Welcome to your human family PRT 2

Welcome to your human family Part 2

A man plants a tree in honor of his mother
An astronomer makes a breakthrough discovery about dark matter
A man kills his whole family then kills himself
A woman saves a dog from a frozen pond
A refugee is impaled on a fence
A teenage girl’s first sexual encounter is not what she imagined
It’s the same for her teenage partner
A boy confesses his sins, but not all of them
An Indonesian gay man is beaten to death
A monk chants with sublime inner calm
A monk immolates himself
A woman escapes her abusive father and turns to prostitution
A female Navy pilot runs for Congress
A man gives away $100 bills to strangers at Christmas
A journalist lies
Rosa Parks
A man hires a prostitute for his wheelchair bound Army buddy
She does him for free
A Native American Indian in Alaska sees the signs of climate change
Twin girls are killed in DUI car crash
A woman gets botox injections in the fourth part of her body
Two men hijack a truckload of breast implants in Brazil
A 12-year-old runs away from home and is never found
A first generation immigrant graduates magna cum laude from UCLA
You and I share a message on facebook

Welcome to your human family

Welcome to your human family Part 1

A little girl gives all her pennies to a cancer victim
An Afghan officer keeps a young male sex slave chained to his bed
A police officer gives his life to save a black woman
A man proposes on the Jumbotron at a ball game
A dad throws his laughing child up into the air
A dad throws his child against a wall
A family takes a Caribbean cruise together
A boy rummages through the Cairo dump
A scantily clad actress lectures her audience on sexual harassment
A family catches a fast food meal on the way to a soccer game
A billionaire is proud of all the money he continues to make
A Chinese peasant is stabbed to death
The second grade class of St. Mark’s goes to confession
Jeffrey Dahmer
Two men kiss in an alley
Two gay officers marry at West Point
A depressed Norwegian commits suicide
A ten-year-old girl commits suicide
Two students traveling alone meet and eventually marry
A couple married 35 years decide to divorce
A drag queen becomes more famous than s/he ever imagined
A refugee family goes unnoticed as they starve to death
A talented deaf girl graduates art school
A 17-year-old girl makes a solo crossing of the Atlantic
A couple gets into heavy debt
A couple has sex for the first time in a year
An elementary school student completes his Suzuki tape
A homeless man is buried in Potter’s Field
A man despises his neighbor
A woman make a documentary about date rape

Death

Death was near, but you didn’t know it. So you’re glad you lived life for all it was worth. Death happened, but you weren’t there. For you it was a phone call or a facebook post. It surprised you that death was actually a beginning—of resurrected memories, of never saids, of rituals, of trying to bring the dead one back to life.

Since we all will die, death shouldn’t be so hard. But that’s the very reason why it is.
So mourn however you must. Do whatever is demanded. Then live life for all it’s worth…again.

God Hotline

Welcome to th ASK GOD online hotline.

JT from Velveeta, CA asks: What do you look like, God?
God: JT,I look like the imaginations of all human beings.

Roxie from Tornado, MO asks: Why is the world so unjust? Did you drop the ball?
God: Roxie, creation is my job, justice is yours.

Billy Ray from Arkanarka, TN asks: I've heard that "God is Love." Is that true?
God: Billy Ray, God is Love when Love is God.

Complacency

Complacency is the death of art. Art has to be alert in the world and be able to turn that alertness into a conversation with the viewer. Art has to find mystery (often in the gaps) and surprise (often in the ordinary) and the sublime (often in confusion and chaos). Art has to wake people up.

Noise

The world is exploding with noise. Advertising marketing, smart phone conversations, talking electronic devices, screens, robocalls, even talking gas pumps. Noise is incessant and skillfully constructed to invade your brain. It pushes out your own thoughts to the point that there is no room for your own values or common sense. You think it was your ideas that you must absolutely have perfect white teeth, that you must be in style to be loved, that you must ask the doctor about every new medication, that celebrities are the experts on everything, that lies are the truth.

This is why everyone needs a quiet space for quiet reflection, a space to discover the true self again, to hear against the noise of the world, to dig out truth and values from the rubble

Celebrities

Do you know any industry that spends more time, money, marketing and glam energy on rewarding itself? One more time, these celebrities will cover themselves in gorgeousness, surround themselves with spectacle and in acts of "courage" recall their #METOO moments with great drama and media attention. These are the stars would could not say no directors and moguls, but who could say yes to nude scenes and simulated sex in front of movie crews and eventually the American public. I don't get it.

What we need is persistent and widespread attention from the media to the plight of the American women who lack resources, who must support families, who can't lose their jobs, who need protection, who must fight sexual harassment often alone. Celebrities may make news, but these women make "courage" mean something.

Vote for me

Being in excellent health (a mere one pound away from obesity) and passing a test of mental cognition, is a pretty low bar for the Presidency. Neither of those guarantees intelligence, truthfulness, compassion, empathy, leadership, integrity, personal dignity or respect for others.

I on the other hand have never been sexually inappropriate (except for off color jokes in the company of mature men). I am compassionate (most of the time and even when people are not watching). I am dignified (at least when dignified people are watching). I am the eleventh least racist person you will ever meet. I am the greatest artist on my block (and many people will attest to this). Since I was in the Boy Scouts, I am trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Therefore, if  it comes down to it, you can always vote for me.

Bill and Mary

Bill: Do I have any clean underwear?

Mary: I washed them and put them back on the floor where you left them.

Mary: Does this necklace go with these earrings?

Bill: I guess so. They’re both the same color.

Bill: Can we have Beef Wellington, garlic mashed potatoes and Caesar salad for supper tonight.

Mary: Sure, I’ll go get dressed.

Mary: Do you think Donald Trump would pay $10,000 to have sex with me?

Bill:

To truly love

To truly love someone, you must love them from the inside out.

Mysterious you

I’ve heard it said that each human being is as complex as the universe itself, and I’ve come to believe that.

Just try to figure yourself out. The evidence you have is memory, experience and images, all of which are extremely unreliable as they get lost in the fog of the past. Whatever does get figured out, when it gets figured out, is old news because you’ve moved, changing your way into the future.

Who you are also depends on all the people you got connected to. They are no more reliable than you are in unraveling your story.

So what to do? You are constantly making and remaking yourself in the moment, so be present in that moment. Leave a worthy mark. Be content with the fact that this simply means you are a mystery, a puzzle of thousands of pieces with some inevitably missing.

The high-rise and the church

The highrise office buildings dwarf the church spires in any major American city. The office buildings get taller and taller in competition with one another. Church congregations get smaller as do their budgets, and for efficiency church buildings flatten out like pancakes. This is the reality, but what is the message?

As Joseph Campbell points out, in each age, the tallest buildings indicate who’s really in charge of the society. The temple, the monument, the government building, the church, the office building. The Pyramids, the Mayan temple, the Medieval cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building.

In our time, it’s obviously the office building. Floor after floor of workers stacked on top of one another in little cubicles. At the top the expansive executive suites, proportionately larger than the cubicles as executive salaries are proportionately than worker salaries. The buildings, with their high atriums, reek of wealth, as do the entries to the tenant suites. They are all about competition and wealth. And the workers can’t wait to leave them.

The churches, with their spires, invite not competition, but aspiration. Their sooty interiors are filled with stories and symbols and smells and light scattering all over, pointing to enlightenment. Though fewer in number, those who enter want to be there, where the vertical trip requires no elevator and can actually get you where you need to go.

Self-revelation #2 Underwear

Self-revelation #2 Underwear

Jockey shorts, speedo underwear, thongs are all too uncomfortable, and besides they would reveal too many of my sculpted body contours.

No over-priced Calvin Klein billboards on my nether regions. 

Colors and patterns are the most fun, and it’s boxers all the way.
If I anticipate being shot, stabbed, needing an appendectomy, getting hit by a car or otherwise ending up in the hospital, I wear a pair of my best. Reputation counts.
Cotton definitely, since they make the best paint rags in their second life.

The fuck screen

There are many people I know, especially young people, who don’t use their intelligence enough to realize what intelligence they have. One of the signs of this to me is what I call hiding behind the “fuck screen.” The fuck screen is something you consciously or unconsciously you employ by using fuck or its many derivatives in place of words that would be much more interesting, articulate, meaningful or provocative.

Take a conversation like this:
-How did you like that movie?
-It was fucking awesome.
-Yeah, fucking awesome man.
-That one scene blew my fucking mind.
-You mean the one where they fucked in the grass?
-Fuckin’ right, dude.

This is just a dirty-word, chit-chat, superficial conversation. Nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but it can too easily become habitual speech. The other thing is that it saps the power from “fuck,” which “fuck” truly deserves and was meant to have. And that’s a disservice to a word with real credentials.

If you suffer from fuck screen, my suggestion: Get out from behind it; go cold turkey for a week. No fucks (the word) for a week. See what you think. See if its power won’t be restored.

Oprah

With the “Oprah for President” discussion being bandied about, I thought it was important for me to start paying attention to the Oprah phenomenon. I happened to be waiting to meet some friends and saw a copy of the Oprah magazine on the table near me. So I picked it up and gave it a quick (admittedly rather superficial) look.

First, she is on every cover. On this one she was lounging in the sun. Every time her name was mentioned in the magazine, there was a picture of her. (She must spend a great deal of time preparing for and having photo shoots.) There were self-image and self-help articles, and some articles on social issues. No disturbing images related to those social issues, but nice pictures of the writers of the articles.

Advertising was, to me anyway, for products that would be expensive for the ordinary person—clothes, beauty products, décor items. Also noticeable was that the models in the ads were your standard, stare you down thin ladies. No body variety at all.

My observations. Admittedly quick. Just sayin’.

Best scenario

Talent, skills, creativity, passion are all servants of intention. If you intend to make wallpaper, you will make wallpaper. If you intend to change the world, you will change the world.

The best scenario for making art: Throw your all of your humanity and intellect at it, and wait for it to say back to you: “Is that all you’ve got?”

Love / kill

Human beings are still trying to figure out how to love and how to kill.
But they haven’t decided yet which is the most effective.

Sexual enticement

I’m a great believer that men are often major assholes. And I think that women are often the ones who hold things together. But I’ve also begun to think a lot about the current issues of sexual harassment surfacing with #METOO.

Attention: the Golden Globes. Celebrity women dressed in black to support a change in the way things are done in Hollywood. It is their time. But black was still uber-expensive designer gowns, pin-up posing on the red carpet and showing cleavage, backs, knees, legs and thighs. Most of these women are fully dressed as male fantasies, objects of desire. 

This is where I am conflicted. Is this the image women desire for themselves, choose for themselves? Is it their self-selected measure of beauty? Are they dressing up for other women, for the camera, out of expectation, for men? 

I’m always a bit suspicious of stirring speeches about the downtrodden delivered by wealthy celebs swimming in glamour and excess but rarely in the street. I wonder what kind of message this really is for the average woman who often must live up to those kinds of beauty expectations and fight that kind of discrimination on a budget.

So maybe “sexual enticement” needs to be thrown into the #METOO mix.

Self-revelation #1 Food and drink

Self-revelation #1 Food and drink

I don’t pretend to understand or enjoy gourmet food—stacks of little sculpted meats and veggies with drizzled somethings on top. Chili, corned beef and cabbage, stews, meatballs and spaghetti and most fried things are what I go for.
Fancy sauces don’t appeal that much to me either. If you’re going cover an item with a sauce that masks its taste, why not just eat the sauce?
I get confused by too many utensils at the table setting.
I’m not a connoisseur of wine or beer. I try to find something relatively inexpensive that I like. Why try to pretend I can taste the walnuts, cherry, pine, citrus and fruity climate of the drink?
It seems odd that there’s more shelf space given to bottled water than to fresh vegetables. Hardly drink pop.
Takeout not too often. Vegetarian once in a while. Fat, salt sometimes.
Sweets, don’t tell anybody.

Men

Men have a rich fantasy life, but it ‘s the day-to-day lives of men where we see the heavy burdens they must carry.

Men must try to look as stylish as their wives when their wardrobes are composed of comfortable, decades-old clothes.

Men must take on the job of teaching their children the complexities of flatulence.

Men must be responsible for the yard, the plumbing, the electricity and the roof and still respond to: “But how come you don’t do your half of the cooking, housework and childcare?”

Men have to struggle to not look forlorn when they are turned down for sex.

Men are responsible for keeping beer companies in the black.

Men must constantly explain that a beer belly is in fact an attractively developed muscle.

Men must endure being constantly marketed to by seductive and scantily clad women.

Men have to work tirelessly to disprove the stereotype of the dumb ass, clueless male perpetrated on them by TV.

Men must smile when they get ugly ties and underwear for gifts.

Men must pretend to enjoy endless discussion of sports for fear there might be nothing else to say.

Men must suffer quietly knowing that Donald Trump if one of their species.