 |
| The Oracle of Delphi |
But the real question is, why am I so hard on members of my own family. For example, I posted this on my band Shiprect's Facebook Page because I'm trying to get the guitarist to come out of semi-retirement at way-too-early-of-age: "MAN OVERBOARD! Missing since mid-summer, Anticide has apparently been lost at C for sometime now, and the night watchman only noticed it this morning. Apparently, he does not realize how hard it is to get 71 members on any Facebook group in about one year, much less a few days. It's like Bono going, "Oh, where's the Edge? Is he still flipping burgers for the Super Rich?" Or, better yet, Kief Richards, as channeled by Johnny Depp, upon hearing Mick J. is reluctant to tour again because he's under the false impression a solo act will ever actually make sense, saying, "If he doesn't show up, I'll break his friggin' legs." If anyone sees this missing pirate star-in-the-waiting, please alert Amber, because she's really into him. I mean, take a day off, dude. We only have nine days before Nibaru destroys the Earth, anyway, Call in seasick, please! So you can get back on that stage and punish the evil doers good and right with that guitar gawd gift of yours. OK?"
And that's just today. Yesterday, I was totally critical of one of my favorite humans on Earth, Bernie Sanders, when I wrote, "Sanders can't even get decent health care for his own state, Vermont. I will give you a living recent sample. Last week a friend of mine was taken away by some pretty brutal police officers for an involuntary mental health emergency. She didn't want to be institutionalized in Newport, Vermont, way up in moose country, where they have very few services of any kind at all .... no public transportation, no rail, no bus service, no airports for anyone other than the super class ... an there is no mental health facility, just the hospital. They kept her there in the emergency room all weekend, trying to figure out what to do ... This an area serving perhaps 25,000 people or more, if you include the outlying areas ... Nothing. I know Bernie is not into the pork but, hey brother Bern, eat some pork every now and then, at least for your own people! See my point. Not very realistic. But then, true revolutionaries are romantics. It's not their job to rebuild the worlds they blow apart. Not much different than Steve Bannon, in that regard ... I know there's a DIY publication available in that state that rails against the mental health system with a frightening amount of material. By the way, they let her go, and she's back to her normal self again ... Thankfully, since what can we really say about the "science" of psychiatry anyway without a metaphysical component, anyway? Enough said."
But was that enough said? No. I kept going, like a cat in heat, writing ... "I am happy as a clam about the way the system works for me, but I am an odd duck in a lake full of gators, so what do I know?"
Ernest, I get that self-deprecating humor from my mother. But this insistence on writing when I should just keep my mouth shut. O, it's the devil. Must be. Why I comment at all on public health care at all amazes me.
But was that enough said? No. I kept going, like a cat in heat, writing ... "I am happy as a clam about the way the system works for me, but I am an odd duck in a lake full of gators, so what do I know?"
Ernest, I get that self-deprecating humor from my mother. But this insistence on writing when I should just keep my mouth shut. O, it's the devil. Must be. Why I comment at all on public health care at all amazes me.
But then I finally found something else to blame. The season of the summer bummer 2017, about which yesterday I wrote: "This is supposed to be the day the brutal summer of Arizona ends, as we enter a period where the temperature goes below the triple digits. The question is, how do we say goodbye to this tormentor of our souls? How many brain cells did we lose? Did the heat and ozone and carbon monoxide finally turn us into compliant beings incapable of remembering each other's faces or names forever? Is there any value to this? Such as the ability to create more wacked out music than ever before. Such as being poetic, if living in the moment enough, in ways shaped by the natural environment as never before in human history. Sure, there is a cost. Like the whatevers (still too messed up to remember what they are) of Greece, who became holy producers of sacred visions by sucking in the very vapors of the Earth? I mean, they must have been pretty senile at the end, right? Or the holy men of the mountains of the Himalayas, who got themselves to the point that they had no more thoughts at all, not one, whatsoever. Who knows? One man's nirvana is another culture's Alzheimer's crisis. All I can say about the summer of 2017 in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona is this: It hurt. Bad. I will never be the same. And if I can't figure out how to get out of here next year, just shoot me. Please. I won't even prosecute."
Later today, I saw a post by my daughter, E, and she is so great and really gets it, and has enormous musical talent. She posted something up on the so-called Denver Airport conspiracies, and I found it pretty thought provoking, if more than a little hysterically monomaniacal and fear-based. But she's very young and eager to learn. So, enter Dad, the historian. Right after I found out a sculptor, Luis Jimenez, had died making a wild-eyed horse piece, quite apocalyptic, for the Denver Airport (man, being an artist can be dangerous work). I interviewed him for a controversial sculpture that was eventually removed around Craftsman Court in Scottsdale when I worked for the Scottsdale Progress in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It noted great mural piece and tried to interpret it through this fear-based view, and may have been created before the coming of Donald Trump into the presidential race. But ithe mural has a little Germanic looking boy with a giant hammer ushering a new age of peace, apparently destroying the old world order. "Drumpf has German ancestry," I wrote. "That is his German ancestral name before it was changed to Trump."
Summing up I wrote, "Too bad about the conclusions, though. For example, how do they know that plant is genetically modified. Also, the whole bit about Quetzcoatle, the plumed serpent. Just a North American myth based on the tragedy of the conquest of Cortez ... Furthermore, the idea that all religions are one is simply a dualistic view of religion rooted out with the persecution of the Cathars by the Catholic Church in one of the last great purges of Templar influence in Europe, perhaps the biggest stab in the back and money grab in human history (after the Wall Street bailout). Dualism is more subtle and dynamic view over more autocratic forms of monotheism, and most certainly would improve the current rifts in sectarian society, as well as the current left/right political divisions. More holistic, let's say, but also just a more compassionate and less dogmatic view of Christianity.
"There will never be a 'One World' government or 'One World Religion,' hard as either of these forms of human authoritarian organizations try to make it so. Dualism, is, in fact, the birthplace of humanitarianism, which counters the divisional violence implied with a more egalitarian view of the human spirit and its possibilities. During the French and American revolutionary war era, it was grounded in the Enlightenment, then codified in the 19th century. It was the precedent for quantum theory, mechanics and an even more open-minded world view spreading among the 'enlightened' now."
"For my money, of course, I always go back to one of my artistic and literary ancestors, in a sense, William Blake, who wrote extensively on how "All Religions are One," I wrote, ending the whole history sermon with "If you would like to know more, go to your local library, investigate these links, or, just ask your dad. Namaste." I put the punctuation mark with one of my favorite daoist images.
Later today, I saw a post by my daughter, E, and she is so great and really gets it, and has enormous musical talent. She posted something up on the so-called Denver Airport conspiracies, and I found it pretty thought provoking, if more than a little hysterically monomaniacal and fear-based. But she's very young and eager to learn. So, enter Dad, the historian. Right after I found out a sculptor, Luis Jimenez, had died making a wild-eyed horse piece, quite apocalyptic, for the Denver Airport (man, being an artist can be dangerous work). I interviewed him for a controversial sculpture that was eventually removed around Craftsman Court in Scottsdale when I worked for the Scottsdale Progress in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It noted great mural piece and tried to interpret it through this fear-based view, and may have been created before the coming of Donald Trump into the presidential race. But ithe mural has a little Germanic looking boy with a giant hammer ushering a new age of peace, apparently destroying the old world order. "Drumpf has German ancestry," I wrote. "That is his German ancestral name before it was changed to Trump."
Summing up I wrote, "Too bad about the conclusions, though. For example, how do they know that plant is genetically modified. Also, the whole bit about Quetzcoatle, the plumed serpent. Just a North American myth based on the tragedy of the conquest of Cortez ... Furthermore, the idea that all religions are one is simply a dualistic view of religion rooted out with the persecution of the Cathars by the Catholic Church in one of the last great purges of Templar influence in Europe, perhaps the biggest stab in the back and money grab in human history (after the Wall Street bailout). Dualism is more subtle and dynamic view over more autocratic forms of monotheism, and most certainly would improve the current rifts in sectarian society, as well as the current left/right political divisions. More holistic, let's say, but also just a more compassionate and less dogmatic view of Christianity.
"There will never be a 'One World' government or 'One World Religion,' hard as either of these forms of human authoritarian organizations try to make it so. Dualism, is, in fact, the birthplace of humanitarianism, which counters the divisional violence implied with a more egalitarian view of the human spirit and its possibilities. During the French and American revolutionary war era, it was grounded in the Enlightenment, then codified in the 19th century. It was the precedent for quantum theory, mechanics and an even more open-minded world view spreading among the 'enlightened' now."
"For my money, of course, I always go back to one of my artistic and literary ancestors, in a sense, William Blake, who wrote extensively on how "All Religions are One," I wrote, ending the whole history sermon with "If you would like to know more, go to your local library, investigate these links, or, just ask your dad. Namaste." I put the punctuation mark with one of my favorite daoist images.
Your friend,
Douglas McDaniel (AKA Mythville)
 |
| Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State of Florida between 1999 and 2002 |
Let this all end with a song, "The Campaigner," by Neil Young, with that wonderful line, where the acoustic NY yearns for a place "where even Richard Nixon has got soul."
