[ about notions of home, real and imagined ]
this has been written for a christmas open mike session at crisis skylight, a place in london that offers ‘help’ for people without a ‘proper’ home. what’s happening there is basically courses, lots and lots and of them, which you’d think is a good thing. on one hand it is. but if you turn up as someone like oneself, who could basically teach at least five of those courses to a higher standard (drawing, art, writing, psychology, mindfulness, qigong, piano, etc.), then all they can do is turn around and persecute the persecuted. i’ve been thus put in a position of segregation within the ‘shelter’. i’m not killed, but ignored, which is the professional way to deal with ‘unwanted elements’ these days, to use a nazi lingo for illustration purposes …
anyway. i’ve managed to get on the list of acts after lots of hassle. and i’ve managed to get on stage after lots of hassle and clowns guffawing to whittle precious time away. then i read, saying, i don’t usually do readings anymore and i don’t usually write essays anymore. in this light, this is for you. appreciate or don’t, it doesn’t make a difference. we’ve long long passed this stage as a writer :)
obviously, exactly when the juicier bits started to happen “… then anyone could just walk into your local council, open a suitcase with banknotes and say, “listen, mate, here’s a deal for you. Look at what you could do around here with all of this. Our guys bring in state-of-the-art knowledge and technology //// !!! ///”, i got cut off by management on grounds that i take too much time. the clown in charge confirmed and ushered the next set of clowns in. and i said, “it’s alright to silence me. i’m very used to it. but it is your time that is running out, not mine.” and i left the farce behind. maybe some of the gathered audience understood what’s going on and that’s what my performance was all about.
over and out.
I
It used to be said that the home is where the hearth is. It was, for the most part of human history, the centre of living, the always welcoming source of food, warmth and communication. Entire Greek cities used to be centered around the original fireplace laid down by their respective founders. It had to be kept burning as the flickering symbol of a flourishing society for as long as the city that grew around it existed.
But things progressed, obviously, and after many decades of petty struggles and questionable achievements, as the new centre of home has now established itself a mighty piece of flashy machinery. The television. So much for the ‘evolution’ of mankind.
Yet how is it that increasingly less of us even have a home, let alone hearth or television? Why do we face being outcast and tumbling? Why are we increasingly lacking our most deep-rooted needs? Aren’t even dogs better off, these days?
Certainly, having no home is the main reason why we’re gathering here today, around this substitute hearth of an open mike session, which for the time being impresses on us the archaic warmth of group safety and belonging comfort. A communal social hearth such as this, including the catered neat choice between veggie and meat burgers, can at least temporarily give us the illusion that we’re still part of the human race. But be careful. Don’t think too much. Take your medication. Be happy. You’re all so great. Poor buggers. Thank god, I’ve still got my job. “It’s a jungle out there” (original quote from a food-serving Barclay bank volunteer). A business plan tailored for people ‘in need’ that is based on fashionable, board-room-savvy condescension. No one tells you the truth. The show must go on. Something to laugh about. Bread and games. Let them continue. A marvellous choice of learning opportunities. Reality is just too complex. Where to begin?
II
Well, reality is indeed complex. Why the fuck have we run out of homes, for Christ’s sake? There are many layers of answers, way too many to spell them all out here in a few passing words. But let’s just hint that Christ has indeed something to do with it. Or better, the Barabbas bunch of gangsters. And – the proverbial ‘fallen state’ of Woman. Buried in matter. Adam’s first wive. Zeus’ shunned wive. Hearth keeper. Life Giver. Coming Home. Womb. Bridal chamber. Holy of Holies. Alchemy. Helpmeet.
But of course, on the concrete asphalt level, ‘religion’ has nothing to do with it. So who’s to blame? Well, we’ve all come to know meanwhile about ‘new world order’ and a global imprisonment into the invisible framework of world government. Orchestrated from above the even topmost echelons of international governments – Masonic lodges and their executive bodies of secret services, banks and corporations – the fulfillment of ancient prophecies was a task that most kings and emperors readily subscribed to. Little did they seem to know (or at least didn’t want to) that whenever humans entertain certain plans, on another layer of reality there are always higher plans within plans at work, and deception always lies within deception, so that any human endeavour inevitably faces the same insight that Napoleon is said to have had after being shattered, “the best laid out plans of men and mice often tend to go awry.” Who knows who you are really sleeping with? Is there anybody you can truly trust? Can anybody trust their own selves even? Why bother carving “Know Thyself” into the frontispiece door-beam of Delphi’s oracle?
Invisible and for the most part unrecorded deceptions or seductions were actually far more significant for the writing of human history than otherwise visible and readily recorded wars or disasters. Sex, Concubines, bedspring whispers, clandestine promises and outright temptations. Back-stabbing, jealousy, malice? What about money? Britain was apparently far more successful in ‘colonising’ the world than the Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish together, because Henry VIII (when he wasn’t too busy with all his six wives), decided to simply set up shops, not only fortresses, wherever his Britain deforesting fleet ventured – ie, it is far more efficient (or ‘professional’ to use a modern term) to conquer with trade, not with armour. Whether friend or foe, it doesn’t make any difference. Powers’R’Us, either way.
So, historically, any king needed to be careful. Attachment to money has always been considered to be an enormous problem in spiritual-philosphical circles. Do you know, did any Camel ever make it through the needle-hole, in the end? In ancient Greek democracy, involvement with money was an insurmountable obstacle to being allowed any political voice. They even went so far as to use forced exile for anybody with ‘too much money’ or who leveraged their money in such a way that was antithetical to the commonly shared sense of human, dignified living.
A successful constitution of any country meant that money needed to be kept ‘in check’. It had to be issued, monitored and spent, whether at home or abroad, with respect, virtue and wisdom.
III
Thus, we’re returning to the asphaltic core of our present home problem. If money is the only bottom line within a chilly ‘evolutionary existence’ (the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ crap), then anyone could just walk into your local council, open a suitcase with banknotes and say, “listen, mate, here’s a deal for you. Look at what you could do around here with all of this. Our guys bring in state-of-the-art knowledge and technology, and you and your mates never have to worry about money again. Plus – all your people can be made happy overnight – you know what I mean? What more do you want? Employment opportunities and lots of changes everywhere. There’ll be massive changes even, transforming not only lives but entire communities. There’ll be a buzzing climate of progress everywhere. And when we’re through with this, you’re not at all the same poor, insignificant borough, county, nation or state anymore, but you’re happening. You’re truly leaving your mark. History will never forget you. You’re in the ‘book’, man.”
Naturally, you won’t tell them that once your infrastructure is set in place you’re running the whole bloody circus, monopoly style, controlling all shots and markets, and it is any integrity that might’ve been still there in your town or borrow, that’s now become history. Essentially, if you take the money, the majority of your people will be finished. Everyone with a brain and any halfway decent spiritual-philosphical education knows this. But here’s the catch: if you say no, you’ll be dead, either real or at least career-wise, and somebody else will be chosen instead. If Coca-Cola can’t swallow your new promising drinks brand, the same batch of money will stomp you into total invisibility. In other words, whatever your choice, whether you take the money or say no to it, it’ll always work for those ‘powers’. So the outcome is simply inevitable. Sounds inconceivable?
Yet this is exactly what has happened. It happened all around the globe, in fact, sometimes more openly, sometimes more covertly. More openly, economic hit men hired by the CIA and the World Bank have already blown their whistles, claiming what they did should certainly be illegal but, sadly, is not. Simply put, the world does not belong to the ‘people’ anymore, or, rather anything ‘human’. It belongs to something else, instead. There’s a machine in charge whose gears are continuously turning.
IV
Let’s wrap this up with a few exemplary words: If you still own a virginal farmland, while all your neighbours have already evolved their businesses through irreversible subscription to genetically sturdied crop, it is not the only thing discomforting that your closest neighbours’ soils can never be made pure again. If the wind blew one of their seeds onto your land, the company owning the rights for that dodgy crop can actually sue you. Thus disown you from your own land ‘just because’. Now that’s some catch-phrase of ‘disenfranchising’ for you.
But hang on, the comical farce goes on and on, though. Back in the Thatcher / Reagan days, they made-up the term ‘Neo-Liberalism’ which in fact meant taking all possessions from you, the ‘people’ – amenities like gas, electricity, transport and water – and deliver them into the hands of their greedy corporate mates. They thought anything with the word ‘liberal’ would go down well with a detested, liberty-craving populace.
And the catch phrase ‘emerging markets’ de-facto meant to rape all third-world countries by putting alien shit in place and suck them dry as quickly and phenomenally as possible. It’s just great. Lots and lots of investment opportunities for anybody who’s got the cash. Look, people, something emerging. Pop, Pop, and here, look, some more. And all so noble sounding. Pension and hedge funds. Progress everywhere. That’s what the old pensioner farts back home have been asking for, isn’t it? We’re just doing our job, what’s wrong with that? Just snort the coke, mate. Get a life, loser. Long-legged hookers soaking bean-counting digits at arm’s length.
Curtains up. Homelessness London, Christmas 2015: Now that the emergence-job’s finished and third-world nations are pretty much done for, of course, anything on this planet that might still be left emerging, is hitting home now. Homeless-littered America has already done that a while ago. So it’s now Europe’s turn to proffer some of the things left ‘emerging’. Groundwork has been laid most satisfactorily. Mega-cities and systematic centralisation are simply a great base for no-risk investments. After all, the more people who need them, the more promising are the profit-margins for all those so-called ‘homes’ or ‘offices’. Not to worry about old laws of supply and demand anymore, since no one needs to live there anyway. The capital has bypassed all purpose and reason. The capital is henceforth and forever-and-ever rated thousands of times higher than anyone who is merely human.
V
What else is there left to do other than laugh about the madness of man and their self-righteous and stiff-necked ways? “Do I take pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”, recites Ezekiel. So it’s not that we haven’t been warned, is it?
But let’s again not get into religion. It really doesn’t go down well, these days, and besides, we certainly feel that praying isn’t enough anymore. Let’s remain instead crystal-clear and aboveboard scientific. Free Masons, like most secret societies, all share a belief in what they call ‘the Tradition’. What they mean by that is lost knowledge that had existed before the flood. The treasuring, researching and passing on of such knowledge is called ‘Gnosticism’. In the past it was simply unthinkable to be an artist or writer if you weren’t initiated into the Gnosis. It should be clear by now, even without being religious, that this place is most definitely not run through big-bang-anarchic Chaos. Not only behind every religion, but also behind every major corporation, secret service and bank, there are always kind-of Gnostics at work. What is happening right here and now, as well as everything else that might be happening, including ‘emerging’ terrorist plots, is all being monitored and recorded. Washington computers are churning microchipped gears overtime. Since we ourselves are also ‘cultivating’, treading the path of Great Dao, Masons do of course at the very least respect us, if not openly acknowledge. What they detest are the ‘we are we’, or the Barabbas / Cain crowd.
Everyone knows that Buddhas don’t punish people. A Buddha’s starting points is always compassion. There might’ve been the odd occasion where Artemis / Diana shoots one of her arrows straight through the heart of one rotten-to-the-core mortal. Zeus smashed his flash only towards some fellow Gods on rare occasions. To most of us, it seems clear that the way of heaven to deal with ‘bad’ people works somewhat different:
“Oh my god, how great you are. Here, have some more credit.” It’s really hard to turn back once you’re dead-set on a road to ruin. This tells us that individuals are not destroyed but rather led down, further and further, towards the sinister path of complete self-destruction. For an entire populace, they might find themselves, due to continued denial and ignorance, boxed-in to the point of having no room left at all to navigate any further. They might find themselves, through their own choosing and doing, facing a black hole ‘at the end of it’. And that, also, is heavenly annihilation, rather than having anything to do with ‘evolution’.
In Daoist thought it’s really hard to free oneself, or rise up, from a cosmic tide that is sheer enormous. It’s already hard enough to even recognize that you’re trapped in a waning tide when everyone near you is also trapped in the same decaying tide. In the same Daoist view, sand running through an hourglass can be taken as a beautiful, non-digital example of what modern quantum physics refers to as a time-space or space-time. Karmic debts, deviations from the Dao, quite clearly accumulate. Pay back later, pay more – inn’it? It appears to be a clean-cut law and universal principle.
VI
Putting things back in perspective again. Home and cultivation. Reality and polite-ics. Cultivators aren’t afraid of hardships, of course. Yet if there’s anything left for a humanity to speak of, it there’s any remotely human argument, the pre-condition for any human living and its full scope of human expression within all our social engagements, it is of course, to have a home. Also Aristotle, 2300 years ago, felt that the core cell of any prosperous kingdom is a healthy household or family.
Standing here, rootless, lonesome and lost, holding on to the somewhat cold, not all-too welcoming hearth of a substitute group ‘family’, things have fallen apart beyond redemption, haven’t they? For truth and integrity, there is simply no Ersatz. Rather than gracing with talent and beauty her own kingdom and chosen King – why has Woman been working for somebody else instead all this time, metaphorically speaking? Well, here we go, another full circle. So what is it, really, that ultimately constitutes home? What is a womb? What is a cave? What does it all mean – castle, palace or mansion? What about bathroom? Living-room? Bedroom? For us homeless, all of these have become merely dreams and fancy bubbles. Yet are we not, by having faced rock-bottom, having seen the asphaltic core truth of it, the actual ‘real people’ in this crazy world?
Within the Unfathomable, it is certainly not too late for miracles to happen. Everyone is still taking their true stance right now, openly and sincerely, while not capable of seeing the actual fabric of the cosmos with their very own eyes. As long as this present realm is still under the ‘spell of delusion’, as Buddhist thought puts it, there is still time to wake up and perhaps glimpse our true homes, homes that surely are in other realms, better realms, more pure and holy. And who knows, in this way, by glimpsing them, we can successfully create a decent dwelling place, at least for the time being, in this, however transitory, dimension as well? ‘Own’ a lovely household-family? Reclaim our birth-right, a place of welcome to lay down our head with human dignity?
It is doubtful, though, whether we’ll ever see anything about any of this on telly.
Therefore – do not believe the hype. In fact, don’t even touch it.
Yours truly,
draft magazine
London, Christmas 2015
