How Does and Era End?

According to playwright Arthur Miller, an era “can be said  to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”
      
       Hasn't an era ended if I can put Pat McCullough's (pseudonym for client) info off to the side and not write anything for her ... and not have anything “bad” happen to me.  I need to write and tell her that I am not going to do any work for her.  She now has millions and should hire someone else to do it for her ... and when she figures out why I am doing this she should call me and come down and I will buy her lunch at the Ramada Inn and I’ll explain it to her … or she can explain it to me.
      
       Hasn't an era ended when I don't want to be a physician anymore?  When I am not afraid to hire a consultant to go after new contracts to expand my company and shoot for triple the income by the end of the year?
      
Passages, Crises, Stages and Eras

The October Syndrome:
the leaves fall,
the body fails.
the mind deserts us.
we need jails
for the body, not the mind.

the mind is free
of worries and
cares and
of woe is me.
it's backwards, the world,
I've thought that for years.

when you ought to be
laughing you are
shedding tears.

when you ought to be
crying you
are racked with pain
from the humor of circumstance:
               a pig in the rain,
               an Eskimo's ice box,
               an Arab's space heater.

it's queerer and queerer:
the rich man's a cheater;

the poor bastard gives away all that he has,
then goes to earn more
to feed starving lambs.

the ones who have "everything"
really have nothing.

the ones who are struggling
are swaddled in bunting
of red, white and blue
or today's favorite colors,
by grateful receivers of
staples they're hunting.

you win, but you lose it,
you fail to succeed.
you get what you want
but don't have what you need.

you strive for a goal and
make fun of the gooks
who don't have objectives,
who don't have roots
in the ground, and
no plans for the
future, tomorrow,
they just go on living,
without joy or sorrow,
just living and dying without direction,
Free Spirits wandering
without a connection
to anything I can see anywhere.

can it be,
I'm afraid to ask,
does a life without tasks
well-defined, planned,
scheduled and ordered,
hold the answer to structure,
the solution to boredom?

Is the real answer "living,"
not looking for "life,"
is it doing, not thinking,
is it fun and not strife.

if winning is losing and
losing don't matter
and neither does "don't"
as opposed to "doesn't matter,"
then I've missed the point,
I've been led astray by
illusions and
mystique and
power and play
as in:
play with my mind,
don't tell me the truth.
tell me what I "should say"
and starting from youth
tell me how things are done
and what things we say,
and what we don't do
'cause our kind's not that way.

so I'll grow up with
curtains and
screening and
blinds and
dirt-covered windows
that I'm stuck behind.

I'm trying to see out,
but what the hell,
there is so much damn filtering
how can I tell
what is real,
what is fake,
what is true and
what's not.

I'm so confused hereabout
I can't use
what I've got
in the way of skills,
to sort it all out.

from the top of this tower of bullshit I sit on
       and
       look
       down on
                    real things
                                    miles down below,
it's so far away
how is a person to know

what is real,
what's made up,
what's right and
what's wrong.

is it right 'cause you told me
or now is that wrong?
is it wrong cause you told me
and now it's all right?
or will all of my days be spent
walking in night-
like confusion and
darkness and
worry
about who is the Judge and
who is the jury?

which one is properly prepped
for the task?
it's no wonder so many
men take up the flask or
the  pill bottle, needle or
gun at the worst,
       (the quickest if you prefer
        your death in a burst)

nary a day-to-day
slaking of thirst
which grows larger and drier
as suns rise each day,
'til you think that the bottle or
pill won't belay
the pain and the hurt.

but, then, big surprise!

you're dying!
it's working!
in front of your eyes
a real death is lurking!

it's working, the pain's gone,
oops, so is your liver,
but the hurt is a dream,
and you're life's
just a sliver
of memories.

painful, yes, ahhh,
but now waning,
episodes recalled,
       (but only with straining)
                         (and effort)
                         (and energy),

god how you work, but now back-
wards to subdue
the slivers
that lurk
in the cracks.

The Beauty of Backwards
 
the beauty of "backwards"
is that it says you have finally made it to the point where
you can enjoy life
because
you have to expend more energy
trying to remember the by-gone slivers
than
you used to spend
trying to forget the chunks.

one switch like that and
you can begin to see
a hundred of them a day,
everywhere.

nothing is really what it seems,
not even you.
you're what you
think
you are, but that's not
really what you have
become.

to discover what that is,
turn your head upside down and
see what you find.

most of us find that we are,
when upside down,
looking up our own
asshole,

which may have been what we were doing
all our lives
and didn't even
know it until
now.

or worse yet, someone else turned
our heads upside down a long time
ago
and we have been looking up
their asshole
all this time not realizing it,

you know,
like when you  “are only doing
what your
father
wanted you to do."

then you find out
he didn't even care, never cared, still doesn't care to this day,
what you do or how you do it.

"minor" shocks like that cause people to start wars or
        spray a MacDonald's restaurant in San Diego / San Ysidro
with three
semi-automatic weapons,
splattering
Big Macs and Large Fries all over
the ceiling and
the walls, to say nothing of
the additional pieces of tissue,
brains
hair clumps,
eye balls and
other assorted body parts of 21 people killed and 19 injured all over the
                                 "Over 164 billion Sold"  sign (*)
hanging on the wall.

I  wonder  if
that MacDonald's closed down or
if it is back
in business? (**)

      (*) 247 billion as of April 30, 2010
     (**) addendum: it was closed and bulldozed; a new one was built two blocks away.

The Decision

I haven't decided:

is the October Syndrome (*) the end of an age
or the beginning of an era.
(*) http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The--October--syndrome-5723

it certainly marks the end of an era, since
all of the previous basic illusions are exhausted by
the occurrence.
but the flip side of the
coin has interesting words
and pictures printed on it too:

is the onset of The October Syndrome the start of
a new era and if so can we figure out
what the Basic Illusions of the new era are and,
in so doing,

either,

postpone the passing of that new era or hasten
its demise in a conscious manner?

it does follow logically,
doesn't it,

that if "we are finally free of the illusion" that our father controlled
us, then we have to
ask the questions:

free from what?
free to do what?
really free or just apparently free?
or just free of that one parental figure and now
controlled by some other parental surrogate or
substitute illusion  ...
when will this new era end by our becoming "free of"  ...
or by exhausting ...
this new illusion?

The Waltz With Death Effect
                    —> Transition
                           —> Transformation
      
"It goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three CLICK !   ..."

you are  a cop and you are depressed.
you are Catholic, have two kids, an ex-wife, a girl friend who lives with you,
you see your kids on alternate weekends and you want to kill yourself.

so you go see a therapist and talk about it, but nothing gets any better and you report that you are getting more and more depressed and are fearful of becoming suicidal.

you think about suicide more frequently each week.

then you get a call one night on duty, a domestic situation.

a father has called because his son has gone berserk in their two story farm house just outside of town.  the kid has threatened the whole family and has fired a couple of shots from the 38 in a random fashion inside the building.  the family is out of the house and you are called to check it out.  your partner checks the yard and the back door while you go around the front, in the door and through each of the downstairs rooms ... but you find nothing.

you mount the narrow, central stairway which rises from
the entry foyer
straight up to the landing
on the second floor ...

with your service revolver cocked,
held upward in firing position.

as you near the top step you see
a shadow
coming from your right side,
not moving,
but in the hallway on the second floor.
you step up,
aim
scream "Police! Freeze!"

you hear

the CLICK ! of a double-action
revolver being cocked,
pointed at the space between your eyes.
as if in slow motion your mind knows
you have heard one click
and you must hear two before the revolver can be fired.

without further thought you sense
his revolver has not
clicked the second time,

you round the corner toward the click
but you have already BANG !
fired your service weapon and
are sure that the bullet has
covered at least 6 of the 12 inches separating you
from the gunman
before he even knows what has happened.

in the next limitless instant
he is hit
pulls his shot skyward,
blows a very large hole in
the ceiling of the hallway and
has a grand mal seizure as he falls to the floor.

your shot has penetrated his skull with
unerring precision.
it takes  minutes,
apparently two or three full
minutes for him to
instantaneously
hit the floor as you watch in amazement.

as he falls    s l o w l y,

gracefully,

jerking arms and legs
going in different directions
from the neurological shock of the missile that
tumbled
and
slashed
its
way
through his
gray matter

(and now lies firmly embedded, almost two thirds of the way through
a two by twelve in the frame of the house!),

you are aware your depression is
melting in an almost visible,
physical,
palpable
way.

you feel it either
draining
out of your body or
being lifted off your shoulders in a musical, lyrical way.

there can't possibly have been time to think of all this,
but you did:
as if both you and the rapidly dying gunman are dancing with
death.

Death spins you,
his former partner,
around,
twirls you to the point of throwing
off the weight of his presence
with which you have had to cope for
so long ... and .. .

waltzes his way over to the
bloody,
grotesque
form,
dancing in its
tonic
clonic,
jerking,
dissonant,
uncoordinated way toward the
sanded … polished ... hardwood ... so ... as ... to ... catch ... him,
unite with ... him ... just ... before ... the ... foundation-shaking ...
                                                                                                                               
                                                                thud !
to dance the last few  bars with the
former son,
former gunman,
former lunatic
to keep him from having
to dance alone this one last time.

Death takes his victim to another ballroom
down below and you are left
                                               alone
without a partner,
without the weight of depression,
without the suicidal thoughts and
with the recognition that
if you had really been suicidal
you would have let him
shoot you.

but instead you won the Quick Draw Contest handily ...
automatically ....
instinctively .... and,
believe this ...
so gracefully
with one of the smoothest, most coordinated and on-target fluid
point-and-shoot motions you can ever remember having put together.

Killing another man in self-defense is not suicidal behavior.

Waltzing with Death had definitely made him a transformed man.

Waltzing with Death was definitely a dance of                    
                                                                           Transfiguration.

       The message that he heard when he listened to the voices inside was suddenly different than before.  He didn't hear depression and despair.  Now he heard "Live! I want to live!" He felt so good he never did go back to see his therapist again. He was too busy living.
      
       The feeling of how bad things were was gone.  The illusion that the feelings were so bad the only solution was to kill himself had disappeared.  Nothing was that bad.  All of the sudden he knew all he had to do was cope with each problem, one at a time ... and he knew he could do that,
but only if he was alive.

        Dead he couldn't cope with anything and dead he wasn't.  Dead was the only way he wouldn't be able to cope, since he now knew, being alive, he could cope with anything . . . if he could cope with this he could cope with anything.
      
       The era of his depression was over the instant the hammer of his gun dropped, sending the 230 grain ball spinning like a rocket down the barrel of his 45, taking the midbrain out of that maniac and, in the process, exhausting the last breath of the cop's illusion that he was now, or ever would be again, suicidal.

The "Infinite Now:" A Clue to Finding Forever

In the beginning
THE was the word and
the word was THE and
it was an Object and
the Object was good.

THE Object was the center and the focus.
The light which shone from it was the light
that was shone upon it,
the light illuminated
all that it touched and cast deep, black shadows
upon all that was
behind it and
under it and
darkness was there.

But when we had THE,
we had Everything and
we were good because we had it.

THE was all we needed and if we had THE our lives were complete and we were better than anyone around us and they envied THE Object and admired us.

But faded THE did, and waned THE did and lost its luster and attraction and the feelings faded and THE was no longer the Object that it once had been,

causing us to search

for an Object to be found that would be THE Object, and we would
be restored by it and we would
keep it glistening, never to let it get
dull and fade as had the olde one, THE . . .  such a THE which we had revered, but had now revealed to us as never we thought it would that it had:
Finiteness,
a limit,
an age or
eon, through which it would serve,
but then would pass and like a long, long play upon a stage,
surprise us with a dropping curtain when just
we felt that it would never end, but entertain us
throughout all eternity,
or least-wise 'til we dozed The Sleep,
bigger than all other sleeps combined,
whenever that transpires, "Later,"
sometime amidst the infinite years.
 
So THE becomes a Finite THE,
THE With and End, to our befuddlement, but why?

We should have known that Infinites need Finites to exist or How can they?
(Exist, that is).

They have no foil against which they can ring the trueness of
their depth, save when compared to
Things that never end.

And that's the Object of
The Story of THE, An Object,
with a start and end and a life unlike all others.
It exists and fades, no matter that we hold as tight as ever.

THE has held us and we it,
THE slips away in spite of all, and we
are left with empty hands,
a state for which we weren't prepared, but which prepares us
for the coming phase,
unlike our previous plans which have prepared us
for nothing, save
frustration that our energies all went for
naught.
We "should have stood in bed" for all the good it did.

We watch THE Object go and realize that We have Not.
(Gone, that is, with it).

We're left behind to watch THE go,
to watch another THE appear as though a Grand Supply of THEs
was just behind the hill,
awaiting Time
or Chance
or Grand Design
to give the cue for it to show its Face.

We watch THE come and go and, disenchanted by the passing line,
seek refuge in a place that's more akin to our
felt needs
and wants
and longings, deep, primeval, for a womb, a cave, a hideaway.
So,
crazed,
we wing our way from here to there,
then stop.

We realize THE's gone,
in decadence it's disintegrated right before our eyes and  . . .
wait.

We're not only still bemused, but also back from one full circuit 'round the castle, moat and all, and right back where we started from.

How nice.

The path is Infinite,
a circle
without ups and downs
or corners sharp
or curves all winding.

Arcing slowly to the left
or right,
I guess we could decide,
but always coming back to Here,
much better than Olde THE, a Finite Cuss who always disappointed us
by crumbling in the End.

So now we know:

the game's to Play ... to PLAY, not THINK ABOUT.
The Game's to Play for Playin's sake,
the opposite of "Play to Win" or
"Play to Lose" or
"Play to Smash Someone to Smithereens."

Who cares about Them anyway?
We've got Our Game to Play
and
They
have
Theirs.

Save passing in the night,
the twains shall never meet,
and that in darkness,
not knowing what transpired,
except for wind and dust and
clacking clicks of wheels on steel
defining cracks between the rails
by beating out a rate-dependent rhythm of
"clickety-clacks mean
steely cracks:
you'd better not
fall in one."

THE seems to be forgotten now as
Play we must at new-found games.
Who knows their names, or cares? No one I see,
although I can't see everyone, so
someone,
somewhere
might know what to call this, but
The Game
is good enough for me.

The Game; it energizes and it teaches as we Play.
There's no way to lose except to stop,
because
the Playing of the Game is Winning and
the Winning's in the Playing
not
the start or
middle or
the end, like THE, Olde THE, Olde Useless THE,
whose passing never indicated Joy was on the way
to take the place of Long-lost THE.

Well, not so much was Joy the
real replacement for Olde THE,
as was Relief,
my God! Relief!

I never thought there was so much to feel
when THE was gone
as when I first met true Relief.

With Happiness so uppermost in song and story,
fable,
lore and
Constitution
who would think Relief would hold a candle to
Pursuit of Happiness?

The thing about Relief:
when it comes, it's Now,
not later,
not tomorrow,
after meals, when meat and spinach are all
gone and then
dessert
is carried in.

No, not Relief.  Relief says:
"Hey! I'm here! It's me, right Now,
                                       right Here,
                                       let's Revel,
                                       God I'm such a Party Person!

"Don't you get it?  I'm Not This,
                                     not That,
                                     not THE
                                     or Them
                                     or anything External.

"Just Relief, in Here, down Here in inside from top to toe I'll
make you feel content, serene and calm.  And that, along with
Common,
Unexciting and
Ordinary beats
Happiness
hands down."

The outcome of the process is to realize a Truth:
we've gone from THE to THE and found that THE is wanting
by itself,
it ages, dies and leaves us
seeking yet another THE to take its place.

But, as a word alone, THE's not a strong contender.
So then we went for Infinite,
since THE was Finite,
endings leaving us non-plussed,
empty and
anxious for
"some more" of This or That.

However, with its Infiniteness, the Infinite leaves
a big, black
Question Hole:

"Infinite" in what direction, where, when, how, with whom and why?

The answer is, of course, Right Now.

The Infiniteness is greatest use to us Right Now.

It turns out that, alone, the three are
of no use to us
or to each other.

However:

Combining THE with Infiniteness, with Now and,
like a three-leg stool,
they hold each other up,
supporting THE with Infiniteness
at just the time we need it,
Now,
since that is
all we have.

You can't sit on that stool tomorrow and
if the date's "today"
you've missed your chance to do it "yesterday,"
but Now You Can,
forever Now,
and ever.

No time constraints,
no limits
nor no bounds.

THE Infinite Now permits you, in its wisdom (and hopefully in yours), to take a chunk of time so big you can't imagine where it ends or starts or where the middle is, because it doesn't have those parts to worry you.  It doesn't start, it doesn't end, it just IS, and since it IS Right Now, let's use it, but don't rush, no need, I'll give you one Now at a time and if you need another one I'll give that to you too.

Time to get to work.
Gotta go.

See you "Later,"
whenever That is.

Why "Life Stinks" doesn't

Comments on “Life Stinks” which, your mother will tell you, you should get the DVD of and watch, while contemplating the message(s) for you it is sending (already) !

            Mel Brooks is not wrong.   The Critics are wrong. The Critics say Mel brooks stinks.  Mel Brooks says life stinks. I say The Critics stink and they have completely missed the point of the movie,  del Brooks did not stink as the 2,000 year old man or in Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety or ...

            He is one of the world's funniest people and a comedic genius.  So let's think about this for a minute.  Do you really think that the comedic genius who has either written or picked the successful scripts like the ones above over the years would be blind to the LACK of humor in this work? Do you think someone who loves being the Best Buffoon would unconsciously pick a Non-Boffo showcase for his talents?

            After all, this man does not have to say to himself "let the Schvartz be with you," He IS THE SCHVARTZ! And the Schvartz, take it from me (and you ought to because I don't deserve to have it) . . . The Schvartz Never Does Anything Unconsciously . . . sooooo I think you should weigh the idea that when The Schvartz, who has been funny for 2,000 years, does a piece that EVEN HE CAN'T MAKE FUNNY, then maybe, just maybe (which, of course, means For Sure!) he did it to sensitize us to the things around us today which are so bad, need so much attention and are being ignored by so many ... to get us to think ... to fill the intellectual blind spot into which we shove the homeless, the poor (urban and otherwise), the poor (urbane and not so urbane and otherwise), those people in whom a sane idea could not find a home (a slightly different kind of "homeless" person).

            What if we reject the hypothesis (which is even difficult to write about it is so ridiculous) that some mindless twit in the finance department of the studio has been told "Give Brooks whatever he wants, $10, $20 million, whenever he wants it."

            He would probably get a bigger laugh from the request for $20 million than he would for the jokes in a bad script.  These are the times when 8, 10, 12 writers go over and over a script before it is produced.  So I personally think we have to reject the hypothesis that the picture was produced by zombies in their sleep spending down overflowing money coffers to avoid paying tax on earned income.   

            Anyone who has ever tried to tell a joke, write a skit or get a laugh at a party knows two things: 1. you have to think hard to get it right; and, 2. thinking is hard work.  So this movie didn't just "happen," it was created by hard-thinking people who know two more things about comedy than we do: nobody likes pain of any sort and all good comedy is based on suffering, hopefully the suffering of someone other than ourselves.

            Therefore, assuming that the apparently mindless comedic genius of Brooks has to have a mandatory sense of the painful, then what kind of movie would he produce if he wanted to talk about suffering to an audience that doesn't even want to THINK about the pain and suffering of others, let alone DO anything about it?   VOILA!  "LIFE STINKS! Already !! "

-------------------------

Life Stinks: IMDB pages: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102303/