The Heretik

IN DREAMS

EVERY SINNER WOULD SEE himself a saint in his dreams.  Redemption may be the most powerful narrative we know.  Who has not fucked up sinned in an earlier life and wanted to change the world his life?  When darkness falls, a dream may light the night for each of us.  What we take from night’s sweet rest may be a taste of heaven or hell.

And I hope when it's all said and done, people will say that George Bush knew how to make a decision and to stick by it. You know, not let the polls or the focus groups determine the course of history, but he made decisions based upon principles and things I firmly believed in. I'll tell you one thing I firmly believe in: I think I believe liberty is universal. freedom is the deep desire of every human being and that a country with influence like ours ought to do things to free people. And there's all kinds of ways to do so. I meant what I said in my inaugural address, we ought to end tyranny in this century. And so long as I'm the president I'm going to follow through on what I said I would do.

WE SHOULD ALL BE thankful we only have to live our own dreams or not, not the dreams of others.  To live in another’s delusion could be an endless ten or twenty year endless nightmare. 

REALITY BITES
STATE MEDIA Left I hits right on:  Repeating an Amy Goodman quote I've mentioned before: "If we had state media in the United States, how would it be any different?" In the post below this one, I note Bush's inaccurate answer to the question of how many Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. Bush's answer, that 30,000 figure, is being reported, and even headlined, widely -- The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and on NBC Nightly News that I am currently watching (and no doubt on every other news outlet). Not one of them cast the slightest doubt on that 30,000 figure. Evidently, Bush's credibility has such a strong record that questioning a "fact" asserted by him is beyond the pale. Right.

NEIL SHAKESPEARE Designing Jhihadists.

PICASSO MEETS RUMSFELD

The women cry tears unseen.  The men more fortunate are dead, home in the ground. The less lucky, the tortured, and the disappeared hang in the sky, the blurs of eyes black, somewhere below the clouds. The women wash them, the bodies of memory are washed with tears, the tears the women let no one else see.  The women’s tears fall below clouds and never reach the ground.

THE HERETIK HAS A HOPE in this forsaken fouled air that one good man might speak even as men of power don’t listen. Some day history may look back on the day at the Pentagon when somebody spoke up for who we are.

GEN. PACE:  It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.  As an example of how to do it if you don't see it happening but you're told about it is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago.  There's a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility.  That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts.  They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it.  So they did exactly what they should have done.
SEC. RUMSFELD:  But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.
GEN. PACE:  If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.

WE AMERICANS KNOW who we are and what we stand for.  Some may have forgotten. A civilization cannot be defended by the devil without the stain of darkness forever having governance of the sky.  No one need kneel in darkness when others hold up a light. 

ON PICASSO AND POLITICS

GIVEN THE CHOICE I would take Picasso over politics.  Every time.  Eleven times out of ten.  But as happens on these pages, the narrative of the day and its events hijack my soul as much as they must.  Until I can’t stand it anymore.  I am but a blogger though my story is seldom told, I carry the reminder . . . Why do we care?

HOW CAN YOU NOT?  We live in historic times about which songs someday will be sung.  Who hasn’t? Events now take place that will change the world forever.  When have they not?  We live in times of the greatest moment.  Who hasn’t?  We live with the consistent illusion that our era exceeds all others for its import.  Cynics resign themselves to all things now as they always have and laugh.  The comic in me may as well.  There is more in life than a blue hue and a hard reality.  What acid the cynic burns the face of the day with will not be the mark of these times. I live ever on the edge of hope, unafraid of the occasional tumble.

AND WHAT ABOUT PICASSO?  The friend I have never met Picasso lives outside the common reality in the nobility of the simple line and the forever true, the essence of the soul found in hue, in the space found in the fracture of a cubist face and cultures.  Blue, Parisian, Cubist, political even when he was not.  Picasso is about politics as all artists and all people are, whether we know it or not.  How and why we apply paint to the canvas of our lives reveals with every stroke who we are and who we are not.  Artists great and less than great live in their own worlds, but we share one as well.

ART MAY BE the refuge of the soul, but that is not the sole power of its forms.  When the artist comes out of his necessary solitude, the like of Guernica comes to life.  I return again to Guernica.   Guernica, specific to a Basque town in a Spanish war of Republican and Loyalist, is not limited to its time.  Some say we live in a Republican time of our own.  Fallujah could be Guernica. Who will paint that? And what Old Guitarist will sing a song?  Who remembers Baghdad is the Babylon of old?  Who can forget the rivers of tears cried by those in search of peace.  Are we captive in the infinite dark prison of ourselves?

By the rivers of Babylon
Where we sat down
And there we wept
When we remembered Zion

But the wicked carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
How can we sing King Alfa song
In a strange land
Cause the wicked carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
How can we sing King Alfa song
In a strange land

Sing it out loud
Sing a song of freedom sister
Sing a song of freedom brother
We gotta sing and shout it
We gotta talk and shout it
Shout the song of freedom now

WAR IS LIFE and some say inevitable.  Can we ever be free of war and should we be?  Who wants peace when another holds a sword must be a fool.  But no peace ever lasted when “the victor” holds the sword over the vanquished.  Peace itself is the struggle, the undiscovered country we would all be citizens of if we could forget the arbitrary boundaries of man.  Peace may be the stuff of fools and dreamers, but we are such stuff as dreams are made on.

WASHINGTONICA

PARODY IS ON PARADE in the halls of power.   Who will be the next Picasso who paints the Guernica of this day?  Will some sculptress make a form out of this mess today?  Are we doomed to high expectations low balled by reality?  Words fail.

LAUGHTER LIVES when even hope seems to die.  This kid makes me laugh.  And then there is Neil.  Neil Shakespeare day in and day out reminds me coffee is best fully swallowed before opening his page.  Who has you laughing today?