"...solstice"

We're in this fucked up shit together.

That, and like it or not.

We bleeping need each other to survive.

 

 

"...solstice"

I was wondering how there could be Christmas 

or any celebration this year. 

After all that's happened, and is still happening.

Then I remembered. 

There have been worse far worse years.

1943 was one. 

 

I was looking at my grandmother's holiday cards from that year. All her sons were in the War. 

She didn't know if she'd see any of them again. 

Much as we fear we may not see endangered loved ones, and friends. We fear now as I post, and you read.

So perhaps we should observe a quiet Solstice.

This in our homes. Alone or with immediate family.

An acknowledgement that life goes on.

The year is turning.

That, and there may be hope on the other side. 

 

"...truce"

The first day of December is hours away. As Dickens wrote of this season. It is,"...a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely."

So even now divided as we are. Anxious angry confused in this republic as we are. We must be as Mr. Dickens urged.

There was once a ceasefire during WW1. It was called the Christmas Truce. Where both sides by common consent laid down their arms, and joined in the Spirit of the Day. In our case the Month. Can we lay down our divisions for just this short time, and recognize once more our common humanity.

I'm suggesting a December Truce in the American Culture Wars.

That conflict was at the heart of why so many perished here in the pandemic. Why we are now two nations raging at each other.

As I sat watching the rain come down on this dreary day it came to me. It doesn't have to be this way. We all both sides know this, but no one yet acts. We have to act. I don't know what to do. Other than ask you to consider this, and spread the idea of a December Truce in this Cold Civil War.

As Lincoln said "...We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

 

"...virtue"

Being Queer or un-Straight. ...and there are as many kinds of Queerness as there are Queers. It isn't, and never was merely about physical sex. There's same sex activity in prisons of both genders, but this isn't remotely Queer.

Being Queer is to have a sense of life of being that is Different.

We are, and always will be Different.

This is our sacred Virtue.

 

"...alive"

I had a dream. I’m 70 btw. 

I dreamed I woke in my bunk bed in December 1959. I was nine again. My late older brother John asleep below me our dog Brownie padding about. Snow. It was snowing. A now rare event where I live in 2020. I heard my dad getting ready to drive to work…my folks were alive. All my lost family were alive again. I was home. 

That, and I had to go to school. 

A segregated school that barely acknowledged science, and thought sex came from the devil. I was nine in 1959 with the memories, and intimate experiences of a 70 year old man from 2020. …this is going to be interesting I thought.

'...cry havoc"

This is yet another time of two Presidents. It comes every four to eight years. In a more normal era it would be a common formality. Just as this era of two Popes. Francis succeeds Ratzinger...who still lives. Yet they are amicable. Ratzinger on the whole quiet, and respectful of his successor.

Our situation is different.

Biden succeeds Trump. Yet Trump denies it, and raises enraged armies to his side. He is not silent. He cries havoc. He stands baying rages at the moon. Biden the lawful successor the 46th President of this Republic. He goes about the calm business of the traditional, and lawful transference of power.

History, and the world watches with great interest.

"...fitful"

 

I don't talk of race. No point. However I will say this.

I’m reading fitful articles by liberals as to why 70,000,000 people voted for the likes of Trump. The great white hope. These were almost to a person 70 million white people. …or those identifying as such or allied to them. This tell you anything?

There’s no need to parley with them. No need certainly to understand them. This since we already know them intimately. We had to. This to survive in this country. We’ve been in a race war with them since 1619. Strictly speaking since the late 1400’s when the Spanish first kidnapped Africans, and brought them to the hemisphere.

So this is a very old war that has just changed. It’s finally turned,…for us. In 2008 more technicolor babies were born here than pink ones. They’ve been getting born by the metric ton every hour since. Kids grow in a flash. These the first are in middle school soon high school then university or the service then work families voting.

I think those 70 millions have an intuitive knowing of this. Their frantic fearful behaviors these last years is an enraged rear guard action. This in the long war they now know they will lose. Hence the talk of white homelands, and defensive genocides against us. They from the start refused to share this country with dark skinned peoples. Fellow citizens. They've put up every defense to stop us.

Now they face biology.

Like the pandemic they think is a hoax it will overtake them. Nature is quiet slow, and certain. So their grandchildren certainly great grandchildren some of them are going to be brown,…guaranteed. Peace at last.

 

Last of the Colors.

 

 

"...stuff"

The stuff that just happens. 

I recall my first beyond the senses experience. I was home falling asleep. I’m about 11 or so. I began to lift out of my bed. I had the sensation one gets in an ascending elevator. I dug my fingering into the mattress to stay down. If they make a video of this it’d be funny. I’m halfway up. My front end holding onto the bed my feet at ninety degrees up going to the ceiling. 

Life is interesting.

 

"...live"

There I am above at six or so.

Life is hard.

Everyday we live through is a victory.

So keep breathing, and keep doing good.

 

"... Brightly Floating"

I'm drifting, and dreaming about this life. My mortality. Oh life you are so strange so terrible so wonderful so short.

Mortality is no longer a distant rumor a vague imagining. I've sailed just off it's coast, and seen it's mountains mysterious valleys. Even so I have felt the Bright Wonder of Life.

Every day a Miracle of sensations.

Walking sleeping hot showers books sorting laundry talking to friends on the phone. Tapping on the computer parks shopping. Watching folks birds cats bugs wind rain, and dreams. This, and attempting to decipher medical forms rules balancing income all that stuff.

Wonder upon wonder.

I lay in bed, and listen to my Heart beat. It sounds just as it did when I was little, and wondered at every new thing.

"Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~bap"

It sounded through my pillow. On, and on. Hardly a missed beat in near a 100 years.

As I said on my recent 70th birthday, "....'Closer to 100 than 20".

Not bad. ..."Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~Bap"

So it goes.

 

"...Earth Abides"

Visited my local park up the block.

Hadn't been since the plague started.

Last saw her when the first buds came in March.

Now in full Colors.

Though these are starting to fade.

Winter is near the leaves browning, and falling.

Looking forward to another, and better Spring.

I took my faerie pals with me.

They were glad to be in the colors as well.

If we get snow this year,...none in two years now.

Still if we do I'll take snaps in the park, and post them.

It's being part of the cycles that make life good.

We are part of the Earth.

The Earth Abides.

 

"...Queer Daze"

Queer Comix Book Art

This by my passed on pal Barry Blair.

He was seriously Cool to know.

Loved that guy.

As for the gender fluidity of youths these days.

I could not approve more.

They uphold millennia of tradition.

This as the near 100 year old 78rpm record 

illustrates below.

I imagine they've already found coniform clay tablets

complaining about Sissy boys, and Butch girls.

These running about Ur, and Babylon.

Fagging it up making art.

Refusing to be in the fucking army.

Basically saving Literacy, and Civilization.

Oh the Times We Had!

Bless all those Queers Souls.

 

"...beds"

I read that here in NYC they're going to announce available hospital beds, and intensive care beds. Well I guess that's good news. If ya told me a year ago. I  mean that a few open beds would be "good news",...aw man. 

The wild shit we get used to,...hey?

"...their own sakes"

I make my pretty things for their own sakes.

I make them so they will exist.

I make them because these are the worlds I want to live in.

Even if such worlds can never be.

 

"...pie"

 

A full day,...at least for me.

As I mentioned early this morning I was on my way to the medical center shopping the post office, and then to the park. Done, and back to tell the tale. Folks are good. The folks at hospital are all everyone heroes. The post office the same. One keeps us alive the others in touch. The park is just plain sacred in these times. Be well loves ya.

I got Apple pie too.

Un-sugared.

I was very good today, and deserved a treat.

"...chains"

About Thanksgiving.

On October 3, 1863, expressing gratitude for the Union Army victory over the Slavers at Gettysburg. President Abraham Lincoln announced that the nation would celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863. The Pilgrims were added as a myth by commercial interests much later. This Holiday was not celebrated in the South for generations after this. This I think is where the Pilgrims come in to de-politicize the day.

The Statue of Liberty is another item. It was originally given by France to celebrate the Abolition of Slavery. There are broken chains at lady Liberty's feet. This was also lost till very recently. As the statue was repurposed...like Thanksgiving.

The work to unite our Republic continues to this very moment.

"We Gather Together"

I always loved this Thanksgiving hymn.

I remember we sang it at at school for the Holiday.

 

"...hot stuff"

I pity the fool that puts hot dye

in his head

then goes public.

 

"...Who"

My home made 2012 "Dr. Who" Holiday Card.

I've been re-using it all these years. No point in stopping now.

Please download it this year. Save me a bunch'a postage. I mean we're all broke these days. Happy Holidaze,...loves ya.

"...drywall"

 

The Barbie Quarantine home improvement doll.

This was exactly me from April through July...then again in October when it cooled off. 'Even have the same tool box,...no dog. I painted plastered repaired re-did my entire digs...a few times over. Now I don't do anything. Well I do watch for UFOs, but otherwise.

"...tubes"

 

Speaking of presents.

A little story about my first radio set.

It was a 1942 small "Zenith". Made of plywood which was really new, and cool in the 40's. They made patrol boats out if it so it had to be cool. Anyway this was about 1963 or so I'm around 12. My Aunt Sybil gave me her old set. I went at restoring it like it was a model kit Spitfire. I cleaned, and sanded the housing. Put fresh varnish on it. Cleaned the electrics rack replaced the old tubes. They still sold radio tubes then. That, and she was in business. With some of her 1940's tubes still working she played Motown, and the Beatles. Below is a near spitting image. Thanks Aunt Sybil.

"...moments"

If I could portal through space time I would shift to this place for a few moments. Moments are all one needs for such. I'd also go to my childhood home. Perhaps on a Christmas eve. This to watch from outside the raising of our tree,...for a moment.

"...271"

Life at Home. Day 271...I think. Now I hardly do anything. I did contracting work on my digs through the months. I ended up painting where I painted plastering where I plastered. I wrote did art slept a lot. Spent too much time online especially here. Now I just sleep sit eat,...repeat. Mortality is vivid anxiety more than last spring. Nightmares. Emptiness. Yet we go on. Below...the little things get you by.

"...Blue"

A Hopeful Blue Moon over Brooklyn.

From my Brooklyn fire-escape observatory.

 

 

"... Outsider art"

If rich you are an eccentric. Your "installations" are praised by the critics. If poor you're considered criminally insane. You are forced to take anti-psychotics, and or put away. Today Arthur Rimbaud would be a sex offender, and locked up for insanity.

 

"...embrace"

About Thanksgiving. It was much the same as Christmas. Just more drama. I have jumbled memories of Uncles arguing some fighting with cousins Aunts being stoically quiet, and our dog Brownie pigging out on leftovers. This as the field of battle quieted when folks left. Otherwise it was fine.

No really it was because things always calmed down back into laughing yacking eating, and just being happy in each other's company. Life when it works is like this. It's what we embrace. All of it. The rough the dicey the wonderful.

Grace. This was a big deal. I mean we only sporadically did this in real life. However the Holidays was when we got real about eternity life, and what we meant to each other. As a kid I was into g-d the same way I dug Santa. 

Myths were as real as math exams to me.

For Billions still is, but that's another rant. I just liked seeing everybody. Cousins were more sisters, and brothers to play with. Aunts kept kissing me. Uncles did tuff guy stuff. Uncle Louie showed me how to do a firm hand shake. Saying how important that static was. 

I loved Uncle Louie. 

Worked at the Navy Yard. Built aircraft carriers with his bare hands! I remember the time he stuffed me, and all the cousins into his gigantic 1959 Imperial. He drove us up'n down the new New York State Thruway. Did near 100! This was before cops executed Black people for having faulty tail lights. ...he got us all drunk one time too.

My Ma freaked out.

He said it was time we grew up. We were underage, but the bar knew Uncle so drink like little fishes we did. I got sick as hell. The next bar I entered was a,...ahem. A rather different one. Again another rant for another time.

As for the Turkey.

Being the sort of kid I was. I helped my folks the night before with the preparations. My new little sister Sylvia did too. Those nights those makings are among my happiest memories. 

We helped Ma make the fixings stuffing. This is also how I learned to make good red bean'n rice.  'Helped Dad make the pies. Every year Dad made pies for the whole block. It was a tradition. 

The house smelled like a swell bakery...with Turkey roasting in the background...a bleeping big one too. Our lives our histories memories are multi-dimensional. Sights smells sounds emotions spiritual tingling's of the un-nameable.

Keep these things in your hearts. Especially this Holiday season. This as most may not see loved ones. Stand fast. Be brave kind smart, and eat everything in sight!

 

"...I'm just fine thanks"

Aw Hell I gotta cheer the fuck up.

This shit ain't healthy.

Wish I had some ganja.

Look it could be worse.

It is for millions out there now.

Hey me,...I got a home a bit of food.

Fucking fresh water!!!

One Billion folks out there don't got even that!

I took a hot shower just now! 

I'm online connected to the Universe.

Family a few friends, and dolls to play with.

No serious complaints.

Not going hungry not in a concentration camp.

Not infected yet, and still stumbling about.

I'm fucking fine.

Remember

Eat evey thing in sight.

Drink heavily.

Get fucking stoned.

'and

Oversleep!

 

 

"...This Just in"

Life pointlessly viciously gleefully sucks, and then you die alone in a ditch in the rain pissed on by dogs. Your family is fined for your rotting body being left as trash in a public place. 

Meanwhile you despite having lived a life of kind generosity to all. You go to Hell. You burn in a sea of irradiated molten steel  for fucking ever. This for the heinous crime of eating that baloney sandwich on a Friday back in 1957. 

Angels rejoice! 

Heaven sings with joy at this Great Justice done by our Lawd.

Amen.

"...dogs of war"

I just read from "Forbes" how one of Trumps sons' funneled Cancer Charity funds into his personal accounts. He did it legal, but he did it because he could. I'm reluctant to have bigotry against a whole class. Perhaps it's more a moral sense of exasperation. The very wealthy some of them are cut off from their humanity. In the same way that desperation makes the poor self destructive excess wealth seems to do the same thing.

The wealthy have the means to heal themselves of destructive inclinations...the poor have social services which reluctantly barely feeds them.

Of course not all the poor, and not all the well off are destructive, but many are. The current irrational materialists values enforce this situation. We live with a kind of national cultural undiagnosed metal illness. It's very much like what Malcom X said about racism. To paraphrase..."Racism is a form if Insanity,...it makes it's perpetrators, and it's victims both insane". As does wealth, and poverty.

I'm just looking at our present national situation from a metal health angle. We're all living in a republic with a vast undiagnosed form of mass insanity. This is clearly what it looks like if you stand back. One that not only permits a gigantic disparity in the means of basic survival,...but encourages it. Rewards it.

"...the upside"

PERP WALK

El Jefe his own self.

#45 after meeting with Michigan Senators.

He insisted they come to D.C.

He demanded they order their state electors

to all vote for him.

Thereby bypassing the the will of the people.

There's an election. 

Whoever get the most votes gets the electors.

They cast ballots at the Electoral Collège.

The Boss told them Fuck that.

Have them Vote for me.

They said no.

America more or less moves on.

The upside for #45.

He will be in court for years to come.

Everyone he ripped off is coming for him. 

With immunity gone he's fucked.

His "upside".

He'll soon be getting free accommodations.

 Free food exercise psychiatric care,

and a nifty orange jump suit.

His favorite color.

 

"...assume"

In the Emerald City we're headed back to Orange Zone status. Red total lockdown Orange partial Yellow near normal. Mind you all this is politics. Assume you're in a Red Zone till you get your shot. The vast spikes in cases, and deaths from coast. Comes from near half ignoring the whole thing. It's caught up with them as the scientists said it would. Be wise be safe.

"...united states"

We’re getting back to normal…in a way. True the current head of state still refuses to leave. However this problem carries it’s own solution. January 20th he is relived of all authority. On the upside politics,…some of it is slowly returning to what it was. Liberals devouring each other, and the right wanting 1958 back.

The progressive left is tearing Uncle Joe a bunch of new ones. This for his administrative picks. They want left progressives. They’re getting moderate business connected centrists. Which is what most of the voters wanted. 58% of Joe’s voters did so they say to get rid of #45. Not start a revolution. 

As for the right. They still  threaten Joe’s life wave Confederate flags, and continue their war on the poor. 

This is our normal pre-#45 political state.  …What a relief!

Above a monument to the Union Army in Brooklyn. In gratitude for defeating the Slaver Confederacy. 

That made us the contradictory messy hopeful ‘United’ States.

"...Bang"

This Golden Age era comic sez 2020 so well.

Shit is far from over.

I expect exactly this before the curtain falls!