Manifesto in F Minor

fuck winning, fuck fad sex, fuck community standards, fuck girls gone wild, fuck pop-up ads, fuck lead-lined coffins, fuck the blood of the lamb, fuck eminent domain, fuck capital letters, fuck bailouts, fuck parking tickets, fuck starvation, fuck large families, fuck texas, fuck politically correct, fuck empires, fuck family values, fuck the categorical imperative, fuck cute dogs, fuck the council of nicea, fuck bad movie science, fuck a sense of entitlement, fuck her new shoes and the coffeepot, fuck drab colors, fuck reality shows, fuck ambition, fuck the great pacific trash patch, fuck proper names, fuck laws against suicide, fuck money, fuck hijacked revelations, fuck hijacked revolutions, copulate pedantry, fuck concrete, fuck muscle cars, fuck standards of beauty, fuck self-family-state-nation, fuck b-flat major, fuck harley davidson, fuck pierced tongues, fuck the war on drugs, fuck lèse majesté, fuck poetry in the new yorker, fuck positive thinking, fuck certainty, fuck weak will, fuck the electoral college, fuck cruelty, fuck obscenity, fuck group hugs, fuck haditha, fuck aristocracy, frack euphemisms, fuck feeling bad, fuck all forms of confirmation bias, fuck thongs, fuck paper cuts, fuck at&t, fuck high heels, fuck billboards, fuck laugh tracks, fuck repetition, fuck repetition, fuck sanctimony, fuck the rule against split infinitives, fuck looting, fuck sneakiness, fuck american exceptionalism, fuck boredom, fuck neoclassical beaux arts, fuck huitzilopochtli, fuck romanticism, fuck progress, fuck inappropriate language, fuck our lord who art in heaven, fuck scoobie doo, fuck friday, fuck me, fuck legally protected collectivist hierarchies, fuck cold wet feet, fuck in god we trust, fuck action movies, fuck bank of america, fuck lipstick, screw henry f. phillips, fuck iraneus, fuck you, fuck fuckity fuck fuck, fuck packaging, fuck zeus, fuck borders, fuck the ku klux klan, fuck the afl-cio, fuck me, fuck 1978, fuck trader joe’s, fuck tv sex, fuck gaia, fuck the number 2, fuck goatees, fuck mistaking fear for love, fuck droit de seigneur, fuck the top ten, fuck them, fuck pragmatism, fuck imperial measurement, fuck social darwinism, fuck psychomedication, bugger sodomy, fuck me, fuck moloch, fuck anarchy, fuck ontology, fuck military adventurism, fuck yhwh, fuck chastity, fuck prisons, fuck this, fuck low-carb diet, fuck dropping things, fuck tamurlane, fuck pinpoint pupils, fuck polarity, fuck the epilogue to war and peace part 2, fuck these cords everywhere, fuck allah, fuck paypal for selling out wikileaks, fuck drone attacks, fuck slimfast for fucking the quantity/price ratio, fuck golf, fuck atv’s suv’s and snowmobiles, fuck spanogyny, fuck fake orgasms, fuck attitudes, fuck preferring vinyl to cd, fuck flattening of the affect, fuck summer blockbusters, fuck corrupt bureaucrats, fuck rape is rape, fuck odin, fuck the police of every nation, fuck huáqueros, fuck it, fuck banning hemp paper, fuck criminalizing hallucinogens, fuck clearcutting, fuck all three tiglath pilesers, fuck badly spelled racist web comments, fuck mistaking greed for love, fuck cop shows, fuck not having my own space/timeship, fuck not loving everything, fuck homeland security, fuck inflation, fuck string theory, fuck deforestation, fuck using “fuck” to mean fuck things, fuck all eight henrys including V, fuck resentment, fuck seven billion homo sapiens sapiens and counting on 510 million km2, fuck curtis lemay, fuck contempt for solitude, fuck sharing backstabbing gossip only upon sworn silence, fuck extrajudicial arrest and execution, fuck the lesser of two weevils, fuck embarrassment, fuck the death of the oceans, fuck sushi, fuck osmophobia, fuck forgetting to breathe, fuck pantyhose, fuck making america as wicked as the rest, fuck that I walk on by, fuck fucking with the aurora borealis, fuck banning huckleberry finn, fuck mistaking the directive to pair for love, fuck being whole for a few minutes in a lifetime only, fuck hizbollah, fuck recycled air, fuck this hypnotic state, fuck the theory that war gives birth to civilization, fuck loneliness, fuck nudity laws, fuck the conquest of peru, ffuck diplasiasmus, fuck envy, fuck conspicuous consumption, fuck fedoras, fuck negativity, fuck powerpoint, fuck rote apologies, fuck smallpox blankets, fuck the death of the family farm, fuck nato, fuck twitter, fuck oppositional defiant disorder: the concept, fuck high-school football, fuck boob jobs, fuck quotation marks inside the period, fuck robert lowth, fuck logging on public land, fuck cowboy hats, fuck the vertical society, fuck psychological entropy, fuck cheap nose hair clippers, fuck books I forget I’ve already read, fuck wanting time to pass faster, fuck car alarms, fuck the nuclear family, fuck raping poor countries for resources, fuck love vs. freedom, fuck the two-party system, fuck water shortage, fuck fear, fuck change of venue, fuck coordinated universal time all night long, fuck everything we love and will lose, fuck the ardening of the hearteries, fuck parole boards, fuck inflation of tuition, fuck the american consumer farms, fuck income disparity, fuck arrogance, fuck false humility, fuck rage, fuck hypoxic oceans, fuck peremptory challenge, fuck that these sweatpants have no pockets, fuck ads on gmail, fuck vaguely uneasy dreams, fuck the fences along every road, fuck that my balding bothers me, fuck that you are hurting, fuck volunteerism, fuck that it’s 8:59, fuck forgetting what it felt like, fuck slyness, fuck lying to children, fuck manning up, fuck american idol, fuck canned green beans, fuck triumph, fuck industrial farming, fuck the patriot act, fuck organized sports, fuck strip mining, fuck cliques, fuck nostalgia, fuck victimless crimes, fuck self abasement, fuck misinformation, fuck plastic bags, fuck greed, fuck that freedom and liberty are political opposites, fuck bullies, fuck the nsa, fuck activism, fuck chronometry, fuck antiwar movies, fuck vanity, fuck tyranny, fuck raiding pensions, fuck support our troops, fuck judicial instruction, fuck parental ownership, fuck video surveillance, fuck predestination, fuck being a team player, fuck diminishing returns, fuck explosive reactive armor, fuck my country right or wrong, fuck naming generations, fuck mall rats, fuck theocracy, fuck the defeat of the impulse to freedom in america, fuck the shadow lords who killed it, fuck the boot stamping on a human face forever, fuck losing, fuck despair, unfuck now


From 12/17/11

Love versus Freedom

What did the zen monk say to the hotdog vendor?

"Make me one with everything."

If the mystics are right, there is a place you can (not being) be where all things are one and there is no opposition. Where we live, however, existence depends upon polarity. 

Here-there, this-that, on-off, us-them, light-dark, I-thou, up-down, pleasure-pain, angel-demon, yin-yang, pretty-ugly, true-false, zero-one, every form of duality. Without contrast, without comparison, there is no consciousness and without awareness there is no existence. 

So what? Got me there. It doesn't matter, because no matter what you do, it will all turn out that way anyway. Or so the Acid God informed me on my Alan Watts trip in '68. But thrashing through the underbrush of everyday life, figuring out what's at the other end of every stick we're pulling or pushing is how we get things done.

My life has generated its own particular opposite: freedom and love. 

The conventional utterance goes, "the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference." Maybe. I'm indifferent to that; in fact, I'd say overall that love's antipode is fear. To me, it's being free.

I started a post under this title a while back, but abandoned it because, A, it didn't really bother me at the time, and B, it struck me that it might not be true. For me, as I go, yes, but intrinsically? Isn't the world full of people for whom this conflict doesn't exist because all they want is to love and be loved?  For whom love is freedom from all the dark and chill lurking outside the fire circle of their intimacy? So I let it go.

Okay. Then things happen. First, I get free. And it feels good. God almighty, free at last. No one to answer to, nothing to stop me, I've got the gas and the cash, places to go and plans I can change on a whim.  

Then...here's a 90-second love story.

1967, New York City, I see a Canadian girl coming across Washington Square. This is love. A few years on, she gets distracted by shiny things - like a career - and drifts off. I remain constant, in my center, thinking that some day we will die in each other's arms. A life goes by. At last, I give up. I accept that it will never be. I make plans to leave it all behind and ramble. I go north one last time to say goodbye. With the pressure gone, we are at peace. Then, on the last hour of the last day, she discovers she loves me. She has always loved me. I carry her to bed. Just a slight twinge in my lower back, thanks. 

Is that 90 seconds? 

Now there is a dilemma. On one end of the stick, my plans to go free. On the other, my life's love. 

Can't I have both? I want both. Maybe I can have both.

I go for a road trip with Tom, one of my three friends, to camp on the beach at Point Reyes, and he has a sharp eye for the essence. His questions bring me up short, wipe the Vaseline off the lens. 

Can't have both. Sorry. If you leave her behind, you lose her. She knows what she's costing you, what she's done to you, and she won't lay down any ultimatums. Go ahead, South America, adios, I'll be here when you come back. 

But free means you don't have to come back. Free means there's no one left behind. Free means there's only you and whoever you meet on the trail. Free means love is left behind.

It feels fine to feel free. But you know what? I'll take the love. I've stood on high ground stunned by the radiance of the world around, feet on the earth head in the sky and all open before me, and only one worm in the apple. No one there to share. No one to say, "look at that." 

The message from the black planet: I don't want to be alone.  Given a choice, I choose communion. 

Maybe it won't work. Of course. Given my history, and for that matter, hers - neither of us ever married - that's understood. Sunt lacrimae rerum, old son. 

So I checked out of Hotel California, set up a household in northern Washington - the World's Longest Unguarded Border rations me six months out of a year in Canada - according to my criteria: in the wild, by living water, with stars, dark, silence - on Beaver Pond Trail - and then came north to this homestead up Vancouver Island to see what we can do.

As for the validity of that dichotomy, love v. freedom, well yeah, you're always free if what you want is what they give you. Arbeit macht frei. So if all you want is to snuggle with your honey bunny you won't feel the shackles. But if you wake up one morning with an urge to step out onto the road and never come back, you will understand.

I have that urge. Always have, always will. But I know how to choose. And sometimes we can step out onto that road kinda together.