Today, a new essay, "Costa Vieja," under Essays in the website. FK 

y, way back in 1970, when I was in high school and filled with all sorts of dreams of anarchy and paradise on earth, there was a movie that was made into a short-lived sit-com called Logan's Run.  In the sci-fi world where it took place, people lived in a vast bubble protected from the elements and all the pain of bee stings and sun burns and everything else.  Life was ideal, because no one suffered - at all, because at the age of 30, a ceremony was held where they were lifted up to heaven in a shaft of light.  Except it wasn't quite so.  In fact, they were simply killed while high on whatever.  Logan found out about this, and with his girlfriend, looking remarkably like a wealthy flower child, he escaped from the bubble.  There they found a world that hurt, and a world that had been destroyed by a long-ago nuclear war. They made it to what was left of Washington, DC, where they met an old man for the first time.  They were entranced.  Here was this dingy old fellow with a white beard who puttered about the remnants of the national library, his failing memory and shuffling gate so amusing to them.  Old age wasn't so bad!  And so they returned, led a revolt, and exploded the bubble.

Into the real world they went, then, the same world that had erupted into global violence before.  And the same world where old age is not a quaint novelty, but a very real and, eventually, uncomfortable stage of life.  People my age, no longer young, look with dread at the ancients, now our parents, who become senile, ugly, incompetent and incontinent and then, by the miracle of modern medicine, are kept alive in these horrible states sometimes for years.  We look at each other and think darkly - not us!  Better to die!  But I have seen the will to live.  Even the ancient have it, with all their suffering and pills, until the last, faintest glow of energy finally dissipates.  It is only then that they acquiesce to the big mystery.  And so, I know, it will remain for most of us.  Could Logan's domed world have a glimmer of compassion to it?

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, which simultaneously commiserates the last days of Jesus and the reality of death in life.  In the Catholic Church, a cross of ashes is put on the foreheads of parishioners as the priest says, to each, "from ashes you are born and to ashes you go," or something very similar (there goes MY memory).  We are reminded that death awaits us, as well as an afterlife, too, when Lent is done at Easter.  But Logan didn't have Easter, nor any of the other beliefs and rituals. He only had his desire to live and his ignorance to protect him from the real world.  The world before him was not any more evil than the world of his future.  It is iis vicissitudes, its suffering and fears, that creates the worst of our violence.  With Logan and his fellow followers, this will happen again.  The world by itself offers no palliative; rather it is by thoughts of the mind and the inner life, of the heart, that give us reason to live in the face of a painful old age and a scary death.

So, in Gary Lachman's The Secret Teachers, we learn about the ways in which the Western world dealt with this perennial problem.  I have just finished reading of the era of the slow collapse of the Roman Empire, beginning in seriousness about 200 years after the birth of Christ, and lasting until the final dismemberment in the 8th century.  It was a time of confusion and warfare, of barbarian hordes and clashing ideologies.  It was also the last of the Pagan era, where intellect gave way to faith, where brain gave way to heart, for the world had to be remade, to be re-understood by the masses, not just the intellectual elite.  And so the West veered off into dogma, and quickly, into intolerance, for a religion built on belief rather than a foundation of thought could be easy pickings.  As the late Medieval period went into its high phase, after the 9th century, the great Christian thinkers of the time filled in the spaces with what was left of the pagan intellectual tradition, culminating with St Thomas Aquinas's works that were based primarily on the Aristotle.  

Thus the via positiva - the way of faith and ritual - was buttressed by the via negativa, or the way to God through meditation. The later is what informs Christian mysticism to this day, but it is still the way of faith that leads most in whatever religion - or lack of religion - is followed.  The inward way is difficult, takes years and years, and does not always work.  But the outward way always does, if only for the moment.

And so it is that the ashes are received on the forehead with the solemnity of death - but with the knowledge that we will somehow live on.  

This is the way of the poet.  Driving back from town a few days ago, a thin coat of powdery snow  was blowing across the road, forming drifts even as I passed them.  In their shifting form their seemed a beauty and truth, both terrible and wonderful, of what we are.  It was not through intellect that this ocurred, but through heart, as if the heart knows something that ouir mind cannot.  It is this, I think, what we call soul, and what must have made the first thinking humans understand that something more than mere living was afoot in life - something greater that perhaps only the wise men can grasp, but something that we can all know intuitively.  

And we often do understand in this way, from the blowing snow drifts and the rolling waves.  It is not from will-full thought, then, or abstract imagination that most of us know something is afoot, but through something in our environment that comes from something else and is written in our hearts.  And so the ashes bring forth that knowledge, in what the ancients called sympathy of spirit, and by whatever ways we might think, we are still brought forth before a world that not only hurts, but teaches, if we are willing.  Perhaps Logan will find his way after all.  FK                
               

In many ways, nothing seems changed.  The view out my window is the same as it has been for the 16 years we have lived here. Now, dead leaves quiver on the sugar maple before me, a cold north wind trying vainly to rip them free.  Beyond are the pines, coated with light snow, and beyond them, the vast corn field with its stubble poking out from the white-whiteness of this newly fallen snow.  It will sting to take a walk today, my glasses freezing the bridge of my nose as the cold goes deeper into the forehead. The snow glare will hurt, and it will be nice to get back inside for a hot cup of tea.  

All the same, except for the new organic pig pens being put up in the alfalfa field to the north, but it isn't really.  The closest town is expanding its borders beyond the new beltway, running up along route 12 to someday join the expansion flowing east from Madison.  Almost everywhere in this country it is the same, and for those worried about jobs, this is a good thing.  Except - except, when will it stop?  In Wisconsin, we have gone from sparse Indian settlements to industrial farming and cities in only 150 years.  Our system depends on this kind of growth but there are, as has been said, limits.  When and how does it end?

This, along with a whole system of thought, is tackled expertly by author Gary Lachman in his book, The Secret Teachers of the Western World.  It is not an ecological treatise, but rather an exploration of the West's esoteric - that is, inner - teachings, and how they have become buried - but not killed - by a changing form of consciousness.  He uses the right-left brain model for simplicity, although he explores this split far beyond this division. The left brain, the logical, discursive side, he claims, overtook the right - the intuitive side - in the Renaissance, a process that has continued to this day, which has almost destroyed the efficacy of the intuitive.  We can not only know this is true by what is valued in our thought processes, but by the fruit of its aggressive expansion.  The discursive side wishes to dis-assemble everything into discrete bits that it can completely understand and control, and thus has set its sights on "messy" nature, by overrunning it with human structures, limiting it more and more to passive farming belts or fenced-in, controllable parks for our occasional amusement.  

However, it has its limits, not just ecologically, but mentally. Lachman, borrowing from a slew of other thinkers, claims that the dominance of one side of our nature always runs into a wall when its excesses become so obvious it falls into self-parody. And more: the discursive mode must constantly pick things apart, down to the tiniest particle, like a kid taking apart a watch, to understand and control it.  However, in so doing, it starts to eat itself up - that is, pick apart the nature of its picking apart.  

In grad school, this was abundantly clear, as we fell into studying the deconstructionists, but one does not have to go to the ivory tower to see that it's happening.  The West, which has dominated the world by its left-brain thinking, is now in the process of deconstructing itself - from its cultures and morality to its very processes of picking things apart.  We see now the dragon eating its tail.  We can clearly see now the destruction of Western hegemony by its own hands

The current political crises in our country reflects this knowledge and this fear, and the concern is real.  However, Lachman claims that this has happened before, and it is part of a spiral process: as Hegel put it, the thesis forces the antithesis, and the result is a synthesis, a movement forward out of reconciliation.  This is part of the magic of "three", from Pythagorean theory to the mystery of Christ.  And thus the book moves on, to sum up this hidden knowledge that has been forced into the shadows by the modern rational mind, but nevertheless remains, because it cannot be lost - it is as much a part of us as our physical brains.  

This book is the best I have read for a synopsis of the Perennial Tradition, representing it with a clear (and sane) eye, but it also brings about our own perennial question here: Will the discursive brain give way to a synthesis with the holistic mode of thought that has been marginalized by the mainstream, or will it insist on running us into the ground, jealous to the bitter end of its supremacy?  It seems to me more and more that, this time around, it will depend on a global presence of goodwill that is so far absent, so much so that it seems our fate is in the hands of a greater force.  This is the greater, unifying force that the esoterists speak of, but they, too, have long differed on how it works.  For some, transitions run smoothly; for others, an apocalypse must first ensue.  Perhaps by the end of the book I will have a better idea as to which way things might know, but it is my guess that no one really knows.  But we do know that, in the end, it will depend on us as always, and how each of us contributes to global consciousness.  FK        

Yesterday, a friend sent me the blog of a woman we had met at the Consciousness Society, a "wing-nut" division of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) that we had both enthusiastically embraced, and even contributed our own wing-nut theories as well.  This woman is a great New Age artist, and in her blog, she showed both some of her work and told us breathlessly of her world tour last year, including many symposiums and art banquets for achievement, as well as visits to exotic (traditional) peoples in Africa.  It made me realize what a piker I really am in the scheme of human endeavor, which is probably good for me, but also something else: how deeply mystical all world's cultures really were.  I had always known that, and that is what brought me to anthropology, but normal anthropology usually only exploits a social version of modern science.  Seldom does it get to the lived meaning of culture - and thus our participation with the "wing-nuts" who strove to do so.  

This reminded me of the artist's lecture at one of the Society's meetings.  Here, she tried to show how our alphabet was derived from circumstances of nature.  For instance, for an "A," she showed a slide of reeds crossed in a swamp that looked very much like the letter "A."  In this, she was trying to prove that a basic feature of our civilization was born from raw nature, linking us holistically with it.  

This was of interest, since her pictures were great, but unconvincing.  For instance, just because a burnt spot on a piece of toast looks kinda like the face of Jesus does not mean that Jesus originated in toast.  

Still, it reminds one of our roots.  According to my encyclopedia, our alphabet was taken from the Greeks and modified by the Romans into what we recognize today, but the Greeks got it from the Phoenicians and the Phoenicians from those marvels of civilization genius, the Egyptians.  Our alphabet is based on phonetics, that is, on an approximation of the sound of the spoken word, but that came later.  The Egyptians used hieroglyphs, which, like Chinese writing, are based on pictures of actual things in nature.  But also something more: on the social-religious meaning of things in nature which were often transposed into features of the gods.  Thus writing itself was a holy endeavor, calling forth our relationship with nature and the gods.  It is, in part, for this reason that scribes were so honored in ancient times (recall the Jewish hierarchy of the Scribes and Pharisees, putting religion and writing together).  But the Greeks and Romans, in a bloom of practical knowledge, replaced the pictures with a limited number of symbols, that borrowed from the hieroglyphic of say, a bird, taking the symbol as a representation of the sound "B" in bird (only an example.  The ancient Greek word for bird probably does not start with a "b").  Thus, all was simplified, and any child could learn to turn simple conversation into writing within a few years.  

This has affected our current civilization in profound ways, making everyone, in a way, a high priest.  Because we now share the same language as those who once spent years bringing nature and god and culture together, we are both democratized (not a bad thing) and secularized, which is often not a good thing. In ancient times, we were placed beneath those of knowledge - but we knew that this knowledge, this depth, was there.  Now we are equals, but often do not recognize our own depth.  We have been "flattened out," allowed to scramble at the surface without even understanding that this, our world reality, is only a surface.  

Last night I also bought a book, The Spiritual Life by Fr. Tanqueray, that was recommended by our not-so-new (now) priest, Fr. Peter.  Fr. Peter, it seems, has lost some of the congregation because of his long and sometimes rambling sermons, as well as because of the conservative message in some of these sermons (too much at times, I admit, on sex).  However, if one listens, his message is really about Being Saved.  This, of course, is the message in one way or another of all religions, but in the modern churches, the emphasis has been placed on social issues.  This is understandable because, as with writing, we have become a practical people, but Fr. Peter is desperate to show us that this is only the beginning.  

And so I bought the book. It is a long and heavy one, and I will have to read it over months, interspersed with others.  It is not only not entertaining like a novel, but not inspirational, like many popular books on spirituality.  It is, to paraphrase the author, a science book, except that the science he speaks of is about how to reach God, rather than, say, fly to the moon.  And with this I realized two things: one, that the mysticism that so enamors me is not some sort of side-show of the weird, but a central tenant of even the hide-bound Catholic Church.  In this book, transcendence is treated as no more of an oddity than is a rocket by an aerospace  engineer.  And another: it once again makes apparent how little we know of what we think we know.  Just as with writing, most of us wander into our churches or synagogues or yoga classes thinking we know what we are doing, but most of us (and I include myself) do not really have a clue as to the depth and sacredness of that which we witness and purport to believe. Religion has become trivialized, stream-lined so that anyone can participate without effort.  

It may well be that in any groupings of people beyond the extended family, we have two choices: adhering to a belief in equality, which takes away the excesses of the divine right of leadership; or in hierarchical knowledge, which poses the inevitable risk of dictatorship or theocracy.  Yet, so much is lost with democratization, where the truly vulgar can become the staple of normalcy, and the greater and deeper is thought to be pretentious, an invented abstraction meant to demean  "the people."  Is it possible that this dichotomy is one of the fundamental problems of society today? And how best to counter it than by proclaiming, as Jesus famously did, that we are all unique and equal under God, but are also fully responsible for our own souls, no exceptions? For with equality comes great responsibility, a burden I think others in other times understood well and traded in for hierarchy and complacency.  FK                                

Decades ago, I was at a small party given by a friend, when his wife (also a friend) asked me, "what is the most important thing in your life?"  Like a polished conservative politician, I said, "God." For an evangelist, that would be expected; for me at the time, it was not, and she reacted with surprise.  

I still react to that memory with surprise.  At that time in my life, I was in a high-pressure graduate program, and was so driven by the need to succeed - to be the smartest and the best in a field with virtually no jobs - that I must have been quite a jerk at times. Somehow, though, this remark made its way through me, even with, or perhaps because of, the great abundance of beer at the party.  It was similar to the time that I was hitchhiking back to undergrad school when a driver asked me what I was majoring in.  At the time I had no idea, but I immediately answered "anthropology" (see my book, Dream Weaver, for details).  Somehow something knew what I was going to do.  Did it also know about this centrality of "god," or was that simply a statement manufactured unconsciously for shock value?  For it would be hard to say that this metaphysical concern truly has come to dominate my life, as anthropology once came to.  No one who knows me, I can assure you, would describe me as a saint, or anything close.

I would not have had this memory were it not for the novel I am currently reading, The Dog of Jesus, by Michael Sakorski. So far, it's been fun: a dog that was at the Crucifixion of Christ happened to be at the foot of the cross when the blood was spilled by the spear of the Roman soldier.  The dog licked it, then was pierced by the same spear.  "Santo" recovered, and was taken to Spain by St James (Santiago), where he left it to a sailor for care while he traveled to Palestine, where he was killed.  2,000 years later, we meet the sailor again, still with his dog in a sleepy mountain village in Mexico.  He gives the dog to a religious boy, Jesus, so that he can finally die, for to live with the dog is to live forever. The dog cures those who God chooses by a simple lick of the tongue. The sailor had helped to cure many, but had long kept it hidden because of the turmoil the knowledge of such a dog would cause.  Jesus does the same after the sailor's death, until ....

I will leave that to those who wish to read the book, or at least until another time.  To bring one up to where I now am, at about two thirds through, the dog has been discovered, and Jesus has consented to allow a billionaire pharmaceutical magnate to inspect the dog, to perhaps find a special chemical in the dog that can be reproduced, and thus heal humankind's ills.  Jesus is given 250,000 dollars and some other things as compensation. When asked what he would do with the money, he replies, "I don't need it for myself.  I have everything I need.  Maybe it would help to buy books for the children."   It was here that I was touched, but not because I would respond that way.  Although I, too - like most Americans - have everything I need to live, I would love to have more.  I would love to buy a better guitar, an ATV for up north, a new roof, some great vacations, and so on.  Like most, I would soon probably find that this bonanza was not enough; I would soon find that there were MORE things I wanted, and would still feel pinched.  

Then again, I do understand Jesus.  I have lived through frugal times when I had barely enough, and been thoroughly satisfied, because of purpose and because of others who shared that purpose.  At times, that purpose was transcendental - I would like to think holy - and it was at such times that want was least noticed.  It was at those times when a worthy purpose and companionship created a field, a sense, of fullness that did not want or even think about stuff beyond the basics.  The idea, then, of desire for such things as ATVs would have made no sense. And of course, it was during these times, as infrequent as they were, when in retrospect there was the greatest happiness. 

This is not new to the pages of this blog.  Rather, I mention it again because of the importance of it.  Our fictional Jesus seems just that - fictional, just as the lawyers present at the deal with the billionaire looked upon Jesus, as unreal or a madman, when he said what he did.  But I bet most of us have had a time when all was right with the world even though we hadn't a penny extra. 

It is an overused notion and, for that reason, corny ("Rosebud" comes to mind), but the great truth that the right spirit is more powerful than poor circumstances should still not be diminished. For some who are consumed by that spirit, they find that it can even overcome great pain and fear of death.  This concept is not, as many have said, only pie in the sky, an attitude meant to lull the impoverished masses into acceptance of their lowly lot, even though that has been done by cynical elites. Then again, we don't have to live as poor farmers like Jesus in the book to realize the spirit, for if wealth happens from honest effort, who's to blame? Rather, Jesus's remark reminds us of a proper point of focus. That point is not mere sophistry, but something so real that most of us have not only experienced it, but wish to live it again, this spirit of fullness, as much as possible.  It is found through right purpose and fellowship, and, unlike great wealth, can be had by anyone.  FK       
           

       

Sometimes we can't keep our hands out of the candy jar. Perhaps, then, we shouldn't even have a candy jar, but I have Kindle and can get almost any book for sale instantly, for the price of a movie ticket (and maybe a tub of popcorn).  And so, after reading a very long novel in Spanish, dictionary by my side, I went to the candy jar for comfort food, and came up with It's a Wonderful Afterlife, by Kristy Rosinett.  My intellectual pride bristled at first, as an Ann Landers - like Mid-West matron told tales of deceased loved-ones visiting the living, who in tears were most often comforted to know that the curtain of death is not such an iron curtain at all.  

It was hard to believe, and just too - well, comforting.  At first.  But as I quickly peeled the digital pages back to the second half, a deeper spirit of the book began to penetrate my skeptical skull.  

It is not that I took everything for fact, although one is almost forced to do so to continue reading.  Rosinett is one of several psychics I have read who claim that they have talked to and seen the dead since early childhood.  In fact, I have a niece who claims the same, and still I don't really believe.  But this woman has built a practice, written many books, often hosted radio shows, worked with police, and still takes in dozens of clients suffering from guilt, depression and hopelessness after the death of someone close - often of their young children.  What type of person could hoodwink those who are suffering so?  Only the most crass, and Rosinett is not a flashy psychic surrounded by sycophantic worshipers, but a plain Middle American.  I believe she is sincere, even as I remain a skeptic.  

I don't know how to bring those two together, for she is obviously not a schizophrenic or someone unusually unbalanced.  Yet, her encounters with the dead seem too pat, to normal.  It is that which makes me the most skeptical, for as my wife once said, "Whatever we think waits us after death, we are going to be surprised."  Should that not be true?  For if living with tribal hunters in the Amazon, for example, is an adventure into the unknown, how much more so is a trip to something or somewhere with no physical form? We can't even imagine it; so much so that we make up versions of what it is like so that we CAN imagine it.  

That is probably what Rosinett and other genuine spiritualists do - interpret psychic signals in more quotidian symbols.  They are probably the ultimate translators, even if they don't know it themselves. And in this, an Ann Landers-type woman would see the dead in an Ann Landers way- inviting the scorn of skeptics who know it cannot be so. 

But translations are never perfect, as I find when I read Spanish. And in time, I got used to Rosinett's plain visions.  What were very real were the emotions, which never get deeper than with death, when our ego walls come crashing down.  We wish we had been more loving; we wish we had done more; we wish we had paid more attention to the person rather than to our own preoccupations; we wish, ultimately, that we had been more authentic, more real, more human. All this comes out in her plain style, as tale after tale is told of long and painful deaths, of deaths and hard lives of children, of loss after loss after loss.  All as if we were talking to Auntie Bess in her Nebraska farm house kitchen.  

All so normal.  This morning I clicked on the radio as I cooked breakfast and immediately heard the voice of a very old woman - one who my wife told me was a regular on Illinois public radio. She had written a book about dying after the death of her husband, who had been living with a crippling degenerative disease for many years.  When at last he was hospitalized and could not live without intrusive aid, he told his family that he was ready to die.  "But Dad," said the children, "they can make you live comfortably."  At that, says the woman, her husband clenched his jaw as much as he could and answered angrily, "I said I am ready to die!"  His wife, who knew him best as a man, had them remove (at his request) not only life-support systems, but food and water.  He lasted, she said, ten days (which I did not think possible with a healthy person).  As difficult as that was, she was adamant that his wishes were followed.  "Dying is the most normal of things.  We all do it.  It should not be treated as something unnatural.  We should allow people's wishes at the end.  We should talk more about death.  It is as normal a part of life as anything, and is foolish to ignore." (my paraphrase).

So there you have it, and so true - it, death and dying, is absolutely normal.  It is not an avoidable chasm, but as certain to life as breathing air.  So why wouldn't a translator see it so?  For to Rosinett, it is as normal as her daily life.  That she cannot see dimensional leaps and so forth in it only means that she cannot see these in her daily life either. Her reading of the dead may seem simplistic to space cadets like me, but at least she is able to read them, and without fear.  It is all normal.  And if she cannot tell us of the stranger parts to it, she can tell us not to fear what is a part of life and inevitable; she can tell us that whatever comes should not freak us out, for it is no more or less real to every human as being human itself.  And one other thing I know she got right: death is the moment of truth, when the masks drop. These two things, one can argue, is all we know and all we need to know about death.  The candy jar remains open for another time. FK    

                                               

There's a joke a friend told me about a year ago that was new to me but could be 50 years old: three guys are sitting on a park bench, each with a big smile.  One is young, another middle aged and the other, old.  Says the second to the young man, "what you smiling about his morning?"  "Me?  I met this beautiful woman last night.  We went back to her place and had the most incredible sex of my life!  How about you?"  The middle-aged man regains his smile as his eyes roll back in memory: "I made the best deal of my life this morning - a 2 million $ contract that will boost my stock in the company to the roof!  Oh, and what about you?" he says to the old man.  "Me?" says the geezer wistfully.  "I just had the most incredible bowel movement..."  

And so it seems that at different stages of life, we are imprinted with those memories that we consider most eventful and exciting. It seems true, but recently I have found that this is not the case.  I doubt I am alone in this.

I was not sitting on a bench, but laying back in a recliner after a too-large lunch of black beans, rice and carne mechada, a great and cheap combo that I first came to know in Venezuela.  At one point, I drifted into that half-sleep state that brings dreams almost to consciousness, where one would think I would be occupied with memories of our last trip to Costa Rica - or, at the very least, some darker anxiety dream about work.  But instead, in it I was reliving a memory that I had not known that I had even retained. I was in 6th grade and was visiting a new friend at his home for the first time, a place a few miles from my own.  Who it was didn't matter, because it was not about him or anything to do with him. Rather, it was about the scenery.  It was a moderately cold day, slightly above freezing, so that the light snow cover had become a little melty.  The sky was gray and the trees still and leafless, as one would expect in late winter.  The weather, in fact, was about what we are having now in Wisconsin, and I would not say it is anything to write home about, but here...the memory was so exquisite in feeling that I could barely stand it.  It's sweetness, simply the being there, provoked such deep nostalgia that I had to wake up and shake it off before I became too lost in the loss of it, in its being gone forever.  But why, why such longing for a nothing day so long ago?

My beaver-like waking mind, ever trying to figure things out, then decided to hold a little experiment.  I let myself drift into other memories, with the intent that they be the ones that bring the greatest pleasure.  Without fail, they were all similar to the first - memories of small things, of a pleasant day on the beach, or outside in a sunny field, or in a canoe at night looking at the stars. No great sex, great deals, or great dumps came to mind, although they surely would have immediately after. But these were not the ones that stuck.  Rather, always, it was the quiet moment, the moment of still beauty or gentle relationship that came forward.  How, my mind continued to work, could that be?

I do not know for sure, as few of us can of such things, but for the moment, it seems fairly clear: our greatest moments are not those of triumph or success, but rather those where we acquiesce to a still time, to a time apart from the whirring of planned human events.  These, almost by definition, would occur in situations where nothing much is happening, where we are not wrapped up in doing or performing.  

If true, this is a finding of the greatest import.  We are always told by old-timers that the greatest thing in life is family and a few close friends.  We are often, but not always, told by very successful people that success hasn't given them the closure that they had imagined.  In a recent finding by a long-term Harvard study, they found that the three most important things for happiness are, simply, good relationships with the family (all three, almost ridiculously, were different takes on the same thing).  Yet, as important as good relationships may be, it seems that the missing element to these beliefs and findings is the state of being of the person.  Strong family makes a place where we can simply be, not having to perform or be anything other than what we are, whatever we might think that is at the moment.  Yet, so does a quiet, uneventful day that somehow takes away our stray thoughts to focus us without effort on our lives, right then and there -  as it is without frills.  And there we find, usually without realizing it (until perhaps years later) that being - just being - is the most wonderful thing.  

Already my mind is gearing up again: time to edit a book, call a publisher, get this life going!  Yet I know it will be the barren trees in a field of snow that I have witnessed while doing nothing in particular that I will long for when all is closing down and the end to it all is near.  FK                

 
            

Upset over the excruciating ending of the Pats - Denver game, I lit out for the Anytime Fitness gym in town and sweated to the oldies, only to find later that I had left my one and only Mississippi State Bulldogs tee shirt there.  Too late to return to get it, it was left to this morning, when I didn't appreciate the break in my schedule one bit.  But as I stepped out onto the parking lot, an odd sensation greeted me - the daily joy of being alive.  Analytical as I can be, I quickly attributed it to the sunshine, which we haven't seen since leaving Costa Rica last Tuesday. There were piles of snow standing tall around me, not  palm trees, but it could have been an ideal beach for all l knew.  How sweet was the air! 

The night before, there was another ballgame after, a blowout between two teams I didn't care about, and it left us waiting impatiently for the new X Files mini-series as one Panther victor after another told us it was a team effort and they looked forward to the next... blah blah blah, until at last Scully came on the screen, looking spookily old, and then Mulder, looking like a rummy pulled out from behind the dumpster.  We saw footage of aliens crashing; of scientists with a reverse-engineered alien space craft that used point 0 energy and could slip to anywhere in our universe through cross dimensions; of strange Men in Black watching and killing coldly.  The conspiracy was back, now bigger than ever.  Perhaps not by coincidence, it dovetailed all too well with the sci-fi novel I am finishing.  Spooky coincidence or script pirating? You (music plays louder) be the judge. 

I thought it moved too fast, but I'll still watch the rest of the series as long as the stars don't fall from the sky.  The original has made me a life-long fan, although not quite enough to have a poster on my wall reading, "I want to believe." Actually, maybe I would.  But why? Why the love of the strange and the alien?  

One might first say "boredom" and that would not be a bad guess.  How much more interesting to have aliens and spacecraft and a parallel government leading us to an edge leading to either a new age or the end of the world?  How much better this, than a life of slogging through the gray of winter, and then the chores of summer, one after the other as our teeth go bad, and then our kidneys or chromosomes fail, and then our bodies give way with that final whimper.  But that's not quite it.  That's not it at all.

Rather, it is about standing in the sunshine and feeling the nameless, even pointless joy of being alive.

It is this because something in us knows at all times that this life we have made is a temporary facade.  The daily grind, or D Factor, has as little to do with reality as Scully and Mulder's X Factor, is in touch with reality no more or less than the conspiracy of the Men in Black.  We have been formed by a limited concept of nature, and continue to help form it, as comfortably alive in it as a turtle in its shell.  But, good lord we are bored with it!  Turtles aren't, but we are not turtles - we are not solely of the limited reality embraced by the natural order.  We know we are meant for cosmic things because we are able to penetrate into its mysteries now and then, either intellectually or as a sense, as nameless but elevating as a sunny morning.  We look to shows like the X Factor to flesh out the marvel that we have inured our daily selves from.  Such a show straddles the divide between our turtle world and our cosmic selves, but at no cost to our boring but coveted security.  To watch it is, then, not a flight into fantasy, but a tenuous step towards a greater reality without all the fuss. We can step away from it instantly and return to our safe schedules, as mind-numbing as they might be.  Here, the torch is kept a-lit, if only barely. 

I was upset about a game that means nothing, concerned for a cheap tee shirt that could disappear today for all the world cares, while a flaming ball of nuclear power punched its energy through a thin shell of translucent sky over a tiny orb to land right there on my shoulders and whisk away every care, even if for only a few minutes.  How can we not grasp that everything in the X Files is small potatoes compared to what each one of us has now, and forever? How can we not be always aware that the D Factor is an X Factor to the unlimited power?  

The clouds are returning as we turn towards an evening of snow and freezing rain.  The shell is back. How we can step into the sun forever, now, is a problem that seems to require a Scully and a Mulder to solve.  And yet, with a lift of the chin or a turn of the head, we could do it ourselves - but won't while thinking we can't. Beam me up, Scully.  FK           
                    

It must be the book.  Or maybe its the after affects of 10 days of strong coffee.  Or both.  It's such a silly thing, this book of 653 pages, La Resurreccion Maya by Steve Alten, that it almost makes me ashamed to admit that it is getting to my head, in Spanish no less.  Conspiracy.  In the book, there are circles within circles of conspiracies, from the lowest (simply making money or getting sex) to the most incredible: a race of superior beings that are beyond the restraints of time and space who are offering humans a way out of destruction through implantation of their own genetic code (60 million years before) set to express itself in certain humans starting in - you can guess from the title - 2012, the year that the Mayan calendar says that everything of the old age will begin to crumble into the new.  But, of course, human and super-human interference comes about in the form of selfishness and downright evil, something our genetically determined heroes must confront to save human kind. Bring in whales and pyramids and chakras, and you get the idea.

All in fun, for sure, but it can get to one's head, as it did to me the other day when reading about the meeting of the great financial heads of international banks and companies in Davos, Switzerland.  The article, read from the internet and taken from, I think, the Wall Street Journal or another well-respected source, matter- of -factly talks about the shock and even horror the people have there - including former #2 congressman Eric Cantor, who somehow (how?) was included on the list - of a Donald Trump presidency.  The reason?  That he is for blocking Muslim immigration to America for a waiting period to "find out what the hell is going on." (I recall that this is a direct quote).  

As usual, I do not talk politics here and take no sides for or against candidates.  What is so surprising is the reason for their horror.  In America - as one developed country similar in this regard to many others - the percentage of people who want greater regulation of immigration has run consistently for at least a decade at anywhere from 70 to 80%.  And yet - nothing has been done about it in real terms.  Again, I am not coming out for it or against this, but rather wish to use this to make a point.  Why has nothing been done?  How can politicians in a democracy ignore such huge numbers?  

The answer, in large part, seems to come from Davos.  The reason these high financiers and top dollar execs are horrified at stopping Muslim immigration has little to do with brotherly love, but movement - of money, of things, of people across all borders, as if borders did not matter.  They, in fact, do not like borders, for they believe, as the article states, that they are not good for business. Could it be that Big Money has been running our national destiny?  Our world destiny?  

Even saying such a thing reeks of naivete, for all of us older cynics know that this is largely the case, as it has long been.  But at Davos, we find that the cloud of "money" has a face - or, to be specific, many faces of a mutual accord.  It seems, indeed, that a small handful of elites are running the world.  What then of other "news" that we hear of?  Is the news that is reported, and the slant that it takes, meant to control us?  Further - and now even darker clouds roll in - is it really all about money?  Or is there something else involved?  

In the Mayan novel, even the selfish rich are being controlled by other, higher intelligences, although they do not realize it any more than the average Joe realizes how much of his world is being controlled by these human elites.  Circles within circles. And so I am forced to believe, at least when contemplating the darker side of life.  Getting rich is not a fundamental building block of life.  It may be based on the basic need for survival, but it obviously goes way beyond that.  But why and how?  It is well known that in some Native American groups, the most respected person was the one who gave away the most stuff.  He was often the poorest guy in the tribe, and yet he was the most revered and the most influential.  Why is it that massive accumulation has overtaken the simple need to be esteemed in the social group?  What force has done this, and why?  

We might easily say that greed runs the world, as Davos helps to show, but it only makes sense to those of us who have been raised in a world culture of greed.  But this greed has a face, or several of them, and these movers and shakers are no more aware of the nature of reality than the rest of us.  They, too, are being led by an ethos that they did not make.  What is the face, or faces, behind this ethos, for it is, indeed, largely responsible for our current events and relatively recent history?  And, even more provocatively, to what end does this ethos reach?  The big money people have no other vision than a world unified under the banner of commerce, although many will say that solving poverty is their impetus.   Still, that is not a visionary goal, but one so prosaic that, if humanity could only hope for that, we would soon disappear from earth out of despair, or at least out of boredom.  No - in this great unknown universe of limitless potential, that goal is no larger in perspective than the dream of a four year old to someday get a whole bag of cat's eye marbles.  And yet it is presented to us as the be-all and end-all from the crowd at Davos.

But they don't know.  What is the greater meaning, the larger circle that circles this mentality?  Our leaders are being led, but we don't know by what or towards what.  There is something stirring in our DNA, almost as alien as Alten's aliens.  And thus we are moved beyond finance and science and all our other pursuits back to page one, back to the basic questions: in a patterned universe, who is making the pattern?  Why?  What role does choice play?  What role does morality play?  From where comes morality?  What unknown powers compel and guide our own small powers? 

Suddenly, the Resurreccion Maya does not seem so silly. In substance, perhaps, but not so in perspective.  There are indeed controlling forces, some of which we know and many of which we do not.  We do have a destiny, for we are moving in a very specific direction, but towards an unknown fruition.  And so the questions, and the search, continues.  FK       

Yes, just back from Latin America, where I first experienced the "other" and the adventure of being an outsider, this time in Costa Rica.  I will have an essay on the adventure as a whole within a week, but here I will succinctly make a few observations.  First, Costa Rica is NOT Mexico or Venezuela, the two L.A. countries I know - or at least knew - best.  It may be that Mexico now is much different from what I knew in the early 1980's, which in many ways I know is true from watching the Mexican soap operas.   It is, now, more middle class, less traditional, and more - some will cringe when I say this - (North) American.  Still, drug lords rule in the mountains and the border states, corruption is widespread at every level, and violence still reigns. Venezuela, of course, is a mess, worse than I ever knew it from the 80's and the 90's, more violent and poor, more unhappy, and more anarchic. Costa Rica cannot be described by any of the these negatives.  Hard-core violence is low, power is more distributed and less corrupt, and things actually seem to run well.  Very well.

This was a shock.  There we witnessed the old stores of stucco painted in blue and white, the red tiled roofs, the little motorcycles, the tropical plants, the rapid-fire Spanish, but here was not the overwhelming presence of poverty, chaos and violence.  Almost as a letdown, it seemed a calm place with working-class values where highways were in good repair, where garbage did not litter the streets and canyons,.where shacks did not climb up the hillsides, where erosion and foul water did not bleed out in nearly every vista.  It was, instead, a land of comparative wealth, of natural beauty, of a nation that, while imperfect, had things under control, in a healthy way.  It was not, then, a place for Graham Greene-style stories of violence and evil. 

This first day at home, I miss the great coffee; and last night, an hour or so after our arrival in a dark, snowy, cold land, I had a shot of the best rum I have ever tasted, an elixir made in Costa Rica that almost was lost to our national security forces at the airport. With three adults going, if I had known, I would have bought the limit, but maybe it is for the best; the rum is almost TOO good. 

But, to keep up my Spanish, I kept reading the novel "La Resurreccion Maya,"  and in that, began to look for signs of evil. 

They were not hard to find.  Coffee to me is a genuine drug, a legal speed that takes me to great heights and then to dark lows.  I avoid it in the States, but could not resist its excellence in Costa Rica, and so for a few hours each day, I felt that I was slipping into a higher dimension, somehow separate from the common lot of humanity. But at every turn, something would bring me down.  For instance, as I walked along the edge of a hotel pool, feeling superior, I suddenly stepped on black-colored bricks, which had absorbed more of the heat of a tropical sun, and so burnt my feet, making me yelp and hop like any sunburned tourist.  Proud of my Spanish, I still got ripped off, either by chance or design, for 6 bucks buying coconut milk.  And so on, reminding me that both my feet and my mind were made of clay.  

All small-time stuff.  But, as this was an eco-tour that we were on, I was reminded of the damage that evil does, not only to other humans but to our natural world.  While Costa Rica has 40% of its land protected, and while they enforce environmental laws well, we were still told of the toll that greed takes.  We are not talking here of poor people cutting down the forest to live - that is simply a matter of overpopulation (and, many times, of corruption that does not allow a fair distribution of wealth), but rather of beach-front properties sold to the very rich at the expense of sea turtles or small farming communities, of rare animals killed for aphrodisiac properties, or of rare timber harvested and sold on the black market. In Costa Rica, greed and planned violence have been reduced to levels that might be better than in our own nation, but still it exists.  

As I talked to my son on the ride back from the airport, he mentioned the evil in this world, which made me think of the story I have been reading and of the "world in decline" that all travelogues now mention.  We seem, somehow, to be in decline as a species, not in numbers but in world view.  And this, somehow, has to do with evil.  Not in a sociological or biological way, but in a metaphysical way.  We seem, regardless of what we do, to be influenced by evil.  Sometimes what discomforts us is not evil, like my walk on the black stones; but sometimes it is, like the slide towards extinction of the leather back, as the rich, often unknowingly, sit on their verandas drinking cocktails over the graves of an ancient species.  

But what it is, this evil, in its fullness is beyond me.  It is beyond me not only because of my limited capacities, but also because I do not wish to delve into its lair.  I do not want its taint, or its smell, to distort the fragile shell of my own life.  As I had to admit to my son, I do not feel strong enough to combat it, one on one.   As Costa Rican progress has shown, it can be subdued with a great tribal or national effort, but it can never be banished. 

Without getting too close to this core of darkness, I have come to the conclusion that it is evil that gives the world we live in its bite. When someone we are close to dies, we understand that this, what we live in, is not a joke.  When we are mugged or beaten, or when populations are tortured and killed, we cannot talk of our "movie," like some pot-washed surfer dude.  But it is more - it, evil, is a defining mark of our existence.  If we slide outside of moral judgement, we might say that the existence of evil is the existence of opposition, something that is within us that places us in the world around us that is defined by the struggle between life and death. In this, we might say that our inner being is what defines the kind of world that we live in.  We might even say that, as long as we harbor duality, we will always have impermanence - best exemplified by life and death.  We might say that our existence is defined by imperfection, both within and without, which in the end is defined and felt morally as evil.

To rise above this is, then, is to rise above the very laws that define nature.  While Costa Rica has done a very good thing by protecting its natural resources, we might not want to forget that earlier people defined much of nature that then was so overwhelming as the source, or home, of evil.  Thus it was in many myths, and thus it was that in the Old Testament, Man was told to subdue nature.  We now believe that nature is good and humans bad, but that is as human-centric as the Old Testament. It is best to seek the beauty in both nature and ourselves to keep evil at bay, but evil is something that sticks, regardless.  It is, as long as we share this world, what gives our lives that bite, whether they be the bites of mosquitoes and crocodiles, the bite of bad human intentions, or the bite of death.  

But, for now, I wish to go no further, but rather wish to remember the great coffee, the cloud forests, and the beaches that were as inviting as our Costa Rican hosts.  FK