This blog by Visible published 7/25/2008 at http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com

The Strange Moments of these Remarkable Times

If someone were to ask me to define God, I would say, “Imagine the highest and deepest, most piercing and enveloping love. Then imagine you are on a highway out in the Midwest. On some of those highways you will sometimes see signs for a Las Vegas casino called Harrah’s. Well, you might see one in Bangor, Maine that says the distance is thousands of miles. Further on you see a sign which says ‘God; one million light years.’ That is how that feeling describes God in terms of definition and I am a million light years from there as I sit here now.” That’s the best I can do but that is probably wrong too because I am a million light years from my best as well. I hope I have satisfied your curiosity… it is that close.

Neither God, nor love can be measured and I don’t think greed and lust can be either. Feel like you are in an Escher painting? Me too… but you have to be able to imagine.

Last night I saw this I could say that the guy could use a makeover, Hollywood style. But we don’t want Hollywood in a situation like this. We want truth. So, some guy, antsy and uncomfortable against a brick wall will do for the moment. The t-shirt isn’t a bad move either. What it says is the truth. I don’t know why I kept listening. The production values are not to my standards but if I had to do it I probably wouldn’t accomplish the technical end any better. Let’s just say, that’s a definite. Speaking truth to power is something that you do not see. Young man, allow me to reach across the internet and shake your hand.

Then I see this and I hear the rumble of a distant engine. Willie Nelson has always been one of my heroes. And now he just proves why once again. Maybe we aren’t going down just yet. It could be that the battle has not begun. That’s another problem. How come nobody said much of anything all those years? Well, maybe they did and they got their head handed to them like The Dixie Chicks; those brave and righteous women whom contemporary America scorned and I cheered on but then felt like I’d farted at the dinner table. Good, I want to fart at that dinner table.

Then again, slander and ignominy come with the territory. You have to be willing to risk that for the good of yourself and others. In my book, other people come first. So why is it that only Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney and the rest of the fingers on one hand are the only people in our government to speak out against the lies and murders that have continued day after day after day? How come no congressman, no senator, stood out on the steps of congress and said I will not move from this spot until this senseless murder stops? How come? How come?

How comes it that a simpering psychopath like George Bush can take the White House without having been legally elected two times and nobody says a word? Sure, some of us spoke out but we aren’t important people. Even some important people spoke out but we didn’t hear about it and when we did we were told that they were traitors and giving comfort to the enemy; even though no enemy did 9/11, 9/11 was an Inside Job.

My father, not the nicest guy in the world, used to say to me, “You can’t piss in my ear and make me think it’s rain.” He didn’t leave me much or else I haven’t figured out yet why I went through what I did but he did leave me that… even if when he said that… it was raining. Those were not good days for young visible. Young visible had many a bad day. Young visible understands what happens to people simply for being themselves and young visible empathizes with other people when the same thing happens

I became an accomplished liar to save my ass; not that it did. But you do what you have to, to survive. I often wished that I were dead but apparently not yet. Ghosts follow me. I know they are ghosts. I am not afraid of ghosts.

Is there a glimmer here? Is there some movement, some change in the air? Can it be that this young man standing against a brick wall; Willie Nelson, Jessie Ventura, Ron Paul and a host of others are going to juxtapose at the perfect moment? Will the forces of evil among us be met by the awakening forces of good struggling out of their dreams? I don’t know but I am with them, in my heart and in my body and in my mind.

Proof to me that there is a God is that I feel the way I do. I feel the surging course of a rising brotherhood. I believe in love and honor, what is decent, what is good. I have not always behaved the way I should. Like all of you, I am a work in progress. Still, none of us have risen to such heights only to sink to such depths of depraved psychopathy as has our congress and our courts and our leaders.

How it is that used car salesmen Gumby-bots came to be our icons and wardens, I cannot tell you. Was it bad TV, music, movies, sex for sex, sucking the moment up like a chemical drink for the fast food mind? Is it about the money and protection from the people you stole it from? I always feel that I am inside that Yeat’s poem when I think about these things.

I’m going to ask you all again, one more time …and I will still ask you again and again because on this we depend, I’m going to ask you to wake up. I am reaching into your dreaming mind and shaking your metaphorical shoulder. You have to wake up and stand with that guy by the wall and might I remind you that is not the only wall? You have to climb out of your Matrix cocoons and wipe the slime from your eyes. You have to come into the moment and fill the moment with your presence, your sleeping beauty and your love.

Every Marine who loves his country needs to understand that what is worth dying for is worth living for and might want to read the words of the Constitution of The United States of America. Every officer and soldier in every branch of service needs to read what it says. Every citizen needs to read what it says. Thugs have hi-jacked your country. Treason has been committed. Sacred trust has been broken. You need to wake up. This is their single power… that you do not wake up. When you wake up it is over for them so… please… I beg you… wake up.

I’m just a guy standing in front of a brick wall, just like that guy standing in front of a brick wall. We are trying to reach you. You are not beasts. You are human beings. Rise and be counted.

Tyranny occurs because you allow it. You trade your freedom for comfort and then they take your comfort. It’s a no win situation. Maybe something is coming. Maybe something good is coming. Something good would be coming if all of you were coming and your intentions were for the greater collective good. Let’s face it; no one is safe when we permit murder in our names in order to go on sleeping.

You’re not dead yet, you’re just sleeping. The Constitution; what did Bush call it? It’s not dead either. The revolution is on if you are. You can die in your sleep. You can live in your dreams or you can take a stand, even if it is only in your mind and you can help to tip the wheel and turn the corner and grind the circumstance beneath the wheel until it is a fine powder and you can take that powder and put it in history's musket.

The good can only endure if it can endure in you. If you sell out your honor and your birthright for a mess of potage then where are you? Some things are worth the trouble. The fate of everything you care about is connected to the way you are. Be there for yourself and each other, wherever ‘there’ is …be there. In this moment be there and the world will change.

God’s Not Dead