Ecliptical Rant

 Here comes the sun

chasing the dark side of the moon.

The joker tried to chase away our American tune.

The joker tried to turn our Dome to Doom!

But Oh say can you see, in the 2121 light?

What we so proudly maintained after your riotous fight!

Why’d you have to screw it all up?

We had a good thing going till you showed up.

Now it’s us v them

what used to be peaceable  repub v  dem

Now we got a elephant throwin’ his weight around

Tearing our American dream down.

Washington prob’ly turnin’ over in his grave

home of the brave now riot for the knave.

Us and them all over again

though we’re just ordinary men.

Now here come the sun chasing the dark side of the moon

Figure it out pal; it time you change yer tune.

I mean why’d you have to get contentious

instigating magas to be so dam vicious?

I mean w’ere trying to assemble a team here

to work together toward  American dream so dear

to us

In God we trust!

Hop on the bus Gus

Drop you plans for Capitol bust!

in land of free,  home of the brave

not the battleground of the knave.

I mean there we were with one small step for a man and

you perverted the leap with  your command

So we don’t have a decent country any more

cuz you busted open that insurrection door!

You violated the liberty of our open door;

you dragged in that babylon hoar

cuz you just had to put on your 5th ave suit

and step out there and shoot

our Rule of Law

now with open wound made raw

yeah, you, with your elliptical rant

But we be insisting you can’t

get away with it!

We shan’t let you do it any more

cuz this aint 5th Avenue with busted golden door.

This is America!

not heretica.

You aint in jersey shore no more donnie boy.

This nation aint your casino toy!

Oh donnie boy the pipes the pipes are calling

while your insurrection gangs are falling!

In our Courts they be going down

cuz you took your shot from downtown.

The rioters be goin down like flies

as maga Court defenses  dies

They be squirmin in them prison cells

They be repenting from their rebel hells.

So you think the mouth shall rise again?!

Think again my friend.

Cuz Jack Smit he be jump'in o'er your cannon trick

after your failed rendition of  worn-out plan like tricky dick.

No not here this ain't no watergate re-run

sneakin 'round with fakey delegate plans undone!

Its all over but the shoutin’

Yeah yeah yeah hush yer pountin'.

Glass half-Full

Good Ole Mel

 Mel Brooks? Mel Gibson? Mel Torme? Melchizedek?

Yeah,that’s it. Melchizedek. It all goes back to good ole Mel, Melchizedek, whoever he was.

When you’re an ole guy,72,  like me, you have all these unidentifiable names, images, phrases, vaguely remembered snippets of this, that and the other floating around in your head. 

Maybe the cinematic recorder in my babyboomer head was ringing up some neuronic association of a hollywood producer who had floated images into my head, or maybe some necktie-bound, old-school nightclub singer who had crooned  love-song hopes into my brain while I was watching Ed Sullivan show, back in the day before we had the Web, back in the day when we had a boobtube in the living room.

Maybe that was it. Maybe that’s what I was thinking of . . or 

Maybe it goes back further than that. . . Melchizedek?

Who was that guy anyway? Some important guy that Abraham had met back in the day, back in the wayback Torah movies. You know, the ones where Moses parted the waters so his enslaved people could escape slavery and enter the promised land. 

Promised land? Good luck with that. I mean, you can’t take this stuff too seriously. . . you’re liable to get flung into the concentration camp, or worse, the gas chamber,  or neglected at the oscars or neglected at the grammys or maybe just pass into mediocrity, the veils of history, forgotten forever like your granny, or maybe remembered in some museum somewhere.

Did I say “promised land”? Yeah, that’s the place that Moses caught a glimpse of before the Lord took him to the real promised place. That’s the place that Dr. King caught a glimpse of before the magamaniacs shot him dead the next day. 

Wait, I remember now. That’s the place that Abraham went to when he left the old country, when he somehow managed to escape Auschwitz and jump on a boat that took him to New York harbor where he caught a glimpse of Lady Liberty, who was, methinks, Abraham’s cousin, and then he got off the boat and settled in the lower east side for awhile.

And then I think he headed west again, all the way to the newest version of promised land, California.

Yeah, that was it; that’s what I was thinking of. . . Mel in Hollywood. It all comes back to me now. How can I forget about good ole Mel? I catch a glimpse of his work every time that promised land crosses mind, every time I sit in my easy chair and look at my back yard, my own little promised land, my own little acreage that I was bequeathed, having driven a stake in the ground and declared that God and the county.gov granted it to me, after I had paid my dues and taken a few turns on the great mandala.

I mean, we paid for it, me and my wife, back in the day. Maybe one of these days I’ll leave it all behind and go see Abraham, Martin and John and. . . and Mel. Maybe I’ll meet Plato and we’ll talk about the shadows on the wall. Maybe I’ll meet Pythagoras and we'll talk about triangles and Trinity and the good ole days back in the old country. Maybe I'll catch up with Mel himself. We'll sit in chairs and reminisce.

Maybe one day! Yeah, that’s it. I believe it could happen, at least that’s what Mel’s great-great nephew said after he walked out of the tomb on Sunday morning. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. 

Hope to see you there! 

Glass half-Full

George Harrison's Weeping Guitar

 When you get old, like me, you reminisce a lot. . . or, as Sonny Bono, sang it: remonisce.

I mean, I can still remember the day I was out in our Baton Rouge yard, mowing our lawn in 1967, racing through it so that I could get back into—as the Beach Boys had so perfectly harmonized it—“in my room, in my room”—where I could listen to the Beatles’ brand new Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We had no idea what it . . .

When I had finished the mowing, I retreated to the inner sanctum, cranked up the ancient “record-player”(about the size of a suitcase, dark wood casing with a dark fabric panel in front to soften the sound) and suddenly there’s Ringo singin’. . .

“What would you think if I sang out of tune, if I stand up and walk out on you?   Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song and I’ll try not to sing out of key. I get by with a little help from me friends. . .”

It all comes back to me now. Who the heck is Billy Shears? What is going on here? Whatever happened to:   "She was just seventeen; you know what I mean, and the way she looked . . ."

And for that matter. . . who is Sgt. Pepper? (. . . we were wondering, at first. If you’re not a baby boomer, don’t worry; you’d have to have been there. . .) Even so, stay with me. There's a media/cultural history lesson to be learned from us old folk.

Paul McCartney expressed the feeling well on that Sgt. Pepper album, even though he was a young dude at the time:

“I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering. . .”

But now,  in this case, I'm going to fix a hole by allowing my mind to wander a bit. Wander with me.

So now, 57 years later, I’m getting a few answers. They’re out there in the 21st-century version of boobtube/idiotbox. . . the internet. Here’s some guy telling me all about the contentions that those fab four guys were going through back in the day. Turns out, it was no  walk in the park, certainly no Hyde Park, no strawberry fields forever. It was, in fact, most of the time, a hard day’s night for Beatle George, tolerating the power-tripping (ha! tripping, get it?) manipulations of John and Paul, but mostly Paul. 

I mean, I always knew—or at least I had figured out by, say, the 1980’s, that Paul was the real spark plug of that band. He was the real music guy, the real control freak, which is why, I suppose,  John could start a highly contagious rumor that Paul was. . . barefooted, or no longer of this world or. . . something like that. Paul and John had this quite effective good guy-bad guy public melodrama going on; it rendered them a powerfully productive public image that ultimately took them around the world and back. 

Well, as it turned out, in 1967, Ringo was opening that first Sgt. Pepper invitational anthem with the “if I sang out of tune” soliloquy (see lyrics above) by belting it out so bravely on behalf of his fellow-Beatle, George, because—come to find out—George was, all along, and for all fab-four time, the beaten-down Beatle.

I just watched an online behind-the-scenes exposition of that sad-but-true, chronic Starr-Harrison, shared rejection scenario.  It ain't easy backing up the dynamic Lennon/McCartney duo: one song-writer genius and one working class hero with a flair for outrageous poetry and showmanship. ( In one performance, while performing for the Queen, John had released the audience from any obligation to clap by explaining they could just "rattle your jewels.")

Anyway, getting back to 2024, the musician/documentarian James Hargreaves pulls back, online, a time/media curtain to reveal the sad-but-true saga of George with his faithful drummer friend Ringo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEKwAv3cKYU&t=601s 

 As it turns out, George really was the neglected genius, a guitar wizard hidden behind the curtain, among that fabulous four genii.

". . .with every mistake we must surely be learning."

I mean, we always knew that George was the quiet one, possibly even the neglected—the unappreciated— one. As it turns. . .  he was. He was the tortured soul who really meant it when he later sang the hauntingly  beautiful, profound—even Shakespearian-level tragedy—musical lament :  While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDJs9dumZI

". . .with every mistake we must surely be learning." Thank you, George, wherever you are.

King of Soul

What Violence Descends Into

 Long about the 1600’s, and into the 1700’s, the Western world began to change in very big way. People started to think a lot more, ponder new economic ideas, revise old philiosphies, and invent new devices. 

We are talking here mostly about Europe, as the New World was still at that time, mostly wilderness, although we Americans were certainly destined to ultimately play a huge role in all the changes that brought about the modern world. 

That period of time is called the Enlightenment. The ideas of Life, Liberty and the  Pursuit of Happiness represented a progressive development in the conduct of governments and industries. Our American version was represented in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the steady development of our American government. 

A very important development in Europe was the industrial revolution. This progress brought into plain view a certain characteristic of civilization that has always been true, but became even more intense in the Industrial age: the rich get richer and the poor take a while to catch up, if they ever do.

Back in the 1830’s, Karl Marx noticed this and pointed out that, in the new order of things, this widening differentiation was intensifying into a confrontation between the people who do the work and the people who run the show. The workers he called proletariat; owners he called capitalists. 

Well, this philosophical/economic division has, since that time, evolved into a major identity differentiation that is oversimplified in the terms, the Left and the Right. Another loosely categorized expression of it has evolved to Democratv. Republican.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I really want to write about here is use of violence of either side to try to impose their program on the rest of us.

Looking back again to the Marxian analysis: as that developed, history witnessed the issue of violence used as a means of imposing progress. 

In early 20th-century Russia, the Bolsheviks harnessed some wild ideas to the extreme economic and military extremities of that time. There was a dispute about tactics in which, ultimately the strong man won the whole kitnkaboodle.

Josef Stalin, with his ruthlessness, prevailed over Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky was sent packing; Stalin took control and set up trials in the ’30’s which led to an oppressive system of gulag prisons.(which Solzhenitzen wrote about) Josef Stalin was a bully who grabbed the Marxist idealogues by the balls and twisted Communism into authoritarian Fascism. So Stalin was a bad-boy dictator.

Meanwhile, down in Germany, an even more bruthal badass was mustering up a wehrmacht to out-do the Russian bully-bear.

Hitler was cunning, even more cruel that Stalin. He didn’t think twice about telling lies; he was the father of 20th-century strong-man fascism, a master of deception. He set up the most massive killing administration that the world have ever seen—the final solution  of the third reich, a Holocaust to kill all the Jews and other critics of nazi extremities.

Hitler made a deal with Stalin in 1939, not to attack Russia. Good luck with that, thought the civilized people of Europe. Then hitler reversed himself two years later. and attacked Russia anyway.  

That’s what bullies do. This gets around to my main point. As these Left v Right confrontations intensify—and then degenerate into real enmity, the tough guys are always behind the scenes waiting for their opportunity to turn civilized politics into violent overthrow. The stalinists took over Russia; the nazis took over Germany. The maoists took over China. The Viet Cong took over Vietnam. blah blah blah. . .

 Violence, in 20th and 21st century infrastructure, ultimately descends into violent insurrection, if not—dare we say it—civil war.  God forbid it doesn’t happen here. 

I mean, (wake up!) it already did . . . on January 6 2021.

Never again!

All ye Constitution-abiding Americans, do not allow the magas to follow their chief insurrectionist (see our 14th Amendment, Section 3) into a violent overthrow of our Constitutional Republic. They already had one failed attempt. The so-called Right-wingers are disposing of their classic conservatism (which was legitimate) and permitting the loudest bully on the block to incite them into a (blahblahblah) abuse of 2nd-amendment rights to foment of fascist rebellion. 

As we used to say back in the Deep South, where I was born in 1951 and grew up, Never Again! A few years ago, I wrote a novel about it:   King of Soul

Listen to my new third-verse for our National Anthem:  

Star-spangled Capitol

Nothing Like It Had Ever Happened

 The apostle John wrote later: 

 Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, 

“We will come with you.” They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing. 

But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know it was Jesus. 

So Jesus said to them, “Children, you do not have any fish do you?” They answered him, “No.”

And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right-hand side and you will find a catch.” Soo they cast, and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.

Therefore John said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work,) and threw himself into the sea.

But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from land, but about one hundred yards away , dragging the net full of fish. 

So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish place on it,,  and bread.

Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish which you have now caught.”

Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three, the net was not torn.

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples ventured to question him, “Who are you?” knowing that it was the Lord.

Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish likewise. 

This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead.

King of Soul

                                            Wonderful   things  happen  at  the  seaside. Tell everybody.

                                                        

All Quiet

 From 1914 to 1918, the European world was caught up in a dreadful war. It was the worst war in human history. It was ultimately the stupidest war in human history. . . 

But from our perspective, the armies of the German kaiser had to be defeated, so we Americans sent an Expeditionary Force over there to help the Brits and the French finish off those (at the time) deranged krauts. In my novel, Smoke, the last page (spoiler alert) describes a young American who sees, for the first and only time, the grave of his own father in a grassy field in Belgium.

But I digress, just as the world does from time to time.

I mean, that first world war was a titanic act of stupidity, initially, in its beginning, before it devolved full circle into a challenge of necessarily heroic proportions for the Allies who showed the kaiser who was really in charge in the 20th century!

At least, until the little Austrian colonel with the purloined swastika came along and cranked it all up again. 

But Germans are not like that any more, thank God!

I say that first world war was a titanic stupidity because of the way it started: In 1914, one gunman in Sarajevo, Serbia, assassinated an Austrian archduke;  a few weeks later the German kaiser sent his armies packing into Belgium and France to raise hell for the next four years. It just doesn’t make any sense.

This morning I was reading All Quiet on the Western Front, the classic (anti)war novel about that first world war. Erich Maria Remarque, a soldier in the German army during that war, had published his reflection upon that war in 1928.

I was reading this All Quiet classic this morning, this Saturday morning between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday, or as they say in the wide world, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

I was contemplating writing this, because the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a bloody event, like that war, and because it was a world-changing event, like that war, and because on that Saturday between crucifixion  and Resurrection, the tomb in which Christ’s body had been laid was, no doubt, quiet . . . all quiet, all quiet on the Christian front.

We have come a long time since those days, those days of 37 A.D. and now 2024 A.D. And as the tomb was quiet on that Saturday, my house is quiet on this Saturday morning as I write this in North Carolina, far, far from that garden tomb, far from those European battlefields that Remarque had written about a hundred and ten years ago. 

Here’s one memory that Remarque included in his classic novel: 

“The days go by. On a foggy morning another of the Russians is buried; almost every day one of them dies. I am on guard during the burial, the prisoners saying a chorale, they sing in parts, and it sounds as if there were no voices, but an organ far away on the moor. The burial is quickly over.”

But sad to say, in this present day, now the Russians, fiercely driven by the deranged vladimir putin, have degenerated to cruel aggression; they have reversed themselves and are now doing what the german kaiser had tried to do to Belgium and France in 1914 and then again when the little nazi colonel had tried to do in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France, and Russia again.

But on this Saturday morning in America, 2024 A.D. I reflect on all of it, pondering the temporary quietness of the war front in that first world world war, and the quietness of that tomb in Jerusalem long ago when Jesus Christ was laid into it—but only for two days.

You believe that? I do. That’s my story and i’m stickin’ to it.

Smoke

Crucifixion

 Here's an historical event that, like it or not, believe or not, changed the course of world history . . . and my personal history:

"The soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around him. They stripped him and put as scarlet robe on him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they knelt down before him, saying “hail, king of the Jews.” They spat on him and took the reed and began beating him on the head. After they had mocked him, they took the scarlet rode off, put his own garments back on him and led him away to crucify him. . . When they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull, they crucified him."

Golgatha, or Calvary, as it appears today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lament, rendered in song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iVuCJ7_Yyo

Glass half-Full