Chapter 22

from my [in progress] autobiography: "Don't Fill Up on the Antipasta."

I live in Jeffersonian America where many people own acres 0f land, edible livestock and ennobling natural wealth worth preserving. Traditions of independence are maintained through high moral standards, a righteous household, agricultural disciplines and selfless sharing among the local communities. Some plow and bail hay while others raise entire barns for their neighbor.

I was once isolated in a gorgeous city where much of what I encountered had little direct bearing on my life. The cars I crept behind for hours, the throngs of people in clubs and stores I would never meet, the shops I would scarcely notice, and the pages of social organizations I would be unaware of were meaningless to me. They were "in the way" of where I wanted to go or needed to do. The lights, the stop signs and the people had nothing to do with my life directly except slow me down. Was it the feeling of the city's pomp and grandiosity and its stirring connections that somehow enlarged my fragmented identity? My vain sense of self importance permitted me to be around wealth but never possess it. Instead, I would flatter my own poverty as I subsisted in my eclectically furnished flat, content to visit a few cozy cafés and criticize the mediocre paintings. Yet, I believed the American Dream was real, and if properly understood and and acted upon, it could bring greater satisfaction, a better life and great wealth.

Why was I so blind for so long? What influenced and overpowered my mind and heart? What was it in the city I worshiped so intimately that I missed the essence of God's good earth and her blessings which lay quietly and still under the damp dewy pine needles and flowing along her pristine streams and falls? Was it the noise, the cocky perverseness of the man-made? Was it unnatural and ungodly that intoxicated me? Was it the instinct to taste the sensual apples on the broad ways and main streets? Why did I hesitate so long to embrace the living and vital things; the organics, if you will. Mankind was called to steward and govern the earth and all living things responsibly. I think it was some vulgarizing fear that held me back. Yes, some one else's fear passed on to me.

I was bred to be negative and taught how to adapt to strange urban environments of more or less meaningless, colorful stuff. I lacked a fuller and more complete wisdom until coming here to my mountain farm? What was I doing all those years of city life? And the others I would see from afar, what were they doing? It seems now such a fickle world I once lived in. A slave, I was more fickle than the city that owned me. For too often I ate fickle, dressed like, spoke, thought and acted like a fickle fool. I, the masses, changed my mind about relationships, about where to live, where to work and where to travel too often to be considered stable by people of substance who are mature, educated and refined. I coveted other's lives and goods, lied thinking myself honest, would back bite with little conscience, would drug myself continuously with only the slightest hesitation except for cost. I remained hypnotized, blinded and enslaved by media thinking myself beyond suggestion, more lucid and free than others. I took advise from boastful billboards and though myself a cosmopolitan sophisticate acutely aware of my surroundings. All cats do the same things over and over again until somebody stops feeding them or there are no more mice to inspire their playful gluttony. Others obsessed over sports, teams, divisions, diversions, fights, competitions and wars and were frightened of entering a solidarity wider than the immediate herd. Comfortable in our prejudices and bigotries I established sharp lines to distinguish ourselves from others right down to tires on my cars. I have met but few beyond most of these common limitations. When I did they seemed strange. I suspect that many more have transcended the gummy gel than encases most Americans. Many live more fluidly above the stagnating mire of common mass mentality. Low and common ideologies butcher royalties and cut up priceless tapestries to stoke wood burning stoves unaware of how low fickle folly tends to descend.

Now let me focus all this ranting hoo-ha down to Obama Mama, our new demi-god. Mr. President O stands in oval kitchen preparing chitlins and ham hocks for one hungry nation. I see sweet potato pie next Thanksgiving –real soul is now in season. He is a wise chef who knows how to set the plate and adjust the parsley encrusted carrots so it looks appealing to the fickle. Nothing bland about that man. Mama ‘Bama, the Good President, come down from heaven to shepherd his wayward sheep to greener pastures where the hay is sweeter and the waters are calm. Old David must be so elated ... another minute closer to his NW order –the Rock of our salvation. Some say Messiah Mama's spicy chicken soup will heal us of the sickening stews we stomached while out in the bush all them years. Fickle, intelligent white boys jumped higher this time through hoops of Nubian laughter when our losses became greater than the cure of any pale fickleness. Our chefs have nearly ruined our nation and our appetite laboring tirelessly to dish out, and ease in, global consumption. Vandana Shiva had it right when she said that our survival depends upon changing the rules of the WTO –that we must preserve cultural diversity of spices in the menu. Prudence wants changes, yes, but only in the right places –time tested secrets and traditions of rural household wisdom and life practices evolved to sustain mankind since the beginning. We gonna change widely today finding new ways to implement wild changes to increase earnings to fix the world if it robs them and kills us. Quick fix changes are fickle changes. We have a new chef now, but the same old fickle help waiting on the same old fickle customers.

Does Hillary change now or George Soros? They never change. They never gonna. There will be changes and some drastic. The ones who have mastered righteous, applied intelligence and discipline to their households are stable. They employ the fickle believers in vain bail outs, hand outs and drop-outs. We are still a nation of fickle fools with no idea half the time what in the world we are eating.