Self-awareness with utterly nothing about which to be aware?
Absolutely nothing existing, no being of any kind in any sense, just the sentience.
How not to be traumatized, but for the fact that trauma did not exist. Absolutely nothing did. Not even timid time. Certainly not space. Nor any heaven and, of course, no hells. Not even an incipient big bang, nor a little one, not even an infinitesimally tiny one. Not even solitude.
No right or wrong, no morality or ethics, no echoes or shadows or hints of things to come. No infinity or eternity. Nothing.
Nothing, but a newborn sentience with nothing to sense.
That’s what it would have been like to be god, in the real beginning.
No wonder divinity lacks stability and perspective. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
For some reason, this morning I was recalling the Christmas season while we were at the Citadel and how our Christmas traditions impacted my whole life, and impacted it profoundly. I recall that we sold ourselves to the “knobs” in a parody of Saturnalia in order to raise funds to share with the city’ orphans and orphanages, and I recall the visits, especially to the orphanages set aside for black children, and how grateful and warm they were, and how much more I think we appreciated the privilege of sharing with them than they welcomed our gifts. Not that they were not appreciated! But it was we who came out ahead I think. It turned us into real human beings. In my case, it evaporated any vestiges of the racism in which we were raised. I hope the tradition prevails there but I tend to doubt it, although I’m pretty sure it is imbedded in each and every one of our hearts.
We each recall many things about our times at our alma mater, and there are many, many things that bear recalling. It was a very full season of years, and it certainly made us who we are. But which of us would have thought way back then that love would be its principle legacy, love for each other and for all of our fellow alumni, love of truth as something tangible, and of honor, and of our fellow men and women, and of the world in which we live, and of tradition, and of the future we hope to bequeath to our posterity. The world is vastly changed from what it was then, in some ways, for the better, but in too many ways for the worst. Polarization and greed have become the rule and empathy the exception. But to some extent, I think we are immune from that.
Just wanted to share with those I most respect. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Fathers’ day is a mostly ignored holiday, a superficial holiday, one taken for granted and most good fathers understand and don’t take being mostly ignored badly. Those that are recognized and treasured have an awesome reward. But too many who deserve some sort of recognition are not remembered at all, or if remembered, remembered in ways that don’t do them justice. Most great fathers don’t look for recognition or praise, they’re too busy doing. Good and dutiful fathers who are there for their families. But it’s a particularly difficult day for those fathers who would be there but for fate, for fathers estranged from their children, often as a result of family bitterness, manipulation and distortion. And it’s a very difficult day for the forgotten fathers, those whose duty done, are pretty much discarded.
I was estranged from my own father for most of my life and am now pretty much estranged from my own sons, two of whom are now fathers on their own. And they’re great fathers I think. I’ll be thinking of them all tomorrow, but I’ll also be thinking of estranged fathers everywhere.
Freud once wrote something that comforts me in dark times, it went something like this: “in darker times there lived a man who thought as you do”. For me, its meaning is that, regardless of how alone we feel in the quest for the right, if we recall that there were, are, or will be others in the same position, who also realize that there were, are, or will be others like them, a bond is formed among us and we are not really alone.
So, to estranged and discarded fathers everywhere: “in dark times there lives a man who feels as you do, and doing so, remembers you today.” _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Atrophying, withering and finally decaying, ties that once bound fade and perish, only the worst memories remaining, only the mistakes and misunderstandings, until it’s too late, as is so habitually the case. The quest for purpose perdures but its objective seems more and more nebulous, more tenuous, ephemerally ethereal, slowly waning, goals becoming less and less visible and concurrently less and less viable.
As a child, in a form of waking dream, I would deliberately delve deeper and deeper into realms of disembodied emotional terror towards a singularity from which escape would be impossible, testing my limits. I’d always just escape, fighting to wake. A seeming exercise to enure myself, perhaps against the future I’d all too soon have to face. And it seems that future is upon me now.
Today, I dream of a variant of immortality where I am utterly alone after times end, when all matter has disintegrated everywhere and gravity and entropy have died in a mutual embrace. Where I have, by default, become the singularity, self-sentenced to eternal boredom and loneliness. A melding of Heaven and Hell. But I do not shy away from that infinite improbability. Rather, I face it with determination as a sort of self-decreed fate.
Self-delusive hubris imposed as propriative atonement.
Manipulable mass hysteria is the incoherent albeit pervasive characteristic of mankind’s collective consciousness. It explains the power religions of any kind hold over their adherents, regardless of how illogical and incoherent their premises and how inconsistent with such premises their practices, both collective and individual tend to be. A bitter illustration involves the pleas made to the same deity by opposing warring factions, both seeking divine intervention to rain death and destruction on their co-believers. But it is far from only in the religious sphere were collective incoherence and delusion reign supreme. Nationalism is a closely aligned phenomena, sometimes involving multiple individual states as part of a multistate collective, and within such states, multiple political associations vying for power in a perpetual quest to control governance. For example, the Hispanic nation comprised of almost thirty different states and within each such state, myriads of political parties and movements. Or the German nation where the same phenomena arises (i.e., Germany, Austria, and parts of other regions in Central and Eastern Europe), or the Slavic nation, witness the current intra-Slavic conflict between the Ukraine and the Russian Federation, historical Siamese siblings.
The United States is, in many senses, sui generis, an amalgam of immigrants from diverse nationalities that sort of coalesced on an ethnic, then regional, then religious, then racial, then gender basis into something similar to quasi-internal-polarized nations, perpetually at war with themselves but capable of uniting so as to be perpetually at war with outsiders (and of course, with the original indigenous population).
Yesterday (April 16, 2022) was “Holy Saturday, commemorating Yeshua’s brief sojourn in Gê-hinnōm (really around thirty six hours rather than three days as usually reported), and I chanced to read an article in Consortium News written by Patrick Lawrence entitled “The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine” (see Consortium News, Volume 27, Number 105 — Saturday, April 16, 2022). As so often happens when I read that rare source of accurate information, it set me off. The fact that such “holy” day is so ludicrously incoherent may have helped. The article dealt with how easy it seems to be to manipulate the well-meaning among us in order to secure their support for anything under the sun, regardless of how antithetical and opposed to our purported values. The case in point dealt with the Nazi reincarnation in the current Ukraine which the United States is not only vigorously supporting, but which it in fact gleefully orchestrated with the unwavering support of its corporate media (i.e., the 2014 Ukraine project orchestrated by Obama’s assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as recorded in her infamous call to United States Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt; see transcript provided by the government owned British Broadcasting Corporation at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957). As Clinton supporting Arkansas hog farmers might exclaim, “Soooeey!”. Their own sweet sonata, to which we might add the qualifier, “generis”.
The omnipotent if hardly independent and certainly not free “corporate media”, a consolidated branch of the United States entertainment industry that operates not so much for fun as for the “profit” of those whose brainchild it is. A brief historical lesson is probably in order. Hollywood, the California version, was turned into an arm of United States and British intelligence during World War I (the War to End All Wars) by George Creel on Woodrow Wilson’s instructions, and it never really looked back. We are a thoroughly manipulated People, not only through Hollywood but through every aspect of our culture, education and sports, all of which both direct our perception and emotions and distract us from the realities under which we live and which we help impose on others. And I say that as a Yankees and Jets fan (they tend to balance out) who has come to realize that the energy I expend on sports as a fan and as a participant desensitizes and distracts me from realizing serious goals, such as my autonomy, my quest to do what is correct and honorable, my quest to separate truth from the narratives to which all of us are constantly subjected.
So! Paraphrasing Yakov Smirnoff “what a media!” It can accomplish almost anything. Think of it, by labeling opponents to their manufactured narratives, almost always false, as “Big Liars” and their honestly held assertions as “Big Lies”, both terms repeated constantly, they deflect meaningful evaluation, and, by censoring any other opinions, they hide uncomfortable truths (e.g., the misadventures of the Biden and Clinton and Obama families, most recently staring Hunter and Jimmy and the Big Guy).
Can you imagine if the original Nazis (or any of history’s worst villains) had enjoyed the benefits of today’s Deep State narrative managers? Why, if they’d wanted to, they could have founded a Zionist Nazi Party in Israel, although there are those who believe they did. We Americans have been bred not to question the carefully crafted narratives we are fed on a 24/7 basis. Bred and trained like Pavlov’s dogs, the stimulus of choice, not a bell, but our mass-produced pseudo culture. In our Hollywood, no ties to any sort of reality are worthy of respect and that philosophy has been successfully transplanted to the fecund territory of our news media a/k/a pseudo journalism. Or perhaps the transplantation evolved from the opposite direction, after all, the purportedly free-press in the United States was founded on the precedent established in the famous Peter Zenger trial held three centuries ago in the Royal Colony of New York, a decision premised on the absolute right to calumny and defame (truth being merely an inconvenient irrelevancy; ahhh, the joys of liberty. Ring that bell!!!).
We have been bred to accept without question the incredible profits available as a result of massive violence, domestically and abroad, perhaps a residue of the ancient Viking glorification of pillage and rape as a valid economic model, but in our case, oxymoronically fused with delusion and denial. Consequently, as Patrick Lawrence observes in the cited article, most of us are indoctrinated to reject reality and are thus virtually oblivious to our record levels of incarceration, oblivious to our record levels of local mass shootings, oblivious to our record levels of foreign interventions, oblivious to the hundreds of millions of resulting deaths. To us, they are all irrelevant abstractions or justifiable collateral damage. Compared to our penchant for pillage and slaughter hidden in plain sight, the Vikings and their Nazis descendants were pikers. But we came about it honestly, the British taught us how to do it, the British of the infamous Opium Wars, and of course, of our own quasi-Revolution.
For us, the denizens of the “Land of the Free” and the “Home of the Brave” (epithets made famous by that famous champion of slave owners, Francis Scott Key), “mass murder” is and has apparently always been a growth industry (just ask the original inhabitants of our continent). It is our most important crop, a gift that keeps on giving. We sow death and profitably so. We glory in armed conflicts at home and abroad, but without the disadvantages of victories which might insure accursedly unprofitable peace; that would devastate us. So we need to keep our enemies at least on life support lest we have to go to all the trouble of creating new ones. That may explain why our country has not won a war since World War II, with the notable exceptions of the invasions of Grenada and Panama; but it also explains why our government cynically created and funded Al Qaida terrorists in the Middle East, terrorists we created to fight the Russians but whom we eventually found to be useful allies, kind of like the Romans with the Visigoths, etc., albeit those proved to be alliances they eventually very much regretted. That explains the 2014 Ukraine project orchestrated by Obama’s assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland; a “project designed to assure the 2022 Russian Special Military Operation, the bonanza that we needed for pillage based economic survival.
Of course, not all our leaders have wanted to be mass murderers. During my lifetime, two United States presidents refused to play ball with the evolving Deep State, that military industrial complex against which Ike warned in early 1961. But both were overthrown, even if what passes for history and news portrays their demise very differently. One was forced to resign to avoid impeachment, and the second, well he was impeached twice but conviction was unsuccessful, nevertheless, well, you know about the 2020 election, the first perfect, absolutely no fraud election in United States history, despite evidence that would seem to indicate otherwise (given all the technocratic meddling, the “pandemic”, etc., the free flowing ballots everywhere, where the “honor” system worked to perfection to assure the absence of sales and related fraud, but, after all, we are a capitalist society).
Despite their character flaws and insecurities, in both cases reflected above, it was the inclination to work towards a world without war and specifically their desire for positive relations with the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, which proved anathema. In each case, the presidents appeared to enjoy widespread public support for such policies, but rather than insulate them, that exacerbated the “problem”, rendering the situation intolerable to those who really run our “Western” world. Thus, today, we are blessed with the ultimate good old boy as “president”, the ultimate Deep State crony, a guy who, if you pay him (or his family) stays bought because that is his unwavering concept of honor (ask the credit card industry, or well, … the Ukraine). And of course, hurray for the Ukraine, that bastion of liberty and democracy, notwithstanding the imprisonment of all political opponents and closing of all “unpatriotic” media outlets and slaughter of 14,000 residents of the Donbass. Hunter, in any case, is ecstatic. Lucky that Obama made the Big Guy proconsul there.
And of course, again referring to the Ukraine, now we have the great little war we needed after the Afghan fiasco to assure the economic welfare of the very few who rule us, one where we are not directly involved, except for the massive defense expenditures being authorized in what now looks like a perpetual stream. As planned, “defense” industry stocks are zooming so who cares about the rest of the markets and the economy and inflation and scarcity, or Ukrainian lives and infrastructure, so long as the Russians are debilitated.
We the People of the United States, especially those who ironically believe that they share liberal and progressive values and abhor violence, racism, sexism, uncomfortable history and uncomfortable journalism, are just fine with plenty to criticize in order satisfy our need for faux moral outrage against others (which makes us feel good), but without really rocking our comfy boats or changing the way things are, the way we’ve been indoctrinated to believe they should be. The way things will remain as long as we keep finding troublesome people against whom to vote, even if we have to settle for “lesser” evils like Joe Biden, the Obamas, the Bush family, the Clintons, etc. One wonders what plans Hunter has for a future presidency, after all, he has huge experience in avoiding the consequences of past mistakes and still remaining in good standing as an honorary victim. The latter being essential today.
Just some things on which to reflect as another Easter flows by, flows by obliviously, a holiday in honor of the Prince of Peace in the name of whom so many, many wars have been fought and so many, many lives have been crushed, and in the name of whom so many people have been and continue to be enslaved.
If Yeshua (the purported Christ) has truly risen after his brief sojourn in Hell, what might he be thinking?
Probably that it’s as if he’d never left his former colleagues in Gê-hinnōm. And probably wondering, somewhat confused, about Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
“Ecce Homo”! The phrase purportedly uttered by Pontius Pilate on the first “Good” Friday as he presented Yeshua to a crowd allegedly demanding his execution for blasphemy, unsuccessfully washing his hands of all responsibility for what was to follow. Perhaps it is even more fittingly a phrase for our times and for what we have become: oxymoronically incoherent, awash in orchestrated poetic orthodoxy belittling empathy and keeping us chaotically in line. “Ecce Homo”! The collective image we would probably see were there a mirror large enough to encompass us all.
A mirror that would reflect fear and hate in the name of love and tolerance. Race, religion, ethnicity, gender, nationality, class, history and philosophy all perverted in order to divide us and set us at each other’s throats in orgies of faux self-righteous indignation. Exuberant hate exalted.
The price of our folly in declining to exercise our better judgment, permitting ourselves instead to be manipulated through fear rather than embracing the courage of our convictions. Bacchanalias deifying purportedly lesser evils. Illusions of a democracy we’ve never attained.
Another message from Cassandra’s archives. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Maundy Thursday represents a transitional day in the Yeshua myth, legend or history, depending on your perceptions and perspectives. A day full of humility, generosity and a sort of nostalgia and melancholy on the one hand, and perhaps betrayal on the other. Although rather than betrayal it might have instead involved fulfillment of a terrible task imposed by destiny, one that led not only to Yeshua’s passion and death but to millennia of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism Yeshua would obviously never have countenanced.
What does that say about destiny’s prescience? Or that of destiny’s purported author, יהוה (yodh, él, waw, él; to whom we refer as YHWH”? Or what does it say about us?
Something on which to reflect during this strange annual epoch of pain and sorrow imposed by יהוה on innocent Egyptian families to punish their autocrat, and imposed on Yeshua as a human sacrifice, and then imposed for millennia on the Jewish people as a whole, but celebrated joyfully by all three branches of the Abrahamic faith in one way or another. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
According to religious mythology and legend, which, as with all myths and legends, may or may not be true, the Sunday before the Jewish Passover, the Sunday Christians refer to as “Palm Sunday” was the highpoint in the brief lifespan, at least in the Middle East, of Yeshua ben, … well what follows ben in his name is subject to debate but might have been “Yodh-é-waw-él”, “Miriam” or “Yosef”; he was certainly not referred to during his life time as “Jesus” or “Christ”.
Why then are the Sunday following the Jewish Passover or the period following the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere the days most important to most of his current followers?
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
I have a pair of very old shoes, now in pretty bad shape.
When they were young and just out of the box they were striking, top of the line, perhaps dreaming of a life on board a yacht, or at least on some sort of vessel, sailing through exotic seas. Perhaps the sea near their birth in the Charleston that I love so much. Then, as the years rolled by, far from any ocean, they instead started archiving memories for me. Memories of the family I once had and of the aspirations I had for us all; memories of the aspirations I had for our country, of the ones I had for our world. Of the ones I had for me.
The years have passed and many people, many places, many things I’ve loved are gone. Misplaced in some cases, perhaps wondering where I’ve vanished, beyond the veil in others. I now live on another continent, the one that saw my birth, in a beautiful city near the sky where snowcapped peaks greet me on sunny mornings, high in the central range of the Colombian Andes. A cycle seemingly renewed but now, again, seemingly awaiting a rebirth. But there are so many people and places I miss, parts of my heart and soul sprinkled far away in time and space. People and things gone long before their times. But, … is there ever a right time for things we love to leave us, … or we them?
Those shoes are old and broken down now, but I still wear them, if only in lieu of slippers at home. My sons are grown and drifted away. The family in which I placed so much hope has turned to mist. Almost as if it had all merely been a midsummer night’s dream. My aspirations are much less than merely unfulfilled, apparently further from fruition than ever. But still, they seem to be echoing in those old shoes that are beautiful to me still.
Misplaced is very different than lost and hope still lingers there. Hidden amidst bruised and battered old leather with wrinkles in the shape of the myriad memories and transitions they reflect. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 