MEMORIES, PARTING GIFTS, AND DREAMS

MEMORIES, PARTING GIFTS AND DREAMS

 I WAS AT A CAMPSITE over on the Bruce Penisnsula and
an old friend seemed to be packing up, leaving, maybe
going away for good (this time by)...

and there had been a fire in the fireplace many nights 
before... but there was no fire that morning
and along the side of that hill of rock 
he had placed a line of conch shells...

the shells were like the days
of his life

no words were said, but just as he was
packing up and leaving, he gave one
of the conch shells to me... and in the shell
there was a sunrise or a sunset, a glorious
inner fire of beauty

there was no fire in the fireplace that morning
and my old comrad was going away. I assumed
he was dying. I don`t know why. no words
were said, and he seemed healthy enough...

the conch shell, his silent gift to me
before he turned and walked away...
as I say, it was a sunburst... and it was
obviously an experience of great importance
 that had meant something 
to him in his life...

no words were said... none were required...
and it seemed to me that, after a while,
in this land now words will not suffice...
in any land really... words do not suffice

and I realized that, whatever your religion,
whatever it is or whatever you say it might
be, the power of this land takes over...
and your religion is the gift
your vision is given
at the end of your days

whatever day it might be - whatever your
insight or utter lack of insight, it matters
not

your spirit is your vision which is a gift
of any of a number of final days

and every gift between friends is a
parting gift, however long you might
think you have together

many husks, many living gifts, many souls
for travelling roads

the conch shell reminded me of a vagina,
and I was thinking that`s kind of a strange
gift for one man to give another

and then I thought - what better gift?
what deeper experience of life...
and that shell has great meaning
for me to this day.

for it was a not a shell;  it was more than
a shell... and it was a gift given
without words

and it was a parting gift
as each day given to us
is a parting gift

my friend had been a hero of sorts
he had been a great athelete
and a man of vision

after that morning and the silent
gift of the sun-shining conch shell,
my old friend walked away into the
grey morning

and I have never heard from him
or seen him again

I assume he walked off into death;
or maybe he was dead when
he gave me the shell; strange things
like this do happen, and now to me
such occurrences seem the most normal
of events... maybe the whole experience
was a dream

I no longer have the actual shell;
but that conch shell is a sunrise
within me. And it is a sunrise
that has never set

I never saw my friend again.
but as I write this,
he is sitting here beside me
beside a campfire that was 
never lit; and this fire
has never gone
out

oh, yes, I say I am a Christian.
But what does this story
have to do with Christ?

this is a story of this land,
and we cannot own the land,
but its spirits pass through us
from a place that has 
no beginning

and a place that has no
beginning
is a place that never
ends.


 
 

THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS AND THE STANLEY CUP FINALS!

                           Now that the first three rounds of the battle for the Stanley Cup are over, I can look around and take a deep breath and smell the roses, taste the coffee and throw a few
rocks across calm waters at the moon...I must say this...
the Boston Bruins have been kicking everyone`s ass...
             The Toronto Maple Leafs came within seconds
of thrashing the Boston Bruins. No one else has come close.
             The Bruins beat up the Leafs physically those last
few moments. If we`d put our big guys back in those last few minutes, we wouldn`t have been intimidated by the Bruins,
and the Leafs probably would have won.
              The Leafs were faster than Boston. In the end, Boston was tougher than Toronto... but not by much.
               Chicago might take them in the finals, but my money`s on Boston. The better Boston looks, the better
the Leafs look - so I`m cheering for Boston.
               The Leafs haven`t won the Stanley Cup
since 1967. And that`s just RIDICULOUS for the most 
affluent team in the league!
               Someone did something right these last
couple of  years in the league`s most storied franchise
and what a relief it is! It`s a relief for Leaf fans and it`s a
mercy  for people who love the City of Toronto - to get a glimpse of success once again... in a hockey town that deserves success in hockey!
               As has been said in politics and war:
it`s no longer "the beginning of the end."  
              Now it`s "the end of the beginning!" 

SPLIT IN THE HUMAN PSYCHE -- THE WHIP AND THE CROSS --THE DIGNITY OF MEN AND THEIR NEED FOR GROVELLING ABASEMENT ---THE PERVERTED PRIEST --- WOMEN KNOW

MASCULINE INFLATION AND THE   NEED FOR HUMILIATION

______________________________________________________

     

              I have been having a little trouble with the human

psyche, meaning my own psyche.

         I have a lot of bad habits and I`m not going to blame

my psyche for that - well,  maybe just a little bit. I`m sure

you all know that I drink a bit. But that`s not a problem,

unless I run out of liquor. Ha! Ha! 

          No, drinking`s not a problem for me -

unless I go outside and start climbing things

-like church towers - and ringing the cathedral bells 

in the middle of the night and waking up the whole town.

         I also have a little problem with mania.

I get a little worked up sometimes . Mania

can make  me think I`m more important

than I am. The word maniac comes from

people who have a little problem

with mania.

        Try mixing 3 parts mania with 7 parts

rye whiskey, you get some fool standing

on top of a bell tower in the middle of the

night - ringing the bells and shouting, 

"I AM THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE!"

And laughing wildly, waving a knife at

the stars...  he`s going to attract

some negative attention.

           It`s the sort of thing you can do

when you`re deep in the bush, but it`s not

recommended activity when you`re smack

dab in the middle of  a Small City on the Bay.

Nope, you find yourself in jail pretty quick.

And this has happened to me. It has happened

more than once.

            I am also affected by the cycles

of the moon.  When the moon is full,

I find myself jumping out of bed and pacing,

and I don`t know why I`m pacing.. until I

look out my window and see the full

moon hanging there in the sky.  staring

me in the face.

             At such times the moon almost

seems to be humming - no, it`s not a hum.

It`s a high frequency sound like the snap

and crackle of electricity.  An electrical pull,

a magnetic pull at the tides.

The word, "lunatic" comes from lunacy - madness an excessive involvement with the cycles of the moon.

  

        In the bush, nobody cares. Nobody

hears you except the dogs and they don`t

mind. It`s a beautiful thing to hear the howling

of the dogs under a waxing moon.. across

a calm lake.

         The dogs` howls echo along the shoreline

and my howls echo against the rocks across

the lake and come back to me.  All the howls

come back to me.

          But I`m getting a little off subject.  Ho! Ho!

Subject? 

          "What you mean `subject`, white man, you

trying to get smart with me?!!?

          I`ve figured something out. I`m not that different

from anybody else. And that`s a great comfort.

I`ve been fascinated by whippings and spankings

and the infliction of pain for pleasure - but so are

a lot of other folks! I`ve noticed that men, when 

they get older, their head going white and growing

paunches, I see a lot of such men involved in

S&M. I was thinking it`s good to see some converts.

          I was mentioning this to a friend of mine,

who  happens to be a dominatrix... that I was

glad to see so many old guys are involved in the

fetish.

         She said, "They`re not involved in the fetish,

you fool!" she said, "They`re gettin` old and they

have to beg for sex!"

        This leads me to the problems I`ve been

having with the psyche - my own psyche.

         On the one hand,  I`ve done all this work

with the Nag Hammadi gospels. At times

like that I feel  I`m in the midst of

something pretty holy -  and I know there`s

truth to it, so that`s fine with me.

         On the other hand I`m involved in

S&M - the joys of dominance and submission -

 the wondrous joy of giving all your power

over to another person. To tell the truth,

that act of kneeling feels pretty holy, too.

          And the feelings of being sadistic -

well, that`s a whole lot of fun, as well.

When I hit someone`s buttocks with 

a cane or a tawse, I love to see them squirm. 

It makes me hot when they try to get away 

from the pain they need. 

                       (And the pain they deserve).

            OK, so here`s the dilemma -this

 problem I have with this  split

in the psyche, I`m getting more comfortable

with the paradox but still it messes with my mind

             Our  whole society has a problem with

this split. This is why we have so many

preachers crowing out the spirit like a rooster

on  Sunday mornings.  Then creeping along

on their hands and knees to stare at a naked

woman`s buttocks through  one-way

glass  in the evenings. Preachers full of pills, 

and whacking off like  monkeys at the zoo ... 

peeking up over the edge of a counter to get 

a secret glimpse of her fulsome curves.

           This would be funny and it is funny,

 but because this is the kind of thinking that

 gave rise to the witch trials - it`s a serious

matter, too.

           Hey, I like to crawl and grovel and beg

as much as the next person, and I guess

the older I get the more begging and grovelling

I`ll have to do just to get close to a woman.

           That`s all great fun, and you gotta remember,

we`re playing with the lusts and barriers

involved with the source of life here. So

even though we mock this stuff in our society,

we`re playing with some earthy and holy realities

here, too - in the pursuit of sex and insemination.

 I like that word, "INSEMINATION". I like it

very much.

.

              So this is the problem I`m dealing

with... how do I write about both sides of this

split at the same time?

               I`m thinking about doing a sister

blog to "Roving Reporter Rants" and calling

it, "THE WHIP AND THE CROSS" or maybe

"THE PERVERT PRIEST"

               I can`t get advertising revenue

from Google if I keep writing about the entire

waterfront of human aspirations and emotions.

               I guess I have to go to some

adult site and find a host for this nasty Roving

Reporter stuff.  But you all know,  I`m only

talking about the truth, the whole truth...

                Women know these truths better than

men. Because for centuries they have had to deal

with both extremes of men`s behaviour... acting all

holy and then begging for sex.

                 Women see the humour and the hypocrisy

in it. We men would prefer not to discuss it,

because our dignity`s involved.

                  Our precious dignity! To hell with it!

 After going to jail a number of times, and after 

singing the blues on stage for years...who has time 

for this phony dignity?

                   I still take myself too seriously. I admit it.

And I`ve had plenty of "holy" moments.  But I wouldn`t

mind getting down on my knees right now,  and doing a little begging myself.

                  

                                                                       Whoops...

           I`d like to know by what percentage  the witch burnings and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition could have been reduced -  if men had started whipping themselves instead of blaming women for their own personal neuroses. 

        This way - punishment and honesty - perhaps  we could reduce the  split in the  psyche.

        The division deep within through which men  are obsessed with the flesh and at the same time 

hate the flesh.

            When we`re feeling really guilty, it`s easier 

to blame someone else rather than admit responsibility.

     

         In the old days, when men got away from all this lusting and hating for a little while, they were sure they were going to hell. So they got on their knees and prayed for forgiveness.

    At the same time  they strung up the women who had forced them to have such evil thoughts!

                                                                        

                                                  

                                             

                                           Respectfully submitted, R.R.

                                           "Discard nothing, everything

                                            may serve"                     

                                            Punishment is forgiveness.

                                             Carpe Diem

BOB MARLEY, BOBBY DEAN AND JOHNNY ROCK - THE PARISH OF ST. ANN ---LIFE, JAZZ AND BLUES AT THE ZANZIBAR

     
        I was born in North Ontario.  I grew up in Jamaica.
I grew up in the Parish of St.  Ann.  Bob Marley was  born 
in the parish of St. Ann about 3 miles away.
          When I was 17 years old, living in Toronto, I started singing
by myself in small clubs for folk singers. I sang some songs I wrote myself. I sang some old folksinging classics like,  "O Sinner Man",
"Some Day Soon",  "  Four Strong Winds"  ( Ian and Silvia)  Don`t Think Twice,   " Bend Down Low,"  "Hold em, Joe, "   - me donkey wants water! Hold him Joe.".  "Mama Look at Boo Boo " "O Sinnerman.... where you going to run to....?"

          I`m playing , "Bend Down Low - let me tell you what I know"
and people are loving the song and the rhythms.. So I play it each night...
until one night I smoke a Big One, and swallow a good one - and I`m
sitting up with this writer who` s  a famous guy now, and we both listen to a version of "Bend Down Low" that neither of us had heard before...
           It`s Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Natty Dread album, singing
"Bend Down Low" better than I`d been singing it the last six months.
So I started following Bob Marley and I stopped singing, "Bend Down Low.", the song I`d learned at Miss Gwendolyn Dicken`s knee
 in St.  Ann Bay, Jamaica.

          After singing folk songs and ballads and playing
with calypso rhythms much of the time, but playing acoustic
guitar primarily in folk clubs,  I made a move.
          I took the giant step from the world of
folk music to the wholly different and more dangerous
world of Yonge Street, Toronto.
           I walked into the Zanzibar tavern and Bobby Dean
was doing an afternoon show there playing a B3 organ.
He said. "You look like a guitar player.?
            I told him I was and we decided I`d join him on
stage the next day.  I had a red Gibson 330 which had a sweet neck
on it and a Super Reverb Fender amplifier.
            I asked Bobby what keys he played in mostly.
            "I play in all the keys!`he said.
And he did, too.
             There  was something else he said to me
when we first met.  I`ve never forgotten it. He said:  "There are
no mistakes in music."
             And he`s right - if you`re quick enough you can take a lead
in any direction, and improvise with the song.
             I didn`t know any of the standards - I didn`t even know what the
standards were.  But we`re talking jazz standards... For a period of about two years some of the best jazz that was played in Canada 
was being played at the Zanzibar  in the afternoons.
            I didn`t know the standards so pretty quick I learned to improvise.
            
             Fine musicians from all over used to line up to get up
on stage and play. Bobby and I were the band.I was known back then
as Johnny Rock.  So it was Bobby Dean and Johnny Rock and
Liberty Silver and Roland Prince ( tho I don`t remember him).
There was a guy who played an old hollow-bodied Gibson
about four inches thick.  He played so well,  so fluidly
that I bought the same guitar when I found one once in Florida.
Turns out he had been the guitar player for the Ink Spots.
             One night some guys joined us in a piano bar on Queen Street.
We were playing a song called,  "Don`t Make Promises You Can`t Keep."
These three guys stepped in and sang with us in three part harmony;
it sounded pretty good.
             So after the set I was talking to these guy. And I say, "You know,
you guys are pretty good.  You should turn pro."
             And they laughed a bit and nodded their heads in agreement.
No one said a word.
              It turned out these guys were The Platters, and they`d
been singing that night in a sold out show at Massey Hall. They`d
come down the street to join us.
              No "I told you so`s". They were a class act.

               Anyway, I stayed at the Zanzibar for over a year.  I rented
a room upstairs. The action never stopped.  Someone was always
trying to sell you something... and the good looking women hanging
around didn`t hurt... The Zanzibar is a strip club,  after all.
               Some of these women could even sing.

Because I mentioned Bob Marley earlier in this article:

"Forget your sorrow and dance;
Forget your troubles and dance,
Forget your weakness and dance,
Forget your sickness and dance."

I`ve always thought these were  his best lyrics.
        
            Well, there was always plenty of dancing going on
in the old Zanzibar... and it was a wonderful; place 
for a folk singer to learn how to sing the blues.

            There was a lot of running in that place, too. Sometimes we were running because others were chasing us. Sometimes we were running
from the police.
       
 

THE REAL WAR IS THE WAR ON THE FLESH - THE WAR ON DRUGS IS JUST A SYMPTOM - BLIND JIMMY GETS OFF! DANCING AT THE HEART OF BIOCHEMISTRY!

            


                                Jimmy spends almost no time in jail this time.  What`s
the expression?  This time he has horseshoes up his ass!
                    With a system like ours, it`s often better to be lucky
 than good. This time Jimmy has a  lawyer clever enough to see the value
of a videotape. The videotape is a happy one for Blind Jimmy. The one the young teenage girl took on her cell phone - one of eight  police officers with suspicious magazines in their hands, laughing, standing over a man on all fours vomiting on the centre line of a highway...
            To be fair, this event did not take place in North Bay.     It took place on Highway 10  north of Caledon . When there`s an element of
truth to the story I`m telling, it`s best to be accurate.

           (Editor`s Note: There is not always any element of truth
whatsoever in  stories told by our Roving Reporter. At such
times, of course there is no possible way we can correct him.)

                                  The situation turned into such a monstrous
cluster-fuck with videotapes of laughing policemen standing
over a poor man obviously in distress on all fours vomiting
very loudly - shouting it out, so to speak. In fact, it was
cyclic vomiting.
                   It wasn`t pretty and it wasn quiet.  The
horrible howling and moaning sounds Jimmy was making
as he was puking every last  drop of rye whiskey
out of his system - it sounding like a combination
of two cats snarling at each other like they do
when they`re thinking about having sex during sex.
                  that sound plus the sound of some
sadist toruring a half-aware male child with an
electric probe just as his voice is breaking
high and low at  the advent of puberty.

                 The sound was so intense and
so loud and so gut-wrenchingly miserable
that - try as you would not to laugh, you` couldn`t
help it.  The sounds were too funny.
                And the combination of the
weird fetish pictures in the magazines,
 the  adult bonnets and diapers and the big soothers,
and the writhing and retching and barking 
out  sounds....!  It was too much!

             One policeman was  crawling on
his hands and knees,too, he was laughing 
so hard and he made an odd pair with Blind Jimmy
who was also in his hands and knees,also -
as if he were some strange wildebeast
on some forgotten part of the African veldt
moaning out his rhino call


            You couldn`t blame the police guys for laughing.
 I was laughing, too, just
looking at a videotape of the event!
As I say, the pictures of the event
looked a lot worse than what
actually happened.
               But when youi`re defending
a client you have to use every tool
that presents itself.
                In this event, fate had
provided me with a lever, a crowbar
which entirely changed the
perception of Jimmy`s situation -
the videotape of laughing policemen
standing over a vomiting man..
This was very fortunate -  Jimmy
could have done five to ten years
in prison for just knowing the Axeman
let alone being in the same car with him -
when the Axeman kidnapped his own wife 
in order to pursue his  romantic intentions.

                The northbound lanes were
blocked with warning flashers, so a crowd was gathering
rapidly.
                And cars heading south were pulling over, too.
Everybody was photographing the whole scenario, and the
                  All Jimmy`s charges were dropped - lawyers and police
alike just wanted to bury the scene and all memory of it.

                                               *
 
 THE WAR ON DRUGS, THE PURITAN ETHIC
AND THE HIGHEST PER CAPITA JAIL RATE ON THE PLANET
 
                 I`ve re-written this article but can`t seem to find
the new and improved version, the coherent one...
                 The point I was trying to make is that there
is a dangerous hangover from the puritan mindset. Part
of that mindset is an UNCONSCIOUS TENDENCY to debase
all things of the flesh. And this judgemental disdain towards 
 the flesh has much to do with the uncaring destruction of
the physical world around us.
                 This unconscious hatred of the flesh is the motivating force
behind many of the idiotic judgements made by shallow Christian
elements.The puritan tradition is carried on thoughtlessly, a prejudice
repeated by rote.
                  Why is this important? This unconscious moralizing
WAR on the FLESH is the impetus behind a hateful disregard for
 our physical environment.
                  If we pray to the spirit and despise the flesh, this
disdain ends up being applied to our  environment, also.
                  I truly think this is a dangerous situation. I think
this unconscious prejudice might kill us all.

                  I shudder to think that a mind infused with this
unbalanced dualism -  that such a mind might have access
to nuclear weapons - this is no joking matter!

      
                 

                   In "THE LAND OF THE FREE" as we refer
to ourselves in Canada, we have the highest per capita 
incarceration rate  on this planet. And why is this?
It`s because of the high arrest rate caused by the "war
on drugs."
                  All of North America has this honour.  
We share this  highest per capita  jail rate  with the United States.
                  
                 WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?

                  THIS MADNESS DERIVES FROM THE PURITAN ETHIC.

                   In old time errant Christianity we used to  "lift up the spirit"  and  "debase the flesh". There are not two worlds: a higher world of the spirit and a lower world of the flesh.
                Our magnificent Earth and the Universe we are born 
into  - it`s one Unity. Spirit cannot exist without the flesh.  It`s
obvious: we are part of one fabric of being. It`s ridiculous to demean
one aspect of this fabric and sanctify another aspect.
               The thinking goes,    "Drugs are  evil;  they are part of the lesser world - the world of the flesh. And there is a mean-spirited and mostly
unconscious prejudice against the world of the flesh.
              There is  sickness in this  dualistic thinking and the phony morality that derives from it:    spirit vs  flesh,   God   vs  man.
               Morality based on such phony distinctions is erroneous morality.
             

                                                                          *       *       *



                   Some facts about the drug war -
                        that success is impossible
                  
                    _______________________________  

                   A lawyer in my office had a client   who was a major wholesaler in the drug business. He lived in Montreal and for some reason
he kept trying to do a 100 kilo sale in famous Peruvian marching powder.
                  The problem was this. A certain police station in the Montreal area was paying $1,000.00 per kilo to any trucker who was
carrying such contraband for information about the cargo.It was a bribe
for cash and information and the bribe worked
                   We`ll call the client, "John". (Jimmy wouldn`t be appropriate in this situation. ) Almost every time  John attempted a 100 kilo sale - he`d get informed on by his trucker. Because a 100 key sale was worth "100,000.00  (100 grand) to the trucker. 
                   You can spend a long time in Cuba, Jamaica,
Venezuela, Columbia or Peru for one hundred thousand dollars U.S.
                    Every  kilo seized by the police that time
was not destroyed. No, members of that particular
police station would sell the powder for millions of dollars profit.
To give the Montreal police their due, I am told the equivalent 
of one entire police station had to move in and bust
the other entire police station. And this way the situation was resolved.
                 I don`t know the details of that situation
and ...                      I don`t want    to know the details!
             The whole monstrous mess and massively
profitable deal has now descended into the realm
of Urban Myth and that is where the story must
remain.

             The reason I am telling this story, though,
is this: whenever the client, Johnny, lost a 100 kilo
shipment, his suppliers out of South America ( back then)
would double his shipment FOR FREE! Johnny wouldn`t have to pay an extra dime when he`d receive the 200 kilos for the 100 kilos he lost.
              
              Every businessman would have to agree,
that the doubling of product at no cost, as a form of free insurance on behalf or the retailer - it`s almost impossible to compete with that kind of a bargain.
              No one`s been able to compete with such bargains and such profit margins.
    
                                
               AND the real profit is in the marijuana  trade. The marijuana trade brings in MASSIVE dollars. Just because of the huge tonnage of that trade.
                We`re back in "PROHIBITION" now, only with a different product. Prohibition didn`t work with alcohol and it`s
not working with the HERB trade.
              No one is going to give up this kind of cash
easily.  Look at the drug violence just south of the U.S.
border. No one wants to give up the cash.
            
               And there is IRONY to this situation!
               The irony of this situation is: the  REAL MONEY isn`t in illegal drugs.
              The real money is in LEGAL DRUGS!
              One drug company alone makes over 8 BILLION
dollars a year just for its legal sales of Percodan.
              But whether we`re winning or losing the "war on drugs" is not the point.
               The thinking that justifies the war on drugs
is incorrect moralistic thinking based on an incorrect way
of viewing the world.

               The truth is people like and need drugs
 too much to ever be able to give them up. And there`s nothing wrong with this. This is not depravity...
               There is nothing wrong with CHEMICALS!
We are biochemical in nature.
                HUMAN BEING IS BIOCHEMICAL!

                Our EMOTIONS are carried through the human
body by chemical messengers called, "PEPTIDES".                
                And the Realization of GOD is aided by a
chemical created within the human body, called. "DMT."

                SPIRITUALITY itself is not separate from
the physical realms.  That`s all hogwash! It`s morality
based on phony dualistic thinking.
                 GOD does not exist apart from BIOCHEMISTRY.
The Spirit partakes of biochemisty as does the Flesh.
Flesh is one side of the coin, / Spirit is the other side of the 
SAME COIN. The coin itself is biochemistry.

                 There is only one world. Two worlds do not exist -
not one higher world of the spirit and a separate lower world of the flesh.
                 The SOUL does not come out of thin air.
The soul dances in the midst of a glorious crucible.

                 The crucible is the MIND of GOD.  The Mind of God -  God, the Creator did not create in the past! That`s
just bad thinking. It`s wrong and it`s stupidly wrong. And we
cannot afford stupid thinking any longer.  Through us,  the Earth comes to see itself.  The Earth cannot afford stupid thinking any longer.

                  GOD is THE ONE WHO IS CREATING US: 
HE/SHE/IT  is creating us even as you read this and I write
this - the ONE who is creating us dances in the midst of the GOLDEN FERTILE LIGHT and the WHITE CHASTE LIGHT;
AND these two lights mix  together in the crucible of MIND
in the INFINITE and ETERNALLY  PRESENT dance 
of GOD`S MIND thriving in His Kingdom of Bio-Chemistry.         


                                                                        END

O YOU SAINTS AND BODHISATTVAS! THANK YOU FOR YOUR GRACE, THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE, THANK YOU FOR THE GIFTS YOU HAVE GIVEN US! THERE`S A RADIO IN YOUR BRAIN, IT BOTH SENDS AND RECEIVES!

        You ever notice, when watching a good comic,

he or she will lay down 4 or 5 good jokes, then 

sometime in the rhythm of his talk he`ll slip in

a serious statement- a real zinger - and people

will laugh at that statement, too, but the laughter

starts to fade into an ugly silence.


 
"The terror of nothing to think about."
 That`s how T.S. Eliot describes it.


       
        Most big crowds in North America are

very uncomfortable with a silence longer than 5

seconds.

       We`ve been conditioned to think we need

almost constant distraction.

       Of course, we don`t.

        We  need to desire this thing  or that thing constantly:

the new car, the new woman or man, the new boat, the 

new house and a constant variety of food. Buy this

eat that, eat that buy this - that`s what our society is telling 

 us - "Hurry up and buy, buy, buy!"  And it`s not surprising

because our culture is centred around the marketplace,

not the temple.

      

          Our culture, our civilization encourages the monkey--like mind.

In India they have a temple which on some level encourages us

to watch the endless train of thought whistling through our brains.

The idea  is first of all is to recognize your own monkey-like mind -

that it exists - then get past that constant distraction and compulsion.    

by sitting still and watching the action. At the monkey temple the same action

is going on inside and outside your head: it`s like a reflexion!

It`s a very elegant way to learn.


        If you sit still for a while - do a little sitting - watch the T..V screen 

inside  you, listen and listen some more until you tune in

       You`ll notice there are all kinds of  things you can do with  your 

brain more entertaining than watching the T.V. tube.

       For example, if you let the silence reign just for

a little while, you will hear voices from across

the globe,  voices you`ve never met.  Our mind

is like a radio that  both receives and projects. 

      If you project your mind outwards in humility and love

and with a prayerful attitude call greetings and ask                         

ask the saints and bodhisattvas to help you  accomplish some

task - chances are you will find  help.

         if you really pay attention that day and the next

couple of days you will be able to sense if you`ve

been given strength and assitance. And you will start to build a 

relationship with these many minds  who somehow form one 

consciousness beyond  death.


         If outloud you say, " O you saints and bodhisattvas

help me and give me strength  in our task to liberate mankind. Thank 

you for the holy vows that you have taken

to  help  and stay with us until we  are free.

         Close as I can, I will walk a path to join you in your holy chapel."


          Something like this.  The words don`t matter so much

if you open your heart and speak with love,

even if you believe no one`s out there, say the words.

           I was pretty damn sure that no  one was out there. 

No conscious Lord of the clouds, no Lord of the

Meeting Rivers.

        Say the words anyway, shout them from a cliff top,

or shout them from a rooftop. Shout them in anger,

 shout the words with hate.

         But if you can find one place in your heart that`s honest,

one person or one thing you love, say the words to that love,

say the words to that person.

         Even if you  think no one could possibly hear you,

say the words.

         Even if you are certain the world`s a cold machine.

say the words of your love

          Say them out loud so you can hear yourself say them,

 even if you`re certain there is no consciousness

in this galaxy that can absorb your words.

        

          Our science is certain of so much... except it is

admittedly ignorant of the entire sub atomic world

and all the greatest mysteries of the One Who Is..

Creating Us.

       


 
         The modern, mechanical "RATIONAL" age has 

placed a curse upon our souls - the curse is that we

truly believe the human mind is the only conscious mind

And that matter is only matter.

          And that life is only life, and that`s it! And that

death is an absolute end, and there`s no crossing

over between the two.

          How sad! How erroneous.


           That there are no voices to be heard, that there are no

minds who speak to us from across the globe, voices from

places we don`t imagine - voices from places we can`t begin

to imagine.

               No travelling voices, no minds that can be heard,

no roads for travelling souls.


           Except I hear them and I have for a long time. And

I started hearing thoughts of minds who didn`t need

to speak a word.

           And everybody can do this!
            
           But we don`t, you know why? Because we don`t

sit still; we don`t have time.  There is something that

we need to buy.
 










"Once you open communications,
                            communications are open."     Walker Ballantine


 

JIMMY GOES TO JAIL AND GOES THROUGH AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT --- HE LIVES WITH HIS WIFE AND EATS IN THE BACK YARD

                        PART ONE
                       __________




       Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen table the other
morning trying to fix something that looked suspiciously
like a motor. It didn`t look as if he was going to get the
motor going for another month or two, so I wasn`t
forced to take it away from him quite yet.

       I didn`t say anything to him because he`d had a rough
few months.
      Any sudden sounds -  like closing a window, flushing a
toilet, or moving in your chair - he might start to cry or  leap
 out of his chair  screaming. Any sudden motion he catches
  out of the corner of his eye, it`d be the same thing.
He`d start to shudder. I don`t know where he learned
how to shudder like that, but he`s pretty good at it.
        I had to be very careful about slamming a drawer shut or letting
the  screen door slam, or sneezing suddenly.  I didn`t want him to
jump up  and scream or cough or shout   In case he blew out his new dental
implants.
     
       Some people do very well in jail. Jimmy was not one of those
people. His was naive, inexperienced. He thought people liked him
just because they smiled at him.
         It`s not always wise to smile back. 



       Three months ago Jimmy went to town. He went
 with his pal from up the lane. -his name is Jack
but everybody calls him The Axeman"  . He`s tall and has
huge shoulders. Not many wrestlers on the northern
circuit will fight him anymore
       I heard this from "The Crusher" who fought the Axeman once:

        "Right at the start of the second round, he CHANGED.
At the sound of the bell he landed on me just as I was
getting off the stool. He grabbed the stool and hit me with it
so hard I saw stars and was unconscious. 
        "He was   slavering like a   mad  dog"
         " He was jumping up and down in his  corner like a gorilla.
growling and baring his teeth. I was afraid
he was going to bite me!"
          Crusher  said.
          "I woke up two days later. I don`t mind being unconscious
sometimes.  When you`re unconscious you have no worries.
           "But the show was finished 30 seconds into the second round.
Tickets were thirty dollars each. The audience expected a good show.
But the Axeman had no understanding or comprehension of
the word, "Entertainment.``He had gone to a more primitive
place - a place where you eat or you are eaten.  The word, "tickets"
 had no meaning to him."
         ( I`m  told, well, in fact I know Axeman had gone through
a "psychotic break". And the least thing a psychotic break
implies  is an extreme change in perspective. Unfortunately
there`s a change of personality, too. And this is usually not
a good thing...    I had a woman go through a psychotic break
on me -literally, when she was sitting on me and we were having
sex.  But that`s a tale for another time).
     
         Crusher: "After I was knocked out on the mat, the Axeman
turned and faced the audience and started snarling at  the crowd
The crowd was half drunk  they   were  snarling, too.
Tthey were picking up chairs and throwing them into the ring.
Axeman was catching the chairs, biting them and throwing them back
then he went bounding off looking for a something sharp."
          " It was chaos, a dangerous disaster.  Three referees had to
run in from the rink next door to start quieting the crowd They were using
hockey sticks,clubs, pepper spray, and some fool shot a taser
at this guy and hit him in the groin. Some security guys showed up
and they were all using shooting  the crowd with tasers.
Even that didn`t stop the howling mob. In fact, the mob got
worse.
            Four bouncers had to carry The Axeman back to his dressing
room. A Shrink writing for the media talked about The Axeman`s
 CHANGE. A psychotic Axeman simply couldn`t tell the difference between
an  entertainment event, and a mob that was trying to kill him.

       So guess who did Jimmy went  to town with that same  night?
The Axeman! After he escaped.  He was Blind Jimmy`s travelling companion.
when Jimmy went to town that night several months  ago.
The two seemed to understand each other. This is not always a good
thing.


      
        They drove along the long dirt roads around here, down the hill into the Small City of
North Bay  Jimmy was driving Jones`s wife`s  car.   It was illegal for Jimmy to drive a car
 anywhere in Ontario. And it was a lifetime ban. He`d crashed everything after six cars
 had been smashed up; he crashed a speedboat, a skidoo, and he even managed
to crack up a lawn tractor when he fell asleep in a stupor and drove it off a small cliff.
And as for Mr Axeman Jones it was illegal for him to set foot in the ring ever again;
 it was illegal for him to work as a bouncer. .He`d escaped from a locked unit at the
Psychiatric Hospital on the Hill, way up Highway 11, right next to a swamp.
        It was illegal for him to step in a bar. It was illegal for him to ride in a car
He was supposed to be behind bars
            It was illegal for him to be anywhere at large.But he wanted to see his wife.



             So the evening got off to a good start
and it just got better from then on!
              It seems that the two of them
  got carried away  in a large A&P supermarket
and had stolen ten T-bone steaks, two avacados and three gallons
of butterscotch ripple ice-cream. They were seen sneaking out the
back of the store through the butcher`s entrance.
A store clerk followed them.
        Jimmy  put his booty in a burlap sack.

         Axeman  went bounding off over a high back fence into someone`s
 yard.  He`d hidden 4 T-bone steaks and a bottle of wine in his pants.
         He caught his wife in the kitchen.He insisted that they go and sit down
and "Talk love." So he dragged her into the coat closet in the front hall
and made her sit in the corner (The ladies just love a quiet place).
He crawled in after her, blocked any escape route she might
have had, and insisted she drink some wine from the bottle,
while he burbled sweet nothings into her delicate ear.
           She was not happy to see him even before he dragged
her down the hall..  He`d attacked her front door with a fire axe
only two weeks before.

       Jimmy  entered Ernie`s Adult Books where he purchased
several magazines, and slipped quite a few more into the large
burlap sack he`d picked up at the butcher`s. He palmed  some
other items as well, though how you palm
a pink  two-foot dildo, no one has explained to me.
       Jimmy jumped into his  car and threw the large
sack into the back seat.  The store employee wrote down
his license number and  he called the City police.
   
         
         Here are  some are snippets from the police reports

        "Mr Jones proceeded to visit several drinking establishments."
"In various bars he was seen trading T-bone steaks for whiskey.
 He drank  several shot glasses of Seagram`s Canadian rye whiskey.
I counted 16 shot glasses  on the bar in the darkened room"
         (Ye gods! I want a shot right now! Notice how the officer
tells  exactly what kind of whiskey Jimmy was drinking!")

         "Tthe suspect ambled from the bar and stumbled  when he
opened the exit door."
          The accused got into his vehicle.
          I followed closely in my cruiser and radioed ahead to
the Provincial Police
           "Officer Stevens from the highway unit joined me
in minutes, driving an unmarked police car and he followed
closely behind the accused"
       
             This next from the OPP cop:   
   
          " Suspect was travelling out highway 63 towards Temiscaming,
driving slowly in order to keep the vehicle between the
white lines."
         " I followed the accused closely
         " I noticed the subject was drinking from a large bottle.
He was drinking in a jerky fashion.
         "He threw his head back and appeared to be gargling
with the liquid in the bottle.   He did this repeatedly, and every
time he threw back his head to gargle, the car would weave
across the centre line of the highway."
           "I then turned on the siren and overhead flashing lights.
I instructed the defendant to pull over, stop the vehicle and
remain in the car."
            "I repeated these instructions several times through the
loudspeaker. Eventually the defendant did pull over, but he did
not follow my instructions."
              "Instead he fell out of the driver`s door of his car
Then he crawled on hands and knees out onto the highway,
where he proceeded to vomit on the centre line for
at least approximately fifteen minutes."

               One officer put up highway warning flashers
fifty feet on either side of where Jimmy was making a display of
himself. The flashers stopped traffic both ways on the
highway.  A crowd had gathered by the time Jimmy had
stopped puking - it was cyclic vomiting, actually.
              The crowd was enjoying the entertainment and started
shouting jokes and encouragement to Jimmy and
the officer. "What you doing Jimmy? Calling for Bill.?
BIILLLL!  BIILLLL!"
               Several other police cars showed up. The cop
who had taken the report of the theft in the grocery store
was reaching into Jimmy`s car.  Naturally he found the sack
and started pulling out the twenty or so fetish magazines.
He opened the page and started to laugh and shake his head.
               He handed more copies to his fellow officers who
had shown up at the scene.  They all started to laugh
out loud.    Jimmy was still on all fours puking on
the centre line. And a crowd of cops were laughing.
standing above Jimmy

                A young girl video-taped the  scene on her cell phone
and took it into Bell media office. The scene looked shocking
on the next day`s  six o`clock news.
                 It looked a lot worse than it was
                   

               Iit turns out, not only was Jimmy charged with four
counts of theft ,charged with distributing obscene materials,
careless driving, impaired driving, blocking  a public
thruway, mischief, resisting arrest and forceable
confinement.

            Some of the police are still reading those mags.
I heard it was part of some rookie  initiation. The magazines are
l kept as evidence  even to this day,  Now everyone in town knows
what Jimmy likes - the spankings , the  butt plugs, the paddles, and the cane.
None of this was too surprising to anybody.
     
        No one was shocked until they saw the big baby bonnets  ,
the adult sized baby diapers, and the adult sized  baby soother.
        It was the soother that put my assistant over the top, sent her into
gales  of laughter.
        "How are they supposed to have sex when he`s got that thing
in his mouth and he`s wearing a diaper?"
              "Sex? Oh no... no sex!" They don`t have sex,"
I`m no expert but I suggest this is what they do:  His wife sits above him in a chair
wearing nylons and heels. She tells him to
hump a  pillow on the floor while he`s he`s  wearing his diaper.
 She makes him put on his diaper and "masturbate for mommy".
   
               "OOoo, it`s hard to talk about some of this stuff, but you know my
motto , `Get to heart of the story no matter how strange or twisted
it may be."
              Mommy-wife  will have more fun later. For now she watches
her husband pumping on the pillow.
              No hands!" she insists and she means it, too! She`s holding
a long very thin riding crop in one hand .  If he touches himself
with his hands, she`ll  whip  the hell out of him.



               I understand their relationship has gone through some changes,
now that Jimmy`s back from jail. He has had some experiences in
the slammer that humbled him considerably. That`s what jail is
for - ha! ha! - to chastise you and get you in line, to give you an
attitude adjustment.
               Well,  Jimmy certainly got one of those!

              Now his wife has got a  big studded collar around his neck and he`s chained
to an iron post in the ground, right near his doghouse. 
             He has to act like a dog at all times and I`m told he has gotten
into the doggie act amazingly well. She feeds him in a big yellow plastic dish
in the back yard. She puts his dish on the grass near his  doghouse.        
            "No hands!" she calls out,  when he starts to eat.
And he obeys her, too.
              They get along pretty well  now, better than before. She only
beats him when he keeps on barking and barking   for too long.        
 




(C)2016 by W.G. Milne