For some reason - probably too much tea late in the day - I was having difficulty going to sleep last night, when finally, at last, consciousness slipped away - but only for a moment.  Then, from out of the void, came this eerie, high-pitched whistle that brought me back to the crucible my bed had become.  After the haze cleared, I realized it was my wife, and the sound chilled me as if she were wheezing her last.  Just as quickly, the stark reality hit, as it only can late at night, that someday, one of us would be watching the other die.  How could that possibly be?  How destructive that is to the happy ending we wish our lives to have.

The night before that, we had a themed party just for the heck of it, which featured, among many things, an endless supply of different kinds of home-made beer.  At last it was just us and another couple.  The night was wearing thin when the man mentioned one of my essays that had recently been published in the e-magazine, BioStories.  It was as clear that he had hated it as it was that he had had a few or more too many.  First he described it as "lame", then "too wordy," then, at last the real burr under the saddle, "it was disrespectful of your mom."  Wow!  I was fascinated.  How could he have gotten that last interpretation? Everything in it spoke of sadness, awe, and pained puzzlement over the loss of our most treasured people, as well as ourselves, through aging and death.  All of us lost to the great mystery that is inexplicable nature.  

It wasn't until last night, as I struggled to sleep, that I thought about it and understood his distaste.  It was too real; our moms don't always die with a faint smile and blessing on their lips.  Our moms, after all, along with our dads, are us, only older.  They die from various diseases, some distasteful, and some that make them not themselves anymore - from the dementia of my mother, to the pains of heart disease and cancer that can make formerly wonderful people act from fear and anger and frustration.   But that is not how this man wanted to see it.  He wanted to hold to romantic illusions, many from past centuries when people often died younger and in more painful and wretched circumstances. He did not want to face the reality either of his mother's death or, eventually, of his and his wife's.  

Right now I am reading a fascinating new book, A Kim Jong-IL Production, by Paul Fischer.  Quickly we find that Jong-Il as a young man was fascinated by film, so much so that he made himself an expert, and at the age of 25 became head of the film and propaganda arm of his father (and national god), Kim Il-Sung.  While life under Il-Sung was at first better than life under the Japanese before him, it quickly sank into a nation of terror and starvation, one that Jong-Il would inherit.  But, thanks to tight border security and the films of Jong-Il, the people never understood just how bad they had it.  Jong-Il had mastered film as a tool and weapon of the state, to prop up long-standing sentimental fantasies and myths the people held, substituting North Korea and his father for the long-standing homilies that had been meant to sustain people in hard times.  

And sustain people in hard times the propaganda has done.  Still we find, after 3 generations of starvation and terror, that people cower under the Kims.  The book explains that the Kims, with Jong-Il as master artist, have made a veritable film of fantasies and homilies of North Korea itself, so that the people see themselves only in the light of the government lies.  One dies for the Kims because they are the sons of heaven, brave supernatural beings brought to them by magical dragons and unicorns.  One starves for the Kims because they are gods, and because to die for your country is to die for the purest of master races, the Koreans.  One tolerates the brutalities because the forces of evil - those of the US and their South Korean flunky - are always on the horizon, necessitating such harshness. 

One lives, in other words, in a fantasy reality that enslaves.  

Not all fantasy realities enslave so bluntly.  For some, the fantasy of death as clean and good and romantic is necessary to block the harsher reality.  This is something others, however, cannot do, for in fantasy there is something harsh as well.  Not only is it a lie, but it keeps us from readying for the real deal, which will come whether we believe it or not.  I believe that in seeing reality in its starkness, something far beyond pain and fear can be grasped.  It is a sense of mystery and awe and, ultimately, a sense of unlimited respect for all humanity, for we are involved not in a carefully manufactured movie made from sentimental homilies and false myths, but in a real life that is uncompromising, which demands and finally brings out our deepest courage and our greatest selves.  FK  

There's a joke that I can't quite remember, attributed to Winston Churchill in the one I heard, that involves him and a conceited upper class woman.  She huffs that she would never do this or that, but when given a certain situation, she says she would readily agree to it.  The joke ends, "Now that we have determined what you are, we only have to settle on the price."  It refers to prostitution and implies that given the right price, even this upper class lady would take the cash and do the deed.  

Yes, I wish I had the whole joke, but my outrageous younger brother and I often have a fun time with this idea, usually using sex as the topic.  Would you (to make a mild version), give Donald Trump a big sloppy French kiss for 10 million?  Hell yeah, we say, even though to us it would be revolting.  We reason that the grossness of it would be worth the great life we would have afterwards.  It does not have to be about sex, however - humiliation is a great source for the outrageous.  Would you, for instance, strip naked and stick a dyed-pink ostrich feather up your backside, then waddle around quacking like a duck for a minute on video for 10 million bucks?  Again, with a little pause about the video that we know would quickly go viral, we agree that we would. Now that we know who we are, as Winny supposedly said, it is just a question of the price. 

Maybe it's not true for real life, but we think we'd sell ourselves in these impossible scenarios.  Needless to say, my brother and I are not the most highly evolved beings. (Oh yeah, the money would have to be counted, certified, and up front, of course.)  The humiliation or disgust, we figure, would be temporary and the rewards beyond imagination.  Even on video, we could always claim with a high degree of certitude, that hey, buddy, you'd do it for 10 million, too. 

In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, the wise protagonist joins the material world for a few decades of business deals, losing and gaining, but mostly gaining, what he doesn't really care about - which is why he usually gains.  He is just playing the game because he knows what he'll get at the end - eternal bliss - even though material comfort and gain are antithetical to his beliefs.  In this Hindu-colored story, he is only doing what comes to him from his karma, his earthly duty, but always with his eye on the prize, Christianity's 'pearl of great price." For someone of our time and culture, the advice would be - do what it right for your situation but never become attached to it.  It is nothing compared to what you will receive.  Therefore, the slings and arrows of fate - with its trials and humiliations - will simply pass.  You've got a much better life ahead of you, one with rewards beyond imagination.

Of course, the main problem of this analogy (there are more than a few) is the certainty.  We would want the money up front for that sloppy kiss.  But what is the certainty of the pearl of great price?  Some believe it to exist, others feel it and know it, while others doubt or downright do not believe.  However, even the doubter can look to the benefits of this attitude.  If you cannot be upset by bad circumstances, if your ego cannot be angered or twisted  by humiliations, if people cannot guilt you or pressure you to do what you do not want to do, what a wonder!  If instead you can keep calm within, and can hold on to the beauty that for most of us is only a passing emotion, what a great experience the world could be.

To have a deep knowledge of this prize is of infinite benefit, but there is a solid reason for this noncommittal attitude that all of us can agree upon - that our problems in our little time on this little earth should be of no great concern, for they are almost nothing in the tumultuous swirling of the cosmos.  If we could gain this sense of the macrocosm in our own microcosm, a whole world of hurt could be, if not avoided, at least ameliorated. And, better still, in such calm ego-neutral territory, that great pearl might just happen to shine through.  FK                         

Anyone familiar with New Age spiritualism has read, or at least knows of, Deepak Chopra.  An Indian- born physician now living in - of course - California, he has written scores of books and given hundreds of lectures over the past 25 or so years.  His stuff is primarily Eastern philosophy/religion repackaged for the West, with a healthy dose of science thrown in.  Many mock him because he is too simplistic, but I think the animosity has more to do with his success.  Successful people are always brought down to size.  I am sure there is gossip out there connecting him to affairs and greed, which is supposed to render his ideas mute. They have not, and that is fortunate.

A few weeks ago I went off the satellite onto antenna TV and surfed what is now an expanded menu.  Public Broadcasting now has three, and as I tripped through them, I came upon Fundraising Night with a video of Deepak giving a recent lecture on his new book, The Future of God.  A few days later, I was browsing for interesting titles at the library, and there was Deepak's new book, offered right there for free.  I admit I hesitated.  The first time I came across Deepak in the early 90's, I was thrilled at his accessible and ecumenical spiritualism.  In time, I began to succumb to the snobby idea that he is not deep enough.  And it is true - he keeps at the mid-level and offers apparently too-easy-to-believe tips for expanding your awareness.  That remains true in this book, but after all these years, I have rediscovered his value.  Connecting with real-life people rather than with grand abstractions alone is a valuable and necessary effort.  His style is what it is, and although it doesn't delve into everything with the depth we might want, it delves into almost everything with a depth that we can use.  

At first, The Future is a bit disconcerting.  He tells us that our old religious models are not only inadequate (for most) for finding God, but that they define God in terms that cause distress in modern people. In the Middle East traditions, including Christianity, God comes off not only as petulant and petty, but as completely unreliable.  We pray for help and more often than not, it does not come.  We have rationalized this by saying that, in the greater context, such things were not meant to be, but Chopra differs.  Test God, he says.  If he is not what it is claimed - all powerful and loving - he is not the God of your higher aspirations. Ditch the old one, he says, and find something that works! 

I admit that I found this distasteful, as if Chopra is siding with the barefoot materialists, but that is far from the case.  It is really his presentation that shocks, not his conclusions.  When everything begins to gel, we of the  New Age start to nod our heads again, as might some of the Old Age.  The reason that God does not work, says Chopra, is because we live in a partial universe where ignorance has created a world of neurotics and psychopaths.  It is a superficial gauze that, however powerful and convincing it seems (and anyone with a bad toothache is very, very convinced), is only a shell akin to a dream.  This is very Hindu and Buddhist, but also very Christian. Chopra reminds us that Jesus speaks again and again of the malleability of the material world (to paraphrase: 'if one has as little faith as a grain of mustard seed, one could still move mountains').  Chopra then separates reality into three major categories: the materialistic, the subtle, and the transcendent.  The materialistic dances to its own rules, born from limitation and incompleteness, including sickness and death and evil, all those things that make us doubt the existence of God.  We are then shown how these limitations, and the attendant evils, disappear as we approach the Whole.  I   have just completed the chapters on the subtle, and I cannot help but agree with Chopra.  In fact, he made a list to show us that the subtle is not only real, but that we all experience it from time to time.  His list sounds like the themes for this website, with the reason behind it.  Here are some of them:

Your have experienced the subtle world if:
You have an "aha" or "eureka" moment.
You feel a burst of heightened reality, as if things suddenly became clear to you.
You are struck by awe and wonder.
Inspiration comes to you.  You have a leap of creativity.
Events seem to form a pattern, and suddenly you see what the pattern is.
You think of a person's name, and the next  minute that person telephones you. 
You run into meaningful coincidences, when two events coincide and mesh.
You feel the presence of someone who has passed away.
You are certain that your life has a purpose, which may feel predestined or beyond what your ego wants.

Certainly all of us have had some of these "hints" of the subtle, but we forget them and let them go.  We fall back into the gravity of the material world. But Chopra encourages us to encourage the subtle.  Here are some of his helpful hints - 
'you are encouraging the subtle' if:

You don't listen to the voice of fear.
You question the narrow boundaries of ego.
You are optimistic about the future. 
You search for the hidden meaning in everyday events.

The last are my italics because I feel this is the most important - although keeping optimistic, as well as some others not mentioned here, might be just as essential.  Yes, we must keep on our toes - this everyday world of ours, no matter the words we set to express it, is a thin veil, a magical trick of illusion, not because it is not real, but because it is only a minute element of reality.  As Chopra tells us, only 4 percent of the universe is accounted for by science, including all the space that appears to be empty.  We understand only a tiny fraction of that 4 percent. Essentially, even from the scientific viewpoint, we are as ignorant of life as a mosquito is of human consciousness.  The mosquito is of this world and operates effectively in it, but it knows nothing beyond the mind-set of the mosquito.

But humans are made to operate at much more complete levels, as Chopra tells us again and again.  It is repetitious, but such repetition is more than OK - it is essential to help break free from the net of materialism.  It is at these other levels of awareness   where we can begin to know God, and where doubt dissipates and true faith appears - which then turns us towards a vastly greater, and more satisfying, reality.  

Chopra tells us we are not condemned to a life of suffering and frustration.  Even though most of us probably are, it is good to hear that suffering is not the basis for God's universe, and that it is possible for a few of our spiritual athletes to escape gravity.  If we at least listen to them, we can begin to understand - and evolve in the most meaningful of ways.  FK     

Just finishing the book Island on Fire by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe about the eruption of Mt Laki in Iceland in 1783 and how the smoke and gas from it harmed Europe and possibly altered history.  It is also about catastrophic volcanoes in general and how they were able to affect weather.  One volcano, for instance, from 780,000 years ago - long ago, yes, but our genus Homo ancestors were then alive and kicking - lowered the world temps by about 10 degrees (F or C, I forget - it is a big difference, but both are very high) for a decade and by several degrees for several centuries.  This would have affected our ancestors in a very big way, killing many and changing and limiting the gene pool, helping lead to who we are today.  

In other words, lots of stuff in the air can lead to big changes. I try not to get into politics here, but most know where this is going necessarily  - to global warming.  It is odd that it is claimed that human pollutants are warming the world while volcanoes cool them, but I leave that to the scientists.  The idea is that certain activities, whether natural in cause or not, will cause changes in climate.  As for politics, we all know that climate change is so ensnared in debate that it is impossible for the open minded to find the truth.  There is good reason for that.  For one, lots of egos at are stake, as are lots of dollars.  For another, climate is a complex thing - in this book, the authors speak authoritatively of temp change with volcanoes, but it is a different matter concerning the "little ice age." This was a period - from the 14th to the mid-19th century - during which much of the earth cooled considerably, radically changing much of world history.  Yet, know one knows why.  

The arguments have gotten far beyond egos and money, though; for many, it has become a holy war of world views.  It is startling that from such an academic debate such vituperation should have arisen, but that is the way it has always been.  We laugh now that thousands have been killed over the idea of the Virgin Birth, or over which descendant of Mohamed was given his ultimate blessing.  But on this issue, billions of dollars are at stake, as are whole ways of life. People are up in arms over dust particles that may or may not be changing the climate.  Certainly, those of the future will laugh at all the hubbub we now have over this.  

Or maybe not.  Changes in view over the Virgin did not bring about ultimate catastrophe, but the issue of the Islamic Imam might give us nuclear war.  We just don't know for sure how things might shake out.  That the Treaty of Versailles after WWI would lead to an even greater war would have been unthinkable in 1920 - yet it did.  But fluoride in the water has not led us to become mindless zombies - at least not yet. One economist predicts a great boom or bust and he is declared a genius - until he almost invariably misses the next big change.  We are, apparently, neither too tightly constrained by the Powers that Be to make great changes to the world, but neither do we often know what great changes our actions will make.  It is as if we are clumsy oafs in a china shop, where one turn knocks down a table with a crash, while another only opens the door, neither intended. And if we think we know where reasonable precision and blind fate (whether it is truly blind or not) diverge, think again.  That would be to know the future, and we oafs are far too oafish for that.  

Which might give us pause before we commit to revolution or war for a certain belief.  Perhaps sometimes the idea itself might be worth it, but that is generally not true with the outcome.  Ask a Russian how the proletariat utopia worked out.  Our certainties can lie in optimism or pessimism, or in a belief that the world is primarily good or evil, and any of these can work out for us, depending on how we view the world. But most things beyond the basic human stuff - that, say, using drugs leads to dependency - are beyond us.  Which is a good thing.  Life should never be boring, and we know we have a lot to learn.  FK             

This past weekend, my son and I were able to cobble 4 days together to make the long haul up to the UP by the shores of frigid Lake Superior.  My first concern after we drive the last half mile on the pitted dirt road is always: is the cabin still standing? Did it burn down, or had some drunken snowmobilers smashed through the back window to look for booze?  Was it now filled with raccoons and mice and layers of crawling insects?  

As we made the last turn, we could clearly see that everything was intact, as always.  The cabins up there, mine included, are humble, after all, with few things to steal, and no one simply stumbles upon such places that are placed off any main road 20 miles from the nearest town.  As for fire, the whole way up was wet and green, lush from a month of above average rains, and a forest fire would have been difficult to start without vast quantities of accelerants.  No, everything was as it should be, and I finally backed up to the steps for the Great Unloading of more stuff than we would use or eat, then opened the door.  

An unavoidable mistake, we would find instantly, as swarms of mosquitoes covered us like mangy fur.  Rush to the cabin door!  I said as I fumbled for my keys, and then saw with horror that as Jeff entered, he brought in at least 50 of the demons with him. 

Such it would be for the entire stay, the devils sparse only along the big lake's shore, where the cold and the wind clipped their wings.  The back woods up north are not the worst in the world, though, even though Jeff would swear they were.  I had read of the old Eskimos and how they would huddle under skins with handfuls of wet wood, which they would ignite to create suffocating smudge fires, preferring a lack of oxygen and eventual emphysema to being sucked dry by the swarms.  My friend Dave also told me of his graduate work in Labrador in summer, where they would pee in jars at night rather than go outside into the fog of mosquitoes.  A drive into town told the same story - there, many were masked by netted hats, their hands covered by gloves and the rest covered by thick long pants and jackets, even as the temperature hit the upper seventies. Along the paths we would see frowning overnight hikers, suffering far more than they had thought before first stepping out, never believing that they would be so tortured.  Aching  backs, yes; being eaten alive, no.  So bad that Jeff, while walking in his long coat and hood in the morning before I woke, would come across a large bear just a few yards from him.  Neither flinched, both being more concerned with the mosquitoes than each other, like humans at war suddenly confronted with the common foe of an alien invasion.

Of course, Jeff had to make the observation that almost everyone does under such an onslaught - why did God invent the mosquito?  If IT is a loving God ... and so on and so on.  I could only answer with my typical abstractions - that the nature of this universe is such that each feeds off the other, nursed first through the energy of the sun through photosynthesis.  That, this sun, is the purer of the cosmic force; we here in this world only a small slice of the totality.  The mutual feeding is a conditional reflection of universal love, of the melding of all into the other and the desire and need of the other for the other.  It is a physical expression of a metaphysical ideal, imperfectly formed around beings both limited and temporary.  We selected or were selected for such a universe by our needs or our nature, our spiritual color. For reasons unknown to us, or to me at least, we need this impermanence and particularness, this nature, for a greater purpose.

Unfortunately, this adventure often entails pain.  The mosquito, in its way, loves us - but its love hurts.  It is the central part of the game, this pain, or we would all give ourselves willingly to our predators and the game would be over very quickly.  To give in to the pull of universality would mean death.  But this comes too, anyway, and the game of life then becomes an afterthought. 

What is that afterthought?  We get glimpses of it now and then, but then it eludes us.  It is not meant for us to fully understand until the game is over.  

Huddled in the cabin, I listened to Garrison Keeler on NPR recite a poem on the Writer's Almanac.  The poet spoke of life as a song in two harmonies, the one heard most loud and frenzied, the other seldom noticed, an undertone that prevails in everything.  I agree with her.  Beneath the drone of the mosquitoes hums a song of our deeper lives, but we seldom have time to hear it while swatting away at the bloodsuckers who periodically plague us.  But listen for it we should, for there, even the mosquitoes make sense and reflect a universal glory - if we can stop slapping away at them every now and then.  FK         






       

Today, a new essay, The Checker King, under Essays in the website.  

Many years ago when we were looking for a house in Wisconsin, our realtor took us to Stoughton to see a place on the outskirts of town.  As we drove down main street  through this typical small-city setting of late 19th century buildings, she whispered to us: "I am not supposed to tell you this, but Stoughton has a problem." Ooh, I thought, she isn't going to give us an account of some troubled minority neighborhood, is she?  Her pause was only for a few seconds."  Well - this town is mostly Norwegian."  We thought it was a joke and laughed, but she did not.  We never were told WHY Norwegians were a problem, though - apparently, everyone in Wisconsin knew that without saying.  

We did not move to Stoughton, but not because of the "minority" problem.  We have also been to Stoughton many times since, and I still can't find the problem with it.  In fact, is has a great cheese store and a fantastic brew-pub that features an extremely potent beer named "Dragon's Milk."  But in Rolvaag's tale of late 19th century immigrants to South Dakota, Giants of the Earth, one gets to understand the problem with Norwegians.  

First, they were extremely ethnocentric, but what newly- arrived immigrant group isn't?  Second, they were very religious, but again,weren't many from the Old Country back then?  But it is not until the last part of the book that we get to understand the meaning of "Dark Lutherans," made famous by Garrison Keillor, the author of the Lake Wobegon books about a fictional small town in Minnesota.  In Giants, however, there is nothing comical about the darkness.  It has mean edges with sharp consequences. 

Rolvaag, though, was clearly not anti-religious.  His sympathetic portrayal of a traveling minister allows that religion can, and should, be the very glue that keeps desolate and struggling communities together, and gives the people hope.  But one woman, Beret, loses her mind out in the great emptiness of the prairie, to the point where she endangers the lives of her smallest children.  Obsessed with the belief that they had come into the Devil's land, she wanders about possessed by fear and anxiety until the preacher is able to persuade her that God is here, too. 
Thus she becomes competent again, but obsessively religious. Every non-solemn word and act, from drinking liquor to mild profanity to joking  becomes a sign that the originator of such things is doomed to hellfire.  

In this way, she becomes a nuisance for the men in the community - but it gets much worse.  Norwegian worse.  She persuades a man who has come down with a harsh cough that he is going to die, and if a preacher is not brought to him, that he will go to Satan's lair.  The man worsens and pleads continually that someone bring him the preacher, although they are in the midst of the worst winter ever experienced there.  Finally, the pressure of the women, especially Beret, forces her husband Per Hanson to ski out into the deep snow toward a distant town as another blizzard comes. What becomes of him can be guessed.

There may be a dark side to every religion.  In the current Catholic Church, we are told both to rejoice and be glad, for we are saved, and to hang our heads in shame over our many, many inevitable sins.  It is for this reason that many have left organized religion, and why many religions, including Catholicism, have become softer.  Still, the sting remains.  And it is not only the Christian religions that demand a certain sacrifice - even the free-wheeling Dakota peoples of the old Plains would offer themselves to torture in the Sun Dance, would starve themselves to find favor with the gods, and would even offer themselves to death to serve the tribal spirit.  As Beret felt, the wild nature of the frontier seemed to demand suffering as well as life itself from all who sought to live there.

So we run from these dark philosophies of the past, and, as Rolvaag shows, often for good reason.  However, when we stop our running, we are caught short.  Either we are left with no representation of the greater reality to help us make sense of things, or we are left with an ersatz religion that gives us candy and hugs but does not prepare us for what is inevitable - for, just as it is a waste to not enjoy the good things of life, so it is a grand mistake to not accept its realities.  We do suffer and die and there is nothing we can do about it.  That must be figured into any reality system.  It also seems necessary that we offer some form of sacrifice - not for the thirst of the gods, but to prepare ourselves for the troubles that will come.  To be spoiled and pampered does not serve us well when inevitable pain, loss and death find us.

In the book, however, most of the Norwegians had found a suitable balance - and that is why Beret was seen as such a pest. Common sense does seem to come into play when juggling the sacred and the profane in equal measure.  But many people, and societies, have erred on one side or the other.  Muslim fanaticism today shows us the dark side - but American pop culture shows us the candy-cane fairy tale side.  A sense of proportion should bring us all around, but it seems to be moving very, very slowly.  Heads continue to roll in the name of Allah, and every day in AMerica, we are introduced to another Caitlin Jenner-like frivolity that passes for real life.  Lord, give us wisdom.  FK       


              

This morning, I got up at 5:30 due to some intestinal discomfort - I blame it on the pizza - and realized that I had time to go to the very early church service.  I had not gone the afternoon before because of the Belmont Stakes and the possibility of the Triple Crown.  I was not disappointed, and figured, ah, well, another Goin' to Meetin' week-end lost to horse racing!  But there I was this morning, compelled by circumstances to make the drive into town.  I do not worry about black cats crossing my path, or walking under ladders for bad luck (stupidity is not bad luck), but I do believe in circumstances.  And so, tired and somewhat uneasy of disposition, there I was, driving in the early morning rain.

Of course, I pushed the button on the radio.  NPR was having a man talk in a section about "books we should read."  He was a professor of something, and was going on and on about Roland Barthes and his ground-breaking work, "Mythologies." Written in the 1970's, the professor claimed the work made us understand the greater depth to our customary activities - what small things like cleaning clothes meant about our reality construct.  Why, for instance, do the adds tell us we need our clothes to be "sparkling clean?"  What does this tell us about our attitudes towards our biological selves, and about our natural world?

Ah, Barthes.  He had been a prime member of a class of authors called "deconstructionists" which I studied with great seriousness in graduate school.  Indeed, such were eye-opening and they have forever, as the professor said, "made me look at the world differently." 

Yes, but I remember a problem with such studies: after the classes, as the day turned to evening, I would become depressed, not my natural condition.  Life seemed pointless somehow, all a reflection of something else, which also was pointless.  All arrows led to a bottomless pit of nothingness.  In the old days of new philosophy, they called this "existential angst," that which was brought to us all because capitalism universalized the world and made every meaning merely a cultural construct in a multi-cultural world.  

And here I was going to church, which is not only filled with endless symbols, but purposefully so.  I knew as I turned off the radio that I was not only going because stomach problems had gotten me up early.  Rather, the last few days had been filled with this existential angst, as cultural meaning and ultimate meaning collided.  What had I done with my life?  How much have I wasted?  But- wait!- was it wasted, or was that only a cultural construct speaking to me?  If so, what WAS important?  Oh, and did I mention that this morning was my birthday?  

But I did not have an epiphany this morning.  Rather, I had the same one I often get the night before, each just as meaningful every time, and this morning only reminded me of it.  It reiterated the idea that this daily world is a mishmash of cultural symbols, of goals and desires and self-perceptions that are manufactured for us out of the populist fabric.  But unlike Barthes's "groundbreaking work," this epiphany always gives an answer after the expose, one that I always forget and need constant reminders of, especially when the night wolves have been out devouring the meat of meaning, turning us into less than wolves ourselves.  The epiphany says that there is a meaning, or a doorway to meaning, that is accessible somehow, every now and then. One may be led to the door by a seeming accident, or by icons, or by the ritual of a church itself, for that is what the symbols are there to do - to lead us away from our daily selves and stylized realities.  But however one gets there, there it is: this gateway to a deeper truth, this WAY beyond the grasp of Barthes and his fellow intellectuals.  The Way does not depend on faith, although that might help; nor does it depend on reason, although that might help - or hinder - as well. Rather, it is the third way.  It is beyond Barthes. He is stuck in his three-dimensional mental chess game and cannot see beyond the board.  Most of us can't most of the time.  But the door is there.  And here is what it begins to tell us just beyond the door:

"Nothing else matters but this.  It is the key.  You know simply by being presented with it that this is true.  Everything else is a pale reflection of this.  You cannot know this with anything but that special sense that you have been given, but once you are there, you know."  

With that, sometimes too my memory begins to work, and I sense again what I should have sensed when I was five and at the ocean, or 45 and on the river in a canoe - in fact, what I should have sensed every time.  But some of these times call out louder, and when they do, it is of this Way, of this door that they speak, if I am aware. Which most often I am not.  And that is why the darkness of discontent, of being lost, revisits again and again.  FK                   

Way, way back in high school, we were made to read a collection of short stories by Earnest Hemingway about his semi-autobiographical adventures with his physician father in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early 1900's.  In one story, the boy goes with his father to an Indian village to help a woman through a difficult child birth.  During the long night she screams and cries while her husband lies by stoically in a nearby bed. By dawn, she makes it through, but when the husband is sought to be notified, they find that he has slit his own throat.  Tragedy. Hemingway's father would kill himself some years later, as would Hemingway, after suffering from severe depression and the primitive remedies of electric shock therapy.  

In the book that I am currently reading, Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, we find ourselves in a similar situation.  A group of Norwegians have come to America in the 1870's to claim "quarters," or quarter square mile lots (160 acres) for homesteading in the Dakota Territory, lured by this incredible gift of land.  Per Hansa, the central male in the story, loves its vast isolation because of its potential; his wife Beret immediately takes a different view - why, there are no trees to hide behind!  There are no people!  They will all revert to savagery!  It is no joke - she keeps this to herself, and her mind wanders to distraction, to anxiety, and to deep depression.  The  reader is given to know that she is well along in her pregnancy, and we start to wonder - is this the reason for her dark moods?  

Finally, on Christmas Eve, she goes into labor.  It is a difficult one, and Beret is already sure she is going to die.  Even the women attending her begin to believe it.  Her shrieks and moaning go out through the night, where Per Hansa paces in the snow, unable to talk to anyone.  Finally, it is quiet.  In time, one of the women summons him in to the house.  He is convinced that Beret is dead, and as he passes the barn, he notices the high, strong beam that lays on the walls.  He thinks of the rope he has - good, strong rope.  He does not think of his other children.  We believe we know what he will do, if...

As it turns out, his wife survives, as does the infant, a boy born with "The Helmet" a birth crown that is very rare, on Christmas day.  It is said that he will grow - if he lives - to be very special.  We have the rest of the book to find out how.

In both cases, the death of the father is or would have been tragic.  Neither considered the lives of others who would survive them - only that they could not stand the suffering of the women that they loved, or could not live without them.  But in both cases, continued life would have or was better.  Their's was a temporary problem, which would have been solved by time, one way or the other.  In both cases, the results would have been or were so much better with life.  

In my youth, besides being forced to read the classics, I also talked with quite a few young people who were considering suicide.  I would tell them that their problems were temporary, and that life, after all,was short.  Why not ride it out?  And why not, if the situation seemed intolerable, just run away?  What could hurt more than suicide?  And one would still be alive, able to mend fences later if desired, or start another life that was more compatible.   

This was true of the two men in the stories.  It was the situation that made them suffer.  But what of some others?  I have read of people so consumed by schizophrenia that they make themselves freeze, as if statues, to avoid the life that their tortured minds gave to them.  Then there are the others, those with intense depression, who seem absolutely normal and blessed with the common needs, but who none-the-less are absolutely miserable.  Hemingway and his father were two of those.  In such cases, is suicide such an irrational thing?  It leaves behind the blackest of holes for friends and family, but how can we judge the degree of unrelieved suffering that they might be living?  Theirs was not a misery of the moment, but perhaps of a lifetime.  Just as I perfectly understand the suicide of the old with terminal diseases, so might I understand these others.  

Whether one cares or not, the Catholic Church now allows 'suicides' to be buried in consecrated ground, recognizing the suffering of the person rather than the taking away of life that was given him by God.  This surely seems the more merciful perspective.  Still, we pray for resolutions to our problems, and often they come - more often than not - and in surprising ways. Someone who has failed at one thing may find his true passion in something else; someone who's child was killed by a drunk driver finds she can help other children with health problems or in need of financial assistance.  And sometimes the very mental disease that tortures us allows for a genius to emerge that might make it worthwhile in the end.  Hemingway wrote books, the mathematician in "A Beautiful Mind" made discoveries that are still being used.  The resolutions may not end like novels, but they are resolutions of a sort.  

Should those who suffer hope?  For those miserable in a life situation, sure - that situation will change or can be changed.  But for those others, it remains a question.  It seems to me that anything can be altered, at least enough, with a strong faith. But how does an average person have faith when it seems the whole world has abandoned him?  I cannot judge - but only hope that my own faith would carry me through with what might be.  It reminds me of how serious one's faith can be, and how little the jokers and mockers (myself included, at times) really understand or serve anyone.  FK             

A few years ago, I wrote a novel, Remission, about multiple layers of reality that could be entered from our own reality -and with the proper knowledge, the natural laws of these other realities could be brought back to bear on our own, creating actual "miracles" or "magic."  I had first come across that idea in my youth, and have since come to understand it better, and to believe it.  However, this is still only a kind of map of a more complex greater reality.  I have never been able to use the idea practically, and more, cannot fully explain how it could work.  This is because the science, the explanation for it in verbal and logical terms, does not exist for me.  Thus the book, as much as I like it overall, remains an unpublished problem.  In the many attempts to bring that reality to the reader, I still was not able to do so.  And so, the major work of rewriting remains.  Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew.

The same could be said of an off-the-wall movie we saw this weekend, Frequencies.  Here, we have a special school for gifted youth (placed in London) which operates on the principle of natural resonances - that is, that each of us is born with a certain vibration that makes us either more or less in tune with the universe.  Those of high resonance always have things go their way; those of low-resonance are always obstructed.  With this, in the movie we start with two characters, a high-resonance female and a low-resonance male who somehow still resonate with each other.  The male comes to greatly desire the female as they grow; she, on the other hand, can feel no emotions, although she is brilliant and, as understood, gets anything she wants (as they say, "the universe is working hard for her.")  As a grown man, the low-frequency guy finds a way to alter one's wave-lengths with the help of a genius son of a  composer.  Certain words, they find, have vibrational influence.  Those words can be found using the algorithms of the genius son.  

The man uses them to alter the woman, who wants the one thing the universe is unwilling to give her - emotions.  They fall in love.  But then the government finds out about the experiment and freaks - use of "magic" words have been used throughout time to enslave people.  Those involved now are forbidden to speak outside a quarantined setting.  They must find an antidote.

The antidote is music, which brings everyone into an equal resonance - it is the one common human bond that surpasses hierarchy and power.  But wait!  The genius son believes that even music is mechanical - that, indeed, all life is mechanical and can thus be understood and foreseen as easily as any natural process, such as the fall of an object through space.  In the end, he believes he has found the perfect algorithm, and can predict EVERYthing.  At the same time, the loving couple discuss this possibility - that the man was only made for the woman's use by the universe - and as such is only, in a way, an object.  But they laugh it off - so what?  They are in love!

Too many threads were left untied, as can be imagined, precisely because the science was not there for the writers.  Still, the questions remaining are haunting. The composer Dad insists to his son that music is not a precise mechanical work - that it has to be played with feeling to be effective, and that this feeling was propelled by free will.  But what do the young lovers say of this?  And, is the universe primarily mechanical?  If so, then why should humans not be, when so much of everything else seems to be?  But what of "seems?"  Is that mechanical vision of the universe true, or only a shallow map of a much greater potential? We could know if the genius's son's work was tested for us.  If he could predict everything, then we are indeed determined.  But we never are let to know. 

These are questions of real importance, and here's how I see it: that our daily lives, and what we normally believe to be ourselves, are highly mechanical, run by impulses that are effected by the environment in near stimulus-response fashion.  That we have different body chemistry, or better, resonances, is true - some will be "luckier" or more adapted to this environment than others, but will still be no more free.  On the other hand, the stimulus-response model is highly reductionistic. We are potentially so much more than that.  It shows in music, and in the other arts, that we are somehow, nearly inarticulately, something else.  LIke the model in my own novel, we can have access to other worlds.  And this access is determined by our will - unless, of course, there is some "uber world" where our will is formed.  Still, It is a fathomless "onion" of reality, where logically, everything eventually has to be based on free will - on the very act of creation.  

And to this we are tied.  But the strands are long and tenuous. For the lovers in the movie, they decide to forget the problem and live with their affection for one another.  And that's what the writers had to do - and eventually, what I had to do in my own novel: to just leave it to viewer or reader.  For one cannot convince anyone of anything that cannot be reasoned by that person, unless he desires it. Understanding, then, is itself an act of magic and an act of will.  And where the imagined reality and the will to embrace them come from is problematic and mysterious at the very roots.  It is here where the rubber  hits the road, and what makes life so much more than a chemical, vibrational, or mechanical action.