I feel more and more these days that we are now the Iron Curtain country– we have become what we feared. It’s all so senseless and sad. I was going to say 'and unnecessary,' but perhaps it is necessary in some perverse way. Everyone who is awake must shut out the fear and just carry on and find intelligent and thoughtful ways to counter this rising ‘insurgency’ of conservative ideology that is killing our country. It’s an ideological ‘War of the Worlds’– our sane world against their insane world.
Within a couple days of 9-11 I had a vivid, vision-like dream about America. I saw a huge, miles-thick, miles-high steel-gray wall spring up instantly all along all its borders, completely sealing it in. Nothing could penetrate it. That wall is clearly in place now, and its strength is the thick, gray, stony silence and dark negativity of rising ignorance and hatred, fomented in service to greed and the lust for power.
Idealogies can be both ridiculous illusions and dangerous realities at the same time. To live in a society that is slowly going mad like this, one has to be– I hate to quote the Bible, but there is a quote that I think fits well– ‘guileless as doves and wise as serpents’– innocent and open-minded, leaving room for hope and the return of love and compassion, but at the same time unflinchingly aware and stripped of any naive notions about the forces that are at hand.

This was taken in 2003. I'm still trying to get my hair
long again, having 'fried' it a couple times with over-
processing, which necessitated cutting it short or
otherwise having it look like cotton candy. Jonathan
has had beautiful natural silver hair for years-- love it.
Heck, I may just stop bleaching it and go natural
brunette again.
Okay-- back to the real world of more pressing concerns,
like are we going to keep what's left of democracy alive or not, and when am I going to gather enough diverse and talented, as well as committed musicians together at one time to get my worldbeat music group happening? 

This was to be a place to share my creative life-- my art, music, beadwork. No doubt that will be part of the mix in time, but I find myself at the moment concerned about sharing my feelings and concerns about the urgent crisis our nation and world are in, and although I'm involved in a pretty creative and fulfilling life as a musician and artist, I need to express these concerns and channel my anxiety-sadness-anger-sense of powerlessness about what is transpiring by writing about them. (Note: more about these feelings of anger and powerlessness, in particular, later-- my struggle to find my own power, to integrate spirituality with activism, to understand the constructive and meaningful role that anger can play in an engaged life.)

Here's a poem I wrote a few months ago:

Life in a Psychic Fallout Shelter

We live in a bubble of stress-proof fluff-filter,
Our shields dangerously close to burn-mode
Our ears and eyes raw from the stress of
Straining against seeing, against hearing:
The screaming incoming missiles of Nil
That splinter the mind and soul,
SearingThe delicate flesh of the heart like lightning.
Yes, this is way beyond stark sadness.

The constant onslaught of words and thoughts
Perpetrating the ill-crafted LIE, in exquisite
And sickening white neon, advertising the End
With a fashionable Madison Avenue glow:
Eerily juxtaposing white lipo-sucked bodies
Bikini-ready for a prime-time reality show,
WithThe sight of dead soldiers well-hid from view.
No, this is way beyond sheer madness.

******

And here's a short article I published in October, 2005 in a local newspaper about the New Orleans tragedy:

Katrina:
Revealer of the Tenuous Fabric of Life, Destroyer of Deadly Illusions

Hurricane Katrina has opened the floodgates, not just of New Orleans but of the American psyche. Nine-eleven broke our hearts and forged a crack in the fragile veneer of our sense of personal and national security. But this hurricane and its terrible aftermath have forever breached our trust in the rationality and integrity of those to whom we have entrusted our collective welfare. Its winds have stirred the primordial mud of the mass mind and have disabused us of the naïve notion of being somehow a nation pristine, apart from and above the sufferings of the rest of the world. Illusions that were still clinging to us like energy-sucking barnacles less than a month ago are now falling from us rapidly as this massive sea change manifests all along the shores of the American consciousness.

America’s social structures are massively contaminated by a deadly and curious blend of self-righteous judgment and new age blame that have fostered a near-complete lack of social conscience and compassion for those in need, validating and championing apathy and inaction in the face of evil and injustice. What will it take to heal this ethic of “Hear no evil, see no evil, trust authority, and above all, don’t rock the boat”? Nine-eleven, the tsunami of 2005, and now hurricane Katrina clearly are teaching us the lessons of ruthless and careless disregard for the welfare of the commonweal. How many more millions of innocents will have to die to bring the corrupt policymakers and leaders to their knees, to make all of us give a damn? What will it take to heal the world and turn back the tide of global tyranny that has lost sight of the value of human life and values human beings only as consumers of goods? How many more cities, towns and coastlines have to be completely decimated before we all wake up and start working actively and passionately to create a real global community that sustains and nurtures life?

We can start now, today, this hour, this minute, with a clear resolve to look at “what is”—no matter how painful-- and not turn away from it to go shopping or watch more ‘reality’ shows on television. We can choose right now to become active in supporting people and causes in our neighborhoods and communities that need supporting. It’s late: the next killer storm or catastrophe may hit our own immediate shores.

************