Shane MacGowan in corner, strumming a guitar:

Oh, Kitty, my darling, remember,
that the doom will be mine, if I stay,
'tis far better to part though it's hard to,
than to rot in their prison away…

Lincoln, sitting silently,  chin in hand, leaning slightly forward, just like the portrait painted of him.

Enter Kennedy, walking in, as if to a press conference, but slightly slower.

Lincoln, after a pause, as Kennedy stops, as if to look around:

You too?  Well, that's okay.  I was kind of expecting you anyway.

Lincoln rises.  Reaches to shake hands.

You look good.  Welcome.

Kennedy:

Well, thank you, Mr. President.  I, ah, hear, uh, your ghost has been keeping in touch with the current matters.

Lincoln:

Oh, now and then.  It's hard not to.  I couldn't resist Churchill.  No one would believe a drunk anyway, I figured.  But you got there, and I could take it easy and sit in tree tops on April mornings feeling the swelling wind, or I'd go find a horse…  I liked the catafalque. I go over to Fort Myers sometimes, up on that field overlooking the mighty river, where they keep the caissons in the stables there.  To stand there in Virginia...

It's funny how things happen.

Kennedy:

We all have our night at the theater, Mr. Lincoln.  You were gracious to begin the tradition.

Lincoln:

I thought that was a nice touch, actually, not that we're in control of these things.  The timing, I thought, was fitting, and my death was proper enough.  I'd said what I wanted to say, or what needed to be said, pretty much.  It's hard to let go, though.

Kennedy:

Bind up the nation's wounds.  'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,' that was an excellent moment.  We took a lot from that.

Lincoln:

Helping out.  I figured I'd help start the pattern.  Say something great before you go.  Might as well.  Why the hell not.

Kennedy:

I agree with you very much, Mr. President.  It goes quickly, but, that last fine run, makes it all the sweeter.

Lincoln:

Look, here's your rocking chair.  They are a comfort aren't they.  I was sitting in one, you know, that night.

MacGowan, in a soft voice:

"Music is just music, really.  It's in the fucking water, it's in the fucking ground, it's in the fucking rain… it's in the fucking wind. Everywhere, really.  People just put it into boxes.  That's how I look at it."

Glass of wine anyone?  Might as well…  Hch, hch, hch, hch, hchh…

In a day, I'll be over the mountains.
There'll be time enough left for to cry,
so good night and God guard you forever…

Kennedy:

I'm glad we're all Irish here.

Lincoln:

It helps, I'd say.  Hell, we always were.  Thus, all our problems, fitting ourselves in.  Why we were great.  Why we ended up in a box.

That was nice you got to go there.

Kennedy:

It was a place to go say things.

Lincoln:

There's good things to do when you're President.  I felt like shit up at Gettysburg.  But it was worth it.  Funny how it all works out.

Kennedy:

Yes, I'd say so.  It all works out.

Lincoln:

So when did you realize it?  You kept an awfully good sense of humor about the whole thing.  Me, I just aged before the camera.  Ha ha.  I thought that was the thing to do.  As if I was sorta tellin', no, you don't want this damn job anyway.  You want it?  Hell, take it.

Kennedy:

And those generals… Jesus Christ.

Lincoln:

Yes.  Thank you.

Hey, they'll always joke… you know.  Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln.  John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald…  That they too in turn get shot…

But it is kind of odd when you think about it, all the parallels.  The geometry.  Euclid, old boy, he was right.  Two little freaks, integers.  Small men, just like always.  And you're own dead body smiling, as if to teach a final lesson, bowing out to the curtain.

Kennedy:

Yes, don't go to the theater.  The theater.  It is all the same, when you look at it, Mr. Lincoln, isn't it.

Lincoln:

Always liked your sense of humor.

MacGowan:

When I first came to London,
I was only sixteen,
with a fiver in my pocket,
and my old dancing bag.
I went down to the 'dilly
to check out the scene,
but I soon ended up upon
the old main drag.

Lincoln:

It is all the same.  Adjustment to the details.  And no one, that's the funny thing, no one can do anything about it.  Like it's the hand of God.  You go to Dallas for all that.  I go to Ford's.  I'm out diagonal on a too small bed across the street, you end up in that beautiful limousine and that hospital.

There ain't much they can do for you, though.  Cut your shirt open, put your head on a pillow.  Let the bullet fall out.  Whatever.

The rising up, I thought, that was…  you know, in a way it was just what I expected, looking at yourself, at the violent thing that did not change you, but just sealed you as a President forever.

Kennedy:

I felt it all in a dream, a long straight line, and then I was broken, and for a time I felt like there were monsters around me, grotesque people, looking down on me, or was it me, a nightmare, knowing I couldn't be fixed.  Then I found here peace.  Not of the hillside, but of the things I left behind and the way people will remember me, in their souls, just like you almost.

Lincoln:

I know, I know.

Kennedy:

It was a good ride.  I got my energy from the people.  I'd shake hands.  Sometimes, all the dirt, you know.

Lincoln.

Yup.  It is, exhilarating.  You kept a great sense of humor about it, like a kid sometimes, and by that I mean no disrespect at all.  I liked the way you'd nod at everyone.  Just like I used to.  They say, oh, what a hick, but really it's a sign of nobility, and you got to put up with a lot of shit anyway.  I 'd nod at that Whitman, bright eyed fellow, made me feel I was who they said I was, I mean in the good way, as President, and I'd bow back to the fellow.  Better than getting shot at, I'll tell you.

"How are you," I love the way you'd say that.  So warm, so gracious.

Kennedy:

Your hand was swollen, when you arrived.  You looked more like me then.

Lincoln:

Ha ha, that's sweet of you.

MacGowan:

I've been loving you a long time…

Kennedy:

I like the music here, Mr. President.

(both chuckle)

Lincoln:

They chided me over Antietam, Lamon playing the banjo for me, but as I've said, I like the merriment.  Otherwise…

Kennedy:

Yes, you'd want to hang yourself.  I felt that way too, often enough.

But I suppose, life is the banjo, Mr. President.

Lincoln:

That's true, too.  I guess I had that sense.  I always loved animals.  A pig stuck, a bird fallen, a cat going about it's business.  You learn a lot that way.

But I know, we both loved a girl at one point.  Well, you know how it goes.

Kennedy:

Yes, I do.  It kind of changes your whole life.  We really did though.

L:

It does, it does.  It hurt a lot, and I never forgot.

SM:

That's good.  Mind if I use that?  Hch, chch, hchh…

lights a cigarette

Still there's a light I hold before me,
and you're the measure of my dreams

L:

I guess that's when I became a poet.

K:

I, uh, don't know, exactly what I became, but I know what you mean.

L:

You do what you can do.

SM:

I've not come up with any new material for a while, at least they say so.

The Cadillacs stood by the house
and the Yanks they were within
and the tinker boys hissed advice
hot wire her with a pin.
We turned and shook while we had a look…

L:

You were very good about the poetry.  You always used that.
Mr. Nixon and I are not rivers frozen in time…
That was good.  I still get a chuckle over that.  Nixon…
Ah, but he's one of us, almost.
Well, there are a few, 'almosts.'

K:

Yes.

L:  But in the end, it's you and I.  Not even Washington.  We're the amalgam.  We're the blood flow.
History is funny stuff, I suppose.

K:

I'd want people to know, that in the end it's all an illusion.  Like it depends on what kind of dream you want to have.  Then you make it so.

L:

That's the most dignified way to go about it.

K:

And are we here, too, for a reason?  What do we do know?

L:

Well, I don't know.  I guess part of it is watching.  Seeing if there's anyone bright down there, then matching them up with people who'll help them.

K:

Like Bobby.

L:  Sure.  He'll take it hard, but he's the perfect man for it, I think.  We made him tough, appropriately, and not a conniver.  He's an honest type, like a good lawyer should be.  He'll feel it.  Then he'll read the Greeks, I suspect.

He'll get his own funeral train one day, sadly enough.  Before his time.

K:  silence

L:  We know these things up here, or mid here, or down here, wherever it is, the places where we dream in a deeper way.

But take comfort.  There's always the right person for a job.  Take Jessie Curry, chief of Dallas Police.  Could you find a better guy to stomach all that?  It's all a surprise.

History appoints its men.  Each to fulfill his roll.  And what can you do but be as dignified as  you can, I suppose.  Is that the way I always looked at it?  I don't know, not anymore, but I think that speaks of the ones who live on, if you will, that they were dignified, given whatever situation.

I mean, we all can be stupid.  That's just human nature.

SM:  Don't know what you're talking about.  Where's Ronny Drew?

A hungry feelin'
came over me stealing,
and the mice were squealing'
in my prison cell.
And the auld triangle
went jingle bloody jangle,
all along the banks
of the Royal Canal.

L:  Do you think anyone could ever really try to be a nobody? I thought of that sometimes.  But you didn't have that chance.  I could have slipped into nowhere pretty fast, quite a few times.

What do you make of that?  You're here now.  You know about such things.

K:  Well, I could have slipped, just lost, failed.  That's all, I suppose.  But I was good, and I kept winning.

L:  Saw that.  I saw that.  West Virginia.  I think that's near where I was from originally.

Is that a fault or a strength, now that I think about it.  What matters is that you're real.  Then you just stop feeling awkward about yourself, even if you are, as was I, an emotional cripple sometimes.

K:  I was a cripple too.

L:  You really let in that great sense of tragedy.  That was a great gift to the nation.  Greater a tragedy, or better fitting, than what happened at Gettysburg.  But you said your own words to make your own loss so well understood.  No one needed to say anything.

The people said it themselves.  They cried.  They cried and cried.  Then the bagpipes played.

K:  I'm not so sure people always give a shit.

L:  Well, that's how it always is when you present a new truth.  Some people try to get it, and can hear it, but because it's the world, and you're bringing them something out of the world, they have to reject it.  It's like a wave pattern on water, the heights of watery contention, the troughs of calm.  And you feel it in yourself.  Same damn thing.  Pay it little mind.

K:  Polling would confirm your sentiments.

L:  I like how you handle the press.  This press conferences reminded me of my baths in public opinion.

K:  They'll still say whatever the hell they want to.

L:  Well, well…  I got a kick out of what they wrote about my few words up there at the great battlefield.   But spiritual work happens in spiritual time.  And it must be done.  And if you think about it, politics is so deeply flawed if you think it can really allow itself to be part of the greater work.  Better to leave it to lesser men with their egos and their love of dealings.  The bigger matter is in the changes, like the whole system of democracy came about.

The thing is in the lining up, that spooky stuff, bringing it out into the real world, to not be distracted by all the material things as we obsessed over in our lives, the pork barrel, the move the capitol to Springfield.

That's the sense of humor.  You roll with the punches, but deep down you're really doing something, even if no one is going to even begin to understand it.  Almost better that way.

They'll all jump in on one side, as they see it, on one side of the worldly aspect of it, with the greatest zeal and fervor.  Abolition, Pro-Slavery.  The crazies pick up like it's their own selves, such that the war came.

Well, I hate to say it, but that's never really what it was about.  It was about something far deeper, and even I cannot explain it, not even.  I was just doing my job as a politician, an instructor.  A House Divided, that was the closest I ever came.  I knew I could not be divided against myself, and I figured that the same applied to the nation.

And I was human too.  I got pulled into it myself, the animosity, the self-righteousness… much as I tried not to.  And then we had the war to pursue.  Well, they started it.  Once it starts, you can't go back, and I had to see it all out to the end.

But, whatever I said or tried to accomplish, or the way I thought about it all, it all came out of a very deep and personal struggle.  I decided I needed to have faith.  And when I got the melancholy, or I couldn't think of what I wanted to say before a crowd of people, well, my deeper mind was telling me something.  I had to align myself with all the things that come from the Scriptures.  You know what I mean?  And the only thing I could do then, the final self-evident thing, was to apply it.

So perhaps I was a little over-zealous, but I don't regret that larger sense.

K:  So what were your faults on earth?  I cannot think of many, to be honest with you.   Compared to some of us… {flashing famous smile}

L:  Well, thank you kindly, but I was born a poor boy, one who wanted to read books and write things. My faults were in my ambition.  I was a lawyer, even.  Not that I am ashamed of that, but just some of the deals I might have made. But I was not mystical enough, until I began my path to the Presidency.  Still, it's hard to climb to the top of the pyramid and look out in all directions.

We all have our faults.  Maybe we should not be unproud of them, in the end.

But you didn't have a choice, really.   You were obliged from birth to be ambitious, and you took well to it.  And you were kind to people.

K:  Lawyers are necessary, if you want to accomplish anything in the world.

L:  Maybe so.  But I felt that need to have those portraits taken, so that inner ghostly thing might come across, so that they could see, bumpkin that I am, or was, that I wasn't an idiot, nor was I evil.  Just like you always came across, I think, with your real good spirit and your humor.

"I'll put it on in the White House on Monday;  if you come up there you'll have a chance to see it then."  That cowboy hat.  I was more of a hat man myself, but then I don't have your hair.  But you can't blame a man for playing the politics game.  You brought a lot of light to it.

K:  Thank you, Mr. President.  Part of my comedy was physical after all.

L:  Yes, I can see that.  I move slower than you do.

But there are reasons why I don't blame that man over there.  {gesturing to MacGowan pouring himself some red wine from a brown paper bag into a cup.}  He's found an access to the murmurings from the deeper reality.  If you don't believe in it, you're never going to leave behind or say anything that will be valuable in the long run.  You need to courage to go find it half way.

I used to not approve so much of drinkers, but they are kind people, often, as if they had a gift.

SM:  Some of us have the ability to see ghosts…  Hch, hch, ch, ch, hch…  Cheers.

K:  It is all a damn prison anyway, but you make the best of it, and then, right as you get the hang of it, boom.  Why is it that way…   Life is unfair.  Some enjoy perfect health, some less so.

But viewed from the long lens of history…  {voice rising, about to extend an arm, chin raised}
I almost feel like making a speech.

L:  That's good reflexes.
Goddamn.  I get so sad sometimes, without you guys.  Our most triumphant hours, and there we are, getting shot.

{turning away}

Funny how we all get old.

We're all bound to fail at everything.  You have to fail.   And then, when you have no other choice,  you turn to something.  Not some shallow thing, not another person's version of a story, not even necessarily any tradition, but something, barely definable, you've tested out in your deeper mind, something higher.

I wished it had all been not violent so suddenly, as the pace of the times seemed to require.  I guess that was one more thing, to give up to, to surrender to, to accept, to have to fit in, like all the rest.  Something hopeful.  Like the wind in springtime.

I guess you could be passive, and just absorb it all, writing your comments upon it, if you could live forever.  But alas, we don't.

{turns back}

When that girl died, and they put her in the ground, and then it was raining and raining, I couldn't take it anymore.  A part of me withered up, never to be alive again.  And I didn't think I would, but I made it through that, as if was some kind of training, for something.

I mean, I have to qualify that with being out here, with the fact that what we must do consciously on Earth is ego.  A part of me withered up, that sounds now like something a fool biographer would write. That's the good of being up here.

But I still think about her…  all the time, really, if you were to look at it in a way...

Jack, do you think that death makes us?  Makes us the great men in the collection of minds, whereas if we died of natural old age, had faded into irrelevance, old statuary, no longer a power, no longer the significant voice of the time, what we had done would have then seemed an ordinary business?  But we had died as some people, at least, were listening to us, indeed with their ears opening to us even, with us making advancements… You and I are alike in that…

K:  But you had been reelected.

L:  Damn fluke…  But it's true.

The odds didn't look so good for you, with your stance there on the moral issue, but there you were, working those Southern States--didn't they all end up in Texas, those fine Confederates--and with the same uncertainty, and facing the same hatred, doing pretty well.   You had that Presidential quality about you.  I had a Brooks Brother's long coat covering my sorry ass…  Oh, man, they had all the reason in the world to hate me, to call me tyrant and worse things.

Despite it, you were doing pretty well.  I was waiting for your Second Inaugural, I think.  But I guess, you know, it's something like they didn't deserve it, or could not have gone that far in their state of earthbound thoughts.  They cannot always receive our wisdom, little birds that they are with their mouths up reached.  You feed 'em what you can.

SM:  {aside}  There's that story, you know, Vishnu builds this great, like, almighty palace, thinking he's, like, the greatest, that this will be the most fantastic place, like, with great parties and great music, the finest chicks, good wine, a great house bands, The Roots, probably, and, like the highest of wisdom, and fucking books and learning, I mean, to go along with all that.  But, like, he notices he, even he himself, notices that he can't finish it, that he keeps wanting more.  This goddamn palace is never quite finished.  And then a greater God, even higher above him, comes down, shows up one day, and then, look out, there are all these fucking ants, fucking thousands of them, millions of them, marching in perfect order, in through the front door.  Like it was there place or something!    Hcchh hchh hchh…  And Vishnu says, like, what the fuck, and whoever the greater God is, says, well, my friend, each one of those ants once was a god king emperor building his own fucking palace, thinking it was something, some fantastic kingdom all measured to fucking perfection…  Hhcch, hch, hchh…  And, like, each one comes from another planet, another universe, another dimension, as the fucking Mahabarata tells you, it's all a mud puddle, somewhere in London, in the middle of nowhere.  So there's fucking Vishnu looking down at all these ants coming in the front door of his palace…  Chhh, chhch, chh, hhcch, chcch…

So you know, you just fucking know, whatever it is, it's all bullshit anyway.

London, you're a lady,
you're streets are paved with gold...

L:  I think what happens to us…  Well, it's like we get broken up, into some pieces, and that a piece goes into a lot of folks, but small regular normal folk, so that it's no longer the high and mighty who can possibly carry our fine thoughts and sentiments, not the congressmen, not the senators, but all the plain people, like those who good heartedly line railroad tracks or come into the great Rotunda to file past you in a casket on a catafalque, or watch you go by on a caisson.  It would have to be the regular people who carry such things like a truth or a flame, or something good and decent.  That's just math.  You and I were just strange, being so pushed forward the way we were, the way we had to be.  Our air of the presidential, that only happens at very strange times, Mr. Kennedy, wouldn't you agree.

SM:  I mean, that's the thing, that someone would say something and actually mean it, you know…
{getting snuffly}  That someone would actually give a shit, and like, the things they said would be like, like Irish music, hits you in the gut, means something, is said with all the emotional stuff, just like the things that people have always done, drinking, fucking and fighting, but, like applied, as it always is, to something deeply intellectual, not fucking faking it, but true, just like it took the black man to play the blues.  They wouldn't be, like, playing fucking blues out of a fucking teleprompter, not giving a shit like a bunch of fucking robots.  Their fucking guitars were like barely in tune, covered with cotton picking fucking railroad dust, and they knew the secret, that no one really gave a shit, but that because each fucking person realized that in turn no one else gave a shit about them, then they could fucking share this, like, guilty secret of liking this liberating music…  But it took, like, Muddy Waters, some guy who knew no one gave a shit…  And that's blues, that's rock n roll, that's Irish music, African music, whatever you want to call it.  Music, raw, played by people, not by computers or some fucking rating system, but by the heart….

L:  The basic matter before us all is that the personal judging of people is necessarily arbitrary and insensitive.  That's why we have to think of mystical things, unions and the like.

Behind the law, and its equality, there is brotherly love, and that applies to women too, strange creatures that they are, who give birth to us, love us...

That's what we all need.  That's what I need, even here.  Love, that is all.

K:  Well, I can't say that as a man I ever had much problem with the, ah, democracy of women…

L:  You old hound dog…  I like how they call it my bedroom.

K:  I had more time than you, Mr. President.  I didn't have to go listen to the tapping of the telegraph at night.

L:  Well, at least then I could feel I was doing something, not just sitting around waiting, unable to do a damn thing...

When we get up here, we see the great equality of all people and all things.  Less is there of the difference.  More how odd the whole thing gets, why sides must be taken, wars fought, hearts broken, for details, over details, small insignificant things, when all along, we all loved each other, God's gentle creatures who are led to layeth down in green pastures and by calm waters.  Why all the bloodletting of life?

K:  I liked to put that record on at night.  "Each evening from December to December…  Camelot."

L:  And I like that fellow's songs, the one who sees us over there…  There's something he's achieved too, no less, well…  this is heaven, so allow the possibility… than us.  In attitude, at least.  Because he doesn't care what we think.  He just plays his music, transcribes his songs, and that they are rough, therein lies their charm.

To write a biography of John F. Kennedy, you have to inhabit him from within.  You have to understand his experiences as partially universal, applicable to those of other lives, regular lives like our own.  You'd have to understand him on his own terms, by making your own sympathetic to his.  You could write about a few things and make long light of them.  Like the girl who broke his heart, marrying John Hersey, like his need for action and adventure, the proverbial PT Boat days.  You'd have to write about his adrenal system, as if through over-activity and too much push, he burned himself out, but how that push remained in him, aided as it was by medication.  You'd have to write of his own understanding of courage, how he'd walk up the steps of the three floor tenements of Watertown, ponderously, painfully, one step at a time, putting one foot up, then following with the next foot.

You'd have to follow him into your own life experiences, your own need to be, as he put, somewhere every day.  You'd have to see your own courage to show up and physically and mentally deal with things.  You'd have to understand your own need for words and books, whatever form of history you find pertinent.

The world is a disappointment.  That is wisdom.  In accepting that wisdom the mind rises to a higher understanding.  And no intelligent person can long ignore the fact of the grim nature of life, of the hopeless quality to worldly battles.  "Pain falls drop by drop upon the soul, until through the awful grace of God, comes wisdom":  Robert Kennedy quoting Aeschylus, as if to finish his brother's thoughts, before he himself was murdered.

But shouldn't you know all that, coming into it.  That's the mysterious thing, maybe, about the cracked negative picture of Lincoln, or that one with his head cocked, including his hands in his lap, as if holding a watch.  He seems to get it finally.  That's how he'd entered the whole thing in the first place, not wanting to be a house divided against himself and his basic sense of Biblical justice.

Oh Christ.  The long night of the bar captain, on that last night before the feasting holiday.

I don't know what's better, if the twitch in the muscle and nerves under the eye feels soothed by the old habit of three good glass of Ventoux and a good loud playing of several Pogues songs in the night bar after all are gone, including the musicians, including the last few people who could have made you nervous, or if it would feel better if, as instructions might say, you didn't drink at all.  I chose the music, I chose listening to myself recorded reading the Gettysburg Address, thank god, something creative after a lot of jee-ing and haw-ing, dodging and ducking…

For I could see how it might be calming, to finally release your own singing voice after enduring a singer who, yeah, it happens to all of us, ain't always quite on key.



Tuesday was full of light, despite the heavy pouring cold rain outside.  The sweet lady, when asked if anyone had made note of what happened fifty years ago, quietly, calmly, says, well, no I didn't watch any of the History Channel.  I was there, in the White House.  I remember what the clock looked like, she finally says, in her quiet voice.

It was an open White House, she remembers.  He'd come out and stand against a desk, and the young women, there were many, were very capable and competent and working in many significant positions.

She helped out with all the letters to Jackie.  That they loved his hair, one theme, in the letters of women to Jackie, or to themselves, after the great sick Mafia hit tragedy or whatever it was.

I find it somewhat validating, to read again through John F. Kennedy's health problems.  He took anti-histamines for food allergies (and some of them seems to have made him depressed.)  He had high cholesterol, probably from regularly eating eggs and bacon for breakfast.  Too much dairy, bad for type O blood, so the unsubstantiated theory goes (while it secretly remains to work for us.)  He had colitis, an intestinal inflammation brought on by eating grains never meant for certain guts.  Perhaps too with the adrenal insufficiency, a factor of a mis-intended diet back from the days of American white bread.

And one can feel the strange relief of validation reading about Lincoln and his psyche, his bouts with melancholy, finding Joshua Wolf Shenk's book on the subject quite real and believable.  Lincoln, by the way, was type A, I seem to have read.  His problems with what might be unipolar depression cut beyond the lines of blood type, across the human species, I would gather, by their inherent nature.  I find it validating to find a tale of Lincoln, to the gist that he needed to participate in the mirth and the merriment and the jokes lest he fall into an abyss of dark mood and hopelessness.  (That's a bartender's night, right there.)  Perhaps the dignity we attribute to his image is in surviving such storms, as we intuitively sense that.  His mind went through the dark nights and would tend to emerge with broader deeper insight, to be saved and then put into words when an occasion called for it.

Sharing such "problems" does not make one a great leader.  But somehow in the dark of winter night it is a comfort and a relief to ponder such things with a glimmer of self-understanding.  It helps with the self-blaming and the guilt, I would think.  It helps for accepting, as one first must accept, a kind of a life.  And maybe it gets better from there.



Within the history of John F. Kennedy is something of the history of humanity.  A man needs to live a bit in order to understand, to be able to walk in another's shoes.



In this day and age, people go to a trainer at the gym, wanting a focussed work out.  Is that the point of reading something, that it's quick exercise toward some kind of end of enhanced sensitivity for life?

Democracy works because it indirectly supports a basic reality.  By treating all as being created equal we protect the basic essence of the Buddhist observation that Self is, to a large extent, an illusion, a false representation.  No one, really, is a born monarch.  That would be a false self.  A person could act the part, and develop a marvelous personality to match, but in the end, the person is human, just like you or I.  There are many great ego trips to have:  I'm this, I'm that, there goes Tom Cruise.  Such things weigh us down.  Hitler was caught up in himself, in the picture of himself, creating a whole world order based on a false notion of self.

Democracy may work indirectly, and perhaps represents the extent to which thinking, bound to the practical world as it is, can go.  We can accept the logic of fairness, of all created equal and equal protection under the law, of the idea of voting for representative government.  But to go any further, to philosophically embrace what is coincidentally the main idea of a thinker and wise man from long ago, would invite chaos, it would seem.  And indeed, unenlightened people are bound to act selfishly, so, the thinking might go, you can never achieve fairness, right?  Which happens to be one of the problems, now that I think about it, of a democracy, as justice can get bent to those with greater resources, as assessing the power of any one vote for, say, the President, is a complicated matter depending on a lot of things (thanks to gerrymandering, Karl Rove's fondness for hacking voting machines, the money for big opiate advertising) even if the delegate system of the electoral college seems the best attempt there can be at national parity.

But there it is, a basic reality to be found out, that, as a poet put it, "I'm nobody -- who are you?"  Can democracy protect the interests of all who might realize that?

To go consider a corporation as an equal entity under the law doesn't agree.  Corporations almost necessarily have to have ego, simply in their structure, their need to make a profit.  Thus will they act to forward their own selfish interests for whatever reason.    The logic of Halliburton, enforcing clear cut goals.

Compare the corporation with the private citizen, who of course, being a human being, has a broad range of concerns and sensibility, with a  more immediate sense of nature and the environment we live in, who can sense healthy behavior.   The great democracy should be just that, steered by informed private citizens, reducing  egotistical acts.  Of course that would now be sneered at, taken as pie in the sky, belittled as childishness, 'who will pay the bills?'  And it would seem there is even no more infrastructure, like the town meeting, for much of that to even begin.  The structure, or course, is representative government, which now means raising money, primary, before all concerns and stances, which means lobbyists.

The great bargain of journalism, which aims to be, through a myriad of takes on different issues, egoless and truth-searching, is to allow within the ego of the corporate advertisement in its pages.  Ads can be, like Facebook, quickly overwhelming to the delicate reading mind sorting out its daily reactions and thoughts.  Is Facebook reducible being suspiciously like personal advertisement and branding as an inevitable consequence of its basic form?

But a democracy is effective to the extent that it offers protection and fairness to "the least of these," to the most selfless, to the meek along with the infirm and the poor.  And this leaves one to wonder if there is not some great center, a great intersection of those things we bundle up separately as art, religion, government, wellness practices like yoga, and science as well.  To do one well, the practitioner must expand across all of them, blending poetry with science, music with spirituality, hospitality with the rule of law, as if reconciling strange bedfellows.

I think sometimes I qualify as an anthropologist.  Some sit in rooms reading books piecing skulls, wrist bones and vertebrae together, and some expose themselves to the ongoing history of the world.  My work as a barman.

Humanity, this to me is obvious, was born with the ability of words and all the gift of communication with language.  It just happened.  It happened instantly, when people became people.  Strange as it might seem.  It's just a talent we have, and we healthily participate in it.  And from the beginning, there was lots of talk.  There was lots of being human.  There was community, there was openness, there were good things. There was talk of health and the sharing of food, to the extent that there was posturing and early forms of commercials, or at least, and better, the documentary, the story.

From the construction of history and politics we know, lots of stuff would have been immediately going on.  Tribal strife, empire's thrust, the confusions of the blending of the various breeds of humanity.  Vercingetorix being dragged through the Roman streets.  Racism, perhaps.  And yet, as any barman knows, all of that easily transcended with any neighborhood discussion, people put together.  The reestablishment of the basic understanding that we are all, quite remarkably, and amazingly, human, with all the gifts.

We deal, we follow, we cope with, we examine the crazy flower of history's doings, the ceaseless flow, one moment, one character, one group, one event ceaselessly flowing on, met by another.  Lincoln's moment, a big one, perhaps an ultimate one the becomes superseded, becoming the assassin's moment of history and the sorrow of the nation.

When I have a strange idea, I wonder how to put it.  It's as if they come as dreams, presentiments.  They come, and they have to be chewed upon, and then they need writing down.  They are thoughts that come one day, then they need to be put away, then slept upon, and then reassessed by the light of inspiration.

There was a time, long ago, when I was approached outside my dorm one night, by a fellow a year behind us basically challenging me to fight.  "We both know who would win," he said, and then he walked away.  I felt I had initiated the whole thing that had led to such an incident with my own fool behavior, and so I did not feel right pursuing it.  And yet I restrained myself, probably swallowed some pride, as he was an aggressive type who thought well of himself and probably talked a lot, all of it without really impressing me he was anything worthy or special.  For a long time I may have regretted not rising to his challenge, and from time to time, I must admit, it comes up in my mind.  How would I handle such a challenge, knowing that it would irritate my mind for years, whereas he would take more confidence from the meeting and go on with his life.  There are few people I do not like, and I might say, he would be one of them, from time to time.  And only because I am a writer, an American humorist, a fan of great people like Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, I do address it.

It's a common problem of ego.  My deeper thoughts are that really, in the end, none of it matters.  You can tell yourself in your mind, oh, because of this, that happened, and because of that, further things happened.  But really, not much of it does matter.  It's all a great story of fiction that our minds tell back to our minds.

But this is an extremely odd thing for the intelligence to accept.  And because we mark now a strange thing that happened fifty years ago, a terrible event, one finds such things approachable.  What is the meaning of life and of life events, of the things that change us, of the things we wish went differently.

Dallas, November 22nd.  The stupid things of life.  The idiots.  The effect of them.  How to grapple with the fact that that 'leader of the free world,' who pretty much averted a situation of total nuclear war, who was a classy and humorous guy, ended up dead in mid stride and no more of his excellent words about what was happening at present in the world as far as events and worldly powers.

How to grapple with the basic fact of life.  How to accept tragedy?  What is that science, that math, that study of the things we must find to be unhappy and deeply disappointing and tragic.  How do we deal with it, how to digest it all.

What is it?  Is it that there tends to be a lot blustering in our lives?  Doesn't, in hindsight, the whole tale of drama seem a little overblown?

But then, try to be a Buddhist.  Try to say that the Communist world was benign, therefore not a logical object of suspicion, not having committed great atrocities, atrocities that, if you're reasonably lucky, you almost know directly of through a grand old neighbor, that JFK saber rattling was drama, it doesn't hold water.  Not at all.

And yet, the effect is in the reaction.  The reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis is actually the basic message here, to be cool, to not get overheated into overreaction.  That was the gift of JFK, the 35th President of the United States.  To not get overwhelmed, or carried away with the superfluous, with the ego.

The proper reaction, it seems, is to be calm, and not get overwhelmed or beyond yourself.

That is the ultimate graciousness of the great leader himself, that of Lincoln, that of JFK, to be, even in the heat of things, circumspect, even when the voice tells you to press the button of things like war.



I suppose what's left are things like the words of the man himself.  He sought to defuse the tension of the Cold War.  We all breathe the same air, he said.  We all have the same hopes for our children, we all are mortal, we all have the same dreams.  Which is a pretty deep statement, when you think about it.  He let us see that other people cloaked in some blanket understanding were people just like us.  An insider who included the outsider.


He was, in my mind anyway, a kind man, who liked people, and he had that quality of wit.  Those are the things I find myself most greatly appreciating, his basic thoughtfulness.   And sure, a lot of that entered into the decision making process.  But a lot of that part of him, his aura, if you will, his magnetism, his charm, while appreciated, seems to be practically taken, by the historian, as something beside the facts.  The humor, the good looks, the smile, all of that seems to be finally taken as a pleasant side dish, sort of like Lincoln's charming folksiness, his gift for a story, his clumsy awkward form that somehow sustained so much strength and higher thought and the merging of poetry with public policy. "A house divided," he brought up, out of the good book, applying it, and made it apply like a ruler of truth to the situation.

And in the end, this is the fragile part, the part we cannot protect, the vulnerability we all have, as great as some of us are, as common as some of us are.  "The world will little note, nor long remember…"  The statesman, yes, comes and goes, and makes daily decisions that do effect the world, but a certain portion of that is something like ego, as maybe an Eckhardt Tolle might point out.  Do you really think there's anything in Vietnam that you really can do that is going to make much of a difference?  What comes of it is nothing but a huge tragic costly waste.  The same might be said of the Civil War itself, even if we don't want to believe that.  The world will go about its business, people will be people, economies will run as they want, exploitive as they may be.  Perhaps then it is the ego stuff that attracts the nut job, the lone assassin in his own unhappy world, stuck as he is with his own ego and self importance.

In the end, it's as if we see the humility, the friendly human quality of a 'great man.'  That's what we hold onto and remember, protect, keep safe, cherish somehow somewhere, as if they could be, in a way, part of our own lives, sitting in a room with us.