Long lounge the resistance

Dear diary,

I’m really glad that I am taller than King Kong; cuz, Jesus fucking Christ, if you’re not taller than King Kong, you can’t get anything done around here. And we’ve so much to do. First, we have miles to sleep before we go…

& now everyone’s all worried about spying. The corporations are spying on you. Plus all the governments have the nuclear bomb, so we’re all like a hive of bees to a lumberjack who just cut down our cedar. What I mean is that We the People, with all our handguns that we stockpile in our cubicles, are no match for a government that holsters two nuke pistols. It’s true that no lumberjack wants to get stung by a bee while he’s chopping down beanstalks, but what match is a stinger or two to that spray that Jack has. That spray is poison. Plus the Government is just a Voodoo Suit that can be worn by anyone. A bear could break into the world and steal the Suit and wear the Government, so then instead of our laws permitting the abolishment of honeycombs, the bees would actually be pampered, because gentle bears enjoy the honey that we make, so the one that broke into our world and managed to don its Voodoo Ensemble, which is basically the pelt of a moose with the head hollowed out, changed all the laws from bad to good. Here’s how our law used to read:

Thou shalt chop down trees (especially the largest trees known to bees: cedars!), and abolish all the hives thereof, and eat none of the honey, for on the day that thou eatest thereof, ye shall surely die.

But then our moose-clad bear-savior revised the above, so now it reads:

Thou shalt make no law prohibiting the operations of hives or nests, of any kind, or respecting the free honey-making thereof; or abridging the freedom of its honey-makers to buzz all round, or the right of all flying people peaceably to suck flower stamens, and to petition the Bear to put on righteousness so as to redress grievances. Oh, & also: It is OK to eat honey; for, if ye partake of it, ye shall not die, but your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be just like the Voodoo Moose Suit, knowing both good and evil, but performing only the former, because bees are, for the most part, reasonable pests.

This brings to mind the story in the First Book of Samuel (14:24-29); I’ll withstand the temptation to change the name of Saul, then-king of Israel, to the LORD God (Yahweh Elohim) because I think you’ll hear, in the following, the echoes of that early story in Genesis (about the forbidden fruit), without my tampering:

And the men of Israel were distressed that day: for Saul had adjured the people, saying, “Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies.” So none of the people tasted any food.

And all they of the land came to a wood; and there was honey upon the ground. And when the people were come into the wood, behold, the honey dropped; but no man put his hand to his mouth: for the people feared Saul’s oath.

But Saul’s son Jonathan, his firstborn, heard not when his father charged the people with the oath: wherefore he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it in an honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his eyes were enlightened.

Then answered one of the people, and said, “Thy father straitly charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth any food this day.” And the people were faint.

Then said Jonathan, “My father hath troubled the land: see, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey.”

I love these early biblical stories for the way that they covertly recommend a sort of common-sense rebellion against oppressive rule. And I love how Jesus always sez “X was made for man, not man for X,” for instance regarding the Sabbath day, the day of rest (Mark 2:27); and I wish that we would apply it to our modern problems as well, like the problem of robots. “What if robots take all our jobs?” people fret. But isn’t it a good thing for all the labor to get done by robots? For then we all can have leisure time, free time, vacation time, fun time, play time. “But,” you argue, “the owners of the robots won’t give us paychecks, if we don’t work; therefore we shall all surely die!” This is where I wish Jesus would re-enter from stage left where he last made his exit, back in Act Zero, and exclaim with great reverb effect on his microphone “Robots were made for man, not man for robots.” And then all of us rabbis could pipe up and explain: “What Jesus means is that robots were invented to make the life of humankind easier, not the other way around; humankind was not created by God for the purpose of serving robots or trying to keep up with social media. So go out and smell the flowers at your park. Suck on a stamen.”

But it’s sad because the people shout me down. They say: “But the parks have all been privatized for oil drilling.” So Jesus says, “With your permission, Bryan, I will handle this question. Dear hecklers, oil drilling is the new cotton picking. I don’t know what to tell you about it, other than that you’re pretty much at the mercy of the corporations that decide to do these things. You can’t stop them; for they wear the Moose Mask; which is to say, they call the shots: if they wanna drill, then they’ll pass legislation declaring it wise and holy to drill. Then they’ve got you by the balls, cuz ya can’t break the law. I never broke any laws, myself; that’s why my followers who named themselves after my patronymic (my official title is Sir Yeshuah O’Bryan Ivanovich Christ), I say, it’s because of my stance against the breaking of any laws whatsoever that my self-styled followers, the Christians, still follow ALL the laws that I wrote in my Bible, the Hebrew Bible, which they call “The Old Testament” but there’s nothing OLD about it, just take its laws for example: they’re all up-to-date and totally compatible with modern life; that’s why we need to let the drillers drill, and the cotton magnates buy and sell humans as property, and fathers and sons (males everywhere) vend and purchase daughters and mothers (females everywhere) via the institution of marriage, and basically everyone participate in slavery in order to earn wages. You know what they say:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (Genesis 3:19)

If you had gotten yourselves born as robots, perhaps you wouldn’t sweat so much. And you’d be made of metal, not dust; so you wouldn’t have to return to the dirt when you die: you’d just get melted back into the volcano, from whence ye sprang when the Big One erupted. Quite different from either humankind OR my foster father in heaven, as it is written:

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.

[—from part III of “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens]

But what I meant to get at (I’m a little sidetracked at the moment) is this: If the corporations are wearing the government costume, as they are now, and they own weapons far more powerful than your militia, as they do indeed, then your constitutional amendment permitting the ownership of firearms is utterly beside the point, when it comes to stopping the Madness of the Moose. At a certain point, you need to admit that you’re bested. I’m not saying to give up entirely. We’re not quitters, and neither are cockroaches. But the whole “violent conflict” option is pretty much off the table, don’t you agree? And if the cotton corporations of yesteryears left an aftermath of displaced people instead of cleaning up and making genuine reparations for their crimes (slavery, etc.), then surely the oil barons of the present moment will leave just such a mess of the earth which they’re ravaging. And all the other corporations that are ransacking this planet, you just have to learn to put up with it, like deer who live inside the enchanted forest must tolerate the presence of bulldozers and chainsaws. What are you going to do, you little deer, against my giant metal robot? You can’t even hold a pen in your hoof, to write a law prohibiting the destruction of your culture and artworks! You can’t even operate the zipper of the Moose Voodoo Suit, so how will you ever convince anyone that you’re shaman enough to sport it! Just curse God and die.

Then one came running—a fleet-footed deer bounded out of the forest before him—and kneeled to him, and asked him, “Good rabbi, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

And Jesus said unto him, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, Bryan Ray the Blog Man, alias Blog-master Bee.” (Mark 10:17-18)

No, that last quote never really happened. Jesus would never use the word “weblog” when complimenting me — he’d say “prose poet” or at least “electro-essayist”.

*

I don’t know why this topic of resisting authority was on my mind today. I just wrote this entry the same way I write all my others: timepassingly in a fuzzed half-stupor. I wish I would’ve written something else, tho. All those guns and robots, and the government looming in the background like a scary puppet being controlled by corporations: it’s not as fun as…

Actually this is about as fun as it gets. I’m glad I wrote this. It needed to be said. It cleared the air between parties who’ve been fighting for centuries. I was able with one cradling arm to bring the angry militias into the room (I speak as therapist), and with the other arm I hugged closer THE POWERS THAT BE, and I made these enemies sit down and talk to each other. They hashed out all their problems, and now they are friends. Plus I got to pretend that Jesus wrote me a recommendation; so now, if I need to find a job at an online poetry magazine, I can say:

“Please forgive my lack of a résumé. I didn’t bother typing one up on my typewriter, because I’ve done nothing of note with my life.”

And they’ll answer:

“Do you have a recommendation from anyone we might trust who’s currently working in the industry?”

Then I’ll hand them the part of the screen above where I claim that Jesus would’ve mislabeled me a poetic prosaist. This’ll move them deeply: they’ll offer me a permanent position as an intern, and I’ll be able to read all the submissions that come in from aspiring writers everywhere. I’ll be the first exposed to all the new talent. Whichever genius is scheduled to dominate the upcoming ages, I shall discover her. Then other people will make the same discovery, after me, and I’ll spend years in court trying to prove that I was the pioneer in this matter—this laying hold of the new Golden Goose: the one who will oust the “Son of Man” from where he sits at the right hand of God. For I believe that our next great poet shall be a computer. (Personal computing device = robot.) Roll over, Beethoven, & tell Tchaikovsky this news. (Good news = gospel.)