A Sadness at the Passing of Robin Williams

"You made 'em laugh - you made 'em cry

You made us feel like we could fly."

~ Queen, "Radio"

Thirty minutes ago I learned of the death of Robin Williams. Twelve hours ago I was quoting a line of Williams’ from the movie of “Dead Poets Society” which is as following, “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”

I was 17 when my English teacher called me out in the middle of class and told me that I reminded her of Robin Williams. I was 20 when my depression started. I was twenty one when I watched “Good Will Hunting” and for the first time felt the passion it takes to grab a man by the throat and tell him that he doesn't know what the fuck he’s talking about.

I am sad. I am confused. I am caught unaware at his passing, an apparent suicide. I've followed Williams’ own struggle with depression and substance abuse and have listened to the man talk gracefully and humanly about it. He had given me hope. He was an inspiration. The only comedian to make me cry, I am profoundly sad.

It’s real. Those things we feel in the darkness of our minds are real. The terror, the lament, the torture, they come at the hands of our own self-defeat. It is real and I am sad.

Yet I’m feeling hopeful despite whatever sorrow is overcoming me. Heart is faint but spirit strong. That despite whatever outcome the battle is with people like me, the people who struggle and fail, consistently, again and again, without end are not the means of their end but the sum of what they left behind. Robin has certainly left me with inspiration to move toward kindliness and gentleness and joy and spontaneity and gracefulness. I hope it remains.

Robin, you will be missed. Enjoy the other side. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the tears.

KJ out.

"Some Stories From My Adolescence"

“Ripped Pants Twice”

I didn’t wear underwear once for a whole year. 

I was thirteen and the sun was beating down on the black asphalt and callouses were being born on my naked feet. 

FLASHBACK!

Earlier that day:

It was P.E. Physical education my ass. The coach was blowing his whistle to signal another pushup. I was wearing my brother’s old brown shoes. They were like dress shoes but cooler. They looked like clown shoes on me. I wanted to be thought of as unique. I was thought of as unique but much later on, and for other reasons. 

Then my pants ripped and the crotch became history. I hadn’t worn underwear because I had rapidly gained weight the year before and progressed sadly into the category of too obese. I didn’t tell my mom I needed new underwear because I was embarrassed of going to the store, checking out and the cashier seeing me and my underwear side by side. I’m still this way. Paranoid by childish bullshit. I waited for Christmas and for Santa to bring a new pair that fit.

Worried my dangles would dangle I stood up faster than I have ever stood and walked with John Wayne’s grace to the coach. 

“I need to go the front office and call my mom,” I told him.

“Why do you need to that,” the coach asked.

“My pants ripped,” I said.

“Where,” he asked like a jackass.

“My crotch,” I answered reluctantly.

“You can still stay in class and fini…”

“I’m not wearing underwear,” I interrupted.

“Oh, sure thing kid. Go ahead.”

I grabbed my shit and booked it holding the bag in front of me through the halls of the school. I wasn’t sure how far back the rip had went and I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself by checking.

Sitting in the office was scary. I waited for someone to notice. I wasn’t sure how they would react if they saw a fat kid’s penis. I didn’t want to find out.

Mom eventually arrived. My grandmother was there too. I hadn’t told mom why I needed to leave school. I think Mamaw laughed and then choked on her cigarette smoke. 

At the house I changed my pants, threw the ripped ones away, ate some junk food, watched some cartoons and waited for my friend Paul to get home. When I realized he should have been home and hadn’t come over to see me I decided to walk up the hill to his house.

I was walking in the middle of the road when Paul came ripping down the hill on his neighbor’s four wheeler. The sun was beating down on the black asphalt and callouses were being born on my naked feet. 

Paul was good at driving that thing for a thirteen year old, but his judgment could have used a tuneup. I stepped off to the side of the road as he roared past me. I turned to walk back down the hill when he made a one-eighty and came back to meet me. 

I didn’t move as I waited for him to stop. Then he hit me. My legs went behind me as I skidded along the asphalt. I opened my eyes and Paul was on the ground too. His four wheeler was on its side. When he stood up my pain came. My knees were on fire. My right leg was telling my brain not to move. 

Paul walked over to me and asked, “Why didn’t you get out of the way?”

“Why didn’t you get out of the way man,” I answered.

“Because I thought you were going to get out of the way. Can you stand up,” Paul said trying to justify himself.

“I don’t know just leave me alone,” I said.

The pain was too painful for me to cry about. It was then I first noticed I was becoming a man. Eventually I wiggled my leg. It still worked thank fuck. I rolled over to look at my legs. Both knees were bloody and the new pair of pants had ripped too and again. Paul helped me up and I limped silently to my front door. Paul went back to check the four wheeler. 

In the house I walked past my sister who was lying on the couch watching “Real World” or something equally septic. 

“Hey,” she said, “What are you doing?”

“I just got hit by a four wheeler,” I said.

“What! Are you okay,” she started to laugh.

“Yeah, I just need to lay down.”

Making it to the top of the stairs I collapsed in the bathroom. My face rested in a puddle of what was more than likely my own piss. I was a horrible shot. I’m not sure how long I laid there but I thought twice about puking before I got back up. I found a new pair of pants and walked back outside.

Paul was standing in the front yard wringing his hands nervously. He asked me how I was and I laughed hysterically. It was barbarian. It was maniacal. It was a sign of craziness. 

“Please don’t tell my parents,” Paul told me. 

“Don’t worry. I need to get cleaned up. Can I do it your house,” I asked.

“Sure, but don’t tell my mom what happened. Say you fell down the hill.”

“Okay, can you give me a ride on the four wheeler,” I asked and limped over. The push bar was dented where it had hit me in the right knee. 

When he returned the four wheeler the owner asked why the bar was bent and why there were scratches down the side. Paul told him he had hit a small tree and rolled over. The owner revoked Paul’s driving privileges for a year and I was thankful. Fuck four wheelers. 

- - -

“A First” 

(explicit content, but funny)

We were three boys up to mischief passing a photo of a naked woman back and forth walking down the hill of Rosewood Way. I was the one who printed it off the internet. I showed it to Paul and he showed it to Joseph. It was the spring of 2002 in Loganville, Georgia. 

I can’t remember who the lady in picture was. I had kept it in my pillow case for safe keeping. These were not the days of my father. In his day you had to come across a naked woman in a magazine or talk a girl into showing you her goods. You had to look and strive and hope. 

With the rise of the technical overlord that subdues my generation you could find naked women at anytime your parents weren’t home. Hell, you didn’t even have to do that. You could just flip through the nine hundred and ninety-nine channels and eventually come across a side boob. If you had the endurance you could stay up until two in the morning and watch the sales commercials for Girls Gone Wild. They had stars over the nipples which didn’t cover up the power of a young boy’s imagination.

The three of us would hangout in a ditch just across the road from my house. The houses of our neighborhood were dispersed of their  pastel colored, cooky-cut designs by trees and a creek that swerved through it. The creek formed a barrier around my house and cut under the road in a large drain pipe which was big enough for the three of us to walk through. Once on the other side the creek would drop two feet into a five foot deep puddle and from there would carry on throughout the neighborhood. 

I call it a ditch. It was more a pit. Down there we would slide down the muddy bank and play and explore the wild river. 

We took turns staring at the naked woman and wondered about sex. We were nine and we hadn’t quite figured it out yet. Then Paul said, “My cousin says girls get pregnant when you pee in their vagina.”

I didn’t say anything. Up to that point I had never seen the physical act of sex. Hell, I hadn’t seen a vagina either. The woman in the picture was only naked up top. The picture had real “class”. The wind was blowing in from the viewers point of view. Her hair was cast into the wind and her top was a see-through almost window curtain material. It flowed behind her exposing her chest. Her navel was there too. She sat in a seductive lotus pose. Her eyes looked into yours. Like I said, real “classy”.

Though I had never seen a vagina I knew that you shouldn’t pee in one. I think it was intuition from becoming one with man’s animal nature. We hadn’t taken a biology class yet and our only life lessons so far had been to not get ourselves killed and to be back before the sun sets or else.

But Paul was onto something with the pee thing. I solved the equation later that year once fall came. I was watching a movie starring a well gifted actress. The lights were off and I was no longer sleeping regular hours. My insomniac life style had just begun. 

I had been getting erections since I was six. I knew what they were but not what they were for. I enjoyed them and played with them. They were my only true friend. On that night one was sparked when the actress began seducing a man who would not let her into wherever it was she was trying to get into. She undid the button of her coat and her cleavage bubbled out from the low cut neck line of her red dress. Full figured indeed. They were hills the hobbits would envy. 

And that was all she wrote folks. I popped. It had never happened before. I didn’t know that could happen. I didn’t even know what had happened. It was dark and darker still under the blanket. It was warm and the only things I knew that were warm and wet were urine and blood, but his had a thicker property. I freaked out. 

I ran to the bathroom, turned on the light and looked in the mirror. I thanked god it wasn’t blood. Not knowing what it was I decided to keep it to myself. 

I went straight to bed after that and recalled to my mind the sensation. Then came a realization and a childish fear. This was how girls got pregnant. That’s what Paul had been talking about. I figured out the great mystery but couldn’t tell anyone. Then I thought, ‘Can guys get pregnant?” 

That was true fear but a fear that couldn't make me stop.

- - - 

“Dead Cats” 

The house I grew up in was big enough. The subdivision was nice with roads named after various flora and fauna. The yard was ample. Random trees, it seemed, grew in the yard; one in each quadrant. The left side and rear of the house were bordered by woods and a small creek. Beyond the creek is where I would disappear when I missed the bus. Often I missed it on purpose. I would retreat into this forest with  a cassette player in hand listening to Meat Loaf. My favorite hobby in the woods was to take a metal baseball bat and bash trees. I often pretended to be a great and feared swordsman. 

We had a pool that was used for only one summer. It was green during the last few years we lived there. My sister had a cat. Scooter Two had been the last of her six siblings to survive. Scooter “One”, my kitten (and Scooter Two’s brother), died of starvation in the woods. His back legs didn’t work – hence why I named him Scooter. Scooter was eaten and disposed of by various carnivorous birds. The others had died in equally horrific scenes. Two had been run over. Another was neglected by its mother while the other had fell down a well. Scooter Two had been a trooper. 

We found Scooter Two’s body steaming in an early Easter morning Sunday sun, but being on our way to church that morning we decided to just leave a trash bag over the cat. I suspect the cause of death to be caused by one of two things: One, the cat had simply fallen in and inhaled the water, climbed out and then died; or two, the cat had eaten a mouse out of the pool filter and died of rat poisoning. However, the latter hypothesis did not explain how Scooter Two had come to be soaked.

I have a sick humor when it comes to dead animals. It’s from an early exposure to songs about them: “Dead Puppies” by Ogden Edsl, “Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes, “My Dead Dog Rover” by Ian Whitcomb, and my personal favorite “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” by Tom Lehrer are just a few. 

I also like jew jokes… I cannot explain why. Here are some original jokes from me to you (or should I say from me to jew?). Feel free to use them.

1.) “So, a jew walks into a mosque…”

2.) “What do you call it when you think you’ve seen the same jew twice?”

- Punchline, “A Deja-jew”

3.) “What is a dishonest jew’s favorite month?”

- Punchline, “Jew-ly”

4.) This one’s just something for you to say next time you talk about how bad of a movie “Space Balls” really is.

“The movie would have been more jewish if Mel Brooks had called them Hanukah Solo and Jew-baca.”

And if you happen to be wondering why I think I can say these things let me say this. My grandfather thinks all white people are jewish. Its a long story. 

KJ out.

"Stacy"

I met this man once. 

His name was Matthew. His name was Stacy. He was an artist from California, real abstract guy, odd even. Stacy’s hair was greyed pepper and stuck out in a frizzy ponytail. He wore thick rimmed glasses that magnified both eyes. Arleen, his wife of a short time prior, was by his side. She was calm and relaxed; out of place, lost in space. They were smoking by the pond. The geese and one swan were there too. I asked Arleen for a cigarette.

They told me there story. Stacy and his wife Arleen came to Fort Mill, South Carolina in the winter. They had been living in a man’s van in the church parking lot where we were. The man with the van had picked them up in Charlotte, North Carolina as hitchhikers and kindly gave them a place to wait out the winter in his van. So kind. 

Stacy was an artist and Arleen was his girlfriend of some odd years. They had met when he was living as a woman. He said he’d done everything but have the surgery. He took hormone pills, wore makeup, dressed in dresses and high heels. Arleen was attracted to women with penises I assumed. I liked Arleen. She was kind and gave me cigarettes. Stacy was kind too but neurotic.

They had come to South Carolina when Stacy became a christian. He told me that he no longer identified himself as a woman and recanted it as a sin. I don’t know what it was. It was interesting. I had never met one of these people before and I can’t remember, for the life of me, Stacy’s conversion experience.

The church we were at was the same one I had went to seminary two years prior. I had came back to apologize to some people. I told Stacy and Arleen that and they thought it was cool. Then Stacy told me about his artwork. He said he worked in abstract but God had told him not to paint until God told him he could paint again. Stacy said his artwork would often produce demonic figures. I thought that was interesting. I told them I was thankful for the cigarette and hid inside the church that night to sleep.

When I woke up I went back to the edge of the pond hoping Stacy and Arleen would be there. I wanted to bum a smoke. They were there. I was thankful and thanked God. Another conversation broke out.

Stacy enlightened me to more of their story. When they had been found out by the church’s security for sleeping in the van they were ordered to leave the premises or rent a room in the church’s hotel. They didn’t have any money. They were homeless. They could only work for room. In order to this they told they would have to meet with the head of security Doug. 

I knew Doug from when I had went to school. A good man, an ex-sniper on a swat team in Indiana. He had taught me how to run with proper form back when I exercised with him my first year. The last time I had seen him I had been caught drinking in the parking lot. 

Doug allowed them to stay in the hotel under the condition they worked for their room by doing housekeeping forty hours a week. They fed themselves by going to a food bank once every two weeks. Stacy told me it had been discovered that he and Arleen were not married. When it was discovered they were told they had to be married in order to continue staying in the church. 

Now that I think of it I don’t think they had been dating prior to their arrival. I think they had only been friends. Anyway they got married and someone provided them rings and blessed their marriage. They carried on the same way with each other the same they had before. I don’t think there were any relations had. 

A month or so went by. I had started living at an old friend’s house for free under the pretense that I was looking for a job. I would walk over to the church everyday to bum cigarettes. You would have been surprised by how many of the people, staff included, smoke there. I, however, was no longer surprised. I had started smoking three years before my return in that same spot beside the pond. 

Stacy often asked me if I did any kind of artwork. I told him I played a little guitar and in high school I drew cartoons. He asked me if I still did and I told him I hadn’t in a long time. I decided to draw him a sample of what I would do. I drew him a hippie man and a anthropomorphic stork. He liked them and his appreciation awoke the gift in me again. It was refreshing. 

I began to walk to the pond everyday that month to draw and listen to my new favorite band Led Zeppelin. I drew what was considered by most people to be psychedelic art. I’ve never done psychedelics. That’s just the way my brain works. I don’t need drugs to think obscurely. 

When I drew a picture of a stairway to heaven inspired by the song Stacy told me I should be careful. He told me that Led Zeppelin had been inspired by the occult. I thought ‘who gives a fuck what they were inspired by. They made some killer tunes.” Who was Stacy anyway to tell me what I should or should not be listening to? I knew more about the christian experience than he did. I experienced more. It was only pride.

I eventually found a job. I moved into a shed that was far from walking distance from the church. I had made the mistake of giving Stacy  my number. He called me everyday wanting to know if I wanted to hangout. I never answered. He didn’t creep me out or anything. He just got on my nerves over time like most people do. 

I saw them occasionally and asked Arleen for cigarettes. Stacy said he’d been delivered by God from his addiction to cigarettes. Also God told him that he could do artwork again but not with paint. He could only use oil pastels. 

Stacy showed me some of the work he’d been doing. It was nothing but shades upon shades of spontaneous colors, mostly blues and greens. He called it prophetic artwork inspired by God and that angels were inside each piece. I never saw angels. I didn’t see pictures. I saw colors. 

When the church began to ask him and Arleen if they were looking for jobs they told the church they were not and that God was going to provide for them. The church told Stacy that maybe he should try selling some of his artwork. Stacy told them God told him not to. Stacy gave away each piece of work to whomever God had told him to give it to. 

Around that time Stacy was beginning to grow suspicious that the church was trying to kick him and Arleen out, that the church was kicking out children of God. I agreed inaudibly with Stacy. I also agreed inaudibly that Stacy should try to make a living without living by faith, but who was I to say what was from God or what was not from God? I kept bumming smokes.

Finally Stacy and Arleen were asked to leave the church. They were homeless again and didn’t know where to go. The man who had let them live in his van told them about this property in the North Carolina mountains where God did miracles. I had been there a couple times. It was a beautiful place but I never spent enough time up there to see God do anything. Or maybe I had and nothing happened. 

Stacy heard from God that he should go by his given, male name Matthew. I was to call him Matthew from then on. I have met these kind of people before, people who change their names by the command of God. I always forget to call them by their new names. I think its stupid, but who am I to tell someone what they do or don’t hear from God?

Stacy and Arleen decided to hitchhike up there. Last I heard from them in a text they were doing well up there and Stacy was still doing his prophetic art. I have since deleted their number in my phone and they finally quit calling me. I hope they’re doing well. 

KJ out.

Thoughts From Midnight

I finished writing a short memoir last night about my mother. Now I’m sitting here waiting for the wind to sweep me into something else to write about. 

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or where I’m going. I stay up all night and sleep all day. My stomach aches constantly. I drank too much coffee chasing my muse through these last few weeks of dark nights. 

I’m waiting for contentment in something. I don't know what that something is. There’s nothing good on T.V. and the computer rots my brain.

My books bore me. The music has all been the same stuff on repeat. I’ve been trying to find something new to listen to. 

I keep getting this idea that if I had some pot it would all go away. The boredom that drives me crazy. Maybe I’ve just been by myself without human contact for a couple weeks. The phone doesn’t help the loneliness, but I like being alone at the same time. 

I miss having wheels. I miss being able to go for a drive in the middle of the night and smoke a cigarette with the radio blasting tunes and the cool wind whistling in my ears.

In Indiana I would take drives at two in the morning for some taco bell, a soda, and would take the back roads through gravel trails. I would be high at the time coming to terms with why the Beatles were so great. Janis Joplin was there too.

I’m listening to Graham Nash right now. H’s perfect right now for how I feel. He doesn’t even sound like he’s trying. He doesn’t sing the coolest stuff but you can tell it comes from somewhere real. 

I often wonder if what I write is really me or just a faint attempt at being a good writer. I suck at description and I use the word ‘I’ too much. I feel self-centered every time I mention myself.

The artistic road is confusing to me. On one hand you express yourself. On the other hand you do it to be seen. Jaded. Two sided. Crooked. Hmmm.

I have ideas. I have a lot of ideas. But I can’t give them life because I’ve never lived those ideas. They’re all sad stories. Their all sad truths too. I don’t know how to write happy things. Maybe because I’ve never been truly happy. 

I want a typewriter. There’s something final about a piece of paper with words on it instead of a screen. On a screen the words are easy to forget and change and rearrange as if they were never there. All mistakes are easily fixed and erased. But that’s not reality. I hate the internet.

That’s another one of those ideas I have that I feel jaded about. I use it. I love it. The world operates on it. If I want to be a writer I’ll probably have to use electronics to push my shit, at first anyway. I miss paper. I know it kills trees but I don’t care. Pennsylvania isn’t using their trees. Let’s kills those ones.

Sometimes the words flow through me. Most of the time they don’t and I start to feel obligated to write. That’s what I’m doing now anyway. People say I’m a good writer but I think I’m full of shit. 

The only times I feel like a good writer is when the ideas come and I put them down. That’s the best part. Its when I have to make everyone else understand them that I get frustrated. The voice in my head is different than the one I use. Its much more eloquent and fluid. It uses the same words I do but somehow they seem more inspired when I speak them to myself. 

I’m gonna’ steal a couple of lines from Don McLean, “I wish my brain would operate instead of standing still. Its all so complicated. I don’t know how I let some of those ideas out of the box. It was just a feeling I had. I liked the verses. They were so nice and even. My eye will never be that good again. I lost a sense of rhythm but I gained a sense of time.”

What would life be like if you were never born? You ever wonder that? If you never existed? I do a lot. Nobody would know about you so I don’t want to hear anything about anyone being sad. Its a fun thought. Who would have taken your place? What would they have done differently? How would they have connected the dots? Filled in the blanks?

I also like to think about Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammed walking down the street on the way to their “dad’s” house. What if all these religious figures were all related at some point? What made them all decide to fight? Or maybe there was no quarrel. Maybe their respective children just heard something wrong along the way of their discipleship and fucked it all up. I don’t know. Why do we live our lives based on what some dude a long time ago said?

What if T-Rex’s are the evolved form of kangaroos? I’m pretty sure I’m up to something with that idea. If I knew a paleontologist I would tell them that. Maybe make a couple mil. and get my license back. 

I’d probably just take the money and pull a “Fear and Loathing”. I’d fill my trunk with drugs and hit the desert and end up dying in a puddle of my own vomit with a mojave whore rummaging through my shit and a buzzard plucking my eye balls out. Maybe that’s why I’m tied to a shiny red lead filled balloon.

But maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. I’m gonna’ go have a cigarette and try to call on the gods for an idea. Maybe sell my soul for one. You’ll know if I do.

KJ out.

July 18, 2014

"Once More Into the Breach of Change"

“But somewhere's just like nowhere when you leave it for a while

You'll find the broken hearted when you're traveling jungle style

It's hard to be a pack rat, it's hard to be a ‘bo

There's freedom when your walking, even though you're walking slow.

And the children seem to know

That Jesus on the highway was a lost hobo.”

~Don McLean, “Homeless Brother”

The first rule of hitchhiking is to pack light. There is no room for sentimentality when you travel. One extra set of clothing, a tent, a warm jacket, that’s all you need. Necessity is the key. The rules change too. You no longer have to concern yourself with the judgments of others because you will soon come to know that their judgment will be that you are either homeless or a decrepit social outcast. Does this mean they won’t help you? Not necessarily, but if they pass you twice on the same day they will either carry you out of town or report they’ll your appearance of suspiciousness to the local authorities. Both end with you being taken away.

I believe we all soon have to pick up our mats and walk off into the blinding fury of the future. I feel it. I sense it. It is not an apocryphal notion either. Its a stirring in my heart when I watch the news. Its the ringing of the Liberty Bell heard across the nation. All kingdoms fall and no great things last. Changes, my friends, changes are coming and we cannot afford to carry all this shit with us once more into the breach. 

Changes are coming to the institutions of ages old and present. The social structures we have created will fall alongside everything else we idolize in the wake of progress. The genius of the old is killing the life of the future of the young. 

You can see the death in the news-the endless debates about the Constitution, the Bible, and the influence the preceding has on the latter. I believe I have found a way to end it. Follow me as I attempt to adapt the ancient ways to the new path of social evolution. 

First I have to explain that all the old ways, ranging from Christianity, the Constitution, the Democracy of Greece and the Roman Republic, are all important and offer wisdom by virtue of the good things they accomplished. Yet, all these philosophies, were for another people in another time. The Bible is no longer relevant as a complete way of life. It says homosexuals (1 Cor. 6:9),  will not go to heaven and should die (Romans 1:32), while often saying nothing, if not in support, about slavery. Why did/do people believe in this? Because a piece of paper told them to. That is fucking retarded.

I’d like to make it clear that I am not an atheist. It’s just that the older I get the less I give a shit. I used to be a Christian and would argue the Bible to be true and the Word of God. My opening statement for the argument was as follows and from 2 Timothy 3:16:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness…” (or its interpretation of righteousness.) 

I would then say, putting emphasis on the the word ‘all’, “ALL script is inspired by God and if ALL scripture is inspired by God then ALL of scripture has to be true. You cannot pick and choose between what is and what is not true in the Bible.” A pretty good stance if I don’t say so myself.

But then, as I began to think for myself, I came realize I was full of shit. I then switched the emphasis from ‘all’ to ‘inspired’. Now I say, “All scripture is INSPIRED by God.” The verse doesn’t say WRITTEN by God. It doesn’t say SPOKEN by God, but INSPIRED by God. If I make a cup of coffee INSPIRED by God then that cup of coffee doesn’t belong to God. Its not God’s cup of coffee. It’s my cup of coffee. I can even say, “God deserves the glory for this cup of coffee. I couldn’t have made it with him.” But that doesn’t change the fact that its my cup of coffee. 

The Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and other religious/philosophical texts aren’t bad or necessarily untrue, but they were written by people trying to figure things out while wandering the desert. They were pioneers on the journey of truth, and they all INSPIRED both good and evil with their words.

Why do I bring up the Bible in such detail? One, because its the text I know the most, and two because the Bible is said to have INSPIRED  the Constitution. There is nothing in that piece of paper, or its companions, that quotes or references the Bible. Like the Bible, I believe it is, will soon be, and should be irrelevant. 

Things no longer work the same today as they have in the past, and adhere to the evolved state of progressive consciousness so that we may all work together for a future that shares our common tranquility. I say for this both for our country and eventually the world. 

I think everyone, except those who derive their substance from it, hates the government. Hierarchy, control, manipulation, dominance, the mountaintops of social class, religions - these are all things that divide us. I believe that is the problem of the human race - the love of power.

To support my statements on the Constitution:

One: Only the Declaration of Independence makes mention of a god, and only refers to the concept of “Nature’s God” and of the “rights endowed by their Creator”. Neither is very specific to who’s god. And to further add, the Declaration was not a document of law but was written to establish the intent of war against Britain. 

Two: The Constitution never mentions God nor contains any reference from the Bible. The only reference made to religion is that we are not to test the religion of someone holding office. (So, no matter how you feel about him, drop the ‘Obama is a Muslim’ bullshit.)

Three: The Bill of Rights, an extension of the Constitution, yields us two references to religion. Firstly, that no law is to be made in respect of religion or in the prohibition of free exercise of religion (Article the Third). 

Secondary, we are able to to change, or ratify, the Bill to reflect our times and the problem ther-in. We had to do this so that black people and women could vote to uphold the Constitutions claim that all men are equal. The last amendment made was on May 7th, 1992 during Bush Sr.’s presidency. So I don’t want to hear anymore claims by conservatives that people are trying to change the constitution and all that crap.

Now, the Preamble to the Constitution sets up purpose for these laws and structures. To quote, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (emphasis mine)

Posterity means future generations and we are the future generation. Let me interpret it this way, “We(or Us), in order to form a more perfect Us and the future Us, establish this Constitution.” The rest of what our founding fathers set in place, things like capitalism, were good once upon a time and still, to a degree, possess good properties, but what it has bore is awful and wretched.

The freedoms we made for ourselves have wrought ugly imitations that only allude to peace and justice for all. We have live in a country where mothers have to whore themselves to feed their children and we refuse to give them what they need because these women haven’t “earned” it. We live in a country where people die in the streets from starvation while our markets and restaurants throw out food because it no longer makes a profit. We live in a country where the homeless are arrested for sleeping on someone’s property, because the shelter would have been over capacity, only to be thrown back out on the streets to repeat the cycle. 

We live in a country where the American Dream of WANTING more casts anyone NEEDING more away with reprimands and punishments for not trying hard enough. Let me tell you. I have spent time with these people and they do try. They try everyday to make up for their mistakes. They fight to stay sober. They fight to stay warm. They fight for a drink of water. They fight for a fucking indoor toilet. They do fight.

“And you who leave on promises and prosper as you please,

The victim of your riches often dies of your disease.

Down the bowels of a broken land where numbers live like men…

Where wealth has no beginning and poverty no end.”

~Don McLean

Listen, I love this country, but the sentiments of the past are leading us to a time when the things we have held dear and true are no longer relevant. The Constitution was meant to set us free. But all it it has wrought is enslavement to a way of life that divides us. 

Should we abolish the ways of old? Not entirely. We should work together to find what truly sets us free. We should find love, not power. We should seek peace for everyone. If we don’t we will all be die on the highway, dragged down by our own system of exclusion and our judgements and our inequality. 

Listen to the broken Liberty Bell. Listen to it ring. An opportunity for a better tomorrow is coming soon and we must drop all the bullshit and bring only the essentials. All we need is love as we go once more into the breach.

KJ out.

Could This Be Hell: some poetry

Enigmatic, shrieking madness

Wheeling, kneeling, slowly dying

Feeling, trying, hiding

Steel wheels, cartwheels, soap box drowning

Cacophony  morose, thickening glucose

Comatose, overdose, breath stole, a noose

Blind eyes, all cries, shattered window pane

Gall-less, breathless, ribs shared in pain

Tears flow, rain falls, a sick depressing doll

All gates, barred doors, lying on the floor

Open wide, frighten eyed, hell commence to come

Again to Onward, the dead man’s toll, pieces of forgotten soul

Pearl above, brim below, whispered words bellow

Chortle, cackle, howl and hollow

All is lost, far behind, no tomorrow

Always gone

“Raining Dreams of Memories”

“Walk out of any doorway

feel your way, feel your way

like the day before.

Maybe you'll find direction

around some corner

where it's been waiting to meet you.”

~ Grateful Dead, “Box of Rain”

I would classify myself as a low-functioning Dead Head. To put it simply; I don’t have all the albums, but I do listen to “American Beauty” enough to be whisked away into the plain of peaceful, easy feeling. The kind of feeling where there are no worries and their is no pain; only joy of a pleasant existence.

The first time I ever heard the Dead was a few years back when I watched the show “Freaks and Geeks” and the song “Ripple” played out the show’s finale. I dug the groove but didn’t give the song a second thought until the night I returned to Charlotte, North Carolina unannounced. 

I had disappeared from Charlotte back in the spring of 2012 a week or so after having been kicked out of ministry school and had returned to correct some wrongdoings I had committed during my tenure there. When I arrived I contacted my buddy Clyde who I had, unknown to him, wronged once upon a time. 

The only way to explain Clyde is to tell you a story for he is a character. 

Clyde is a musical genius, a musical prophet and super gay for John Mayer. In early July of 2013 Clyde had began to cover, with his band Laylo, the classic Skynyrd song “Call Me the Breeze” written by the late J.J. Cale. Clyde had been consistently ranting, as he often does, about everything, that John Mayer was stealing his ideas for songs via their shared brain frequency and that soon Mayer would begin to play Grateful Dead tunes. He was certainly predicting a lot.

On the 23rd of July, just a few weeks later of my arrival in Charlotte, J.J. Cale passes away. The gang and I were at an open mike when we heard the news. Laylo had already played their set which had included the song “Call Me the Breeze”. Then on August 20th John Mayer released his album “Paradise Valley” which contains a cover of “Call Me the Breeze”. Clyde is playfully pissed and I still don’t fully believe in his foolish “premonitions”.

September rolls around and our buddy Chris the German returns to America. The German takes his girlfriend to see John Mayer in concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Charlotte. This is the first tour John Mayer had done in three years and Clyde, for some reason, couldn’t make it. Thoroughly bummed he became sullen with inner turmoil when the German sends him a video of John Mayer performing a cover of Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” completely fulfilling Clyde’s prophecy. 

I have since recanted the error of my ways and have become a believer in the “Clyde is always right eventually” theory. Its a controversial organization with very few members, but I have high hopes in its future growth in the greater Charlotte area. 

That’s but a brief beginner’s guide to all that is Clyde and when he becomes famous and dies I will be glad to write to his biography because he will surely, if not already, live a life deserving of one.

Now, as I’ve said, I disappeared from Charlotte a year and a half prior and had returned unannounced, with ten dollars in my pocket and no place to stay, when Clyde picks me up around nine o’clock at night. I hop into his car and he says we’re going to go for a drive. I tell him all about my time I spent away and the deep depression I had fallen into and how I had recovered. In the meantime though I was unsure of what Clyde was thinking because he hadn’t said hardly a word  for him being the conversationalist he is. 

Clyde, acting very distant the whole drive, then told me he’s taking me to go see a friend of his. I was unsure of who this person could be and was wondering if he was going to take me to someone’s house or to a homeless shelter when we pulled up to a little brick house. ‘Well who could live here,’ I wondered.

We walked to the door and Clyde knocked. I’m very nervous when suddenly the porch light turns on and the door unlocks opening up to the face of another dear  old friend…

Lo and behold! it was that ole scoundrel Dirty Dave. I hadn’t seen Dave since my second year of ministry school back in 2011 and was shocked and awed to see him make yet another appearance in my life. Dave is one of only three kindred spirits I possess and the only man I know to live up to the hippie ways of old. A truly gifted and talented guy.

We shuffled our way to his garage where Grateful Dead were playing from the sound system and we all sit down exchanging what had been going on in our lives over the last couple of years. Then Dave pulls out a tiny, cylindrical, glass thingy. This thingy turned out to be a bowl. I became ecstatic and for some reason it had never occurred to me that Dave smoked pot too. I accepted his offer taking a few hits and we then commenced to pass around the guitar taking turns playing our songs when suddenly the pot began to take effect. 

In the back ground “American Beauty” was playing and it completely filled my mind. I sat there for maybe thirty minutes swaying unspeaking, letting the word’s wash over me like the refreshing streams of biblical waters. My head eventually began to swim and I turned nauseous. Not wanting to embarrass myself I stand up and excuse myself walking out of the garage door to find some fresh air. I made two steps around the corner when I completely lost my composure falling into myself like a sack of bricks.

I decided to just lay low hoping Clyde and Dave hadn’t noticed. Eyes closed the darkness spins and spins swirling and turning into a vortex of euphoric ecstasy. 

As I listen to “Box of Rain” pour softly through the midnight air I follow a single drop of rain that falls from the sky and as it drops through my skull and into my mind I follow close behind, winding the trail of my unconsciousness. 

- - -

The drop of rain continued its venture, eventually reaching the valley of my past, coursing the rough and mountainous terrain of of my dreams and memories. Everything collides as if all were one.  

The first “dreamory" I came across was of me lying in the smooth, tall, swaying grass of a country meadow. The sun shines down upon me and a girl with satiny raven hair I did not know but who seems completely familiar and ever present. She’s laughing when she turns over to wrap her arms around me and kisses me gazing deep into my eyes and I into hers. We continue to watch the passing white clouds holding onto each other for what seems an eternity. 

I return, somehow and reluctantly, to the valley where the drop of rain waits for me to continue our journey. 

Not knowing how I got there I’m suddenly ten years old and riding a bike with other children through the streets of an old town in the vicinity of the 50’s; where everyone know everyone and the red scare never happened and the commies of old were dead. 

All is black and white and we’re on our way to the local ice-cream parlor. We walk in I receive a mighty fine welcome from Mr. Watson, the proprietor, who calls me by name asking how my father’s doing. I tell him father had been promoted at the factory and was taking the family that weekend to the county fair and how swell it would be. He gave me a free ice-cream cone and best wishes to my father.

And as I turn to step out of the parlor I’m confronted by a little girl barely five holding a pinecone. All reverts back to color. The girl begins to tug at the seam of my jeans and I reach down to pick her up when I see that my hands are wrinkled and old with wispy grey hairs. “Grampa,” the girl asks with a furrowed brow and showing me the pinecone, “What’s this?” I tell her its a seed that will one day become a tree and the expression of confusion remains plastered within her beautiful wide eyes. 

I blink for just a moment when suddenly I’m back again with the raindrop who’d been waiting patiently for me to return. Then the valley begins to widen and the mountains slowly begin to turn into hills and the hills into a wide horizon and beyond the horizon was a vast and endless blue. The path we’d been following had become a river gently guiding us to the sea. 

I looked at the drop of rain and it gave off a glimmer from the sun as if winking, trying to tell me something, when it slowly begins to slip into the river and then washes away.

- - -

Back in reality I opened my eyes to Dave’s back yard. The dark and empty sky loomed over me. Groggy, sad, and a little lonely, I tested myself to see if I could stand on my feet. I could and walked back into Dave’s garage. Clyde asked me if I was okay telling me that I had been out for about an hour. I told him I was just really high. Then I told them, in not quite the detail I’ve told you, about my experience; how I walked through memories I’d never had and how painful yet joyful it was to walk through a life I’d never lived or, to be hopeful, yet to have.

And what I have since come to understand was that this experience was but a gallery of the desires of my heart and, I assure you, there are many, many more. Some, as sad as it is, will never come to pass. I will never get to live in Mayberry, I’ll never go to the fair with my dad, I’ll never be able to do things I wish I could have done differently. But I will, I’m sure of it, be in love someday wrapped in the warm arms of a woman in a meadow, and hold a beautiful little girl and explain to her the wonders of the world, or write the great novel of my time and be forever and eternally remembered. 

We shall all one day face the sea. Washing away into the horizon with the twinkle of sunlight in our eyes whispering goodbye. Let the rain fall, easing your pain and troubled mind, and may love see us through.

KJ out.