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Can’t Compete

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On the Santa Barbara Artwalk, I’ve been drawn again and again to Neal Crosbie’s booth. His golden Labrador is preparing to move on, which has occasioned deeper conversations. At the same time, three pieces caught my eye as being unusual in his oeuvre. I lingered over them each week.

All of Neal’s pieces have a figure he calls “coyoteman” as the central element. Among the Native American animal gods, coyote is the weakest and least reputable. He is unable to impose himself in any situation, and so must use misdirection to achieve his aims. As Neal recounts, eventually he achieves the ability to transform every situation, and so becomes the most significant of the gods.

This story resonates strongly with my own. Unconditional Love is the most powerful force in Creation because all things desire it, but cannot betray it without alienating themselves from it. Being so powerful, Unconditional Love cannot compete against the other elements of creation, lest it exclude them and lose its purpose.

Both coyote and Unconditional Love must therefore enter into relation with things – coyote because of his weakness, and Unconditional Love because of its strength.

Neal finds this characterization of coyote disturbing if not perturbing. When I realized how it related to the three pieces I was fascinated by – and a fourth that I had purchased already – he thought that I was describing his art. But I wasn’t – I was interpreting his art in a manner that allows me to relate better to my journey. I was talking about myself, and allowing compassion for myself in my empathy for coyote’s pathos.

So these are the images. All are oil crayon on paper.

The first is a black sketch that I think of as “Primordial Coyoteman.” It is coyote in his original state, denizen of mountains that we have rendered less and less habitable. He offers thanks for being allowed to testify as to his relationship to them – for being allowed to recall himself to us.PrimordialCoyoteman

The second is the most complex of the pieces I have seen, and the least sympathetic. Titled “Three Views of Mount Fuji,” it is Neal’s homage to mayorana Buddhism, the “Greater Vehicle” at the top of the piece.ThreeViewsOfMountJufi

Probably the dark and dense section around Coyoteman is to suggest his relationship to the earth, but I see it as an arena of mental and emotional turmoil. Coyoteman is alone, beset by threats, and has only the weapon of his wits. Under the strain, he seems ready to crack, and the boat flimsy.

The third is the most beautiful, both artistically and psychologically, for it places Coyoteman in the context of supportive relationships. “Relax Your Teeth,” it says. The bear-like figure to his right suggested to me Emerson, Neal’s dog. The fish figure is a metaphor for Neal’s wife. The teeth are shown twice, once of to the right, as though clenched, and again in a relaxed pose.RelaxYourTeeth

And the fourth, the one that Neal told me he had trouble letting go of. “If You Were a Tree” shows Coyoteman in his final state, bearing the Great Spirit feathers.IfYouWereATree

What does this mean to me? It grounds me in my journey. It reminds me to be open offerings of support even when they arrive in a context of struggle. And it gives me hope that I am not on this journey alone.

A World, A Part

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I’ve been combing my hair with a part on the left side since I was a little boy. Maybe I was just doing what my mother did.

I do perspire profusely, and in hot yoga my rug gets soaked. It’s particularly pronounced in the inverted postures, with all the sweat on my back running down my neck onto my pate. Lest it run down into my eyes, upon standing my habit is to squeegee it off my crown from left to right.

I realized last week that when I did, I was losing mental focus – becoming more emotional. That makes sense, in a way: the left side of the brain is analytical, the right intuitive. But with the realization came an image: the movement of energy from a male bastion to a female cluster, weakening the former.

So I decided to start parting my hair on the right side, just to be sure that I’m not favoring one side over another.

I wonder what consequences I’ll confront?

Abominable Candy Box

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I don’t have very many dreams any more – by which I mean stream-of-consciousness random-association imagery. My dreams are normally “visions” – conversations with other personalities that have a purpose and coherent outcome.

So this one took me by surprise.

It’s the end of the world. You know – disasters happening everywhere, people cowering in fear, bizarre monsters running amok. I am floating over the world, trying to figure out how to help. A distant harbor beckons, and when I reach the shore, I see a huge Valentine’s candy box float up out of the ocean. Yes: it’s heart-shaped and says “I Love You” on top.

I hesitate a little, not quite sure what to expect. I mean, it could be Pandora’s box, right? But a little nudge compels me to take off the lid. Yup. It’s full of abominations: slime-covered worms and twisted millipedes and gaping jaws grasping eagerly for sustenance.

The voices of the crowd scream: “Kill them! Kill them all!” But my face twists in befuddlement.

No. No, these too are God’s creatures. We have to learn out how to love them.

B-duh, b-duh, b-duh, b-duh. Dat’s all Folks!

Again?!?

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Jesus once said:

Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest.

I go many places, seeking to find a community that will recognize the opportunity that I represent. I’ve been in church meditating on the cross with my eyes closed, and when I open them the pastor said: “Every now and then the elders have to ask someone to stop coming to church, because they sexually harass everyone in the place.” At dance celebrations in five venues, people’s hearts have cried out for healing, and when I clear a space in which they can receive the love that is their right, organizers voice a similar complaint.

I try with the t-shirts. The one I dance in says “Danger: Angel gateways. Please play nicely. They just want to be friends.”

I used to put it this way: our society’s experience of masculine love is so impoverished that when people receive it, they go completely haywire. They have expectations, and project them onto the intentions of the lover. To me, it’s like being raped.

It is convention now to complain that the problems we face are due to “patriarchy,” but few recognize that the divine masculine is no more present in our culture than is the Divine Mother. That female spirituality has been driven out of the cultural limelight is actually an advantage in that regard: they practice their arts quietly in the background. But a man that dares to do the same is rejected and hounded.

Simpler forms of life have a certain clarity in that regard. Knowing that I seek nothing for myself, they flock around me. When a community gets it right, they press inwards, and then ask me to project the pattern outwards into the world. They want every fish, bird, animal, flower and tree to know what it feels like when people surrender their self-seeking and instead offer love. They want to know where it is safe to invest their strength, strength far beyond human strength, strength established from investiture in the earth over billions of years.

That is what I meant by “opportunity”: I am an amplifier pickup. Through that connection, people have the opportunity to make a serious dent in the problems we face. What most choose instead is to say “Go away.”

Trump-Washed

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I caught a little piece of an Oliver Stone interview last night. He was saying that after thirteen years of watching Trump be decisive and commanding on The Apprentice, very few except the politically sophisticated would be able to perceive the empty vacuum at the heart of his persona. Of course, about the time of the Access Hollywood recording, producers at The Apprentice let it be known that they had to work really hard to maintain that image. Trump was abusive during scenes, and arbitrary in his decisions. One of the challenges was building a back-story that justified his actions.

Coupled with this is the dominance of Fox News in Republican circles. Joy Reid was on with Chris Hayes last night, observing that the reason the Republican base still remains loyal to Trump is because Fox continues to tell them that the Russian interference scandal is nothing worth paying attention to.

Contrast this with Joseph McCarthy, leader of the Red Scare scandals of the 1950s. McCarthy would roll into town, make a bunch of baseless accusations against local politicians, and then leave. The press would publish front-page denouncements of McCarthy’s targets, followed by back-page retractions when the accusations were debunked. Lives were ruined by the asymmetrical publicity.

What undid McCarthy were the televised Congressional hearings. Before the cameras, he was revealed as a manipulative little weasel.

Of course, some among us see Trump in the same way, but his electorate has been conditioned to associate those traits with carefully-scripted moments of glory.

But what about his sons?

It was cathartic to see Donald, Jr. on Fox News last night. He came across as a whiny brat.

Trump, Sr. characterizes the meeting with Russian representatives as “opposition research” that “almost anyone” would pursue. If so, that’s an indictment of our political culture. Trump has long been cozy with organized crime figures, and draws his legal talent from a community of ugly intimidators – men that will not even bother to apply for security clearances that would never be granted. Is this where we have come as a nation? A political culture in which winning by any means possible includes crawling through the gutter with people whose livelihood requires corrupting virtue?

In the early hours this morning, I found myself musing that maybe Comey took the line he did against Clinton in part to create conditions under which that culture would be exposed. I know that it had invaded the FBI itself, where anti-Clinton zealots used Breitbart publications to motivate a criminal investigation of her family. This is a visible case of misuse of agency resources by political operatives, but what if elected officials all across the country are interceding in investigations to protect criminals that have contributed to the destruction of other candidates?

I personally don’t find that inconceivable.

J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI as long as he did because he had files full of the dirty secrets that elected officials wished to keep hidden. Could it be that organized crime has its own database at this point, and is securing its influence by blackmailing the political class? The Russian government – now the most powerful organized crime ring in the world – may not be motivated only by its foreign policy goals to attack our political system. It may also be extending its power through organized crime, and collaborating with U.S. criminals to corrupt not just our political class, but our entire culture.

Smoking Dope

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Matthew Walther at The Week argues that no smoking gun has been found to support the claim that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in its interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Walther (isn’t that the name of a gun manufacturer?) wanders a little, asserting that when the Clintons fly first-class for their global charity, they reveal their corruption, and so justify ongoing support for the President. I find that argument weakened, however, in that Trump flies in a private jet purchased with funds gained laundering money stolen by Russian kleptocrats.

And as for the central assertion: it’s going to be awfully hard to find a smoking gun in the radioactive crater left by the hydrogen bomb Trump has set off in American foreign policy. As Rachel Maddow has been laying out, Russia has been given everything that it could have asked for. Trump’s craven catering to a murderous tyrant is all the evidence required to prove his unfitness to be our head of state.

Or should that have been “cave-in cratering?”

Little Creatures

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As I progress through the video series at Love Returns, I’m having more and more trouble keeping myself anchored. Time and space, life and death, nature and design: it all winds together more thickly around my mind.

At Dance Tribe on Sunday, I felt disconnected, as though some part of me was missing from the experience – or something else was in control. Half-way through, I focused intently, and found myself thinking about the phytoplankton whose shells are dissolving. While higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide warm the air, causing the most immediate threat to human civilization, they also increase carbolic acid in the oceans. This is bleaching coral reefs and impeding the maturation of phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton are the base of the oceanic food chain, and the greatest source of the oxygen gas that we breathe to fuel our metabolism.

Their message was simple: “We can’t do it any more.”

I fell into a deep-rooted grief that built until I was concerned that it would disrupt the celebration. Taking down my gear from the shelves, I headed for the exit, only to be stopped by these lyrics:

Black lives matter.
Children lives matter.
Police lives matter.
Judge lives matter.

The grief spilled over, then, and I started sobbing, face turned to the heavens. After a time, another man leaned his head into my shoulder. I finally pulled myself together, set my gear down, and went back out on the floor.

It was different. My muscle cells seemed to float as though on an ocean swell. Bones forgotten, it was all about the tissue rising and falling, until I tumbled over onto the floor.

And then the second phase: protective tissues. Lower extremities anchored firmly as though to the ocean floor, my arms and head swayed in the air, fluid, the currents of the air rolling along and around them.

The then the final phase: shells, the calcium accretions that became our bones. Joints and alignments came into focus.

In Psalms, this echo rolls back from the Messiah:

I am less than a worm.

Not less, in that moment, but of and from. They are still inside us, those simple things.

And they are dying.

In the closing circle, we were asked to state our names and offer a word that summarized our experience in the dance. I blurted out my name, but concealed that word that was presented to me.

Destruction.