Revolution in Modern China

Unlike the French, American, or Bolshevik revolutions, the Chinese Communist Revolution spanned nearly 3 generations. It is difficult to pin an exact date on the movement’s beginnings, but it is often considered to be with the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s. Yet, although the party had been formally established, it developed very little inertia until Mao Zedong led the “Long March” to Yen’an in 1934-35. A formal ending to the revolution is also hard to exact, yet may be placed in the 1970s with the death of Mao and the arrest of the “Gang of Four.” But these dates, it must be understood, act as bookends to a series of revolutions rather than points of origin and termination to a single one. In that light, it cannot be argued that this was a single event, nor did it involve a single approach. It is this variance, the series of revolutions, which came to define modern China, and it is also because of this episodic recurrence that rifts were driven between the varying generations experiencing them.

As mentioned above, the CCP found its initial power in Yen’an. It is also here that we see the making of Mao Zedong and the formation of his revolutionary philosophy, the so-called Yen’an Way that became the ethos of Revolution until the 1980s. Mark Selden defined its principles in his book The Yen’an Way in Revolutionary China as: First, reliance on the innate creativity of people; second, rejection of domination of a technical elite; third, conception of human nature as able to transcend social and environmental obstacles; and finally, cooperation and community approach. Decentralization and self-reliance.

These principles represent in many ways the idealistic education of the first generation of the CCP. They were a colorful bunch, an amalgamation of individuals of varying age and level in the traditional society. In his book Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow wrote of that early cross-cultural cooperation, giving the greater world their first look at the Chinese Communist. His portrayal of Mao and his followers is largely positive, and of the youth involvement he wrote: “Altogether, the ‘little devils’ were one thing in Red China with which it was hard to find anything seriously wrong…I suspected that more than once an older man, looking at them, forgot his pessimism and was heartened to think that he was fighting for the future of lads like those.” (1)

Snow’s work in Yen’an gives a rare glimpse into how the CCP was molded into the party of the people, and how party loyalty began to trump traditional Confucian ideals which placed family allegiance at the heart of society. But this transformation of duty would have very powerful repercussions after liberation (specifically 1949-1976), and would make the early “idealism” expressed by Snow appear a superlative adventure, a once pipe dream.

The CCP succeeded in political unification of China, but that was only the beginning of their task of building a society, of gaining the trust of the hearts and minds of everyone. Indeed, most of the country post-unification was not communist. What was needed was social and economic change, a shift in allegiance, to bring true unification.

The original impetus for this was found in Yen’an, when Mao and the Party leaders demanded a forced re-education for those joining the cause. They forced on new comrades a shift of consciousness, a kind of mild brainwashing to a new way of thinking. As illustrated in the above quote, the focus was not on the future of ones progeny, but the revolution, the party. The Yen’an Way may have appeared eager and enlightened in the beginning, but post 1949 it destroyed millions of family’s through an escalating need for party commitment. One of the few critical first hand descriptions of this post liberation period would come to be expressed brilliantly in Liang Heng’s account of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), titled Son of the Revolution.

At an early age, Liang’s family was fractured by an anti-rightist sweep disguised as the Hundred Flowers Movement. In Liang’s own words, “its official purpose was to give the Party a chance to correct its shortcomings by listening to the masses’ criticisms…but then, with confusing rapidity, the “Hundred Flowers Movement” changed into the “Anti-Rightist Movement.” (2) Liang expresses what many more must have been thinking, that the original movement was disguised to trap the Rightists (supposed economic and intellectual liberals, capitalists, entrenched bourgeoisie, etc) throughout the Party. Many came forward and expressed their opinions, and many of those were caught and sent away into the countryside to live among the peasants in forced re-education programs. Liang’s mother was one of them. Liang describes his father’s reaction: “Father’s traditional Confucian sense of family obligation told him to support Mother while his political allegiance told him to condemn her. He believed that [to condemn her] was the only course that could save the family from ruin.” (3)

For young Liang, being raised “in the shade of the revolution” presented a confusing set of circumstances. His was a new, unproven generation, schooled in the history and propaganda but as yet unable to assist. They were overzealous to help and make something of themselves, to prove their worth to those who came before them. The fuel for the Cultural Revolution came, in a sense, from these kids, from various student factions who were following commands from head leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, determined to make the “PLA a centerpiece of cultural change. These factional fires were fueled by the anger of students frustrated over policies that kept them off the paths of political advancement because the students had the ill fortune to be born to parents who had had connections with the Guomindang, the landlords, or the capitalist “exploiters” of the old regime and were therefore classified as “bad” elements by the CCP…there were as well millions of disgruntled urban youths who had been relocated to the countryside during the party campaigns of earlier years…there were those, within the largest cities, who were denied access to the tiny number of elite schools that had become, in effect, “prep schools” for the children of influential party cadres." (4)

These students were the outcome of years of revolution, of social upheaval and a vast reworking of class and norms. They were the logical conclusion to their preceding generation, simply adopting the prevailing ethos. But in their case, where revolution and war was the dominant paradigm, the absence of an external enemy would force war upon itself. In the course of only a few decades, thousands of years of Chinese culture was challenged, with its terminal point being the PLA’s attempt to erase that history in the Cultural Revolution. It was an attempt to turn siblings into comrades and Party leaders into parents, to erase any memory of Confucian morality or cultural proclivity, to destroy the native instinct of the Chinese heart.

The forced re-education programs, often bordering on religious conversion, took Liang’s family, especially his father, through recurring bouts of self-doubt and self-flagellation. Intellectuals, represented in Son of the Revolution by Liang Shan (the father), the consummate writer and thinker, were forced into the countryside because terror of judgment within the party became too great. Others throughout traditional society, monks especially (5), were brought into a parallel world with the party line by much the same method; during the Cultural Revolution, none were free from the Little Red Book. An account by Liang during a bus ride through the countryside illustrates the point emphatically. Upon stopping for a moment in the town of Xiangxiang, they encounter a monk who is being harassed by a gang of kids. “He was kneeling and beating a gong before a broken stone tablet on which I guessed was inscribed the history of the temple or some Buddhist scripture…as he beat the gong, he chanted, “I have tricked the people, I should be punished,” and Buddhism is a lie, only Marxism-Leninism-Chairman Mao Thought is the truth.” (6)

This, it can be surmised, is a far cry from the original positive idealism of the Yen’an Way. Revolution had devolved into an inquisition under the guise of controlled criticism, where exile led to redemption and paranoia to stronger party loyalty. Snow’s account of revolution in the 1930s and Liang’s in the '60s presents a stark contrast to the ways and means employed to achieve intellectual and cultural unity. The countryside and peasantry, the great savior of the CCP and modern China, was used to bring equilibrium to a class-based society, but ended up becoming an instrument rather than an ideal. “’How could Chairman Mao say that the countryside was a great land where we Educated Youths would have glorious successes?’ Liang Wei-ping wondered. “I’m only afraid that when I go back I’ll be sucked into that terrifying whirlpool once again.” (7) The three decades following the establishment of the PRC brought unity and nationalism to China, but one has to wonder at what cost.

**********

Footnotes:

1. Snow, Edgar. Red Star Over China. New York: Grove Press, 1961. p 327
2. Heng, Liang. Shapiro, Judith, Son of the Revolution. New York: First Vintage, 1984. p. 8
3. Ibid, p 9
4. Spence, Jonathan D., The Search For Modern China. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990. p 604
5. While attending a retreat at a Chinese Buddhist monastery, I had a chance to speak with a senior monk who had escaped the Cultural Revolution and fled to Taiwan, and then on to America. He shared with me a story of watching his uncle (also a monk) be torn apart by four kids (presumably Red Guards) on horses. They tied ropes to each of his appendages, with the other sides of the rope to their horses. It remained his most vivid memory of the revolution.
6. Heng, Liang. Shapiro, Judith, Son of the Revolution. New York: First Vintage, 1984. p
   91
7. Ibid, p 200

D. Reese Zollinger, 2007
(fair use of above material)

Gervais and the Serpent

I posted this on EO some months ago, but I think it derserves another shake.

Reese

the certainly fictional dream of the late charles darwin, as fortold by the late jesus of nazereth

there is a beetle on the mantle


the state i am in.
is the slate and the dream.
clean and white and unshuttered.
for positing, the command of language,
the real way of looking at your hands,
with apprehension and a frog pond,
a cascading ivy,
clean, with hope.
a tall pot with cordyline.
fragmented spiced bacopa,
with a phrase in a scent,
laden with wisdom,
with beauty,
with enough grit,
to live another century.

cornflower on the horizon,
and nothing but the bread cornflower makes,
like manna, and honey and
not the sense of taste.
a cool night in the desert as the mid winter approaches,
like a cake upon the pan,
condensing,
and waiting for some one,
some thing,
some mind,
some soul,
to reverse it's polarity,
as though upon the horizon,
there were nothing,
and there was only one 'as though'.

the whisper of our reach,
as though i could speak for more than just myself,
also introduces for you,
the pretext and context.
(the edicts are certain circles you would circumscribe).
underline a word,
pardon the meaning for moment,
and punctuate the thing you say,
as though it were you saying it,
as though there were molecules on a ribbon of sugar cane,
which, having been rejected for molasses,
become raw,
unheralded,
rimbauden*,
as a federal system of integrated states:

*("...like a morbid fog
and greyer cloud,
as those stately gloomy airs,
and those able shrouds,
for those stately hidden truths.
while
those buried very real,
are only what those dead conceal,
those from beast,
from tired crowd,
those blackened silhouetted shrill,
for toward eyes,
and crying limbs,
the shocked fence avails portent hymns,
for those unable ears.
and mind, is sane,
it twines its hand around electric pane,
for wailing; taunting whims,
in under-creaking-floor-boards wane,
scornful bows,
the sinner sees,
and frozen,
burns:
bitten, frosted miseries for toes.
while to those forted, binding
rings, though not the true or real,
there clings,
as ever glued branch to tree,
a man to a fence. that falling brings
"hopeless" cleverly subdued, awry,
concealed, vain:
those true to spy for a glimpse.
their fingers hold there own,
awaiting hours
when flesh and bone,
and scabbing skin will fry,
the brainy grey to monotone,
the holy way a man would dye.
alas, years.
and dying times.
the burning scent,
the masked rhymes.
for ears,
but simply wretched holes
to air the reddened brainy coals,
with ecstasy's brittle crimes,
and strength exhausted shriveled souls
falling where those,...
where that child climbs.
but hesitation,
rear, or gleam,
the only choice before a dream
softens churning eyelid veins
and deadens dreary burning brains
to silence.
"should i warn the child?"
"or embrace the tangled wild below?"
"or free the truth beguiled...."
by a morbid fog
or greyer cloud,
a gloomy air or able shroud,
for hiding truth.
it is buried, real,
what alone those dead conceal,
not from beast,
or very tired crowd,
the blackened silhouetted shrill....

as those,... and those nailed to a cross,
have an understanding. sideways.
laterally they blink to a forlorn state...."(,)

said the secretary of that state,
for the queen of kolob,
and what was her fate.)

......................................


the stiff november wind is a state,
and the way it whistles,
and tosses the pseudo tsuga,
has its way,
along the mountain shore of whidbey.
homo sapiens on an island,
and perception,
capable,
as the train of the incalculable;
"i suffer for the sins of the world,
when I draw the world,
like a good tide sways."
isaac said with an apple in his mouth.
"i have a juncture,
a mountain as a table top." said j.
"hence forth god is a misnomer." r said,
as though he were d-.
"alfalfa grew inside the belly of the cow," said
our illustrious hostess, the queen of kolob,
"i saw the idea before i thought it." said i.

the white shrill of snow,
whipping like a hot cross bun,
and the forward thinking messenger;
placed us deep in the petrie dish,
the orange flower, a distant thought,
the plain gas,
the sharp glow,
the ego less,
face of a planet's moon,
a far;
"keep going back." said j-
"find a way, like paul, leto."
j continued,
"blessed are those
who are the kwisatz haderach,
blessed are those who hang in the balance.
blessed are those who,
after inheriting the world, give it back;
as the musk ox and the capable cornish hen.
blessed are those who see god,
for they are the fish who can breath water.
blessed are those who need blessings,
for they shall realize the good fortune of being blessed.
blessed are the meek, the pliable, and the malleable,
for they shall evolve too."

as though he could not help himself,
j added truly, "not an iota, not a dot,
will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

like a law which is the berry of juniper,
tinctured with the yeast of a sun,
and burning like a flag, or flagellum whipping,
the judgement awaited its hopeless telling;
as william would have with isaac's apple.
the scarlet smell of jasmine,
the lure of sex,
as a loyal economist:
"all things are paid for, c.o.d."
the yellow belly of a chicken hawk,
notwithstanding,
this:
hunger and thirst.
heaven, and the castle
of william randolph hearst.
the whippoorwill chimed in:
"all souls, a fortnight and change."
"lonesome cattle range." said 'win.

the echo in a canyon,
bounced off the canyon walls
reverberating, and constantly becoming.
the horse on a draw with a plow,
the husk on a cob of corn,
the still small voice,
like an echo in a non-canyon,
placed a long hold,
like a good notary,
or bail bondsman upon his bailiwick,
a bet; listen and feel the sway of the wind,
as it tickles their ears with their hair.
do not listen, so say,
listen as a lunch woman slopping minted spinach,
as a jack hammerer.
"call upon a nostalgia
if it helps you see it better." said j, as though
he were not i.

clip the top of this picture and you will see,
the bottom, the submerged pier.
hang a kite,
hoist a video camera.
get a wireless transceiver.
listen:

"like a sand of beach particles.
or the capable fleeting thought."

..........................................

i am lying here.
the rock upon which i lay
is beholden to a certain lay,
who stand for what i represent,
and practice it upon the day,
for which i recommended
they rest.

do not come to me on your day of rest,
with your beautiful bread and water,
as though the day were spring,
and the water were refreshing.
please.
do not come to me when you are tired,
as the november asters,
and their transmogrify,
and their lubricated casters,
please, though an orange rock rose,
is always a sabbath,
come with me on a day of my choosing,
when i know we both
are in good spirits,
and social,
as equilateral hosts.
"i will declare to you on that day,"
i said,
"blessed are the ones who,
as a fleeting thought, are remembered.":
"there is only one multi verse." said the queen of kolob.

as transparent feet on a treadmill
the four of us walked,
walking backward, while pointed forward.
the vast pacific sea,
herald and lee,
the pointer sisters,
and ho chi min,
with frank sinatra pleaded,
as they pleased us with their version
of your grandmothers biscuits,
with your grandfathers gravy.
"you ate it as you thought it," said h.
the sky was always dark now.
there were no hankerings.
no unremembered visions.
there was no fox racing through the underbrush.
other things there was none of:

back in the petrie dish,
holding like a mayonnaise to a country salad,
a string of popcorn balls to a tree.
like december kernels in november,
a stiff breeze wisps it all away with
a man in a tomb with a shroud.
with, a certain "waking up"
from a state of certain "deadness."
day two:
"still no one has peeked there head in." said j.
said you, as the crackles are made in a late blue grass,
"as a grass upon a prairie,
a hold upon a dairy.
a certain cow and its propensity to produce milk.
with the yogurt and the cinnamon granola,
and a hint of mint;
like you were printing money,
as though a goat was milked?"
"a hail mary mid november pass,
of good old fashioned american gas."

it is a stretch
to catch.
i love a good haiku as much as you.

there is a beetle on the mantle.

C2007 rrzollinger

none

the pages of my life i mark with used toothpicks
the plaque-detritus inks me to write half thoughts
the pages crumble like saltines
earthquake
unknown memory comes when it will
not when I WILL
-M

A travel home

my ancestor's home... Iskeia an island tucked in the Mediterranean sea.

back in the day they were farmers and fisherman...

Now the town of Forio and the other towns on Iskeia are full of thermal baths and shopping

being on Iskeia,

i understood better my pull to ocean and earth.

but England came as a familiar relief...

so i ask myself am i an Italian or the prodigy of NYC

Escape

Had the opportunity to meet Carolyn Jessop last night. I had invited her to the store to do a reading and signing. She escaped from the FLDS Colorado City/Hildale group of polygamists four years ago and has just come out with a book about her experience living among that group of people. She was married to Merril Jessop as his fourth wife. This was/is the group that claims Warren Jeffs as their prophet.

This is a very good and fast read. The event last night was sobering. Carolyn escaped from Colorado City in the middle of the night with all eight of her children with $20 in her pocket. In four years she has succeeded in winning full custody of all eight of her children and writing the most vivid portrayal of FLDS polygamy that I have seen.

Jessop calls this group a cult. She was a fourth or fifth generation member of this society and it seems her childhood was good. But she was married to a very powerful and manipulative man who saw her as his property. She said that when Warren Jeffs became prophet things really spiraled downward in Colorado City. Now, the core members of the group are hiding out in closed compounds like YFZ in Texas.

Strangely, Jessop's oldest daughter always wanted to go back to Colorado City. When she turned eighteen just this July 2nd, she left on July 4th to return.

I have thought alot about polygamy this week. And, about our own upbringing. How we spent our formative years on a farm with a very large family, who wanted to live their own higher order. How far were we away from fundamentalism? I look fondly upon those times on the farm out in Thatcher, where I was until I was eight. But, talk to someone like Marjean about her experience living in the basement underneath Bob and Fawn in the same house in Canada and you might find surprising similarities.

Branding

We live in the age of the image. Never before in history has such a barrage of unconnected ideas moved through our lives. From iPod to YouTube our culture has become a streaming channel of endless icons, branding with thought tattoos each individual who dares to tune in.

From the early days of western corporatism advertisers have been rubbing the bottled genie in hopes of magically increasing corporate revenue. What they soon realized was that the attention of consumers was easily bought by employing controlled symbolism to market their products, drawing the customers loyalty more through attachment to the symbol than the item being offered. When deconstructing this morbid state of affair- something that I'll attempt in this short essay - it should first be understood that it is not the image (icon, brand, or logo) that is important, but what that image solicits as an emotional response.

The fact that we can find historical precedent for modern advertising doesn’t make it easier to understand. Symbols litter our minds; from the golden arches to bitten apples our world has become a crowded arena of patented images. The consumer’s attention is battled for on the front lines of supermarket isles, in the halls of malls, or even driving down the interstate. We are told we can become members by simply buying products, as if this act was itself the sacrament. So deep has this symbolism penetrated that in Kalle Lasn’s words (Culture Jam, 2000), “advertisements are the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants.”

This toxicity, rising as it has through the need to sell products, has left an indelible mark upon the human mind. Lasn continues by noting that, “Corporate advertising…is the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race.” Strong words, but not altogether unreasonable when you see as Lasn does that the symbol has gone from simple iconography to complex and multidimensional abstraction. In that symbolism is historically one of the most powerful tools for uniting people, we must recognize that its nature is two-fold; first, the symbol is itself inherently benign, and second, any meaning applied to a particular image is what becomes important.

There is an old iconographic precedent that justifies modern advertising. In the year 312, while preparing to battle for control of the Roman Empire, Constantine received a vision telling him to unite his men under the banner of the Cross. “In hoc signo vinces,” the angel told him, “In this sign you shall win.” This symbol, already having ancient ties to Egyptian and Phoenician cultures, was easily accepted, and eventually became the most complex and powerful banner of western civilization.

Beyond the West we find other cultures using similar means to achieve similar ends. Chinese thought manifested as the symbolic duality of yin/yang, Judaic representation would be expressed by the Star-of David, Native American as Totem; all of these symbols being expressed in glyphs designed to establish instant connection between image and idea.

The consumer provides the fresh skin for the hot iron, so without cultivating critical minds, our bodies will continue to be treated as perfect receptors for the corporate logo. More than our wares, but our whole selves, our thoughts and deeds, should define what makes us different. By seeing necessities as more than iconographic trophies, we displace ourselves from the corporate battle. We begin to make informed decisions based not upon form, but upon function.

It was realized in the mid-eighties that (Naomi Klein, 2002) “successful companies must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products.” (No Logo) That we have allowed the Corporation to move from production of goods to the manufacturing of Icons is our mistake, one that we must claim and work to remedy. Does it really satisfy, does it bring us happiness? We should ask these questions and others as we confront the barrage of commercials from day to day, because the symbol has turned from representing deeper, universal ideas, to selling materialism. We can imagine a young man saying: “Under the shadow of the sears tower I found myself,” because it was that symbol that his city presented as most important. This experience is common. As the sacred retreats from the Vegas Strip, cowers beneath the overwhelming magnitude of the “stars and stripes,” or huddles away to avoid contamination from ethanol or elmer’s glue, we begin to understand her reticence.

Advertisers long and systematic policy of targeting the ego has produced a morally inept culture, dependant not upon deeper meanings but on colorful veneers. Once again, it is the emotional reaction to the said media that is in question, because, (William Bernbach, 1989) “you can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.” There are numerous examples of advertisers soliciting emotional responses to commercial products. Ads such as, “Drive = Love,” or “Bigger is Better,” show that the aim is our emotional insecurity. We are reminded again and again about the body’s endless needs and infinite wants, that we must have a certain thing to be up-to-date, or fashionable. What was natural and sustainable has become demonized by the consumptive majority; our new prophets are corporate leaders and tycoons.

The tendency today is to see life in monetary terms, because that is our world; that is capitalism and democracy in action; that is free-market economics, the newest revelation from the bible of modern affairs. We are looking through the glass darkly, not because we don’t own it, but because we're only leasing it. Some argue that the corporation has brought us what we love most, entertainment and material goods. They have given us a world where we may theoretically take more time to enjoy the finer things, the subtler things, but in the end we pay for it.

The corporation has hijacked the icon. Our deepest fears are played against us in hopeless tugs-of-war. Should I buy Coke or Pepsi, Nike or Converse, Gucci or Gap? The Icon rules, we are the first generations to have brand names as kings, to be raised on cartoons and commercials. It is a life we have been given and must somehow sort out. As each generation has its challenges, so this is one of ours. In a world where one watches the Super Bowl not for the game but for the advertising, we should be concerned that the wool keeps inching down.

It is ours to reclaim for ourselves what it means to be human, to redefine our approach to society. In this postmodern hyper-technical culture of competing interests we may choose or we may not. Whatever we do, the concept of marketing symbolism will surely survive, because our need of image and icon date to the very beginnings of humanity. Again, the conclusion is to not see the symbol as destructive, but to question what the symbol solicits as an emotional response. As we realize this, we can cultivate symbols with deeper meanings, ones that illicit a beneficent reaction, ones like the mythic Shiva that remind us of our mortality, that we must live well for tomorrow there may be no more living.

Reese Zollinger
cross posted from EO.

the unwritten fiction of charles darwin. chapter two. (as told by albert einstein)

(courage is a coriander)

"i wonder about things sometimes,"
good king george told me once
while climbing the rocky mountains.
i exploded then, and found a paradigm,
something to which i could attach a
stumbling forward;
it was like the fracture of earth and air:
there was an uttering stated,
a forward overstatement, an overtruth,
an overstanding, an opus as a dove.

there is a belief.
and, there is a mule.
and there is the long walk up to the surface,
as the whole affrontation;
with stirrups, boot straps.

as once the cat tails, wagged,
it is like the last extinction,
between the last ice age,
encumbered with force and determination,
as the fist of a whirlwind,
and fire and water are combined.
the two words rhyme
but cannot be spoken together.
we knew this only:
a dog is under something.

i wished sometimes when the night was grey,
and we were walking,
and a bird force was above us,
and the simple choreography of structure
implicit in a latter day saint baptism presented itself, ...though,
we found ourselves in an algerian cafe,
you, me, isaac and H-,
all were there. "i wish, ...
we are so lucky to behold the twenty second century,
like the space between the tick of a clock,
and a century of doubt,
the path we would walk is folden,
ridden with clout.
uncertain with forscision.
as the dunking of a doughnut in a mug.
the once king of a fallen nation." you said.

"i think" einstein thought to himself, as a response,
(the narrator chose to acknowledge):
"that the cause of the universe has as its potential,
the purport of a pulse,
as if the around focusing,
had to relinquish a scent."
"i had the distinct impression the other day that god defies occam's razor;
though he walks the razor's edge," you said.
i could have said: "it is harder to explain "god"
than "the universe" god created."
(as though one were not required by the other.)

imagine she, me and you with him,
drinking moroccan chai,
as though the wall beside us were clay,
as though we had a moon to drink by.
and significance could not be defined.
and thwarted as we were to see it,
we defied odds,
and saw as nods of a series of heads,
the immersion and the crisp, blue,
earth enclosed chamber,
the wholesome place of requirement.

the wholesome woman dressed in orange
stepped, like a catholic bible,
downward into the font, ready to baptize.
the blue water cast a glow.
"i had a becoming once with a beetle,
and walked away from it overplaced.
the blue water was like this,
or the scent of a cup of coffee
being poured into a glass bead cup;" said H-.
we had a good laugh.
there were hard lines in the bifurcated room,
the split was between us and them,
though we were baptized that day too;
like the whisper of an equestrian to his horse,
we lauded our honoree with this exclamation:
"if we could,
we would baptize ourselves
in amino acids."
(or, R- reminded us
in these woods which were
as though we thought we knew them, said:
"like a small dragonfly not knowing,
we glowed with amazement, knowing."

....................................................................


too, locked into our story, was forthcoming.
as it would have been.
the light in the room was perfect,
and we launched into the debate.
there were four winds blowing
when the innocent rose from the liquid water;
four winds blowing also,
the moment before.
H- said,
"incongruous as a warped board,
and squiggly as a rummy worm,
though firm as a foundation and pressed on firm,
like a buttermilk bread upon its spatulaed side,
with a sprig of lettuce and the
praise a man would give to the man;
a million metaphors, also."
"i said,"
said i,
"this is as it would be naturally,
'elected as the before point'."
(i had the distinct impression a couple of days later,
that the autobiography of herman hesse,
had a stitch of the super natural,
and i reckoned this with light.

i thought later that i knew then what god was).
you said then something i will always remember,
"the apple is only a seed."
as eating an oatmeal salad, i underate what you meant.
remembering later,
i see,
and would add as a caveat,
(as if i had the ability):
" i am lactose intolerant,
and as such am in at least one form of intolerant."
quick as the brown fox,
isaac interjected then,
"imagine an apple on an ox."
we laughed and put on our shoes and socks.
and the four of us went on as one person walks.
we walked backward from where we were
to the orange rose and wafts;
we sat and smoked and laughed.
the orange rose spoke,
we were uplifted,
as though the bench
on which we sat,
had always been above us.

light and matter and god and
the understory of chatter
in this late night cafe and
a certain mad hatter;
this is the welcome for which we were warned,
he came, he spoke and uttered
in the name of a certain father,
of a certain son,
and of a certain holy spirit:
a spirit of comfort,
of place.
"this is where you are,"
it said,
"before this what where you?" it asked.
"nothing." it said.
(it said this to teach you something.
(you learned it of course.))

................................................................


the dining cafe and the baptism emerged
as a fox racing through the brush,
and a dry farmer noticing;
the drive home from the farm,
a few miles west from where your mind is.
a friday night in october,
baseball, football, soccer, an eagle scout
and a duck pond with
mahaunryemoureancummere;
the brother of jared.
"i am the brother of jared," you said.
(we were all in awe, of course
for the orbs of light you manifested.)
"i know the orb is true," you said.
"you are human," we said.
we laughed, we had been here before.

light shone in to the baptismal font,
and then reversed itself.
we walked backward then and i said to you,
"albert, remember the way the light travels through water?"
(i said to you as though i were i,):
"charles, the light of god is
a light only i can see;".

the sound of the scene perished.
and somewhere a sound was made
of a carpenter exposing from a drift of ash,
a fine abacus.
we counted backwards from zero and found
the urn,
where we had stored ourselves.
(i remembered the irony.)
(each time we walked backward,
we came to nothing.)
(like a man walking a way from his sins).

as a pendulum ever returning,
we forever arrived at the moment before.
the candlelight of the table
overriding the saucers and kin,
perched like a head of lettuce,
in a land,
where there are seas and seas
of heads of lettuce;
miles and miles;
on and on as if lettuce where nothing,
and that was all there is,
or isn't.
(not to put too fine a point on it.)
the apple, perched
like a pelican on a pond,
fell;
like an aspen having lived a long and quaking life,
heading backwards always to that moment
when life was breathed,
perspicacity and thunder rolled and breaded,
non yeast fried.
we saw then that this could not be and retreated
from our retreat.

we walked forward again,
heading backward to our destination.
i said, "H-, when we get there,
will you tell me?"
H- said, " of course, but by then,
you will already know."
the turnips in the field,
just then,
like an apple cobbler,
baked in the earth, as an oven.
we waited to eat.
while we waited,
the carrots and the tomatoes counseled.
we waited to eat, and for the verdict.
while we waited,
the moon spun in perfect synchronicity with the very earth on which we stood.
by then we knew there was no soup,
no amino goulash;
only the verdict:
like a walk through a rain forest
on the sunniest day of the year,
we rolled in the grass
like oats, or late twentieth century diamonds, rocks.

there was a sense that morning was approaching
when i said, "we are the evidence we need."
"we do not have to walk backward."
"zero cannot reverse itself."
"courage is a coriander."


c2007 rrzollinger

The History of Oil - Robert Newman

It is sad, nay tragic, when truth is spoken best by comedians. In this 45 minute stand-up routine, Newman explores the complex and often overlooked history of our perverse love affair with oil. But, rather than boring his patrons with academic drivel, he speaks the truth through humor and irony. An astounding performance. If you have an hour to spare, give it a watch. (caution: the truth can be a bit racy)



Enjoy, and don't forget the popcorn.

Reese

Dalai Llama and Mandalas

A connection was just made between me and the Tibetan Holy Man. A woman whom I met in Park City, visiting from somewhere in the south, bought some of my originals and a few cards from me this summer. We have since maintained a connection by phone. She just informed me that while visiting a workshop in Florida where the Dalai Llama was speaking...she placed the tulip mandala card in his hands.
In one instant, the sphere in which I live and create has grown large enough to encounter his circle of life and beauty.
It is a both big and small...for art touches multitudes of people we dont know...who treasure it no less.
But it is a sign, bright and bold, that marks a post along this path...that says it is enough to keep going.

Holli