The Cheese Does Not Stink Alone.

I post regularly at Best of the Fray at www.slate.com and this is a reprint of a recent post. It seemed relevant to something. I'll be traveling for the next week or so; likely I won't be writing here during that time. Avast!

Probably it is an un-necessary exercise on my part to do this. But if it only makes me feel better then maybe that is enough. Every now and then it's a good thing to define ourselves a little more directly than what can be inferentially drawn.

You can perhaps move through this life without making enemies. I doubt you would be a very interesting person. We'll exempt Lao Tzu and similar rare entities we have this gift of colorless water. They are 'gate... gate... paragate...' I am not.

Since we cannot move without being opposed, even if it be at a distance, in a glance; whether it be the result of our clothes, our nose or our eyes; it behooves us to choose who our enemies will be. I use 'enemies' loosely. Some respect is possible between opposing perspectives. Mild dislike is not the same as homicidal fury.

Some see bush and cheney and organisms like them as practical politicians. Some view them with regard or respect, with fear, with a reflexive, subconscious, authority genuflection or with an attraction to the life. Some see them as evil, heartless, manipulative, mislead or misleading, or just a couple of God's chillun.

Everybody you can think of is here. BOTF runs the gamut from some of the most pristine intellects to some of the densest protozoa among us. We got cold, emotionless reptiles and we got verge o' tears hystericals. We have both comedians and clowns and there is a difference.

I haven't seen a single poster here who has maintained, without exception, that equillibrium which is the secret of the Great Work. A very few possiblities come to mind and you know who they are.

This is the playground at recess and it is the sidewalk in front of the drugstore. It's a bunch of people with sticks and varying degrees of skill. As virtual as this place is, people do get hurt, offended and sometimes make an ass of themselves. I've been on both sides of all of it. I'm more skilled than I was but far less skilled than I ought to be. All of you, the good, the bad and the ugly have done me a great service in the process. I have served you too.

You grow here and you can't grow without pain.

I want to take this opportunity to explain why I think as I do. We all reason differently. We arrive at different conclusions. For myself, I make connections. If someone does something in New York, I am likely to travel with it to its final destination. I believe you can say something in Saddle River and have it heard in Cairo the next week. For me it's like a stone thrown into a lake. The ripples eventually encompass the lake. A stone thrown into the lake and an airplane crashing into the lake will have a degree of difference. Some of us have more power in the phenomenal, more power for harm.

When I see a dead body I trace backward. Sometimes the bullet or the bomb originated thousands of miles away and was fired from a fountain pen. When people starve you can blame them for poor location or whatever you do when it is your nature to give the victim the blame. Or you can think this or that is the reason.

When I count the dead in The Congo I think of merchants in Belgium and other locations. I think of the people who wear finery. I think of lifestyles. When I think of oil I think of the supression of technologies to the contrary. When I think of weapons manufacturers I think of the need for use, the need for increased sales, the need to generate conflicts for use and replacement. I think of the arguments in the minds of everyone of us and the hotspots in the world which they travel to across the astral transmission lines that circumnavigate the globe. It IS all connected.

So I look at bush and I see bloodstaned hands. I see a mass murderer. Whenever diplomacy might have served and was not used I look for another motive. Wherever threat might have served in the place of action, wherever food might have served in the place of words, wherever the joined hands of a collective industry might have helped and instead a crushing enslavement of debt was applied; I see men in suits in offices working on the bottom line.

As I have said elsewhere, mary cheney is like the person who drives the getaway car at a bank job. Her hands are bloody too, she supports killers. Many journalists and media types kill with the use of robot hands at a distance. It serves many an industry to initiate conflict. Death is a business.

I cannot change this world. I don't like this world. I wish I were elsewhere. I take little pleasure in this place. Although, I'm certain, I'm happier than most anyone I meet. The secret is not wanting anything. I've learned to swim against the tide without running into the fish passing me in the other direction. I no longer throw my body in front of cars. However, my life is not as important as all the lives ripped apart by unfeeling psychopaths at the wheel of power.

I oppose these people. I would stop them if I could. I can only hope that the greater portion of the world might rise up alongside... but they are distracted by life and silk-screened into pleasure-lands, dream dens, upon bar stools, before entertainments and tables and bedrooms of scented bodys by the minds fireplace. We all dream.

So whether I am right or wrong is not the issue. I've only my words and my thoughts to counter injustice and to no great effect. But I will fight these evil fucks till my last breath. Of course it is Quixotic and I am confused on occasion. Good and evil melt into something beyond the ken of our divided minds. It's all under control and it is more wonderful than terrible. It's better in the long run than we can even know.

But not to fight the good fight is to be a coward and a slave. Not to cry out against injustice is to give it your support.

Yes, we must be sure that "in the pursuit of monsters we do not become one." But I'm not about social reformation but rather about the channeling of appetite into the formation of another world. We build that place there with our efforts here. Here and there are the same except that we perceive them with diferent tools. Heaven begins where our feet touch the Earth. We are building our coming world both here and there.

There has to be more to being here than acquiring things you can't travel with. There has to be more than a thousand and one nights. There has to be more and I suspect we are that more in becoming or not becoming, over straight or very convoluted roads.

I'd rather I had had less Lovelace and more Eliot- but that's just the mind always eyeing another pasture. We are always most real between our personal extremes- that is our peace. But we are more often in transit between.

I don't care how many curtains they erect, how many carnival lights there are, how many girls wink at me and move their hips, how many car horns, radios, TV sets and rest stops there are on this highway. I can see the machinery behind it. However long you stop and stay, you always have to get back on and head on out. And behind these constructs are just the supporting two by fours that hold up the mock town on a Hollywood set. I looked.

I can't imagine and haven't found more than a few things worth living or dying for. Love is one, Justice is another; most importantly is to meet the one who has authored it all and to be led away unseen to the hidden kingdom. Since this is what I have found to this point it is all I have. In the process people will object, oppose, not understand, or what have you. But it won't make any difference until I find a better way.