Love at a Reasonable Price

no more
please
captain of the sliding ship
sliding through the atmosphere towards the land where it will break into many pieces puking bodies all over the alien scenery
sliding down the waves deeper and deeper where Davy Jones sleeps and his locker holds all his dreams
a pretty girl
a happy home
a family in a nice safe spot
a world that didn’t walk over him
or flush him down into the pitch black deep dark empty sea so far down so very wrong about what was going to be

who is in the wrong now?
please don’t make me go back
please no more
please I can’t do any more of this
please God
not again
down into the boring stress
down into the pointless struggle
and yet
why should
I
be so special?
Most everyone slogs against the mud
soft and deep cold and calm indifferent to our puny mortal hooks and jabs

your useless strength
your useless power
your useless violence
because
you are lying
and the lying is always
bodies turned to corpses turned to bones turned to dust turned to sand turned to never mind
sorry

you
well
you have no idea
you
well
you are wrong
but
it doesn’t matter
the rose petals have fallen
the chill has set in
the snow will fall
the gods don’t care
and the Great God only cares for the One Light
that Eden saw play
you
well
you have no idea
you
well
you are wrong
but
so am I so is this so are we so it comes for us all

it is not true
it is a lie
that that would be everything
that that is salvation
that that is all there is
that that is eternal Truth
still
it is true
that you
are lonely
and worn down
by shots fired in the dark
by letters sent to the wall
by dramas staged in the nowhere in the nothing in the nohow

gets old
wears you down
wins in the end
must you lose
when it wins?
must you break apart
as it hatches?
gets old
you
all alone
no one wants to know
you don’t want them to anyway
but you try it!
you’ll see
it wears you down
it hurts right through
it kills you inside out
but
all along
there’s bigger problems
in wider skies
you must listen to the wider pain
you must hear the wider mistake
and you must reorientate yourself
before it is too late
and the game
becomes as impossible as the fools and villains pretend it is right here and now

Who’s the lazy mother fucker who never fought the war?
Who’s the shitless baby pussy face who never dodged the fire
raining across from above and all sides?
Who wandered into his forties over the corpses of young men with their dead eyes open in surprise?
Who never did anything for anyone and watched democracy die a lonely and most of all bored and half-ass death?
Who’s the criminal in the stocking cap torturing children in the early dawn?
What’s a criminal who is never caught but the nice guy next door?
But you’ve mixed up the sins, the little, the medium, and the pretty big huh
Just kids
dead for what?
And now what?

You missed the eighties
And the nineties (except?)
We met
You smiled
I fell apart all over the place like wet cardboard
In time, given the opportunity to tell you how I felt, I barfed all over your face
You left
I felt bad
I felt sick
I wanted to die
Now
I don’t know
what can I do?
Anything that would be nice?
That would make things OK between us?
If there’s anything any good I could do here, I want to do it please

We have found the ingredient
not to tell us our Truths are lies
but to show how expedients
how shortcut grabs at certainty
break mind and heart from the kind resolve
that lets all our Truths live through us all.

No one’s worldview means anything to anyone except to the degree that worldview helps them to feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind and joyfully-together.

But none of those concepts mean anything to anyone except insofar as they are illuminated by a Love that is not just “a nice idea” or “one way of looking at things”, but that is a spiritual Reality, and that can thus serve as a reliable guide in our inner quest to discover what is really going on, what really matters / what the proper use of our love really is, and how to fit ourselves into what is really going on so as to move towards what’s truly better and away from what’s truly worse.

And so we see that no one’s worldview makes any sense to anyone except insofar as that worldview helps one abide by the universal values (aware … joyfully-together) and center one’s feeling/thinking/acting around a Love that shines through all things (including each conscious moment, hence our “in”) and that Knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.”

But the Truth is not our ideas and feelings about the Truth! The Truth is wider and deeper than our ideas and feelings. And so wisdom, goodness, holiness, and et cetera: these goods are not endpoints or victories, but gentle caring constant effort to better and better love ourselves, everyone else, and the boundless Love that binds us all.

And with this potion in our flask, we save ourselves and everyone else.

A further proof — in addition to the one offered in why you be blaming us — that blaming us is totes boges.

People need to stop tryin‘ to pin everything on Bartleby Willard and Amble Whistletown!

We already proved straight up no chaser once and for ever-all that each and every thing that ever was is and shall be is 100% God’s fault — either as the ultimate/external cause of all things; or, to the degree creatures are wise (centering their feeling/thinking/acting around the Pure Love shining through everything, including each conscious moment, and thus flowing off the Pure Love into life with minimal distortion) — as the proximate/interior cause (f/t/a never flows perfectly off the Godlight shining through each consciousness moment, so even when we are very wise, our actions are to some degree the fault of God-qua-ultimate-cause and never 100% the fault of God-qua-proximate-cause).

But now this time right heres and nows we prove that even setting metaphysics to one side, it’s none of it our fault, and y’all really need to step the fuck off!!

Oh but wait! We shouldn’t set the Great God — all that scrumptious Godlight — off to one side! That’s sacrilegious. Or, wait, not sure if being sacrilegious is a problem; but this here’s more fundamentally sacri-spirit, and that’s gotta be a problem! For sure. I’d think, I’d surmise I’d best-guess.

We’re not setting the divine mystery to one side — as if that were even possible! We’re simply demonstrating — live, for your edification, and in your face sucka! — that even were one to attempt the folly of supposing God away, one would still find no plausible argument to support the claim that Bartleby Willard — author of eternally relevant kicks and oh-so reverent giggles — and/or his editor Amble Whistletown are to blame.

Oh, Okay, then I guess, well, let’s hit ’em with the proof! Let’s knock their socks off and remind ’em who bought their fancy tennis shoes in the first blankety-blank-blank-bu-bu-blink place!

Exacts! And to wit:
The thoughts and feelings that enter a person’s conscious space — do we choose them or do they enter unbidden?

Well, gosh, I don’t rightly know. Thoughts and feelings are in there, and they all slide and jostle and squish and bleed around into each other. And in all that commotion-ating, sometimes I seem to feel myself as a will directing and selecting them. But am I existing and steering when I sense myself directing and selecting? And if so, what exactly am I steering? And how much?

Picture this — and all you haters back home, suck on this:
Your thoughts and feelings flow in and out of each other, inspiring new thoughts and feelings, and together influencing the development of the thinking/feeling within your conscious space. And at some point a feeling of “I’m going with this! Here we go!” wins out. And that’s the decision. But who chose the “I’m going with this!” feeling? That part of your conscious moment where you seem to sit and feel, and that seems to steer you conscious thought, and make decisions and take actions: does it choose feelings? Does it choose the feeling of “I’m going with this!” Does it make a choice and then the “I’m going with this!” feeling rushes in? But how would it make the choice? Wouldn’t it be via a feeling of something like “Yes, this, I’m going with this”? And so again: Did that part of you where you seem to exist as a conscious being choose that feeling of “Yes … “?

But is this not the same argument as why you be blaming us!? For if there is no Godlight shining through each conscious moment, then surely we are all just the bump and jostle of antecedent causes — be they physical, emotional, or intellectual. But add in a first-cause — an uncaused spiritual atom! — that sets everything in motion but also shines through and love-lifts everything, including each conscious moment: Well, then, in such a case, that self-caused and/or causeless spark would freely choose, and — to the degree the rest of one’s conscious space were well-organized around that Godlight — one would freely choose, rather than be just another jostle in an infinite series of jostles. But here again, we see that only God could ever choose anything, and that we would only choose to the degree we are God.

But wait! What if God made individual souls that were also first-causes, not of everything, but just of whatever vessel they inhabited?

Maybe, but those individual souls — being God’s direct creations — would be pure and good. So again, if you blame me for my dastardly deeds, then you blame not me, not my soul; but merely the mistake that my ideas and feelings have become, drifting as they have so far from my own soul. In short, you blame the happenstance, and how everything all together created a scenario in which my soul was decoupled from my mind/body. Anyway, I don’t think a created soul could be a first cause, since it was created by a greater soul. Although such questions range beyond human logic, and are thus speculative at best.

Suffice it to say, people need to stop blaming us for everything. They haven’t considered the depth of the human conscious moment — how difficult it is for one to figure out what aspect of one’s conscious moment is in any given moment steering the whole, and how impossible it is for others to assess that.

Yeah, but what is freedom? What steers?
Chance, fate, necessity, God, and in there somewhere also a spark of Godlight that is our own?
Surely not, surely all is one Godlight and we are one tapestry flowing over the Godlight, seeing It better in moments when the whole-flowing-together is wiser and worse in moments when it’s foolish-er.
Maybe. Who can know? You can’t measure this. You can’t riddle this. You can only live and die with this mystery.

Can you blame souls for not maintaining control of the conscious spaces they are in?
If so, maybe you could blame us for losing the rudder, for disengaging with the Light within and thus giving the reins of our conscious space over to the mindless bump and jostle of feeling and idea untethered from a cool clear presence in the Love that chooses everyone.

In any case, you can’t possibly know enough to blame or praise yourself, let alone Bartleby Willard and/or Amble Whistletown. So QED! So take it or leave it! So we’re outta here boyzzz

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson

unable to write
the perfect essay
for today,
the essay
that would not only keep power
from Donald Trump and his would-be collaborators,
but would more fundamentally
move the mass of our collective feeling/thinking/acting
towards a
joyful, grateful, honest, thoughtful
reinvigoration of our shared democratic republic
and the universal values and spiritual Love underlying
the proposition
that all humans are created equal —–
unable to come up with the great essay we in great
panic and longing and fear and trembling
seek,
we began to consider Tenacious D’s tribute to the best song ever written.
Could something like that work here?
Perhaps if we could write down what essay we think would help here and now — what insights and informations it would have to contain, and what impact it would have to have on individual readers and on the wider shared discourse:
Maybe, we thought, maybe
an essay about the essay that would actually help us all right here and right now:
Maybe that essay about the helpful essay
could be of some help.
ughgh! hmmph!
enough preambling,
the water is cool
the creek floor is silty soft
sink down worn creek sneakers worn because of bits of sharp steel and jagged glass here and there
sliding smooth sneaker soles over smooth water-worn algae-fringed stones
merrily chasing terrified crawdads with outstretched hand and styrofoam cup
now knowing what I know
I wish the little segmented beasties the safety of the warm mudbank.
I don’t want them trapped in the reckless hands of my foolish youth

The essay we seek will sink
all the evil
It’ll show the spirit
of democracy —
a spiritual good
that allows us all
to protect what’s
most sacred to each
by agreeing to agree
where we already agree:
aware, clear, honest,
accurate, competent,
loving-kind,
joyfully-together
we build and maintain
systems that
reward good stewardship
with temporary
shared and constrained
power
and refuse power to those
who cheat, lie, break, steal,
who would plunder
our shared government
to king themselves
and checkmate the rest of us suckers.
strange self-appointed
political gods
who trade our freedom to speak without fear
for new rules that say
might is right and We’re the might!,
that
true and false are weapons
and nothing more
so you better shut up and
get with the program

The essay we seek will show
the nation and world
what Trump has done,
what his would-be collaborators
have schemed,
and
what we risk
by handing this man with those schemes
and cronies
the keys —
what risk we run with Trump;
and how outsized it is
in comparison to the risk we run
by running from Trump,
by turning aside
his id and the attitudes and ideas
that would strengthen
the weapons that would
from the inside out
dismantle
the rules, norms, institutions, and laws
that keep the people
at the helm
of their own ship of state

The essay we seek will make
this moment clear to all
will make Bill Barr remember
will make Mike Johnson recall
will make the guy with his arm on the bench back see
that democracy is good for us all
and Trump and MAGA have harmed and
will likely endanger and exhaust
and could possibly undo
our shared democracy,
which is a spiritual good
because it allows we the people
to serve as a final check against
madness, corruption, and evil in government.
By preventing tyranny,
democracy allows leaders and citizens alike to be decent, happy, and successful all at once! —
rather than constantly forcing the corrupt land’s choice:
“You’re fealty or your success and safety, and that of your family’s!”

The essay we seek will remind
us all that the way to make
things better is not by
destroying the systems that allow
us to jointly steer our shared fate.
The way towards
better
is found by a gentle refusal
to harm what is good or denigrate what helps
us all
think and feel
together.

Within a system of
equality under the law
that
lends limited power
from the governed to their leaders
for limited times,
we citizens of this
democratic republic
can share
enough Reality
— We are all in this together; bound in and through and for the Love without which nothing is OK, and with which everything is OK; and should seek, think, feel, and act accordingly (only to the degree I follow this inward path, are any of my feelings, thoughts or actions meaningful to me; and within this path is the insight that you and I are fundamentally the same) —
&
enough reality
— let us feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving-kind, joyfully-together (only to the degree we follow these universal values are our feeling, thoughts, or actions are meaningful to any of us) —
to
meaningfully share
both conversation and government.

We cannot share the Law
by telling each other how to find our ways to the Law.
That just encourages us all to lie about the most sacred things to ourselves and to others.
We share the Law
by sharing the rules, norms, and laws
that admit that no human is the Law,
and that all humans
have a duty
and a right
to seek the Law
in ways meaningful to them,
to follow the Light
where It leads them,
to speak Love as it moves them.
This is not radical permissiveness.
It is anchored in a system that allows individuals their freedom,
but not the freedom to hurt others or the shared rules, norms, and laws that keep us all safe by keeping tyranny at bay and by selecting for honesty, clarity, competency, and good faith.

The essay we seek
oh God
where is the essay
that would right this moment?
clarify these confusions,
remove this poisoned pill
from out our collective belly?
Where????

Would-be Author of this would-be work: Bartleby Willard
His Editor: Amble Whistletown
The copyright holder: Andrew M. Watson
Their hopes: broken, flailing, tortured upon the stretching rack and the twisting wheel — oh ye old fashioned methods for proving what is True and what is Good and what is HOLY!
What a convincing proof!
Not a valid one, just a convincing one.

About
Trump
and those who would encourage his dishonest destructive politicking:
Let’s not do anything about these desperate violent overreaches
except gently remove power and sway
from visions disconnected from the
Beauty
of a nation dedicated to the proposition
that all humans
are created equal
and
in this equality
deserve to share the rights and responsibilities
of a free people
freely speaking their thoughts, electing their representative, dreaming their world up together

That’s the beauty of democracy!
Peaceful gentle transitions of power — no one above the law; no one allowed to force his will upon the wider world, but all subject to the same norms, rules, and laws:
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all humans are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including but not limited to, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That’s the Beauty
we’re seeking
alone and together
in this
funny joke
about humans
finally
building and maintaining
a system of government
based on the Truth of fundamental universal equality — the kind that could only exist if Pure Love really was God of all.

*Review

*(for we’re all always a collection of forces tumbling towards more or less wisdom — with more wisdom equalling better syncing one’s feeling/thinking/acting up with the Pure Love shining through everything, including each conscious moment)