Greek Chorus II

There are those who would have us work
More than we need to, day in, day out
At joyless tasks, producing surplus value
For them
Because they succeeded in creating a system
Through centuries of struggle
That runs on deceit and avarice and accumulation
They wanted it O! so badly And they got it
Work child – work harder
Longer, faster
Surplus value is their God
To whom the tortured bodies
Of the exploited are offered up
Save the expense of burnt offerings
Let them lie where they fell
Or shove the cadavers into a pit
And burn them there
The putrid smokes of Hell
Ascending to the God of Surplus Value
Pound of flesh?
Nay, they want it all
Burned, unburned, it matters not
As long as IT produced Surplus Value
So get out there and Get a Job
Sonny boy, girlie girl
OR, come to our inner sanctum
And learn the holiest of holies:
How to accumulate the Surplus Value yourself
Then you’ll be a Success
They’ll write books about you
Make movies, comic books, commercials
Starring YOU
Your developing skills of deceit
Are the ones to be rewarded
Clever girl, cunning fellow
O! So clever, so cunning
Accumulate and buy, Buy, BUY
Buy your security in the Halls of Power
Call these Halls “democracy” if need be
Use your cleverness to paint it so
So . . . democratic
But you know better
Because you’re clever, O! so clever
But beware the “Baby Jesus” living
The living spirit that is within
And without
And moves through all things
The spirit knows your falseness
And you can kill and oppress and imprison
But the Life Force will still be there
Knowing who you are and what you do
Reaching beyond names
EVERYWHERE.

 

©2020 Douglas Harvey (nom de plume: Figment Zenguitar)

 

Greek Chorus

Born into a world of strangers
Do they want YOU or a fantasy in their mind?
And if you're not the latter, which you're not
You try to make yourself into that
Because you know that's what they want
And they are shopworn and cynical and
Are themselves representing a falseness
That is institutionalized
Protected by cultural flotsam that accrues
To hide the Truth
And you try to understand
Thinking that everyone wants the best for you
And you are rewarded when
The false self begins to accrue and conceal
Or punished for your authenticity
Self-medication or idle distraction or both
Become what seem to be survival skills
That are killing you
Maybe you are four years old
Or maybe you are eight years old
Or maybe you are twelve years old
But there are moments of clarity
That are also hidden because
If seen they are attacked
THAT will not be permitted
So you will have to choose
What seems like a choice between
Yourself or your family
But you don't know that's the choice
You're too young to know
And so, like the white man in blackface
Who uses the mask to be authentic
But it isn't, but it is
And confused you try again
This authenticity or acceptance
No, THAT'S the choice
BUT you have no tools, no role model
To learn self-esteem, self-support
Self-nurturing, self-acceptance
So now you've split in two
The child, frozen in time, ignored, left behind
The child is the "Baby Jesus," the Buddha, your Chi
But then -- one fine day . . .
So this is the story
THE STORY
To be or not to be
Slings and arrows, indeed.

Augustus and King Donald of Orange

Observation: Supporters of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 (ratified 1788) were a group of economic elites (bourgeoisie / merchant-bankers, 1%, choose your term), offered no guarantee of rights in the proposed governing document. It was only when they realized they would have to accede to demands for a list of guaranteed rights to get adequate votes for ratification that they agreed to a "Bill of Rights." So, the "Bill of Rights" was a concession that allowed fairly narrow approval of the document.

By contrast, the "radical" Constitution of Pennsylvania of 1776 was drawn up by working class delegates to replace the proprietary rule of the Penn family. A "Declaration of Rights" was the first thing after the Preamble. This document served until it was overthrown by a merchant-banker coup in 1790,

Historians refer to this era as "the Critical Period" and usually sing the praises of the bourgeoisie who pulled us through. This bourgeois document also contains the seeds of its own destruction, perceived and predicted by some observers at the time (Herman Husband, for instance). What we are witnessing now, with the rise of King Donald of Orange, is the natural fruits of putting the levers of power in the hands of an economic elite. This is analogous to the rise of Caesar Augustus in the 1st century CE. The consequences are much more dire now, however.

History under the History

There is a train of thought here that's plausible: The right-wing obsession with taking power from the liberals (i.e., FDR and the "New Dealers") and consolidating it beginning with the post-war period (much more can be said about all this, obviously): 1) Murder liberals with power and popularity to intimidate the others (note the slave-owner methodology here); 2) Murder civil rights reformers with power and popularity (even more apt analogy with slavery enforcement); 3) Escalate the "war" on left-leaning governments globally (beginning especially with the Dulles-led CIA in the early 1950s) ; 4) Escalating the war in Vietnam (bad move -- a set back with the public, although good for war profiteers); 4) Overcoming the "Vietnam Syndrome" (i.e., the anti-war movement), beginning with the invasion of Granada by Cowboy Raygun -- a fictional character cynically designed to pacify the American public); 5) Criminalization / financialization of the economy (didn't have far to go on that one); 6) Deploy a "new Pearl Harbor" to institute draconian responses and raise national fear levels ("we'll protect you"); 5) A global pandemic to further muddy the waters, consolidate wealth, property, and power, which plays into #3 where right-wing governments have been installed and supported militarily through the "power of the purse" of the US population and in the EU.

Just a very rough sketch -- and can actually be traced back much further -- A HuffPo piece on Fauci predicting the pandemic in 2017 inspired this (all-too-brief) commentary --

In researching my biography of Herman Husband, an 18th-century agrarian "liberation theology" kind of radical -- I've found that he would not be surprised by this kind of chain of events coming out of the consolidation of power represented by the merchant-banker coup of 1787 (we've been trained to call it the "Constitutional Convention") -- indeed, he predicted it.

The Mother

3/22/20
I'm writing a biography of Herman Husband, a mystic and radical that lived in the hills of the eastern woodlands in the eighteenth century.  He had a vision of the New Jerusalem being west of the Alleghenies and that it would be ruled by the Divine as found within the hearts of the residents therein.  This was the only way humans could survive -- by relying on this connection to the eternal within -- and by being honest with oneself and tuning into that inner voice, justice, peace, and plenty could indeed happen here.

Listening to some music of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis -- "The Mother" -- from the movie "The Road" -- evoked some feelings about North America that took me a bit by surprise as I sit on my perch reading Covid-19 news.  I've been reading up on the history of Quebec and Nouvelle France, mainly in French, and this author, Laurier Turgeon, was talking about how the colonists made the environment their own through food, especially the codfish.  And "Terre Neuve," AKA "Newfoundland," which encompassed more than what is referred to today by that term, was a new universe to the French fishermen, traders, and explorers.  It was capitalism from the git-go with the investments in the tools to extract the fish and the competition to get the best price.

Anyway, I lived in St. John's, Newfoundland for a few months once upon a time when a moratorium on the fishery had just been declared because of centuries of overfishing.  I was on foot, so I didn't get out of town really at all, but I pounded the turf pretty steadily during that time.  I walked all over town, along the Battery Trail many times, up to Signal Hill, around to the lighthouse on the south side of the harbor.  I never made it over to Cape Spear, but you can easily see it from the Battery Trail and Signal Hill.

So I'm thinking about all these things while Cave and Ellis invoke "The Mother," and I do not remember the context of that piece in the movie, but it brought up that sense of oneness with the other-than-human world.  It's beautiful -- transcendent -- beyond the daily sillinesses of life in USA USA USA.  I saw the main artery of the St. Lawrence River as seen from Cap Diamant in Quebec, near the old fortress, where Champlain, des Monts, Roberval, and probably Cartier stood in awe of the place.  It's the upper reach of the tide -- Kebec is Iroquois for "where the river narrows," so that is laid out at one's feet.  A three-hour train ride upstream - don't know how long by boat -- brings one to Montreal, la belle isle, where the Iroquois had a village called Hochelaga and the sand bars represent the fall line of the river.  There, one finds Mount Royal and its sister mountains overlooking the St. Lawrence valley.  Incredible beauty and a joie de vivre hard to find in the U.S.
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Looking north from Cap Diamante, one sees the beginning of the Laurentian Mountains -- geologically tied to the Appalachians but I can't remember the difference just now.  Going north through that land of boreal forest, bogs, lakes, ponds, moose, bear, caribou -- you feel The Mother, for sure.  After a couple of hours, one drives into the Saguenay fiord in the Chicoutimi area just below Lac St. Jean.  A town is named after the French fur trader Roberval at that lake, perhaps the first European to set foot there.  Again, I'm feeling a deep well of peace and love and calm that is beyond words -- experiential only -- that is The Mother.

I never know when The Mother . . . this Comforter . . . is going to emerge from the realm beyond logic, the senses, the quotidien, the cacophony of the monkey chatter.  But I remember once on a Sunday morning when we lived on the outskirts of Lawrence, KS near the confluence of the Wakarusa and Kaw Rivers.  It was the Wakarusa flood plain that I was admiring when The Mother -- The Comforter -- emerged.  My psyche was suddenly opened up and I could sense the wonder if that valley extending to the Flint Hills and the Kaw Valley that extended via the Smoky Hill arm up into the High Plains to about the point where you just make out the highest peaks of the Front Range.  Grandfather's Lap, I call it.  Downstream, the Wakarusa flows into the Kaw which soon flows into the Missouri River at Kawsmouth, an old meeting spot from when the French had come this far south and west from Quebec.  But because I'm a sucker for hills and mountains, my life journey has taken me to the south of Kawsmouth by quite a bit, although I live within ten miles or so of it today.  On that Sunday morning when my thoughts turned to the east, I was thinking of my old home, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri.  That's where The Mother saved me from the False Self (The Mother becomes a male war god in her/his malevolent form, whom I call "Murgatroid") -- and left a sinkhole as a calling card -- on Johnny Morris's new golf course, The Top o' the Rock.  But that's another story.

So when Herman Husband says he had a vision -- a way back in 1779 -- of the New Jerusalem in North America and the Allegheny Mountains represented the eastern wall, I take him seriously.  I suspect he was touched by The Mother / Comforter, mystic that he was, and my brother.