Freedom.

Like many who came to America, I have a strong sense of freedom within me, and I came to this country to pursue it.

Along with watching the spirit of America dance on the edge of a sword, I also now understand that freedom is not given, it is always claimed.
Within us all we know freedom, but as we grow we become more solid.

In my opinion America invented freedom in the world. As I watch the struggle of power in Washington, I realize that my actions may differ depending on the outcome of events, but my freedom lives in me – and how much I am willing to stand up for is how much freedom I have. As a “for-instance”, let me say, that I have the right to remain silent at any and all times, not just when someone arrests me and they read me my “rights”. I claim the right to not have to speak to anyone I don’t want to speak to. It’s that simple.

Another example: I have the right to anything that goes on in my body, hence a woman has complete authority over her embryo/fetus/baby until it is born. End of story. We can discuss the sactity of life until the end of time, but everyone owns their own body in my oppinion.

Freedom was won on the beaches of Normandy, but it is revived by small actions we take. If a census worker comes to your door and you don’t like the questions, will you still anwer? If a policeman fines you unfairly do you take the time to go to court to object?

America is a unique country – and I don’t use the word “unique” lightly. It is truly a one-of-a-kind. The people here are good people who 99% of the time can work things out between themselves (99.98% of the time probably). There is no question that at this time in history the mashine, the government, corporations, unions and other organizations are too big to be sustained by honest working people, so what will the people do?

I saw what happened in Denmark, but here I don’t know because this is America and Americans have a different spirit than the people of Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere. For almost 300 years people have come here because of freedom. The gene-pool is rich in mixture, but sound in conviction, and as the move is afot, the spirit also awakens.

Maybe the new revolution will start with a simple “no” in your life.
Freedom starts and ends within us, and when we are willing say “absolutely not”, freedom lives – even if they put us in jail.

Phrases coined.

I like turning things around.
I like to make stuff up that turns things around.

Here are a few ’sayings’ that have come to mind over the years:

“If you can give it to yourself
You can have it from another.”

“Out of two possibilities,
The third one usually happens.”

“You never get a second chance,
But sometimes you get another first.”

“I haven’t listened much to my own opinion after realizing
It was only one in 6 billion.”

“My ego is still on the board of directors,
Just not as the CEO.”

“Nature’s ways are always crooked.”

“Don’t plant flowers in a mine-field”.

“Silence is the sound of someone listening.”

“Dance is music made visual.”

“There is nothing wrong with having your cake and eating it, too.
It’s eating it and having it that is the problem.”

“Ignorance is bliss, but it’s hard to keep it up”.

“Some say I am full of myself.
- Rather that than being full of someone else.”

From Beatles to DNA – or “Extreme ADD”.

It’s good the see the kids taking on the Beatles, now available on “Rock Band”.

It disproves a theory of mine, that you cannot transmit the soul of something through the digital medium. The music is proving itself to be good enough to stand the test of time, such as Mozart’s or other great composers have managed over hundreds of years, but it is first in historic terms, that music is lifted into a new generation not from notation, but digital recordings. Yes, these guys recorded analogue, but the kids these days have never heard the real bands or analogue records played, yet they respond, otherwise no sale, so what is it?

It’s a code.
Within the pulse of melodies and dynamics of music a connection is made between souls. Something familiar passes between two observers, something that reminds them both where they came from, and perhaps where they are going. I smiled to Mozart standing in the room when I heard a sonata for the first time and he chose a better phrase that I expected. Across time I felt his presence through the artist now playing. Within the regularity of patterns others stick out and get through to us. It’s a code that doesn’t repeat, in a way. Some people feel the same way studying famous chess gambits. Some feel it in poetry – the lilting of the words, the pulse of metaphoric fields…

Perhaps memory itself is a melody. DNA could be considered digital information in that it contains a finite number of combinations, but is that all there is? What, other than sequences of numbers is included in DNA? It is part of living cells, but once separated from the living cell the DNA can produce no offspring. A single protein requires enough code for building that would fill volumes of books, but how can proteins form from the presence of DNA molecules alone within a cell? To me, it is similar to having the schematics of a tractor in a book on a coffee table – having the information is one thing, but someone still has to build it, find parts, physically put them together. How does that get done? Is there a melody that goes along with DNA that makes all of life dance to it?

One could argue that classic music notation is a digital medium, i.e. that the notes are quantified in terms of placement on the scale and duration within the measure – and then it is up to the player to add human expression. The spirit of the composition lives in luring the mind in unexpected ways. I’ve often said, the melody exists only to confuse the mind long enough for the Soul to get the message. As long as the melody is ahead of the mind it will lure the mind by speaking of mystery.

Music is rich, deep code. Just like Callill Gibbran use metaphors that take you to unexpected insights of your own humanity, it is in the listener’s heart the composer lives.

I have long speculated that an energy, “ki”, “prana”, “essence”, “soul” can be passed among living beings, and that this energy is vital to our experience here. I have thought that this energy could be transmitted though the mediums of art, especially music, and it would still be present in recordings, just like original paintings and sculptures still resonate from the artists’ hands. As example, I understand that one cannot visit the original “David” without still sensing Michelangelo in the stone. I still believe, that when such art is represented digitally the “vital energy”, in lack of a better phrase, is absent. It makes sense to me that something which is infinite cannot be reduced to a finite set of numbers, but the Beatles are doing it, the kids are getting the spirit of the music – how?

I don’t have the answer, but here is a final thought on the “added feature” that must be present in the DNA molecules, besides the information:

If one looks at a cross-section of DNA (as above) it looks to me like printed circuit-boards, hence it must be capable of electromagnetic resonance still singing the song of creation.

This seems similar to me in the mystery that a mother passes all the eggs for her daughter’s children to her before she is born. I believe the reason the eggs are passed from mothers bodies directly to their daughters – unlike men who make sperm as they go – is that the key of life must always be passed alive and cannot be created from physical parts alone. Like an Olympic torch, the melody of life has been sung like endless mantras within each living cell from the very beginning.

Trippy stuff…

Hey Arnold?

Dear Govenor Schwarzenegger.

As our reining governor you are making my life difficult.
You changed the vehicle-laws, so that a 25 year old car now has to pass a smog-test it was never designed to muster.

I have a rare old van, which suits me very well. In a way it is part of my personally. I don’t drive it much but it is my only transportation. To protect the world, presumably, you are demanding that I jump through all kinds of hoops, spend money I don’t have or bribe people I don’t know to keep things going.

A 25 year old vehicle cannot be held to the same standard as one from last year. If it is well maintained surely that must be enough for my fellow Earthlings. Wherever I go I am always welcomed, even in Earth-friendly circles. People don’t seem to mind I only get 14 miles to the gallon, perhaps because there are so few of these old Hippie vans still on the road. I’ll also bet everything I own that the combined emissions from all vehicles like mine in America will not delay the onset of rising oceans by even a second. Your law is a feel-good piece of governmental oversight that is messing with my life for no good reason.

Stupid laws cost money, solve nothing, breed contempt, and makes lawbreakers out of otherwise decent people.

They say it takes a big man to admit he is wrong. I’ve seen some of your movies, and it seems to me you should be able to qualify in that regard. My advice: Get the facts. Get off the green-machine-train before it completely derails, and let me have my “clunker”. And STOP FIXING THINGS THAT DON’T NEED FIXING. We all have better things to do.

________________________________

Details?
I have had a 1977 VW bus for 10 years. It is part the local landscape here in town – and will most likely not be able to pass the mandated smog inspection next year, so my choices are:

1. Get rid of it.
2. Try to “fudge” the data – like the global-warming scientists did – by tricking the DMV mandated test.
3. Registering the car in another state and hope nobody will notice.

I would like to bring it up to its original condition, even improving the performance by replacing the flawed fuel-injection system with carburetors, but the law says no.

Be honest. Have some common sense and serve the people of Carlifornia for goodness sake.

Who am I kidding? We thought you were a leader but you became a politician instead. Big difference. Our mistake.

“Arbeit macht frei”

It is interesting that there is attention on a sign that was a lie, intended to fool the neighbors of the deathcamps of Germany.

That is what the beast does best: It lies because it’s true agenda would not attract many sensible human beings.
On christmas eve, another stone will fall on the heart of freedom.

Waikie, waikie America.

Hey, Tiger Woods?

I am amazed at how the public thinks it has a right to know about your home and sexlife. Oh the detailed speculation that so-called news shows will get into. I think you should just keep on playing golf, and insist that how you live your life is between you and your family.

By all means, evaluate your life, but ignore the news. If your sponsors pull out, so be it. Some may stay, but live your life, eat drink and be merry – possibly not married. If you kept on winning tournaments without a single comment or excuse to the “world” – it would be so refreshing. Imagine, someone with his balls intact…

Just an oppinion…

My questions to a Muslim brother.

Oh Brother,

You may ask questions of my religion anytime. May I ask you something that I wish to understand?

If you keep reading I presume = yes.

If your faith is what is called Muslim, is it your understanding that God created everything in the universe?
Yes/No?

Does your faith tell you that God was not only present in the past, but at every moment sources of all life – some say by continuously creating molecules, gravety, light, and living cells?
Yes/No/Cannot say?

Does God hate parts of His own creation?
Yes/No/I cannot answer?

Do you think the All Merciful has human thoughts like revenge, jealusy, betrayal?
Yes/No/Sometimes/Cannot answer?
(I think the Christians used to think that – but I don’t know how many still do.)

And the final question: Does God give you freedom of choice, but also command you to live in particular ways?
Yes/no/yes and no?

Insurance in general.

Both sides of faith lead into yet another system

Guarding myself against misfortune by taking insurance is a two-sided mirror.

You are simultaneously stating: I don’t want this to happen, and I think it could.
Liability insurance is being forced upon us, for the sins we could potentially commit.
We are considered a risk to the system simply by being born.
We are accepting it.
No, we are tolerating it.
Toleration is a factor the system keeps score on.

What may be running things here isn’t so much bad humans, as it is a thought. When you start a train people jump on when they see it moving toward the destination they want. The thought itself that a government can solve a problem has attracted so many workers it may now have developed an “Almost-Consciousness” – a spirit without the presence of a Soul.
The largest bureaucracy in the world is a Frankenstein, told it must awake and save everyone from themselves – while everything it touches either dies, or multiplies and needs more saving.

Take the insurance for my little scooter: Fifty bucks a month. That’s to make half a million dollars available to put someone together again after he meets me blazing down the wrong lane, high on meth-amphetamine. I have to pay a fee because society tells me I am guilty of having the potential of being an idiot. First I became a risk driving cars, then serving dinners and swinging golf-clubs. Now the system wants to charge me for being costly to fix some day – when there is nothing wrong with me and I am not asking to be fixed.

A system would think like that.
An artificially created system would have no soul, nor would it be able to see any proof of a soul’s existence. Hence, it would be suspicious of all soulful things (such as caring for others for no reason), and not trust that I as an individual have a moral compass within me that I follow – not because I have to, but because I want to. How would a soul-less system hear that?

It can’t.

It threatens me with jail-time because it thinks it knows the solution to a problem I don’t have. The problem I now have is a system telling me what to do. I don’t mind the things we can agree on, but those don’t need laws to begin with. I will ignore as long as possible the implied insults, distrust and outright distain the system displays towards me, but I will resist, in any way possible, demands based on pure speculation.

In the system there is no driver at the con, but the levers and wheels move – as if on their own – from all the people in the gears that have learned how everything works and wants to keep it going and growing. Everyone on the train came onboard because they shared a central thought such as: Laws solve problems – or We just need rules for everything. Think of all the people in government working away, creating new positions, new areas where they can make things right, fair, just, equal, pure and simple. All they ask is that you tolerate how fast the system grows.

No.
Know:
I trust people, not systems.
Freedom is never given.
It must be claimed.

To my friends in Denmark

Sitting pretty here in a small town in California I sometimes hear of what the media reports from United States. The Danish newspapers and TV seem to think Mr. Obama is doing a wonderful job and America is finally on the right track.

Allow me to present another angle:

Mr. Obama is expanding government, killing private businesses, raising taxes and making promises he can never fulfill in order to secure power in perpetuity to his political party. I can forgive him for being ignorant, arrogant and possibly a Marxist. What I can’t forgive him for is putting the nation in such debt that it is mathematically impossible for the inhabitants ever to repay it. This is shameful, because mine will be the first generation that will leave the country worse off than we found it to our children. All other generations have fought hard, made sacrifices, worked all thier lives to give their children a better life. We, on the other hand, have already made life harder for our children and childrens children because they will have find a way to pay back the money we borrowed. By the way, Prez Carter, followed by Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2 got the bloating of the beurocracy and entitlement programs going, but Obama has quadrupled our debt in the short 10 month he has been in office.

According to the constitution, neither the president, congress or house of representatives have the legal right right to borrow money on behalf of present or future generations. Everyone in office should be fired or impeached, because they have all sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States and they are ignoring it at best. If we had a free press (or TV) on the side of the people and truth, perhaps our government would not be able to get away with what it’s doing, but unfortunately most people will rather be entertained that learn something.

The second thing I cannot forgive is being weasel, trash-talking America and lying to the public.

There is a difference between not being able to fulfil on a promise – which Obama has done, and will do plenty of – and stating something knowing it is not true. He promised transparancy, but nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. He said no lobbyists were to be part of his administration and it’s filled with lobbyists – and he would allow “no earmarks” in bills – and the “stimulus bill” had over 9000 special “favors” in it. No “special interests” were to run his clock either, and the biggest union in the country put up 60 million dollars in campaign contributions, buying unristricted access to the White House. We have a president that has no problem lying. Amazingly, other politicians, doctors, scolars & scientists seem to follow his trend.

As I understand it, generating prosperity in a free country is not rocket-science. It’s actually easy. Historically it has been shown over and over that if you cut taxes and cut government regulations the people prosper. Yes, you can still be environmentally responsible, but growing government, debt and taxes invariably leads in the OPPOSITE direction of prosperity.

I do not think Obama is stupid, ergo I must assume he is not interested in creating jobs, energy independance or securing the nation. He seems to view private enterprise as toxic and has no real understanding of the spirit that build the United States of America into the most successful nation in the world in a short 250 years.

What I, and others, think he is interested in is political power for his group of elites, and – it wouldn’t surprise me – a world government, where he could run for president.

My friends in Denmark, I’m sorry if you don’t get better information from the press or TV. Listen to some talk-radio stations in America instead, where they actually care about reality, history and facts. I reccommend (yes) Rush Limbaugh, Roger Hedgecock http://www.rogerhedgecock.com/Default.asp?cchk=yes, Glen Beck (http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/) and others.

America was founded on the idea of freedom and personal reponsibility. For decades Americans have been sytematically been told how irrisponsible and mean the country is while being the one power in the world that has done more good than any other nation in history. Obama is saying that people and free enterprize is greedy and cannot be trusted, and a big government is a better way to go.

Socialism/Marxism is an idea that has ALWAYS failed the people, while hugely benefitting the ruling elite. Look at history. Hitler, Mao, Lennin, Castro, Chavez… The leaders say they will take the money from the rich and give it to the poor. Well, they do take the money from the rich, the rich then leave town and take their companies with them and the government rations services to the people. It all seems terribly obvious from here.

To care or not to care…

There was a moment.
I sat outside taking my skates off – after a ride in the streets of Los Olivos.
I put my foot in a cold shoe wearing only a thin sock, giving me a momentary chill.

And I had a thought of a woman sitting next to me, who would notice something like that and ask if I needed thicker socks. I saw a picture of myself also caring for her in that manner and bring comfort to her whenever possible – and I could see the two of us taking walks, doing dishes, sharing time and a sense of recognition of the gift each moment together truly was.

Nonsense, we say these days. Such a relationship does not live long. Everyone is only into themselves and what they want.

Yes. It does appear that way.

We care, but not that much.
We have come to the other side of individualism, where we each live in our own universe with our own goals, our own brand of religion and priorities.

So what’s it to you?
How satisfying is it to get the job, the dress, the connection, the next meal if nobody cares if you do. When something good happens we must tell someone just to see them rejoice for us – and when bad things slam us down we need others even more.

A machine could learn to do most of what we do all day long. What makes us human is that we care. That’s all.

The simple fact is that if you don’t care, life is not worth living. Another simple fact is that you cannot care for others long, unless you let yourself be cared for also. We all start life with love inside us, which we gladly give at first. Then, if not returned, we give a little less the next time – and so it goes until the pool of love we pass between us is less than what we can hold in our hands.

We are so focused on doing and giving.
Will we learn to be and receive?

- When we give, we live.
- When we receive, we grow.
One must breathe in, as much as out – or there will be trouble