Man, I didn’t revise it, I CONDENSED it! See?

If I’m doing what I really want to do, everything else falls to an appropriately lower level of concern.

You really don’t have to read any further, that says it all. However, I did write some more in the original post. Not exactly resolutions, but they are timely:

1. For anyone following my crazed flailings re blog addiction, etc., know that I’ve rebuilt my “Blogs” bookmarks folder with the same political blogs I’ve deleted and reinstated at least four times already since last summer. This is a very dangerous thing, as just a single click on the Safari bookmarks bar folder opens them all at once, allowing near-instant scanning of all the nasty bits. However, I was cheating — I am an addict — so why pretend?

The issue isn’t the blogs per se but my own self-awareness, or lack of it. In the short term, draconian measures always seem to work, but lasting change requires a lot more attention to living in the present moment.

2. I want to write. LOTS. Music and podcasts, too. There’s a lot of creative energy in the air.

3. I feel good about 2008. I think it will be chaotic and desperate for many, maybe even for me, but I welcome the opportunity to change the way I’ve been living for the better. All you sweet young things should know (but you won’t, and it doesn’t matter) that the unfolding never stops, the potential never ends, and neither does the struggle. I know, because I’m still here, when by rights I should have been dead or incarcerated long ago, straight A’s or no straight A’s. Why? I was raised to be afraid, to shoot low, to always expect criticism, and to try to play it safe. WHAT A CROCK! — and not a destiny to savor. Does a chipmunk ever feel fear? Of course, in the presence of actual danger. We’re so evolved, we learn to cringe at phantoms. Bah!

4. A very transformational thing occurred over New Year’s: I listened to Patti Smith and her band play a live gig at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC on Sirius satellite radio, at THUNDEROUS VOLUME, for a whole 2.5 hours. It was absolutely glorious and stupendous, beginning with a long performance of a poem about “art rats” (this is the Year of the Rat, remember) and moving on to exciting rock and roll. Patti was brilliant and fearless. That was the theme of the evening, NO FEAR, just do the right thing and feel good about it. As for the patriarchy and its stupid fear of Dionysian release, I FUCKING QUIT! Patti knows from release. Great music!

• I’ve been reading the financial blogs. Basically, the patient died some time ago, and we have him propped up behind his desk to fool the photographers. Everything is gonna be cool, though. Stay loose, we have all kinds of choices. Give land away, let everybody have a little bungalow and garden. Tan your naked body in the sun among the cantalopes, it doesn’t cost a cent.

Onward!

It is, of course, not New Year’s Eve. [ahem]

That would be the winter solstice. The actual new year has been rolling along since Dec. 22, and tonight’s events are just an arbitrary invention. I was so happy when the truth of that hit me in the head, because it explained the awful, empty feeling I’d always experienced in the past between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ll bet you’ve sensed a glimmer of that too. The reason might well be that these are essentially orphaned days, actually the beginning of the new solar cycle but not recognized as such by our culture.

The culture, need I remind anyone, is, um, flawed. Cracked. Skewed. Blind. Crazy. An artifice of ignorance, greed, and lies, held precariously together by the rotting patriarchal boilerplate of domination of Nature, sexual repression, and a vengeful god who loves us. No, really. This is the same “I’m doing this for your own good” bullshit that’s raised generations of murderers and rapists, who incidentally have never had it so good — think Blackwater, etc., health plans and Hummers for human pit bulls. No big news here, though, as some have always known. (Goddess bless Sam Clemens and all other marginalized souls…)

Ah, there’s another thing: try substituting “goddess” for “god” once in a while, whenever it comes up (I’m still not sure I should continue to capitalize those). A little jarring at first, isn’t it? Kinda reverberates, wants to shift a couple crates around down in the basement. That’s an important sign. And remember, it’s not one or the other — but the goddess element has been viciously repressed (and adherents dutifully slaughtered) for several thousand years. Humanity staggering toward the brink with only half a soul, no bloody wonder. Repression of women (life, eros, creativity, etc. etc.)? Well, there you go.

No worries for the long run, though. The old framework has been tottering now for several generations — we just haven’t noticed from our limited temporal perspective — and more and more people are actively restoring (recognizing) the balance through their own individual lives. We don’t even need to have a movement, it’s just happening, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Hey, remember my little solstice ceremony? Here’s something I didn’t mention before: when I stood outside on that snowy frozen night, I felt the ground beneath my feet was living flesh. That was the picture in my mind. A body, not human, obviously, but with give at 10 degrees. For not the first time in my life, I had the distinct sensation I was standing on the back of something like a celestial elephant. Not a real beast, but an immense aliveness, with organs and circulatory systems deep within. Something I would no more cut into without thinking than I would slash my cheeks for profit.

Everything’s alive, and I’m a part of everything, or how else how would I know?

Now that is a verrry interesting thing… You can call me looney or deranged for having such a feeling, but I felt it, that’s a given. And is that so bad?

Think about it. A person who feels like that is lots less likely to mess up or ever “fail” when it comes to living as a human on the Earth (a helluva better place to start than “God told me to kill those buffalos and get those heathens into church,” for example). I’m no saint, yet with the orientation I just spoke of, you also know exactly how I stand on at least 10,000 issues without ever asking. I could babysit your kids, your garden, or your forest, and you’d never have to worry. You could lend me your car, and I’d return it washed and gassed. I’d treat you fairly all the time, except when I fuck up, and even then, you’d get a fabulous apology.

Go ahead and talk to a tree. It’s safe, in other words. Your Bible will not fly off the shelf, catch fire, and brand you on the forehead.

Okay.

[pause]

Now please, just forget all of this and be happy and connected. Everyone is going to die, eventually, so be nice to a plant and tickle your dog. It’s a lovely day here in the mountains, and I need to chop wood while the sun shines.

Dios es mi motor

Sometimes things just fall apart, a little or a lot.

It can happen in an instant, but usually builds up over several days. A little emotional awkwardness is the first sign, neurotic guilt symptoms the second, and then wham, a sharp drop down a well-worn slope. Some people take anti-depressants. I guess I understand. Without them, natural selection would have eliminated a lot more of us. But I’ve never done that. I can’t imagine it. If I have a broken leg, shouldn’t it hurt?

The situation is not enhanced when all I hear are drums for war. An occasional commenter here once said that while the administration is evil, they’re not insane, ergo I shouldn’t worry that they’d actually start an even bigger war on top of the two they’re already losing. And with Iran yet, a nation with a culture older than Jesus. They don’t know a thing about Iran except the numbers, as if that’s enough, and they’re also ranting about “saving Israel” when all this will do is blow it up. The accelerated “return” of an immaculately conceived descendent of Abraham to reward true believers for the mess they’ve made is part of this equation, and who does that remind you of? (”Heckuva job, Christians!”) The man thinks he’s acting in the name of the Almighty. The more impassioned the protest and cries for reason, the keener his revenge. How is any of this sane?

Simply taking it all in is dangerous. It can set off my own reactions, and then the things in the basement wake up. It’s outrageous how similar they are, my own learned flagellations and the planetary depression of war and apocalypse. Scared? Check. See no way out? Check. Feel no love? Check. No joy? Check. Everything a waste? Check. Why go on? Check.

Meanwhile the arguing and strategizing roll on. It’s like we’re all riding the same gigantic eel. But who wants to ride an eel? Better yet, WHO WANTS TO RIDE A STINKING SLIMY UGLY FISH DOWN TO THE BOTTOM AND DIE???

Want to know what really happens when the hammer drops? Everything disintegrates. I mean everything. I know what’s going on, but I can’t stop it. I fall all the way down through the blackness and get dumped into a cold stone dungeon dark as pitch. At this point, useless and dysfunctional, I might as well be dead. It’s over. My heart is cracked completely open. And then, spontaneously, I hear a quiet little voice. Over in the corner, there’s a light. Essentially, Little Johnny Angel-Boy in a propeller beanie says “Wait a minute, that’s not right,” and instantly there’s a total shift. It’s literally that fast. Without any warning, I’m saved by I don’t know what. I think it comes in through the crack. But I have to hit bottom hard enough to break things. One way or the other, I have to feel.

In the same way, I have this image of humanity needing its collective heart cracked open, so change can come. Maybe it’s just a matter of allowing. Otherwise, the eel snaps its tail. That’s the default method, though what I think what we have here is a chance to be different. I know there’s a chance because I’ve seen things change instantaneously. Sometimes it’s really crazy. It’s like there’s this big dumb secret only rocks don’t know, except they do, and we’re the ones left out in the cold by being stupid.

This afternoon I was still a wreck and took a walk up the mesa, more to take my vibes out where they wouldn’t stink up the house than anything else, and halfway up the hill it happened, just like I described above. Everything shifted, I was “back” and fine, but in a slightly different way. As I walked down from the top, I started writing this post in my head. Thirty seconds later, I looked down and saw a rock with a singular shape. I bent down to wipe the sand off and picked it up. It was heavy, about a foot across, in the shape of a heart that’s been cracked open.

I tucked it back under a piñon for later retrieval with my backpack. When I get it home, I’ll post a picture. It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw, at least this week, and you really won’t believe it.

A big dark brown spider crawls silently across the rug. My wife’s in bed, so I take no action, even though he’s heading underneath my chair. As with the spider, I’m not sure what this is about. I just want to share a little of what I’ve noticed lately.

For decades I was a voracious political & news junkie. Roughly nine years ago I gave up TV more or less completely. Since Bush got in, I had to stop listening to NPR as well. For an awfully long time now, I’ve gotten probably 99% of all my news from the Internet. That means I was able to control my consumption to some extent, to select the kinds of stories I wanted to read. During the last few years of major crisis mode — personal, national, and geopolitical — blogs provided an even tighter focus: I didn’t have to wade through a bunch of other articles to find the ones I wanted; in fact, I didn’t even need to read them: most of the time, a hot quotation with someone else’s appended outrage was enough. And if I wanted more of the latter, all I had to do was read through the comments and join in. I mean, you can mainline this emotional state.

But it’s almost like I had to take the risk. If you’re expecting a check for a million dollars, you keep looking in the mailbox. Likewise, if you think the dam’s about to burst and you live downstream, you listen for the sirens — there might not be any escape, but at least you’ll know.

Well, for most of August and September I turned off the blogs completely. It was extremely difficult to do, an eye-opening experience that proved the depth of my addiction. Not unexpectedly, I did expand in other directions. Maybe a few loony ones, but still. There is life out there — (”in here”?) — I realized. At the same time, I became curious and took a few backward glances at the daily hullabaloo. Remarkably, everything was just the same, as if I’d never left. That insight didn’t stop me, though. ["Hello, my name is John H. Farr, and I'm a crisis junkie."] And now I’m back to reading blogs again, checking half a dozen on a daily basis. That’s a pale shadow of my earlier involvement, thank God. Nonetheless, I’m getting the news again, observing and dealing with the psychological and metaphysical effects, and so on — only with a wee bit more detachment than before.

I can’t just ignore what’s going on, but I need to understand the context created by the focus: what strikes me most is how the vortex of negative energy, amplified by convergence with an apocalyptic archetype manifesting in the world [No shit! -- Ed.], feeds back into itself and suppresses creativity, i.e., solutions. That’s what makes it a vortex, having no apparent choice. From inside, all options are framed by the downward spiral: what will we do when gasoline is $10 a gallon, where can we go before the clampdown, what about the ice caps, etc. etc. It’s a frigging mess. You can’t get there from here, because there isn’t any there!

This is so close to what it’s like to be mortally depressed, I can hardly believe it.

It’s the same pain. My pain, the country’s pain, the pain of the world. It’s like there’s only one wound. Suddenly, instead of feeling alienated and alone, I’m me but also part of everyone else. It’s all sloshing back and forth a billion times a second. I CAN’T QUIT. NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY TO MAKE IT SO, NO ONE IS ALONE. Which is why it has to work the other way, too: heal myself, I heal the world.

Holy crap! As Rob Brezsny’s [sidebar] newsletter signature quote assures me Pogo once said, “We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”

Go forth and multiply (quickly). Make art. Something else is out there.

I am wearing the new L.L. Bean fleece bathrobe my sweetie bought for me. It’s red and comes from China. This is a fine thing, even if I am a little too hot.

No, we don’t have a new car. We sure need one, though. This afternoon I took a phone call from the same lady, who reported an accident or event involving the ‘89 Dodge Spirit’s exhaust system: “It’s really loud!” was all I really understood, but that was enough. From the sound of it, the pipe had let go between the muffler and the cat (catalytic converter). Could be cheap, could be expensive, depending — when your vehicle’s trade-in value is around $300, you keep an eye on that — but I knew that if I took it to the same guy who offered to bust out the guts of the converter on my Ford truck while he was installing a new glasspack, he could probably do a little cutting and welding and make it all work. That would happen next week, however. My immediate job as husband was to start looking around for a new set of wheels.

I went to the Ford dealer, parked my truck, and stood next to an electric-blue Mazda RX-8 on the edge of the used car lot. The “come on” machine, you understand. Within 20 seconds a friendly fellow came out, and we proceeded to become acquainted. He had all kinds of cars to show me, most of them just a year or two old, and they were all too expensive and dull as sofas. Not a car on the lot had a manual transmission, either. I did end up driving the Mazda down the street and back, but that was a given. A little cramped for my taste, seemed tighter in the cockpit than I remember my old Nissan 240SX SE to be — the best car I ever owned, by the way — but it’s a dandy touring machine, except for having no damn luggage space. Purty, though.

It’s been a few years since I’ve done this little song and dance, the old hunting-for-a-car trip. I don’t know how we can afford one, but then I never have: you just buy now and cry later. I mean, this is America. You gotta have wheels. Interestingly, there’s a very real possibility I could win a car next month: there’s a local lottery for a Ford Escape, and I bought a ticket ($100) with my birthday money back in August. I don’t particularly want a Ford Escape, but it is red, and I could forgive a lot in a new vehicle that only cost a hundred bucks. They’re cutting off sales at 300 tickets, so the odds aren’t too bad.

I need careful watching at times like this. My predilection is always to hunt for something special, something different, and soon I start fantasizing about hot sports cars, classic land yachts, or wacko foreign curiosities. But the next car will be my wife’s daily ride as well as our road car, so it has to be decent. Please God, no Corollas or Camrys. My wife’s sister just leased a loaded Camry, so guess which make my honey favors. Maybe I shouldn’t be so prejudiced, but have you ever driven a ‘91 Nissan 240SX SE??

Four-wheel disc brakes, a strong DOHC four-cylinder engine with hydraulic lifters and chain-driven cams (so you never have to change belts or adjust the valves), and the road manners to give me Corolla-sneering rights for life. Lord, I loved that car. We’d take the back roads through Kansas with the cruise control on 80 mph, what a joy. And guys, the best thing about a car that good on a road trip is that my wife liked to drive it just that fast! Because it handled so well and stopped so quickly, you understand, and stayed firmly planted on the pavement, it made her feel confident.

Me, I can take something like the Dodge careening around if I have to — I know how to, that is — but a sane person wouldn’t, and it isn’t any fun. A Japanese Buick would beat the hell out of the Dodge, but virtually anything can.

It’s time, though, and I’m on the hunt.