The Scream I Will Not Silence

 

 

 

When I contemplate the horror of the atom bomb

I catch my breath, only to scream

The only acceptable response to mankind’s mass suicide.

There is no calm or rational approach to madness

There is no civil reply to abomination

There is no excuse for the ultimate evil

No explanation, no rationalization.

There is only an unending scream.

 

Don’t ask me not to interrupt your brunch

The scream will pierce your eardrums as you eat your quiche.

I’ll scream as you watch the Super Bowl and my scream will rise above the roar of the crowd

My scream will continue until the roar of the crowd is one big scream at the greatest of sins.

I will scream at your televised debate

And at your campaign rallies

I will scream until everyone feels the madness that cannot be denied.

I will scream at your child’s christening to alert him to the sick truth

I’ll scream a scream that sounds like madness but is in fact the only sane response to madness.

I will scream for every innocent animal unaware of what we’ve made.

I will scream until every man, woman and child feels the same fear and dread and horror that lurks in my heart

Until there is not one corner or bit of darkness in which the madness can hide unperturbed.

 

I will scream because I can do no more

And because I can do no less

There will be no peace

 

Until there is peace

You will not sleep

And if you do

The scream will haunt your dreams

 

Don’t ask me to be quiet

And let the grownups talk

The bomb makers and the Jim Jones know-it-alls

And the good boy media sock puppets

 

Don’t ask me to sit alone in a dark closet

Feeling the bugs and worms crawl across my skin

The scream has too long lain silent

In my heart alone.

My New Novel, Horror Films, Self-Pormotion and War

See that little image over there to the right of the screen? It’s right below where it asks for you to subscribe to my mailing list (which I’m sure you've already done so that you can get notices of new releases and sometimes free stuff. It’s really worth it and I promise not to bother you more than once or twice a year). That picture of a book cover with the title Shell Shock signifies that I have released my 5^th novel. Quite a small and unassuming little image, hidden away on an almost unknown blog-site.

And yet to me it signifies the result of all my spare energies for over a year now. It signifies a heck of a lot of research into areas that showed in gory detail some of the bleaker aspects of humanity. That’s what I do, I stare into the abyss and try to bring forth hope from it. I think that’s the essence of the horror genre, at least for me: to stare into the darkness and see something other than what our fears awaken in us. To shine the light into the dark places rather than turn away and pretend the darkness doesn’t exist.

Horror to me is not a means of distracting myself from reality. I remember as a child peering through slightly-parted fingers at many a movie that both terrified and excited me. Perhaps my favorite story was that of Frankenstein. The story has been told many times and often the creature was not always called Frankenstein, but the similarities were there. A scientist, who is blind to everything except his ability to do what no one has done before, creates an abomination. Through genius and hubris he brings to life something God and nature never intended. The creature, ill-equipped for the world, becomes a monster through no fault of its own and must be destroyed.

There were lessons to be drawn from such stories, lessons that have always stayed with me. One important lesson I learned from such stories was that the monster was not really the monster, that he was an object of pity who may have harmed others but did so not because he was evil but because he was misunderstood and ill-fashioned for the world he was brought into. I could even feel pity for the creator of such a being, because his intentions were ambitious and noble, though they were taken too far.

The other lesson I learned from the Frankenstein story—whether the monster went by the name of Godzilla, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Fly, or countless other movies—was that the use of technology always brought with it unintended consequences, that there were powers too great for man to control. They warned against the perils that our technological progress would bring with it, warned against the sin of too-great pride and self-importance.

Pity for others and humility in oneself. Not bad lessons to be learned from works of horror. You see, not all horror stories need be escapist, in fact the best ones aren’t. The best ones don’t end up distracting you from what you fear but causing you to look at what most frightens you so that you can overcome it. That’s what I try to write, about real-life problems we would rather not face head-on. That’s where horror lurks in real-life, in those problems we stuff into our subconscious because we don’t feel brave enough or strong enough to overcome them. They become monsters there, always lurking in the darkness to pounce upon us in our moment of weakness. I deal with them through fiction so that perhaps the reader will dare to chance a peek at them even as they cover their eyes. That maybe what we fear is not insurmountable and we are in fact capable of perceiving it for what it truly is and perhaps even be stronger in the end for having dared.

But I’ve strayed far from my original intention, which was to announce the release of my new novel, Shell Shock, and have you sign up for my mailing list. For all of my high-minded talk, I’m still just a writer who’d like to be read and perhaps even rewarded a little for my efforts, however modestly. But there is more to it than just that, as you will see when you crack open one of my books. The monster I deal with in Shell Shock is war, and it kills more than Jason, Freddy, Godzilla, Dracula, The Wolfman, and every-zombie-that-ever-was combined. There’s an element of Frankenstein in it too, in that man has managed to create horrors with technology he never should have toyed with.

While I have employed supernatural aspects in Shell Shock, I assure you the horror is all too real and 100% man-made. And if we try to avoid it, if we shove it deep into our sub-conscious, it will fester and grow in the darkness until one day it eats us in our sleep.

Shell Shock: A Final Passage Before Its Release

This passage relates the horrors and madness of World War I, a horror from which we have yet to draw the appropriate conclusions:

He had read The Star Rover not long ago, a recent novel by Jack London. London had described a prisoner bound tightly by a device not unlike the one he had about himself now. The severity of his constriction forced the character in the novel to turn inwards, explore the universe within and find liberation. Whether it was insanity or revelation, he felt his capacity to rise above the body Dr. Crenshaw had sought to restrain.

Some part of Doug knew the causes for his mental state. It was some mixture of hypnotism, drugs, electric shock, and the constriction of the jacket. But the combination was squeezing him out of the body he was intended to inhabit.

Free from any identity, he was more aware of a larger consciousness. He was more than an individual. He sensed the group consciousness that existed within the asylum, like the blood of a community that dripped from solitary souls and coalesced in a draining pool.

A mass of traumatized soldiers existing in an institution that sought to cure what it did not understand. All the power of the analytical mind attempting to understand its shadow, the unconscious. The cold, calculating logic of science seeking answers to the random death and destruction of modern warfare. To that end they applied powerful drugs and electrical currents to force men to conform to the rules science sought to apply to realms it had no business contemplating. Doug could feel it, the effects of war upon the human psyche, upon its very soul. It was an illness, a bacteria that fed upon the spirit, spread like a plague throughout humanity. It tore apart men’s psyches as it did their bodies. It was not merely a phenomenon but a living, screeching demon.

And doctors sought to understand it! Better they should send witch doctors to help mend soldiers whose souls were blackened by war, men sent to deal with the problems of a world incapable of solving its own spiritual darkness.

He felt it, isolated cells containing truths no one wanted to know. For the world to hear what they had to say would be to admit the truth of its own sins. These inmates were the sacrificial lambs sent to the holocaust to appease an unholy god. They alone looked into the darkest depths of humanity’s soul, they alone were not permitted to look away. They found what redemption they could in the love of their comrades, and when they came home no one wanted to know what revelations they had seen.

He felt it, a thousand souls in anguish, augmented with the insanity that had existed at Barrett Greens Asylum since its inception. He felt, sensed it, saw it and smelled it. My God, the smell. He was surrounded by the hell experienced by others. The collective consciousness of those who had been bathed in war and would forever carry its stench.

He was floating again, gazing down upon a scene created from the synthesized subconscious of those residing in the asylum. He stared at what appeared to be a deep gash of a wound with vast amounts of blood spilling from it. Then the picture slowly altered so that the slit was the opening of a mouth, surrounded by red lips that smiled at him. The smile was terrifying, a red laugh of one whose lips were stained by blood. The mouth seemed to open and he felt himself falling towards it as it waited to devour him as it had so many others. Within the mouth he could see the desecrated bodies of others it had already chewed up and ingested.

As he neared it he saw he was falling to the earth, as if the earth itself meant to swallow him up. At last his senses adjusted until he understood what it was he saw, a trench hastily dug into the earth, a field of red poppies in bloom about it.

His senses floated slowly downward, until like fireworks exploding, they shattered into myriad pieces and fell to earth. Each of them an individual in the vast war machine that sought to grind them into the same pulp.

He was a thousand soldiers, each experiencing the same hell, each intent on survival at all costs, like gladiators in an arena. He was an underage boy who had lied to a draft board that was willing to look the other way in order to meet its quota. He was a father of seven children, who had joined in order to provide the steady income he could not find at home. He was a million men, each with a story and a reason for living. Each of them called to him, wanting to tell him his story, a story they dared not even tell themselves. The voices pulled at him, overwhelmed him until he accepted their invitations to look for a moment from each of their eyes.

Nearby birds chirped, while somewhere down the line distant artillery could be heard. The heat of a mid-morning sun had already started its work of drying the muddy ground and puddles that formed in the 

cratered earth.

His clothing was soaked from last night’s rain, unbearably sticky in the sun’s rays, his feet rotting in boots that never dried.

In front of him, had he dared look, were the bodies of his comrades who died in their last attempt at overcoming the enemy, their bodies not yet retrieved from the battlefield. So thickly did they line the ground he felt he could walk from his trench to the enemy’s without ever stepping foot on bare earth. Behind him, not more than twenty yards, were the graves of those buried from the attack before that. The trench itself had been dug through some previous graveyard, so that here and there in the trench a rotted limb or scrap of clothing could be seen in the wall, dead comrades still unable to flee the battleground.

A cloud of flies rose and drifted its way toward him in the stagnant air. They carried with them the stench of the corpse they had been feasting upon. Upon the dead soldiers armies of insects fed and bred. Flowers grew upon the shallow graves, receiving nourishment from the dead. Rats too feasted and grew fat on the carnage. Everywhere those that fed on death ate at soldiers whose lives were wasted on futile attacks.

Further down the line, where the sound of shelling was deafening. Soldiers gripping their legs tightly, the noise so loud that communication with one another was impossible. Each soldier was left alone with his own thoughts, each as isolated from each other as if they were locked away in dank dungeons. There was no action to perform to increase one’s chance of survival, one only had to endure. Looking at other soldiers he noticed them all shrunken within themselves, crying like children with no mother to comfort them.

Still further down. The call to go over the top is given, and thousands crawl out the trench they had up until then been afraid to peer over. They run into a barrage of machine gun fire, a hundred yards away from the enemy trench. They run until they drop one by one or dozens at a time. They run until all that they are is a single soldier who by some miracle of fate is left standing. He runs alone until he is caught in the barbed wire in front of the enemy’s trenches. There he sits, unable to move, awaiting the bullets that will silence the terror that is screaming in his soul.

His consciousness is in touch with the stories of all who have experienced the horror of it all. One after another they seek to tell their tale. Each screaming to be heard, to be free from the isolation the war has inflicted upon them, each a private hell. No one can understand except those who have been there, those who know. No one would ever permit themselves to understand, no one would ever willingly look.

The stories played themselves out in his mind, one after another, a limitless supply of witnesses to the ultimate madness. Each vying for his attention, each wanting to bear witness to what he had seen, voices crying out in an attempt to make themselves heard over the exploding bombs.

The noise inside his head increased. He could hear the screaming of soldiers until it became as loud as the artillery, until it became the artillery. The fear that welled up inside helpless individuals became so strong that it created a means of making itself heard. It created institutions to give itself voice, and these institutions contrived the weapons that gave them power.

But the weapons that gave power to some became the instruments of torture to those who had to face such weapons, until an ecosystem of death, not life, was created. Here the blood of soldiers dripped from bodies to collect in shell holes. Here was a chaos without explanation—one could experience but never give meaning to it. One could never understand why one’s brother died while another survived.

A Night Of Madness

Earlier today I wrote down ideas for a blog. It was an impassioned plea for human morals in a world that is too often dictated by the needs of our institutions. But I find tonight to be a night where madness speaks, and so I am sharing images I have acquired while researching my novel in progress. Perhaps a glimpse into what we can permit ourselves to become and do will sate our appetite for insanity so that we can go back to building a more rational world. I begin with the propaganda and work my way to the reality of war.

Shell Shock: Another Sample

A sample of today's writing from Shell Shock. To set the scene, Doug Slattery is in search of a missing soldier, and visits George Laderoutte in hopes of getting information:

At first it appeared that Doug was alone in the room. The sunlight lit the better part of the room, but made the areas untouched by it seem darker still by comparison. There was a chair on either side of a coach which faced the fireplace, which contained a fire, and in the chair that faced away from Doug, he could see a head above the chair’s backing.

Doug walked towards the coach before turning around and facing the figure in the chair. Fearing the worst, Doug was relieved to find the man in the chair did not appear too damaged, at least not noticeably so. There was a certain unevenness to his facial features, a certain tilt to the head that was somewhat disconcerting. His shoulders were covered by a blanket, so that Doug was unsure of what damage might have been hidden underneath.

“George Laderoutte?” Doug asked. Getting no response, he continued. “My name is Doug Slattery. Thank you for meeting with me,” he said, and reached out his hand to shake with the other. But no hand came from the blanket, the unbalanced stare not really telling Doug if the man had even heard or understood him.

Doug sat himself on the edge of the couch closest to the other, trying his best to appear comfortable and genuine. There was something about the appearance of the other that made Doug look away. He found his gaze instead focusing on the mantel above the fireplace, where family pictures were displayed. He saw one that must have been George, only slightly younger and lacking the glasses he now wore. Doug turned his gaze back to the man sitting in front of him, the shadows he was sitting in more pronounced due to the bright fire beside him. Still, the unexplained unevenness of his appearance made Doug’s gaze unable to maintain eye contact for long. He shifted his stare back and forth between the man and the picture of who he had been.

“I’d heard you were in the same battalion as Peter Rothary,” Doug talked, filling the silence the other was unwilling to break. “As you know, his is missing. Anything you could tell us of him would be much appreciated.”

“Peter,” said the other, the voice coming as if through a filter. While his face appeared undamaged, as he spoke the normal facial movements were lacking. He spoke from lips that barely parted, the words somehow formed from somewhere deeper inside him

“Yes?”

“You wish to know what happened to Peter,” his voice sounding as though it were coming through a telephone. “There is only one way to know what happened to Peter, what happened to me. What happened to all of us.”

“And what might that be?” asked Doug quietly.

“To know what happened to Peter you must see through Peter’s eyes, experience what he and I and a generation of young men have experienced. You must live in the trenches, you must know war before you can hope to know what happens to the soldier.”

Doug remained quiet for a while, wondering about the best way to approach his next question. But George continued.

“You…you are not much older than I am. Why were you not sent to the trenches?”

“I am an American,” Doug began, knowing that wasn’t an answer. The U.S too, was now at war. But the other did not bother to question his response.

“I do not judge you.” He was perhaps younger than Doug and yet he spoke to him as if an old man to his grandson. “You are better off not knowing. You are better not looking too closely at the truth. You have your health, you have your illusions. Live the life humans are meant to live. Do not go searching for madness, for that is all you will find, madness and death.”

“I am only looking for the truth.”

“Madness and death are the truth,” he said, the words coming out of him as from a dusty tomb. “All else is a façade. We paint over the unpleasantness, it is only natural. Man is not meant to live with the truth, any more than any other animal. We are meant to go through the motions, perform all the duties encoded in our genes. But there are abysses that are never intended for human sight. And when those such as myself are forced to gaze into it, we are not permitted to speak of it.”

“And yet I ask you to. Whatever affect it might have on me is not your responsibility but my own.”

George shifted in his seat, a hand that had been hidden by the blanket now gathered it about him. “My position in the war for a time was as a censor, you know. It was my duty to scan all the correspondence written by the soldiers to their family, to make sure the truth did not make it back to people such as you, who could not have accepted it.”

Doug did not wish to deny the truth George had been forced to see, yet he could not accept the answers he had come to. “Perhaps the truth would have helped put an end to the war.”

“That is what I thought. I couldn’t live with myself anymore, could not live with the idea that I was keeping the truth covered. And so I gave up my position behind the lines and was sent instead to the front lines to fight.

“But I was wrong,” he continued. “The fragile façade was all that mattered, and it has been irreparably shattered. We see now what we are, killers unable to control the machines we have created. We were too smart to be content, and yet not smart enough to grasp what it was we sought.”

“So you say. I do not deny what you have seen, what you have experienced. And yet your perspective is altered by it the way any other person’s perspective is limited by their experience.”

“If you had such courage you would have been to the front and seen for yourself. Then you might have the right to question me, but you would not. No one I have ever talked to has come back unchanged.”

Doug had until that time avoided staring too directly at the other. There had been something about him that assaulted his sensibilities. And Doug wished to respect what George had been through. But he made sure now to stare him in the eye, as if to directly confront the dark vision that was truth to him. Doug had not lived through the war, but he had peered deeply into the darkness that was inside of humanity and had survived and perhaps even become stronger because of it. He would not accept the other’s answer, would not look away merely because he feared the answers.

“I do not willingly look into the darkness,” said Doug. “I look for the light, it is only natural to do so. But the light I search for now is somewhere amidst the darkness. You may deny that any such light can exist, but it is my choice to believe otherwise. Will you not help me in finding what it is I seek?”

George unwrapped the blanket from his shoulders and arose from his chair. Doug had been concerned that he had been wounded in the war, was pleased to see he still had his limbs and the use of them. He walked to the mantel place, his back towards Doug. He picked up the picture of himself that sat there, stared at it for a moment as if trying to remind of himself of who it was he once had been. Then he removed his glasses, set them on the mantel, and turned back towards Doug and the sunlight.

Doug did not immediately look at George, looking instead at the glasses sitting on the mantel. It was far more than the glasses that sat on the mantel, and at last Doug understood. They sat in front of the picture of the younger man who wore no glasses. When George had removed his glasses he removed with it a nose, an eye, and part of his cheek. Doug looked now at the man in front of him and saw something he could not understand. How could such damage be done to someone and still permit him to speak? Doug could not put the pieces of the puzzle together, could not see how such a thing could have been created from the remains of what once had been a human face. How could the war have taken it apart in such a fashion? What blueprint were the doctors who operated on him working from when they attempted to reassemble it?

Doug stared without regard or awareness, unable to make sense of what it was he saw. Where before he could not seem to stare directly at the former soldier, now he could not look away.

“You wish to look at the truth. Then let us put aside the lies that try to make the truth more appealing.” The voice still sounded as though it came from elsewhere, but Doug now understood why. How he was able to speak at all was not something Doug could understand. He could not perceive of anything that seemed to be a mouth. “Where is your light in the darkness? What do you see in me that speaks of some deeper truth that is worth scratching beneath the surface?”

“I’m sorry,” said Doug, finally able to avert his gaze.

“It is nothing. It is but the surface, and yet you would wish to look beneath. You would explore the darkness, but you will find nothing.”

“I do not do so lightly. I have questions that need answering. The evil that manifests itself on the battlefields does not end there.”

“I will tell you what I know, but it will do you no good. Sooner or later you will turn your eyes from the truth. I have seen it so often, from men far braver than you, men who were willing to go to war and face their fears. When the war became too great, they looked away, refused to see any further. Something inside them flickered out so that they would not have to deal with the truth.”

“I'll take my chances,” said Doug. “Do you know where Peter Rothary is?”

“He is among those whose mind could no longer endure the light, who live instead in the darkness.”

“What does that mean?”

“He has found himself a bunker inside of himself which provides safety. He has discovered a shelter from reality. The world calls it madness, but they know nothing of it. The doctors who try to heal men up only to return them to war are the mad ones.” 

Love In The Time Of The First World War

My first attempt at writing of love. The year is 1917, and silent movies were accompanied by live musicians, in this case a pianist.

Soon houses thinned into farmland and wilderness. Doug turned around, desiring the company and the light the town provided. How long he walked he did not know, not conscious of where he was going but merely trying to stay on whatever road seemed most well-travelled. Here and there were people headed towards their destinations, but Doug did not know what they were. Perhaps they were on their way to visit family and friends, on their way to houses that provided comfort and camaraderie to those who knew the owners.

For the first time in recent memory, Doug felt alone. Whatever the downsides of a lumber camp, there existed within it a certain comradeship. Interdependence required as much. And before that, even though alone, there were other words more apt to describe what he had been feeling. Fear, frustration, despair, but not a longing for human companionship. Perhaps his time in the woods had achieved the desired aim—he was thinking and feeling normal human thoughts and emotions again. Even the events of the last few months had not been able to prevent the healing that had taken place. Whatever might be wrong with the outside world, it did not have to leave its mark on his soul. He was beginning to feel whole again, and feeling whole, he realized that man was not meant to spend all his time alone.

Music drifted into his mind that seemed to accompany his thoughts. Elegant, beautiful music that stirred in him subtle and wonderful emotions. Anonymous longings sprang up in him like long-dormant flora, feelings universal and timeless. Another soul was touching his, telling him of deep mysteries beyond the understanding of man.

Music. It was a language that spoke of things over which words had no power.

Chopin! Tears came to his eyes and he did not know why. It was beauty, beautiful music beautifully played.

He did not realize it but he began to walk towards the source of the music. It was only a piano, but each note reverberated in him. It was another thing entirely than the music he had been used to of late, a fiddle played by oversized hands accompanied by a concertina and doggerel verses.

And just as suddenly the music changed. It was as if at once a chase began, and if to accompany it came a hunting song or a madcap dance. Looking up to the source of the sound he saw a rather large building and upon it read the sign for a moving picture show. He had come upon a theater, albeit a very humble one. A woman sat at a window, distractedly. The show had apparently already started, but Doug was able to get her attention and purchase a ticket. He entered into a small dark room with perhaps no more than fifty chairs arranged in front of a silver screen no more than ten feet across. And upon it played some drama concocted by one of the major studios. But while in other circumstances he might have been interested in the movie, it was the piano that called to him. It was too dark to see the people inside the theater as more than shadows, but he could see the movement of the pianist. It appeared to him a ballet dance, so fluid and lovely was the body as it swayed to the notes. She was positioned to the right of the screen, facing it so that she could respond musically to what was being shown. Every act and emotion upon the screen was played out more convincingly in the movements she made, more so in the music itself.

Doug could not even recall the movie he was watching, only that it was the most moving he had ever seen. Not the story itself nor the actors but the accompaniment. It lifted everything, from the simplest movement to the look of longing on the starlet’s face. Music infused the story, making it sublime.

Sometimes as the light on the screen was brightest, he could make out her fingers touching down gracefully upon the keys and it appeared to him in his enchantment they moved like tiny faeries in an intricate dance.

He did not see her face and yet he was convinced he loved her. Her grace and gentle soul, the playfulness that let drop hints of her depths like ripples on a pond. He was content to sit in the dark, alone with the music she played.

It was over far too soon. The film ended and the lights came on and-lo and behold! She was beautiful. Beautiful as the music she played, lovelier far than the starlet that had been on the screen. Long brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, with here and there a strand escaping like non-conformists. Her entire person seemed to radiate grace, as though you could not feel uncomfortable in her presence.

And yet Doug felt extremely uncomfortable at the moment. He wished to approach her, make her aware of his existence, and yet knew no way of doing so. He was a stranger in a small community and knew such forwardness would be quite unacceptable. He knew of nothing he could do to catch her eye. Already she was surrounded by others from the audience. And yet Doug could not help noticing there was no one who seemed to be either suitor or husband.

She was young, younger than Doug by several years, but seemed in possession of a maturity beyond her age. His eyes slid from her face as she happened to glance in his direction and in that moment he noticed no ring on those fingers that had danced so eloquently on the ivory keys.

She left amid a group of people, family he couldn’t help thinking, judging by a similar look among a few of them. Doug too exited into the darkness, alone but with thoughts of another, one whose name he did not even know. And all the events of the last few months receded in his memory, and all the concerns of the last few years slipped away. He had sought to flee what had been haunting him, the inescapable truths of a world too large for him, and at last he knew what he had been seeking.

Love was the answer. Love was the cure for all the sickness and ugliness in the world. The revelation came not as a thought but as an emotional welling up within him, like the passionate passages of a nocturne.

Understanding My Novels

Thoughts I had at work today regarding the series of novels that include The Amazing Morse Series and Seven Stones, as well as novels yet to be finished:

I am constructing the paradigm through which humanity needs to look if it wishes to survive.

How’s that for a bold statement? Give a few moments before you judge. I think my books best make the case but I’ll try to summarize for you. It's not so much of a perfect summary as thoughts upon the matter.

The Amazing Morse was a story of an individual overcoming the restraints one is capable of placing upon himself. Your worldview can act as a straightjacket upon you, restricting your ability to move in the directions you wish to go.

Perchance To Dream, my second novel, involves the individual overcoming the restraints society places upon him. In the end, it shows that the disbelief of a single individual in a shared vision, can save the whole.

The Association deals with the inevitable rise and fall of societies due to their imperfect conception of reality. In it, it is stated that in the fall of a dominant paradigm, people and groups of people constrict, and fear and defensiveness take the place of trust and interdependence. The tragic result is always violence, war. Man can no longer survive war.

War. It is the symbol of all that is wrong with the human race as well as the one great human evil that we must evolve from if we wish to survive an age of atom bombs and ICBMs. I go back in time 100 years to do an earlier series which will tie into my Amazing Morse series, beginning with Seven Stones. I decided that seeing the foibles of the present age might prove too difficult for some, and so I went to another era in order to critique it. That we do not see the foolishness of our own era and find it so easy  to mock whatever is different about another era is a theme that runs through The Amazing Morse Series.

The year is 1913, shortly before the start of WWI. I wanted to show the senselessness of war and this one truly looks pointless in retrospect. At the beginning of the 20^st Century, Mankind had emerged from primitive means of production, had at hand the tools necessary to build whatever society he wished to build, and yet morally and emotionally had not been able to elevate from the fear of others and the desire to protect himself through violence. The very science he believed could free him from his past had built new and unimaginably cruel weapons to kill him. The seven stones in question are representative of the seven continents. Divided, each stone is a strength but one that does not work with the others. Individually, power is destructive. It is only the unity of the seven stones that can achieve the understanding mankind requires.

The era immediately preceding World War 1 was also a beginning of new perspectives. In art, different perspectives were being represented in a single painting. Albert Einstein was postulating ideas that were tearing down our conception of the universe. Constants were being shown to be relative. The very world we lived in, or at least our understanding of it, was beginning to break down. We needed to find new ways of thinking about the world, not just simply more answers to plug into our existing paradigms.

The Seven Stones trilogy will end with an understanding of what has gone before and a laying of a basis for understanding that will spread throughout the 3 Amazing Morse books as well as the not yet written The Beyond Show  trilogy. It is the shattering of humanity’s mindset and the rise of a new, more comprehensive one. It is the realization of our interconnectedness and the rejection of violence as a means of change.

The Amazing Morse: To liberate oneself before being able to liberate the world, or at least one is able to liberate the world only so much as one is self-liberated.

Perchance to Dream: The doubt of an individual can save the whole. It only takes one person to put a crack in a paradigm held by the group, allow cracks to show in it.

The Association: The idea of a society coming to grips with the collapse of an imperfect understanding is not resolved in the action of the novel, but the roots of what will happen in novels to come are revealed.

Magic is my description for the ability to see unimpeded by the intellect (i.e. whatever paradigms we have acquired), to see through the eyes of a child. Because life is truly magical when we are young, although occasionally very frightening. This is not to say our vision should not be assisted by the intellect, the paradigms we have imagined, merely that we should not mistake the finger that points at the moon for the moon itself. We should never mistake the model for the real.

Perception versus reality, that is the source of all struggle. The more we mistake the finger for the moon the intellectual construct for what it represents, the more religion and philosophy divides rather unites us. Two differing vantage points are not reasons to quarrel but opportunity for us to gain a deeper understanding.

In denying another person’s perception of God we are limiting our own understanding of God, and in a very real sense denying God. 

Talking Peace

…..Is it still okay to talk about peace or has it become unpatriotic to do so? Is refusal to follow our leaders blindly into whatever war they initiate showing disrespect to our fighting men and women? These are questions that I ask quite honestly and without any sarcasm intended. I ask these questions because I often feel that when I mention the word peace that I am somehow doing something controversial, that many feel I should probably keep silent and say nothing. Sure, it may be easy for you who are on the side of the majority, who are on the same side as the media. It is easier to speak your mind when you are on the side that has the support of all of the powerful institutions, all of the big money. Whether we care to admit it or not, there are trillions of dollars to be made by selling arms and virtually nothing to be gained by supporting peace.

…..So let me ask one more time, is it okay if I share my thoughts about peace, about peace being something that should be supported and worked towards by all of humanity?

…..I’ll admit, I’ve never been the biggest patriot. I’ve never wrapped myself up in a flag, was never one to unquestioningly obey orders. You see, when I was growing up, I was told that what was so special about my country was that it allowed you the opportunity to do things the way you wanted to do them. You were allowed to think what you wanted to think, do what you wanted to do. And I believed that, I really did. Not only did I believe that my country gave to me a freedom that no other country on earth gave, I also accepted the idea that freedom was a very special right. Not only a right, but a responsibility. I had a responsibility to act freely, to oppose any kind of oppression, whether it be overt oppression or the more hidden oppression that comes from public opinion. I considered it to be a sacred duty to think for myself and resist any temptation to conform, to think the way I was supposed to think.

…..Mind you, I didn’t just say whatever came into my mind. I never said or did things merely because I could. I’ve always been rather conservative when it came to speaking my mind. Because freedom was a sacred thing, I did not wish to abuse it. But I nurtured that idea of freedom, tried to cultivate inside myself the idea that whatever thoughts I grew inside of my own mind had a certain value precisely because they were not dictated to me by some outside force. I had a notion, given to me not only by the founding fathers of my country, not only by my religion, but also by everything I had read of the great thinkers of history. I had a notion that if we are given enough freedom, as well as a proper environment in which to grow, that we would in this fashion make the best possible world.

…..Is it a crime against our nation, our government, our fighting men and women, against freedom itself? Is it okay to talk about peace?

War Or Peace

You cannot make war on war, you can only make peace on war. You cannot profess to fight for peace, only work for it. War and peace are alternative paths we can take, different kinds of behavior. They are opposite paths. It is a choice we must make, war or peace.

Once you commit to peace you must leave behind the weapons of war, the mindsets that permit you to see the other as the enemy. You must beat the swords into plows and start tilling the earth, plant seeds rather than attempt to burn the crops of your neighbor.

To believe in peace you must help your neighbor rather than withholding your help for fear of him using your vulnerability to harm you.

Make no mistake, when you choose war you have chosen war. You do not choose war in order to achieve peace. When you choose war you have abandoned peace. When you choose war you abandon the very ideas that make peace possible.

When you choose war you choose “me” over “us”. You choose fear over hope.

Even when war leads to victory it plants the seeds of future wars. No vanquished nation or people ever forgets their defeat. The wounds of war never heal. They fester, for years, decades, centuries, until the time for vengeance arrives. And that vengeance is but another justification for their enemy in times to come.

Peace is the planting of seeds for the future, an optimism. War is a succumbing to the immediate fear. A commitment to peace requires faith while war is a surrendering to the fear that is the basest instinct of our animal nature. It is the fallback, the final position when all else has failed, just as an ill-adjusted adult falls back to infantile patterns of behavior when confronted with a situation he cannot control. As one of Isaac Asimov fictional characters was fond of saying, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

The thing is, it may work for some…for a while. And from that, others deduce that it is a valuable tool or perhaps a necessary one, an ever-present threat to be held against others in order to entice them to the bargaining table. But show me the nation that has risen by war that has not fallen in the same manner. What works for the individual does not work for a nation. What works for the life-span of a human will devour a country in the span of several human lifetimes. And beyond that, what works for the individual is toxic for the whole. Humanity has endured through war not because it is an inevitability but because its scope has so far been limited. But larger and more destructive tools of mass-destruction have been filtering into more and more hands. With the greater proliferation of such weapons will come the increased desire to use war as a means of protection against such weapons. At some point the desire for individuals and nations to protect themselves will mean the end of us all.

There is no peace that war provides. Even those who believe in war have no ultimate answer as to how we can forever forestall nuclear war. They provide no vision of a nuclear-free future, no security. They offer only immediate actions to stave off whatever the most pressing problems might be. But the road they propose we take has only one endpoint. War leads to war, not peace. Choose now the path you wish to take.

Support Peace, Or At Least Share In The Cost Of War

     War is the failure to achieve peace. Preserving peace is the job of the politician, war is their failure. The warrior is needed when the politician has failed. The politician’s job is not to send men to war but to prevent the need for their sacrifices. No politician should be lauded for sending men to war, rather he should have to pay the price as much as anyone else. But they never do, at least not if the war is won.

     I support soldiers, but not by supporting war, anymore than I would be supporting fire fighters by supporting arson. Arsonists should be sent to jail.

     I support those in the medical field as well, but shouldn’t we do everything we can to avoid injury and illness? If we want to help doctors and nurses, if we want to improve the overall health of society, shouldn’t we be stressing prevention above all else? If a car crash happens and medical personnel race to the scene to aide those who are wounded, are we to be accused of not supporting them if we were to call for rerouting traffic away from the site of the crash in order to avoid further damage?

     It is the soldiers and their families who alone pay the price for war. It used to be that when the country went to war the homefront was expected to make sacrifices. In Word War One people were encouraged to grow victory gardens. During World War Two there were rubber drives, paper drives and scrap drives. Women did without silk stockings so that silk could be used in the production of parachutes for the troops. Food was rationed, gas was rationed, everybody knew it was their duty to do their part.

     I remember our President’s speech after the events of September 11, 2001. The one thing that sticks in my mind was his call for us to go about our daily business, “to go shopping”. Consuming and behaving like shoppers, that now seems to be who we are as Americans. Maybe it seems normal now but I guarantee you it would have seemed plain wrong to my father or my grandfather, both soldiers in the two great wars.

     I remember also in the days after the war in Iraq began, the sudden appearance of bumper stickers on SUVs that proudly proclaimed We Support Our Troops. No, you don’t, you support war. Not the same thing. You support war for oil. You support converting the blood of our soldiers, not to mention the blood of others in nations you will never visit, into fuel for your oversized vehicle. You might not want to hear it, so you’ll probably try to shout the idea out of your head and become outraged until I silence myself. But it’s true. We didn’t go to Iraq to help the Iraqis, we didn’t go there to make the region a safer place, and we sure didn’t go to war for the sake of the troops, who had to leave their lives and families behind.

     So I’m going to say it, even if it makes me unpopular, even if I have to pay a price for it. Because I think if our country is sending its troops into battle we should all have to pay a price for it. We can’t continue to go putting the price of war on our credit card, increasing the national debt because we don't want to really know the costs of war. Support the troops. Demand that your politicians do their job by finding better solutions than war. Support peace. And if such concepts are too foreign to you, at least do your part in the war effort. Because once you start to be inconvenienced by war, maybe it won't look like such a convenient option.

Random Thoughts Part 13

25 more ideas for blog posts waiting to be written. Or 25 concisely written epithets, your choice:

A nation run by bankers will never be out of debt.

A nation owned by weapons manufacturers will never know peace.

A nation that allows a small segment of its citizens to write the laws will never know justice.

And if these elements own the media, then we will never know the truth.

Knowledge is knowing.

Wisdom is knowing you do not know.

When we can no longer find anything to believe in, that is when it is up to us to become something to believe in.

Writing, as I suppose other forms of creative activity, is both hard work and the ultimate form of relaxation.

The rules of finance were written by rich people looking to get richer. That part about the “magic” of the market place was thrown in to make the workers feel better. You think they wrote the laws because they were selfless? You think it was to benefit you?

If you have a sufficient desire to do something you will not only find a rationalization for doing it, you will find a moral imperative for why it must be done.

Every man is a heretic to another. No two think exactly alike. What people mistake for exact same thought is in fact not thinking at all.

The problem with government is that it inevitably leads to a bureaucratic nightmare. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to spend the next eight hours on the phone with my insurance company.

There are always those who urge war and revolution as a way to rid the world of evil. If violence purged sin our world would be a Paradise.

We are not raising children to be free but to conform. When they are told rather than asked they are taught to obey rather than question. What kind of freedom can come from such teaching?

Most of the world’s problems begin when people decide that if some is good then more is better.

Imagine if all the discontent people felt was channeled towards changing our society instead of being quieted by prescription drugs.

The difference between a scientist and public relations expert is that a scientist does not answer when he is uncertain and a public relations expert is never uncertain.

There is nearly always an economic excuse for not doing the right thing.

The trouble with technology is that it is in the hands of people.

It’s not like there is anything new to say. We merely have to repeat the words of a play performed a thousand times before until we deliver the perfect performance.

Always try to see yourself in another person, even if to do so means you must see yourself as an idiot. It’s hard, but it’s never too far from the truth.

When yes and no are no longer sufficient answers, wisdom begins. Spirituality, too.

God is life, everything is alive, and love is the awareness of this.

How could a species smart enough to build atomic weapons be stupid enough to build atomic weapons?

Science is the process of disproving false gods. So is religion.

Reality is altered by belief just as it is maintained by disbelief.

The trick is to be tough and independent without becoming cruel and indifferent.

Our children’s minds are in the hands of corporations as firmly as German children’s minds were once in the hands of Nazis.

No one is so foolishly optimistic as they are when buying a lottery ticket or voting for a political candidate. 

A Poem From A Soldier To His Mother

I was going through some things at my mom’s house and came across something my father sent to his mother after enlisting. I thought a poem from a son to his mother during World War II might be interesting to more than just me.

There’s a lonely mother somewhere

And a lonely soldier too

He is many mile away from home

He’s thinking this night of you

He may not have been the best son

That a mother ever had

But though he wasn’t perfect

He wasn’t very bad

Like a million other mothers

To this country you gave a man

For we now have a war to win

And he’ll win it if he can

He appreciates his mother

Now, as he never did before

For he knows that he loves you

And will forever more.

Someday the war shall be over

And someday the fighting done

And the sons will return to their mothers

And the mothers to their sons.

Your Loving Son,

Walter