Scenes Inside a Gold Mine, Ch. 10

Blind Date

On the last day of the experiment, Lacey swiped the list of names from her researcher, Morris’, lab. It was dead easy to do, since he seemed to have no concept of security - not surprising in this case, since all there was to protect was unintelligible pheromone data and a lot of smelly T-shirts. So it was beyond simple for Lacey to leave her jacket behind in the exam room, and then remember to go back and get it once Morris had escorted her to the lobby.
“Oh, no – I forgot my jacket! I’ll be right back!” was all she had to say, before turning quickly and jogging back down the hall at a bright pace. Morris started to say, “I’ll go…” and then stopped, and turned to follow her. Lacey just had time to open the door to the lab, fold his laptop carefully closed, grab the jacket from the back of her chair, and hang it over her arm, concealing the computer.
“Got it!” she said brightly to Morris, as he turned the corner of the hallway and walked toward her. “It’s not cold, but I always carry it with me in case I walk into some building that’s got the A/C set to ‘freeze’,” she continued, walking in long strides so Morris had to amble a little faster to keep up. “It feels fine in here, but I swear, some restaurants I go into these days would be more bearable if they just shut the A/C off and let people be, instead of trying to turn them into ice cubes.” She turned and smiled at Morris. “You know what I mean?”
They had reached the lobby, and were approaching the door. Lacey stopped and turned to look inquiringly at Morris, clearly waiting for an answer.
“Oh, yes…” he said, and paused, then added brightly, “It’s better to be prepared, than Frigidaire’d.”
Lacey had to think about that for a second – then she burst out laughing. “Oh! Ha-ha-ha, that's right! You are too good, Morris! Well, adios then. My work here is done.” She put out her hand for him to shake. Morris was smiling; he shook her hand and nodded his head. He watched her go out the door, through the short entryway, and out into the sunlit afternoon, jacket over her arm.
As soon as she had walked past the building, Lacey picked up her pace, turned the corner, and headed straight for a coffee shop in the middle of the next block. She was practically jogging as she pulled the laptop out from under her jacket, rested it on a bent arm, and checked the screen to make sure the data she needed hadn’t disappeared yet...it hadn’t. She let out the breath she’d been holding. There it was, her own page of preferences, staring back at her. She tapped the spacebar to renew the timer and keep the screen alive, then gently closed the lid, slowed her pace, and turned into the coffee shop.
Once inside, Lacey picked out a chair, placed the laptop on the table in front of her and opened it. She looked for a long time at number 7, which she had scored the highest on a scale from one to ten. As she looked, she felt the sensation she’d had in the lab, when she tested that box, come back to her:

...inhaling through the hole, she felt an immediate, cascading warmth & tingliness fall from the top of her head to her shoulders, followed instantly by the same sensation just below her navel, descending down her thighs. It took only a second, but was so alarmingly pronounced that Lacey had to sit and gather herself before she sniffed again, this time concentrating on the odor rather than her body’s reaction.
The main difference between the scent of this shirt and the others, she thought, was that it wasn’t at all spicy or sharp. It smelled more like damp earth, or…she sniffed again – damp sand, like at the beach…with lots of microscopic life underneath, giving it highly a stimulating and complex aroma. Lacey inhaled again, deeply, and vaguely felt the two-part cascade slide down her body again as she took the odor through nose and mouth, and into her mind…it is salty and delicious, she thought. It smelled like the sea.
Lacey smiled a most contented smile. "Ten,” she had said to the waiting Morris...

So now here she was in the coffee shop, trying to find out who #7 was. She was hurrying. Fortunately, Morris kept very neat, logical & well-labeled records. She clicked out of the folder marked ‘Female Subjects’, and into the one marked ‘Male Subjects.’ The male subjects didn’t have any scores or other data to confuse the search – the experiment was only testing how women rated males’ smells, not vice versa. So just like that, she found the name and contact information of subject #7:
Martin Westerbrand
1452 Pacifica Blvd.
New York, NY 10128
Phone: 221-320-0235

 Lacey’s heartbeat - which had been going like mad already - ticked up a notch. She took out her phone and entered his name and number. After a moment’s hesitation, she entered his address, too. Then she clicked back to the Female Subjects folder, opened today’s results to where she’d begun, clicked the laptop shut and tucked it into her elbow as she rose. Pocketing her phone, she draped her jacket over the laptop and headed for the door. The search had taken just minutes, but already she felt the chill of the A/C on her nervously sweating flesh. Lacey was glad to step out into the sun.
She jogged back to the building.
Approaching carefully, Lacey peeked through the entryway’s two glass doors – no Morris. She came through the doors and stepped into the waiting room.
She approached the female subject seated nearest the door. “Would you give this back to Morris?” Lacey asked, smiling, handing over the laptop. “I picked it up by accident with my jacket.”
Then she slipped back out the door.

* * *

Two days later, on a Friday, Martin Westerbrand answered a call.
“ ‘Lo," he said, as he usually did.
“Who?”
“Oh!...Well, nice to meet ya, Lacey.”
“Well, there wasn’t much to it, was there – I sleep in a t-shirt every night, anyway,” he chuckled.
“Well now yes, I do like seafood. In fact, my family is in the shrimping business right off Long Island...sure, sure – got my own boat and everything. Dad let me take over as captain after I lost my left eye in a fishing accident. Said I can probably see better with my one young eye than he can with the pair of his old ‘uns,” he chuckled.
“Oh – you would, would you?...Well, no, I don’t mind a bit…It’s not every day I get asked out to dinner by a gal that likes the way I smell,” he chuckled.
“Well, no, not very often – but after losing the eye, you might say all my dates have been at least half blind,” he chuckled some more.
“Oh, sure thing. I always recommend The Crow’s Nest, on the corner of Lexington and 95th. I’ll introduced you to my pet shrimp, Hercules,” he chuckled.
“Okay. Eight’ll do fine…say, what’s your last name, Lacey?” (pause)
“Not really….” (pause)
“Now girl, you are pullin’ my leg…”
He smiled. “See? You can’t fool me, girl! ‘Underwear’…ha! ‘Miller’ I’ll believe,” he said, chuckling.
“What?”
“Okay…yep…orange shirt, got it…right, I’ll be the one in the eye patch. Actually, there’s a few of us patchies lurking around that place; I’ll be the one in the eyepatch next to the fishtank, how’s that?”
“All right.”
“See ya later, Lacey girl. Bye, now.”

* * *

(enter Hercules the Mantis Shrimp. Order: Stomatopoda - Suborder: Unipeltata)

stomatopod monologue:

creep backward…creep forward…
“wat iz diz? eet iz shiny and oraange…round and multitudinous!…i am dazzled by ze sparkling oraange orbs…   …mi dios, ze sparkles, ze color!  eet does zometing to me…. (shiver) ooh!...i feel ze tingle in my tail!…zat iz new…i will move closer…"

creep forward...creep backward...
"it sees me!  oh, but itz eyez are so duulll, like muud...but oh, wat iz dees dangling tings?  oh, dey are de feelers...they look so fuulll and feaytheryy...ooh! (shiver)...   ...enough of diz shiver bizness! she iz mine!  i go plan...."

creep backward...creep forward...
"wait, wait wait, wat iz diz? oh, no no No No NO NO!  eevil, one-eye loozer man wid de tappytappy fingers will NOT be being wiz my woman! NO! never mind! i take care of you, my big blind friend..."

creep forward...creep upward...

* * *

Lacey came early and sat patiently, nervously, by the fish tank. She stared at the door, then told herself to stop staring at it. She looked at the fish tank, but there did not seem to be anything in it but rocks and coral; she didn't see any fish or shrimp at all.
She looked back at the door.
It opened, and in came Martin.
Lacey smiled, and waved, but inwardly she thought, 'Ew. I do not like that eyepatch.'
Martin came over and leaned down to kiss her cheek. Lacey held her breath, but then remembered at the last second to take a sniff. Inwardly she thought, 'Ew! What IS that? Old Spice?'
He sat down, smiling broadly. "Hi there, Lacey girl! Wow - couldn'tve missed that shirt if I'd been blind in both eyes!" he chuckled.
Lacey smiled, inwardly thinking, 'One is enough.'
"Don't you like orange sequins?" she asked.
"In moderation, maybe!" He chuckled again. "Have you met Hercules yet?" he asked, gesturing to the aquarium to his right. Martin peered into the tank. "Nothin' stirring...let's see if we can tap 'im out." He tapped on the glass a few times. "Come on out, Herc! Show yer scaly self!" he chuckled.
"I didn't think there was anything in there," Lacey said, inwardly thinking, 'Only jackasses tap on fishtanks.'
"Oh, he's in there all right. He just hides in the nooks and crannies until a fish gets thrown in with him, then he comes out and eats it...look, there he is - he's hanging on the side of the filter, right over here!"
Lacey leaned toward Martin, 'til she could see the handsome, colorful 4-in. shrimp hanging onto the filter there near the tank lid - motionless, save little eye stalks waving.
"Ooh, he is SO cute!" Lacey exclaimed, smiling. Inwardly she thought, 'Ooh, he is so cute!'
"Yep, but dangerous - he can stun a fish just by smacking it and then drag it into his hole in about two seconds - I seen him do it," Martin said, looking at Hercules.
Then he looked back at Lacey, who was still leaning in, looking at the shrimp. "Say, I do like them earrings, though," Martin said. "Spotted feathers - they look real soft..." he reached out his right hand and gently took a feather between thumb and forefinger.

CRACK!

Hercules punched open the swinging black plastic lid of the fishtank, crawled over the edge and jumped to Martin's shoulder; Martin looked at his shoulder in shock...

SNAP!

The mad stomatopod cracked Martin in his right eye, turned, ran down his arm and jumped onto Lacey's shoulder; Lacey looked at the shrimp in surprise...

SMACK!

The smitten stomatopod struck a swift, salty kiss onto Lacey's lips, then sat back satisfied on her shoulder, his feelers caressing her feather earring...

The shrimp shebang had taken just seconds; Lacey sat stunned. Another second, and her body remembered the vital function of breathing, just as Martin's remembered the vital function of screaming.
Her face still turned toward Hercules standing possessively on her shoulder, Lacey inhaled. Her eyes closed, as the now-familiar cascade washed over her. He smelled salty and delicious.
And very strongly, of the sea.

Tattoo You, Ch. 9

Tune in, turn on, drop out.

Its probably easier to do now than it was in 1967.

Back then, it was all about living a more intense genuine experience.  Uncorrupted by the hypocrisy of governments, business, church and family.  The Vietnam war didn't help, to be sure.  But you had a choice.  You could play the game, get ahead, live a life in comfort.   But it was all so vacuous.  Would you really want to grow up like your parents?  To work in some dead end job in some cubicle for the man?   It would sap whatever humanity you had in you.   Go back to the country joe, lean how to fish.  Live a genuine life off the land.  Do something that meant something.

What choice is there now?  We bought into the american dream.   We want to live a comfortable life like our parents  But how?   Why rack up fifty or one hundred thousand dollars in debt for a college degree when there are no jobs.   There is no light at the end of the tunnel.    Its so unfair.  American greed, wall street style has robbed us of our rightful inheritance.  The deck is stacked against us.  I'm not going to play the game anymore.  

I want to live in a community of people who cherish life.  Who aren't obsessed with material possession and iphones.  Who share what they have.   I don't care if I haven't earned it.  That's why I'm going to the Rainbow gathering.  I'm going to quit my dead end job and go to Tennessee.  I want live with friends.   I don't want a dead end life.

"We move with the flow.  Nothing to our names.  Nothing but the clothes on our backs.  We gave it up for this moment right here."

"We live amongst each other in a forest.  Peace and harmony, my brothers and sisters.   Welcome home."

  (illiopolis beat clinton 14-7 in softball.  That's about the only sports team I follow these days:-))

The Zen Guy, Ch. 13

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

A:  John Cage's 4'33".

What is the sound of the quietest place on earth?

Ask the Anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota.  The Guinness Book of World Records rates it as the quietest place on earth.  The walls of the chamber are lined with sound-absorbing baffles that can capture noise and mute it in an instant.  To make it 99% silent, even the lights are turned off as they emit noises which would be evident once all the otherwise distracting sounds are eliminated. 

So what is left?

Only the sound of your breathing and your heart beat.  Which can be disconcerting if you aren't used to it.  Silence, it turns out, can put a great strain on the brain.  Researchers at NASA have tested the room to simulate the silence of space--an environment astronauts would have to get used to-or not.   The longest anyone has spent in the room is 45 minutes, before they hallucinate or otherwise fail to deal with the radically silent environment.

Can you feel the blood going though your carotid arteries and into your brain?  Can you feel the pressure of it?  

During the late afternoon of the unstructured sitting practice during Sesshin, the rejuvenating practice of feeling the blood flow.   Feel the tension in the muscles ebb and flow with the flow and beat of the blood:-)

Scenes Inside a Gold Mine, Ch. 9

The Smell and the Hammer.

A.  The T-Shirt test (the Smell) 

44 men are given clean tshirts to wear for two nights.   In the morning, the shirts were collected.  The researchers put each T-shirt in a box equipped with a smelling hole and invite 44 women volunteers to come in, one at a time, to sniff the boxes. The women were instructed to sample the odor of seven boxes and describe each odor as to intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness.

The results confirmed that the women preferred the smells of men with genetically different immune systems than their own.   Specifically, the women selected men with different MHC (major histocompatibility locus) genes.   That choice theoretically provided a survival benefit to their potential offspring because the combination of two different MHC genes  advantage in beating back disease organisms.

Look what's going on inside you
Ooooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell
The smell of evolution surrounds you.

Or so my Uncle Lynard used to say:-)

B.  The Mantis Shrimp (the Hammer)

The Mantis shimp is approximately 30 cm long.   But big things come in small packages.

Mantis shrimp use a hammer-like arm to smash open snail shells for food.  High speed imaging reveal that the hammer can reach maximum speeds from 12-23 m/s (in water).  The hammer strikes in less than 800 µs, with peak forces of 1500 N (over 2500 times the animal’s body weight).

Some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon.

Evolution has given this fiesty crusteacian exoskeletal springs to power the hammer blow.

Though it rules the roost among the clown fish, its hammer is too little and too late against larger prey who find them tasty.

Mantis shrimp is abundant in the coastal regions of south Vietnam, known in Vietnamese as tôm tít or tôm tích. The shrimp can be steamed, boiled, grilled or dried; used with pepper + salt + lime, fish sauce + tamarind or fennel.

In Cantonese cuisine, the mantis shrimp is known as "pissing shrimp"because of their tendency to shoot a jet of water when picked up. After cooking, their flesh is closer to that of lobsters than that of shrimp, and like lobsters, their shells are quite hard and require some pressure to crack. Usually they are deep fried with garlic and chili peppers.

In the Philippines, the mantis shrimp is known as tatampal, hipong-dapa or alupihang-dagat and is cooked and eaten like shrimp.

The supposedly smell wonderful when cooked:-).

Mr. Lawyerman, Ch. 4

Mr. Lawyerman sat across from the twitching shaking D.J. "Q" during the four day trial.

Here was the deal:  On the night of July 24, 2005, Q left the Cardinals-Cubs game riding with his best friend at the time, Becky E.  Becky E. was driving.  They were on Memorial Drive on the on ramp to enter the interstate and the Poplar Street bridge.   They were rear ended.

Q did not appear to be injured except perhaps a bruise to his arm, or shoulder or elbow, depending on who you listened to.  He also said he suffered a whiplash injury at the time.   Becky E did suffer a whiplash injury in the accident.   She testified that Q only complained of an injury to his elbow after the accident.   In any event, Q did not seek medical attention on the night of the accident.  He went to a bar instead.   Q testified that he started having symptoms of leg weakness and numbness, lack of coordination and difficulty walking after the accident, but did not go to a doctor until 37 days later.   When he went to the doctor initially, Q was only complaining of chest pain and not numbness or difficulty walking.   The doctor who examined him at this time did not testify, but his chart suggested that he did a physical and neurological examination on Q (including his neck) which were normal. 

About 10 days after the examination, Q said that his problems with his legs became worse.   One time, when he was working as a DJ at Diggers Dugout in Stanton, Illinois, his legs gave out after a gig when he was loading equipment into his van.  He fell.   He returned to his doctor now complaining of numbness in his legs and hands with difficulty walking.   That doctor immediately suspected a spinal chord injury and sent him to a neurologist.

Q told the neurologist that he had been having problems with numbness and balance for about 10 days at that it started suddenly.   He told the neurologist about his fall as a DJ.   Later on, almost in passing, he told the neurologist, that he was involved in an automobile accident what was now two months earlier. 

The neurologist sent Q to a neurosurgeon. The neurosurgeon testified that Q suffered from a herniated disc in his neck at the C-5/6 level superimposed on degenerative disc changes.   The herniation impinged upon Q's spinal chord.  This type of herniation, according to the neurosurgeon, can result in numbness to the extremities and balance problems.  The neurosurgeon then proceeded to perform two surgeries on Q's neck.   When those were not successful, the neurosurgeon referred Q for a second opinion to a neurosurgeon at a major medical university.   This second neurosurgeon then performed another surgery.  That surgery also did not alleviate Q's issues.  He still to this day has numbness,a  shaking twitching leg and cannot walk without a cane.  He has been found to be disabled by SSI.  He has not worked since the accident.  

Both neurosurgeons testifed that the accident to a reasonable degree of medical certainty caused his neck injury and need for surgery.   This is because the symptoms of a spinal chord compression may not become evident for several months.   Mr. Lawyerman's expert testifed that if the accident caused Q's symptoms, they should have been evident shortly after the accident, not two months later. 

Things are never that simple though.   The jury did not give Q anything.   That is how the story ended.

Loreli, Ch. 2

Springfield Civic Center
Self-Help Meetings and Support Group Schedule:

Broken Hearts Club
When: Thursday, 8:00 pm
Where: Civic Center Room A
Program: "You Think Your Lover Done You Wrong? Listen to THIS!"
Heartbreakers and heartbroken welcome.  
Activities: Participants may share or just listen to each others' personal tales of heartbreak and emotional devastation in a nonjudgemental, understanding and supportive group environment. Kleenex will be provided, or you can bring your own hanky.
Speaker: Discussion will be moderated by the popular Dr. Marcus D. Loveless, practitioner of the highly effective "Touch Therapy" approach to emotional healing. This method employs friendly back rubs and bear hugs delivered by Dr. Loveless, to promote a feeling of security and acceptance, allowing participants to really let go of their pent up pain, anger, regret and remorse. Participants are encouraged to cry their eyes out, wail, console one another, and finish with the traditional group hug.

Zen Again Meditation Group
When: Thursday, 8:00 pm
Where: Civic Center, Room B
Program: "Are You Compassionate Enough?"
Beginners and longtime sitters welcome.
Activities: Participants sit still on the floor for 30 minutes. They are encouraged to concentrate on the cries and lamentations that can be heard across the hall in room A, and use them as a focus for increasing, through intentional practice, their inherent capacity as compassionate beings. After the half hour, participants will walk in a circle to honor the the karmic truth of what goes around comes around, and then bow towards the hallway to show respect for the truth of suffering evidenced there.
Speaker: Meditation will be led by the serene Master Arlo S. Liepyet, teacher and developer of Zen Again Meditation. This method of compassion-building meditation enables people to accidentally become aware of their own illusory, dualistic habits of thought (such as good/bad, asleep/awake, yellow/blue) and experience instead the mind's infinite power and ability to know all, feel all, and be all, if you sit still and wait patiently, with an open heart & mind.

Yellow Pants Anonymous Meeting
Time: 8:00 pm, Thursday
Location: Civic Center, Room C
Program: "Look Around: Is Anyone Else Wearing Yellow Pants?"
Yellow pants wearers and recovered wearers welcome.
Activities: Participants sit still on the floor for 30 minutes. They are encouraged to focus on the fact that the world is a dirty place and that merely sitting will make yellow pants dirty enough to have to pre-treat. After the half-hour, participants walk in a circle where they must confront this truth by seeing how dirty their neighbor's pants have become. Subsequent discussion will highlight the embarrassment YP wearers may be inflicting on loved ones, who just want them to dress 'normal'.
Speaker: Discussion will be led by Ms. Tillie C. Dalite, recovered YP addict turned peer mentor, whose years spent battling the urge to wear yellow pants in public led her to develop the effective, 3-step method used here. Ms. Dalite's struggle with the shame of flagrantly violating fashion norms, as well as jealous condemnation by clowns and children under 6 for trespass into their culture, inspired her to help other socially stigmatized YP wearers realize that khakis are much more suitable and acceptable, and jeans are much easier to clean.

NOTE TO ALL:
Self-help and support group attendees are invited to a Meet-and-Greet in the civic center gym after classes, starting at 9:00 pm. Enjoy alcoholic beverages, music and dancing at this fun event! Teachers will be present, so come mingle and get great informal advice on topics like: how hugging strangers can help heal heartache & loneliness; how to avoid having your legs fall asleep while sitting for long stretches, and how to use yellow underwear as a first step toward recovery.

Hope to see you there!

Loreli, Ch. 1

If I were the ruler of a country where people's welfare was measured in Gross National Happiness, my people would be the happiest people on earth. We would cultivate experts on happiness and all other emotional conditions, and they would go out into the world as ambassadors of joy and diplomats of delight, and teach other people - as Pepsi once tried to do - how to be happy, even if you live in a very cold climate, with scant access to soft drinks.

Happiness is a state of mind, you see. It is not the state of the state. The state of the state is undeveloped and poor, with barren, rocky soil, rockier roads, and BIG rocks that roll down the mountainside and crush the cattle. There is no garbage service, though there is an increasing amount of trash around. There are no police, though there is an increasing number of bandits around. And yet...

When I wake on a cold, cold, cold morning with stiff joints and sandy eyes, I am happy to be cold, stiff, and have sandy eyes. I go to the doorway and look out, and I am happy to see the barren land and the garbage, and also the sun peeking out between the mountains. If I see a bandit walking around, I greet him with a smile and invite him in to take what he wants. Whereupon he is grateful, and smiles, and says, "Thanks!"

Our queen has taught us that we are happy people, because life IS happiness. She has taught us the secret of the inner smile, which is cultivated by looking at life with curiosity and openness, and assuming that life is as it should be, and it is good enough.

(This attitude takes a long time to learn, of course, but it is easy to fake until you get the hang of the real thing.)


Long ago when I was a baby, I would sometimes be crabby and discontent. I would scream and fuss and cry, and holler and pout. But after I had calmed down, my mother would smile a smile made of lips and love, press the smile into her fingers, and rub it gently onto my forehead in little round circles. "Here is a smile for you to use the next time you feel bad," she would say, " But remember...it always there." Then she would wait until my forehead cleared, as it absorbed the love (or the oft-repeated lesson), and then she would let me go.

But as a kid, I would often forget the smile was there. If I was hungry or tired, or angry at my sisters (who sometimes wore their smiles like sneering slivers of hate), I would yell and throw things, and try to smack the awful smiles from their faces! But our parents would find out about it sooner or later, and after letting us fight it out like wild beasts until we were bloody and tired, they would remind us that we are ungrateful morons not worthy of the smiles bestowed upon us; that we only have each other to take care of in this life, and what kind of way is THAT to take care of anybody? Then they would lock us in the stable until such time as we found our misplaced smiles, put them on our cleared foreheads so they could see, and let us out.

By the time I became a teenager, I had mastered the external smile, but still had trouble maintaining the inner smile ... that is because I was half mad. Fortunately, this is considered a normal condition for teenagers where I live. So when the porridge was too runny, or the cheese was taking forever to set, or my sisters were behaving like asses again, I would temporarily become a raving loonie, and be sent to the kicking rock.

The kicking rock is a mushroom-shaped rock just south of the dump, where teenagers gather to bitch and kick chunks out of the splintery surface until they calm down. If my sisters were sent there with me because they truly WERE being ass-ish, a jury of our peers would assemble to listen to us holler out our case, and the oldest and calmest kid in the crowd would decide, with the help of his opinionated bretheren, how many kicks each party must bestow upon the rock to restore peace. If we perform our kicks and it clears our heads, the judge is boosted to the top of the rock to take a bow. If it does not clear our heads, however, there is general mayhem while shards of rock are gleefully and vengefully winged at the unwise intermediary, who on most occasions is swift enough to get away unscathed.

(If no other kids are at the rock when we get there, though, we usually just kick it once and get the hell gone...because it truly stinks there, right next to the dump.)


As an adult, my inner smile is much more steady, and it helps carry me through the tragic events and harsh conditions that are as unavoidable as the blissful moments in this wonderful life we lead. When half the town gets sick, and the other half has to go about bearing the extra burden of work, caring for the sick, and burying the dead, they do it as if nothing is wrong, because nothing IS wrong, or right - it just IS.

When some complete idjit hollers at his yak for crapping on his shoe, and it echoes up the mountain and loosens a giant raft of snow that comes sliding down and buries the man, the yak, and 20 other villagers, the rest of us are glad that it's quieted down again, and that he won't have to clean off his shoe, after all.

"The outer smile is made by the mind to clothe the face," our queen tells us, "but the inner smile is spontaneously present in the human heart, to clothe the spirit."

"The work you do and the effort you expend in caring for yourselves, your animals, the land, and each other increases the happiness of all those around you," her ministers state.

"Happiness a gift bestowed by heaven upon mankind," say her priests, "so that we may felicitate in life's majesty and accept death's mystery with a secure, strong spirit."


Now that I am very old, my happiness is complete. We age, and people around us die, but we do not grieve. The children cry, of course; the teenagers stand around and kick the rock and try not to cry. But the old ones just sit and watch the sick ones suffer, smiling gently.

The sick ones' eyes open and close; their foreheads are sometimes sweaty and furrowed, but sometimes clear, as they feel the last light of their inner smile flow from their body, breath by breath. We give them medicines and rub their aching bodies for as long as it will help, but it will not help forever; nothing will.

And so, as the last breaths blow out, we old ones gather around and press smiles onto our fingertips. We rub them gently, one by one, onto the forehead of the dying person, so he might take them wherever he is going.

After that, if he isn't dead yet, we sing his favorite songs for a while to encourage his spirit to go to whatever happy place the music takes it...

But he STILL is not dead, we all go home and leave him in the care of his family. (They are, by this time, used to the tricks this mischievious old dodger likes to play on them; he is almost 90, after all, and has come close enough to dying to get all the rites twice now...probably in case he can't enjoy them if he ends up dying from a swift hoof to the head, or a slip off a cliff, or the random yet inevitable rock that WILL fall on your head one day - which happens a lot where I live, despite signs the town put up years ago: CAUTION: FALLING ROCKS.)

We understand he's just hedging his bets, as we all do, to one degree or another. But the best way to ensure that you die happy, advises our queen, is to live happy.

And we believe her. :)

Silster Wilster, Ch. 10

Fun with words.

The whole "shebang"

When you say "shebang" you don't get the full double entrendre effect that you have by looking at the word "shebang."  Which of course is comprised of two syllables "she" and "bang".   That leads us inexorably to the next issue, to wit:  whether she bang is a statement or a question.  Now that I know her, for example, I can testify unequivocable that she bang and does she ever.  When I first met her, by contrast, I did not know whether she bang.   And so on and so forth.

Though determining whether shebang may be acertained by empirical examination, the history and etiology of shebang is nebulous.   For example, Walt Whitman, though traditionally thought of as more of a hebanger than a shebanger, used shebang to connote some form of hut or rustic dwelling.  In Whitman's Specimen Days, from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, 1862:

"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes."

That leads us to the interesting question of whether shebang in a shebang.

 Mark Twain used 'shebang' to refer to a form of vehicle - in Roughing It, 1872:

"Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't let you pay a cent."

Again, does she shebang in a shebang?   I certainly want to know.   Hopefully, not in my new car.   It still has that new car smell.   Shebang in my old conveyance, to be sure.

In the military context, we see for the first time that shebang amounts to just about everything, to wit, "the whole shebang."   For example, military officers are left "running the shebang" as in Johnson's Talking Wire (1864) and S.C. Wilson's Column South (1864).

And let me tell you, those military officers know what they are talking about.  Because when shebang, it is tantamount to everything.  Its that good.

She bang must be distinguished from "shebop"--a notion that was popularized by Cyndi Lauper in the 1980s.  The editors feel there is nothing wrong when shebop.  Still, the preference by this author is that shebang.  Sorry, to those boppers out there, its just the way I feel:-).

The Apolitical Activist, Ch. 6

Happiness and Good Governance

In Bhutan, the King decided there should be a quantification of happiness to be used as a measure of good governance.   It was hypothesized as GNH (Gross National Happiness).

He was only kidding.

But his ministers took him seriously and retained a Canadian researcher to create a list of both subjective and objective measurement of happiness.  It looked something like this:

http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/

If you want to take the "happiness" survey, check this out:
http://www.happycounts.org/begin-survey/

I did.   According to the test, I'm above average on the happiness scale.   Except in social connections and mental conditions.  Then I'm just average.
When you take the test, you may find that many of the questions seem to biased toward a belief that happiness is not dependent on material possessions or the acquisition of same.   This is not surprising.  Bhutan is an isolated country lacking prosperity in any material sense.  The King emphasized that people’s happiness did not depend on the nation’s economic wealth.  Which of course is a logical position to assume if your country is poor and you don't want the masses to become discontent.

Namgay Zam, an anchor from state-owned broadcaster Bhutan Broadcasting Service, echos this sentiment:  “Bhutanese generally are very content people, resigned to their fates due to their belief in karma,” she said. “They simply don’t ask for more.”

Well, actually they may be asking for more.  For when the residents of Bhutan have taken the test,   though more than 90 percent of the 7,142 respondents said they were “happy” in a recent government survey, only 49 percent of people fit the official definition of total happiness by meeting at least six of the survey’s nine criteria.

What does this mean in a predominately Buddhist Country?  Does practicing Buddhism resign you to your fate?  Does it make you immune from the siren song of material goods and the desire for same?  Happiness is just one manifestation of existence.  Are there any others?  lol. 

I'd like to see an equanimity test.  Now that would make me truly happy:-)

In any event, here is what the Bhutan website tells you you can do to increase your  "happiness: "

1. Sit silently for 5 minutes a day. Turn off the television, laptop, cell phone. Make yourself comfortable and just sit for 5 min, observing and not judging your thoughts. Close your eyes if you can, or keep focused on any object about 2-3 feet in front of you. If you find yourself deep in thought, simply observe this and then come back to the moment.
2. Practice gratitude: every morning and every night, list five things for which you are thankful on paper or in your thoughts. These might be as simple as how good the pillow feels under your head or the really yummy lunch you had, or something much grander. It is the act of gratitude that counts.
3. Give every day with a small act of kindness to someone in their presence or so they know it is you who gave. This may be as simple as smiling at the cashier or saying thank you to a co-worker or boss. Once a year, or if you are inclined, once a month or week, volunteer with a community organization or do something on your own or with neighbors to increase the well-being of others in your community.

The Open Microphone, Ch. 1

The Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex and Farming Show:

Loreli ("L"):   Men are in a constant state of ovulation.   They have to keep reinventing themselves.  Women only have to do it once a month.

The Imp of the Perverse ("IP"):  Have to do what only once a month?

L:  Ovulate.  Do you want me to spell it out for you?  Women only ovulate once a month.   The testes in a man are pretty much busy all the time.

IP:  Busy doing what?

L:  Busy creating millions and millions of eggs all the time.   Then jacking around and spilling them on the ground.   Then starting all over again.   Constantly.   Guys are a bunch of jumpy jack-offs.   That's why they can't sit still to meditate for over 15 minutes at a time.  They are in a constant state of motion.

IP:  Semen aren't eggs.

L:   True, but they contain just as much genetic information for the potential baby as the egg.  Both the sperm and the ovum hold half of the genetic code. All ova have an X chromosome, and sperm either have an X or a Y chromosome. One can't create a baby without the other since it would be missing half of its genetic code.  In this way, semen are half babies, just like the eggs.  Millions of half babies.  And when men go celibate by becoming priests or Buddhist, think of all the potential creation that is wasted.  Women, on the other hand, only have to give up 12 instances of creation of year to become celibate.   That makes me wonder whether any Buddhism is applicable to them anyway.

IP:  Zen dudes are not celibate.  They are married.   Indeed, some of the Japanese Zen guys who taught in America spilled plenty of seed into some of their American students.

Marita Donita ("MD"):  Enough of this celibacy talk!   I want to fuck, eat and drink all that I can.   I mean, I'm not going to be stupid about it, i'm not going to drink until my liver goes out or get any of the things you can get with sex, but really, what's the point?  We are here to enjoy life after all.  And i'm going to do it!

IP:   You need to talk to L.   She needs a breath of fresh air I think.

L:  My heart was broken, to be sure.

IP:   In fact MD you need to talk to everyone.   Lets all go hedonistic for awhile, shall we?

MD:  Fucking right.  That's why I'm a waitress in a bar now.   I'm trained as a stock broker.  But when I was hired because I'm a woman, I had to start in the typing pool.  How many men have to start in the typing pool? Fuck that.  Now, I'm loving life working where I can be around people all day who are there to have fun and drink and eat (and of course the other stuff):-).

Sarabi:   I want to work in an organic farm in Colorado or Wisconsin with my friends.   So at the end of the day, I can look back and know that I have actually accomplished something.

IP:   Have you worked on a farm before?

Sarabi:  No, but I haven't working in International Relations before either.  Or been to India.  I just don't know what I want to do with my life.

IP:  Lets all go on the farm so we can spill our seed on the ground and maybe something will grow out of it.....

Things that don't resonate with me to the extent they once did, Ch. 6

European Intellectual History, 1930-1980

From the period immediately following World War II to the publication of An Essay on Liberation in 1969, orthodox Marxist theory and practice came under intense criticism from both Marxist and Liberal intellectuals.  The critique of Marxist practice centered on the increasingly totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union.  Even thinkers like Merleau-Ponty who defended the Moscow Purge Trials in Humanism and Terror became aware after the disclosure of slave labor camp atrocities that the Soviet Union was using violence for its own totalitarian rather than revolutionary (Marxist) ends.

Orwell extended this criticism of the Soviet Union in 1984:  a depiction of a communist (INGSOC) totalitarian regime which used brute force, psychological torture, and linguistic control to subjugate its citizens.   It seemed to confirm the perception that B.H. Levy later argued in Barbarism with a Human Face; Marxism was the demonstration of brute power (E.g. O'Brien) under the guise of morality and equality.   This equation of power to communist practice extended beyond the critique of the Soviet Union.   Raymond Aron systematically applied the criticism on a social level to French intellectuals, who, displaced from power by the rise of the new technocrats, used Marxism as a vehicle to regain lost power.

The final break from the Soviet camp occurred as a reaction to the "Prague Spring" of 1968.  Not only did European communist parties and intellectuals repudiate the Soviet model and practice of Communism, but in its stead were updated and anti-totalitarian ideas which aligned "Euro communism" with the ideals of freedom and liberty found in Western Liberalism.

Though Orwell had intended 1984 to distinguish socialism from the bastardized vanguardism of the Soviet Union, Western thinkers with the advent of the "Cold War" turned their criticism to Marxist theory.  Some argued that the "exclusive" nature of Marxist theory, its privileged and correct view of world history and class society, and its prescription for revolution, had licensed, if not caused, Soviet totalitarianism.

One writer during this new "Cold War", Frederick Hayek, saw Nazi totalitarianism as the natural consequence of socialism.  Both governments had "centralized" economic planning.  This led to compulsory mandates of a "majority decision" which gave no voice to dissent.  Hannah Arendt argued that Marxist and fascist conceptions of "historical movements" destroyed traditional Western freedoms granted though previously "transcendent" laws.  In communist countries, Marx's "science of history" became identified as the sole interpreter of human history; there was no longer recourse to transcendent laws.  Moreover, this "monopoly" of history was relative to the group in power at the given time in history.   Since the interpretation of history determined almost all aspects of public and private life, individual liberty could be destroyed with the change of governments.

Similar critiques came from within the Marxist fold.  Popper argued against the validity of Marxist "historicism" ("holism") as a science and tool for social change.  Such "laws, he argued, were based on the invalid extrapolation of scientific induction to history.  Scientific laws were based on repeated events with uniform outcomes.  History, on the other hand, was a "one shot" event which could not be retested and thereby validated.   Even the apparent circularity in history was based on infrequently occurring events which might have any number of causes.  It would be impossible to retest any one theory.  Finally, Popper railed against Marxist plans for a future society:  the course of history depends on knowledge, and future knowledge cannot be speculated on in the present.  Thus, "whole" changes cannot be made, only "piecemeal" social engineering based on present knowledge is possible.

All these criticisms militate against any comprehensive ideological position, specifically the Marxist claim to historical "insight" and application.  Without any of "exclusive" ideology, many intellectuals, like Rof Dahrendorf, favored a pluralistic political process.   Like Marx, Dahrendorf felt that change and class struggle were inevitable in society, yet society should "institutionalize" the change, providing formal rules for conflict and mediation which recognize the equal rights of all dissident groups and ideologies.  Even the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci wrote that Marxist values must be taught rather than imposed.  He also wrote that communist parties should assume power only through democratically validated means. 

Within this non-ideological and pluralistic context, Marcuse reaffirms some of the absolute "privileged" Marxist theories with a new twist.  The re-emergence of interest in the "young Marx" brought back traditional categories "alienation", "species being" etc, all which found their basis in the Hegelian absolute of human "freedom."  Marcuse based his social critique on biology and Freudian analysis, which were apparently even more undeniable.  From this underpinning, he leveled irrefutable attacks on capitalism:  "Self determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, ...to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive it may be.  Organized capitalism has sublimated and turn to socially productive use frustration and primary aggressiveness on an unprecedented scale."  Note what has happened here:  pluralism and freedom are denied, for mankind cannot make truly "free" decisions.  Instead, the "so called consumer economy and politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form."  His argument remains ideological in the sense that it give a partisan historical interpretation of history, and due to its"absolute nature--its basis in biological truth--its could be used to license totalitarian change in the sense Arendt elucidates.  The dissenters would simply not know what is "truly" best for them.

But perhaps this is an unfair criticism given Marcuse's other Utopian ideals.  He is not advocating political revolution, but a complete revolution in consciousness--a "liberation."  In this way, Marcuse allies himself to the "young Marx" concept of "alienation."  Both argue that modern labor does not fulfil the self.  Man's biological needs, his "life instincts", require a creative and free expression of the self in line with the classic German idealistic conception of "Bildung."  In a capitalistic system, however, work is "socially necessary": done for the purposes of power, competition, or money.  The life instinct is sublimated in the unfulfilled acquisition of material goods.  But how can man liberate himself from these capitalistic conceptions that have become "second nature"?

In the formulation of classic German idealism, man's freedom of imagination (and thus the fulfilment of the "life instinct") is the synthesis between "sensibility" (comprised of "sensual experience" and "pure forms") and "reason".  In a capitalistic system, man's sensibility (sensory experience) is corrupted by "socially necessary" work, "surplus repression," and acquisition.

Political "liberation" then becomes an "aesthetic liberation."  Art ultimately has the same goals as the "life instincts" of man"  the integration of the sensuous aspects of nature (feelings and emotions) into formal instructions (via man's reason) that have internal "harmony."  As is the case in man, the sensual nature of art is corrupted by the Establishment:   "Art cannot become a technique in reconstructing reality; its sensibility remaining repressed."   Instead, art must reject current "forms" (desublimate) and return the vital roots of its original creation.  Marcuse views "Non objective, abstract painting, rock and roll, blues and jazz" as "liberation art"--a complete rejection of current artistic forms (the "false automatism of current practices."   The "new object of art," just as that of politics, is not yet given, "but the familiar objective has become impossibly false."  Likewise, what is called for in politics is a desublimation of existing political forms--for even democratic systems perpetuate the Establishment and a resublimation to a new harmony of sensibility and reason devoid of capitalistic "alienation."  Like Popper, Marcuse has no one future plan in mind, only something like "piecemeal" social engineering:  the "harmless drive for better zoning regulations to the prohibition of transistor radio playing in public places."  Such practices "desublimate" existing institutions, brings people back to the fundamental roots of government (i.e. Rousseau).

But still, is this process of "liberation" ideological?  Des the criticism of Arendt apply?  To answer this question at a first level, it is important to examine in more detail what a Marcusean revolution, if indeed there is to be one, would entail.  Specifically, how would the revolution withstand the criticisms of philosophers of the New Right like Levy and Glucksman?  These writers have argued that the reality of society is overwhelmingly complex, with constant conflict between groups.  To impose a Marxist solution is not possible without dissent.  Indeed, they would argue that a classless Marxist utopia does exist in real life--in the Soviet Union.  For the only way to homogenize a complex society is to silence and isolate dissent.  Thus, slave labor camps are a necessary feature of a Marxist society.  

At one level, this criticism of the "new Right" is invalid.  It is based only on the homogeneity of class, not on the possibility of mass liberation.  If universal liberation occurs there theoretically could be a universal brotherhood with peace and understanding.  Moreover there are no provision for a revolution in the present or the future in Marcuse.  He sees provisions for a revolution in the present or the future in Marcuse.  He potential elements of a future revolution in the ghetto population of the United States and in the countries of the Third World, but he fears that without a rupture of their beliefs a revolution would either spark a counterrevolution or continued enslavement to an exploitative system like in the Soviet Union.  He offers no specific blueprint the new society must be determined by trial and error.  Rather, his emphasis is on the spontaneous almost anarchic feeling of the joy of freedom which accompanies revolutions, especially student revolutions.  This emotional response of liberation re humanizes the lives of the oppressed, filling them with new meaning.  Marcuse sees this emotional content as more important, for example, than the specific revolutionary model of the Fidel and Che revolutions.

At this point, it appears that Marcuse's theories are indeed negative without any direct advocacy of any real world action or ideology.  But a more persuasive criticism can be made on the applicability of aesthetic Utopian ideas in a complex political society.  Art is not life, and is it even possible for the artist to achieve resolutions?  Indeed, Marcuse's analysis seems to push human reality to absolute black and white dichotomies; for instance, mankind seems either absolutely free or absolutely indentured to capitalist society.  There is no sense of a grey area reality of partial freedoms or partial truths, which by extension, the thought of New Right thinkers suggest, given their emphasis on pluralism and change.  Implicit in their analysis is a resignation to the inherently conflicting motivations and beliefs in human behavior, and the necessity for compromise.  In short, perfect forms in either art or politics are not possible in the world.

Finally, through desublimation appears devoid of ideology, taking in itself it is an ideology to end all ideologies.  Could it comprise negative thinking or is it an absolute value?  It seems a dichotomy had developed in political though between black and white thought aimed at negativing reality and establishing a Utopian community, and the more realistic acceptance of the inherent conflicts and compromises necessary in political life.   But is this in itself an example of the black and white mode of thought?

Why are Marxist beliefs maintained in the face of this criticism?  Or why after the apparent failures of both the Soviet experience and student revolts of the 1960s?  Or why after the criticism waged by the end of ideology thinkers like Bell, Aron, and Ellul who suggest Marxism to be obsolete in a modern industrial world that is effected more by the technical expertise of managers than the specific economic system employed?  The answer to this question in interestingly and suspectly a restatement of Marcuse's original position.  For instance, one could reject capitalism on moral grounds, where morality , like beauty is defined as part of a high more resolved world.  It follows that the world under capitalism is immoral in practice, a life spent in competition and material acquisition  and by its effects:   inequality of wealth, emptiness of material gain, unemployment, destruction of communities and the environment etc.  Marxism, on the other hand, is favored because it offers the vision of a harmonious world.  The "why" of Marxism has become a restatement of Marcuse's essay.  It seems that the form of his argument first assumes certain Utopian conceptions of life, the condemns any discrepancies from the Utopia.  Is he then begging the question:   imposing absolute standards on life and then condemning capitalism for not reaching them?  If so, is his and other Utopian Marxist criticism not unique to capitalism, but applicable to all aspects of an unresolved reality?  This is all critical and Utopian thought based on faulty logic or illusion?  But what is the alternative?  Resignation could bring with it no hope for a better future.