Yes, We Need a Little Naked, Right This Very Minute

January 7, 2013:  Monday morning, and the remaining bounty of Christmas decorations demonstrates the continuing—dare I say growing—need for spiritual fulfillment in America (or at least my little corner of it). Yes, it turns out I’m not alone in the satisfaction I garner by way of the holiday season, and despite my heathen leanings, there are few joys in my world like the magic I project upon December.

No, I’m not alone, except I suspect many people don’t acknowledge their hunger. In fact, we as a nation—a world, perhaps, but I wouldn’t know—are starved for spiritual connections and fulfillment. But we’re too embarrassed to know what to do. Yes, I said embarrassed, because in my definitions of spirituality, it’s our own cloying discomfort with ourselves—everything from our outside appearance to the personal stench of our inner assholes—that keeps us from letting our guard down enough to allow spiritual satisfactions in.

Why so serious indeed? Simple. It’s just fear—fear of … well, everything! Fear originally cultivated in our respective demented families of origin, but blindly perpetuated by a demented society, drives us, controls us, and—to this point—prevents us from allowing ourselves to experience the pleasure of a free spirit.

You must understand—in fact, I insist, if you’re going to read my Blah-ugh!—you understand that spirituality is not synonymous with religion or religious practices—though these can offer a means to the valuable end—but more importantly describes—identifies, in fact—who we really, authentically are, despite what our thinking muscle keeps insisting. If you’re able to set your thoughts aside for a moment—a delightfully simple yet simultaneously hard motion—and allow yourself to fully wake up into the moment of this very moment—you may just understand in that instant that all that you are right now—that whole awareness and consciousness—is everything about spirit, and that spiritual relates to all those things that aren’t centered with your physical body or your calculating mind.

That said, getting in touch with your authentic self thus demands—at some point—that you honor that self by letting it be itself. (My god, even the grammar checker on this stupid computer couldn’t digest the heady tone of that line!) The problem is that, so often … too often … we’re constantly bombarded with societal messages that prevent us from risking being ourselves, mainly because we live in fear of what other people may think, or that exposure of being ourselves will somehow prevent us from getting something we think we need.

But let’s shift back to more Blah-ugh!-related inquiries and ideals, and so move the question of What of the Jews? While the Clausians continue an impotent attempt to prolong vague spiritual stirrings through light bulbs, the Hanukkoids are hunkered down in customary defense, waiting for the next uprising. Some smart Jews—like myself—make a big show of endorsing Christmas in order to thwart suspicion and keep the Nazis off the trail. It’s pretty sneaky, I know, but what do you expect from a Jew? The sneakiness is in our blood. (Boy, this computer doesn’t like anything I’m doing today!)

But all kidding aside—and I want the B’Nai Briss to know I’m kidding—we’re never going to come close to achieving that much-desired spiritual fulfillment as a society until we lighten up and start running around naked, even in the cold weather. The upside of tragic events like Newtown is that they provide people an excuse to fall apart. That’s why so many people tend to wallow in these kinds of events, if you will, because it affords an opportunity to be naked without fear of reprisal, because for that window everybody’s naked and they won’t be singled out. People hate to be singled out, even me; it’s just that some of us, through necessity, grow used to it.

I propose that starting this year people begin an informal competition of displaying the most outrageous lawn decorations they can imagine—no holds barred. I think this will be a good spiritual practice for a culture desperate to have the stick yanked out of its ass, but too self-conscious to even acknowledge that it’s there.

Half a Fla-ugh! is Better Than None!

July 16, 2012:  I noticed something odd the other day. (And why should we be surprised to find odd things, what with Washington airports being named after Iran-Contra Scandal principals, and Watergate perpetrators being put on stamps?! ... No, nothing surprises me anymore. I don't even surprise myself, except when I come out of the shower, and then it's more shock than anything ...)

Still, this was -- and is -- always odd to me these days. Flags, I mean -- public flags, and the fact that they always seem to be at half-mast. Yes, once again, just last week, I walked (or perhaps skulked is the right word) past a public flagpole -- you know the kind, all straight and white and tall and public -- and there, once again, was a flag left hanging halfway up the pole, and for some reason I still can't quite grasp.

Once upon a time -- it seems so long ago now, when people were people, and not robots, and stamps were 10 cents, or 13 cents, and people licked them for the sheer pleasure of it, and not just to "send" ... Well, back then flags were almost always at the tops of flagpoles where they belonged. It was a rare occasion -- a dark, shared-public-consciousness kind of day -- when some serious death occurred in America that brought the flag back to mid-strife -- presidents or Miss America finalists -- and we walked around for a couple of solid numb days going "ooh" and respectfully mooing "moo," all sublime in our solemnity, like a bunch of sterile coconuts.

But now -- or so it seems to me -- that stupid flag is always fluttering halfway up the flagpole, and I really can't figure out why. After last week's afternoon of inspired contemplation, I finally concluded it had to do with the untimely death of Ernest Borgnine, and then for a few minutes it all made sense ...

But then I began to wonder why was it always at half-mast so often times before his dying. I mean, what am I to conclude? (And by the way, what are you to conclude? What are any of us to conclude, except that these Blah-ugh! entries get worse and worse, and our money would be better spent on fresh copies of "Space Case" by Jarret Liotta (meaning me) (available through Amazon).(Yes, yes. It's all true!))

Anyway, I don't remember what my point was, except you can't trust anything these days, even our founding father flag. I suspect that eventually we'll learn certain corporations are paying significant amounts of money to keep the flags half-masted in the hopes of marketing something. Flags perhaps. It may simply be that Wal-Mart can sell more flags in the summertime if they're kept closer to the crowd so the rabble can grasp them quicker and find motivation to get out and buy more ...

I don't know. It's just one theory, good as another ... Peace out! R.I.P. Ernie!

"I Go Out Walkin' ... Before and After Midnight ..."

March 26, 2012: Well, another week has passed and I'm no closer to anything on my "bucket list," except perhaps my death. One difference, however, is that I've stopped putting undue blame on myself and have started placing it squarely where it truly belongs -- on everyone else.

It's been an interesting week, you see, in part because I've started walking everywhere. And if you want to learn anything about the people around you, try walking everywhere and see how many of them pass you by on the street. "I saw you walking this morning," has become an annoyingly familiar greeting at work, and one to which I have to perpetually keep NOT replying, "So then, why didn't you offer me a ride?" Instead, I find it a great opportunity to brood and embrace that certain otherness that makes me the kind of person who can't just sit on his laurels collecting an exorbitant salary like so many disturbed people, but must also continually express his disturbed notions in a Blah-ugh! (or a Blah-ugh!-like venue, such as an e-novel, such as SPACE CASE, which is really nothing like my Blah-ugh! except it was written by the same person, who was me, or IS me ... or Esme ... so anyway ...)

I've always been vastly disappointed by the collective non-response of my Blah-ugh! readers to my infrequent offerings (excepting the few of you who DO respond, and in whom I'll forever forgive everything, including minor theft and periodic body odor ...). Here it is, I commit not only MY thoughts to paper (or could I call it virtual papyrus) on an almost daily basis, but YOUR thoughts as well -- (Come now, you KNOW I do, and that's the POINT!) -- and in responsive gratitude, you merely cast me aside without so much as a glance because I'm no longer driving that Mercedes that Matt lent me ... (and Matt is a lovely man, by the way, except for the fact that I'm starting to suspect he's really Italian.)

The point is, you should all be ashamed of yourselves for perpetuating the myth that Americans are surly and lazy and have to drive American cars and eat at Duchess. It's disheartening, yes, but also vaguely unnerving, because somewhere in the past -- and I think it was 1975, actually -- we took a wrong turn and have never got back on the high road. And yet we all sit around bemoaning how awful things have become and how too many people text message when they drive and do all this terrible stuff, and yet when I mention that I'm on foot, people look at me like I just shit in their oatmeal.

On a parallel note, I was disturbed to hear from my son that they now install front-seat DVD players, supposedly for the passengers. Now this just takes things to a very bizarre new level, for I still can't get my head around how they allow those television screen navigation systems in cars, let alone mini movie theaters. I mean, it's absolutely comical. Do we as a culture -- as a world -- now really believe that it's not ENTIRELY DISTRACTING for a driver to have a giant blue-light screen shining in their face while they drive?!! No, I'm serious!! I'm just mystified beyond all belief. I mean, am I from another planet and just don't realize it. Please, be honest with me. I really need to know at this point. Am I the result of thoughtless inbreeding and too much Lysergic Acid in my developing years?!

Anyway, I hear my wife coming, so I'd better end this before she catches me. This is no time in America to deviate from what we're all expecting to experience in each given moment, and it's especially way past the time where a good American can raise any sort of question that might rub someone the wrong way. Unfortunately in this country it's just no longer safe to rub anything anymore!

I think it was Gary Neuman who so eloquently sang, "Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors. It keeps me stable for days in cars."

(Who am I kidding?! I KNOW it was him, but I'm so scared to SAY I know because I don't know what you'll all think of me for knowing! ... See! THAT'S what it's come to!!)