Chaos reigns

Things just build up

Thought by grisly thought

Till it bursts forth and many people die

I don’t know how to deal with this thing

Chaos reigns within the heart of things

Sheer terror in the night

I feel it on the bus every day

I see it in the faces of the crazy motherfuckers

Who rule the streets of hell

I have told myself to just ignore it

Otherwise it could drive you mad

But Chaos is real

Dark Knight, Dark Night

Life and art implode

And real flesh and blood appears

Real death stands stark and naked on the page

Chaos reigns

Don’t know what else to say

How to prevent it? You tell me.

But perhaps we could stop courting our worse tendencies

And try to love those lost souls who hate us

Good advice, but good luck with that one

Whatever……

What do you do when a young boy dies because he is wearing a hoodie? Have we become so paranoid, so filled with fear that we strike out blindly? The news is telling us relentlessly, Yes! Absolutely! It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Why not murder? Of what worth am I? Or you? These are the kinds of questions that possess the people who kill for no real reason except that they can. It is right that there is outrage over the death of Treyvon Martin. In the face of the kind of unreasoning fear which filled George Zimmerman’s mind that night, Treyvon didn’t have a chance. There is a general coarsening, a cheapening of life nowadays. I see it every day out on the streets. Everyone is afraid of strangers, and ready to strike out against imaginary threats. I am not sure how to deal with this problem. I tend to curl up in my internet cocoon and ignore the death outside my door. Just like everybody else.

But we need to care about this, because it is only going to get worse. Why does everything just turn to crap in spite of our best efforts and intentions? I believe scientists call this entropy. Christians call it sin. For most people it is just how things are, the inevitable disappointment of everyday existence. It dulls the senses and robs us of our emotions. I was reminded of this when I watched the news report about several people discovered dead right across the street from the community college where I had taken classes recently. A neighbor says: “it’s really crazy!” and kind of chuckles to himself. What does this guy think? That it was a little show put on for his entertainment? Wow man! People dead. It’s crazy! no man, it is real life, wake up from your slumber, moron. But I shouldn’t be so harsh on him, he didn’t know what to say to the reporter when a microphone was shoved in his face.

But all of this is illusory. This attitude which turns everything to crap is a sickness. I believe the mass media encourages it. Reality is treated as though it is unreal. Everything is ironic. Listen to how people talk. Every experience is ‘like’ something, instead of being that experience. So what are you saying? That you are checked out somewhere and dumbly and numbly watching all this stuff happen around you as if it were on a tv screen and like something real but not really. Are you that schizophrenic? Do we live in a schizophrenic society that refuses to take ownership of it’s own experience? Such a person can commit murder because it isn’t actually murder, it is ‘like’ murder. When I hear teenagers talking that way it makes my skin crawl. Whoever thought that was cool? I guess the idea is to be totally not present, unreal. Then all of the pain of life cannot reach you.

I find the recent news reports very disturbing. The soldier who killed all those civilians. Why not? What difference could it possibly make? Whatever…..That is another expression which is unexamined for what it represents. It means nothing matters. It means that one thing is as good as another to someone who is as good as dead already. It destroys all experience and turns everything to crap. Youth is poisoned by it. I can remember the unspoken code of coolness. Don’t ever let yourself be thrilled by life, taken away by it’s beauty and promise. Be cool. Yeah,  a corpse is pretty cool I guess. Just when you are best equipped to live life to it’s fullest, you are encouraged to sabotage it. You are encouraged to treat life as something to endure. Anyone who shows enthusiasm or makes good grades and genuinely enjoys learning is rejected. He or she just doesn’t get it. What is there to get? That life sucks, of course. That nothing actually matters, everything turns to crap and who the fuck cares anyway. This is the credo of the killer. This is the underlying disease which plagues not only the young but all ages. You can see this kind of uselessness in the trailer parks, breeding monsters. You can see it in the wealthy who don’t have a clue about how to use their wealth except to squander it. So many people despise life and themselves, and I don’t think popular culture is giving them much reason to feel otherwise.

There is a need to look inside our own experience and discover how we really feel inside. It is very different from the way we have unwittingly been taught to feel and think by our culture. Our culture is fucked, except I don’t like to put it that way. Fuck is beautiful and sacred, and our sick culture has transformed it into the opposite, as a weapon to destroy anything good and worthwhile. Don’t let that twisted philosophy dictate how you speak. If we can look to ourselves and be true to that, we discover something very different. We all want love, as uncool as that is. And we want acceptance for who we are, whatever that is, without judgement. We are all victims although we haven’t been murdered yet. We are victims of our callous uncaring attitudes which worship ironic hipness at the expense of our ability to even experience life. The best we can hope for is to have something ‘like’ life.

I wanted this post to be about more than just the usual outrage over these senseless murders. Rather than finding someone to blame, let’s blame us all. For the malaise that breeds these outrages is endemic to our entire culture, worldwide. The solution lies within ourselves and our courage to truly be ourselves regardless of it’s cultural implications.

Murder

The furies cry "Murder!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is no act no thought no cursed moment of unbridled rage

Which escapes their attention

They watch as you flee in terror from the helpless knowledge

Of what you have done

Murder

Nameless in some filthy quarter for no purpose

‘cept to quench your thirst your hunger for revenge

Murdered in their sleep then burned

Twisting apart the shape of things

Such arrogance has it’s consequences

A brutal justice lies in store for the remorseless stone cold killer

The Furies demand it and the Moon and Stars agree

Justice there shall be!!!

For the butchered innocents in Afghanistan and Syria

And the streets of Chicago, Oakland, and Detroit

Foul! scream the Furies  May you cry out for mercy and find none!

For Murder, in a fleeting moment of crazy glory

Leaves it’s stain upon us all

The Painting is Murder by Franz von Stuck

 

No Shelter From This Storm

I'm sorry, sir! You have to move on!

This is a sad post. If you prefer some pleasant distractions check out my other blog, russellpop. It is inspired by a sad little story in today’s SF Chronicle. Peter Cukor, 67, was brutally murdered outside his nice home in the Berkeley hills. He had spotted a young man loitering beside his garage, and went out to tell the man to move on. Given that Peter lived in a fairly secluded area, he undoubtedly thought the young man, Daniel Jordan Dewitt, 23, was up to no good. After confronting Dewitt, Peter Cukor went back inside and called the nonemergency police number. Dewitt must have been somewhat hostile, and Peter preferred to have the police handle it. He didn’t realize he was dealing with a mentally ill person, who could not control his rage. The police were busy monitoring an Occupy Oakland march, as usual. One officer noticed Peter’s call and planned to respond, but was told not to. Trespassing complaints regarding homeless people are a common occurance, and can be ignored.

Peter Cukor became more impatient, wondering why the police had not arrived. Daniel Dewitt was still out there. He may have been taunting Peter. I don’t know. In any case, Peter Cukor made the fatal mistake of going back outside to confront Daniel again. Daniel assaulted him, dragged him into the bushes, and killed him. The police found Dewitt nearby, and arrested him.

This is a tragic story on many levels. It is, of course, tragic for Peter Cukor and his wife. It is tragic for Daniel Dewitt and his mother. It is tragic for the Oakland Police, and Occupy Oakland.

People who have worked hard all their lives to spend their retirement comfortably in a nice house nestled among the trees on a steep hillside, feel safe from the random horror of the urban streets. But they are not. There is no shelter from this storm. The levees cannot hold. In the interest of free enterprise unleashed, our responsibility for the mentally ill, the homeless, and the elderly was abandoned, in the eighties under the conservative messiah, Ronald Reagan. He made the choice to throw the mentally ill onto the streets. Peter Cukor’s blood is on Reagan’s hands. Given the diminishing resources of government on all levels, this situation isn’t going to get any better.

We are all in this together. This is the message I take from such tragedies. The homeless and mentally ill cannot be shuffled from place to place, each person telling them to move on. It just doesn’t work. I do not justify murder, and I can certainly sympathize with Peter Cukor. But I sympathize with Daniel Dewitt as well. I can understand the rage that comes from being told to move on, move on, you are not wanted here. You are not wanted anywhere. Our foolish obsession with wealth, and security will be the death of us. The detritus of society will not and cannot go away. I believe that some of the obsession lately with zombies in our popular culture is a subconscious recognition of the zombie homeless and mentally ill. We must face our responsibilities, and take care of our own. In doing so, we take care of ourselves. We are all in this together.

Facebook Murders

Just a quick response to a news story I just saw on Yahoo. I posted it to Facebook because Facebook users are precisely the people who should see it. It involved a double murder of a couple who had defriended a woman on Facebook. The article went on to point out that this isn’t the first time this has happened. It sounds ridiculous, but I can completely understand it.

It is frighteningly easy to get carried away by something you read on a screen, be it Facebook, a blog, or an email. It happened to me today. I felt patronized by an email I received. It made me angry. I wasn’t furious, foaming at the mouth and contemplating murder, but I was pissed. I got over it fairly quickly, but only after replying in a rather rude way. It makes me wonder about the usefulness of  internet social media. It is very easy to be intimate and reveal your innermost feelings. That can be good and that can be bad. I have experienced both ends of the spectrum. I enjoy expressing myself online, but I am a notoriously thin skinned individual, which can cause problems. It is way too easy to click “Send”. Then you have second thoughts. Oops! too late!

I have posted about this problem before, sometimes even when I was in the midst of making the very mistakes I warned about. That is how insidious it can be. Feelings get hurt. People get mad. People get defriended. I know how it goes. It is so important to keep in mind that you are in a public space. People form judgements and that can potentially lead to bad things happening. In the case reported by Yahoo, the worst possible consequences ensued. What a useless and unnecessary tragedy!! But it does get me to thinking about people I have pissed off. There could be hundreds of them out there, who never bothered to click Unlike or leave a comment. It is a disturbing thought.

I’m sorry folks!! Please don’t kill me!

And rest assured, I don’t intend to kill anyone, no matter how mad I may get.

But none of this makes me feel a whole lot better. I have considered getting off of Facebook and stopping blogging. It has complicated my life in both good and bad ways. I wouldn’t say I was happier without it, but at least no one knew about my neuroses but me. Sometimes it is a lot more comfortable to be invisible.

I guess all I wanted to say is what I’ve said before, with a little more emphasis. Take a breath when reading anything on a screen, and consider that you can’t see the person. You can’t know the intent just from the words. You can’t hear the voice and the intonation. It could be vicious, or it could be harmless. Very hard to say just from the words on the screen. This is good advice. I am full of it, good advice I mean. Will I follow my own advice? I have a bad track record on that score. But I shall try.

As crazy as a murder over defriending may seem, I suspect the people who committed the murder never saw it coming, and I know the people murdered certainly didn’t! On that creepy, disturbing note, I will continue to use Facebook and continue my blog hoping that I don’t do anything to get myself killed. I will honestly try to be more prudent. Really!!! I mean it this time!!! Put away that shotgun!!