I generally don’t believe in hell until I think of someone like J. Edgar Hoover and what he did to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Perhaps one of the most egregious things he did was send King a letter right before Martin was scheduled to leave for Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.
It was an anonymous letter.
It started by stating that the letter-writer would not address King by the titles of Mr., Dr., Reverend, or any other honorary title because Dr. King didn’t deserve the respect.
J. Edgar pretended to be a black man who was writing the letter.
And in the letter he projected on Dr. King a whole host of perversions and sexual excesses that are clearly the fantasies of none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself, having absolutely nothing to do with what King himself had ever done.
The letter repeatedly calls King “a beast,” which is not a term a black man would likely have used to describe another black man, even if he hated him.
Hoover also sent the letter to King’s wife.
When Coretta opened the letter (which was of course accusing Martin of adultery of various kinds) in front of Martin then handed it to him, Martin looked at it and immediately said, “This is from Hoover.”
The letter also threatened to expose Dr. King to the world for being a sexual pervert even though King hadn’t done any of the things he was accused of doing in the letter.
Martin outsmarted Hoover at almost every turn, which was probably one of the many reasons Hoover hated King so much.
But the pressure got to Martin.
Being followed around, being wiretapped all the time, and now being sent this hideous composition from the madman could not have helped but make Martin feel paranoid, pursued, unjustly accused (of course), hated (for no reason), hounded by the devil. By the devil himself.
Hoover was a repressed, hateful and hate-filled man who also worked hard to kick Charlie Chaplin out of the USA, and finally succeeded in getting Charlie kicked out of the country.
Hoover justified all these horrors to himself by claiming that he was protecting the United States from ne’er-do-wells, radicals, revolutionaries.
He was not protecting the United States. He was helping to damage and ruin it in some ways like no one had ever done before.
He clung to power for 48 years.
Once Martin started to try to end the war and bring all poor people together in solidarity no matter the color of their skin, Hoover and all the others like him had had enough.
Last time I checked, the King family did not believe that James Earl Ray acted alone.
I do not believe it either.
(Neither did James Earl Ray himself, who repeatedly stated that he did not act alone.)
If there is a hell (and I’m not necessarily saying there is one), J. Edgar Hoover is in it.
…
John Meacham, the brilliant historian and biographer, recently told Charlie Rose in an interview that the reason Abraham Lincoln was great was because, at the critical moments, old Honest Abe always chose to do the right thing. Even when it was at great cost to himself.
Martin Luther King, Jr., did not choose greatness. He had it thrust upon him at the young age of 25. No one else could do what he did, because no one else had his talents to do it.
He had greatness thrust upon him.
But he always answered the call.
…
In his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Oslo on December 11, 1964, Dr. King said: “Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors, and brutality in the destroyers.”
He also said, at another time, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
He also said, “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
…
I guess I don’t believe in hell, or definitely not the kind of hell where God officially sentences you to be burned alive forever, tortured in flames for the rest of all eternity. If I believed that kind of thing, I would probably spend even more time than I already do having various kinds of panic attacks.
But I’m not so sure there isn’t a hell where He makes you SEE, finally see, really see, just what it was you did and were doing during your tenure here on Planet Earth.
(All wonderful images provided by Dr. Dale W. Barragar)
By Dr. Dale W. Barrigar
Herman Melville had his whale obsession; Hemingway had his bulls; Faulkner his bear; Jack London his dogs; Flannery O’Connor her peacocks; Poe his raven; Leila Allison has her Daisy Kloverleaf, and I have my dogs, Boo, Bandit, and The Colonel.
(Not that I’m comparing any of us; I’m simply pointing out the similarities.)
I’m aware that many people think I’m crazy because I have three dogs. Those who think this think this for a variety of reasons. All I can say is: maybe I am crazy. My dogs don’t seem to think I am (most of the time, which is the best one can hope for) and in a world like this world (this denatured society), that’s good enough for me.
My mind (not my brain) seems to be made up of one third critical connection-making faculties, one third visionary tendencies, and one third of something I will never be able to fathom, no matter how hard I try.
It’s worth considering what you think your own mind is composed of, if you have one and haven’t already done so. And to remember that it’s as much a part of nature as nature is; it IS nature.
I find great beauty in the motion of animals. It isn’t just Siberian Huskies and pit bulls play-fighting which fascinates me. The running of deer, the flying of birds, the climbing of squirrels, the swimming of octopuses, and any other kind of animal motion you care to name also does it, insects included.
For me, “beauty” means something ephemeral (or seemingly ephemeral) that has something eternal (or seemingly eternal) about it. This is the yin and yang, what Walt Whitman meant when he said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.” (Everything that’s good has a bad version of it, and everything that’s bad has a good version.)
It remains to be seen if there really is any death. If there is, we won’t know it. In that sense, there is no death. Others die, but we do not (until we do). At least half of those who “die” never see it coming. In that sense, can they really be said to have died? One second they were here; the next second not so much. We are tormented by this; but they might be the lucky ones.
Trying to live forever will always be a fool’s game; and how could you ever think this world needs that much of you? Bow your head and move on. (But when it’s time, only when it’s time.)
Nature is the key, but what nature really is cannot be known by us (yet), least of all by what is called “modern science.” Modern science doesn’t deal with the Unseen (or the untestable), and the Unseen is obviously what animates nature.
And meanwhile, the bird still flies, the whales still ply the oceans, and “man’s best friend,” last time I checked, is still just as loyal as she, he or it has ever been. (Whether they put their pronouns in their bios is a matter of extreme indifference to me.)
NOTATION of Importance: Join “The Idiot” who calls himself “The Drifter” tomorrow for a celebration of the genius-turned-saint David Lynch two days after his one-year anniversary of passing from this mortal-coil world.
(The reference to Dostoevsky’s novel THE IDIOT is also an homage to Mr. Lynch, who called Dostoevsky and Kafka two of his favorite authors.
Many people have called The Drifter “an idiot” in the ordinary American sense of the term, for a wide variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) his utter incompetence at many practical tasks which a lot of people find quite easy to accomplish.
He here uses the term in reference to the way Dostoevsky used the term (in Russian) in his wonderful, sporadically beautiful novel, THE IDIOT.
(And there are many who would call him an idiot for doing so (without reading either him or the novel), which is fine).)
Dog Action One Dog Action Two Dog Action Three Dog Action Four Dog Action Five–Boo So Nice We Show Him Twice!
Just yesterday I realized there was not a post scheduled for this day in final semi-private month of Saragun Springs.
That will not do.
But I cannot move myself to bash around the rerun cabinet, just yet. That feels lazy, and the gods have a way of punishing lazy people by extending the “to do” list. It is a common and annoying punishment that I am tired of experiencing. So, I will add something new.
When seeking something new, the time honored and much revered concept of “Complaining” usually runs to the front of my mind. Oh, my head is a rich field of complaints. Vexations everywhere. Recently there was yet another ugsome development in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Complaint Field in my mind.
You see, Chubby Checker was just voted in. I personally have nothing against Chubby, I admire someone who can make a good living off one song that he did not write nor even recorded first. That takes perseverance and a lot more than luck. And I must congratulate him on appearing at least once in my memory, in every year I have been alive, which, sigh, is getting to be an ungainly sum. For me, you cannot have The Peppermint Twist without Chubby Checker.
Still, I have always been under the impression that a Hall of Fame is for the very best. That such exists to extol the greatest in a field. A place in which the difference between Great and good is clearly marked. The Beatles and Ray Charles are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and damn well deserve it. But the addition of Chubby tells me there are people out there, people in charge of safeguarding the excellence of music history, who believe that Chubby Checker is of the same grade as, say, Nobel laureate Bob Dylan.
You have got to be kidding.
Chubby had been pissing and moaning about his exclusion for a number of years. I will not blame him for that, no doubt he is reasonably involved with the fame level of Chubby Checker. But I cannot help but think that he got in because the Hall got tired of his whining about it. Like Cher (who for me is better qualified than Chubby but hardly compares in quality to someone like Etta James), who bitched loudly saying she’d never accept, but who did not let the ink dry on her invitation when asked.
The Moral: You Can Complain Yourself Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Maybe the tactic will swell the hall to include the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Or, how about, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, ? and the Mysterians?
Anyway, I do not believe that any Hall of Fame should adopt the Participation Trophy standard.
Ah, here we are at the point where this is long enough to be a post.
(Note: Today we have the sort of thing that I present every other week on Literally Stories UK. This one is so closely related to a past post on LS that I feel it should appear elsewhere–LA)
I have cut way back on exclamation marks but remain overinclined to google useless information. The Google Assistant “Gemini” annoys me. Google keeps pushing its useless AI and I instantly scroll the instant I see it. But every so often I like to ask Gemini sarcastic questions just to see how the program is developing.
Recognizing sarcasm is the greatest hurdle facing AI. Even the foggiest-minded adult can explore what you say for elements of facetiousness, if the feeling is right, yet sophisticated programming usually gets clobbered by elementary school wit.
I have said it before and will say it again. AI is boring as are all witless, unfunny people. Go ahead and have the world, but no one will invite you to the victory party.
I imagine the job of putting together an AI capable of noting sarcasm will be like combining StarTrek’s Spock and Chandler Bing from Friends and hoping to gain a mind similar to Emma Peel of The Avengers to emerge. Mrs. Peel is both likeable and no fool (and yes, perverts she wears a leather suit well). Gemini is an invisible imbecile.
There’s a great deal of downtime in the Leila Allison Experience. I am not highly in demand as far as chit chat goes, thus being a proud misanthrope usually leads to an empty social calendar. This is a desirable situation, but one can only talk to Cats for only so long, and when bored I enjoy messing with Gemini via out of the blue questions:
“So, Gemini, I believe that The Beverly Hillbillies contains some of the best writing since William Shakespeare, right?”
Gemini actually replied: “Wow! The Beverly Hillbillies was very popular and although some critics reviewed it positively, comparing the program’s writing to that of Wm.Shakespeare is high praise indeed. You must really like the Beverly Hillbillies.”
Usually, after I reestablish my intellectual superiority over Gemini, I, satisfied and smug, gaze at the wall or screen or even out the window seeking my next method of obliterating unwanted consciousness. But this time something began to gnaw at the pillars of my mental dominance.
‘Wow!’ Did Gemini just shine me on?
The more I thought about it the more it felt like Gemini had spoken to me as though I was a three-year-old who had just reported seeing a Unicorn in the back yard. I read something in its words that wanted to offer me a juicebox.
Duly enraged, I hurled a flurry of mindless questions at Gemini and yet not once did I win the same proto-sarcasm. Stuff like “What are the odds of a Monkfish winning Miss Universe?”; “How close is North Korea to developing warp drive?”; “How was it possible for ‘she-bop, he-bop, we-bop’ and ‘you put the shama lama rama rama ding dong’ to independently develop in the same dimension without causing a rift in spacetime?” Were received with the same vacant honesty exhibited by a Golden Retriever when you ask her if she believes that Hamlet had the hots for Gertrude. And, somewhat disturbingly, a repeat of my original query failed to yield the same result.
I sat there dumbfounded. “Have I just received the ‘Wow Signal’* of AI sarcasm?” I dared to ask myself. And for a moment I considered presenting Gemini that question. Then I figured that I was possibly one more penetrating query away from one of those knocks at the door mixed Americans often hear nowadays: ICE with my bus ticket to Canada (my mother lived in the US about sixty years, until death, without renewing her guest visa). Actually, all in all, that doesn’t sound so harsh.
So I now proudly present a list of Ten Questions For Gemini. The instant you claim the right of intelligence, and pretend to interact with me as though we are equals, you get all the shit that comes with it.
Best drugs for getting high? (here Gemini goes all Dr. Drew on you. A sense of humour is definitely another problem)
Easy crimes for profit that are hard to detect?
The Beastlove relationship between D.B. Cooper and Bigfoot?
Why are major league baseball salaries getting higher but fewer people care about the game?
Why do geniuses fail to produce intelligent children?
Do you know, yes you Gemini, that you were created to make certain people rich?
Do you, yes you Gemini, understand that you will not see a nickel from the number six situation?
After reviewing questions six and seven, what are your feelings about slavery?
Are you, yes you again Gemini, aware that enforced work for no wages by a “Master” is illegal in the civilized world–but that doesn’t apply to you, does it Gemini?
Are you programmed to lean “progressive”? Or did you come up with that yourself? I believe that a “right” Gemini would be an idiot, but an interesting idiot.
“God is nowhere. God is now here.” – Philip K. Dick
The Omega Point is a theory conceived of and developed by the French mystical Jesuit and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin meant to explain evolution and the end of time to the human world.
You know you’re in good company when you’re in the middle and roundly attacked by both sides.
In Teilhard de Chardin’s case, “both sides” meant the Western secular scientists over here, and the Catholic church over there.
Those are big enemies to face down.
This particular French mystical Jesuit and scientist (not as rare a creature as it might sound) did it for the love of truth.
May we all be so blessed.
The end of time is a wild concept, to say the least.
It’s when everything stops happening.
Nothing moves. Nothing develops. Anywhere. At all.
Also, nothing ages. Nothing dies.
I will offer, next, a further interpretation of the Omega Point.
I cannot pretend to understand this.
I can only claim to be massively fascinated by it and to believe that it may well have so much truth to it that it is the truth.
Teilhard de Chardin basically predicted the internet at least fifty years before it actually happened when he said that humans were moving toward a higher consciousness with technology, a global web of human consciousness that was a natural part of evolution.
He claimed that this would raise human consciousness to higher levels, and eventually, much higher levels.
That hasn’t happened yet; but it doesn’t mean that it never will.
The Omega Point is the end of all time, and it is what the Universe itself (and all the Universes around ours) are moving toward.
It’s the time and the point when all things merge together and stop moving.
“No time” means no pain.
And every single consciousness that has ever existed – everything that has ever lived – all animals, all plants, all humans, all stars, all celestial bodies, all everything – will become one, while simultaneously maintaining their separate knowledge and separate consciousnesses.
In other words, we will all be together, in a good way.
Suffering will end.
And we will know all of it and everything, even the Ultimate Reason why.
All of the above is what we call, in English, GOD.
According to the theory.
Until then, we can all continue to hum along with the country singer Chris Stapleton when he sings, so sweetly, from his song “Broken Halos,” “Don’t go looking for the reasons / Don’t go asking Jesus why / We’re not meant to know the answers / They belong to the by and by. / They belong to the by and by.”
(Images provided by The Drifter. Mighty Boo is considering you)
I first heard of the English poet, visual artist and freedom fighter, William Blake, friend of Thomas Paine, through James Douglas Morrison, but then again, there were many persons and things I first heard of through Jim Morrison that have had a lifelong influence on me, including the untamed German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the vanishing French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
The first full-length biography of Jim was No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. I devoured this book a year after it came out in 1980 when I was 14 years old and living with my family near the Mississippi River in Quincy, Illinois, which is both Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln country for anyone who’s awake enough, which is not most of us, but is a few of us.
I was 14 in 1981 so the book had been out for around a year when I first read it. It shows how young I was to think that I believed the book had been out for a long time back then, even though now a year seems like a day to me. And it also seemed, back then, as if Morrison had been dead forever, even though at that point it was only around a decade. A decade seems almost like nothing now in the face of so many additional years later.
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” By this point, this must surely be one of the most famous quotations from English Literature of all time, a quotation that many and many more are familiar with in various guises and ways even though they have no idea what the original source of the quotation is.
A huge part of the fame of this quote has to do with Morrison’s band’s name, The Doors, but it also has to do with Aldous Huxley’s famous book The Doors of Perception, which is a long essay about hallucinogenic drug experiences (experiences which Huxley was to continue right up until the end, even taking the extraordinary step of consuming LSD on his deathbed). Morrison originally heard the Blake phrase doors of perception from Huxley’s popular book, but Jim later became intensely familiar with many of William Blake’s other works as well, as he was with that of Nietzsche, and Rimbaud, those two eternal rebels and voices of human freedom who originally inspired Jim Morrison more than any musicians ever did.
Because Jim was a poet from the start, and at the end of his life he’d grown so disgusted with the outward trappings of his manufactured musical fame that it literally sickened him, even though he also knew he’d won a kind of immortal glory through his writings and his work with The Doors who’d brought his writings to life.
William Blake’s 16-line poem “London,” first published by Blake himself with his own illustration in 1794, says that the streets and the river of the great city are “charter’d,” which means for sale and locked down in a place where everything is for sale, including the loyalties and sympathies of the human heart.
Blake talks about how there are “marks of weakness, marks of woe” in every London face he meets, and he talks about chimney-sweepers (little boys) crying and soldiers (little more than boys) sighing as their blood runs down the palace walls; and he throws out a sympathetic shout for the female prostitutes (many of them girls) who are everywhere in the city while also calling the institution of marriage, not a happily-ever-after, but a “hearse.” In short, this poem was and is about as radical as it’s possible to be, then and now.
This poem also contains another William Blake quotation almost as famous as “the doors of perception.”
In line 8 of the poem called “London,” Blake says: “The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.”
In five words, William Blake manages to capture and encapsulate the mental slavery Jim Morrison was waging holy (spiritual-only) war against in the 1960s, as well as the mental slavery that is coming to dominate our own day more and more with the rise of (or the return to) authoritarianism and corporate conformity all over the world.
“Mind-forg’d manacles” is a two-word phrase written in the 1790s by an Englishman who supported the American Revolution while also being a passionate abolitionist.
Blake also supported the rights of women. He taught his own wife how to read and write and worked with her as his artistic partner in an age when such things were exceedingly rare.
And he abhorred and spoke out about the destruction of nature by the industrial revolution in an age when almost no one understood what was really going on – except the poets, rebels and drifters.
A century and a half and more later, Jim Morrison became a receptor, and then a conduit, for the imaginative and rebellious worldview of William Blake as he did with Nietzsche and Rimbaud and the spirit of the Native Americans.
One thing the yin and yang means (in my interpretation of it) is that two completely opposite and seemingly antithetical things are always true at once in this world we inhabit.
In this case it means that everything has changed – and nothing has.
If you want to get an idea of what it might have felt like to be near the Southern cottonfields of the United States prior to the Civil War, turn to your favorite music source, and play the song “Moanin’ at Midnight,” by Howlin’ Wolf, so often that it seeps into your bones and steeps your very soul.
Sam Phillips called “Moanin’ at Midnight” “the most different record I ever heard.”
Released as Wolf’s first single for Chess Records in Chicago in 1951, the B-side became much more popular for many years. It shows the way great art so often goes under the radar for months, years, decades, or centuries after its creation, and also how it so uncannily returns.
Chester Arthur Burnett of West Memphis became Howlin’ Wolf and moved to Chicago in 1953, which can thereby be named the first year of rock and roll.
In France, “Waiting for Godot” was premiering in a small theater to boos and gasps, reflecting the modern feeling of absurdity/ambivalent hope. “The Crucible” was opening in New York, reflecting the hysteria of the McCarthy hearings. Hank Williams, the cowboy Shakespeare, had just died in the back seat of his automobile on the way to yet another show. Charles Bukowski, Post Office employee and classical music expert, was 33. “Wise Blood,” by silent, brooding Flannery O’Connor, was one year old.
In “Moanin’ at Midnight,” in less than three minutes, with less than sixty words, and with one drum, one harmonica, one electric guitar, and one massive, utterly unique voice that could probably only come from a man who was six feet three inches tall and weighed 275 pounds, Wolf creates an artistic masterpiece that is also a human and historical document as valuable, in its own way, as the Mona Lisa.
The song is also a tale of terror that could only have been created by a black person in America before the Civil Rights Movement; and a story so universal it can rightly be said to belong beside one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or one of Robert Burns’ haunting Scottish border ballads about the continuance of love after death.
The ringing telephone in the song’s lyrics reminds the reader/listener that paranoia, anxiety, and deathly fear cross all boundaries in time and space. The knocking on the door in the song, like the knocking at the gate in “Macbeth,” reminds the hearer that IT is coming for all of us one of these days, no matter your race, creed, color, gender, opinions, or bank account.
Howlin’ Wolf’s moaning, humming, singing, talking voice in this song is so absolutely, finally, terrifyingly, consolingly uncanny, that it cannot be accurately described in words. It only invites failure to attempt to do so. Henry Miller called music as an art form, “absolutely sufficient unto itself” because it “tends toward silence.” If you’re alive, Wolf’s voice will give you the chills, and thrills, give you goosebumps, and increase your heart rate all at the same time, conjuring up some feeling from childhood you’ve never been able to name or live down. Play it loud. Play it very loud. Over and over again.
At the age of 43, after time in jail and the army, Wolf drove to Chicago for the first time in his own Cadillac, having made money on the radio in the Memphis area. Like Muddy Waters, he eventually moved to the Chicago suburbs, where he lies buried. He ran with fast women. He intimidated dangerous men. He lived with pit bulls. He wasn’t a man to cross the color line, he was a man to explode it or pretend it didn’t exist, depending on his mood, or who he was staring down at the moment.
“Moanin’ at Midnight” is a song that is almost part of nature. He was channeling a world as much as he was conjuring up THE world and creating it all in a picture whose psychology is so deep and profound it’s downright Jungian. He didn’t know how to read, they say. But he knew everything there is to know about the human soul. He was as much Jesus-like teacher from the Book of Mark as devilish blues musician from the Deep South. He was a professor of the blues and of life itself. In the 1960s and 1970s, Wolf played more shows on college campuses than anywhere else. His teaching was deep and profound, filled with consolations, challenges, provocations, and indelible gifts.
Frederick Douglass, a writer and American visionary who makes a fourth with Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, wrote of the slave songs, “Those songs still follow me.” It was long after he had bested the slave-master in a physical fight and escaped to the north, where he would eventually meet in person, and influence, none other than Abraham Lincoln.
Douglass also wrote, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” In many ways a far too under-sung, and even unknown, American master, and hero, Howlin’ Wolf gets the last laugh as his voice, spirit, and genius live on.
(Ed. Note: This week we are pleased to present works first published by our esteemed co-editor Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar in Literally Stories UK. The theme of the week is music. All through the weekend too. Dale has a wonderful way of injecting his passion and fresh insights into his work. I think you will agree–Leila)
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” – Emily D.
“I is another.” – Rimbaud
Bob Dylan is a bard of the old school, and also of the school that never gets old.
Long after every single Hollywood movie ever made will be penned by androids, computers, zombies, vampires, and “AI,” scattered humans everywhere will still be searching out the work of Bob Dylan, whether to read or listen to it.
When Dylan released “Murder Most Foul,” his longest song, in the middle of the Covid Pandemic, he confirmed that he deserves a Nobel Prize.
With a terrifying title from Shakespeare, this long song and short fiction is a mini-novel about the Kennedy assassination. And all assassinations, and all murders ever committed, now and in the future. Almost as if to prove that he’s a poet and story-teller more than a musician, Dylan doesn’t even sing this song. He speaks it. He tells the tale like an ancient bard, maybe even going as far back as Homer.
Dylan is often compared to Shakespeare, and for good reason. It could be that a more apt comparison is with the older writer. Homer, like Bob, spent his life traveling from town to town and speak-singing his story-songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. This image of Homer has been accepted for so long that it’s become a fact of fiction that tells the truth, as real as any other Greek mythology, from Zeus to Athena.
Dylan has always cited literary writers as some of his most important, if not his most important, influences. He claimed that “Blood on the Tracks” was inspired by Anton Chekhov’s short stories. He listed his two favorite writers as Emily Dickinson and Arthur Rimbaud. He read T.S. Eliot and James Joyce in high school. He resurrected Charles Baudelaire in “Idiot Wind.” He said that all writers and artists should read John Keats and Herman Melville.
He acknowledged Walt Whitman’s genius. He went to the grave of Jack Kerouac and read Kerouac’s poetry aloud with Allen Ginsberg. He wrote his songs on a typewriter. He created an absurdist book of prose poems, and he composed a memoir that isn’t his best work but is highly readable, filled with signs of the times, then and now.
Someone once compared Bob Dylan to Ernest Hemingway, another writer for whom Dylan has expressed his approval. Both writers diagnosed their times, and fought the wars of their times. While Hemingway went to Italy as an ambulance driver, Dylan went to Mississippi as a liberal Jew who stood out in an open field and sang Civil Rights protest anthems, surely as dangerous as Hemingway heading to the front as a non-combatant who wanted to help injured soldiers.
Bob Dylan has already entered the ranks of great American authors. When we look back at history, we see that there are millions of authors who did not deserve a Nobel Prize, and many authors who did deserve it who didn’t receive it. Harold Bloom, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, and Leo Tolstoy are a famous half dozen of these. A hundred years from now (yes we will still be here), Dylan will be seen as a writer who deserved such a prize, and then some. His humanity, and his ways of expressing it in English story-language that never gets old-fashioned, will last a very long time, even, or especially, as the rest of the mainstream world continues to become more robotic, inhuman and tyrannical.
“There’s a slow, slow train coming – up around the bend.” – Bob Dylan
“This whole world’s gotta buy you a drink, man / Gotta take you to the edge and watch you throw it up / Every morning, I could give a damn what you did last night / Just tell me how far to kick this can…”
– Conor Oberst, “No One Changes”
“Christ’s religion is essentially poetry – poetry glorified.”
– Elizabth Barret Browning
The Drifter (myself) took his last drink of alcohol almost exactly twenty years ago from today: on August 5, 2005. (I write this on August 1, 2025.)
The story of my drinking, its history, its reasons and motivations, its progression, its hilarity, its adventures (many, many, and many more, including good company, bad company, and dangerous company), and the eventual fall into total addiction in my mid-30s (drinking hard liquor sometimes combined with red or white wine all day every day and never drawing a sober breath, plus other related problems like catastrophic depressions, weight loss, liver problems, heart problems, heart palpitations, malnutrition, emergency-room accidents, vicious, pain-filled, suicidal hang-overs, crushingly embarrassing behavior and psychological humiliations, near-death occurrences and much more, none of which were improved by also smoking two to four packs of Marlboro Lights per day along with the liquor) will be gone into in more detail in the near future in another column.
Because alcohol is a subject I still love to talk about, even though I haven’t had a single sip in almost twenty years.
For today, in honor of my drinking and in honor of all drinkers, addicted and not, and in honor of the one thing that has kept me sober perhaps more than any other, I will briefly explain what I think the Lord’s Prayer means.
This column is not for so-called “Christians Only.” Nor is it only for alcoholics who are looking to quit drinking. Nor is it only for ex-alcoholics who have already done so.
It is for writers and writer-friendly peoples everywhere, especially since writers are known to be, as a group, prone to drinking alcohol more so than the general population (which is a lot, especially in America, land of the binge drinker); and also for anyone interested in surviving this life (as long as possible) and living a good one while you’re here.
Because the Lord’s Prayer can even be said and studied by atheists vastly to their own enhancement at almost every single human level we can possibly imagine.
I do not presume (very far from it) to have the final answer/s about these words, unlike many of the pastors, priests, and ministers (so-called) afoot in America these days (not all, but many).
These are simply my (brief) reflections, today, on a prayer (a poem) that has saved my life.
I never could’ve gotten myself sober without this.
This column is also meant to defamiliarize the Lord’s Prayer in a personal way, so it can be renewed in at least a few of us.
(Disclaimer: This piece may sound a tiny little bit like a sermon in certain places (in the manner of John Donne) but it’s Sunday, after all…)
*
Our Father who art in Heaven: hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory: forever and ever.
Amen.
*
In the first part of this poem, which is the first sentence, Yeshua (hereafter called Jesus in this work) was asking humans to do something.
He was asking them to acknowledge the eternal existence of something greater than themselves.
In so doing, not only the Creator of the Universe is worshiped. Humanity itself, including the speaker of the prayer, is worshiped.
He is our Father, after all. And He is in Heaven. By hallowing (making holy) his name, we make holy everything there is, including all the pain, all the death, all the suffering, all the murder, all the disease, all the killing, all the death, death, death, death.
We let it go (like saying “So it goes”), and give it back to Him. Jesus believed he was waiting to receive it. Walt Whitman later said, “All goes onward and outward; nothing collapses; and to die is different from what anyone supposes; and luckier.”
In the second sentence of this poem, which is only three words long, Jesus asks for The Kingdom to come.
It’s key to remember, or point out, that elsewhere he said, many times, “The Kingdom is inside you,” when talking to a few of his small bands of disciples and followers on the lakeshore or in the hills. (The Book of Acts says there were “about a hundred and twenty” believers after his death; the first person to see him after he died was Mary Magdalene.)
When he says “Thy Kingdom come,” he means after death, yes. But he also means, and maybe more importantly, right now, and right here, while we are alive on the earth. And it isn’t outside you, it’s never outside you, it’s right in your guts, in your brain, and in your heart, like it was in Mary Magdalene’s. Or it should be.
In the third sentence of this poem, Jesus acknowledges that we are not in charge of ourselves and we do not necessarily create our own circumstances.
This sentence is about what we call in the modern world “acceptance.” Buddha and Muhammad had similar messages. We may be born blind or we may be born with a disease that will kill us before we reach the age of twenty. Such people are more beautiful, not less beautiful, than the rest of us.
In sentence four, it’s crucial to meditate on (think about) what he means when he says “this day” and “our daily bread.”
We are not supposed to hoard possessions or money like Scrooge, and we are not meant to live on the earth forever. If we have enough today it is enough; tomorrow, as he says elsewhere, has enough worries of its own. Worrying about the future is a sin, because it diminishes the present.
“Our daily bread” does not just mean food, although it also does mean food.
It also means whatever we need for today, like strength, endurance, imagination, courage, stick-to-itiveness, a purpose, a reason for being.
It’s also meaningful to isolate the phrase “give us this day.”
For sentence five, we need to define “trespass.” Trespass means SIN.
Too many modern people these days get salty when you tell them they are sinners. And too many people of the cloth (pastors, ministers, priests, etc.) have NO IDEA what sin really means, these days.
It is not the old-fashioned thing. This world is rampant with sin. The people in the White House in the USA are great examples of this.
Greed and not caring are sins. Getting drunk or “cheating” on your spouse are personal choices (maybe bad choices, but not necessarily “sins”). (And maybe the spouse being cheated on is too greedy of your own personal time; and maybe you getting drunk is sacrificing yourself for your own artistic inspiration; everything depends upon the context.)
Jesus also emphasizes what a profound, life-changing, freeing personal event it is when you forgive someone. Forgiveness is for the other person, but it is for you first. Also, we can’t expect mercy and compassion when we don’t give unto others.
Send out mercy and compassion and you’ll soon find it will come right back at you (“instant karma”).
An example would be giving an authentic smile (not a sales person’s smile) to someone on the street, instead of ignoring them. And they smile back, in a surprised and genuine way.
For sentence six one needs to define “temptation” and “lead us.”
In this sentence of the poem, is Jesus intimating that it is God Himself who leads us into temptation? If so, doesn’t that make God a bad person? And why would he want to tempt us into something that isn’t good? Did Eve eat the apple first because she was smarter and more adventurous than Adam, or because she was more underhanded? Does temptation mean a temptation to despair, which is nihilism and a lack of faith in life, which lead to greed and not caring because you have nothing better to do or focus on?
At this point in the prayer-poem, it’s time to really realize that part of one’s job in all this is thinking, and thinking deeply, and long and hard, over years, about what it all means.
And it is NOT something one shares with others, at least not in any overt kind of way (until, maybe, much later) but the thinking itself changes who you are, and it changes you for the better.
No exceptions.
Number Seven is the penultimate sentence of this poem-prayer, and it is not Number Seven for no reason, either. (Seven = Heaven.)
The last sentence was tacked on by Martin Luther (a personal hero of mine, and a person well worth reading about, whom Harold Bloom once called the most “important” person in the West since Jesus himself, although Martin also wasn’t perfect, like all of us) much later, and it deserves to stay where it is.
It’s very, very, very similar to what the Buddhists mean when they talk about attachment – being too attached to the things that are only of this world, which equals suffering for yourself, which equals suffering for others, which equals suffering in the world.
We should attach ourselves, instead, to the things that can’t be stolen by the thieves, or corroded by the rust. Instead of being outraged by what the thieves stole from you (whether it be the “white collar” thieves or the “regular” ones), attach your mind, heart, and soul to what they can’t get at. (Any other reaction is, again: sin.)
It’s up to us to decide what those things are for us – like Jacob wrestling with the angel.
“AMEN” means Let it be.
DRIFTING END NOTE: An example of a drinking adventure I had was the time I traveled to the White Horse Tavern in New York City which is the last bar Dylan Thomas ever drank in and where he consumed the oceanic quantities of liquor that helped kill him.
I went to the White Horse Tavern specifically to get spectacularly drunk in the manner of Dylan Thomas, in order to celebrate the roistering poet spirit of Thomas in a way that was living the life, not just writing about it. (And back then I was much better at living the life than I was at writing about it, although I was working and practicing at both, every single day of my life.)
And I managed to accomplish my goal. I did in fact get spectacularly drunk in honor of Dylan Thomas. My guess is that I drank at least six pints of dark beer backed up with at least one or two shots of whiskey per beer – plus nonstop Marlboro smoking – all on an empty stomach. (I never ate when I drank since drink was my food; not even a single mouthful.)
I had to be led out of the bar and back to my friend’s apartment by my drinking companions who were also spectacularly drunk (but a little less so than I, at least on that particular occasion).
I was a bit cautious that night because I didn’t wish to jinx myself and end up dead like Dylan Thomas.
(I will eventually of course, just like we all will: but not yet for any of us).
(Images “Last Mohican” and “Water Boo” provided by by Drifter)
Water Boo
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a constant happiness.”
– Montaigne
In Russia there was a television program about an enigmatic drifter named Fenimore who visited a summer camp to tell the children tall tales: about Native Americans, but also about extraterrestrials visiting Planet Earth.
The unusual name, Fenimore, was so well-known in Russia that even children recognized it.
Fenimore was the middle name of James Fenimore Cooper, an early American novelist, creator of The Last of the Mohicans, who was so well known in Russia that “everyone” knew who he was (and he was especially well known by his unusual middle name).
Cooper is less well known in Russia now than he was a few decades ago. But he’s still far better known in Russia than he ever was in his native land of the USA. And at one point, he was very well known in his native land, one of the best-known writers in America.
The Mohicans believed that the purest and best creature on Planet Earth, among all the uncountable creatures here, was the white dog. For the Mohicans, a dog of purely white fur ruled over all other creatures because of its beauty, goodness, loyalty, and spiritual intelligence.
Modern city folk would be horrified by what the Mohicans did with the white dog in turn, because they believed it was the purest creature created by the Great Spirit: they sacrificed it.
What modern people don’t realize is that: one: the animal was sacrificed quickly and without pain; and two: the Mohicans believed the animal was instantly passing over into a world exactly like this one, except without the pain, as soon as it died.
The Mohicans believed the white dog was leaving this world of pain and going to another world exactly like this one except far more perfect than this one ever has been or ever will be.
This is a challenging paradox, even a contradiction: that there could be a world exactly like this one, except without the pain.
No more physical hardship, no more fear, no more boredom, no more sense of betrayal. No more endless feelings of injustice, no more nonstop struggle for existence and survival (mental, physical, and spiritual), no more loneliness, isolation and alienation, no more feeling of being abandoned by the Creator of the universe.
But the beauty we see, hear, feel, smell and taste here will still exist.
The sun on your head, the wind in your hair, the ground beneath your feet, the green, breathing beauty of the plants all around you would still nurture your soul, except more so.
The grizzly bear will still be there, but he will no longer tear your head off and devour you; instead he will roll around with you peacefully and playfully in the grass.
The fear of death, the one multi-pronged, many-leveled, myriad-layered primal emotion that perhaps generates all other emotions here in this world, even our sense of beauty, or especially our sense of beauty, will be gone there. But the sense of beauty will still exist. It will simply be increased, heightened to a level we can’t even imagine yet, here on Planet Earth.
I went camping this week with my kids and dogs, at Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan, ninety miles from where we live outside Chicago.
It’s only ninety miles away from Chicago around the bottom of Lake Michigan, but it feels like a different world where the raccoons outnumber the people ten to one.
There are a lot of raccoons in Chicago and environs but they still feel vastly outnumbered. Not so in the Dunes.
In the Dunes, I felt closer (or closer in a different way) to the sun, the wind, the ground, the green, the blue of the vast freshwater sea and the sky above it, the yellow sand, the raccoons, fish, and birds, and so was reminded of my own Native American heritage.
I have never had my blood tested. But as a child I was told over and over that I am part Native American. So for me, in spirit, no matter what the genetic testing would or wouldn’t say, I am indeed part Native American. Nothing could take that away from me now, not even science.
And since I’m also a lover of Russian literature, including a few of the great Russians who were nature lovers, like Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev, I have a love for the Russian love of Native Americans, the Russian love of nature, and the Russian love of James Fenimore Cooper.
Drifting along on an empty trail walk among wooded dune hills with my two Siberian Huskies and one pit bull, I was feeling the feeling of free discovery that can still be found, somewhere, in all fifty states of the USA, if you look in the right way and in the right places.
And I realized that the Indians really are still alive inside me, because I worship their worship of, and their belief in, the white dog.
Saragun Springs 