the rohn report

The races coalesce and congeal and divert and disperse and then you have the final results and then you have the celebration or the despair. Very much like watching a sporting event.

Talarico vs. Paxton. Senate race in Texas. There hasn’t been a democratic senator elected in Texas in 38 years but Talarico is leading by a hair.

Mike Rogers vs. Abdul Al-Sayed. That’s a good one. My home state of Michigan. Al-Sayed is a Muslim so you can imagine the poisonous barbs and arrows being flung about. People are all revved up there. Al-Sayed is up by 7 points in the latest poll.

People get all bent out of shape about it just like fans at a football game yelling and screaming for their team, urging them on to victory with all their unbridled passion, all hell breaks loose, logic goes out the window.

Oh wait a minute, we’re talking about politics not sports. But what’s the difference really? People have a chance to get excited in their otherwise fairly boring life. I mean let’s admit it - everybody wants to get off on something. Modern life needs vacations and fishing trips and Disneyland and Caribbean cruises - something to spice it up. Sports. Politics. Life itself is just routines that we repeat over and over again. A series of habitual activities that we are compelled to do so we can make money. Put a quarter in the machine, get our soda pop. Pay our bills and go on living. Let’s see - car payments, mortgage payments, groceries, clothing, umh - what else, utilities. All these are essentials, right?

Anyways, yeah, politics keeps us entertained and excited. Gins up the vital life force within us so we can live another day. Go to the polls and vote. Soon we’ll know the score of the game, the final result, who won and who lost. Then we can celebrate or despair.

You know what? People are people. That’s what I realized one day cruising down Ave. B on my bike. We all have our different perspectives and different expressions. That’s why politics is designed to create a consensus. Very often it just creates a divide, but just consider for a moment all the different flowers in the field - meaning all the different human personalities with their different propensities, different strategies. We are an amazing collection and together have designed and implemented some form of government where we select or elect people to run the place and keep it organized.

Like when your cat jumps on the table and looks at you - what are they thinking? You can tell lots from their tail - hardwired into their brain, no editing just pure expression but with people you’ve got to vote on it, endless nuance and inclination. Did that make sense?

I am not a political animal. I think we should go back to tribes and some form of farming or foraging in nature or atleast communion with it. And that seems to be where we’re headed. We are standing on the precipice of disaster like we have never known before - and we have known alot of them. Sometimes it takes a great disaster to cause fundamental change and that’s what we need. The fundamental change not the disaster.

Anyways and in the meantime we’ve got politics. Exciting mid-terms in the US. We still have some semblance of an organized, process oriented system of choosing our leaders. The problem is - oh never mind I won’t go there. Let’s just play out the game and see who wins.

I’m not saying politics doesn’t matter - it does but can we see the game aspect of it too? That would be healthy.

Recently I posted something on facebook about the students and young people rising up all over the world to make their voices heard - Brazil, India, France. Serbia, Chile, Columbia, Indonesia, Albania, Spain, Portugal, Italy - all over the place. They wanted to change things, they wanted some power too.

The comments I got on my post were nasty, most of them, from people (and strangers no less) who apparently had watched Fox News and decided that the protestors in France, some of whom had become violent, were Muslim communist immigrant agitators hell bent on destroying western civilization. The hate they spewed with their words was just as violent in its own way as the people smashing windows in Paris. Everybody wants to get off on something.

It’s a set piece. It’s a revolving table. It’s a cyclical phenomenon. It’s a game. Play it if you want but don’t ignore where real change comes from - inside yourself. That’s what I’m trying to say.

And have fun with it. That’s where good ideas come from and where real collaboration happens. That’s where we can find some commonality and come back to being human.

Everything else is trivial compared to that.

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I’m on my bike riding down Broadway, composing a text message to a friend in my head. She has two young kids that I like to play with. Hey how are your kids, I say in my mind, I miss them. We need to make a play date with Rohn. Dance around the fire in the backyard, make fire sticks, jump in the fish pond, tell stories, write in the sky.

Yes, you can write in the sky with a fire stick but it doesn’t last very long. A millisecond. I start thinking about language. How for kids written language is hard work. That’s what I learned mentoring a seven year old at Woodridge Elementary. You have to decode those squiggly little marks and give them meaning. Not just individually but in concert. In concert, ha ha, that’s good.

Emojis are a way of going back to a simple visual language again. Early written language was basically pictures which then evolved into abstract representations of things that became alphabets and words.

But letters and words have no pictorial content, they are simply abstract representations. Emojis are returning us to our primordial origins. TikTok and Instagram convey complete messages with just pictures and video. Hey! We don’t have to use strange, symbolized marks anymore. We can see it. Language is becoming visual again.

Street grafitti is a visual language. It’s invented by the kids in reaction to A B C and 1 2 3. It’s a form of rebellion. They don’t like what they learned in school and how they learned it so they go off and spray paint their own arcane symbology on the buildings of their neighborhood where everybody can see it. They create their own language. It’s their alphabet and it’s their school.

Here’s what one kid thought of the written word. Threw it out the window on N. Alamo. Ha ha, some kind of a history test.

So I decided to go on a grafitti safari, ride around the city on my bike and see what I could find. It’s not that common anymore, but it’s still around. I found this one off Broadway. Kind of a compilation piece, a public mural with grafitti superimposed on it.

West Houston was the mother lode. Lots of tags up. Staking out territory, making a statement.

Some of this stuff looks pretty angry. Life on the street can be brutal. No job, no money, no respect. But there is an urgent desire to express something and that’s so human.

Most of it gets white washed off but West Houston, I guess they just gave up on this place. The street people have taken up residence here. Haven for Hope is nearby, a city funded and quite large homeless shelter, in case you’re tired of sleeping on cardboard and hungry.

It’s a curious fact that not only is the language tending towards its primordial origins but the lifestyle of the street people is very similar to the old hunter/gatherer life style too. They forage for food every day and find shelter where they can.

Like our ancestors. Figuring it out on the fly. Leaving messages for the people. Writing on the walls of their cave and on the sign posts of their forest.

Inventing their own alphabet like a jazz.

This is how we lived for tens of thousands of years actually. A fact not to be ignored. And that’s what I think about when I see people living on the street. Maybe they hold the key to our survival. Just a thought.

I cruised around and took pictures and visited the cafe on South Presa where people were hanging out. No matter what tribe you belong to, in the cafe you can relax and connect. Egalitarian is the word. I love that word.

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So, here’s what happened. We were all fired up and waiting for the big meeting with the evil developers who want to knock down the Sunset Ridge Apartments and replace them with a giant apartment complex five times as big.

The hall was packed. I would estimate 200-250 people crowded into Fellowship Hall at the Sunset Ridge Church. Every seat was taken and people were standing 5 deep at the back. We were all activated, informed and ready for engagement. It was truly a beautiful sight, the neighborhood coming together to speak out about a development that would increase the density of this site from 300 units to 1400. Construction chaos, massive congestion, legacy trees sacrificed, road closures - all so the developers can make a bucket load of money. That’s why I call them evil. I’m sure within the context of their business model they think they’re doing great and wonderful things. To the people who actually live here, not so much.

So anyways, the evil venture capital developers from Chicago identified this place because there’s plenty of green space with lovely two story buildings surrounded by a pleasant, friendly neighborhood (Terrell Heights). This happens to be where I live. They consider it to be underdeveloped.

The blowback was going to be massive and they must have caught wind of that because they didn’t show, canceled at the last minute, a few hours before the scheduled meeting. We were informed at the beginning of the meeting that their representative was not going to attend and were left stunned and unfulfilled, questions unanswered, comments unexpressed. I had been preparing my short but pungent speech for weeks. I’m a veteran of open mics, having been to many in the past raving on about this or that in a poetic sort of way.

Our D-10 Councilman, Marc Whyte, was the lead target and he did a splendid job of explaining how we needed to negotiate because they were going to nuke the place anyway, they already had zoning for that. Made it sound like our best choice was capitulation. Made it sound like he was on our side not bought off by the evil developers. Morningside is their name by the way. Check out their website if you want to see how shifty they are.

Well it went on and on. They passed out tickets so everyone could ask questions and offer comments in some sort of orderly manner. In addition to the councilman there was a representative from the city zoning commission, a property lawyer, an engineer and the board of the Terrell Heights Neighborhood Association. Parking, traffic, drainage, giant towers towering over people’s homes - how could this be allowed? People were incredulous.

But that’s what the zoning allows, was patiently explained to us - going all the way back to the 1938 zoning codes. It’s grandfathered in even as the area changed from barely habitated to single home residential neighborhood.

It slowly became evident to one and all that we were screwed. The city zoning regulations and the system itself allows for it, tilts in favor of development not preservation. The evil developers had their loophole and with it permission to do whatever they wanted.

The meeting adjourned. The church hall was only available until 8. We reconvened across the street in the park. The councilman returned, bless his heart, he had left earlier for a prior commitment. The lawyer and engineer and zoning lady and council staff and THNA board were all still onboard.

Ideas and questions continued to flow. A young woman and her husband who live at the apartments asked for a timeline so they could know when to begin searching for another place to live. Councilman Whyte said he didn’t know but would ask the developers tomorrow in his meeting with them. ‘Oh, where is that meeting going to be?’ I piped in. He half smiled but remained silent. Another lady asked if there could be a representative from the neighborhood in attendance at the meeting, not to say anything but just to listen. I immediately volunteered but again no response. I didn’t expect any, it was just a theatre moment. I just wanted to emphasize the fact that he was meeting with the evil developers in private, nobody knows what was really going on there.

The lawyer explained how difficult it was to change zoning laws, in response to a zoning question and that state law had made it even harder. At that point I turned and walked away. We were screwed. The whole system is stacked against us. It’s like the evil developers are running the city, not the citizens who live here.

Another thing I realized and this was actually the motive behind some of my comments and questions. Ever since this country was founded we’ve been cutting down the trees and developing one resource or another. Capitalism means that nothing has value unless it can make a profit. It’s part of our DNA. It’s baked into our character. Ask the native people who endured displacement and genocide. We wanted their land and we got it.

I talked to a fair number of people at this pow wow and I detected a clear and abiding feeling of discontent, that we have lost sight of human values and sold out to the highest bidder our most valuable resource - ourselves, our own humanity.

Do you know what the second most common cause of death is for kids 10-24 in this country? Suicide. How can that be!? Adolescents and young adults checking out rather than fully entering the adult phase of life. Could it be that they sense leaving childhood also means inexorably entering a world devoid of humanity. Being swallowed up by a monster called ‘society’. It’s all about the money. That’s my explanation. Fit into a slot, get your job and become a cyborg. That’s what it is basically - working for the system that cares not for you, is run by the rich and powerful and all their technologies.

That’s why I oppose turning our lovely, friendly, human sized neighborhood into a massive money grab venture capital project for the evil developers from Chicago. Even if they legally can do it, it’s still wrong. And I’m so proud of my neighborhood for standing up and fighting back. A big thank you to Cara Nichols and the rest of the THNA board for marshaling this effort.

At one point towards the end of the meeting, thirty or so people in the park, 8:30 at night, it’s dark, the cloudy sky above, surrounded by the trees, one woman stood up - and I’ll never forget this. She said ‘We have power. Our voice is powerful. Don’t forget that.’ I won’t. One little candle light can be seen from a long ways off on a dark, dark night. And this is a dark night.

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I don’t know. It’s unknowable. People have lots of beliefs, explanations, theories but that’s ofcourse different from knowing.

If it is true that we live onafter we diethen how long

If it is truethat our souls go onwhen we pass onthen how long

on and onon and on

says the song featured in the podcast.

My solution to that particular eternal question is to live life to the fullest every day. Atleast try. To the best of my ability. No guilt, just a gentle reminder.

Besides eternity is not endless time it’s no time, time doesn’t exist. It’s impossible for us to imagine that because our imagining machine - the brain - is a product of time based ingredients - dirt and stuff, ingredients that were created at some point in time. Our brain couldn’t exist at all without the time based stuff that it was created from.

My sister, the other day, the one I stay in touch with, wanted to talk about what happens when you die. I got mad at her because . . . well I don’t know why exactly. Because it’s all speculation and the inherited spirit of the time which is to accept speculation as truth. Conspiracy theories and everything. All the religious beliefs that we identify with and divide ourselves with and all the while worshipping the One True God. No point to even talk about it. Might as well talk about the vagaries of politics, same shifting sand. Nobody knows where it’s safe to stand. Sorry Suzanne.

So we make jokes about it, what happens to you when you die. Can’t think of any right now but if I do I’ll be sure to report it. A priest, a rabbi and a preacher go to hell . . . no that’s not right.

We had neighbor’s night out last Tuesday. That’s when everyone on the block gets together at one person’s house and they host it. Put out some snacks and a few lawn chairs. I had fun pointing out my house which was just across the street by saying “Yeah my house is right there behind the jungle. You can’t see it.” Well the light was fading anyway.

My neighbor’s from the end of the block with the cactus brought their kids: a 1 1/2 year old and a 4 year old. They got the party started. Magnolia (not her real name) organized everybody in a circle and sang to us. The adults were in tears. Atleast I was, from laughing. A 4 year old is spontaneous and clear about it. She was adaptive and interactive with just the right amount of personal power.

It reminded me of the Warrior Princess I met one day at the Blue Hole. The spring happened to be flowing and I was in the water, inside the spring. There’s a big wall around it so people don’t fall in but I wanted to fall in so I climbed the wall and jumped in. Anyways I’m down there in the well and I see this child with her parents and for some reason I just started playing with the child. A four year old. I tossed pebbles from the spring out over the wall to where they landed at her feet. She picked up the pebbles and threw them back in. That was our game. It was hilarious.

When I got out, I was standing by the wall and her parents were explaining her name - we had all become friends by then - it was like ‘Ix Wak Chan’ or something in Mayan, I don’t remember but the English translation I do. ‘Warrior Princess’ is what they had named their child.

I thanked them for their gift to the world and expressed my hope that many more Warrior Princesses might rise up, and that this is exactly what our crazy world needs.

The kid at the Neighbor’s Night Out party was one. Is one. For sure.

Making the most of each moment is the way to conquer the fear of death. Either that or ignore it. Put it in the back of your mind where it can pester you with anxiety without having to appear as a thought or doubt. It’s just there.

That’s what’s wrong with our crazy world, we’re hiding from death. We trying to find shelter from a rain that won’t stop. We’re trying to figure out something that cannot be figured out. Causes anxiety. Major cause of disease, both physical and mental.

“Doesn’t the darkness make your light shine even brighter?” said the warrior princess of the tribe sitting under the tree arranging everyone in a circle so she could sing to us, is how I imagine it.

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It’s a well known myth as the story of coffee goes - one day a goat herder in Ethiopia by the name of Khaldi (this was hundreds of years ago) was out with his herd and noticed that his goats had become frisky after eating the red berries from a bush that grew nearby. So of course he tried them too, chewed on them and caught a buzz. He was the first one to figure out that coffee beans had stimulating properties.

Meanwhile, just across the Bab al-Mandab Strait in Yemen, in a town called Mocha, the Sufis were staying up all night getting high on chanting the names of the Lord and dancing. When they heard about the little red beans (the strait is only 15 miles wide, you could sail over there on a lark just to have lunch with a friend) they were ecstatic. They discovered that if you ground them up and poured boiling water over them you could consume it as a drink - coffee.

The Sufi story is a separate coffee myth, but who knows, Mocha is a real place. It’s not just a menu item at the cafe. It’s on the southwestern coast of Yemen and this is where the Sufis (a form of Islam) were actually living, spinning all night in their spiritual reverie, high on brewed coffee, apparently, some 600 years ago.

It’s also a name in the news lately. War has sparked up in Yemen, again. Mocha has been overrun and occupied by the Houthis, who seem to be kicking butt all over the place (at least as of this writing). The Sufi’s long nights of peace and love, devotion and adoration are long gone.

The same thing happened in Mosul over in Iraq. Found in the rubble of the ancient city of Nineveh, which sits right in the center of the modern city of Mosul, was a library with thousands of clay tablets covered in strange symbols. They took them back to the British Museum and spent 13 years trying to break the code, trying to translate the texts. And they did. It was Akkadian, the official language of ancient Assyria and the marks had been made by pressing a stylus into wet clay. Which is why they lasted so long - 3,000 years plus, laying there in the dust.

Among the discoveries they discovered was the Epic of Gilgamesh. The oldest story ever written in the human language, older than the Bible or the Indian Upanishads or the creation myths of China. In the story, or myth, of Gilgamesh, for it certainly was a well known and often told story in that part of the world and had been for many generations, Gilgamesh learns about being human. That’s why it’s a classic even today but Mosul, unfortunately, hasn’t fared so well. It’s been devastated by war twice in the last 15 years. First ISIL held siege and captured it, and then it was re-captured again in another siege to liberate the city. Thousands of citizens were killed and much of Mosul destroyed. They went all in for war. Gilgamesh tried to figure out how to have some peace. He forgot too, lots of times. That was why he was so human.

And here’s the point. The Sufis of Mocha, now under Houthi control and the story of ancient King Gilgamesh, found in the devastated, war torn city of Mosul both carry the same message - a plea for humanity, a plea for the end of war, the absurdity of it and a plea for the celebration of life.

I don’t know exactly what the Sufis chanted. There are so many names for God. Including the unspeakable one. The one that we can’t say because it is the breath itself. Yah Weh maybe. Jehovah. Allah. Bhagwan. Lord. Oh my. Far out. Groovy. Maybe - Universal Light Force of Creation or Cosmic Ray Emanation or Wise Grandfather or Lover. Maybe all of them and more. With enough cappuccinos in you you could go on forever like a rapper. Flowing your words out of a stream coming from your heart routed thru your mouth. Loads of names. Every name. Every word could be an emanation of God. At some point with all that spinning around I’m sure they lost touch with their rational mind anyways and started free associating. Talking in tongues. Reveling in the ocean of the names of God. Drowning in the ocean of the names of God. Which is what they wanted to do probably.

Gilgamesh, he was ready to give up his life if he couldn’t find it. It says so right there in the book. He’d been wandering around for months, maybe years. He threw his crown on the floor and walked out one day. Didn’t see the point. His best friend was dead and he was depressed. Nothing satisfied him or took away his fear of dying. He had watched it happen. He was in a terrible fix. Couldn’t recognize wisdom when it appeared right in front of him. That’s so common these days too. Wow. Don’t want to give away the plot but Gilgamesh, when he finally got back home, was different. He was changed. He had become human.

And that’s the other point I wanted to make - I like coffee. I like hanging out at the cafe. You get to meet people and learn stuff. Connect. Exchange ideas. Cafes were an integral part of the Enlightenment Period during the 17th and 18th centuries. They were called ‘penny academies’ because for the price of a coffee you might find yourself at a table with some famous intellectual. Spiritual, political and social movements were hatched in the cafe. This is where we figured out that democracy might be a better way to go than kings and popes. People talked it up in the cafes of colonial America and in Europe. We still do. I often have conversations with people in the cafe and talk about many things: life and literature and how we need to become more human - not less. How we need to foment a revolution, some sort of a revolution, a revolution for our time. Don’t need the violence part but we really do need to remind everybody that - hey we’re humans and we don’t live forever. Like Gilgamesh, we need to come home to who we are and celebrate being alive.

I guess that’s my point too.

This amazing music was the inspiration for writing this post and accompanies the audio version. Thank you to Kinich 7 for this music! I bow to you.

Pure Light · Kinich 7 · CamelVIP ℗ 2024 Camel VIP Records Released on: 2024-06-06 Auto-generated by YouTube.

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Yup, I’m planting corn. Put it in on the full moon of early September, punched a little hole in the earth with my thumb and pushed them in there, an inch and a half underground. They were watered the very next day by a gentle rain.

I got the seeds (technically kernels) from a neighbor who had 12 foot high corn growing in her front yard during the summer. It was spectacular. I would ride by on my bike, on my way to school or to the grocery store and see it growing there.

One day I stopped to meet her and compliment her on her 12 foot high corn (plus the rest of her garden) and to ask her how she did it. Her whole garden was flowering, fecund (love that word) and I thought maybe I could pickup some gardening secrets. Like does she talk to her plants or something? She gave me two handfuls of seeds: green, yellow and red and said ‘These are from Mexico - legacy seeds, traditional seeds’ but she revealed no secrets. She just did it the normal way, she said. I’ve kept them in the refrigerator until now.

The Mexican culture and the whole Mesoamerican civilization was based on growing corn along with beans and squash which I have also planted in mi ranchito.

My front yard is a garden, a flower patch, a weed lot, a nursery, a grove, a cove, a corn field and a ranchito. All the plants and trees that have gathered here, from wherever they came from, have formed a congregation and here they sing their hymns together, offer their prayers and praise to the sky and the earth, the rain and the sun.

That’s how it seems to me, and that they enjoy each others company, from the smallest little green sprout spurting out of the dark earth to the magnificent Monterey Oak with the grotto underneath monitoring the front entrance. This is how the ancient people knew it, those who lived here before me and the unknown generations that lived here before them.

The land was an expression of mother nature, she was smiling or laughing or telling a story. They felt her love, certainly, from the food she bestowed and from the sweet air she breathed thru the trees and the sweet water that flowed in the springs. She was harsh sometimes, when the drought came and a sacrifice was required of the people. But she was a goddess and they were honored to know her and proud that she was their goddess and they accepted her blessings as well as her curses. That’s how the ancient people saw it, the natives who knew this land and recognized it as a living being, a goddess and a member of the family almost. And that’s how it was.

The land and the hills and the seasons and the plants and the wild eruption of wild flowers in the spring and the clamor of birds and squirrels in the branches hopping around harvesting the hackberries and the anaqua’s tiny sweet apples growing next to it and the beating of the summer sun and the rainy days of autumn . . . all this was her expression, her personality, her painting, her story. The natural world was her art.

In the Mayan culture, the corn god is depicted as a young boy emerging from inside the corn husks as if they were the petals of a flower, which they kinda are. Two flowers actually, the male and female both have their own flowers and they conspire together to make corn. A mischievous endeavor, i can imagine, and one well suited for an innocent young boy. Both sexes grow from the same stem together somehow.

I haven’t actually grown any corn yet, none that developed ears with kernels, but that is my goal. The ‘ear’ is actually the female flower and each kernel on it is attached with its silk thread to a point of pollination outside of the rough husk. The male flower is the tassel at the top radiating out pollen like an antenna. Yeah, baby, and that’s why I’m curious to see if I can grow corn this time. Going in a little late, it can’t handle freezing weather too well, maybe a little bit. We’ll see.

I visited the Lacandon Maya, once, deep in the Chiapas jungle. The reason I went there was to return the son of one of the patriarchs. He somehow had ended up in Palenque and was in need of a ride home.

I thought it would be a fine adventure and a friendly gesture and so it was. I got to drive out into the jungle on a bumpy road in my red Suburu and hang out with Chun Kin and his family and deliver their son.

One day the brother asked me if I would like to see his garden. I said yes and he took me on a short walk, not on any trail that I could see but sort of in and amongst the trees and plants of the jungle. At one place he stopped and looked around and started telling me about the plants. And then I saw it too, it was his garden. It wasn’t rows of well cultivated and weeded vegetables, like carrots marching off in a line to the edge of the field, but there was stuff growing and it was nestled here and there, wherever it found shelter and sustenance. It was a neighborhood. It was his garden growing in the jungle. Mayan jungle garden. I hold the same philosophy.

The Chun Kin clan had recently hooked up an electric line to their little palapa (somehow) and were enjoying the benefits of electricity. An electric light bulb and an electric grinder of some sort were the two appliances I could identify. At one point the light went out in the hut and one of the women lit a candle. The husband started fiddling with the electrical switch on the post, but to no avail. We were sitting in darkness except for one candle. The woman (I assume his wife) went over to the switch and touched it and the light went on. It was like a magic trick. I think I was the audience.

Number one son took me on a trek to Bonampak, a little known Mayan ruin (at that time) with a beautiful mural still visible. Heck of a hike and a network of paths going every which way but the kid knew what he was doing. Think about that - he was about 12 or 13 years old and he was traveling alone to Palenque and guiding tourists thru the jungle to archeological sites when he got home. He also had a motorbike or somebody in the family did.

Anyways I was really into the Mayan culture for awhile. Still am. And anyways it’s pleasant to sit here in my jungle garden and watch the sun shine thru the translucent leaves as it glides thru the sky downwards slowly towards the rim of the earth. What a love dance - the sun and the earth. That’s how the ancient people saw it. But we’re modern. We’ve got science.

So that’s it. News from the ranchito. Growing corn in the front yard. Can’t wait to nibble on those succulent little kernels growing like jewels on that ear encased in the heavy leaves of the corn husk, hidden in there like a young boy waiting to spring a surprise on everyone. Ha!

I don’t know what the story is. What kind of myths they had about the corn god. So I have to make up my own.

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hymn is a poem i published in 2018 / I wrote it to finish off my book ‘what i want to say to you 29 poems’ / bring it home in a crescendo / show off my poetic ability / my stream of consciousness jack kerouac alan ginsberg howl type muse infused walt whitmanish voice / leaves of grass growing on my back lot / it was my hymn / we used to sing those in church / lots of them and it didn’t matter if you sang off key so long as you made a joyful noise

then came the sermon and that was longer with fewer breaks along the way but not interminable and when the pastor finally finished we were free to mix and mingle among friends and associates / share the gossip of the day but in a good natured way and wander outside and notice the breeze in the trees and to know that you know that the breeze in the trees is not baptist it’s just nature / pure nature / that’s always good to remember

timeteaan apocryphal koana zen haikuwords matterthink about how much of our brainis made up for language so we canmake up words and talk about thingslike the whole cerebral cortex almostand how can we sing about the worldwithout the basal gangliait’s basically impossible

now the airis everywhereit comes and goesthru our noseit intercepts the flow of timeand divides day and nightit’s clear enough you see thru itbut solid enough you can fly thru itit’s strangeit’s many things at onceoxygen and nitrogen and car exhaust

and a bodyi sing the body electricdid he know that we are connected bybillions of nerve cellsor did he just feel the energythe blasphemy the unorthodox juxtapositionof wharf and rivernew jersey and red wheelbarrowsoh that was a different guybut we all have bodieseven wheelbarrows i guessthat’s the pointthere has to be a pointa punch linean end if there is a beginninga story if we are to believein somethinglet it be meand you and all the creatures of the worldrivers and boats and riverboats and everythingwith a bodylet it singlisten

i found a moment of timein there i was spaced outin there i found epiphanyi found memory i found lightbouncing off everything i foundfun i found walt whitman sellinghis books for a dime in brooklynwatching people walk by busy or ontheir way to work their job or theirdestination there is no destinationsave here where we arealive he thought for suredid he have a sign ?? did he speakto people ?? did he smile ??

i take up my whole daytrying to say something sometimesas if it were importantto connect to learn to find outi run out of paper and write onreceipts from the book storebananas coco milk chilis cheeseare on the shopping list wherei record my coda my epitaphmy epigraph my joke poemif you’re not laughing yet i missedthe beat but i’ll try againi can’t sing but i can humi can fake it until the cows come homeand we can be herewith the cows

breakfast with TVin the corner is one way to do itcalibrate your brain waveswith the dominantparadigm and coffee withmigas motorcycles in thewindow fresh chilis torreadoseverything goes with somethingdon’t talk about it if you don’twant to know to know somethingyou have to follow a flowlet’s have a revolution !!my inner brain says to mebut maybe not everyonefeels the same way

you know what ??i see everyone’s energy windowa child could see thatit’s not hard to be aliveit’s a wonder to wonder whybrain freeze catastropheagnostication acquisitiondenial of service attackswhy are we here ?? maybeto kill people you would thinkwatching hollywood movies on TVi learned that from my catsonly kill things if you eat itand we came hereto be here

unsure about the big brainphenomenon that may bean aberration or an experimentor a farm system set up bythe aliens to harvest ourcognitive dissonance as jet fuel to visitother galaxies who knows whatkind of propulsion things they might inventin the future probly nobody knew aboutnuclear fusion a thousand years agoexcept all the plant people who ate it and gotbigger and got ate by the animal people whogot bigger and got ate by the people peoplepeople who didn’t even know about the nuclear fusionradiation traveling at the speed of lightfrom a nearby orbiting star

there are many stars in the galaxyyou can’t play golf on the moonlet me know when you’re ready

no i haven’t taken my medsno i don’t need any medsi’m a writeri need the maniaophelia areola like an oak leaf cherry sodaand whoosh i’m off like a nikeat break neck speeda jail breakto find out what i’m talking aboutinsert a quarter in the poetrymachine and select replay this dayfor the first time unlock unloaddecipher respond rejoinder relaxeveryone is having their own conversationi said to my braineverything is everythingit’s game day game boythe little people said to meor something i wonder what they’re sayingreally in their minuscule voices what theyare thinking down there inthe dark gut of my solar plexus othersat the table nearby talk about something i can’t hearmaybe they’re planning a partylet’s be spontaneous let’s be joyouswhat else could it be ??it could be the totalityis the same as the microalitythat’s in MIByou should also see blade runner andoah kanah the trilogy that hasn’t beenbeen written yet because i need tofinish it first the story of our birth and enslavementand redemption and a superior alien racewith eyes made of glass who learned how to behuman just for fun made fun of us smallercreatures no longer the dominantparadigm and then we became themtraded places going for spatial outguess and microscanningthey liked farmingon little bits of land in the ohio river valley

smaller bits made of stringmade of smaller bits of string made ofsmaller bits of string is what our ultimatereality is made of it has been saidthere is an ocean in the drop be the dropor the ocean either one would be goodbebe quietbe silentbequeathbeneathbe real behave but whynot believe in nothing and knownot believe in anythinglike the guy on the ladder believesit will hold his weight we believethe planet is round but we don’tknow until we go into outer spaceand see it really is rounddamn how did it get so round ??could have been straight or jaggedor lumpy no it’s round as a circle can’t evensee the jagged little pills on thesurface of our round little planet

the power of silencethe health of not eating unless you’re hungrythe ny times front page headline news‘why are we afraid of god?’with commentsthe synergistic symbolic symbiotic capabilities of human beingsthrow a pebble in the poolbuddha sat under the bo treeand realized truth everything is connectedthere is no separation why wouldyou hurt another person‘attack’ said sun tzu ‘when you knowyour enemy’s weakest point’an acorn falling on the groundreveals a truthi am here and things falltwo truths and roll three truthsbicycles and soda cansairplanes and automobilesall rollairplanes are round if you cut themthru the midsectioni tell you there must be a circlein our brain somewhere anintuitive logic circuit afractal bathtub full of water designed by gnomes on acida double entendre with syringean acronym a taco and a pistolmet for lunch the pistol said to thetaco ‘where’s your guacamole ??’and the taco said to the pistol‘OMG is that a loaded question ??’antennas point to heavengod lives in a churchchristmas lights reveal thedivinity of the earthcompliance let’s say calmand deliberate cooperation arerequired here half the game is gonehalf a watermelon reveals the seedsand it’s roundwisdom starts with a seedwhen we are tiny weknow stuff evolutionof the human race stoppedin 1937 we’ve been goingbackwards since thenbackwards and forwards in and outcircling around the sun starting with a seedgrowing tomatoes and yellow flowers

we all pray for the same thingbut we pray in different languagesall the flowers in the garden are differentbut they grow from the same groundheads held high in their towers of indifferenceall comes back to sunshine on the brownskin of our mother earthall worlds end in amenand awomenall shadows cast lightor how could we see them ?!all those who hope also despair

all who carry the lightin …

Well I really don’t know what to write about. I’ve been holed up in my hermitage, my mystic cabin in the woods listening to music and imagining a better world. One where we don’t have to kill everything to have a prosperous life.

Imagining might be a crucial part of building it. “Un mundo quepan muchos mundos” like it says in the current issue of Deceleration (a world in which many worlds fit). Their Summer 2026 Creative Review Issue.

I’m immersing myself in great music and beautiful ideas until something breaks loose and floats to the surface like Gnomes in the Treehouse, then start writing. Contribute to the world-wide awakening we so desperately need. Another model of how to be, way more for real, more gentle, kinder, and a way of living that enhances all ways of life, excludes none, breathes into the hot coals of our collective heart embers and enlivens the flame of love. That’s the world we need to live in.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. I do that in my rohn report, somebody else does it in the Deceleration newsletter - highlighting all the things other people are doing, connecting the dots.

We live in the land of opportunity - remember that? Our country may be a mess, tragic, politically dysfunctional, outrageous, unrighteous, a disaster but . . . and I do mean but, we’ve got the heart and soul of a brave courageous pioneer. This is the land of creativity and opportunity. Am I wrong? That’s who we are. We’ve brought the world here (despite all our sins and shortcomings) and showed them amazing things. I could dissertate.

TV was invented by Filo Farnsworth, born in a log cabin near the town of Beaver, Utah in 1906. Beaver, Utah was not exactly a hub of electronic innovation back then. If you look on Google maps even now you will find that Beaver, Utah is a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. Filo T. Farnsworth. Then we invented spaceships to the moon and Flash Gordon to fly there. We made movies, we made great movies, we invented great movie making: Star Wars and Blade Runner and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. We made exciting new things like TVs and cotton gins and nuclear bombs. We’ve brought the world along alrighty. Give ourselves credit, we should. Deliver us from evil and be the change you want to see, to quote some luminous platitudes from the current media culture we are immersed in.

When the bass line hits you have to let it all rain down. Find a platitude and stick with it. Like U-2 says in Elevation “I've got no self-control. Been living like a mole. Now going down, excavation. I and I in the sky. You make me feel like I can fly so high, elevation”. Bono. Ok, I know he’s Irish.

Like Compared to What? Les McCann & Eddie Harris playing jazz at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. They’re Americans. We invented Jazz and then we spread it all over the world. Heck, we invented Madonna.

See I told you I’ve been listening to alot of music. The best option I can find, better than being discarded and dismissed and misused, neglected and dejected and rejected. Way better. Put away your thesaurus and your brontosaurus and your tyrannosaurus, Rex, and get on with the Anthropocene, our own epic. Humans have their own epoch. As of 2005 humans have built so damn many dams on their rivers that the dams now hold six times as much water as all the water that flows down to the ocean, down to the sea, to the vast heaving sea.

See this is what I do: browse, skip around the internet and flow with it, where it goes I follow. It’s an ocean of knowledge. Like the most awesome library ever. Even though we looted Alexandria, burned down Nalanda in Bihar State (nine million books), destroyed all the Mayan Codices (except 4), somehow, by sheer luck, we ended up with open access to the largest, most magnificent collection of human knowledge, ever, anywhere. Did I already say that? More knowledge than has ever flowed down the river of time to be lost in the void.

But is this the real knowledge or is there something more than information? The self-knowledge that we all look for, that all civilizations need to prosper and be strong, that ancient scholars at Nalanda studied a thousand years ago? That’s the question I ask in my book.

Ha. Back to what we were trying to talk about. How we started out.

We’re just a bunch of gnomes in treehouses trying to live together among each other and ourselves like we did so many ancient centuries ago. Even among the droids and cyborgs that we have built and with the ability of our hands we have built the cities and live in them.

We’re still trying to escape the danger and find a human to talk to, just like our ancient tribal ancestors did who lived so many ancient centuries ago. We’re still trying to learn what we already know.

music and photos for this groovy post is from this groovy playlist ::

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No sense in arguing the point but if you want to know the true nature of something look at its origin - where did it come from? Before it became anything else it was itself. It’s not like things start off being something they’re not and then become what they are. And so I submit to you, dear reader, the following evidence, case by case.

A child’s smile, even that of a newborn, is so innocent and pure it can melt the heart of the most cynical person. Oh yeah they fuss and cry, they fight with their siblings, they can be selfish and even mean but when they are relaxed and in their most natural state the transcendent beauty that shines out of them comes from a place deeply authentic. Sublime would be the word, angelic would not be far off. It’s only when things are not right that their darker spirits get aroused. Am I right moms?

Our species, homo Sapiens, began about 300,000 years ago and our earliest expressions were simple, forthright, humble and spoke of a calm and focused demeanor. Rather than wild warriors shaking spears we have Urfa Man holding his penis. Sorry if that’s gross but people were more primordial back then. It wasn’t the same - sexuality - as it is today. Anyway he’s the earliest model of a human that we have found so far, a life size statue 11,500 years old from southern Turkey. He looks almost spiritual. Maybe he was. Maybe the ‘divine’ aspect of things was more apparent back then. Maybe the early childhood of our species was much like that baby who popped a smile while asleep.

One of the oldest remaining strains of human beings on the planet are the Bushmen of southern Africa. They live in small, egalitarian, extended families with strong ethics, rich oral traditions and deep spiritual connections to the land. They possess an intimate, ancient knowledge of the desert ecosystem where they live, similar to the Aborigines of Australia. They had, and to some degree still have, a vibrant culture of music, dancing, story-telling and painting.

There is a general consensus among social scientists that the modern Bushman communities are directly descended from the Neolithic (new Stone Age from 10,000 BC to 2,000 BC) societies of southern and eastern Africa and comprise one of the oldest cultures on Earth.

Laurens van der Post documented his time living among them in his amazing but somewhat patronizing book The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958). The Kalahari Desert is where they lived after being driven out of every other habitable space by the ‘civilized’ people.

In his book he describes their shock when they discover that he can’t hear the stars singing. At first, they assume he’s joking, but when they realize he really can’t, they’re deeply saddened. For them, being unable to hear nature was the most serious affliction a person could have—a sign of profound disconnection from the world around them.

Here’s a photo of the author with a Bushman. They were tiny, less than 5 feet tall but could walk all day long (or jog if they were tracking game) and communicate by telepathy with their tribal mates. He described them as a gentle, kind people, not at all warlike and intimately in touch with their environment.

So yes, this is basically a rebuttal of what everyone seems to think - that human beings are inherently violent and cursed to destroy things and to employ war as a solution to their problems, that there can never be ‘peace on earth’ like we sing about every Christmas, pax humana as the ancient Romans envisioned it.

Actually I think every civilization that has called itself civilized has aspired to this. My friend Prem Rawat maintains that peace would be mankind’s highest achievement. He’s someone who has tirelessly traveled the world for 60 years reminding people that peace is possible because it lies inside every human being. Brilliant.

Hey, by the way, don’t we all aspire for that? Somewhere in the depths of our sweet, simple heart is there not a bell ringing? In our ‘heart of a child’. Our truest wish. Our deepest longing.

Thank you to Casting Crowns for their inspired performance. The lyrics of this song are based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written on Christmas day 1863 in the throes of the Civil War.

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San Antonio is a city of murals. This is the newest mural to join the tribe. It’s called ‘The Spirit Within’.

You can find it downtown on the wall of the Market Square building on West Commerce across from Milam Park.

It portrays a jaguar eating a taco, among other things, and evokes the spirit of this place. Especially the feminine energy.

Market Square used to be the abode of the Chili Queens back in the day. In the evenings they would cook up their spicy beef chili in great big ollas and haul them downtown to serve the hungry patrons.

That was the beginning of a thriving open air market where local farmers would sell fresh produce they had grown, also pecans, honey, venison, wild turkeys, chickens, eggs all kinds of stuff out of the back of their trucks.

Across the street in Milam Park people traded news, spoke out about their favorite political issues and shared the gossip of the day. It was a famous place to hang out, mix and mingle.

Now this place is bordered by the elevated highway of I 10 and I 35 and the pillars holding it up are painted with scenes commemorating the history of this area.

There’s a playground and a place for people to hang out under the shade of the 8 lane highway roaring above like a mythic . . . meeting place of the gods or something.

The mural itself is 155 feet long and 18 feet high. It was painted by Hailey Marmolejo and Ashleigh Garza.

At the dedication ceremony on August 1, Marmolejo remarked “The mural is a representation of women and the work that they’ve done throughout the history of Market Square. Every element of the mural is female or symbolic of female, even down to the constellations they’re all different, women constellations.”

East of here about a half mile at the very center of downtown is another amazing mural. Eight stories high it towers over the parking lot at Houston and Jefferson.

I met the artist, Rudy Herrera, while he was painting it with the aid of a giant construction crane. It has quite a different theme. It’s called ‘The Last Parade’. I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

I could go on and on about San Antonio mural art and I have The tradition of Mexican mural art in San Antonio. It unites the city, gives us an identity and reminds of us of our roots, it amazes the tourists, it provides a palette for the artists and it makes bike riding around downtown a real adventure. I feel the spirit within.

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