortunes were made and lost though of course.

Political and social turmoil followed in its wake, as it always does.

Son, when the herd goes somewhere, it is already too late,
the rich have already made their money
(and they’ve gone to where you thought you just were).

This is why the rich get richer, amongst many.
The second rule of business is this:

What is popular is wrong.