TRUTH AND LAPISI

Amazon.com Author Forum ^ | 21 Feb 2010 | John W. Cassell

[johnwcassell]

I won't keep you in suspense...lapisi is garbage in Samoan...here goes:

I think we all search for Truth to guide us in our lives....Right combat soldiers? Some of us more than others, but sooner or later the Wonders and the Carnage that we see and feel in our lives compel us to try to strike a balance.... to explain all this. I've found mine, tho I was blessed with an After Death Experience that made it fairly simple.....prompting one Torah scholar, one Catholic scholar and one Protestant scholar to each tell me the experience was in accord with their religious teachings! I woke up thinking it was non-denominational, but it turned out to be multi-denominational...and there is a big difference. One seeks not to offend, the other cumulates Truth.

As for Absolute Truth....that's the King's Business...and I no longer dabble in that. I know better, tho each of those scholars mentioned above practically make that their life. Don't get me wrong, it's a worthy search, but the end is disappointing.....Those humans of different religions who have gotten about as close as a mortal can get all have one thing in common: from Hindu holy men in the hills to a Buddhist monk in Laos who lived for years on a boat in the Mekong River to St. Thomas Aquinas: they go silent....they don't speak because they have gotten at least slightly into a Reality where words simply do not communicate.

That's too much for me. Ignorance can be a major blessing! from what I've seen, ignorant people rarely commit suicide. Nor do they go around like this gorgeous astronomy student I knew back in the Castle days knowing that at any minute the earth could be blown off its axis by giant boulders which are constantly hurling thru space. I told her "I don't want to know any of that..I gotta find my next meal." (she would have said 'why bother? Every minute is a crap shoot.') Of course she had more money than I did and food and mushrooms in her refrigerator.

It's the King's worry...not mine. Alfred E. Newman was right!

I had a weird day today. I couldn't hold a cigarette in my hands (or anything else) and at one point just dropped. As you know I cannot get up once on the ground, so I very fortunately slammed against a wall, very unfortunately on my dislocated shoulder very fortunately allowing me to somehow get my legs under me again. I lost both shoes but did not go to the ground.

On days like this, it is easy for me to eschew f---ing politics. the sad fact is that people who are just plain fed up may make up the majority, but there is no Reagan to unite them [gee that was great to watch after jimmy carter]. it's just the usual collection of GOP nitwits, all spouting the same old crap. So.......the draft dodgers, the moral cowards, the airheads and the fools, who of course think obama walks on water [which he can't cause he can't take his teleprompter with him], will once again install Der Fuerhrer in the next election.....and since nancy pelosi can't lose in the Bay Area [that tell you anything?] we've gotta have a speaker for four more years who will again say "if we go home, they will"---and this Bozo has an AirForce 737 at her disposal to fly home on weekends.

Now...what has this to do with writing? With unbiased political reporting? [this originated at Linda Shelnutt's forum and that was what we were talking about]. The answer is that things have changed. Not since 1964 have I seen such polarization...politics are simply not fun anymore, they are simply desperation.

I would say a majority of my friends are flaming liberals but we've learned not to talk politics and then they are enjoyable. But the fact remains that any attempt at an unbiased political diatribe would have to point out that two presidents ago we had a guy who fled to the Soviet Union to avoid military service and now we have a parasite who never did a useful thing in his life and who hates America...what does this tell us, the non-biased diatribe would have to ask???

It tells us that our electorate is D---b!!!!! Please remember that Bush did not get a majority in either run, so they are the majority. SO, the unbiased political diatribe would continue, we are S-----d! and that, my friends, is that!!!!

Better stick to creativity. as all of you know, being writers, with keyboard at hand we can do magical things: make a world shaped by the imagination of Jeff Howe [who incidentally is working on a book to my delight!], or the poetry of Robert Meacham, or another world entirely like Brad Philpot, or a fictional country like cassell or two worlds simultaneously like Linda Shelnutt. What a long trip around the track just to say "Keep it up, guys...your creativity is your salvation!!"

God bless you all and keep posting.

[Talisker]