But it also feels to me as if there is a greater than ordinary urgency nowadays. As if the emphasis on Apocalypse we find so prevalent in entertainment and life style were more than passing fad, but in fact based in a real lack of hope for a future. As a put-on of our natural fears in a world grown incredibly more dangerous than it has ever been for the entire population, this mock-death wish, this toying with undeadly death may be a healthy response. But it may also represent a real absence of real hope, real comfort in the certainty that life, human life will prevail and thrive. If some idiot is just going to blow the whole world up, and leave a tiny portion of the present population, scarred, mutated, and subsisting at survival level, then we better see to it right now that that idiot never gets the chance, and that the human race has achieved such a pinnacle of evolution that the values passed on are nearly angelic if doomsday should occur.

But where in all that is the simple clear faith that we humans will more than likely discourage Armageddon, keep it at bay as we always have, keep the score one goal higher than the bad guys and idiots manage, as we always have, and muddle through in a manner than is pretty damned good for large numbers of us? So good that large numbers of the one’s who have it pretty good devote a large portion of their survival to helping those less fortunate? Am I terribly wrong in saying that is the way it really is?

There are probably several  million people copulating on earth right now, and neither you nor I are included, unless you copulate while reading goofy essays.

Who knows if while you are waiting in the doctor’s office more time than should be necessary he isn’t back there boffing his nurse or a patient.

Aside from the several wars most of us know about how many other wars are going on in the world you know nothing of? Wars in which a primary weapon is the rape and murder of young women in front of their families, each of whom will be subsequently raped and murdered down to the last person who will then be sentenced to live with those memories forever. Wars in which the primary weapon are viruses and spy wares crawled bloodlessly into the enemy’s super-secure computers to record and send back every keystroke confidently recording their most hidden plans. And the other conventional ones.

And lest we forget the diplomats who diligently negotiate problems that seem on the surface to you and to me to be dirt simple, but instead are impacted by nuances of culture, politics, psychology, sociology, history, security, ethics, morality, religion, distrust, good will and bad will, until the situation is more tangled than differential calculus.

There are probably a few hundred million seriously disabled children in the world. How many families in the world go through their lives, irrespective of how sympathetic they may be, having no idea what it is to have a child with spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, the various D’s , cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, fatal allergies, dwarfism, obesity, Tourette Syndrome, cancer, heart defects, cystic fibrosis, Downs Syndrome, or a few other devastating conditions. And the flip side of that universe, of course, is that none of those families know what it is to have all relatively normal children.

The universes on the planet earth are experiential.

How many people in the world do you suppose have never had nor will a pet of any kind. Who’ll never know the joy and comfort, heartache and problems that a pet can involve.

How many people in the world have known an artist, musician, dancer, actor, writer, sculptor, poet,. Right this minute how many people in this world are doing one of those things in a way that is so distant from the way anyone else in history has ever done them so as to suggest it might even a different art form?

Right now some several hundred people in the world  are dealing with understanding and proving their understanding of the building blocks of the entire universe, and possibly other universes that exist within and without this universe. They are dealing with concepts so complicated they cannot explain them to most of the world in ways that most of the world can understand. They walk and talk and play tennis and get laid, and use foul language, eat, relieve themselves, even look just like you and me and contained within their brains are concepts and connections we don’t know there are to have.

What part of the population have no homes? Has that percentage changed, if even statistically significantly, by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan?

Right now some several thousand people are making tools that can enter the genes in your body and repair tears that might occur from exposure to radioactivity. Have you talked to one of them lately?

In America, there is a lawyer for every two hundred sixty five people. When did you last use a lawyer?

How many people in the world do not believe the most basic tenets of the religion they profess belief in, but will never admit that fact, often even to themselves?

Yeh – we have plenty of universes right on here on earth. And this list just a start.

I think the basic problem with American politics is the bureaucracy of government. Predominately the Federal government, but it has become so intertwined with state governments that each them must develop bureaucracies to “interface” with it. Our legislators, the five hundred and thirty five US Congress members and the hundreds scattered among the fifty states have created contradictory laws and contradictory agencies to regulate those laws, such that one thing everyone agrees upon is that nothing in government works as it is supposed to. Taxes are a nightmare, drug laws are preposterous, the regulation of business is owned by business, welfare and social programs often do more harm than good. Somewhere along the course of the next several generations some band of wise young people – and I keep thinking I see them coming in the young people I get to hang out with – are going to find a way to dismantle the whole shebang and start anew, without destroying ninety percent of what they have in the process. Unfortunately, it may take that long for the kids to see how they’ve been bamboozled by the words that support the current system enough to do that.

1. The End Of Faith/Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris, W. W. Norton & Company Copyright 2004,2005.

You couldn’t ask for a nicer person than Zip. She never
expressed her wealth in conversation. She shopped for clothing at
the same Second Elegance shops on Wisconsin Avenue as the
others, and never overtly drew attention to her family circumstances.
They were present in her carriage, her decorum, and in
her easy generosity. And she did have two violet point Siamese
cats, which must have cost a pair of bundles. But that was it.
Maybe she was aware that she was “treated differently”, but she
never appeared to expect it.
The only time I recall Zip making any reference to her station
in life was one morning when we fell into talking about people
with unusual names. We all knew of the Hoggs in Texas, who
named their daughters Ima and Ura, and I brought up Dr. Armand
Hammer, the great oil industrialist, who opened the Soviet Union
to oil trading and was besmirched as a communist for doing so. A
couple of the guys didn’t believe there was such a guy, and
insisted I was confusing him with the baking soda company. But
Zip spoke up and announced that, not only was he a great man, but
she knew him personally, because he was her next door neighbor
back home.

A LITTLE TASTE OF POISON
Washington, D. C.
Circa 1962

These cats were high school chums, so they caught up on old
friends. They laughed about a few, sorrowed over one who’d
gotten heavily into drugs and had been killed trying to hold up a
corner liquor store. They showed surprised awe at another guy
who straightened his life out and was now a student at Howard
University. And then the car pulled into the first pull-off beside Rock Creek. I had been busily rolling joints in the back seat, and
when he parked I stuffed them into my pocket and headed down
to the water to play with the ducks. Ducks always expect people
to have bread for them, and protest loudly to each other and to the
world at large when their expectations aren’t met. Flapping their
wings like disgruntled arguers, they squawked at me and each
turned to the duck beside them to restate their alarm. “What, you
have no food? Look, this human has no food for us!” Then they
gave it all up, put themselves afloat, and squawked some more as
they swam away.
I heard the doors slam shut, pulled a joint out, and turned to light it just as Leroy spoke, loudly enough for me to hear. “Oh, Jorge, man. I can’t do this without telling him!” Standing there right in front of me, Leroy pulled up his coattails, displaying his badge, his gun, a sap, and a set of handcuffs. “I’m a cop, man,” he said. Jorge and I were good friends, so I just played it for what it was, and held out the joint for him. “And you’re going to join us in this?” I asked. “Oh, man, you got that right!” he said, as he took
the joint and lit it up.

BECOMING CULTURED
Washington, D. C.
Circia 1958

I arrived at her apartment, just north of the Zoo, and was once
again in surroundings I was unaccustomed to. Her place was
adorned with the memorabilia of a long and wealthy life. She was
friends with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and gratuitously mentioned
her several times while we were together.
I had heard of Alice, but knew next to nothing about her. This
lady was fascinating. She was old class of the very first order, and
her manners, her demeanor, her interests, and conversation all
came from a world most of us know exists only through movies
or books. She knew art, opera, theater, and all the proper politics
encyclopedically. She was a delight. If she hadn’t been over 70, I
would have pursued her seriously. She charmed me dizzy.
She was adamant that the law must be amended to clearly
state that an opera house would be part of the NCC complex. She
expected Rudolph Bing, the great Manager of the Metropolitan
Opera Company, would be appointed to the Board of the NCC,
and wanted my assurance that our group would press for that.
I didn’t have courage to tell her we had no power to press for
anything, and so I simply agreed we would do so. I became aware
that if I stayed much longer I would be so far over my head she
would see it and so, after tea and cakes and ices—well, no ices—I
began making my excuses.
“Well, this has been an exciting afternoon, Mr. Galle.” she
said. “I wish to make a contribution now.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Surely, I could have Caldy deposit
it, and then at some later time we could take a decision on how to
handle it all. A few bucks to cover office expenses wouldn’t hurt,
of course. She opened a French Secretary and began to write on a
check.
“What is the name of your organization?” Oh, shit. We hadn’t
received the incorporation papers at the time. I explained that to
her.
“Well, I’ll just make it out to you, and you take care of the
niceties.” And before I could object she wrote my name on the
check in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars, and handed it to
me.

ANTICS ON THE EAST SIDE
Greenwich Village, NYC
Circa 1961

Suffice it to say, this was the beginning of a separation from
my parents that would last for a year and half. I simply ignored the
fact that they were alive, and avoided thinking about them altogether.
This was made easier by the fact that I was ashamed of what I was doing. I had essentially deserted my wife, leaving her and our child with her parents in Knoxville. Now that I was out of the Air Force and “being a Beatnik”—chasing the muse of poetry, drinking a lot, drugging, and living off a girlfriend—there wasn’tmuch about this life I wanted to tell them. So, I said nothing. I had
no contact at all.
Much of my memory of those days is hazy. Patty got a job in
an office somewhere. I spent the day hanging around Washington
Square Park, meeting other Beatnik types, artists, poets, and
musicians. At night, we hit Cafe Wha?, the Commons, or the
Kettle of Fish, or San Remo, The Eighth Street Bar, the Tenth
Street Coffee House, or the little downstairs coffee house right
next to Kettle of Fish, The Gaslight.
The San Remo, on the corner of MacDougal and Bleeker, was
a grand old bar. In the men’s room were these incredibly large
urinals—over five and half feet high and two feet wide! As I stood
at one, the top was at eye level. They were made of marble and,
although pitted from years of use, there was a comfort about them;
they spoke of the old world, and of palatial grandiosity. They
made us all peers, if not equals.

Things have changed in America. Some will say “Not much.”, but they will be wrong. That it is still not perfect is undeniable, but the fact is great progress has been made, irrespective of how much still is needed. And that is true, in my opinion of course, of many of the inequities of modern life. They will always be with us. Life is not fair, people are not fair, human beings are not fair. Many human beings strive to effect fairness in all human endeavors, and many admonish us constantly to do so. Unachievable goals have to be the driving ambition, but it’s also unfair not to acknowledge how far we’ve come, as humans, as Americans. I am the only person I know who was unable to say “I never thought I would see the day.” when we elected Barak Obama. I had not seen a candidate who seemed likely until he came along, the several who seemed most likely just were never sufficiently presidential. I’m not happy with some of where he has pushed the country to, but he is competent, honest, vibrant, a man of integrity. Race is not an issue for him. We are not yet in a post-racial culture, but he has proven a black person can be as presidential as any white man has been. I expect also to see a woman president in my lifetime. This country is sadly and badly polarized at this time, as I believe I have never seen it before, even worse than during the Vietnam War. Everyone is talking past everyone else. People complain at what the “other side” is saying, but haven’t listened to what the other side is saying. I think a major divisive factor is the so-called media, pandering to the fears and hatreds of their viewers – and whatever people of either persuasion read this will read it as their own “other side” that I’m talking about. Both sides are wrong, Conservative and Liberal. I think we are in a watershed period of history right now and I wonder what it will be like when the dam breaks.

These decisions – and they are individual decisions – are made for almost as many reasons as there are kids out there making them. For some it is simple experimentation, and this has to be understood and accepted. It is complicated by the fact that the stuff they are doing nowadays is  more powerful by factors that are geometrically calculated than the stuff I used or you used. So the unavoidable experimenting seems even more dangerous.  But, (and I am only going to say this once) in my opinion the intensity of the substance has nothing to do with its addictive quality. Abusive behaviors are substitutes of for dealing with real personal problems. Even worse, those personal problems may not be severe enough to appear worthy of concern to anyone else. But for the individual, usually a kid, even an older kid, the behavior of ingesting the drug gives the sense of having solved the problem.

Okay, if you’ve bought all of this – or even if you haven’t but you’re still here, fine it all sounds pretty simple. How do we fix it?

I don’t know. Many humans grow out of it eventually because the consequences are incredibly repulsive. Many, of course, die or get jailed or institutionalized in some other way. Many others simply remain below the horizon dabblers all their lives and have few friends, few contacts with their families, incredibly unsatisfying lives. But, whether you agree with me entirely or not these thoughts, these views are true for a large percentage of the people who get themselves into this way of life. If you are parent and wish to save your child, chances are pretty good you can’t. But you can love your addicted child anyway. You can accept your child’s decision, but not accept her or his behavior in your house. You can protect yourself from him or her by not being their pocketbook, their landlord, their supplier. Addicts will steal from you, break your heart, lie to you. Minimize the opportunities for this.

I have rambled on a bit here, and I’m going to close now. I invite your comments, questions arguments, whatever.  I will return to this issue often over time, along with blogging about many other topics. I hope you’ll join in.