http://LionInSunHeart.stumbleupon.com/review/34887712/

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:01:47 -0700

Change you can freak out about
Or: How parkland pot, flying cars and
John Cusack will save the world

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, July 31, 2009

This is the amazing thing about rabid global economic recessions combined with volatile environmental collapses combined with a tasty national identity crisis combined with a truly historic, revolutionary president combined with a gnawing sense that our species might not be long for this world after all combined with the overwhelming sense that something, somewhere, something big and meaty and interesting and maybe even profoundly and butt-shakingly unexpected, has got to give.

This is the feeling: anything can happen. Nearly every day in this New Millennium Wonderland, we are swarmed by distressing, heartbreaking tales of woe and hardship and layoff, only to spin right around and read about something positive and uplifting and innovative emerging from it all, some unanticipated, rise-from-the-ashes kind of thing that whipsaws your perspective and pinches the nipples of your worldview.

Upshot: within a few meager minutes soaking in the media whirlpool, you can travel all the way from defeatist, punch-you-in-the-face, we're-all-effing-doomed misery right on over to "hey, you know what? Maybe all is not lost and we might just survive to blow ourselves to smithereens another day." It's exactly like riding a rickety old rollercoaster in hell, but with better drinks.

Here's the really delightful part: Between those two extremes lies an even more intriguing and juicy category, stories and ideas that fall somewhere in between heartbreaking and hopeful, tales we can't quite categorize or define as good or bad, right or wrong, liberal or conservative, hard or soft, sweet or sour, sacred or profane, spit or swallow just yet.

And why? Well, partly because the ideas they contain have yet to fully sort themselves out, but mostly it's because, by and large, we as a culture have never really been here before, never in this exact spot in time and circumstance, with this particular set of traumas and dramas and apocalypse and opportunity, and therefore have no idea what many these grand social notions -- economy, health, gender, God, capitalism -- all really mean anymore.

(Not that we ever really did, I realize, but our massive, bloated, BS-happy Greatest Generation ego sure led us to believe we did. How cute we were!)

Truly, these are my favorite kinds of stories of all, so fraught with mystery and confusion and what-the-hell-does-it-all-mean. I love them not only because they serve to remind us that we can, if we so desire, rearrange ourselves and our identity far more fluidly and interestingly than we might believe, but also that we have far less control over the gyrations and contractions of the swirling hissing pulsing universe than we like to imagine. Ain't it grand?

A tiny example, signifying nothing: California state parks. They say our new, brutally slashed budget means that upwards of 100 of our beloved public pastures will just up and close. No hiking, no camping, no poison oak, no pissing in the wind. They say, furthermore, that Mexican pot cartels are already gleefully swooping into these selfsame parks and cranking up pot production to "epidemic" proportions, simply because the government can no longer afford to monitor and police them, and it's prime growin' land and, well, why the hell not?

What does this mean? Does it mean we are doomed to be flooded with crime and land abuse and skanky Mexican weed for years to come? Does it mean state lawmakers will quickly snap to attention and realize that pot is everywhere so we might as

http://LionInSunHeart.stumbleupon.com/review/34709914/

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:51:26 -0700

How can one say anything but
..............."YES!"
"Yes!" to this
this buried mystery
this sacred seed
this upward pushing
this urgent invitation
to create
what has always been possible.

And yet,
On arrival, should we still humbly console our
weary Soul before the first stroke of our brush?

-LionHeart in 'Hermitage'-

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