Chris Hedges‘ 4/19/10 article, titled: Noam Chomsky Has Never Seen Anything Like This, opens with the following statement, which is significant for all who seriously seek social change and a better future:

“Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate.”

Since its inception, our social system, Capitalism, has ruined billions of lives and now threatens to destroy the planet. Change is more than urgently needed. It is now a question of collective life or death.

Noam Chomsky’s comment on the following statement by Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci:

“A main obstacle to change is the reproduction by the dominating forces of elements of their hegemonic ideology. It’s an important and urgent task to develop alternative interpretations of reality”

is:

“I respect Gramsci a lot, but I think it’s possible to paraphrase that comment, namely: Just tell the truth … try to find out the truth and tell the truth. Does that say anything different? It’s something any one of us can do.”

History has shown over and over again that telling the truth is the most dangerous and powerful act as well as the most feared by oppressors in all times. Those who dare proclaim and defend Truth to liberate humanity from oppression want to restore a commonwealth of the people governed by the people for the people. That indeed is change we must all support and that is the change that will give birth to a different world.

Noam Chomsky is the foremost representative of that human hope for real civilization.

View these talks by Noam Chomsky:

Noam Chomsky begins speaking in this video at 8:00:

Conversations with History:

______________

By Shamus Cooke

01 July, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — There should be no doubts about the U.S.’ decisive role behind the now-crumbling military coup in Honduras. As commander and chief of the U.S. armed forces, the blame for this intervention lies solely on President Obama.

The White House, however, would like you to believe that they “attempted to convince the Honduran military not to intervene.”

Rubbish.

When it comes to the Honduran military, the U.S. government needn’t ask permission for anything. The decades long relationship between the two institutions is one of dependence — Honduras’ military has long been financed and trained by the U.S. The New York Times explains:

“The two nations have long had a close military relationship, with an American military task force stationed at a Honduran air base about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.” (June 28, 2009)

And from Latin American expert Eva Gollinger:

“The US Military Group in Honduras trains around 300 Honduran soldiers every year, provides more than $500,000 annually to the Honduran Armed Forces and additionally provides $1.4 million for a military education and exchange program for around 300 more Honduran soldiers every year.”

This year U.S. aide to Honduras was $43 million.

It is utterly unimaginable that the Honduran military would act against the wishes of the hemisphere’s military and economic superpower.

In fact, the chief military leader of the Honduran coup — Joint Chief of Staff Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez — lived and was trained at the notorious School of Americas (SOA), a U.S. military base that trains Latin American military officers to act in the best interests of United State’s corporations. It is no coincidence that another coup leader — Air Force head Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo — is also an SOA graduate.

When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya realized that Vasquez was acting against him, he was fired — the rest of the military chiefs resigned in protest; and the coup was on.

The highly conservative Honduran Supreme Court then gave the military the “legal” cover it needed to pursue the coup, a fact the U.S. media uses to justify the events.

The reason for the coup lies in President Zelaya’s recent foreign policy shift — away from the United States towards Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. This turn was the result of the United States largely ignoring Honduras, after a long lasting, villainous relationship had ended: the U.S. had, for years, funneled large amounts of cash and arms to the Honduran government to kill the regions political leftists, the high point being the regions turbulent 1980’s.

After Zelaya was elected in 2006 (he still has one year left in his term), he promised to shift Honduras’ politics toward helping the poorer layers. He realized that he could not achieve any of his promises with the scant amount of aide from the U.S. and looked instead to the Latin American trade association, ALBA. Zelaya explained:

“I have been looking for projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Europe and I have received very moderate offers … that forces us to find other forms of financing like ALBA.” ( Reuters, April 26,2008 )

The U.S. government did not like this move, since it prefers U.S. banks to dominate the economies of Latin American countries. The New York Times confirms:

“…[Washington’s] relations with Mr. Zelaya…had recently turned colder because of the inclusion of Honduras in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist political alliance led by Venezuela.” (June 28, 2009)

Nearly all of the U.S. media’s writing about the Honduran coup is littered with negative references to Hugo Chavez, the “socialist project,” and other buzzwords meant to influence the reader toward acceptance of the coup.

For example:

“…[Zelaya] has the support of labor unions and the poor. But the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest.” (New York Times, June 28, 2009)

Obama himself does nothing to condemn the coup. Yes, he is “deeply concerned” about the events in Honduras, but his vague comments about “dialogue” and respecting “legal procedures” is full of loopholes — big enough for a coup to squeeze through.

If Obama immediately refused to recognize the newly installed coup government in Honduras, while threatening to withdraw U.S. military and financial aide — along with the U.S. ambassador — the coup would dissolve in seconds. Strong actions like these, however, were completely absent.

Eva Gollinger comments:

“I think a clear coup d’etat against a democratic government that also happens to be a major dependent on U.S. economic and political aid should provoke a more firm and concise statement by the US Government.”

Such a statement did come not only from the General Assembly of the United Nations, but from the formerly U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS). Both organizations are refusing to recognize the new coup government in Honduras and are demanding the return of Zelaya. This is a big blow to Washington, who in better times could rely on the OAS and U.N. to turn a blind eye to a U.S.-sponsored coup, such as the one in Haiti in 2004.

Now, however, the OAS has largely broken from the U.S. stranglehold, emboldened by the independent path taken by numerous Latin American countries, though especially Venezuela.

And this is the broader motive for the coup. The U.S. banks and other corporations that once dominated Latin America are being quickly pushed aside, so that governments may use their country’s wealth for social services and real economic development — not foreign for-profit plunder.

The U.S. coup attempt in Honduras is thus a sign of desperation. It was also a huge gamble. Obama had hoped that the U.N. and OAS would let this one slide. It was also hoped that the Honduran people would be intimidated by martial law and a communications blackout. Neither was the case.

Huge protests have defied the military-ordered curfew. Latin American countries have united in defiance of a tyrannical U.S. policy. It is reported that these happenings are causing splits in the Honduran military, while also a general strike was being prepared by the nation’s trade unions.

In consequence, the coup is likely to crumble, and Obama’s first attempt to re-tame Latin America will have failed. The actions of the U.N. and OAS are striking examples of the shrinking international influence of the U.S., meaning that future interventions — both military and economic — are likely to be more direct to restore U.S. hegemony. Obama’s more-subtle attempts to uphold U.S. “influence” in the world will ultimately require blunter, Bush-like tactics.

If the Honduran coup fails, Obama will eloquently discuss how pleased he is that “democracy was restored” — while refusing to admit that he tried to kill it.

______________
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Luminous Compass has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Luminous Compass endorsed or sponsored by the originator.

]]> http://aldovidali.com/general/washingtons-coup-attempt-in-honduras/feed 0 http://aldovidali.com/general/lessons-from-the-sandbox http://aldovidali.com/general/lessons-from-the-sandbox#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:47:22 +0000 admin http://aldovidali.com/?p=1623

A burst of voices and laughter heralds recess. Kids bullet out of the classroom to find their favorite spot on the playground. Katie, Allie, and Sam like the sandbox, but so does Gunner and that’s always a problem. Gunner is territorial, piles up the toys on “his side,” tells Katie, Allie, and Sam what to do, and gets aggressive if they don’t play his game. When he starts throwing sand, the others protest but he keeps at it. Eventually they call the teacher. Now imagine the teacher supporting and even encouraging Gunner. Guest post by Viktoria Vidali.

A Simple Analogy

As simple as it is, this analogy explains in part what is happening on the world arena. A few have taken control of what should be shared with everyone. The distorted values of this minority elite are protected by governments, powerful corporations, and to a large degree sanctioned by religion. This minority owns big media that saturates the population 24/7 with the presumptive rightness of its ideologies, like competitiveness (which discourages people from working together and gaining strength to upset the status quo), materialism (which encourages people to work harder so that they can buy more things and also locks in the false connection between self worth and money), and the law of attraction (which abrogates responsibility).

It [the law of attraction] argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment … The message that we can have everything we want if we dig deep enough inside ourselves, if we truly believe we are exceptional, is pumped out daily over the airwaves in advertisements, through the plot and story lines of television programs and films, and bolstered by the sickeningly cheerful and upbeat banter of well-groomed television hosts. This is the twisted ideological lens through which we view the world. ~ Chris Hedges’ Happiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression.

As a result, great numbers of people think and act against their own best interests and wonder why they rarely have the freedom and peace of mind to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Even when they “get the whole picture,” they are often so distracted or overworked that they lack the energy and will to bring about fundamental change.

What’s Fair

Since the World Social Forum came upon the supranational stage in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, alternatives to a failed system that deprives too many of a decent life have been proposed and in places implemented by the swelling ranks of the poor and marginalized and by all those who understand that there is plenty to go around. What exactly is being demanded? The right to honest work, a living wage, food, clean water, a home, a healthy environment, an education, health care, a responsive self-government, and peace.

They’re demanding what’s fair!

Social movements to actualize these human rights are gaining momentum one by one across South America – Venezuela,* Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Paraguay. They are bringing hope of a better life and renewal to their citizens. At the same time the world’s people are largely getting poorer, we see the biggest concentration of wealth and income in the fewest numbers.** Gunner has demanded and received more of the sandbox and governments are saying this is perfectly fine. Go right ahead, Gunner! You deserve it!

A Personal Question

Many of us are only now seeing the immensity of these global problems and how they affect all of us and are asking ourselves:

Can we personally be truly happy knowing that so many are suffering?

While we should be grateful for the gifts we have received, we must learn to give our energy and resources to work for a better world where every person’s rights are respected. How can we do this? The answer is to act, because we each have something valuable to give. By giving, we renew our vital connection to all members of the human family. The kind of action we initiate and sustain in solidarity with others is open to our own creative imaginations.

_______________________

* For more on Venezuela’s participative democracy, VenezuelaAnalysis.com.

** Confer Political Economics Professor Jack Rasmus’ book: The Trillion Dollar Income Shift – Essays on Income Inequality in America. If you liked this, you might also like: From Global Financial Crisis to Global Recession and a Cross Currents radio interview with Dr. Rasmus.

June 1st 2009, by Hugo Chávez Frías

It is amazing how deep our father Bolivar stirred around in the search of the revolutionary essence; just as he said in “the finding of the mysterious unknown of the free man.” In this huge task he put forward his thoughts before those of the great intellectuals and philosophers of the last two centuries. It is truly amazing how his most advanced ideas form a great slope, whose waters empty into that wonderful river called socialism.

This is exactly what happens with the equality issue. Let’s take a tour of two hundred years to confirm it.

Brazilian thinker Theotonio Dos Santos, in his book Concepto de clases sociales (Concept of social classes, printed by El Perro y la Rana editorial), says:

The representation of bourgeois society as a basic group of individuals who can differentiate into groups must be part of bourgeois ideology (…) This representation expresses exactly the essential interest of the bourgeoisie to hide the class nature of its society and postulate its society as offering equal opportunities to all individuals.

Equality of opportunity, true, but increasingly based on the growing inequality of economic and legal power, as well as material privileges that excessively reproduce the inequality of conditions.

One hundred and twenty years ago, Karl Marx said it in the Critique of the Gotha Program, written in 1875:

Paradoxically, what appears as the end of socialism is, precisely, the integral development of unequalness among men, unequalness of their aspirations and capacities, the unequalness of their personalities. But this personal unequalness will no longer mean a difference of economic power or inequality of material rights or privileges. It can only be extended in an atmosphere of material and economic equality.

And our Bolívar, fifty six years before Marx, pointed out with meridian clearness in Angostura, in 1819:

In my opinion, Legislators, the fundamental principle of our system depends immediately and exclusively on equality established and exercised in Venezuela. (…)Nature makes men unequal in terms of their genius, temperament, force, and characters. Laws correct this difference by giving man a place in society so that education, industry, service, virtue may give him a fictitious equality, properly called political and social equality. The bringing together of all classes in a State is an eminently beneficial inspiration, where diversity multiples in proportion to the propagation of the species. By this single step, cruel discord has been torn out by the roots. How much jealousy, rivalry and hatred have been thus avoided!

These are the reasons why, the more we study the history of ideas, the more we deepen and understand the great thinkers of and for humanity, starting from (Jesus) Christ up to Fidel. This is why, every day, with more strength and obligation, our revolution is more Bolivarian than ever!

Christ, as I have said, was a true socialist thinker. And even more important, he was a consistent socialist fighter up to his last song:

Everything is consummated.

From an old encyclopaedia that I carry with me since my days as lieutenant of the Armoured Batallion Bravos de Apure, during those days when a small group of young patriotic officers of the Army (including myself) started to create the first cells of the Bolivarian Movement, I draw out the following passage:

In times of great internal and external severity, in view of the growing misery of the poor people and the greatest concentration of wealth in few hands, the great prophets appeared and urged the revision of this situation. In 765 BC, Amos, the most ancient and probably the greatest of those prophets, appeared and launched on behalf of Jehovah his curse against the rich people: But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem… because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek, (Amós, 2, 5/7).

Afterwards it reads as follows:

We have found identical tones in Oseas and, especially in Isaiah: ‘Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! (Is., 5, 8 )

And the Jesus arrived to condemn the rich people. Here you have the Sermon of the Mount:

Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. (Luke, 6, 20-25).

For you compatriot, man, woman, youth, who read my Sunday lines, the last day of May I tell you: Let he who has eyes see, and he who has ears, hear!

Capitalism proclaims to the four winds the non-existence of classes nor inequality; since there is an alleged equality of opportunity that guarantees all the enjoyment, privileges, and rights to all the persons on earth, when we know that all its perversity is precisely based on breaking every possible balance between legality and justice. In crisis times, even more, when masks fall, disclosing many capitalists as true mafia bosses. An expensive propaganda campaign has been launched by all the media outlets in order to make believe that our Bolivarian Revolution will deprive you of your car, your apartment, warehouse, arepera [1] and everything you own thanks to your effort and work.

But the truth is that, those who proclaim it are the same ones who have literally hoarded vehicles and speculate barefacedly with the sale and rent of real state. If during the last ten years these oligarchs living in our country have dared to attempt against the sacred right of our people to food, education, and health; it is not surprising that they will likewise attempt against Venezuelans’ right to have property. While we struggle for pulling out the cruel conflict, as Bolívar said, the media outlets at the service of the empire and the most corrupted oligarchical sector of the country promote it in order to, precisely, hide their felonies.

This is why I urge people to be on the revolutionary alert and watchfulness, even those compatriots who – even not being part of our Revolution – suffer because of the overflowing perversity of those who boast about being their defenders and representatives. It is up to us to keep working to establish and practice equality, getting it under the following principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” a Christian principle that sinks its roots in the most distant but alive primitive Christianity.

Time and the passing of history have demonstrated that there is a maturation process of the people; that the current political, organizational, and ideological maturity is not the same as ten years ago. Today, there is a common, popular, and Venezuelan sense that never existed before; as well as an eternal solidarity and a way of organizing and understanding their street, their parish, their barrio, and their history.

Events in the midst of development, as Walter Martinez would say, show that governments must always adapt themselves to the maturity and level of the people they work for. Learning is permanent, and we have had hard but valuable lessons. Venezuela has constructed a history of dignity and struggle, in spite of so many difficulties. And facts have demonstrated the mature degree of this people; the maturity to rule and decide in the name of the people. We are confirming that the creative powers that the great Aquiles Nazoa recognized in us.

It’s time to give substance, strength, and movement to the communal democracy, the democracy communard of Kléber Ramírez. The new phase starts now in Venezuela, developing a strategy focused on “producing food, science, and dignity” and strengthening the dynamism of the participative and socialist democracy.

The time for the community to start its movement towards the full exercise of its power and its political responsibility has come. We have walked far, but there is still path left to walk, let’s go on creating, as Mészaros would say in The Challenge and the Burden of Historical Time:

The creation of a truly equal society demands the radical downfall of the exploitative structural hierarchies that were established during thousands of years.

But the communal model must be ours; it must emerge from popular wisdom, from the clear understanding of their territory; of their connection with their history and country. From everything that causes us to be called Venezuelan people.

We must speed up the structure of the communal councils, the technical tables, increasing their participative power and transforming the community into a reason of state; this is the path; always together with Simón Rodríguez and Bolívar.

“If we do not learn a dynamic lesson from history, there is no reason to suppose that we will find it in another place,” says the great master and Bolivarian August Mijares: it is all about raising people’s consciousness, “the affirmative Venezuelan aspect.”

In history, we have great examples that must be useful as objective references. The Commune of Paris, the experience of the agrarian commune in China; the indigenous Venezuelan, Colombian, Paraguayan communards are all models that offer keys for us to do what we have to; being original, as the socialist Master of America, Simón Rodríguez, who proposed an original Toparquía (small dominion) for our America. But one thing is certain and Lenin said so in a short article called, “In Memory of the Commune”: “The cause of the Commune is the cause of the social revolution; it is the cause of the complete political and economical emancipation of workers; it is the cause of the world proletariat. And in this sense it is immortal.”

Bolivarian and socialist communards: let’s continue clearing up “The Mysterious Unknown…”

With Christ, with Bolívar, with Fidel:
¡We will win!

Hugo Chávez Frías

Note: [1] Arepera: sort of restaurant where you can buy Arepra. The word “arepa” may originate from the language of the Caracas natives (north coast of Venezuela) that means “maize.” An arepa is a bread made of corn originating from the northern Andes in South America, and which has now spread to other areas in Latin America.

By Paul Craig Roberts

What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure. Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed.

On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of the people’s representatives voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, frankly own the place.

It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester’s campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.

The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama ‘change’ administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing ‘Yes we can!’

The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion ‘defense’ budget for this year. The $660 billion–probably a low-ball number–is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that ‘the world’s only superpower’ is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders?

These wars are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over American citizenry.

Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a city on the hill, a light unto the world.

Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistani sovereignty, continues to attack ìtargetsî in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.

Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population.

According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the ’security’ bureaucracy.

The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration.

In the Afghan ‘desert of death’ the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munition corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Website: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.

“Who Should Resist, and Who Will Become Serfs?” This article by Chris Hedges (4/7/09) is an absolute must-read. All who study it should either be galvanized into action or be prepared to kiss their money and asses goodbye.

“America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.”

We do indeed have a cargo cult democracy now. At regular intervals we check boxes, flip levers, or poke buttons to choose among preselected candidates and so give an illusion of choosing our government. But policy making has long since been outsourced to privately funded and directed to think tanks and corporate interest groups.

Wake up!

Before anything changes people have to understand that despite what they’ve been told, they have no share in civic power. If they can’t stomach this fact, they have to start taking their duty as citizens seriously. They must inform themselves about issues, candidates, the uses and structure of power, and do it everyday. Democracy is much, much more than just donating to a party and hooting for/against branded candidates once every two or four years.

Most of all, shut off the god damned TV. Stonewall American Idol. Boycott professional sports. In the old days, the Romans used bread and circuses to keep the yokels pacified. Today it’s beer and B-ball. The flip side of e pluribus unum is divide and conquer, which is exactly what trivial pursuits and diversions do.

Although classified as a Neorealist, Fellini defies this label more so than he confirms it. This is because his best accomplishments stem from the unconventional aspects of his films. Guest post by Lorenzo Vidali.

Rooted in deep philosophical disagreement with Neorealism, Fellini chooses to wander into dreams and fantasy rather than focusing on a concrete, historically based narrative, saying:

I’m a liar, but an honest one [Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, p. 49].

In other words, the literal content of his films is historically false, but they allude to intangible meanings that are in and of themselves true. Thus, he abandons practical realism for a metaphysical one, using unorthodox technique to address spiritual realities instead of socioeconomic conditions. In his book Fellini on Fellini, he writes:

Realism is a bad word. In a certain sense everything is realistic. I see no dividing line between imagination and reality. I see a great deal of reality in imagination. Realism is neither a tight enclosure nor a one-dimensional panorama. A landscape, for instance, has a number of layers, and the deepest, which only poetic language can reveal, is not the least real. What I want to show beyond the outer surface of things is what people call ‘unreal.’ [p. 152]

His work has expanded the genre from simply (according to contemporary French critics) “showing that unjust and perverted social structures threaten to warp and pervert the essential and internal human values,” to detailing the psychological struggle of individuals who strive for human connection in a lonely world [Liehm, Neorealism is like... p. 135].  Nights of Cabiria, therefore, is an expansion of Neorealism’s philosophical reach. It addresses the human condition rather than our social condition:

Our trouble, as modern men, is loneliness, and this begins in the very depths of our being… Only between man and man, I think, can this solitude be broken, only through individual people can a kind of message be passed, making them understand – almost discover – the profound link between one person and the next. [Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, p. 61]

This theme, virtually ubiquitous throughout all his films, has a more specific manifestation in Cabiria (1956), which focuses on the plight of women. That is, it shows them playing an important role in “calling others to spirituality and love” [Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, p. 62]. Using episodic structure, character motifs, open endings, and borrowing from surrealist aesthetics, Fellini delves deeper into psychological realm of the human condition, as Nights of Cabiria displays the emotional struggle of a woman who resiliently strives for love and connection against all odds.

It is important, as a start, to recognize the commonalities between Fellini and Neorealism proper, one of which is the dominance of micro-action over macro-action [Bazin, Cabiria: The Voyage to the End of Neorealism, p. 90]. Just like Bitter Rice (dir. Giuseppe De Santis, 1950) and Sciuscia (dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1947), Cabiria places priority on individual episodes within the story; but unlike the others it lends more emphasis to “phenomenological description of the characters” than to causality [Bazin, "Cabiria: The Voyage to the End of Neorealism," p. 90]. In Sciuscia, for example, we follow the two boys as their unfortunate encounter with the robbers leads to their imprisonment, and eventually, Giuseppe’s death. Under Fellini’s direction, however, Cabiria endures a series of distinct misadventures, which are linked through thematic parallels rather than a causal chain. In the beginning, Giorgio deceives Cabiria, stealing her purse and leaving her to drown. After being saved by a group of boys, her humiliation leads to anger, erasing any gratitude for having been saved.

Indeed, aggression as a concealment for an injured ego remains one of Cabiria’s main character traits, which ties the disjointed episodes together [Murray, Fellini the Artist, p. 100].

When she arrives at her typical “night shift” location, her anger breaks out again, this time against an older prostitute named Matilda. The source of her rage (bitter disappointment) is just as important a motif as the anger itself. In each stage of the film, Cabiria’s expectations are violated, first by Giorgio.

“…the heroine is finally driven to reveal the extent of her hurt: ‘Why did he do it?’ she asks. ‘Why? I gave him everything. Why would he shove me in the river for a mere forty thousand lire? I loved him” [Murray, Fellini the Artist, p. 101].

Next in line to disappoint is a well-known movie star, who after an intense argument with his attractive mistress, summons Cabiria to divert himself for the evening. Intoxicated by her temporary status (by proxy), the protagonist gloats to herself, imagining the jealousy of her rival prostitutes when they discover who she has been with. When they return from the nightclub to the actor’s lavish mansion, we witness a brief moment of connection as they eat and talk about Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Even after receiving an autographed picture as proof of the evening, Cabiria’s desire to gloat is momentarily superseded by a glimmer of hope that her rapport with the actor could grow; but it is immediately quashed when his blonde lover returns. Cabiria must hide in the bathroom, where she spends the night with a puppy as her only consolation: a harsh return to her low and lonely condition.

Anger and disappointment continue to define her experience when she and her companions visit the Madonna to confess their sins in exchange for forgiveness, renewal, and the power to change. At first, her skepticism causes her to brush off the entire ceremony; but hope inevitably lures her in. The surrounding fervor brings the film to its most dramatic point yet, as Cabiria, swept up by her surroundings, weeps for forgiveness and relief along with the other worshippers. Outside the church, disappointment once again leads to anger. Intoxicated with alcohol, and wanting for diving intervention she screams:

We haven’t changed!

These patterns continue and intensify as the story progresses. Under hypnosis she suffers letdown and humiliation, reacting with anger. Her first encounters with Oscar are subdued by cynical distrust, followed by, hope, joy, love, and intense relief, once again to be followed by tragic disappointment when Oscar robs her as Giorgio did. In all instances, Fellini manages to connect episodes using emotional motifs instead of causality [Stubbs, Federico Fellini as Auteur, p. 55]. Therefore, he is able to address the psychology of oppression instead of the social structures responsible. The film depends on an emotional cycle for this to work: cynicism, hope, joy, disappointment, anger. Unlike the beginning, however, the ending is more uplifting, as Cabiria is cheered up by a lively band of young musicians, a testament to her willingness to soldier on and continue her search for happiness.

For a Neorealist film, this ending is atypical and serves a unique function. As stated by Rosselini, Neorealism is a moral position that governs the content and aesthetics of a film to deliver a message [Liehm, Neorealism is like ..., p. 129].

Fellini disagrees: “I never make moral judgments. I’m not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest or a politician” [Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, p. 51].

Consequently, the ending of Nights of Cabiria differs from traditional Neorealist films in a way that reflects this discord. In Sciuscia, Giuseppe dies, illuminating the futility of vengeance. In Bitter Rice, Silvana also dies, showing the ultimate result of betrayal. In Cabiria, the last shot is her smiling. She has no money, no place to go, and the future is uncertain. In the spirit of showing rather than telling, Fellini used this ending to underscore the resilience of Cabiria’s search for love and happiness; but he does not try to state the result of this persistence. He only shows it continues to exist.

It is important to note that Fellini could not have accomplished this without capable talent. If not for the talents of Giulietta Masina, the emotional affect of the film could not have been achieved:

Miss Masina gives a remarkable performance, capturing shades of pain and happiness that are rarely approached on the screen. Her pathos is almost unbearable [Fava, The Films of Federico Fellini, p. 96].

Nonetheless, Fellini does employ strategies independent of actor performance, one of which is defamiliarization.

One goal of conventional Neorealist films is to bring the spectator closer to reality through a disclosure of detail that familiarizes the audience with a particular setting or context [Liehm, Neorealism is like ..., p. 132]. Fellini, on the other hand, employs a kind of “visual decadence” that promotes new, unfamiliar perspectives [Stuffs, Federico Fellini as Auteur, p. 55]. He does this in two ways: one, as mentioned before, is the separation of plot into distinct episodes that could very easily be shuffled to produce the same overall affect. Another, as exemplified by the ending of Cabiria, harkens back to surrealism.

After Cabiria’s final fit of despair in the face of Oscar’s betrayal, she wanders out of the woods onto a lonely road, despondent and overwhelmed. As she walks, a group of young musicians parade down the road past her, whistling and singing cheerfully. In the final shot, Cabiria nearly breaks the fourth wall as she cannot help but absorb the joy of those around her, and she smiles toward the audience. The appearance of the musicians is unwarranted, reminiscent of random apparitions in our dreams. They defy pragmatic realism, but serve a meaningful purpose in highlighting the persistence of Cabiria’s will to happiness.

A peculiar paradox, however, is Fellini’s own opinion on the moral power of avoiding a didactic morality in the ending of his films.

I feel that a film is the more moral if it doesn’t offer the audience the solution found by the character whose story is told. In other words, the man who has just seen a character sorting out his problems, or becoming good when he started off bad, finds himself in a much more comfortable situation… My films, on the contrary give the audience a very exact responsibility. For instance, they must decide what Cabiria’s end is going to be. Her fate is in the hands of each one of us. If the film has moved us, and troubled us, we must immediately begin to have new relationships with our neighbors. This must start the first time we meet our fiends or our wife, since anyone may be Cabiria – that is a victim [Fellini, Fellini on Fellini, p. 150].

In sum, Fellini employs episodic structure, emotional motifs, open endings, and a flamboyant surrealist visual style to touch upon the intangible aspects of the human condition: suffering, longing, love, and striving.

In order to clarify his framing of the female role, however, it is important to briefly illustrate the predominant role of male characters, who themselves chase after something. Giorgio and Oscar clearly pursue money. The wealthy actor, in his boredom and disillusionment, expresses the futility of wealth, which cannot quench his thirst for human connection. He finds a brief moment of solace with Cabiria, but in his own pursuit, he casts her aside in search of what she also is looking for, connection with a lover. In the church, all characters, male and female yearn for redemption and change.

Inevitably, the social aspect of Neorealism comes into play, as it is Cabiria’s low social status that ensures her repeated disappointment, because the men in her life continually cast her aside in search of their own version of fulfillment. Therefore, Nights of Cabiria does examine social structures, but with an emphasis on their psychological effects. In doing so it uses Cabiria as an example of women’s yearning for commitment in a society that breeds a seemingly unshakable restlessness among men, who are rarely content with their relationships, or are blinded by their pursuit of wealth. Nevertheless, the film does not propose change or impose a moral, rather it attempts to show the mental condition of humanity through the struggles of women.

Nights of Cabiria is not a study of one who develops in a certain moral direction – toward either good or evil – but of one who, in spite of constant disillusionment, finds the strength to declare: ‘Yes – I will go on. For it is better to smile than to weep, better to live than to die.’ Far from being merely a picture featuring another ‘whore with a heart of gold,’ Nights of Cabiria has a theme of universal significance [Murray, Fellini the Artist, p. 109].

Although Fellini rejects his Neorealist label, his contribution to the genre has expanded its ideological reach, giving it more power to contend with the dominant ideological machine of Hollywood. Rather than create characters who are defined by the conditions around them, Fellini creates characters who them selves represent a certain social condition [Bondanella, The Break with Neorealism: Fellini, p. 115].

As arguably one of the greatest directors in Cinema, Fellini both challenged and contributed to Neorealism by making a film that addresses many forms of reality, both spiritual and material. He discarded pragmatic realism in the pursuit of a metaphysical realism that penetrated far deeper into the human condition than the most “real” of traditional Neorealist motion pictures.

Confer:

1. Bazin, Andre. “Cabiria: The Voyage to the End of Neorealism,” What is Cinema? Volume II. Berkely: University of California Press, 1971, 90.

2. Bondanella, Peter. “The Break with Neorealism: Fellini,” Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. Continuum: New York, 1997. 115.

3. Fava, Claudio G. Aldo Vigano. The Films of Federico Fellini. Citadel Press, 1981. 96.

4. Fellini, Federico. Fellini on Fellini. Zurich: Delacorte Press, 1974. 49, 51, 61, 62, 150, 152.

5. Liem, Mira. “Neorealism is like…” in Passion and Defiance” film in Italy from 1942 to the Present. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. 129, 132, 135.

6. Murray, Edward. Fellini the Artist. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1976. 100, 101, 109.

7. Stubbs, John C. Federico Fellini as Auteur. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. 55.

Written in 1996 by Aldo and Viktoria Vidali while living in the Cleveland National Forest of San Diego County, this is based on a true story of a California mountain lion struggling to survive.

Puma grew up in the wide open space of Camp Pendleton on the southern end of the coastal range. He had inherited his realm from his father who was killed by a rancher at the edge of the military preserve. Puma’s kingdom extended 150 square miles and was home to three females, each roaming about 60 square miles, slightly overlapping into each other’s hunting grounds. In the last few years, open land was more and more fragmented by the poorly planned development of Southern California.

Puma’s vital space was getting smaller, so the magnificent hundred-pound lion began exploring north. One day he found himself in the upper reaches of Coal Canyon. That evening in the falling twilight he slid along rapidly toward the east end of the barranca. In the gathering semidarkness he became an indiscernible shadow gliding through the chaparral.

As night fell he reached a narrow ledge overlooking the freeway. Heavy traffic could be seen and heard from his vantage point. The star-filled sky faintly illumined the undisturbed wilderness beyond the frightful flow of roaring machines. He watched motionless for about an hour, then without a sound moved cautiously to a rise closer to the freeway and sat there watching cars go by for the rest of the night, afraid, waiting to make his move.

Puma’s ancestors had hunted this wilderness for centuries among grizzly bear and countless deer, antelope, and other wildlife. Mountain lions coexisted with early men who gathered acorns in the dense oak forests and went hunting and fishing here.

As he waited by the freeway, ancestral memories dissolved into his recent trauma. When searching for broader hunting grounds, he had wandered into a cul-de-sac and climbed a shady oak tree in a well-manicured backyard to rest. He watched a man scurrying into the house looking very much like prey. Soon after, steel monsters with flashing red lights appeared and beamed fiery eyes at him from all sides. Puma was stung by a large flying needle and stunned. He fell from the tree, growled once, then foundered into drowsiness and sudden sleep.

Puma awoke sick and alone in the chaparral. He roamed hungry, thirsty and disoriented over unfamiliar ground. He entered a deep canyon and came to a place where the wind could not reach and all was hush and peaceful. A narrow stream opened into a quiet pool. He crossed a small meadow and stopped by the side of the pool. With drooping head and half shut eyes he lapped the cool water.

Beyond the pool the land rose gently, covered by a blanket of green, velvety grass. A cottontail moved. Puma froze and his body slowly sunk low to hug the ground as his muscles vibrated with new life. On the slope blossoms of manzanita wafted their spring fragrance. The air was sharp and light. Butterflies drifted from shadows to sunshine like fluttering spots of color. Puma could hear the drowsy hum of bees as his gaze stayed locked on the rabbit who moved from morsel to morsel unaware of the ominous presence. Occasionally the rabbit froze and its long ears quivered, monitoring changes in the bubbling sound of the stream. Carefully, in small spurts, it gradually moved around the pool, closer and closer to the great, motionless cat. For an instant the rabbit’s head lifted and tensed with eagerness, trying to capture the almost inaudible sound of a beating heart. In that instant the king bolted and leaped, his deadly jaws breaking the small prey’s back.

Food and sleep restored Puma to full vigor. His sharp instincts returned with the first whiff of a female whose irresistible scent he began to follow along the narrow canyon until he reached the freeway. She had successfully crossed the wide river of roaring lights and established her range out there in that unexplored land beyond.

Puma was now on the rise at the edge of the canyon, patiently waiting for his chance to cross. In the chilly hours of the night preceding dawn the traffic died down. With the first light of dawn a soft coastal mist covered the wild hills like a veil. Every fiber of Puma’s being was impelled by his mating instinct to cross. A primordial perception quickened his heart, the lure of virgin land, essential space, where he could be all he was meant to be, a king mighty and free. There were no moving lights out there, no deafening roars to shatter the starlit, musical silence of the night.

He patiently observed the traffic, slowly gathering the courage to cross. Twice he rose to make his move, but thunderous speeding trucks made him squat again. He must act soon while the shadowless dawn made him indiscernible.

As the first colors appeared causing the stars to shyly go into hiding one by one, Puma, with pounding heart, cautiously tread onto the moist, silent asphalt. He was past midway, almost on the other side, when he heard the roar and saw the brute lunging at him out of the mist with lightning speed. Screeching tires. An aborted leap. The deadly thud of impact. He was violently hurled through the air and fell in the dirt of the roadway’s shoulder where the open land began. The dark killer swerved to a grinding, squealing stop, leaving long sinewy tracks on the pavement. Its driver dashed out, cursing. Then, recognizing the lion, he approached cautiously and stopped at a safe distance to watch the broken creature drag itself in dreadful agony into the safety of the chaparral.

Now, concealed by dense bushes, Puma listened to the machine’s roar fading in the distance until there was only the sound of his own heartbeat. Torment choked his being. The fragrance of the spring breeze mixed with the mating message was still there. He inched further amidst the shadows, entering the morning of his last night. He stopped to vomit blood. The innocent feral heart stemmed beating for a moment. The last call of the wild stirred his wonder-filled memories, blending with the impermanent silence of a desecrated land. From this imperfect refuge Puma entered the timeless hunting grounds where the wind is an eternal caress and the only roar is that of the immortal lion.

Who can explain what makes human hearts insensitive to the splendor of the earth, what blinds human eyes to beauty, what prevents human ears from hearing the song of nature? This terrible disorder of the soul is a menace to all life. This nameless fear that separates many from the earth must be finally overcome.

From the oceans, the mountains, the valleys, the forests, ever louder comes the last call of the wild reverberating beyond the limits of the solar system. A haunting, mighty appeal to save the very source of our humanity: wilderness, where it all began, where what lies behind life itself can be contacted. The last call of the wild is a mighty invocation of life longing for itself.

Midway along the walk of life I found myself in a dark wild wood having lost the straight path…this savage wood even in thought renews my fear…I cannot tell how I got there, so full of sleep was I when I strayed from the truthful road…Let the reader suspect that there is something more than fantasy 
behind your words, but never let him be absolutely sure. ~ Jack London, Redwood Cove, October, 1994

Jack London advised me to write this as fiction. He said no one would ever believe it actually happened. He may be right, but I think some will instinctively know this is the truth, so I’m leaving it up to you, kind reader, to decide. Truth or fiction?

I had been reading the last chapter of one of Jack’s best works, John Barleycorn, on a comfortable rattan armchair in the shade of an ancient oak, spellbound by the intensity of a writer who died in the prime of life almost eighty years ago. He wrote:

“Life is a perpetual lie-telling process. Life is a mad dance in the domain of flux, wherein appearances in mighty tides ebb and flow, chained to the wheels of moons beyond our ken. Appearances are ghosts. Life is ghost land, where appearances change, transfuse, permeate each other…You are such an appearance composed of countless appearances out of the past. All an appearance can know is mirage….”

I closed the book. How true, I thought, recalling my own amazement at the weirdness of quantum physics. The world of particles and forces had recently vanished as scientists observed ghostly events in the behavior of what they had always thought to be but “matter.” How could that be? Many asked astounded, “How can consciousness transform the nature of things through observation?” Jack’s intuition had preceded science into the multiple dimensions of consciousness now perplexing physicists.

I reflected quietly with a pleasant sensory awareness of the present moment. It was a balmy Southern California morning. My isolated home in the High Sierran forest a few miles north of the Mexican border seemed a solid reality, a safe haven from the agitation of urban life below. A warm Santa Ana breeze rose from the Borrego Desert. The sky was a deep blue. Suddenly I felt my body get up and walk toward the house.

Still dazzled by London’s powerful prose, I reached for the door, and that’s when it happened, believe it or not.

Please be patient with me. I know it is almost impossible to swallow such a thing, but I repeat, believe it or not, what I am about to reveal to you is not only not fiction, but it draws all its significance from the fact that it actually happened. At that exact moment when I reached for the door handle I stepped into a different world with the same ease as one steps from one room into another. Just like in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the house vanished. An immense sunny space lay before me. A man was standing at the foot of a towering redwood, gazing into the distance. He was wearing a white shirt, leather slacks, and boots.

I knew immediately it was Jack, and I was aware that I was experiencing a phenomenon rising from the unfathomable mystery of my own mind. To describe it as an hallucination would not explain its tangible reality nor its continuity. What was truly amazing was not just the happening itself, but the fact that it seemed perfectly natural to me.

As if he had been expecting me, Jack motioned me to approach and sit down. Without hesitation I stepped forward through flower strewn grass to join him in the shade of the giant tree. A distant ocean came into view.

“This is beyond me,” I said after exchanging greetings like old friends meeting again after many years. “How will I ever make what’s happening here believable assuming I’ll remember any of it?” Then, raising the book I held in my hands, I added: “I was about to put this back.”

His sun bronzed face smiled, amused. He was at the apex of physical wholeness, just like in the old photos I had seen of him in his thirties. The rugged sailor on horseback, but somehow better, bigger than life. The boy, the youth, the man; all three superimposed in perfect union.

“Write it as fiction,” he returned after a pensive look at me. “You can say anything you like, as long as it’s fiction. Happenings like this are seldom believed without proof. Readers will ridicule a report of a visit with a dead man.”

“But what makes this event worth telling is precisely the fact that it is really happening,” I protested. “Fiction would turn it into another fantasy in a market flooded with fantasies. Dante didn’t present his visit beyond as fantasy.”

He laughed: “Dante wrote in the age of faith. People then intuited this dimension, but today you’ll be dismissed as a lunatic. Fiction! Make it fiction. That’s where literary power lies. There is no resistance to fiction because it lets everybody off the hook and influences readers without colliding with personal beliefs.”

“I can’t agree with you. John Barleycorn’s power came from being a true story. The reader was captivated because it was a true experience of drunken madness. Your ‘White Logic’ would have lost credibility as fiction. Besides, science today allows for this possibility….” and I went on explaining the ghostly world of quantum mechanics, telling Jack about the debates of the Copenhagen scientists, and the ideas of physicist Von Neumann and his colleagues who proposed the mind-exploding theory that consciousness creates reality.

Jack laughed, “They’re finally on to that!” He plucked a blade of grass and, looking at it reflectively, said, “John Barleycorn was a warning. A futile one at that. No one can save those who don’t want to be saved. But what is happening to you is not the same thing. You can’t expect an editor to believe you spent a day with a dead man. All the quantum speculations in the world are not going to explain this. They’ll say you are trying to be clever with a cocktail of science and metaphysics. Be sensible! Forget it. Both atheists and believers will despise you. Even fantasy and SF fans will throw tomatoes at you!”

He chuckled, twirling the blade of grass between his fingertips, then went on.

“On the other hand, life-like post-mortem interviews with famous figures is a novel idea and you could fictionalize future meetings with others here who are much more important than I. Unfortunately, that can’t be guaranteed. Yours may be a one-time-only visit.”

He leaned against the tree and added, “Only a woman in love with you – if she is intuitive – would believe this really happened.”

“I’m married to such a woman.”

“I’m glad, but mark my word: even she will have moments of doubt. In fact, you yourself in time will wonder.”

His voice conveyed certainty.

“Maybe it would be wiser to keep this to myself. I wouldn’t know how to explain all this anyway.”

He considered what I said. “Well, there is nothing to explain. You stumbled into another one of the infinite possibilities of the real. This cannot be explained in scientific terms. It’s impenetrable to logic, like a fairy tale. That’s why scientists are dumbfounded by what they are discovering. They are at the edge of dimensions that defy reason. Let me see that book.” He stretched out his hand.

I handed him John Barleycorn. He looked at the front cover, then opened it.

“A 1968 edition! Fifty-two years after my demise. I’m flattered!”

Encouraged, I inquired, “Tell me, were you not dazzled by the continuity of life, instead of the eternal nothingness you wrote about?”

“Dazzled? Why?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I was no more surprised than you are now. It was like waking up after a sound sleep. Every night we go to sleep. How long is it before we wake? A few hours or centuries? Well, it’s the same with death. I went to sleep, so to speak, had a few nightmares, and woke up to this. Of course, I was wrong about death, and yet out of pure intuition – inspiration, if you prefer -; I did touch on the possibility of other lives in Star Rover and in my last short stories. Doubt, like hope, springs eternal in the hearts of men. A presage of ’something more’ after death was in my heart, like in Hamlet’s. I was a fool. I accepted theories. After Darwin’s book, speculations exploded on the intellectual stage and I was swept up by the wave. Everyone believed in progress, the most enthusiastic illusion of all time.”

He closed the book, stared at it for a moment, then continued.

“Doubt unresolved is painful. The desire to be free from fear made me accept annihilation. Not to be is better than slavery. I wanted the dignity of dying like a man, refusing a last meal, never begging to be spared. I wanted to rise above the indignity of the human condition. We are crucified between a past we cannot remember and a future we cannot know. Our feet nailed to the eternal, vertical present, preventing us from levitating through our crown of thorns beyond being.” He smiled and, shaking his head, added, “I just didn’t go deep enough.”

“Do you understand now?”

“The mystery is as deep as ever, perhaps more so, as it should be on pain of our salt losing its flavor.”

“But at least you know that it is impossible for life to end in nothing.”

“Nothingness can be approached, but never achieved. I fell for the absurd. How could nothingness exist without being something? Nothingness is only an idea.

“In any event, three things saved me: intuition, sincerity, and generosity. Oh, mind you, I’m not taking undue credit. I was told by Ernest Hemingway, when he came here, that that is what saved me. Besides, this place is far from paradise. It’s what some call ‘the honorable prison.’ Another learning station.”

He stretched his arms wide as if to embrace the sky, and took a deep breath.

I scanned the spectacular surroundings, puzzled. I tried to take in all that lay before me, from the wondrous valley to the faraway ocean. A profusion of wildflowers studded the carpet of tender pasture grass swaying in the breeze down the gentle slopes all the way to the white beach and sparkling surf. The air brimmed with perfume.

“This… you call this a prison? How can this be a prison?!” I burst out.

“It’s a splendid prison no doubt, but a prison nonetheless,” he answered. “You know what a risk taker I’ve been. I lived like a hobo hopping freight trains. I sailed before the mast as a young man. I marched with the Imperial Army during the Russian-Japanese War. I was wild with life. When all other newsmen were held behind, I hired a Chinese junk and trekked through North Korea to the front lines. I sailed across the South Pacific to the cannibal islands. Most of my writing was about adventure. I battled for social justice. Risk-taking was my call in life. Well, there are no risks here. No new challenges. Personal initiative is stifled. No oppositions. I suffer the loss of exploits, adventure, the quest. Fortunately, release from here is pre-ordained by the requirements of the cosmic design. All I can do is wait out my self-inflicted sentence. This is the immutable garden, a place of rest, reflection, contemplation, and beauty.”

“Beauty all right! How could a writer ever describe this?”

“The same way you would a primordial coastline in springtime crowned by a virgin redwood forest. No one can fully depict the perfection of nature, not even in films. Some came close, especially poets, but it takes a great reader to add the inexpressible. There must be collaboration between the artist and audience. That’s why we came into being. All the world’s a stage, but we’re not just actors, we are also the audience out there in the dark.”

“How can I make readers experience the fragrance of these flowers, the crispness of the sea breeze?”

“By adequate hints, just enough to evoke resonance from what all humans have in the depth of their being, a remembrance of a lost garden.”

“Today that’s easier said than done. With television, the span of attention is ever shorter. Students leave college without the least notion of what it is to participate as a reader. If only they knew what they are missing. You didn’t have that problem.”

“No, in my time people were either illiterate or loved to read. Recent arrivals told me about TV dysfunctions. We have television here. I enjoy peeking at what’s going on in the dream world.”

“Now, wait a minute! Television!? You must be joking! This is absolutely incredible!”

“Why? Nothing incredible about it. All realities are refracted here. We can touch them. We can visit them, in ghostly fashion so to speak, just as you do in your dreams. That is a surrogate of freedom.”

“I bet you have a lot of good laughs!”

He smiled broadly and moved a lock of hair from his forehead.

“We laugh, all right. You should see the faces of those who died before the 18th century when they watch. I’ve seen them rolling on the floor. That would be an experience for you.”

I tried to imagine Jefferson’s reactions to CNN.

He paused, and his cheerfulness vanished abruptly behind a veil of sadness.

“We often weep, too,” he sighed, stood up, and gazed at the sea. I remained still until he turned back and sat down again facing me.

“Of all mysteries, none is more impenetrable than evil. God’s mercy is infinite, but so is human stupidity. When this century opened, I foresaw the rise of tyranny in my book The Iron Heel. Since I died in 1916, over 170 million have been slaughtered in the name of ideologies. The task of a writer now is to deflate whatever promotes collective madness.”

“All generations add a chapter,” I ventured, “but I doubt anything is in our control. We fenced ourselves in ‘private property reservations.’ We destroyed what we loved.” I pointed with a gesture of my hand to the splendor around us. “And now we live in fear of criminals, just as the Indians did when we came. Each generation reaps what the preceding sowed.”

“I feel like weeping when I think of millions of buffalo exterminated! What stupidity!” he said.

“Now we’re pulverizing the last primordial forests to make toilet paper, but let’s not get depressed,”I quickly added, ” I’d rather learn more from you.”

“You’re my guest.” Jack bowed slightly and, touching his heart, confessed, “I will admit to cutting down a few redwoods to build Wolfhouse. I should have paid attention to Teddy Roosevelt. In our day most Americans felt nature was inexhaustible. I made mistakes. But forgive me. I’m getting sidetracked. Please go ahead. Direct our parley.”

“All right. Perhaps I’ll write about this meeting after all, especially about the mystery of the possible. It’s going to be as difficult as your writing about Hasheesh Land. In John Barleycorn you spoke of enormous extensions of time, how your travels were seared on your brain in the sharpest detail. You related how you tried with endless words to describe the simplest phases and tiniest particles to persons who have not traveled there.’”

He nodded, and for an instant I caught the passing of an emotional cloud in his eyes as he spoke slowly, reminiscing, “With those words I introduced the ‘White Logic.’ One never forgets that sort of inspiration. I wrote the entire chapter in one uninterrupted flow.”

“That was evident.”

“That’s it. Something compelled me as I penned the words: ‘I talk for an hour, elaborating that one phase of Hasheesh Land and at the end I have told them nothing. And when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things, I know I have failed to give them the slightest concept of Hasheesh Land. But let me talk with some other traveler of that weird region and at once I am understood. A phrase, a word, conveys instantly to his mind what hours of words and phrases could not convey to the mind of the non-traveler.’

“And: ‘I used all the hyperbole of metaphor, and told what centuries of time and profounds of unthinkable agony and horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the piano.’ That was the White Logic speaking, which to the sober mind sounds like madness, for it lies beyond ordinary thinking.”

He took a deep breath.

I commented, “To those untraveled, the traveler’s account will always seem unintelligible and fantastic. Like Dante in his Paradise asking readers to take his poem on faith.”

He nodded in agreement, “That’s what you must do. I’m pleased you’ve understood that. You must bring your story as close as you can to the edge of a true account, but never, never cross the line. Let the reader suspect that there is something more than fantasy behind your words, but never let him be absolutely sure.”

He stood up quickly and said, “Come, let’s take a walk. Feel this solid ground under your feet. It will help you remember the concreteness of all this so you’ll never convince yourself that you just dreamed it, even if the whole world swears you did.”

We walked across meadows soft as velvet. All leaves and petals were unblemished and virginal. Blossoms of wine wooded manzanitas and madroña changing its pea-green trunk to pepper-red filled the air with perfume. It would have been sating had the air been drowsy and humid, but the air was sharp and thin like the echo of the night transformed into sunshine and flower-drenched sweetness. White, blue, and yellow butterflies fluttered through patches of light and shade.

We crossed a small stream that gurgled melodiously upon the slope. The hum of bees and sound of the stream mixed to create a delicate intangible sound that whispered the spirit of the place, a spirit of peace filled with life, quiet, but not silent, quick with being, but without the struggle of existence. In the shade of the sycamores we halted upon a red royal buck crowned with many antlers, knee-deep in a cool shaded pool, his eyes unable to pierce the green screen of bushes that concealed us. His head lifted and turned. His sensitive quivering nostrils scented the air, his ears moving with a swift eagerness for sound.

I felt light and invigorated, present, with all need for analysis gone. As we ambled along the pool’s edge, the buck observed us unafraid. Far beyond stood an imposing backdrop of snow capped mountains illuminated by the sun. To our left the blossoming fields sloped gently, stopping at the edge of a white beach kissed by the sparkling surf of an emerald ocean, foaming white around black reefs where colonies of sea lions rested lazily in the sun, occasionally barking to their mates. I was reminded of Jack’s description of a Carmel cove in Valley of the Moon.

Kind reader, only your imagination can add the indescribable sensation that separates reality from dream. To describe this experience so vividly etched in my memory is like trying to paint the immensity of the Grand Canyon on a 3×5 postcard.

Our walk continued for three miles or so. I cannot be certain, so carefree was I. Quite unexpectedly we came to a cozy gathering place. The rustic Redwood Cove Inn. The kind of place one found in the early part of the century along the winding Pacific Coast Highway. A construction of redwood and stone with a wide terrace shaded by a luxuriant grape-vine arbor. There must have been a dozen people at the open air tables. Some waved, smiling at Jack. He responded with nods as we walked onto the terrace.

“If you’re granted another visit here, I’ll have you meet some great friends. There are many from more remote times in the valleys beyond. You’ll be astounded. I still am.”

We took our seats at a massive round, hand-crafted wooden table in a shaded alcove. A handsome young gentleman entered and signaled warmly to Jack, who responded raising and lowering his head. He took his seat at a side table where another man was waiting.

Jack must have noticed my curiosity.

“That’s Frank Norris. You read The Octopus?”

I nodded.

“The fellow with him is Ed Markham. Hardly anyone remembers him. One of America’s best poets. ‘At her light touch, behold! a voice proceeds, Out of all things to chide our sordid deeds; A beauty breaks, a beauty ever strange, The Changeless that is back of all the change. Lightly it comes as when a rose would be – Takes feature yet remains a mystery.’ That’s what he wrote about art.”

Silence, except for a few faint words from the other tables. A tantalizing scent of delicious food reached me.

“Hungry?”

“Quite,” I answered. I was ravenous.

“I’ll tell André to prepare something special.” He got up and went to the kitchen.

From where I was sitting I could observe intriguing men and women enjoying mouth-watering delicacies. I watched Jack come out of the kitchen and walk back. He seemed very happy. I wondered what specialty he had ordered. When he sat down I looked at him for a while, then proceeded to lead the parley.

“You wrote that there are various orders of truth in this world. Some are truer than others. Some sorts of truth, you said, are lies, and these are the very ones that have the greatest value. And you said that ‘what is normal is healthful. What is healthful tends toward life. Normal truth is a different order, a lesser order of truth.’ Would you change that now?”

“No, but I would clarify it,” he answered picking up the book again. “Those words of mine were followed by the observation that man alone has reason. Animals have intelligence, but not reason. I said that man alone can penetrate the grand show of universal manifestation and be aware of the cosmic indifference. This kind of knowledge is not without penalties. Man should above all live life intensely. He should sting with life. It is good that man be life-blinded, sense-struck. What is good is true. And this is the order of truth, lesser though it is, that man must guide his actions by.”

“What about the higher orders of truth. Do they not precede ‘living life intensely?’”

“Living life with gusto, concern, with joy, is closest to the highest truth. I wrote that countless men glimpsed the higher order of truth and recoiled from it, then after a long sickness lived to tell of it, and thereafter deliberately forgot it. Well, I can no longer say that these men did right to forget.”

He clenched his fist as if to strike at something.

“I loved your description of drunkenness. It made me drunk.”

He was gratified.

“Drink and drugs are ever an evil curse. John Barleycorn and Misty Lady Marie Juana are orders of folly, the antithesis of life. John Barleycorn is seductive, but cruel like interstellar space, frozen as absolute zero. He will not let the dreamer dream, the lover of life live. Marie Juana leads dreamers in an indefinite labyrinth of illusions and makes the lovers of life lose contact with the birth pangs of the soul trying to be born. Marie and John are quite a couple. Both deny life and instill the notion that death is either an endless dream or a black abyss.”

“Alcoholics are tragic figures,” I added.

“I know. Victims of such dreadful intimacy take hold of the way of death and forgetfulness. That was my mistake. I almost escaped, but when I realized what was happening to me, it was too late. My body had already suffered irreversible damage. It was the grace of having loved life and loved many that landed me here rather than a worse place. I knew even then that behind the indifferent universe there was Something which is not at all indifferent. As Markham wrote: ‘the Changeless that is back of all the change.’ The Changeless.”

He stopped, eyes rapt in boundless vision.

I waited, then said quietly, “Would you now dispute John Barleycorn’s claim that all beauty and wonder are but futility and dust? Nihilism laying claim to a higher truth? The assertion that life lies in order to live? That life is a mad dance in the domain of flux and change, a mighty tide, an ebb and flow of appearances? That life is a ghost land? That we are only an appearance composed of countless appearances out of the past?”

He assented, closing his eyes and saying, “I would add that creation is a misconception and evolution a delusion. Both are speculations of dreamers who think they are awake. Optical illusions due to the veil of sleep clouding human consciousness. Change is intrinsic in the mystery of all possibilities. The Possible as such is the Changeless, the Immovable Mover.”

He paused.

“I was naive,” he confessed. “I took theories as facts rather than speculations on possibilities. My dream, my theory is but one among an endless series projected by the nature of the mind. The infinite bowl will pour forth endless bubbles all doomed to burst.”

He wiped his face with the palm of both hands as if to erase the awesome vision he had evoked.

“Please, try to forget all this. It will never make sense to non-travelers.”

In the stillness that ensued I felt that my miraculous time here was running out. All would soon vanish just as it had appeared. I touched the table. It was as real as my own work table at home, even more so.

“Another thing, Jack,” I spoke as if pressed for time, “you realized the White Logic was deceiving you when it made you write ‘that with the last breath all is done: joy, love, sorrow, macaroni, the theatre, lime trees, raspberry drops, the power of human relations, the barking of dogs, champagne.’”

He peered at me with a mischievous expression I’ll always remember.

“I did call it a lie, after all,” he retorted, “and a lie it turned out to be, even for the raspberry drops.”

Chuckling like a boy, he reached in the pocket of his leather vest and handed me an exquisite little wooden box, opening it with a flick of his thumb to display the raspberry drops he still enjoyed.

“Here, try one.”

I did and was made speechless by delight capturing my sense of taste. This was a quintessential raspberry drop!

“You’ll have a very hard time trying to describe that sensation. The ultimate raspberry taste!” he proclaimed jubilantly, breaking out in happy laughter at seeing my surprise.

A lovely young woman appeared with our meal, a look of curiosity on her intelligent face. I stared at her in unbelief. I felt I knew her. I recovered.

“An abalone steak!” I exclaimed with genuine pleasure.

“Oh, yes, they’re abundant on this part of the California Coast,” he remarked.

“California Coast?”

“But, of course! Where do you think we are? This is unadulterated California…the way the once Golden State could still be if power holders realized there is something more important in life than money.”

We enjoyed our meal in silence. I cut into the succulent buttered white abalone meat surrounded by steamed vegetables. It was perfectly prepared and I knew I would never eat another like it!

As Jack poured me a cool glass of dry white wine, he confided modestly: “You know, Aldo, I learned I was quite wrong about another thing.”

“What was that?”

“Prohibition. My book was influential in bringing in the new law. Prohibition turned out to be a jump from the frying pan into the fire. It brought criminal profits and tripled political corruption.”

“Well, the same is happening now,” I concurred. “As long as drugs are illegal, they’re worth many times their weight in gold. The War on Drugs is another profit farce. Solution: cut off the profit motive, kill the market. But neither politicians nor criminals want the cash flow stopped. They are birds of a feather.”

The young woman brought a crisp garden salad.

Jack lifted his wine glass smiling, and I followed suit. He toasted, “This is to us! You’ll discover True Lady Grape, the finest of California wines. She puts John Barleycorn to shame. She transcends the White Logic with feminine intuition. Treat her gently, never abuse her, and she’ll let you glimpse Paradise.”

Our glasses clinked like silver bells. How exquisite and fragrant this timeless vintage was!

Jack picked up the book, opened it, leafed through some pages, then he took a pencil from his leather vest pocket and underlined the name Lue Ling.

“Lue Ling was one of the bibulous Seven Sages of the ancient Bamboo Grove who declared that to a drunken man the affairs of the world appear as so much duckweed on a river. He led me to another Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu, who four centuries before Christ challenged the dreamland world, saying: ‘How then do I know but that the dead repent of having previously clung to Life? Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentations and sorrows. Those who dream of lamentations and sorrows, wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream…Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves; they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say that you are a dream, I am but a dream myself.’”

“What wonderful men they must have been. Are they here?”

“Not any longer. They both spent some time across that ocean in the real China.”

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“Who knows. In their next possibility. Perhaps someday I’ll meet them when my turn to leave comes. My mistakes will keep me here longer, but not too much.”

He took one more sip of wine, put down his glass, and stated with near solemnity, “The infinite possibilities of the Changeless are far more real than the actualities of the manifested world. Consider what is happening. This dimension, as you can see, is as concrete as your life at home. But for most readers an accurate report will only seem a figment of your imagination. Pure fiction. And that’s the way it should be. Think! If they discovered that this dimension is real, think what would happen.”

He paused, “They are greedy enough as it is. They would consume the earth even faster. They would look at this as a spare-world open to all fools, even ex-drunks like Jack London who burned his candle at both ends.”

I was struck. He was right! I looked into his eyes. Countless questions on my mind. He understood my predicament and smiled.

Our hostess took the empty plates and left us a bowl of fruit: peaches, grapes, apricots, pears, cherries. We still had some True Lady wine.

“Try these,” Jack offered, handing me a cluster of grapes across the table. “They are real. As you taste them, let me tell you what I learned about The Real.”

I took one delicate grape to my lips and savored it slowly, listening.

“Being is the absolute necessity we are all a part of. Existence is where you are now and where I once was. Existence is the expression, or better, a prolongation of Being. I, Jack London, do not exist anymore. But I am! You understand the difference, don’t you?”

I nodded and he went on.

“He who is can never not be, but existence we gain and we lose. I wait with great expectations to re-enter the existential plane through a mother’s womb, to be again water born, because only in physical existence am I free to reach Beyond Being. Oddly, the title of my last story was ‘Water Baby.’ Again, perhaps it was intuition.

“Have you any idea how precious an existential body is?” he leaned forward, looking me straight in the eyes.

“Like everyone else, I instinctively protect my body.”

He came back with intensity, his gaze penetrating to my core: “I wrote about comradeship, the insanity of war, the inviolability of the human spirit, and the redeeming salvation of love. But best of all, in my last stories I spoke about the wisdom of the Great Mother and the Water Baby.

“Listen carefully, my friend,” he went on vibrantly. “A human form is one chance in a trillion to gain freedom of choice, to transcend limitations and move beyond time and space. Existence is the isthmus between two eternities. That is why the human state has been called pontifex, ‘maker of bridges.’ We eternally are, but rarely exist. The difference between being and existing is subtle, but enormously important, and you should understand it and convey it.”

His voice trembled as he added, “That justifies immortality for an artist. To have understood that with the mind in the heart and to help others do the same is the ultimate purpose of art. At the end of my career I began to intuit that supreme truth. Had I understood sooner, my work would have been timeless. As it turned out, I gave courage to my readers, entertained them with adventure and fervent speculations, but I did not show them how to build a bridge.”

He plunged into a silence I dared not disturb.

At last I inquired, “Why are you here? Is this a place of reward or expiation?”

He looked at me and answered with a question: “Is your life a reward or a punishment for things you do not remember?” Then he asserted, almost with solemnity, “Being, my friend, is the source of all possibilities. That’s why intelligent use of freedom while we exist is the magic wand that can break the wheel of illusion.”

His hand slowly swept the air with a grand gesture indicating the imposing line of redwoods stretching as far as the eye could see. I looked at the monumental trees along the path that brought us to the Cove.

“This forest, for example…these wondrous trees that made John Muir weep, arise through immanent Will. In nature this Will becomes the law of the strongest, in the cosmos the law of inevitable consequences. Cause and effect. Karma. Some here refer to it as ‘the preferences of the First Artist.’”

“Creation is the Word of the ‘Motionless Mover,’” I commented.

“Creation as a concept is insufficient for human understanding. Redefine creation: ‘From the inconceivable silence of the Void beyond-Being the song of Being, rises with all possibilities radiating into existence. Time, space, and all the worlds.’ Poets like Markham can put it better. So can great musicians without any words.”

A tall man leaving the inn waved at Jack with a friendly smile, which Jack returned.

“That was Roy Benedict, a wonderful man, an unknown thinker, perhaps the sharpest critic of my work. It was only when we met here that I understood the flaws he had long observed in my writing. He told me I should have made it possible for readers to understand the apparent absurdity, get it? The plenitude of emptiness is only an apparent impossibility. It is just that. It looks like an absurdity, but it is an absolute necessity.

The nothingness from which creation seems to pours forth as if ex nihilo is the mysterious nature of the mind. But this kind of language is only for philosophers, so that’s where the artist must come in. As a writer- had I understood- I could have shown creation as the first archetype of lovemaking, and vice versa, because it is Love that speaks the Word of creation so from the mystery of feminine power and masculine strength comes all the music and dances of love. As the Greatest of Poets said: ‘It is Love that moves the sun and all the stars.’”

We fell silent. That last line of the Divine Comedy sent me back to my student days in Rome. The first verses of the Inferno surfaced in my consciousness, or was Jack projecting them? “Midway along the walk of life I found myself in a dark wild wood having lost the straight path…this savage wood even in thought renews my fear…I cannot tell how I got there, so full of sleep was I when I strayed from the truthful road….”

His voice brought me back.

“I repeat, let the reader suspect there is something more than fantasy behind your words, but never let him be absolutely sure. In my writing I should have employed the metaphor of the empty page and the pen. Paper must lie still to let the pen pour forth, but both are passive in the hands of the Writer.”

My heart leaped. “How beautiful!”

He took a final sip of wine, then plucked a grape. The young woman brought us a cup of coffee.

We tasted the aromatic brew, quietly contemplating the ocean view, watching a squirrel gathering morsels near the edge of the terrace.

“Your thoughts on possibilities keep resonating in my mind. Being is Possibility as such, because nothing is possible outside Being.” I said.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed with genuine enthusiasm. “You got it! But please don’t lecture about it. To most these kinds of ideas sound like a lot of hot air. Save your pearls. Conceal profundities as tiny fragments in stirring action, my friend. Good medicine must be coated with sugar. Make up some fantastic adventure you shared with Jack London in a dream, like sailing stormy Cape Horn in an open skiff or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Something a little more exciting than having an abalone lunch at the Redwood Cove Inn with a dead man!”

We chuckled heartily.

“‘Lunch With a Dead Man!’ What a title!” I said.

Then he abruptly changed the subject.

“Let’s go to my house. It’s only a few miles from here.”

He stood up, walked to the edge of the arbor, and came back with a perfectly sculpted yellow rose which he placed on the table. It had been a lovely meal.

We went a different way this time. The patterns of light and subtle depth of moist silences, the majesty of the giant trees were irruptions of cosmic vitality, beacons on the pathway of escape from dull momentary ephemera to blissful permanence. We hiked down a steep path and emerged in a cove, where the sound of the crashing surf woke me from all drowsiness.

Leaving our clothes on the sand, we ran into the pounding waves with the elation of children. The water felt cool, exhilarating, and made my skin tingle. We body-surfed, then floated lazily watching the graceful flight of seagulls and the powerful gliding of gray pelicans inches above the water, searching for their catch. We found warmth on a flat rock in the sand.

I flashed back to my early youth, to the California I had loved. The iodine smell of saltwater, reefs, and seaweed, the feel of the warm sand, all this took me back to almost forgotten joys. The roaring surf lulled us into peaceful sleep. After a while we woke rested. We dressed and climbed back up the pathway through the trees over the first ridge until we were in view of the valley.

The forest completely encircled the Valley of the Moon, the archetype of Jack’s last earthly dream. There it was, the Wolf House, built of stone and ancient redwood to last a thousand years.

We sat on a fallen log, studying the structure. The Wolf House had been burned down three years before Jack died by someone a day before Jack was to move in, never to be rebuilt. It was his final dream shattered on earth, but here it stood, exactly as he dreamed it.

He looked at me and observed, “We were born far apart in time. You are lucky because you found love on earth and in me your first real friend before you die. In this garden I found my other half. If you come again, I’d like you to meet her.”

“Why do you say that, Jack? Am I about to leave?”

“No visit can be long beyond the veil. It is a rare gift. You have experienced the possibility of the apparently impossible. You now have proof that Love is the weaver of the universal carpet, whose weft is made of cosmic dust and whose warp is life itself.”

I closed my eyes at that breathtaking thought, and when I opened them I was back in my earthly dream entering my house, the book still in my hand. I thumbed through it quickly. Under the words “Lue Ling, one of the bibulous Seven Sages” was a thick pencil mark.

I knew then that I would have to tell it just as it happened.