Hard Rain

My time on Earth would have been far less exquisite if not for the experience, I had today at the very end of my forty -eighth year, hearing this phenomenal Bob Dylan piece. When I was young, I was raised by what I thought to be the most cynical people imaginable. In their infinite, but supposed wisdom, they cordoned off vast areas of human experience as bourgeoisie pap, mediated fluff or politically motivated distraction. Some of their guidance was of course helpful, but other parts of their lexicon were filled with their own brand of vapid slogan shouting and half-truth. One example was my stepfather, who frequently talked about free love and really meant subjugation of as many females as possible. Much to my delight, my mother was commiserating with a young woman at the Laundromat one day about her suspicions that her husband, John, was sleeping around. See love is only free when given without the attachment of sex. Her new-found friend said that her man was married and would not think of leaving his wife for her. Strangely, her man’s name was John as well, and she asked, Andries? Well, if there had been super glue back in the sixties, it may have gotten used on his genitals that night!

All this said, there were times that I wanted to learn things that the adults in my life wanted me protected from and just as often there were things I needed sheltering from that I had to learn to deal with sooner rather than later. The first Earthday celebration was off limits because my parents said that it was all just a media ploy to distract people from the injustice being perpetrated in Southeast Asia. I was not allowed to watch any media coverage of the war because john had been accosted by newsmen while he was serving in that war, asked to act like his unit was being fired upon and to shoot off a few rounds for the camera.

Bob Dylan fell into the category of things they suspected as manufactured for the masses by the establishment. I don’t think either of my parents were educated enough to understand much of what Dylan wrote, but even more disturbing was their absolute vehemence about his inability to sing. I heard the same tripe about Woody Guthrie, Roy Orbison and Elvis, although for some reason Arlo Guthrie and Frank Zappa made the cut in our house. The stinging in my eyes that brought tears welling up out of nowhere at the sound of Hard Rain came not from the fact that Dylan can’t sing, but perhaps because he can’t sing, but was willing to enter the recording studio anyway. When each of us has something to say, the vast majority would rather hold their tongue, let someone else take center stage, or just fight the urge to speak, or sing, back down inside, hiding their light under a bushel basket. For many of these same silent ones, the prevailing sentiment of their insular sub-culture fills the void that their own ideas have left in public discourse. Ban the bomb sounds catchier than stop poisoning my children, free love sounds better than I’m a fuck machine and so on.

I understand that we all must do the best we can with what we are given, but the time has come for each of us to begin thinking for ourselves, not jumping on either the politically expedient bandwagon or the let’s overthrow the government  one either. Surely there are those who would lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, many are powerful men with evil intent, but it is time to realize that by shirking our own responsibilities, we are cheating ourselves of a life of richness and beauty beyond words.

The Art of Deception

We abide by sets of rules based on lies. To tease them all out would take a treatise the size of several volumes, but we all recognize the most pernicious ones. "Marriage is forever and between one man and one woman.", might be a good one to start with, especially since that is where we are all supposed to have started ourselves. I'm sure we all know a number of people who also know that it is a lie. The institution of marriage is between the "loving" couple and the state, their church, sometimes two families and occasionally God/ess. Before you have a chance to discount this fact, I recently spoke with a wonderful and lovely woman who told me that when she married her husband, she didn't respect him. I put love in quotation marks because what one calls love, another might say is infatuation, pathological lust, usury or flat out abuse. What I claim to be an essential part of love, may not fit in with your belief system. I claim that the truth of the matter is that no agent on this earth can mediate a true marriage. It is between two souls and their creator. Do I need to say, "regardless of sex"? Because it is true. I'm sure that our creator isn't hung up on genitalia. My point is that we all accept many limitations of a culture that despises free though and action. We have been told so many times that long suffering and self control are not just means to an end, but the be all and end all of our existence, that we shy away from truth as surely as we were born.

Arbitrary rules that came about centuries ago, when we needed more humans to exploit and the planet seemed infinite were based on a certain truth that existed then. We have surpassed Earth's carrying capacity and even the deaths of ten thousand children each and every day from lack of clean water is not enough to stem the burgeoning tide of affluenza in other regions. Marriage must now be de-coupled with procreation, there are too many children being abused and neglected than we can handle already. Science has proven that humans are naturally cooperative, helpful and compassionate. The lies about "human nature" that have relegated generations of human souls to crushing oppression perpetrated by ultra wealthy and powerful forces has led to systemic power and control issues being played out across the entire planet. It is the birthright of all humanity to live unmolested and free from both abuse and neglect from our own people. Breaking free from the lies that we have been carefully fed proves far more difficult than one might expect, but the first step in recovery is recognizing that there is a problem. The more you learn, the better equipped you become at calling "Bullshit!" We have the right to seek truth and when we find it we have a responsibility to share what we have learned.

I regret having to bring all this up, but the truth is really treated as a quite unsavory thing. We are forever being told, "Don't sugar coat it.", as if harsh truth is revered, but not one of us wants to hear that our ideas don't matter, our problems were brought on by making bad choices, or that our treasured pictures of our children or grandchildren are uninteresting. What we fail to realize is that we are all one with god/ess. We are forever convincing ourselves that we are unique, that our dear reality is true and to be trusted when nothing could be further from the truth. The whole bloody thing is made up. Virtually every single thing that we know is either untrue, or a shallow reflection of something that would have been true if things were different. Take this for example...I love the fact that I recently heard someone who had gone to Vietnam, remark at how astonished they were that the Vietnamese called it the American War, not the Vietnam War. Sadly, differences in perception like this only account for a fraction of the lies that we artfully keep alive between us. Generation gaps, sexism, racism, political debate, advertising, education, religion, even our diversions and entertainments are rife with lies. If we all didn't subscribe to the same ones, where would we be? One lie that seems particularly egregious to me is the perception of lack. The concept of a harsh world, with mankind locked in a brutal battle to the death with nature just unnerves me. I don't think that there is anywhere on the face of the planet where one could travel a mile without being able to scare up a meal or two and perhaps a remedy for whatever ails you. In areas more desolate than that, cultures have developed that keep their food and fluid stores on the hoof and bring them with them across the harsh areas. That said, there are plenty of "educated" people who will tell you how harsh a world it is and how you must screw the other guy before he screws you. One of the first lessons of sustainability (permaculture) is to equitably distribute the abundance that is produced when we work with, rather than against nature.

Our egos are so wantonly out of control that we actually believe in our own self-righteousness. We pray to an idol of our own "unique" expectations and desires. Our very hopes and dreams are based on a book of lies that has an infinite number of pages. We were told centuries ago that we are hateful, callous, mean tempered brutes that are designed to be greedy, competitive, rude, selfish and crass. Science has proven otherwise, but we use this lie and others like it to justify our aggression, bad behavior and lust. Lucky for some, there is a salve that we can use to soothe our souls at the end of the day. Some of you may not like it, but I will reveal the myth of the hour, or perhaps the century, Christ. He died for his own sins, not ours. He, if he existed at all, he sought to expose the great lies of his culture and for this he was supposedly put to death. No contemporary historian of "Jesus" mentions him. You would think that for all the stories of him feeding the masses, healing the sick and walking on water, someone might have made at least a passing reference to this "King of the Jews". Nothing. Nada. Zip, Zero, just a giant void, silence. Granted you can't prove a negative, but hey, this story is as old as the current age. Half a dozen of sons of virgin birth came before Christ, were baptized, taught the people, had twelve apostles, were betrayed by a trusted friend, were crucified, languished in a tomb for three days and were resurrected. But, I guess, if we all believe that it only happened once, it's gotta be true. I for one, cannot believe something that reeks so terribly of plagiarism. With no savior to fall back on, we all have to live a little better lives. The only one with the power to forgive is you!