all's red that ends red...

I really like those Budweiser radio commercials... 'Real American Heroes...' They have been on forever and I still cannot but stop and listen, see if it is one haven't heard before. Well today one came on and I had a bit of an idea: they need to do a series of beer commercials saluting real Communist heroes. Budweiser could salute:

Mr. Peoples' Manifesto Writer
Mr. Guerrilla Revolutionary Ammo Carrier
Mr. Deputy Undersecretary for the Manufacture of Lightbulbs
Mr. Tiananmen Square Tank Commander.

I don't know. Just think there are all those nameless, faceless masses out there who will never get their just due on commercial radio. It is an injustice. Kind of makes you want go on strike or something.

total eclipse of the heart...

Today's question:

If you had your druthers (and I really think you should) what would be the capital of the world?

the heartbeat of america...

Among several other wonderfully pleasant things today, I finished 'The Way of the Pilgrim'. 'Franny & Zooey', by J.D. Salinger is one of my great favorite books of all time. I love the Glass family, and have felt a strange sort of kinship toward them. Well, I also feel a sort of kinship for my friend Sara, one of the best givers-of-gifts that I have had the pleasure of knowing. Well, some time ago, Sara gave me 'The Way', which is the book Franny is reading in Salinger's novel.

I walked 'The Way of the Pilgrim' with a bit of a mixed heart. It was an enjoyable read, a fun path with some bright narrative elements. But the soul of the book is the call to practice the Jesus Prayer as a sort of spiritual discipline. Essentially the idea is that one can 'pray without ceasing' by reciting the prayer 'Lord, be merciful to me' over and over thousands of times a day. Eventually the prayer becomes automatic. And then, with certain practices, one can get the prayer to connect with one's heartbeat so that one actually prays the Jesus Prayer unceasingly in the very heartbeat.

My first response was a sort of hiccup that was more than a hiccup. The pilgrim who is narrating the book is actually looking for salvation through the prayer. And he presents it to several people along the way as a means of attaining salvation. I don't know much about Russian Orthodox doctrine, but I do know that no practice, no mantra, and even no prayer will save any of us. We are saved by faith in Jesus, the real person who died and raised himself from the dead. And we can express that faith in prayer, especially in asking him for mercy. But the repetition of a prayer as a sort of mantra is simply not in itself going to put us into right relationship with God.

At the same time, there is something beautiful in the prayer, I think. One of the key things that it is supposed to do is cause you to dwell on God constantly. And you can imagine that if you are addressing someone constantly, you are on some level recognizing that person's presence and entering into a kind of relationship with that person all of the time. I know there are huge gaps of time where I am consumed with everything but attention to God, much less conversation with him. It is sort of tempting to try this discipline, not as a means to salvation, nor as a sort of vain repetition, but simply as a constant personal reminder to live in relation to the Father, to remember him as he remembers me.

Also was reading in John today (Tim sparked me back onto the book recently). And hit the passage where Jesus is telling his disciples that the sheep know the shepherd's voice. The simplicity of this reality hit me hard. I have wrestled a bit lately and at different times with the desire to authentically know God, to experience him. At the same time I have had times lately where I am looking and asking... where in all that I run into in life is God? What in religion is just folk imagining and doing things, and what is really God meeting his people? What in the seemingly providential is God's letting me know that he loves me, and what might be coincidence? Is the voice in my guts the Spirit, the Enemy, or the chilis that Jeryl spiked the pasta sauce with? But the simple reality is that his sheep hear his voice and follow the Shepherd. Looking forward to dwelling in that simplicity.

a bit of a ditty...

My soul is of the desert
My love is of the sea
Between them stand vast mountains
And dark forests thick with trees.

I thought to dig a tunnel
And then to cut a road
But I have no ax or shovel
Nor a mule to bear the load.

a circus absurd...

The other day someone called me, sarcastically and in passing, 'Boss Man'. To which I replied 'Wasn't the Big Boss Man the police officer in the WWF back in the day? (And we ain't talkin' the World Wildlife Fund here.) Hadn't thought of classic WWF in quite some time. Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Macho Man Randy Savage, Hacksaw Jim Duggan... Never got into it much, but I remember those guys were larger than life. The good wrestlers versus the bad wrestlers. And in the Midwestern industrial suburbs where I grew up, there were a lot of kids who looked up to those guys because they were tough. A lot of times it seemed like it was the kids who didn't have the best home lives.

Then it occurred to me. A policeman, an indian, a construction worker, all with their shirts off... isn't that basically the Village People? I don't know... just think it is kind of funny that the extremes of urban homosexual and redneck macho end up in the same place... sweaty guys in costumes with their shirts off.

Correlations between pro wrestling, gay pop, Sodom and Gomorrah? Throw in some Marxism and attack fundamentalist Christianity, and you've got the makings of a proper doctoral thesis. Anyone out there looking for a doctorate in Sociology?

american history in miniature...

‘How’ said the Red Man.
‘Let me show you’ said the White Man.
‘Ni hao’ said the Yellow Man.

the current that sweeps all away...

reading:

'Florentine Histories' by Niccolo Machiavelli.
The Histories are a bit of a trip. A great Italian political soap opera crossbred with Thucydides sort of history that is far more than history. Factions. Amazing view of the divisions of a city, in all the richness of possibility. In politics and war, one must know the realities, the possibilities, and most of all the intended end. Limited war is inherently problematic.

'Selected Poems 1934-1952' by Dylan Thomas.
Hmmm... Words that must be read aloud, as deeply and powerfully as possible. Oh, for more Welsh a voice. A dark, sound dance of mind and guts, nature, sex and the sea. My first real foray into Dylan other than a few chance readings of his more popular poems. So far, being pulled out to sea.

listening to:

'Black Holes and Revelations' by Muse.
It is like tough electronic emo crack. Kip plays it a lot at poker. Can't stop listening to it, really. And tempted to pick up 'Absolution' which is another great album.

'Sleepless Nights' by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Bros.
Sexy, like GP's solo albums, but a tad more upbeat, a shade less spare and gritty, but a whole lot of goodness. And a little less sort of well... sinful?... than 'Guilded Palace of Sin'. If I skip directly to a track it is 'Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down'. But SN is full of goodness through and through.

'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven' by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

The Blues... Lightnin' Hopkins. Mississippi Fred McDowell. Son House.

because fortune is a woman...

knowing how way leads on to way...

Jenny was saying that in one of her classes they are traveling around Iowa looking at different farming systems comparing the systems, techniques, and outcomes. Basically they are asking the question, 'What is sustainable?'. It is an interesting question. On the one hand there is ecological/resource sustainability. Whatever we do, sooner or later, the environmental chickens are going to come home to roost. At the same time you have real-world market sustainability. In a global and integrated economy, agriculture must be able to meet the nation's food (and possibly fuel) demands in a complex world economy and in a way that works, that makes a profit or that provides incentive to actually do it and do it well.

It is exciting to see some shifts toward organic farming and to see niche possibilities popping up as the market diversifies a bit and there is a demand for other options than mass manufactured foodstuff. Admittedly, I probably have a somewhat stylized and romantic perspective on the world of farming.

But I remember reading Czeslaw Milosz about returning to his grandparents' home, the forest where he had grown up by a river in Poland (or Lithuania?). He had spent his childhood in the woods, getting to know the trees and birds, his own world, a space that you can sense in his poetry. Under communism, the forest and the buildings had been cut down along with everything for miles around to make a giant collective farm. He finally returned to fields along the river following the bare contours of a world that was left only to an old man's memory and words. Perhaps it was not simply communism that erased those family lands. The farmstead that has been a staple way of life in Western culture since the Neolithic may disappear under capitalism as well. Whether it falls to ideas or to the market, it simply may not be sustainable as a means to meet our culture's needs.

All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea is not full. I know that the prairies become farmsteads and that the forests become fields become forests again. Staple foods became hay with the horse-driven economy. And hay turned to corn and beans when the car came to drive the horse into history. But I can't help but will to imagine a way in which we can live and live well with our land, our poetry, and a little hard work.

wrecked him...

I was going to list all the things I have done for money. But I changed my mind.