My faith in the Divine has never been strong.  Whatever remnants which still haunt me have been completely obliterated by what's happening in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  My mind has been boggled.  What took years and generations to build were wiped out in a matter of hours.  Personally, numbness has set in, despair may soon follow.   

A decade or so ago, when I drove along Interstate-10, and passed through Gulfport, Mississippi beach front, I thought to myself, "Self, this is really the kind of place you would like to live in.  Maybe you ought to move here."  Was it a good thing that I did not often act on my impulses?  There, it is said, but for the Grace of God(???) goes I!  Searching high and low, over, under, and in between, digging through the miles of rubble, and treading the stench of the rising water that is New Orleans, vicariously, through the televised medium, where is the grace, the goodness, and the God in all that?

Having lost faith in the gods, or God, if you must, how soon will we humans lose faith in ourselves? 

Reflecting so, it may be prudent for me to rephrase and pose that question for myself only.

Because it is not happening to you, you don't have to think about it, or you don't want to think about it.  But for the past two days, I can't seem to tear myself away from "it". 

In the comfort of my dry, air conditioned living room, hundreds of miles away, I have been glued to the tube on and off, watching the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, the destruction wreaked in it's path, and the aftermath which is just beginning to unfold.

A generation or so ago, I attended and graduated from a one horse college in northern Louisiana, and I had been to New Orleans on a number of occasions.  Naturally, by last Sunday afternoon, when all the weather gurus feared that the Big Easy had a distinct possibility of suffering a direct hit from Katrina, my attention was seized, even though I had lost touch with any friends and classmates I had once known in Louisiana.  Hurricane Camile in 1969 was a bit before my time, and the damage done therein was to rehash an overused word, devastating!  Katrina was, by all estimations, twice as big and as powerful as Camile.  Prior to landfall, one observation I made, almost casually when I made it - if there ever comes a direct hit, New Orleans as we know it, there won't be much left.  This was the Big One, the one we've all feared, the once in a lifetime, worst case scenario, according to the Mayor of New Orleans.  Let us pray, that the storm would steer east, and hit Mississippi instead, or at least away from the French Quarters.

And the Lord, taking His name in vain, awaken up from his slumber, did raise His Almighty Finger, and pointed Katrina to swirl just a little off course, east, at the last hour, and total destruction of the Home of the Saints was spared.  Now, the gambling casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi will be wiped out instead.  Just think of the mileage that the Religious Right can make out of this act of Divine Intervention!

Several things struck me, metaphorical speaking of course, during the witnessing and the unfolding of this drama, from a safe distance.  Words and phrases such as Armageddon, of unprecedented, historical, and biblical proportions, the most costly in terms of billions of dollars, the interruption of oil production, and how YOU will be affected by the subsequent high price of gasoline, were being brandished left and right.  In the meantime, people have died, people are dying, and people will be dying because help from FEMA, The American Red Cross, State and Local rescue teams cannot get to them because of the flooding waters, accumulated debris, power outages, and impassable roads. 

It was postulated that a million people in the greater New Orleans area managed to heed the dire warnings and evacuated.  Theoretically, that still meant that several hundred thousand residents did not.  There are people who could not leave because they were physically unable to, poor people with no money, no transportation, and no where to go.  And there were die harders who believed they could ride out the storm.  The death toll in Louisana and Mississippi, currently reported by AP to be in the dozens, is expected to rise dramatically (what euphemisim!) in the days to come.  Then how quickly and miraculously it dawned on me, it was not necessarily the storm itself that killed.  It was the aftermath.  No food, no water, no electricity, no phones, no gas, no help, contaminated water everywhere, not to mention the thousands of water moccasins and the trillions of fire ants evicted from their homes too.  And what about the million people who did evacuate?  What, if anything left, will they come back to?  How are they going to survive in the meantime, stranded in hotels, motels, truck stops, and gas stations along the roadside waiting for help to arrive.  And where do you relocate a million people practically over night?

As a result of the infinite wisdom of our Divine Maker, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, rather than New Orleans, was the hardest hit.  Which begs the question: why did anyone have to be hit at all?  Job would have asked, and supposedly he did. Why did the sun shine on the saints and sinners alike?  Why did the wicked prosper while the good die young?

So, I ask you, believers in the True Faith one and all, The Almighty, All Powerful, All Knowing, All Present, and All Merciful, WHY?

And, I ask you, what kind of problems do YOU have?

Yesterday I received two t-mails, requesting to be “friends”.  Once before, I had made the mistake of blindly accepting, but this time I took a quick gander at their “profiles”.  It turned out they were, not one, but two, both 13 year old girls!  One of them actually left a comment on my previous post, declaring she often feels the same way as I do!  Amazing, incredible, absolutely certifiable.  Now, I ask you, gentle reader, have I written anything recently that a 13 year old can remotely relate to??

Note that I have nothing against 13 year olds, because I too was 13 year old once, about a hundred years ago.  I simply wasn’t as smart, or as quick as the 13 year olds we manage to bring up nowadays.

For the record, I have little, if anything, in common and can relate to, with a 13 year old.  The only exception, in fact, the very idea that in a few years I should be able to collect my social security, unless it shall go totally bankrupt, when my monthly stipend will allow me to dine for a Happy Meal at McDonald’s at least a couple times a week, is already floating my boat all the way to top of Mount Olympus.

If you are indeed 13 years old, and you know who you are, please stay away from my blog, because I am liable to use a four letter word on occasions, although the ten and twelve letter words are usually not in my every day vocabulary.  There is a good old Anglo-Saxon four letter word, which is so rich in meanings, so blatant and subtle in it’s implications, depending how it is used in context and inflection, as a remark, question, exclamation, query, adjective, adverb, or a noun, that can be so expressive for a particular instance where no other word can suffice.  I am almost tempted to use that word right now, in a rhetorical question of sorts.  But no matter, never mind.

Then it occurred to me that I might have been the blessed recipient of a sick joke or prank which had been played on me, or other unsuspecting and hapless jokers like me.  Let me tell you, if you are indeed 13 years old, and ready to rumble, there are plenty of 20 something, 30 something, 40 something, all the way to old geezers in their 70s, who would love to get their greedy, grubbly little hands on you, revel in your unbridled innocence, and much more. 

However, should you be, (and my imagination is on overdrive here) some crooked, brain dead, numb nut, FBI wannabee profiler, masquerading as a 13 year old, hoping to get lucky in catching up with a potential pedi-phile, and there are thousands of them out there in la-la-land, hiding in their closets, I say, move on, Bud, you are barking up the wrong tree!  To borrow an often used declaration from my dearly departed, I would not have dreamed of anything to do with a 13 year old even if you pay me.  Hey, I am not paranoid.  I am simply pissed off, to no end.

Finally, if you are in fact who you say you are, a 13 year old girl, or boy, then go hang out with friends of your own age, listen to your parents, stay in school, don’t accept any candy from strangers, don’t go along with any joy ride, or else, the truth and consequences of your daring may, and can, be every bit as gross, as horrifying, or as life changing, as beyond your wildest dreams.

"The only way to have a worthy future is to create it."

You wake up one day, and realize that more than half, or in fact most, of your life has already gone, slipped through your fingers like so much water.  What have you really done with it?  If there were indeed a Maker, and you should be asked to give an account of yourself, how could you even remotely justify your lack of accomplishments?  How did you manage to squander all those years, all those opportunities, when you had youth, enthusiasm, vibrancy, or perhaps even beauty once?  How did you fail to utilize even a tiny fraction of that divine matter, that gray matter if you must, that transcends all energies, that lies dormant between your ears, that fourteen ounces or so of convoluted gray matter, give or take, that in totality is so much more powerful that the speeding locomotive, and so much more capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bounce?  And where did you think the locomotive and the buildings originally come from to begin with? 

No singularity of purpose, lack of discipline, dissipation of energy, lack of follow through, those are the vices of the herd, to borrow from Ian Fleming, as in Dr. No. 

Now you finally wake up to the fact that time is on the wane, that there is not much time left, and in most likelihood, not any significant time left to speak of, what can you do?  What will you do?  What must you do? 

And how and then, you ponder the Taoist philosophical question, or rather the assertion, of why do anything at all?  To do by not doing, nothing is out of place, and nothing gets done.  Why be troubled when you can sit, with absolute serenity, by the bank of the river, and watch the bodies of your enemies wash by?

What if you can see the future, your future, in the present, will you still want to see it?

Maybe it is a good thing that we can't see the future, at least not exactly.  But is it not a good idea to visualize a little of what is likely to happen in advance in the days, weeks, months, and years to come?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Thus spake Convention Wisdom.  In the other words, let's take the path of least resistance.  Fail to plan, plan to fail.  Same difference. 

As a result, we are constantly looking in the rear view mirror, assessing our future prospects based on what had already happened in the past.  We become complacent by default, thinking that whatever modicum of creature comforts we have grown accustomed to will always be here for our enjoyment, and presto, with a wave of our magic wand, we shall drift all the way to mountain top, and achieve enlightenment, the brightness of being.  Not having a care in the world, little do we know, the world does not stand still for no one.  Out of nowhere comes the Mack Truck.  The reason we will get run over is because we did not see it coming in the first place.  Our eyes are peeled to the forever present, on the telly, on the Internet, on how to spend our next paycheck, if it isn't spent already.

Okay, so our future may not be all that bright.  Maybe we are geared to repeat essentially the same year's experiences, over and over again, until we get to lie in the horizontal with the white lilly clasped in our hands.  Hindsight is congenital.  What we can all use is a just a tiny bit of Foresight.  To see the possible future in advance, and do our best to prepare for the various contingencies and eventualities.  It's almost a novel idea.  How do you like the Washington Delicious?  &nb sp;

Am I ready for the Mack Truck?  Not quite, but almost, which counts in horse shoes, and what else?   

This list, the Top Ten Jobs for 2004-2005 Graduates, according to AOL Today, of training a round peg to fit into a square hole, is most depressing.  For those of us astute researchers who may have found the Internet to be the mother of all information sources, ahem, are we sadly disillusioned!

Job Function    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;     Average Salary Offer
Accounting (Private)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;    $44,564
Management Trainee (Entry-Level)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   $35,811
Teaching    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;  $29,733
Consulting    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         $49,781
Sales    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;    $37,139
Accounting (Public)    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  $41,039
Financial/Treasury Analysis    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;    $45,596
Software Design & Development    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $53,729
Design/Construction Engineering    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $47,058
Registered Nurse    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;    $38,775    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ; 

Late night after work, I was about all in.  Instead of the peace pipe, I vegged out on the couch with a bit of munchies, in this particular case, slices of cold roast beef from the Deli at Wally World, and a dollop of the good stuff, strictly for medicinal purpose you understand, grabbed the remote to the idiot box, and started a bit of channel surfing.  Isn’t that what most of our modern species do in this technological day and age, especially for those who lead the unexamined and uninspired life?  There was the PC of course, but then after having ensconced in front of my workstation six or eight hours or more in a stretch, somehow my PC just did not have that drawing allure any more in those wee small hours.

The fare offered from seventy or so channels of basic cable was discouraging to say the least.  Generally I skipped all the infomercials, and the religious programs.  Pleasure and Pain, Fear and Greed, abounded, meaning everywhere.  There are always people ready to get their grubby little hands into your pocket by preaching eternal hellfire or brotherly love, good ole Christian values, or how you can make yourself a million a week from next Tuesday without doing a lick of work, or tone up your bodies like the models who are compensated to appear sexy, desirable, and oh so cute.  But they are highway robbers just the same, with more than larceny in their hearts and souls, wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, recycling old wines by putting it in new bottles.  Buy me, donate to me, save me, make me beautiful, fuck me, for four easy payments on your plastic, which has already been maxed out many times over, you will be lead to the stairways to Heaven.

Speaking of sheep, I caught a few minutes of a musical channel, VHI, MTV, what’s the difference.  A rap band was jamming at gale force speed, doing their moves which had long lost their freshness and originality twenty years ago.  The guys donned baseball caps with the visors turned to the back, complete with dark sunglasses, and the girls had rhinestone studded bras, with toned mid-riffs showing off, and tight tight pants to shake their booties, an accepted non-conformity conforming to the non-conforming.  On stage, the lead dog, I mean dude, as he certainly looked like a dude, with glistening skin and bulging muscles, actually wore his pants all the way down, below his crack, to show his designer boxer shorts he had on underneath.  That getup was already old ten years ago, but then apparently no fashion icon had guided him, and to the streetwise numb skulls who made up his entire entranced audience, chanting in unison to the quote music unquote, it made them no never mind.  It was still cool, or should it be sick, in today’s vernacular.  If there were lyrics, then the batteries on my Bel-Tone must have gone completely dead.  At least, I did not pick out any ten or twelve letter words.  Hey, this was after all, duh music channel, family entertainment at its finest.  No, it was the beat, the rhythm, get down, swaying your hands in the air, making like you were really with it, jostling in the jostling waves of sweating human bodies, having simulated copulation with your rags on, be one with the moment, ignorance was bliss, oblivion merged with nirvana, an army of zombies, after the Dawn of the Dead, hurry head long towards the final exit, the slaughterhouse, where all sheep have been destined to go.  This is the generation we have been counting on.  This will be the generation to which our humanity will pass the torch.  No sirree indeed, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Then I caught more than a few minutes of “Truth or Dare”, on BRAVO no less.  But my musings on the Material Girl will have to wait for another more inspired time.  

Last night after work, I finally finished watching the movie "The Hours".  If I have to admit, being a man, I just didn't "get it" at first.  It was, like, seeing a cubist painting by Picasso for the first time, all angles, and fish eyes staring at me, I had not clue one.  Then, slowly, it dawned on me, what the painter, and in this case the writer, (Who's afraid of Who?) was trying to tell me, help me "see" beyond the obvious, and I was pleased to go to sleep afterwards with a small measure of satisfaction that I did finally "get it", at least to a certain extent.

All good stories culminate in death, and you know of course from whence that came.  Why did someone always has to die?  To make the rest of the remaining ones appreciate Life.

In the living words of Wordsworth, "Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory inthe flower, We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ..."

In a society which prizes youth and vitality beyond anything else, for a woman, or even less so for a man, you have to be drop dead confident of yourself to appear older, uglier, plainer, or sicker than you really are.  It is like the kiss of death long before the Grim Reaper has arrived.  And it was not simply in the acting, but the editing, the slow, haunting music, the slices of lives unraveling.  It is probably not a movie you want to watch, especially before retiring to sleep at night, because you may not sleep, thinking about death and dying, and before and after that, about getting old. 

And if you dwell on that, that too can become one of your phobias.

I have plenty of phobias, and this is but one of legions.

After an idyllic hiatus, I had a lapse in my Alzheimer's and decided to put forth a blurp.  Lo and behold, my very first visitor, or guest if  you would, graced me with this beautiful and poetic comment, which defies my ability to comprehend.  Normally, I would not encourage the further esoteric musings of such a misanthrope, a devotee in various forms of ethnic cleansing, with the dignity of a response.  Yet this particular dropping I found to be particularly pungent, so I thought it may amuse others to feast their eyes upon it and draw their own conclusion.  Your comments will be greatly appreciated.

» NightBreed Thursday 08.18.05 [2:41 pm]

when god destroyed the world with the flood .. how did the world repopulate itself?? did moses fuck his own kids and did they in turn fuck their own kids???

O, Brave New World, that has such creatures in it!  Let Allah Be Praised!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to watch "The Shawshank Redemption" again, probably for the third or fourth time.  Towards the end of movie, Morgan Freeman, in a poignant role, was talking to himself, reminding that one could either get busy living, or get busy dying.  Who would have thought such sage words could have come out of Stephen King, well remembered for his treatment of the macabre, who mostly exhibited a twisted and deranged mind.

Recently SP asked me, by way of our serenpiditous conversations, what might be some of my dreaded fears, or phobias.  Off handedly I replied that I did not think I had any.  On second thoughts, I qualified my answer by describing one of my recurring and consciously suppresed fears or phobias, and that is to be forced to return to the place of my birth, that little rock of an island where people are stacked on top of another, packed like sardines in subway cars and other forms of public transportations, where the seas of humanity, and the waves of breathing, yakking, sweating bodies jostling one another, compelling one to either move on or get trampled upon.  That is a phobia not conceived of by most people, especially those living in this great and glorious country of ours, the land of free and home of the brave, where wide open spaces are the norm rather than the exceptions, where you can fly over hundred of miles in any direction most anywhere in the Continental U.S. and often not see a single soul, be it human or animal.  Yes, to be packed like sardines in a can, already cooked, along with other sardines, is that not the metaphysical equivalent of what's happening in some of inner cities?

Now that I have a little time to reflect and think about the subject, I have many other fears and phobias, not the kinds that a grown man is supposed to parade around that little sphere of influence, not to mention the lifestyle, which he has grown accustomed to. 

To quote Ursala Le Guin, "To be in favor or disgrace, is to live in fear."  and "To live until you die, is to live long enough."