HOW DO WE MAKE ROOM FOR OURSELVES IN THIS WORLD?

I claim that a child is born without purpose or meaning.  I also claim a child is born loaded with capacities.  Not skills.  Not abilities.  But capacities aplenty.  Most of the 2500 years of Western philosophy has concluded that a child is born a blank slate (tabula rasa was the term Locke used).  Born blank - the child needs to be “written upon.”  Filled up so as to make them useful to society.  NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND has that illogic fastened to it.  

Born without verbal skills - without the ability to speak one’s thoughts - one - like a deaf person - struggles to communicate.  However - like a deaf person - the child has much to say.  I speculate that if a newborn could speak and be able to tell us of what it was like to go through the birth process - it would be an extraordinary thing to hear.  I’ve had 4 children.  Between the age of 2 - 7 they put on one of the most spectacular displays of imagination you’ll ever see.  All the while society and the child’s Handlers (mom dad grandma etc) work to move it away from existing in fantasy to the real world of “sweat and strain body all aching and racked with pain” existence.  So childhood “antics” are tolerated only so long.  Then it’s time to start the process of seriously writing on the blank slate. 

I claim this is the great tragedy of history.  Greater than all other tragedies combined.  All the wars and famines and genocides and conquests and brutality can’t match the tragedy of misdirecting that natural impulse to imagine one’s existence.  Stop and think.  Given time - some guidance - every child could grow up a vital imaginative being.  And would that not make them more vital.  Would they not being living life more alive?  

THE RAINBOW TOAD

One of nature’s glorious creatures is the rainbow toad (picture above).  The word “colorful” pales when applied to these guys.  They can become whatever they need to become to blend into their surroundings.  These creatures survive through being elusive.  “What moved over there?”  These guys are tough and elusive.  Two traits I tried to teach my children.  Being elusive means you can change - if necessary.  Change your attitude and you won’t be whining about things.  Change your address.  Go where you must to thrive.  Go beyond survival to that place where you have choices.  THIS or THAT instead of just THIS.  The rainbow toad will climb trees to avoid predators.  The rainbow toad will travel long distances for a better source of food.  The rainbow toad is an amphibian so can take to the water.  

Imagine all of these skills and abilities in a single small creature.  Then imagine what is in the brain of a child at birth.  Loaded.  Then it begins the organic process of figuring out where it is.  Who it is.  Why it is.  What it is.  And what it might become.  And just as a child learns to crawl to walk to run on their own - they also learn a complex language on their own.  All of that knowledge is then mixed in with that powerful need to imagine their days.  All of education in the world is wrong.  It’s all designed to move the child into some useful role for the community at large the corporation the state.  A child is a unique one-of-a-kind entity that needs to develop it’s imaginative powers over time.  Time produces the complexity needed for a child to grow to some level of maturity and to bring its much-needed imaginative powers into the world.  To make room in the world for itself based on the ideas it conjures into existence through its imagination.  

Like the rainbow toad - it will then be able to survive in the best and worst economic conditions.  My new book series will detail the steps we adults must take to return to that time when we were imaginative giants.  That time when we knew exactly what we wanted to be - on any given day.  We imagined our way into the world we knew.  We imagined friends if we didn’t have any.  We imagined pets.  We imagined that we could go to some distant galaxy for the day.  And we never wanted the day to end.  I claim that we can return to that glorious time.  As soon as book number 1 is published I’ll inform my readers on this blog.  Stay tuned.

The K/I IMPERATIVE: LIVING IMAGINATIVELY PLAYING

One day in grade school I put the tips of my fingers and thumbs together. Both hands. It formed a globe. You can form a globe with one hand by touching all the finger tips against the tip of the thumb. But it’s much smaller. And to me it feels more egg-shaped. But the two hands form a really neat globe shape. Try it.

What’s interesting about this play-musing in the 6th grade is this led to my thinking about two halves making a whole. This opened a cornucopia of two halves forming a whole of a lot of things. This is apparently how the human body is formed. The brain has two hemispheres The brain people tell us each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body. Why? They don’t know. The human face is asymmetrical because each half is slightly different. Yet I can blink with both eyes simultaneously (at least it feels that way). And I can work the muscles on both sides of my face at the same time. I can move both arms outward at the same time. I can wiggle all my fingers of both hands at the same time. So something lets us do that. Some say it’s that mass of nerve tissue between the hemisphere’s of the brain given the name corpus callosum. I haven’t a clue - but all of this I find amazing.

Sometimes the halves work independently - and sometimes they work as a whole. Recalling all this I retitled my book The K/I IMPERATIVE: LIVING IMAGINATIVELY PLAYING. I’m in what I hope is my final rewrite. I have the cover art and the fonts finalized. But turning the book into a good read is work. Sheer work. Sweat work. Hopefully - it might get done by the end of this year. Thanks for your patience. 

EXQUISITELY BORING - A Poem by LM Marchus

At the sea I’m exquisitely bored - 

That is I’m bored and yet with a

high level of toleration.

It’s the sound that rearranges the furniture.

It’s the sound - a humming sound -

And if I’m perfectly still - still as death - 

I hear the earth humming - I feel

the earth humming up through my feet.

It seems to be singing its song.

I know Thoreau would approve.

I can - again if I’m as still as time - 

visualize Hemingway standing near a deep bluff.

Standing alongside Blake and Nietzsche and

Keats and Coleridge and Montaigne and

Whitman with his white beard flowing in the

wind. I see Emerson over there and Rilke.

And down around the curve I see Vonnegut

and Henry Miller and Pollock - and over

there is Sexton and Woolf and Levertov -

All of them naked as a newborn -

Singing the song of the earth - without

the slightest embarrassment - without pretension -

exquisitely bored - each waiting for a

single ray of sunshine to warm them.

THE REAL AIN'T TALKIN -- A Poem by L. M. Marchus

The brain is gosh.

Gray stuff aplenty

intertwined aplenty.

Nobody understands the gosh-

galloping that takes place in a thought.

Forget it - and the memory leaves it out.

“Remember that Sonny!” - and the kid can

quote chapter and verse.  “And Eve ate. . .”

Sheldrake dreams of morphic fields in which

pigeons navigate blindfolded.

What the hell is going on?  The news doesn’t

know.  The news is a product like oranges after

a bad storm.  The news is about a politics that

doesn’t matter.  The news is not the news.  So -

what is the news?  “A child is lost in the mountains.”

I sit here peeling an orange and wondering if

I’m going to be as insecure tomorrow as I am

tonight.  I have $50 million in the bank.  Cash.

And I don’t know who I am.  And I’m about to

die.  Where is the fair?  Where is the fare?  Help!

Nietzsche wrote some words: ‘God is dead.’  And

the world shriveled up like a raison.  Miller wrote

some words in Cancer.  Miller wrote some words in

Salesman.  The Millers loved all the wrong women.

The Millers lived long lives.  Their wives died young.

The hell with it.  I don’t give a damn anymore.  I

don’t.  I can only look forward to As You Like It and

those lines.  You know - sans eyes and teeth and dick

and love and the looney times ahead and puking in

the toilet and washing the blood off my ass.

HOW CAN WE KEEP MAKING A PLACE FOR OURSELVES IN THIS WORLD?

I claim that a child is born without purpose or meaning.  I also claim a child is born loaded with capacities.  Not skills.  Not abilities.  But capacities aplenty.  Most of the 2500 years of Western philosophy has concluded that a child is born a blank slate (tabula rasa was the term Locke used).  Born blank - the child needs to be “written upon.”  Filled up so as to make them useful to society.  NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND has that illogic fastened to it.  

Born without verbal skills - without the ability to speak one’s thoughts - one - like a deaf person - struggles to communicate.  However - like a deaf person - the child has much to say.  I speculate that if a newborn could speak and be able to tell us of what it was like to go through the birth process - it would be an extraordinary thing to hear.  I’ve had 4 children.  Between the age of 2 - 7 they put on one of the most spectacular displays of imagination you’ll ever see.  All the while society and the child’s Handlers (mom dad grandma etc) work to move it away from existing in fantasy to the real world of “sweat and strain body all aching and racked with pain” existence.  So childhood “antics” are tolerated only so long.  Then it’s time to start the process of seriously writing on the blank slate. 

I claim this is the great tragedy of history.  Greater than all other tragedies combined.  All the wars and famines and genocides and conquests and brutality can’t match the tragedy of misdirecting that natural impulse to imagine one’s existence.  Stop and think.  Given time - some guidance - every child could grow up a vital imaginative being.  And would that not make them more vital.  Would they not being living life more alive?  

THE RAINBOW TOAD

One of nature’s glorious creatures is the rainbow toad (picture above).  The word “colorful” pales when applied to these guys.  They can become whatever they need to become to blend into their surroundings.  These creatures survive through being elusive.  “What moved over there?”  These guys are tough and elusive.  Two traits I tried to teach my children.  Being elusive means you can change - if necessary.  Change your attitude and you won’t be whining about things.  Change your address.  Go where you must to thrive.  Go beyond survival to that place where you have choices.  THIS or THAT instead of just THIS.  The rainbow toad will climb trees to avoid predators.  The rainbow toad will travel long distances for a better source of food.  The rainbow toad is an amphibian so can take to the water.  

A ROAD OVER THE SEA ---- by LM Marchus

One of my earliest recollections was a 

feeling of having been thrown into the sea.

My steady dream of having to swim very

hard or perish visited every night for decades.

Perhaps it began on that day my grandfather threw

me into the creek and told me to “SWIM!” Did my

life actually start on that day? Was I to swim

hard to avoid drowning in my own emptiness?

Was it on that terror-filled day that I first

saw myself in the world? That for the first

time I felt myself dying? Or did I become to

rational for such a dream? These things are hard.

Now these many years later. . .I’m once again

dreaming about making a road over the sea. Am I

drowning again? What could that image of the road

over the sea mean? Is it the image of an incomplete life?

Is it a realization that the sand is racing through

the hour glass? My age makes my task both

easier and more difficult. Olding produces

those appositional references. Time fleets faster.

The image of making a road over the sea. . .of

swimming hard to get someplace near the unknown

may be a throwback to that desire for fame and

money. Have I slipped into that aging desperation?

Or is it the remaining confusions of my thought

disorders? For many years I expected God to

help me make that road over the sea. I waited

for help. But that was too easy.  

POEM:. . .by L. M. Marchus I’M A RICH MAN

My metabolic rate is just north

of death.

I have a bullet in my brain from a past

betrayal.

I have another bullet in my heart from

the loss of children.

I have at least 3 more bullets in my

gut. . .from the loss of sacred blood-

dripping projects that died slow

deaths.

They can't get any of them 

out.

Let me tell you about 

aging.

My balls were shot off by

aging.

My eyes were shot out

by aging.

My entire body aches

from aging.

Let me tell you about cold.

Cold is sleeping with icicles

of bad dreams.

Cold is not being able to feel

the sun.

Cold is knowing your whole body is turning

into tundra.

All that’s warm. . .no HOT!. . .is

my imaginings.

I’m a rich man.

TOUCH OF EVIL. . .THE BOMB. . .OPENING SCENE

Watch closely.  The bomber sets the bomb for exactly 3 minutes.  Then without a cut. . .not one. . .we move steadily for 2 minutes and 59 seconds.  “I hear this ticking noise in my head” . .then BOOM!

I just finished an essay about Orson Welles for one of my books.  I miss the man.  I miss his charm.  I miss his intelligence.  I miss his glorious storytelling.  He was one of the most genuinely interesting beings the planet has known.   I own all except two of the movies he either directed or wrote and directed.  Touch of Evil holds up so incredibly well after more than 50 years.

"Fool the public. . .fool your wife. . .hucksters abound.  I never intentionally fooled the public. . .Try not to spread oneself too thin.  People specialize too much.  Widen out. . .I've always been more interested in experimenting than with success. . .which is vulgar.  Loyalty to the human family. . .[one's fellow]. . .is far more important than loyalty to [one's] profession."  

A Poem by L. M. Marchus. . . . . THE LAST TREE ON EARTH

They tell me the only tree left is in Canada. . .

up near the old tree line and the line where

the tundra used to be.  There’s a bunch

of trailers around it.  Guards live in the 

trailers.  They’ve got orders to shoot 

anyone who tries to even get near the 

tree.  24-hours a day the guards stand

watch with powerful telescopic rifles.

4 times last month. . .people with appetites

to cut it down were shot.  One guard told

my friend. . ."the Old man". . .that they all

had chain saws.  All had military-style

automatic weapons.  “One guy could

hardly walk”. . . said the guard who talked

to my Old friend. . . “he was so loaded down

with guns and had several hand grenades.

They have over 34 people in jail who

wanted to do harm to that tree.  The judge

said he would not release them.  They

were to be held indefinitely.  Two of them

told the guard they wanted “to go down

in history as the men who cut down the

last tree on earth.”  

The guard thought they might have been

trying to find a way to become immortal

or something.  People would talk about

them like Billy the Kid.  Long after they

forgot Plato and Shakespeare they’d be

talking about the men who cut down the

last tree on earth.  

Planet earth is now a crime scene.  Christo

has strung the tape from Beijing to London

to New York to San Francisco and on to

Tokyo.  Last week over 3-million people

showed up in New York to mourn the

death of the city.

Rains come and wash away the remaining

loose soil churned up by the roaring machines.

Roots appear as if to speak to us.  Snow

comes and buries everything for several

weeks.  The trail gets wider. . .requiring yet

more roaring machines.  More soil is

churned.  More root is chewed up and so

the new trees can’t get strong enough to

grow.  There's no shade.  The forest is

now only a memory.  “You guys know this

desert used to be a forest? asked the Old

man.

That kid died when he was 14.  Died the

day his old man bought him a roaring

machine.  From that day on he stopped

drawing funny faces in the margins of his

math book.  He says he bought it for the

kid to help fill his void.  What about his

imagination?. . .asked the Old man.  “It

was gone". . .said the father sadly.

Booze and civilization start up at the same

time.  Or was it one of the “savages” who

invented alcoholic beverages?  It’s true. . .

it’s true. . .one can’t exist without the other.

As civilization expands. . .pressures increase

and the need for booze or some sort of

drug increases with it.  Side-by-side.

TONY BENNETT STILL SINGING WELL AT 85

Tony Bennett's son came up with the idea of a duet album to celebrate Tony's 85th birthday.  He records the CD with many contemporary singers. . .including the late Amy Winehouse.  He told Amy. . ."You sound like Dinah Washington."  Amy just melted. . . because Dinah Washington was her mentor of sorts. . .the sound. . .the phrasing. . .the love of the lyric.  Bennett told her he was a friend of Dinah. . .and Amy was stunned by those 6 degrees of separation.  

Bennett. . .like Sinatra and Streisand and the few other singers who rose above the pack in the 1930s through the 1950s. . .spent hours just practicing the phrasing of a single line.  So. . .when you're invited to sing a song with Bennett. . .you'd better know that it's all about the lyric. . .the meaning which the lyric conveys. . .and of course the song itself.  Here. . .they do the irreplaceable Body and Soul.  SINGERS!  Go back to the phrasing of the lyric. . .go back to enunciation. . .go back to working on having the lyrics heard by your audience.  The beat is fine. . .but just making sounds. . .is not singing.  I first heard Bennett in 1957.  I first heard Dinah Washington at the Blackhawk nightclub in San Francisco in 1953.  When you listen to this song. . .here's an 85 year old man. . .and a 20 something singing together.  It gives me hope.

THE MOST UNDERRATED SINGER OF THE 20 CENTURY?

Below is the great Dusty Springfield. . .whom I was fortunate to see 3 or 4 times.  She had a wonderfully strong voice.  If you listen carefully. . .you can hear when a singer is simply singing a song. . .or if they're personally attached to it.  The song Who Can I Turn To   . . .was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse circa 1964.  Nobody does it better than Dusty.

“LIFE IS EITHER A DARING ADVENTURE OR NOTHING!”

Keller feeling Eisenhower's face

Humans are sensual creatures.  We cannot imagine losing even one.  What would life be like without the ability to see?  Or hear?  Well. . .Mary Helen Keller found out that life can not only go on. . .but one can rise and thrive without the ability to see and hear.  One must turn life (or existence) into an adventure.  For it’s nothing else.  “Life is either a daring adventure. . .no nothing”. . .said Keller.

She had to exist in a world without the images from the outside. . .what we might call the “objective world.”  And there were no sounds from that world as well.  If you close your eyes and hold your hands over your ears. . .well. . .you get some idea of what her life might have been like.  Of course when it gets awful. . .you can simply open your eyes and take your hands away from your ears.  

People feel insecure these days. . .jobs. . .foreclosures. . .violence aplenty. . .etc. . . and they begin to close down.  Most people hide in the television set.  Or they get stoned. . .or drunk. . .or both.  None of that changes anything.  “There is no security in nature”. . .said Keller.  Every living thing out there is in someone’s food chain.  Watch a bird land at a feeder.  They look around.  They hesitate.  They look some more.  They look up and down and side to side. . .their instincts flashing.  And then they descend onto the feeder and eat with great trepidation.  Such is the nature of existence.

Kierkegaard pointed out the consciousness itself is faulty.  That word. . .”with knowledge”. . .doesn’t tell you what kind of knowledge you’re obtaining or possess.  It’s full of flaws. . .all the flaws of our Handlers since our birth.  Keller said the bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.  She also contrasted those of us who see and hear with the blind and deaf. . .”We differ. . .not in our senses. . .but in the use we make of them. . .in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses” (my emphasis).

In my forthcoming book ReMaking Ourselves GIANTS: The New Role of Imagination in the 21st Century. . .I spend a great deal of space recreating our existence as children.  Why?  Because at one time. . .we were much to big to fit into our bedrooms.  We could reach out to the ends of the universe. . .imaginatively.  We made up playmates and endless things to do. . .or pretend to do.  We built sand castles at the beach and just reached out for the materials.  We just invented our way through the day.  Then we entered school. . .and everything changed.  

The result is what I term the “tragedy of history.”  Beginning as GIANTS. . .we’re progressively reduced in size.  Why?  The smaller we are. . .the easier we are to control.  To frighten.  To fill with fears.  How big do you feel. . .inside?  Everyone I talk to tells me they feel like they’re getting smaller each year.  Becoming a GIANT again. . .refers to the person we are within.  For man is nothing but a puny parasite on the outside.  Living off the host. . .the earth. . .like all other living things.  Only be reviving our powers of visualization can we begin the process of expanding that self. . .that most genuine being. . .within.  For what purpose?  To be able to be self-reliant.  To make our own way in the world.  Not to be bullies. . .but able to make our own way. . .in cooperation with our fellow.  If man doesn’t move to this new paradigm. . .if he continues to exploit his fellow in order to generate wealth far beyond his needs. . .man will not survive.  The earth’s resources are finite.  The notion of “renewable” this and “renewable” that. . .is a futuristic dialogue.  We must return to our values as a child.  We were interested in the quality of each day and not the quantity.