“and after all, we’re all just ordinary men”

I am normally a person who is very much caught up in an “us and them” struggle. I come quite easily to hate and “despision”. Even when I was much, much, younger and really committed to changing my paradigms I was only able to sublimate my fear and hatred, not cut it by much, and certainly not eliminate or to use the more fitting terminology, cure, it. I am so, still, not cured. However, this new job, has provided me with an un-looked for, surprising, opportunity, at a time when us and them rhetoric is so bitter and pervasive, to get a better understanding of where that dichotomy falls flat in my own psyche.

You see, the gentleman that I work for is a dyed-in-the-wool, old school, white, southern, (possibly Baptist), racist. He’s a Mason and a misogynist. In short, a possessor of oh, so many, of the qualities that exemplifies “them” to me. He barely reads, he’s crabby, picky, demanding, and so very all knowing, with no hesitation in saying whatever shitty, peckerwood thing pops into his head.

But here’s the weird, crazy, and I guess I have to think, great, teaching to me. Not only do I find him lovable but I want to make sure he feels loved and cared for. He is old, he is sick, and life is slipping away from him, while he is simultaneously watching his wife of about sixty five years disappear as she keeps wandering farther and farther down dementia highway.

I now have the perspective that most of “them” is just a whole bunch more of these folks. Life is hard, and they are scared, tired, and baffled that they did just what they were told to, yet things just didn’t turn out at all peachy, or rosy. They did, and do, the best they are/were able, or else they would do/have done better.

I suppose that feeling so threatened by the “thems” is a feeling of looming, oppression by the weight of their historical dominance. The childhood hurt of always being the other. The anger at being churched against my will. Being stared at, talked about, ostracized, it all builds up like keloids. I will keep (at least) trying to calm and cut that hatred.

I will though, reserve the right to feel completely alienated from, angry with, and diametrically opposed to the other them. That cabal of black magicians whose God is the actual mammon, and who have clearly shown that they will throw anyone or anything into the pit to remain our owners.

Fuck you guys. You are the aliens. And I will always fight you in some form, as someone very much wiser than me says, “just because you’re a Buddhist doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat”.

Each and every morning, creeping up the hollow

I just this very moment discovered “Sunrise Earth”. And it just so happens to be the probable episode of “Buddhists of Wat Svay”.
I’m surfing at dawn and annoyed with the selections. Suddenly there is a temple, and chanting, and a huge rainbow over it and that’s it, for minutes, then some monks walk out. Then the scene changes to some birds hanging out on some stupas, a few bicyclists go by. Some students are walking by some Fu-Lions and a bird is pecking the roof by a golden dragon relief. Here’s doorways with Buddha’s above them. Sunlight through trees. Two barefoot girls carrying a wash basket between them. More rooftops, and it’s over.

Other than the commercials that was blessedly un-glaring and blaring. If one must watch TV, and I really kind of must, that is a lovely break.
We’re on to “Mediterranean Port” now. Time to open the curtains and look at my own sunrise.

Again? But that trick never works....

Had another, last thing before waking, dream of a close friend dying. It was a very peaceful and auspicious death. Many flowers and gardens involved. Everyone behaving in a calm and serene manner. Things being dealt with in a respectful, equitable fashion. The one very odd note was that they died sleeping in a car on a trip and the person who had been driving brought the car round so I could look at the corpse. They hadn’t moved it even though it was several days later. That was a little strange.

Road trip Radio

Dee-Lite - World Clique
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Weezer - The blue 1st one
Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The B-52’s - 1st one
The Pixies - Doolittle

Driving every week or so to the a**hole of Michigan. (It is just down the road from Colon and I don’t think it’s the other naughty bits, nothing particularly sexy about Sturgis.) It’s an odd trip. Load the car and turn around and come back. Past the Amish farms, wave to the Zobians trim little homestead each time. There’s the trailer leaning at that impossible angle, and the “You’re home in Homer” sign. The entire trip has the back hum of constant saying of “Om Mani Padme Hum” for all the small, dead folk on the road. Eating road food, lighting Oliver’s cigarettes and making sure his coffee cup is filled. Finally home to the cats who just yawn and say “where’s dinner?”

Damn Essay

AM earworm (You’ve Got To) Hide Your Love Away - Lennon & McCartney

It wasn’t really my intention to get up this early. Given, the cats were doing the usual 6:14 am, exploratory, breakfast bid for attention. I can usually growl, turn over, cover my head and get another hour though. But the brain engine started revving. The volume on the earworm went up. And I had to pee.
Upon returning to bed people were long and loudly laughing outside my window and I thought to myself “who laughs like that at 6:15 in the morning? They must be trippin’ or something.” Then I wanted to get up, to spy on the laughers, to see if they were tweaked. I hope not cuz they were pushing a baby carriage begging the question “where in the world are you taking your baby at 6:16 in the morning anyway?” Maybe to church.

Now I’m up. The cats are fed and Little ghee has performed the obligatory breakfast dance. My own stomach starts growling warningly and the roommate clogged the sink so dishes wait in a pile for his return from work to fix his screwup.

And that brings us to the subject that is on my mind of late. Lying. Why do people so casually do it? I, myself, cannot escape culpability on this. I admit I am a fan of the sin of omission if it’s going to prevent a big problem. BUT (and it’s a biggish but) that is usually a deliberate, planned maneuver to avoid hurting someone's feelings or putting them on the defensive. After spending many years purging myself of the lying factor (apparently there’s a gene for it in my family or something), I became what some friends and coworkers called “ the queen of no tact”. It is a fact that rabid, ruthless, truth telling is most unwelcome in our society. It is however interesting to note that several of the people who shamed me most often and most enthusiastically about my brutal truthing were in the final analysis found to be avid and compulsive liars themselves. I adopted a “shut my mouth” policy. Not overtly lying, but very frequently not telling my whole truths either.

I used to attribute much of it to astrology. There is an actual link in my view. A lot of water in your chart just seems to make truth a fluid substance. Try living with a lot of un-evolved Pisces if you don’t believe that. Try a quintuple Pisces if you want a most blatant example.

Now we add the idea that it is frequently attributable to “authoritarian” parents. If draconian punishments were administered the children lie instead of taking personal responsibility. This is something I’m going to be watching for in my lying studies in future. I think there is potentially a good deal of validity to this theorem.
For an example, I offer my observation of 2 brothers I know who lie in the same ways (casually, frequently and often easily detected and/or disproved) about the same kinds of things ( usually attempting to make themselves look better, cooler, smarter than they are and avoiding taking personal responsibility for their fuckups whether minute or large). Since I know their parents and have had the opportunity to hear many stories about their childhoods I feel that there certainly could be a correlation. The father is a bit of a raging ass.

Another factor I believe I detect a link with, is substance abuse. The most apparently upright citizen will easily lie if this issue is present. That one becomes a chicken and egg conundrum though. Did the self esteem problem that needs to be bolstered by lying occur before or after the substance issue?

And here’s one I really hate. I have been outright instructed to and expected to lie, by various bosses. This idea that lying is being built into business models really, really, bugs me. Force me to lie and eventually I’ll find a way to quit.

If I catch someone in one or two minor lies I can possibly, probably, mostly, overlook it . The circumstances, how comfortable or glib they seem to feel about it is a real tell. I try to accept people for the face that they want me to see. But I watch and frankly I’m judgmental. If the public face varies too much from the real face I stop trusting altogether.

Those are generally white and grey lies. My true horror is the black lie. Buddhism says this is pretending to have spiritual accomplishments you don’t. This can screw up peoples karma for millennia. Probably just not a good idea. I have seen many painful examples of this. My friend who committed suicide after the Rajneesh scandal destroyed what he believed in. Another who now hates Buddhism after following a false guru destroyed his family. Those are just a couple examples, I’ve seen a lot more. Obsessed as I am with cults and false prophets this is a big issue for me. The idea of one person throwing a huge monkey wrench into another’s spiritual growth for fun, profit and power is very alien and abhorrent.

I also think that lying for fun, profit and power about things like WMD’s or Jews, the Rom, and homosexuals being a problem or whether your industry is destroying the environment and your workers lives and health, which results in the death of anywhere from one to millions of human beings is pretty much the black lie as well. If I believed in Satan I would think it was downright Satanic. As it is I have to try to accept that those are just extreme examples of complete ignorance of the nature of reality and that the people committing such atrocities actually, truly, believe that this will somehow bring them happiness. It’s a hard pill to swallow but it is one of the only ways to try to retain compassion for them in their stupid, ignorant, destructive, negative, foolish, shortsighted, wickedness.

Which brings me to my question. By accepting all the little lies are we totally laying the foundation for the really big ones?

2 Roads diverged in a wood & I took the one to the gallus tree

I suddenly realized that I regularly read the blogs of, and read blogs where the commentaries are comprised of, dozens of people that annoy me. What is up with that?

Fer'instance: one is an unabashed drunk. Whenever any question of alcohol abuse or issues crops up, that one has some post or comment rabidly defending the alcoholic lifestyle. I’m not prissing about the occasional beverage, this is a person who appears to have a barstool surgically attached to their ass. Because I am pretty familiar with how not well the brain works when it’s under constant fuzz effect I take no stock in almost any opinion they opine. Yet I keep reading.
Another is a pathological liar. I know this for a fact. Yet I check in to pass judgment about every day.
Yet another is basically a star fucker, clique melder. Probably an ok person but, possibly without even realizing it, an annoying hipster art snob.
And then there’s Craiglist, what a lot of straight up assholes, rage-aholics and freak show contestants.
Then again I am definitely an unabashed Springer watcher as well.
I tried to explain it once to the beloved english teacher who was, possibly justly, appalled by that revelation.

I want to intimately know the full spectrum of human endeavor. I need to understand the depths of ignorance and depravity as well as get the mechanics of, and the achievement of, the highest human aspirations. This will probably completely offend some (read most) people but to me Mother Theresa and Ed Gein are inherently the same person on some level and I need to know why they diverged.
I used to sit mesmerized for hours by Stiles project. At the time it seemed like the pinnacle of Buddhist thought. Juxtaposing horrific suicides, medical anomalies and sadomasochists against the worship of babe-alicousness and hot bods. I must admit the snuff stuff and poo eating finally got to me and I just couldn’t stand up under it anymore. I haven’t been back for a couple years. I am really uncomfortable with snuff, so much for a lot of Lydia Lunch’s work then. I just can’t bear it. But the odd part is the theatrical stuff doesn’t interest me at all. I can’t stand Tarantino, The Sopranos, slasher or war movies or things of that ilk.

I can’t help but think of what Arwulf used to say, years ago at Commie High, about The Trashy Fiction Club , “how can you tell what’s good if you don’t know what’s really bad?” as well as Portia in “Gone Away Lake” when she realizes that one needs “comparers”.

BTW my tongue is just shredded. Apparently another symptom of this same issue is the person who just can’t stop exploring the sore tooth.

Utility belt

For me, because I gave up on the idea of a big Daddy God or government like a thousand years ago and yet still feel like I need some help and support, here’s what utilizing Buddhism feels like.

You go to “Buddha” and you’re like “hey, I and most of my toys, am kinda broken. I need to do something about that.” Buddha was/is all like “ Yeah dig that, here’s my toolbox have a bang at it and if you need some DIY books there’s some of those too. Try not to borrow stuff for too many millennia though cuz there’s another hundred trillion beings that need to use them as well so it would be really cool if you spent some time figuring out how to build and fill a toolbox yourself, but whatever. Oh yeah, and word to the wise, you’ll probably get more work done if you clean as you go”.

Kalachakra

We are in the wheel of time and time is our boon and our bane.
The action of time on our lives can allow the spaciousness to pull away, to reconnoiter, to see what develops. The issue of time is death. What do we wanna do before death? How much and how little time remains?
This is why washing the dishes with intention is important.
Everyday I go by the river three times going and three times coming and almost every one of the six times I want to get off the bus and go to the water.
Why do I never get to that water?