I live in Staten Island, New York.
Some few weeks afterthe 911 disaster I stood on the outside of one of the old car boat ferrys. All the people were fixed in gaze straight ahead toward the St. George Ferry Terminal. I could not help but notice that the sun was setting over Jersey in a brilliant multi-colored Arizona sunset. And nobody but me seemed to notice.
It was at that point that I realized that too much was being devoted to the dead of 911. Oh, they deserved their memorial services. But there comes a point when mourning is too much. It is to be expected to be shell shocked or take our individual time to recuperate from trauma, but the experience of life is to be living.
In fact, the reason I was on the boat that day was because the umteenth Fireman's memorial Service was being held at St. Patrick's Cathedral and traffic was banned from Fifth Avenue and my Express Bus was somewhere, not there, and I took the Subway to the Ferry Boat.
And now they are fighting over putting a $500 million dollar spending limit on World Trade Center Memorial to the dead. I feel that Bloomy dropped the human ball in 2002 when newly elected when he did not condemn the land and sow grass seeds. Hallowed ground is hallowed ground nomatter how much you connive to make a "God" almighty buck in real estate.
By the time that this real estate fiasco is built, so many will have forgotten why we honor the people who died there. We honor them because they are victims of an American/Saudi energy war for global domination. And the money the specualtors have squeezed out of $70 dollar a barrel petroleum could be reduced tomorrow by $20 a barrel if the U.S. Justice Department went after the corporate speculators who want to turn everything in America into a parking lot or a hole in the ground like the former World Trade Center.
I do not want to make this blog too political but the balance of fairness in this once great land is tipped in favor of those that already have and against those who have to pay $3.50 a gallon at the pump for gasoline. And from this end of the spectrum it hurts. And who wants to hear multi-million dollar media mouthpieces tell us nothing anymore.
No matter where I turn in this city I keep running in to the ghosts of common people whose lives directly or indirectly were changed on that great day of American Defeat, that day we could not or would not defend our skys. I give partial blame to it all on Ronald Reagan and his trashing of the air controller's union a decade and a half before. All the senior guys or all the guys who may have had the backbone to push the Defense Department's buttons to scramble jets to New York's defense on 911, many of them were handed a pink slip, a Republican victory over labor unions. And the wusses that stayed on and those who stand there now know that there is no point in trying to do a stellar job of protecting our skys when management, the U.S. government only wants mediocrity.
That's what killed do many on 911. Lack of leadership in government, no backbone and a "it's good enough for government work" attitude of non-excellance rating of all things it touches. And all the Kings horses and all the Kings men could not prevent 911 or give a helping hand after Katrina.
In the name and memory of those lost on 911, it is time to massively downsize this national government. The lives we save may be our own.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
God, Father and Judge
The present anarchy of the Middle East is one that closely parallels and resembles a less violent but very real decline of the values of another age here on the Norte Americana continent.
A couple thoughts merged this week in my mind. And as some of you know me, the mixture may not be true succotash.
I was thinking of Mychal Judge, victim number one of the WTC attack. The Chaplain of the New York City Fire Department rushed downtown to give last rights to the dying and in his act fell victim to falling debris and died. The image of them carrying him across the street from the WTC to lay on the foot of the altar at old Saint Peter’s, a two hundred year old, pagan looking temple of a R.C. church – It is a truly a great iconic American image and symbolic of our loss, losses that day.
Less than a few months ago I caught sight of a NY Waterway Ferry with his name emblazoned on its hull as it sped by the Staten Island ferry in New York bay.
Momentum keeps rising to make this, give this, everyday workaday priest the title of saint. Of course I am not into that thing, but it speaks of respect within the context of the world that he lived in and served. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mychal_Judge
Problem with old poor Mych, he was also chaplain to Gays. Rumor has it that the R.C. church would rather forget him and his heroism. He is not politically correct. He did not properly serve the good ole vatican party line about gays. He served everybody who needed him including his fellow humanity on September 11, 2001.
There is a website. Perhaps God blesses them. I don’t endorse the webiste. The public has already named him Saint Mychal Judge, of a so-called parish in Dallas Texas.
Is this the correct way to due things or is this the modern anarchy of a New Age being born, where tradition can be reshaped to fit regions and individuals. It is the original formula that the R.C. church used to merged local deities with established recognized saints. The Virgin Mary replaced the ten thousand years old Earth Goddess etc of every culture on the planet.
One other thing that caught my eye a week or two ago was the fact that some Japanese children or teachers would rather mock their national anthem (a war mongering song) and makes a play on words with the language in English to suit their amusement.
The Japanese?
This modern western age is repidly falling apart!
And of course coming back to the concept of respect. Spanish speaking immigrants in America are not supposed to sing the American National Anthem (the music of which is an old English drinking/whoring song) en Espanol.
Having been governor of Texas, Gorge Bushito, never realized that the majority or close to it of the people in Texas cannot read or write or communicate in Engles. But of course George (don’t have a clue!) Bush in his dreams was only governor of the white redneck population (minority) or so he rekoned.
I say if you want respect or to show it, show it and sing it in any freaking way or in any freaking language you choose to.
More and more, the national governments and the national media centers grow farther and farther away from reality. The end of the roman empire was like this. But after rome fell, the world and life went on.
Out of the chaos and rubble of the old WTC, a new global era may be dawning.
A couple thoughts merged this week in my mind. And as some of you know me, the mixture may not be true succotash.
I was thinking of Mychal Judge, victim number one of the WTC attack. The Chaplain of the New York City Fire Department rushed downtown to give last rights to the dying and in his act fell victim to falling debris and died. The image of them carrying him across the street from the WTC to lay on the foot of the altar at old Saint Peter’s, a two hundred year old, pagan looking temple of a R.C. church – It is a truly a great iconic American image and symbolic of our loss, losses that day.
Less than a few months ago I caught sight of a NY Waterway Ferry with his name emblazoned on its hull as it sped by the Staten Island ferry in New York bay.
Momentum keeps rising to make this, give this, everyday workaday priest the title of saint. Of course I am not into that thing, but it speaks of respect within the context of the world that he lived in and served. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mychal_Judge
Problem with old poor Mych, he was also chaplain to Gays. Rumor has it that the R.C. church would rather forget him and his heroism. He is not politically correct. He did not properly serve the good ole vatican party line about gays. He served everybody who needed him including his fellow humanity on September 11, 2001.
There is a website. Perhaps God blesses them. I don’t endorse the webiste. The public has already named him Saint Mychal Judge, of a so-called parish in Dallas Texas.
Is this the correct way to due things or is this the modern anarchy of a New Age being born, where tradition can be reshaped to fit regions and individuals. It is the original formula that the R.C. church used to merged local deities with established recognized saints. The Virgin Mary replaced the ten thousand years old Earth Goddess etc of every culture on the planet.
One other thing that caught my eye a week or two ago was the fact that some Japanese children or teachers would rather mock their national anthem (a war mongering song) and makes a play on words with the language in English to suit their amusement.
The Japanese?
This modern western age is repidly falling apart!
And of course coming back to the concept of respect. Spanish speaking immigrants in America are not supposed to sing the American National Anthem (the music of which is an old English drinking/whoring song) en Espanol.
Having been governor of Texas, Gorge Bushito, never realized that the majority or close to it of the people in Texas cannot read or write or communicate in Engles. But of course George (don’t have a clue!) Bush in his dreams was only governor of the white redneck population (minority) or so he rekoned.
I say if you want respect or to show it, show it and sing it in any freaking way or in any freaking language you choose to.
More and more, the national governments and the national media centers grow farther and farther away from reality. The end of the roman empire was like this. But after rome fell, the world and life went on.
Out of the chaos and rubble of the old WTC, a new global era may be dawning.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
A Vision
Thoughts do travel.
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
A heartbeat. A throb. A thunder from another world. Silence!
Silence and the echo of the last heartbeat, of the last sound, of the last verbal human moment.
Silence to reflect. Silence to wonder. Silence and the dreaded fear realized, dealt with, melted and dissolved away in an instant of time.
No time here. How long is a second of time where there is no time?
A flash of the shades of gray emerging from the black anti-thought, anti-time, anti-self world are suddenly present. Grays merge backwards into the original flash of inspiration. Blinding light. Pure white. Inner sight is born.
I am trapped, no, suspended in a single moment of time. No past movement; no forward.
The image emerges.
I am sitting at my desk trying to sign onto the companies e-mail system. The system is slow and was no doubt expensive. Computers and software are the tribal magic of this modern age. Nobody is ever quite sure if Bill’s voodoo is better than Blue’s voodoo.
My head is turning. It senses something. Something unbelievable. I can hear screams from the Mexican counter staff in the coffee shop where I usually buy my coffee and bagel. How can I hear screams? That coffee place is floors above me or is it below me. I am in space. I am on the what floor? My mind races for facts to justify ?
Justify what?
What am I seeing outside the narrow slit of glass across the room. What is that object? That round circle both dark and reflecting light like a highly polished metal …?
OH MY GOD! HOLY SHIT!
IT’S A PLANE!. A JET.
I DON’T BELIEVE IT!
IT cannot be!
The moment, a split second before and after presentation of a universal law of physics. The moment passes with my limbs frozen in the last thought of what is it, it cannot be etc. The final moment was real. The last moment existed. But there was no follow up moment to savor or analyze the previous moment. The previous moment was a bitch!
Locked into some disreality of thought. Or perhaps it is a previously unused or unrecognized way of seeing things.. I am outside myself and looking down at some ?
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
I am in comfort. A truly comfort zone enwraps me. I am enveloped in some great benign spirit of the moment. I am merged with dozens of similar hearts and minds thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feels, realizing the same new realities or possibility of realities.
This must be a dream.
Calm.
I am floating above some child’s play area. Below hundreds of ants are scurrying out of a broken ant farm. The tiny bits, the dark colored entities are fleeing. Some are fleeing in every direction. Others are following others in predictable patterns. Pieces of the clear plastic ant farm cover are falling down on the ants as they try to escape. I focus for a closer view. These are not ants. They are people. They are not fleeing an ant farm. They are trying to escape the wounded entity. Entity? The entity’s name is World Trade Center One.
What an unusual name for a creature? Entity yes. Creature? I don’t understand.
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
The flash of light was the impact of a jet onto the outside skin of WTCONE.
In a same measure of time, my skin, my former skin merged with the skin of WTCONE (a name? – an entity, a creature? Has to have a name, a label? How human to label things. Was I once a thing???)
Our skins merge in a force of energy, the crash and the instantaneous spark of fire. Fireball. FIRE. LIGHT. HELL!
I withdraw back into my comfort cocoon. Best to replay this tape from a distance. Yes a distance. A safe marked boundary from that other world. That other world?
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
This is not a dream.
This is death.
* * *
What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.
Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.
An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.
The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.
Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.
I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clabbered, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.
She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science.
The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…
The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.
More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.
The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.
Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?
People push by on the dark stairs.
The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror. The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.
-
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
A heartbeat. A throb. A thunder from another world. Silence!
Silence and the echo of the last heartbeat, of the last sound, of the last verbal human moment.
Silence to reflect. Silence to wonder. Silence and the dreaded fear realized, dealt with, melted and dissolved away in an instant of time.
No time here. How long is a second of time where there is no time?
A flash of the shades of gray emerging from the black anti-thought, anti-time, anti-self world are suddenly present. Grays merge backwards into the original flash of inspiration. Blinding light. Pure white. Inner sight is born.
I am trapped, no, suspended in a single moment of time. No past movement; no forward.
The image emerges.
I am sitting at my desk trying to sign onto the companies e-mail system. The system is slow and was no doubt expensive. Computers and software are the tribal magic of this modern age. Nobody is ever quite sure if Bill’s voodoo is better than Blue’s voodoo.
My head is turning. It senses something. Something unbelievable. I can hear screams from the Mexican counter staff in the coffee shop where I usually buy my coffee and bagel. How can I hear screams? That coffee place is floors above me or is it below me. I am in space. I am on the what floor? My mind races for facts to justify ?
Justify what?
What am I seeing outside the narrow slit of glass across the room. What is that object? That round circle both dark and reflecting light like a highly polished metal …?
OH MY GOD! HOLY SHIT!
IT’S A PLANE!. A JET.
I DON’T BELIEVE IT!
IT cannot be!
The moment, a split second before and after presentation of a universal law of physics. The moment passes with my limbs frozen in the last thought of what is it, it cannot be etc. The final moment was real. The last moment existed. But there was no follow up moment to savor or analyze the previous moment. The previous moment was a bitch!
Locked into some disreality of thought. Or perhaps it is a previously unused or unrecognized way of seeing things.. I am outside myself and looking down at some ?
…and if only in a second, a thought occurs, it then fades. All is black and yet the mind does wander in thousands of possibilities to label the moment. The mind cross-references and distills. The moment projects common, already acceptable explanations and then begins to search hidden archives on the fringes of reality. It is in this far reaching realm that fear and or fears often hide or live if that is the word and then…?
I am in comfort. A truly comfort zone enwraps me. I am enveloped in some great benign spirit of the moment. I am merged with dozens of similar hearts and minds thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feels, realizing the same new realities or possibility of realities.
This must be a dream.
Calm.
I am floating above some child’s play area. Below hundreds of ants are scurrying out of a broken ant farm. The tiny bits, the dark colored entities are fleeing. Some are fleeing in every direction. Others are following others in predictable patterns. Pieces of the clear plastic ant farm cover are falling down on the ants as they try to escape. I focus for a closer view. These are not ants. They are people. They are not fleeing an ant farm. They are trying to escape the wounded entity. Entity? The entity’s name is World Trade Center One.
What an unusual name for a creature? Entity yes. Creature? I don’t understand.
A blinding distraction appears on the retina. An essence, the crystal of light, of inspiration, flashes a bulb giving temporary brilliance. Outlines appear in levels focusing out away from the former center of brightest whites. These outlines disappear and seem to be reborn but less brilliant with pulsating, diminishing energy traveling down through grays and finally to the darkest shades of dark into blackest black.
The flash of light was the impact of a jet onto the outside skin of WTCONE.
In a same measure of time, my skin, my former skin merged with the skin of WTCONE (a name? – an entity, a creature? Has to have a name, a label? How human to label things. Was I once a thing???)
Our skins merge in a force of energy, the crash and the instantaneous spark of fire. Fireball. FIRE. LIGHT. HELL!
I withdraw back into my comfort cocoon. Best to replay this tape from a distance. Yes a distance. A safe marked boundary from that other world. That other world?
A mindstart; a thought.
Is this dream or is this death?
This is not a dream.
This is death.
* * *
What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.
Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.
An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.
The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.
Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.
I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clabbered, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.
She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science.
The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…
The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.
More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.
The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.
Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?
People push by on the dark stairs.
The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror. The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.
-
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