Saturday, February 27, 2016

Felix: the Cabby! (Bilingual: English and Spanish) (El Taxista Felix: Dedicado a los taxistas de Lima)

Versión en Inglés

Felix: the Cabby!
(For The taxi drives of Lima)

You will believe this, without knowing,
Yet they know, the Cabby in Lima who tackle the city daily of eight million cars s/he knows:
The does and the don’ts!
Felix, says to me today, —a cabby in his 40s:
“Got to watch those children who run away from their mother’s grasp, head on right across the street without looking…”
He says, “You got to expect temper tantrums from other drivers, under uncommon stress—!”
Furthermore he utters: “And you got to know the moods of the people you pick up!”  It’s a plus…
I tell him, “You got to be a psychologist!”
He smiles, chuckles some.
“You got to be a good listener,” I add, “Oh yes, a good listener,” he heightens.
He suggests: “You should write a poem about taxi drivers” I smile “Oh yes,” I endorse; then he adds, “…if you had a bad day money-wise, well, still you go home with pride knowing you tried!”
I tell him it’s our 16th Anniversary today!
“Congratulations,” he says, and drops us off, at Larco Mar, a shopping and eating—market, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

#5092 (2-26-2016)


Versión en Español

  Félix: El Taxista
(Dedicado a los taxistas de Lima)


lo creerás esto, sin saberlo,
Aunque ellos lo saben, los taxistas en Lima,
Quienes enfrentan diariamente a una ciudad de ocho millones de carros,
Él o ella saben:
¡Lo que se puede hacer, y lo que no se puede hacer!
Hoy me dijo Félix –un taxista en los cuarentas—:
“Tengo que mirar por aquellos niños que se escapan de la mano de sus madres, y entran en la pista corriendo sin siquiera mirar…”
Él dice, “tienes que esperar rabietas de otros conductores bajo inusual estrés”
Es más, él pronuncia: “Y tienes que conocer el humor de la gente a quienes recoges” Es una ventaja…
Le digo a él, “¡tienes que ser un psicólogo!”
Él sonríe, se ríe por lo bajo.
“Tienes que saber escuchar”, añado, “Oh si, ser un buen oyente”, él realza.
Él sugiere: “Ud. debería escribir un poema sobre los taxistas”
Yo sonrío “Oh sí”, lo apruebo;
Luego él añade,
“¡…si tuviste un día malo, en lo que se refiere a dinero, bueno, aún volvemos a casa con orgullo sabiendo que lo intentamos!”
Le digo a él que es nuestro décimo-sexto aniversario hoy.
“Felicitaciones” él dice, y nos deja en Larco Mar,
Un centro comercial y de comidas, que está mirando al Océano Pacífico.


 #5092 (26-Febrero-2016)

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Great Flood of Jauja ((Junín, Peru) (2-23 to 27-2016)) Revised


With Dark, wet, cold ground—
Comes the dim cloudy roads, sinking
Rain, rain—all day, and all night long!
Rain, rain—no one to turn to!
Four days, all night all day long!
Got word, “Comes the flood…”
People of Jauja,
Get out of the way;
Lord have Mercy!
Women and children, cry:
“What can we do now?”
No one to turn to!
Bridge broken down
The river’s overflowing:
Flooding; everything’s awash….
Jauja, Junin—! Afloat, no boat!
Rain, rain—all day, all night long!
All day, all night long.
The ground is a brown sponge!
And the flood, keeps flooding, ebbing…

February 23, 2016 Poem: 5090

Copyright © 2/2016 by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. h.c.

Monday, February 22, 2016

The Trials and Ordeals of a Cornered Pope ((Pius XII) (An Essay/Theme))


Pope Pius XII is an interesting subject, especially during his papacy, during WWII. His actions can be viewed as having potentially multiple meanings. We even have to step into the phenomenal, or unbelievable consciousness of the pope, and the human condition of the times.  His life during this brief time can be viewed metaphorical, as he resists the Nazi occupation in his own way, not the way we might have done it but his way. At one point he sees, ultimately sees, he has no control, and death, perhaps irrational for the observer outside the walls of the Vatican, irrational, but for the living under the Nazi regime, inevitable. Italy and Germany were in a like manner, stepbrothers, figuratively speaking (and the Vatican was at the edge of their horizon): For Pope Pius XII, the philosophical of the absurd was taking place. He sees a regime who can and will, and is killing at will, indifferently killing the whole of humanity that gets in its way, although there are exceptions, but few. The Jew per near a complete genocide, the Catholics took their share of hardships also, respectively, murder was the name of the game, or sentenced to prison, work camps, condemned in the long run, with very little emotion.  ((Orders, they were all given orders the Nazi Regime to kill or murder, and that held precedence, and at the Nuremburg trials, many accused of these murders, would scream “They were orders,”  but are we not accountable for orders, to do them or deny them accordingly?  Another issue for another essay.)(On the other hand, a tad off the subject, Hitler and his gofers, all carried the same tendency, that religion has an inclination to cause or exacerbate human conflicts. And perhaps it has, if one is to look at the backbone of the Crusades, and the rise of the Islamic State, that there is a cost that religion imposes, which was a fabric of Communism; Hitler saw that religion stifles progression, but it produced a moral way of life, and thus for the moment acceptance of the implausible, what he felt was unlikely to survive his  regime could be tolerated for the time being, and taken advantage of; in other words, Catholicism, or Lutheranism, or  the Baptist (as I am), they all could be used to  tranquil the masses, in causing an uproar, by allowing a high clergy, like the Pope to reside at his residence unharmed,  making Hitler look better in the minds of the world.))
      But what I was leading up to is: What kind of man is this Hitler, who looks at a Christian or a Jew, in particularly at the Jew as a plague! A plague of millions of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace outside of Europe. At that very moment, hysteria is mounting in the Vatican the halls are full of spies, in particular the OSS (whom later on would become the CIA). Yes, even Hitler’s henchmen, in particular Himmler, had a desire to barbecue Pope Pius XII; that is, feed him to the lions like Nero did at the coliseum, make a spectacle of him: he was in essence up for execution.
       At this juncture, the Pope unsure of Hitler’s or Himmler’s next human reaction, the Pope becomes the catalyst, one of the facilitators of covert action against Hitler, a coconspirator, or accessory to three botched attempts on Hitler’s life, three assassinations that failed (as several wartime documents would surface in the 21st Century; documents and interviews with the American intelligence agent who wrote them, during this wartime period.)

So thus, the Pope was in an underground movement, what he couldn’t do in the open he would try in the dark vaults of the Vatican, to see Nazism and Hitler dead as a doornail, realizing Hitler’s philosophy of Nihilism, inferring, life is: nothingness or oppression, as a viewpoint, this being the very philosophy of anti-theology, and he wanted to impose it on all Germans, and then onto the rest of Europe. The Pope sees Hitler as a form of ‘Tuberculosis’. He is the bubonic plague. Yet at that very moment, the world sees him as doing nothing, and living comfortably in his Vatican bed of a hundred pillows, and eating T-bone steak!
       In a way, Italy and Germany are sealed off from Europe, the Pope prohibited, like China has prohibited the once young Dalai Lama to leave his prison cell, thus, the Pope is restricted to the Vatican. Under Hitler’s watchdogs. I’m sure the Pope felt separated-effects, like isolation, introverted. So he devised along with his helpers, different plans, to do away with Hitler. One must remember, he could have been smuggled away, like they did with the old Dalai Lama, in 1959, when China massacred the inhabitants of Tibet, per near like a second genocide in less that 25-years, and took possession of Tibet, forevermore, claiming Tibet was part of China in the 15th Century.  But Pope Pius, stayed; forwent his pontifical lectures on good and evil, forwent the broadcasts he could have done, giving his condolences to those affected by Hitler; instead he stayed and lost the opportunity to advance his status as a good pope fighting the good cause, and acted exhaustively to help the Jews, the few he could hide, and develop this plan of ‘doing away with Hitler’ in the dark, and as we all know, the situation worsened.
       It might be said, the world sat back and watched, looked the other way, said it was a European problem, WWII. And Americans simply went to watch the movies, ate their candy frost at the parks; asked one another:  was there really a plague (a war, a genocide) going on in Europe?  Out of sight, out of mind. I mean if the world could not stop Hitler, or was unwilling to, what did they expect one Pope to do? I mean, Washington had the information from the spies in the halls of the Vatican.  The OSS as I mentioned, were there. Yet America was silent. How many people had to die before America would react?  In WWII, 80-million people were killed. Was not Washington, privy to the documents their agent hand? And now, 70-years later, the documents come up because of one man, doing research.  Was not the Pope kind of a silent, Richard the Lion Heart? Was the Pope a demon or a saint? He is either one or the other, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in-between.
       If he had killed Hitler as he and his associates wished, he would have been a hero, but like President Jimmy Carter, who failed in the attempt, to rescue 50-Americans taken hostage by Iran, was looked upon as a failure president. Now Obama, rewards Iran by lifting the embargo, and giving them back 100-billion dollars once frozen in banks, he looks like the hero, not Carter. Political chips fall as they will, like gravity, they roll down to the abyss. I mean, now, we have inspired the enemy, who supports Russia and the Syrian President al-Assad, and the near genocide now going on in Syrian. Iran is no friend to the Jew, Christian, or America.
       So the Pope had hope, even though his crusade looked careless.   But the question comes to surface: did he fight the good fight, against the unspeakable evil. We must look at the parable of the talents, at the man Jesus gave one coin to, and the other nine, he gave 10-coins to (thereabouts), and the one who got the one coin, buried it and gave it back to Jesus.  And what is the lesson? It is not, that it is better to have tried and failed, than not to have tried at all. The message to God is: he tried! In other words: he did the best he could with what he had, at the time. Well, that’s how I see it anyhow.
       The question comes up also: did the Pope collaborate with the Nazi Regime?  It would carry the unexpectedly echoes of such a reality, so people would not be snatched from their homes by the gestapos—I would think, and imprisoned or sent to work as slaves in labor camps.  Everything is not black and white, there are a lot of ashen areas here. We can look at the war I was sent to, Vietnam, 1971.  President Bush avoided the Vietnam War by being allowed into the National Guard (favoritism: who you know counts), and many college kids were exempt, by running into the nearest college, I wanted to go, volunteered, when I didn’t have to go, I was exempt because of a bomb falling on my leg in West Germany, —I couldn’t run like a regular soldier was expected to; this all happened a year prior. Like the Pope, you do things because you feel them right; he didn’t run away, he went forward, but silently, lest he be dog meat for the Germans.
       I felt at the time I went to war in Vietnam, communism was an epidemic, and needed to be stomped out, young as I was, perhaps foolish. What could I do sitting at Fort Lewis, getting sore heals from marching to and fro! I believed if you’re going to be a soldier, then be one, or get out of the game. What Hitler wanted with the Pope alive, is what Russia wanted with America dead.  Deprivation of the symbol of freedom. That is why Russia and China fought and still fight proxy wars with America.

       Why did Hitler not kill the Pope? This is kind a repeat, with a little more reasoning, and feeling behind it, it is my opinion of course.  There are certain laws of nature we know not by reason but by vivid immediate feelings that we must if possible, avoid that immediate feeling that goes along with a behavior, or action, or reaction! Why? Because if adopted by all men, would render social life impossible.  In other words, monkey see, monkey do.  Religion is based on faith, morals, and ethics, for Hitler’s army he wanted them to abandon this theology and acquire his values, but should all society do likewise at that very moment in time, no! Hitler was saying in essence, to kill indiscriminately for his end-means (and to create doubt in everyone’s mind beyond the horizon), was okay (the German people didn’t even know what he was up to half the time); on the other hand, should everyone think like him, which he knew they didn’t, and his way of thinking become a universal law, God forbid, so he had to take advantage of the moment. Let them see the Pope, the man with morals, free, as he imprisoned the world, unnoticed.



Copyright © February, 20, 2016, by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. h.c.

The Pessimist (Revised)




I


Am I really pessimistic, indifferent in my writings? So the Publishers say. I thought I was a realist, although for myself I suppose I’m a misanthropist, meaning: a loner, recluse, cynic malcontent with the world, but Pessimist? I don’t get it.  Well I guess I will live with it, and be unpolished for a while, the Man of Woe, that is me. The telegram said, they liked the draft, but I needed to take all the gloom out of it. That is like saying your mother passed away, and at the funeral, you’re not allowed to give her deep sympathy, or allowed to say out loud her name, or in this case for me to print the gloom of the world at hand. The Will of the world is dead!  Life is a despair, the only victory in life is war. And the victor is never wrong because if you tell him so, you’re one dead duck, along with the many.
       The last publisher out of forty, said I only saw misery and unrest in the world. Somehow life left scars and deep reservoirs, but I made them too deep. He said I said ‘Life was meaningless,’ I didn’t say that, I’ll have to write him back, tell him, I said, ‘The world lived as if life was meaningless,’ no I said, I think I said, ‘nothingness,’ that ‘the world took on the spell of no certain faith, an old religion of nihilism is taking place, that life has gone out of the soul.
       After reading his comments it struck me, ‘when I had young eyes like the publisher, for he’s only 27-years old, and I’m 68-years old, he sees the world with young eyes, he can’t see beyond the dimness of  today, us older ones no longer can. I know he mocks me as a dimwit, living in the past, but it is the present I am talking about in the book, and future: the ruin, man has caused the world, is it not so, that the roof is falling in? I’d like to call him up and talk to him about that. Maybe go see him, or have him see me, convince him the world needs my book, it is like a gospel, per near, a gospel of doom! I know Mr. Christion Durant, laughs at me, and if I call him he’ll say “Mr. Solomon Salem, I had a busy morning in my office, I’m in a good humor, don’t wreck the day for me, I’m too tired to fight, we’re not going to publish your rot.”
       The previous publisher, for him it was regrettable, he agreed— “…but people do not think the way you think,” to his mind anyhow.  Did he take a survey? No! Did he read ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh,’ or Achebe, or ‘The Trial,’ or ‘The Castle,’ or ‘Sentimental Education’ or Virgil, or ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Moby-Dick` or ‘Metamorphoses’: no, no, no, but they all have gloominess to them.  How about Faust or Voltaire?  No, no, no, again gloominess. For him there is no calamity at the tip of the horizon, no nuclear clock three minutes to midnight, he lives blind in a foxhole.
       When I got home last night I noticed a pile of bills on my floor, the mailman’s too lazy to put them in the mailbox, instead of the door slot, that’s for when I’m on a trip, and I haven’t taken one for six years. This mailman’s a new one, he’s older than I, or looks older, with his wrinkles on his face swaying like masts in the offing.

By the time I reached the restaurant, ‘The Chef’ off Payne Avenue and West Seventh Street, my little apartment, two rooms on York Street not far off, just a little walk, not so much an unusual place, more on the order of a greasy-spoon place, with heavy waitresses with loose aprons and bulging pouches, where white haired men eat, and hopefuls with no sympathetic view on life go. I was still feeling badly about the previous turndown of my MS, but Christion Durant was on my brain now. Yet, oddly enough, so much alike they both are. I thought everyone had a view on the chaos going on in the world, did not Aristotle say, “We are all political Animals,” and did not Pope Francis quote that quote to Mr. Donald Trump concerning the wall he wants to build, to narrow the gap between the overflow of Mexicans sneaking into the United States.  I guess my view on it was what Confucius, said: “For a wise man should know what he knows and what he doesn’t know.”
       I like them both, but I wonder if Confucius should have changed his maxim to: “A wise man should know what he knows, and not pretend to know what he doesn’t know.”
       “The Regular,” I told the fat waitress, with heavy-duty varicose-veins, it’s a crying shame, her insurance policy here doesn’t pay for them to be taken care of, and evidently they don’t.  Just then a man came in who lives in the bottom apartment of my four-plex building. He’s 93-years old, he said he sold furs in his younger days.
       “Hello,” he said, waves; I give him a wave back.
       Mr. Christion Durant, should know evil is not blind, only hope and those like Russia, and Putin, and al-Assad in Syria, and the Islamic State, and North Korea’s head honcho, China likewise, they are all brooding over owning more of the earth.
       To know them you got to know their fathers and mothers, because they get their temper from their father, and their good sense and intellect from the mother. The world lives in half-truths, like dreaming, if they put it all together, they’d have a heart attack. But what is stronger than the temper or the good sense or intellect? That is what my book is about, ‘The Will’. Why the world is falling apart.  Why people put-up with living an unbearable life, a burdensome life. That’s why I live by myself, short-tempered and all, and live a challenging-like life, it takes guts to do that. Not mouth-guts, like the politicians, but gut-guts, it takes a strong Will.
       I still don’t know if I should call him. I didn’t know until recently my book produced such a bad impression on him of me.
      I have two sons and two daughters, seldom seen, all out of wedlock, one of the daughters has what I have, that is a strong ‘Will’; not so much intelligence per say, but the Will, and that compensates!  Her husband just died, and she’s survived it quite well. She is not in touch with the pretense of the world. She’s not gloomy, and cynical, or suspicious. Or obsessed with fears, and evils, or fancies.
         It is an effort thinking all these things out, the old man, the fur man, looking my way, smiling. Hair loose, flying to and fro, he sits under a fan, to cool his aging overheated body, and life, he laughs happily at life as being a joke, well, not quite a joke, but I know him, he thinks he, no, we are the salt and summit of the universe, not a passing phenomenon like so many philosophers, not a  hidden illusion, separated by space and time, he told me once “Wise men since the beginning of time keep saying the same thing, and the fools, all act alike!”   I talked to him about the Will, ‘Free Will,’ and he said, “There is no real free will, as long as there is necessity. You see…” he says to me, “…the Will, wants!” I got thinking then, I’d bet he’d agree with my book to be.  I think Dante would have liked my book too, he created Hell, out of the world he lived in, and that is what my ‘Gloomy Book,’ is all about.
       I sleep with a gun under by bed, and I hate noise, it is unbearable, but those with less mental capacity, they can endure noise it doesn’t torture them, for intellectuals, it does, the knocking, hammering of neighbors, loud music, that base thumping, all torment.

I remember once my boy, one of the twins questioned me on if I had any friends? Not one single friend.  A lot of acquaintances, but I’d not call them friends. Between him and them, resides infinity. And I’m immune to political protest and nationalistic fevers. What is so outrageous, so absurd, and so egotistic of this? I can sleep well, I know my prayers are heard by God.
       I shall name my manuscript, ‘The Dark Side of the Riddle,’ because there is a double-edged riddle in the book, perhaps triple-edged. And what is a riddle but a puzzle if not a question, a mystery, a challenge for the world to find.

      
        
II


It was a struggle waking up this Saturday morning, full of sweat and bad odor; I looked out the window, and saw some joggers, and the breakfast sign on at ‘the Chef` café, up the street.   I wanted to get into the shower, and not be troubled with breakfast. I wanted to call Christion Durant, tell him I got a name for the manuscript.  I had to get up out of bed slowly, my head always hurts if I get up and out of bed too fast, I wanted a cigarette, but I had quit for 32-years, it seemed like the bitter taste would wake me better, but that was out of the question. I went and got into the shower, I do a lot of thinking in the shower sometimes.
       I realized the MS attracted little attention for Christion, and his publishing house, but in my last of several letters I let him know he should publish it for humanitarian reasons. And he wrote me back, “Use it for waste paper.” But I knew he didn’t mean it. Oh, he also said, remember, “If a demon looks like a demon inside your book (somewhat…quoting Confucius, I believe, misquoting him…), then it is a demon, but somehow you expect an angel of God to come out of it, I think either the demon or the angel needs help, and you have to iron that part out! The book is hollow, and on a collision course.”
       The only thing I could tell him, and I’m not going to, but if I did I’d say: ‘Like it or not a man must be humanistic in general, and I can’t take your comments serious, perhaps I’m too alien for contemporaries, knowing what I wrote, is what mankind has turned down in place of chaos, for he knows at large, man knows at large—even if only in the unconscious, he is the fox being hunted. And who are the hunters?’
      
I picked up a letter the mailman left on the floor.  It read from Mr. Durant, “You are deaf to your audience, because you cannot see no one applauding, can you, yet you persist in us publishing your rot? Tell me what is in your book to applaud?”
       How can he talk like that to me! Here is an editor who wrote at one time and could not sell, so he took a job editing books to judge them for his publisher. A judge with less applause than me.  The poorest of the players! The only thing his job does is raise his ego, and rejecting my MS, was and still is,  a short cut to his compensation for his absence of fame.
       In other words, Christion knows my MS reads like the Torah, a doomsday Torah, but all thinking people must find seclusion, and for that reason I cannot go knocking on his door. But I’ll stop giving lectures at the University, I can survive on the revenue of my mother left me, she left me quite an investment in apartments.


III


There are a few areas, dark areas I never cared to expose. And a few days after Mr. Durant’s last letter, I’ve decided that  this phase of my life, at this old age,  it was time to; of course that is why I wrote the book, but Durant I doubt read it. Nonetheless as time goes by, it must be written or talked about and he is the last one I want to send my MS to. I can feel his aversion, and it has no substance, his resistance is pride.  I was hardly conscious of this before, before this morning, I must have thought it in my head last night, vague as I remember. I will rename my book “The World’s Dark Soul”. A new name for an old book. I don’t want to leave home today, I want to write him a letter, or talk to him. But I don’t like eating in, too many cockroaches, rats and mice, flies and spiders, mosquitos. I’m no house clearer that’s for sure. Where is the Argentine wine?
       I guess I’ll go to the bar, the “Do Drop Inn,” it’s a ways away, but I can take a bus.

       Fill the glass up please! 
       “Why,” asked the waitress, “every time you come here you order two glasses, a glass filled with wine, and leave one glass empty?
       “A good question, not sure if you are too noisy or not, but I’ll tell you why!   I’m going to fill that second glass up, whenever I come here, and not hear anyone complaining about world events, and war, and the shape of girls, and gambling, and drugs, and guns, and drinking too much, and expect a change to occur by not facing the issues, they are complaining about. I see when I came in, you had a grin on your face, now you answer me why?”
       “It wasn’t a grin, I’ve read several of your articles in the newspapers, and on the internet, a few in magazines, and you’re a real thinker?”
       “Really! So you don’t think I have a dark soul, that I’m eccentric, write with peculiarities.”
       “I didn’t say that, but what you write is always interesting.”
       “Interesting.  Does that mean, pretentious jargon?”
       “What does that mean?”
       “Conceited nonsense!”
       “No, it only that you write in riddles!”
       Just then the postman came in. 
       “Mr. Salem, I have your mail, take it here and you’ll save me the climb up your stairs.”
       And he handed me a letter from the publisher, Mr. Durant, as Susie poured me my third glass of wine.
       “Good or bad news,” asked Susie.
       “My book just got accepted for publication!”
       “You should call and thank your publisher!” said Susie.
       “I have nothing to say to him, verbally. Although I shall be writing him quite soon enough, anyhow.”


IV


When I got home, it was quite late, and the phone was ringing. I answered it, it was Mr. Durant on the other end.
       “Mr. Salem, I have now read your whole book complete, cover to cover as they say, and I want to know what the riddle is, the so called Chinese puzzle, its terminology seems to have blurred that area up for me. I assume you got my letter.”
       “Well, it’s about time you read it, and I suppose I can try to put it in a nutshell for you, if you can take my conception of the world, with a black frankness?”
       “Shoot, I mean go ahead, I’m not that closed mind.” Replied Durant.
       “It’s only a 125-pages, but no time can be more favorable than now in which God sees the world in a shamefully misused way, and indeed may look the other way as He did at 9/11. Leaders worldwide, only wish to further their own objectives over the masses, the political arena is a bullring. There is nobody to oppose them, but God Himself. These present-day leaders indeed wish to live it up, with power and greed and have special rules for them, and for us, obedient to their rules however they make them up, and they make them up at any unused moment. It is impossible that we have not adopted—or better put, approved the demon for the past 50-years to guide our societies. That truth will come quietly and modestly to the surface only to have a short lived life. Truth is no longer nobler than recognition, favoritism; they should go hand in hand. And truth today is what the people want it to be at any given time: not what it is.”
       “Well, what is the riddle,” asked Mr. Durant.
       “I must answer with hypocritical humility, and first I’ll give you an example, then the maxim, if you don’t mind. Would you build a library underground next to a neighbor’s garden and not expect him to water it, thus, not waterproofing your library, which should be a must. Should it not? (Durant didn’t answer, as if waiting for the punch line) I’ll answer it for you, no you would not. If you did, you’d be a dumb head, or drumhead for someone to beat there drum sticks on. Now for the second part, ‘Out of darkness comes light,’ evidently you did not see that. In our world today of over seven-billion, we all speak not as if the other guy or gal doesn’t exist, we act as we are separated from our one united human race, as being the only one that counts in the human race. God hates indifference.”
       Asked the publisher “What does this light say about all of this?”
       “To accept the external world as real, and don’t put your worse foot forward.  Attack materialism, and nihilism. The most vital part of the light is God. Stop trying to explain God as matter, because we only see things as matter through the mind. There is a door, there is God, and there is a key, and he has it in his palm, it is to the entrance of the external world. Check out the Book of Isaiah. The crust of the earth, is much like the crust of the mind, there is much underneath it. Actually, here is where the vital resources reside.
      “We have become a world of ducks and chickens, and hedge-hogs clustering together for warmth; fighting for another day to draw another sniff of air into our lungs. This is the fate of billions.
       “Are you aware, the ‘Will’ is stronger than the guide, if you are its master?”
       “Now what does that mean,” asked Durant, “I read something on that in the book!”
       “It means just what it means, that if the world cannot find a reason to stop the chaos, it is obvious they have found reasons and enough reasons, because they want it. Sometimes logic is useless, and useless knowledge becomes a form of income. This is the sum of my riddle, and of course the end, being the ‘Will’ or third part of the riddle, to do what has to be done, the world does not have the Will. That is to say, their ‘Will’ is to be satisfied, and until that, the curtain will not fall, but of course, the Veil of Maya never falls for long…”
       “You didn’t answer complete!” exclaimed the publisher,  “We’ll publish your book, but to be frank I think the stupidest men in the world get their foxy words to have multi meanings, and our Board of Directors, thought your book held some juice, or value, because of that I have to go along with them.”
       “Let me explain, once and for all Mr. Durant: Character resides in the ‘Will,’ not intellect, and this ‘Will,’ has eight wings: ambition, demand, determination, resolve, motivation, backbone, longing, hope against hope (God), and this is what the world lacks, Will!”


V


Said Mr. Durant, “I did like your last chapter in the book, may I read it to you?”
       “If you must,” I told him, although I wrote it, and knew what it said, but how can you refuse or argue with the man who just said, ‘I’ll publish the darn book!’ as if he was unwilling, and the Board of Directors made him do so.
       “Okay,” said Mr. Durant, “last chapter:  ‘War, Effect and Will’ goes on to say, ‘…there is a power within us, in all living things, and this power rises in every living thing: plants, planets, animals, men, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe.  It is the Will, at work, its determination to survive, the instinct to carry on, and that demands balance, geometry, without it the universe and man would produce only chaos, and have ended long ago. So God constructed one and all to be guided by this, or meet its end; that is to say, if it is entirely without this.
       ‘Will and intellect, put together, says, the elephant will not cross the weak bridge; it foresees the effect. The world today is the elephant without Will or intellect, it is crossing the bridge, at its own peril. Without regard for anybody or anything. The Will, is not there. Perhaps I can say, there is only the intellect at work, it maybe so, that man sees the fall but knows he’ll be dead by the time its impact hits him.  So why not allow it, dead is dead to him; out of sight, out of mind. So he allows the fall by apathetic reasoning.
    ‘The Will, is of course, the power to live, want to live, the man above, knows he has lived his maximum, of life, so indifference sets in, he only cares how dear life is to him, not all living things. So in silence he bides his time.
       ‘Culture to him has less value than an ounce of copper or zinc. Even the living toads found in limestone share in the eternal enemy called death. And do not mistreat their environment, they understand reproduction.
       ‘The Will, is independent of knowledge.  In a way it works blindly. For a person with a strong Will, it is life sustaining. A low background means nothing to him or her. He or she will make it. All the organs inside this person will follow the Will.  And forgo knowledge, he knows the Will is the principle form which all living things proceed; s/he knows because they know. They may not know why the moon circles the earth and the earth circles the sun, and the nine planets in their orbit, circle the sun within its solar system, and that the universe moves as it does, and the galaxies move as they do inside the universe, and what a supernova is, or the forces of gravity at the edges of a black hole have to with gravitational pull—which in essence pull the dying suns into its abyss, and what a gravitational wave is, and that they sway through the universe at the speed of light and that some thirty asteroids hit the earth each year, some the size of twenty meters in size, that most burn up in the atmosphere, but some have the equivalent of 13,000 tons of TNT, most asteroids or space racks end up in the Atlantic or Antarctica; but Will tells them, they don’t have to know. God balanced it all out for them, He’s in charge!...
       ‘Chaos, the unbalanced world among man, causes war. If man is not at peace with his neighbor, it is a cause for war, and the end of peace. In the 21st Century war means the end of our species; we will be sent back to the Stone Age, by duped politicians. We have seen recently in 100-years: WWI, 8-million people died.  WWII, 80-million people died.  Three wars in Israel. Two wars in Iraq. Two wars in Asia, the Koreas, and Vietnam, 4-million lives taken in both Asian Wars, and the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Libya, and now in Syria, that has taken in four years, some 250,000 lives. At any given time, per near 25% of the world appears to be at war, or preparing for it. Russia has had three wars in the last decade; and Africa has become a war zone. Russia has even hinted they’d use nuclear arms if need be with Ukraine. North Korea boast of the H-bomb and that they’d use it if they thought they’d lose their regime, and says it can target America, South Korea, and Japan. Iran has a working nuclear plant, convincing Obama it is for peaceful reasons when they have the 5th largest oil reserves in the world, who does he think he’s kidding, when we all know they have sworn to eradicate Israel with it, as has Hamas, who leads the Palestinians.
       ‘The impulse for war among some nations is as strong as the impulse to have sex. We’ve allowed certain individuals—like leaves on an evil tree—to grow wild, unaccountable to the world order, Obama being the worse of the guardians of the world, since America is the so called watchdog. This allowance, will castrate the world, if we do not cut down the tree of evil, or at least, deaden those harmful leaves, before it ends our species.”’ 

#5087/2-21 & 22-2016 / Copyright © 2/2016 by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c.

The Artwork was done by an anonymous Cubin Artist!  When the author was visiting Havana, in 2003


Worlds Beyond (Part II of II) Last Voyage from Mars


  


I am caught in-between a trans-dimensional vortex, carried by a gravitational wave ((GW) (as if inside the wave’s pocket)), inside a semicircular vessel, caught in the pull of the wave at the speed of light.  I will never age at this speed, and now the wave just passed Earth, I fear I shall be on my way to the end of the universe, what end is anyone’s guess. Who’s to say, perchance this was the very wave that created the Big Bang, after matter and antimatter collided, making it 14.5 billion years old. Or perhaps it is some wave that was created a billion years ago from some supernova, or two black holes with their horrid gravitational pull, plunging into one another, and creating a giant blast. But here I am all the same. It would seem I was asleep a long while, perhaps this vessel was pulled off its course, on my way to Earth from Mars, like snatching a hitchhiker off a highway, at full speed; thus my vessel adjoined  with the GW, in what one might refer to as transcendental, or awe-inspiring  space.  Now lost in its supernal realm, for how long, no one knows!

       Nothing was clear, everything obscure in my head, evidently I was in my space station on Mars, had secured the spacecraft, took somehow a head injury along the way, the concussion has not allowed me to put this puzzle all together, and got caught in the GW. I must have purged through an interspatial vacuum, with a gravitational wave ploughing through it at the same time, and taken me off my course to Earth. I do remember working on this super-aqueous apparatus for the vessel that would produce water indefinitely, and if need be, for an endless supply of water on Mars.  I was deep in my granite cabin of sorts, or lab, on Mars, the vessel was ready to go, and I must have hit the GW, and I now just awoke, or a few hours ago. So I can’t say how long I’ve been caught, only that I am in this interval of time, what I suspected happened, most likely did happen. I do remember it all was experimental, in the underground lab on Mars. I was hoping to be thrown into Earth’s outer rim of space, but the wave this entity that carried me, pulled me, my vessel away from its goal. How unfortunate.

Time Passes

More and more I am heading to who knows where. I have passed Jupiter, Pluto, long ago, way beyond them now.  I can count moment by moment, but not really-time; once I get out of this enfolded wave, I’ll feel better, I sense I am in the belly of the whale, figuratively speaking, yet in reality I am in a swollen part  of the waves quarry.  And the wanting of my brain to return to ungraspable images that I could understand before I made this adventure, but much is still a blur. I sense months and seasons are passing me by as I travel, I never seem to get a day older though. Time does not pass at the speed of light, it is obligated to the laws of physics, but perhaps God has some unknown laws I’ll learn yet, no one knows.  I am now waiting for a miracle.  How old will I be when I find one? My friends who left Mars for earth, eons ago, I’m sure are all dead by now, perhaps they have become part of the human race, what was then a hospital environment, and that is to say, in perhaps passing generations, they have made it sociably livable.  If one once to consider after a certain amount of time, then take two parents, who have four grandparents, who have eight, great-grandparents, like on Mars, as it was once, in only 700-years (or 20-generations) you’d have over a million people, now take 100,000-years, when and if I end up on Earth, it could be billions of people, that are really Martians, or have, mixed genetics, DNA. It’s all quite possible.  In that sense, one third of the population could be interrelated with me, unknowingly. And our blood could very well be mixed with the Homo sapiens, as well as the Neanderthal. I will have a lot of lost ancestors, perhaps one will have kept an ancient diary of what took place, although if my Scrolls are found on Mars, they could put two and two together.

Time Passes

Earth looked to me like an opal, last time I saw it, it was then, 100,000 B.C., on Earth, my ship reads now it is 2020 A.D., I presume the wave somehow turned, it must had been 20-lifetime’s I’ve been in this ship or 100, this tomb of sorts, that is like a time machine that has no time to register,   leaping through space like a jewel, across the universe, like a colossal title wave, then somehow the GW drooped down and I beheld the face of Earth, and now my ship is falling, falling. I noticed, that swiftly the curvature of the wave swelled and that swelling pushed my vessel out of its pocket, and now I am falling, falling: descending to the earth, into its embowered sea, called ‘Red’.
       Now on the floor of the Earth, I must start a new life, at 100, 052 years old. Who do I tell, where do I go, what next, should I expect? 


#5071/2-13-2016/reedited 2-14-2016, redrafted 2-20-2016 / See part one “The Hidden Scrolls of Mars”

Friday, February 19, 2016

The Hyperborean Mythos Passage of the King Snake (An Irish Tale)




Outside of old Dublin, there resides a passageway, where the snakes cross,
As they make their way to Dublin—!
May die on the way of exhaustion.
The King Snake, waits for the impending fog to rise—otherwise known as bog, to sweep over all…
Awaits for it to shift, usually in the mornings, but he never leaves!
This day, the bog was so badly, should any attempt to walk it straight, it would be to his death!
But this day, he decides to trek to Dublin all the same…
Strategically he has moved stones to use as markers to make his way, days before, to where he felt the edge of the bog would lift.
To his dismay, on his way he finds the bog rising faster and faster, the sky strikes light, with its lightening!...
He sees his fellow snakes struggling, death has them in its clutches—
The bog then swoops all the sakes into the nearby sea, except the King Snake who follows an old maid, with a red petticoat, lantern in hand.
The bog is no less carpeted with death, it has swallowed up nearly every living thing in its path; it crosses the King Snake’s mind, many have never returned.

Once in Dublin, the King Snake is met by the high social class of the city.
He is unable to maintain a conversation with them.
The King Snake is not pleased.
He is seen and treated as if in a false position.
Thus the King Snake feels less composed to them.
Here he has no imperial space, hence, he returns to his less exotic place.
Which to him is more domesticated.
He realizes his perception, because of his reception, was off.

#5083/ 2-19-2016
Copyright © February, 2016 by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. h.c.

Note:  the poem is Spatial Metaphor & Personification