The Enemy at the Gates of Wonderland

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

It doesn't matter how hard you try, how self deprecating you may be, or what you admit to, in terms of shortcomings and personal drawbacks, you're always going to have enemies and detractors, who will look to injure you in the eyes of others and also inside your own head, if you let them in. The Devil translated means, 'slanderer'. That pretty much says it all. It's like a continuously perpetuating Fox News. You blare a headline but the content of the article has little to do with the headline. False claims are made and not verified, or justified because all you have to do is claim something and the lumpen proles will just take it as gospel. Some are already inclined to believe lies and others are too lazy to care to check.

Jesus Christ had enemies and he is reputed to have been without flaw or shortcoming. Gandhi had enemies. One of them even killed him. People come around here often to say that he was a fraud and a bad guy. Martin Luther King is painted as a tool, philanderer and what not. Buddha had enemies. Krishna had enemies. My opinion is that you can know the quality and substance of a person by the enemies that they have.

People have enemies for various reasons. Sometimes your way of life stands in opposition to those who bear you enmity. Sometimes you cross their path in an unfortunate (for them) manner. Sometimes it is because of jealousy and envy. Whatever the reason may be, the enemy is there and sometimes their malice and anger are deep and continuous. Earth is a place of conflict. Our bodies are a combination of warring elements. They war within us and they war outside of us, often automatically. Few people are in a state of liberated consciousness, especially in these times. That means delusion and negative perspectives, are preeminent above the virtues, which are often absent, or compromised by the vices that seek expression and can be hindered by virtues; “best not to have the virtues” says the mind of the self indulgent and prisoners of low appetite.

Projection is often the basis for judgments made by the blind. When certain unpleasant qualities exist in us, we project the same outward on to those we encounter. If you are covetous, you imagine that others are plotting to get your goods. If powerful appetites and lusts are operative within you, you imagine it is the same with others. A snake looks into a pool and sees there mirrored a snake. A deer sees a deer. An elephant sees an elephant and all of them imagine that is what God looks like.

A person might want to do something about these misapprehensions, in the hearts and minds of others and depending on the force of clarity and truth within that person, sometimes you can cause a change of heart in others but you will never be one hundred percent successful across the board. People generally focus on the negative impact of enemies but there are all sorts of positive effects provided by the right enemies. I'll leave speculation concerning that with the readers, whom I am sure will see the creative possibilities of resistance and opposition, especially if you are an electrician (grin).

Each of us, because of our astrological predispositions and progressed conditions, suffers from specific circumstances at the hands of enemies as well a particular mutations on a theme. For me it has been treachery and betrayal. John Hall's parents turned me in to the police but they only knew about my 'wanted' status from him. My friend's mother turned me in another time. That wasn't the result of mendacity (except on the mother's part). He was young and a little too candid. I helped out one Rick Glover by letting him come to Hawaii and stay in my apartment for some months. I also helped him get on the police force, indirectly. He used every opportunity to have me put away for life. That turned on him though and he had to leave the police force and the islands. Some guy named Jim from Washington State, who I helped out in several ways, went to the police and offered to trade me for a ticket off the island, telling them tales about me that were patently untrue. When my trial came up they flew him back in to testify. He was destroyed on the stand and my lawyer found out he was wanted for arson in Snohomish County. On his return to Washington State, the sheriff was waiting for him. There are some lesser offenses of the same kind. So it goes.

Some of us seem to have things that others resent and some darkness in them makes them wish us ill. I've not put a lot of thought into motive and source but I just figure these things come with the territory.

Still, the chief weapon of those housing the enemy, seems to be slander, which is also connected to false witness. I used to hear the most ludicrous things about myself, third or fourth hand delivered to my ears. You would think that the truth would be enough. There is plenty to find in any of our lives that can be authenticated and remarked on but for some reason, people feel the need to fantastically embellish, or gild the nightshade (we won't be using lilies in that descriptor because none of the players so involved are pushing up lilies, so far as I know).

I look into my past sometimes and wonder, “who was that guy”? It's pretty much the same when I look into my present. I'm surprised that limitations, which have dogged my footsteps for so long, still remain and then I realize they are there to suit the objectives of the one who uses me, or anyone, as a performance artist woven into the tapestry of life. Maybe it lends more drama and humor to the tale. I've been told they will all go away, when the time is right, but neither intense scrutiny or relentless effort has made much impact on these things.

♫Boy, you got to carry that weight♫ I guess it applies to all of us. I try to roll with it but sometimes it just rolls over me. As I look at life, it often appears that the grist stone must eventually grind us into powder so that God can snort us and get high. Or we might be trampled grapes, fermented, bottled and decanted so that God can get drunk. Things work in both directions. God is an intoxicant for those possessed of the presence and we are no less an intoxicant for God. I suppose therein lies the difference between stoned, stupid and high.

Life is a fairytale but there are many possible colors from The Brother's Grimm to Lewis Carroll to... Hans Christian Andersen. There are many fables from Aesop to George Orwell. They all tell the tale of life in their own dimension of pain and pleasure, gain and loss. The dramas have color, texture and teachings from Jack London and Joseph Conrad to E.M. Forster and Somerset Maugham. Some of us are whipped with switches and some of us are whipped by our conscience and some of us are whipped with birch branches in a sauna. Some of us are stroked and some of us are poked and some of us are stabbed. I guess it is whatever it takes to make the point, given that we haven't gotten the point and given that life is all about that. Life is a refinery and that will involve heat of some kind at one time or another.

You can't explain yourself to your enemies. They would not be your enemies if you could. Sometimes your enemies are right and don't need any explanation and don't have to “show you no stinking badges”. All of these things go into making what is known as great and enduring art, or cheap and pretentious crap and you need both of them to give value to either. Contrast is a very important part of life but not everyone gets what's going on there. We often only know things best by comparison with other things. We only see the exceptional in some, due to the mediocrity of the many. That's just how it goes.

For myself, I don't trouble “my beautiful mind” about it very much any more (grin). I just accept that there isn't much that I can say that will change what isn't real into something real, nor is there anything anyone else can do, for any length of time, to accomplish the reverse. Our job really, is to strive, endure and never give up and then, we surrender. So much for the shit and giggles of existence.

I recall trying to explain myself to people who weren't interested in understanding anything. Their minds were made up, or their agendas held firm in a vice. They were just looking for some vichyssoise best served and eaten cold. That's the nature of vichyssoise anyway. So many vendettas and resentments have little to do with the life in which you find them and everything to do with what made this particular life necessary in the first place. You just have to go through these things, until you get the point and you can do that in a t'ai chi sort of a way, or you can do it like a bull in a china shop, or any permutation between the two. No martial art has any lasting efficacy that is not seated in the mind, just the same as the marital arts are seated in the heart. We're all just going through the motions and sometimes the choreography is sublime and sometimes it is clumsy and brutal. Each degree has a tactile experience and level of attendant suffering or enjoyment and that all comes down to 'who' is enjoying it or suffering from it.

Yeah, we've come round in circles appearing but for some of us it's a spiral and that particular illustration can make all the difference in the end; as we come to the end of this post.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: ♫ Every Fairytale ♫
'Every Fairytale' is track no. 4 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)