Some are Sicker than Others.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

Materialism is an impressive thing. I know that some of us wonder why we may be having such a difficult time meeting our needs in this time when excess and abundance are readily available to what appears to be the very worst among us; as exampled by that link on the first line of the posting. We might also wonder at the truly ridiculous nature of the whole event. Not only is it an example of conspicuous excess to the nth degree but the little punk also had 14 other luxury cars and got a massive allowance each month; not to mention he had something like 27,000,000 dollars worth of other property. The greatest injustice concerning the whole affair are the sentences levied out against the crime. One might well ponder the enduring travesty of largesse extended to the absolutely most undeserving among us.

Here is a website where the obnoxiously privileged among us post their feats of self indulgence spending complete with the receipts. This article goes into a little more depth about some of these wastrels. There are scads of available links if you have that affliction that I call Voyeurism of the Rich. This is similar to the wide spread fascination of the Kardashians and celebrity worship in general. The general theme is that these people can do no wrong, in fact they set the bar for desirable behavior that so many wish they had the opportunity to indulge in.

Without question, you have to be made a certain way to be in possession of such a powerful disconnect when it comes to a practiced indifference about the fate of those less fortunate and to be inspired to rub everyone elses nose in your privileged state.

When I was quite young I lived in Washington D.C. and my best friend was the offspring of a wealthy family. He was and is a good guy. He no longer has any money either. He went to school with other children of the rich and famous and through him I was able to get an eyeful of the character and personalities of these people. I didn't spend much time there as I was busy tripping most of the time and searching for God but I saw plenty regardless. Then I moved to the Jewish Rockies in Woodstock. This is the colloquial term for The Catskill Mountains and it was there that I got my first taste of real professionals at selfishness and one pointed material focus. Because, at the time, I was a pretty entertaining guy and had a gift for comedy and humor; something you don't see much of from me these days and when you do, most people don't get it (grin)...; because of this they liked to have me around and sometimes I would get their houses and cars when they were off to Jamaica or wherever. I don't know if this was so much due to their generous nature, which is about as common among them as hummingbird shoes but more because they felt like they had someone to watch their place and they trusted me. I got to see what it was like to be able to afford as many expensive drugs as you might want and what kind of women were drawn to the scenarios that played out there.

I look at this as having a particular gene, like the gene some people have where they can play the guitar better at six months than I will ever play it in this life, or the genes that provide any of the exceptional talents and serendipitous or tragic events that befall some but not others. I have certain genes of a certain type and am convinced that all of us do, for better or for worse.

The more I look at all of these things, the more I view Materialism as a fever, a virus or a birth defect. Some people catch it and some don't. Some are born with it and some are not. I was stunned when I learned that there are men and women who can tell, just by looking, who made your shirt and pants; who made your sunglasses and purse, who made your watch, who made your perfume and so on. I can't tell any of these things. Sure, if I see a label, yeah. I'm indifferent to this shit. If somehow I got a Rolex I would sell it. I certainly wouldn't wear it. I would feel like a shameless poseur if I did that.

I lived in New York for awhile and was often around Soho and lived for awhile in the East 60's so I would see the fashion windows of stores. In Soho I used to see jeans that I wouldn't have bought in a thrift store, selling for 800 dollars and up. Sometimes they were ripped and torn. I think they call them, 'distressed'. I saw badly shaped jeans that were cut too short, top and bottom and I even saw people wearing them with their paunches pushed forward in exaggeration due to the cut of the jeans. What is it about people who buy exactly the kind of clothes their bodies are not shaped to take advantage of?

For a long time I have taken it as an obvious fact that I live in a huge mental institution, only I am not a mental patient and I know this precisely because the patients think I am crazy when it is the other way around. I have often considered wearing a white coat and carrying a clip board as a private inside joke. The more sane you get, if you are in pursuit of the ineffable, the more crazy so many other people begin to look to you and after awhile you can tell by the tics and specific forms of behavior just what particular form of mental derangement they suffer from. I am guessing that masters have this facility to a very advanced degree and many times I saw one laughing about this very thing and many times I heard them commenting on this very thing.

When you finally become sane, there isn't much else for you to do except to serve as you go and work the depth charge and timed explosive device circuit. You no longer possess any material ambition. You realize that all that is left is that period of time you must wait before you are released from this zone. Since you no longer have any attachment to any of this junk there is no longer a magnetism to drag you back here and if you have burned it off, or had a burst of grace from the cosmic bank, your Karma has been neutralized. I know that many people believe that Karma is a fixed construct but Karma is a process directly tied in to awareness. Karma is a process directed at awareness and however awareness is reached; that specific necessary awareness, the criteria for karma has been met and Karma is then rendered unnecessary.

I say “I don't know” because I don't know a great deal of the time but this does not mean that I know nothing whatsoever. There are some things that I know. I know that there are visible and invisible planes. I know that there is an interpenetrating consciousness that permeates everyone and everything. I know that we are eternal beings birthed by an eternal process in search of an eternal state we are already in possession of but that most of us are unaware of. I know these and some other things because I have experienced them over and over again. I have the gene for this sort of thing. I used to think that everyone had experiences similar to mine but now I know that they do not.

If we could produce a pie chart with the general interests of each measurable demographic, sectioned by color and a black separating line, one of the tiniest slivers would represent those of us that have spent and are spending our lives in pursuit of the ineffable and who are also more or less sane. When I say sane, what I am referring to is the ability to see things in proportion to what they are and what they are not and to be unmoved by any relative value placed on any of them by the covetous world. In other words, to be able to see real value as opposed to a value generated by scarcity or a collective compulsion to acquire it.

What they don't tell you at the Rich Kids of Instagram, or in the boardrooms or country clubs or any of those other exclusive watering holes is that all of that stuff gets old and if it doesn't get old then there is something really wrong with you. These people have to pretend to an enjoyment they don't possess in order to keep face around people who don't care if they live or die. I remember being in some of those country clubs and marveling at the glad handing and transparent lies. It was like being in a mausoleum with dead people who didn't know they were dead. The chief joy to be extracted from being able to afford expensive things is the knowledge that others are not able to. Only the possession of love and the ability to care makes life worth living.

This is the appropriate moment to link to a Patrick Willis rendition of Bend Over and Wait:

...which says what I think about the whole matter better than just continuing on in this vein for any longer. The last time I looked, which was some time ago there were thousands of visitors, now reduced to a few hundred and I see this every time I revisit one of the Youtube productions of one of my pieces. There's a reason they do it but the only important thing is the amount of people who actually came by and not what the counter says.


Have a wonderful day!


End Transmission.......

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