In The Now

In a voice reminiscent of Raymond Carver‘s minimalist realism, Charles Bukowski‘s raw journals of life’s underbelly and Alan Ginsberg‘s poet-political essays, Nick Masesso Jr’s fictionalized short stories, poetry and prose is funny, insightful and heartbreaking, describing often in non-linear dreamscape narrative with the lyricism of a poet; the love and loss and the joy and angst of the fascinating and often mystifying connections of men and women in the intimacy of their daily lives. His writing style is both Anti-Novel and Imagist. He fragments and distorts the experience of characters, forcing the reader to construct the reality of the story from a disordered narrative, stressing economy of language; writing free, with precision of imagery and clear, sharp language and clarity of expression with precise visual images in musical phrase. – Gino Rossi

Conquistadors

 

 ”Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn’t have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realized that you either became a power or you were crushed”  Joe Strummer

The flower of America’s youth lift and flutter like bees as they skyrocket, soaring like gliders above the sidewalk in front of the Dairy Queen in my small American hamlet. In chaotic formations, high on hearts afire they transmit their pollen of optimism on each other and send me a glorious contact buzz.

They are dressed as soldiers in an army of denim and sneakers hidden under Caps & Gowns that flow; like ersatz apparitions floating on an ocean of idealism, that tasty narcotic designer drug; an alchemical potion hypnotizing only the young before that giant pull to mediocrity descends like a Monty Python hammer out of silvery clouds.

Time again for a fresh hive of oracles to partake of perennial ceremonies where diplomas and degrees are conferred unto them; to commence, to embark on an infinite choice of new beginnings; those designated the honor will select and summon anointed icons of implicit success to lecture young scholars on what grand awakenings lay ahead and on what their commencement; truly meant.

It seems a reasonable endeavor to send the next posse of young scholars, leader’s of a new world they will make for us all, off into the world with a roadmap of sorts and I’m not dismissive of that enterprise. Yet I’ve often wondered whether it would not be more instructive and infinitely more entertaining to have society’s most infamously fallen hold forth on rules for avoiding wrong directions; rather than have its most famous masters of the universe gush their particular touchstones illuminating right directions.

This logic is in service of the view that it’s much harder to stay on top than to get there; perhaps we could arrange a weekend furlough for Bernie Madoff or O.J. Simpson to impart their riveting tales of how it can so easily unravel after reaching the nadir of accomplishment; since its darkness that lay in shadows and it’s hits you don’t see that strike the worst blows.

Or, if the presence of anti-heros on such an auspicious occasion upsets the fathers of academia, maybe better to have more suitable mainstays explain the bullet point set of laws that best kept them from spinning out to an epic crash landing. Maya Angelou, for instance, could impart some of her greatest hits, such as; “Never fear anyone enough to lie”.

The recent fascination with the Millennial, Generation Y, 80 million strong and not only the largest age group in American history but one I have affinity for since it was my generation that spawned them and for added measure my Muse is a charter member, has had written many a ton of overwrought comment and review directed at them, much of it branding our best chance out of this mess; a generation of lazy, entitled narcissists. That stupefying stupidity is not only arrogant horse puccy but more importantly misses the point.

While there’s a fine line between Joe Strummers epiphany and self-absorption much credit for having navigated this cage match maze must be awarded those past the age of twenty-seven for nothing more than surviving an always dangerous childhood and having bested Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendricks, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse; all dead as fried chicken at twenty-seven.

I should stipulate from the outset that I think I’m special as well. I know I’m probably not, but the point is I think I am; just like the Millennial’s; and I give them credit for that. Sure they expect a lot, and feel they deserve even more and what could be wrong with that bit of victorious thinking? After all, it’s not our ancestors that we are meant to make proud; it’s ourselves we have to be proud of; and it’s not possible to enhance self-esteem without humping a thick slice of narcissism.

If this predilection leads to feelings of unmet expectations, they’ll get over it the same as we did. None suffered more feelings of where’s the beef than Baby Boomers and look what our angst gave birth to. Being overconfident trumps its opposite by miles. The Millennial’s are undisputedly the most exciting generation since the Baby Boomers, that greatest generation that brought us necessary social revolution.

The reason for so much criticism and lack of championing for our next best of breed is the existential angst harbored by the presently élite; shaken in the knowledge that our progeny  just don’t need us. My generation tried to buck the system and throw the bums out; but this new generation can simply do without any of it and all of us. Hopefully, and most present in the eyes of anarchist everywhere, this attitude will cause the myth of the necessary system to die from an excess of indifference and apathy.

This right thinking sense of entitlement empowers and does not arise from ignorance or arrogance. It arises because young people need to believe they’re worth something; since the world — one where economic instability has led to fewer opportunities, the devaluation of college degrees, and stagnant wages — tells them they’re not.

Again, as Strummer posits, feeling entitled to greatness as a result of our talents causes a shedding of the role of victim and an adopting of the role of innovator, challenger and champion; demonstrating that not all twenty-something’s are lazy and entitled from a sense of privilege.

More than ½ of Generation Y does not ensue pre-packaged mythologies of religion but instead sets their compass of guiding morality on themselves; knowing they’ll just be able to feel what’s right and don’t see that opinion as  radical belief or negative emotion.

While I believe we are in good hands and subscribe to Pink Floyd’s notion to “leave those kids alone” I will humbly offer some advice of my own, which is not only a wont particular to me, but is also the privilege of old men. Would it were me at the podium at commencement speech time I’d keep the advice to three things.

Loyalty: The famous author Hugh Lunn once said Friends are god’s apology for relations; but this alone does not say it. So for the first golden nugget I’d offer loyalty as the thing to value the most; because in this world, the reality realm, without it you are nothing.

While science has proved that cynicism hardens the arteries, so to have life shown the unrivaled value of friends; the code most notably useful goes thusly: Loyalty above all else except honor. This axiom extends to bosses as well. When working for a man; work for him. If the day comes when you can not resist the necessity to criticize the leader behind his back; it’s time to move on.

Reputation: Reputation is the gold standard of character. Everyone starts out with one as pristine as arctic ice and no one save the self can sully it. A person with a good one can do anything and legions will line up to follow those who have held it precious.

Advantage: Those blessed with charm and charisma, once out in the world, will find it easy to take advantage of others; don’t. And know that no one will ever be able to take advantage of you unless you think you can get something for nothing.

What our descendants will do in the next transformation of America will make history. It makes me envious; desirous to witness the future they will make.  In the words of Hyman Roth’s Meyer Lansky, in Francis Coppola’s famous film The Godfather; Lee Steinberg laments:  “If I could only live to see it; to be there with you. What I wouldn’t give for another twenty years”. Damn Skippy Francis; me too.

Water

 

“It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.” -  Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

Illuminating the enraptured notion that I am, as we all are, but a tiny speck of consciousness in an incredibly expanding, immense and almost eternal universe, 190 billion light years across, was never more prophetically enlightening then when I first saw the majesty that is Victoria Falls. I met her in 1974 where she straddles the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa.

Since the whole of black ruled Africa was then officially in a state of war with apartheid Zimbabwe, named Rhodesia then, and I’d promised myself despite that sanction that I would not travel over 8,000 miles and be denied a Visa into Zambia, which I was, it left me little choice. Enlisting the talents of my native pals fearless guidance; we snuck across the border.

This was no small foolish feat since newspapers, that I read from the safety and privilege of the youth hostel in the capital city of Harare, then Salisbury, in recent days had reported that two young American female hikers had been shot and killed by Zambian border guards as they camped peacefully on the Rhodesian side.

I had by all measure a serviceable view of the Falls from the Rhodesian side; but for reasons, ganja enhanced, that escape me now, the world wonder twice as high and ½ again as wide as Niagara Falls, over which the volume of the Zambezi River crashes, forming the largest sheet of falling water in the world, beckoned with a demand to attempt an adventure in her honor as great as she.

At the peak of the rainy season, almost 300,000 gallons of water cascade over these majestic Falls every second. The  treacherous rapids, deadly crocodile, aggressive Hippopotamuses and Zambezi shark (bull shark) infested waters were so dangerous that although the Shona people first arrived in 1100, it wasn’t until the Ngoni, fleeing the wrath of Chaka Zulu, made the first successful crossing during the solar eclipse of November 19, 1835.

That fact was not lost on me while being goaded with chants to show some Yankee balls by crossing in rubber dingy over the mighty Zambezi by my adventurous and law-abiding adverse local companions, and I was just sober enough to remember another fact as well, that this river throughout history was considered so un-crossable that humans on either side evolved differently in language and custom. So with prayers for divine intervention and a brave exterior in service of the pride of my country, and hoping not to join my African brothers in a watery eternity; although catatonic in an inner fight or flee panic; I took the bait.

Where my fascination with water started I no longer remember; had it been my near drowning in the notoriously dangerous Lake Michigan when I lived in its shadow, or the harbor seal with a head the size of a basketball that scared me into sinking flight as it popped its head not three feet from mine at Stinson Beach on a balmy California summers day where I’d decided to go skinny dipping with my courageous friend Big Pauly; who to this day seems fearful of nothing.

Perhaps it was the nonstop 21 day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in winter in a tiny dilapidated and outdated 21 passenger Greek tramp steamer from New York harbor to Cape Town, where I nearly slipped, in a LSD altered haze, into the dark depths, or maybe it was the cocaine trickery of invincibility that found me snagged in a riptide off the coast of Miami; or maybe finally it was those mad moments bobbing hysterically on the Zambezi which set the hook.

Perhaps it has, as most things do, nothing to do with me particularly. It might spring from the same nature as our collective fascination with fire; the way men compete to be the one to build the camp fire and the way we all stare at it in fascination, germinates from the fact that were it not for this monumental discovery no Homo sapiens would have evolved or existed. Since we could also not exist without water for very long and are all made up of at least 60% of it; it is us and we are it.

Today, nine months into my move from metropolitan Oakland, with its diverse population of 400,000 and nearly every vantage point above a few feet from grade close enough to see the green apple Pacific ocean, to rural Spooner Wisconsin with a homogenous population of 2,682 where I sit tonight spitting distance from where I tickle my Typer on a heroes journey not 25 feet from the shores of Dunn lake, one of nearly 1,000 lakes in a county of just 15,000 people; one lake for every 15 people; my connection to water is now permanent and irrevocable.

In the half-light of this wholesome and flawlessly enchanting evening, gazing upon the always present placid golden pond; the same lake where fifty years ago I swan and boated and fished, I contemplate the difference between its blessing and those other bodies of water I once touched and in my wild moments communing with them nearly visited their eternal nadir.

This brilliantly lit morning brought the boatmen with their women and their children who donned life vests to traverse her voluptuous expanses on pontoon pleasure boats, floating decks 10-0 x 20-0 with outboard motors and canopies and barbeques and fishing rods in a floating revelry that caused endless mathematically perfect concentric ripples on a common axis; making the Loon’s scream a symphony in what appeared a behemoth bathtub about to overflow.

These lake locked mariners flopped like skin on the surface of her undulating body with their sun scrunched eyes seeing nothing but horizon, where fish came to nibble, where water and land and sky kiss each other like lovers; where all were one in god’s mirror underneath the sky, and I, now separated from risky adventures by age and wisdom, became as ever, this spring evenings guest; a grateful spectator.

Sundae

English: Black bear (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Awake on another Golden Pond Sunday; the Library, my newest discovery, and the Coffee House are closed; but the gym is open 24/7 so I set my sights toward that outcome. The ice on the lake and the snow on the land begin to yield to the second 70 degree beautiful day in seven months; I down my Cream-O-Wheat with raisins and butter and honey and a cinnamon bagel drenched in cream cheese, almond butter and organic blueberry preserves, gulp my giant homemade cappuccino and down a ice-cold glass of well water in the only surviving beer glass from my grandfathers bar in Little Italy; it’s a good 100 years old and must hold 24 ounces; the iconic beer glass that used to sell back then, full of beer, for 5 cents.

 

The birds and the bees and the squirrels and the trees are bursting spring as I drive along the deserted country road towards town thinking what the weightlifters at the gym were commiserating about yesterday; worried that the swarms of deer that have come a strolling are dangerous; warning that they’ll run right into the side of your car at high speed, or if you hit one head on, come crashing through your windshield and crush you flat as a pancake. But just now, on this early daybreak, I daydream a romanticized narrative for the poetic vision of the smoke billowing from the country home chimneys as it ties the roofs to the dark violet sky in an unbroken symmetry like connective tissue; a little slice of Norman Rockwell paradise.

 

Just then a wild turkey or grouse, some huge bird, slams right into my driver’s side window; six inches from my face. BAM; like a shotgun blast; it bounces off and splits to the side of the dusty road. I stop and  get out to check the damage to the winged kamikaze as the stunned bird runs away looking like the Roadrunner of cartoon fame; Beep, Beep!

 

On a whim I ventured a little farther into the wilderness and just keep going; wanting to let the local wild menagerie know I’m here to stay and friendly. As I make my way into their world I think had my window been open the collision might have snapped my neck like a toothpick; lucky again. Damn near turned me into carrion for coyotes, and later; food for worms.

 

Ten minutes in I stop and lean motionless against an Evergreen watching a white-tailed Hawk soaring a mile above me, surveying  for mice and whatnot he glides effortlessly. He hasn’t seen me yet, until I move a bit and instantly he maneuvers stealthy and evasive; Hawk-eyes. There, off to my left, not 25 yards ahead, emerges from their unseen den, four American black bear cubs, each the size of a loaf of bread and no more than five pounds apiece; they are all of ten weeks old. I freeze and take it in.

 

Some might feel the desire to approach at this point but the story I heard about the video of a guy on Safari in Africa getting out of the Land Rover to try to pet a Lion that then went right for his crotch and ate him whole without a burp zips past  my minds-eye. It takes all my courage not to retreat. I know somewhere very close is a big version of these babies. Mom must be resting after a long winter; conserving her strength. Now in the silence I hear a low grunting; it sends them scurrying back to the hidden den.

 

I was still buzzing from that encounter the next day when getting the mail out by the main road, my neighbor stops in his pickup truck to ask me if I knew when the snowstorm delayed garbage pickup was rescheduled for; said he didn’t want to put it out early because he has seen a bear roaming his property; (just down the road from mine). “He’s a big sucker” he said; “half the size of your car, with a head this big” he said as he created a circle with both arms that looked to be the size of two basketballs.

 

I’m fond of saying I would prefer a death match with a bear to meeting an ignominious end and I would; while I harbor the thought that wrestling with a carnivore farther up the food chain than myself might one day be a glorious romantic finale; my inner logical voice whispers, not today.

 

Charlatans

“Those that know don’t say; those that say don’t know”

The ball bearings hadn’t stopped bouncing on Boylston Street when the first website link hit my in-box proclaiming, yet again, that we’d done it to ourselves. False Flag Operation to be sure shouted the pedantic dilettantes; that jester mob of fake experts, closet geniuses who have locked on to conspiracy theory to explain, in my view, why they are such losers. It’s just a theory I have that goes thusly; the government is corrupt, the system’s corrupt, that’s why the wonder that is me has not rightly ascended the social or economic evolutionary ladder.

These are the same propeller-heads that wreak havoc on us daily with computer viruses just because they can, and they do it for free; proof they are so illogical they couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a base fiddle or find their own asses with both hands. If they weren’t either incapable or unwilling to create something that results in a paycheck and move out of Mom’s basement; they would. But instead they thrill us with their acumen. Yesterday I was eating cocoa-puffs, watching porn in my underwear and making love to my AR-15, but today I’m an expert on international espionage. You bet Bumpkin.

The professional wing-nuts like Rush and Beck and their ilk are laughing all the way to the bank; I get that. JFK lost his head for trying to stop a money laden war before it got really revved up and no one, President to Pope, will be allowed to live if he’s got his hands on that tiller; and I get that. The sensational Americans that make up the armaments industry will not willingly give up a tit that milks ¾ of a trillion dollars a year, at 25% profit, into their coffers any more than gun pushers will give up the 30 billion a year they earn from slinging hot bullet mayhem; not without a fight they won’t; taking out a President or allowing the slaughter of  a few dozen 5th graders; no problem. When war and guns are that profitable, it’s certain we’ll see more of it and them; and I get that too. Money changes everything.

I tend to find interest in surveys that cast a wide net; similar to the one’s seen on the CNN website, wherein they ask a question so ridiculous you’d think 100% of the surveyed, not retarded, would answer in the affirmative. Yet every time it seems, 30% of the responders answers in the negative. This is for me the metric that establishes my theory; 3 out of 10 of us are bat-shit crazy. I’m just saying.

I get the slime balls that attempt to frighten the weak and scared already with their ridiculous plot fantasies for money. What’s fascinating is the wide cross-section of otherwise reasonable regular folk’s that seemingly sign up for this horse shit willingly and claim to believe it, the aforementioned clown posse aside. Where’s the money there?

According to the imbeciles, from 911 to Sandy Hook to JFK Jr’s ill advised nighttime flight into a fog filled sky; every trench coat and black helicopter is filled by an evil American provocateur; groomers of yet another Manchurian Candidate, and no scrap of mislabeled “fact and evidence” is to small and nondescript to make certain their whimsy; James Earl Ray had his Raoul; and the Tsarnaev boys have their Misha; enough for the truly lame to pass for substantiation.

If these Shakespearean dramas did not validate the masturbatory daytime fantasies of this class of inbred nitwits, I suppose we could shrug it off as comic relief; but it does. And therein, as Willy Shakes lamented; lay the rub.

Comfortably Numb

The Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?

Alice: I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

http://www.cchrint.org/videos/disorders/psychiatry-labeling-kids-with-bogus-mental-disorders/

The Japanese have a saying: “the nail that sticks up gets pounded down”. This idiotic but unfortunatly true idiom infers that if you are different from others, you know; guys like Socrates or Galileo, you will be outcast from society. It’s also a warning meant to convey the fear inducing notion that conformance is enforced. If any one of you tries to be different, then you can expect aggressive treatment. I suppose this message worked well for centuries on the Japanese; since if any one of them ever had an original idea they’d huddle around it like a squirrel around a nut before winter.

We didn’t use to be like that here in the melting pot of the world where the divergence of humanity, unlike the homogeneous Japanese, fosters competition. But that ugly backlash of free children from the sixties; the ones that stopped a war and pried a president from the White House gave pause to the powered élite. So in the same way we now have all volunteer armed forces and no TV war footage over dinner and no pictures of caskets filled with the flower of America coming home in pieces; we also don’t take any lip from our kids. Now we nip that shit in the bud.

The added benefit of having a yearly for life multi-billion dollar windfall for the drug company vultures, and if that fails to be  lobotomized, and a whole new prison-for-profit industry for the seriously incalcitrant that lay in wait; is not lost on our rulers. Everything not mandatory is compulsory; so if we can’t drug you into submission we’ll simply throw you away. This is disconcerting; since it’s our youth that will save us; those fresh sets of eyes and ears that tell us the dominant paradigm is a steaming pile of bullshit.

When our future saviors wake one day teenagers, just the other side of childhood, when all was Unicorns and rainbows, and discover the news shooting across the wire reports infants being shot in the face while in their strollers for their morning walk and a few dozen more massacred with a machine gun in their fifth grade classrooms and a midget Moe from the Three Stooges look-alike promising to Nuke us till we glow from his hermit kingdom; they rightly wonder what the point of this mess, after all, is. Having digested the morning news; feelings of depression, thoughts of suicide and insanity take hold; along with a wish to pay no attention to this horror, all very reasonable and sane responses.

The parents, who’ve slowly learned to accept this ever worsening god awful shitty mess, search for a solution to their child’s sanity; their teachers wishing only that they’d quit fidgeting and pay attention, find the kids will have none of it and lurch to drugging and/or running useless power trips on them.

The best answer of course is to direct them toward some form of service to their communities, to humanity, one that they feel will make a difference. It’s like our new dope smoking Pope said: “authentic power is service”. Not only is this maxim true for those served; but it’s true for the servers as well. To even try to do good for others boosts our self-esteem and self-worth, brings meaning to life and vaporizes depression. Nothing will get an optimistic child, or an adult for that matter, out of a funk faster than to find a way to offer solutions to the madness and suffering, not all of it, but at least some of it. Save the world, or just one other person, and save yourself.

William Burroughs offered the opinion that drugs have been systematically demonized. He was referring to the ones I and many others have done pretty much every day for the past fifty years; the one’s Eli Lilly doesn’t get a cut from. I’m not advocating drugs, no one has to do that, though I would recommend steering clear of the needle; like we use to say; the only dope worth shooting is Nixon.

The recent fascination with a one stop shop to solve the so-called problems of Americas youth labeled with attention deficit and other horse shit make-believe ailments by hooking them early on one-a-day chemical solutions will not only ruin their heath and negatively alter their minds; but even worse for us collectively; it will stigmatize what would otherwise be a generation of our next Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Pulitzer award recipients; and if we commit that obscenity, then surely we are lost.