Bernie
I will miss you my friend, your jokes, your advice, that vision of yours from it's greenest, lushest, blue-sky landscapes and also from the dirtiest and most squalid circumstances of the ancient tales you tell; Phoenix emerging from the black ashes to span the heavens gloriously once again in your come-of-age sobriety. A vision of pain and suffering that vanishes, healed, in an ephemeral smile, that capacity to cause all those around you to laugh uproariously with a single word, a gesture or a look. That's you, friend of my soul, that always made me see the folly of insisting on my own suffering by confronting me, fully, intentionally, with those so clear images of a pain so more real and profound than mine and to do it with such absolute simplicity, at once warm and loving but also mocking and gleeful that irresistibly made me reconsider time and time again.

Fare thee well friend of my heart. May Dylan and Richards, Harrison and Clapton and all the rest make way for you and accompany you toward that other garden. My best memories of these last few years go with you and bind me to you. I do not lose you. Those memories will make way forward for me, they will guide me, they will illuminate my path and they will always be a source of certitude and joy.

Goodbye my friend and see you soon.

On August 11 this year, I posted this quote from Ursula K. LeGuin on Facebook,

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then so did the divine right of kings."

Now, we are living with a President of the United States that believes he has been chosen by God, and many of those who support him believe that too, and that therefore the things he does are "God's work". If you watch the news, you have seen him personally saying "I am the chosen one" and his supporters saying similar things. And there is a very interesting series on Netflix called THE FAMILY that addresses why and how this has come about, There is a growing group of people who believe that if something is happening, it's happening because God has ordained it. They believe God cares more about the Elite, those in power, that He does about ordinary folks and that the proof of that is that they have the power.

Tengo una veladora prendida para ti.

We were best friends when we were little growing up in Mexico City. I was Johnny, he was Juanito, or Johnny A. to my Johnny C. His parents and mine were friends and visited back and forth. Juanito and I often spent the night at each other's house and played with the chemistry sets we both had, made magic tricks out of matchboxes decorated with tissue paper, or rummaged in his father's “cobacha”, the cupboard underneath a staircase, where his father kept his climbing gear. We dreamed and fantasized about climbing together. Perhaps even Everest one day. It was the fifties and Edmund Hillary and Tenzin Norgay had just succeeded in climbing the world's highest mountain for the first time ever.
Then it got interesting.

The Grail is lost
We have riches, wealth and knowledge to excess
Possessions pretty and magical
Some petty and some perturbing.
Mass creation and destruction at a touch
Blind and deaf from light and music that forever
From little toxic boxes flow
And steel carcasses surround us
Bending time and space on endless tarmac tendrils
Or floating—roaring—amidst the clouds
But the Grail is lost

When we were six years old we held hands and told the grown-ups we were going to marry when we grew up. Later, in our youth, she became a good friend's girlfriend, much to my chagrin. I would have loved it if she had chosen me, though I was too shy to do much to encourage her. Then we each went away to separate and distant boarding schools, though I don't think I ever knew where she'd gone til much later. In adulthood, we lived an ocean apart, until her father's imminent demise brought us back in contact. It was then the flame was rekindled. And also then that she reached out to me pleading for help. Her chosen lifestyle had made her an undesirable tenant, leaseholder or borrower and she needed help finding a place to live. The apartment she had lived in for years was going to be sold and she would be evicted. I stepped up to the plate and offered to provide a solution. She suggested we form a company to buy the apartment, she acting as partner and manager of the company and I as major stockholder. We went ahead.

For years I've talked about how if you think of the planet, Earth, as a living being, and all the different species of plants and animals on the Earth as the differentiated 'cells' that make up that living organism, then what do you call a type of cell that reproduces without anything to keep it in check and creates great scabs of concrete, glass and steel on the skin of the living Earth that exude poisonous fumes and extend long tendrils of concrete and asphalt endlessly out from scab to scab? In my mind it would be fair to describe it as cancer.

How does the way of Money lead straight to hell?

So here we are, humanity, the only species ever to evolve on this planet with the ability to destroy itself (and many others along with it) on the verge of doing exactly that. And watching ourselves do it, commenting on it and debating it. But will we change our self-destructive ways in time to survive the disaster we are in the midst of creating? That's your homework! Six hundred word essay due monday.

For the moment, this page is dedicated to peace and tranquility. Glad you got here. Hope you enjoy it. The picture above is of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl the volcanoes that used to dominate the view toward the east from Mexico City, now almost always obscured by the smog. It was taken from the window of an airliner on the way from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta. Artifacts produced by imperfections in the airliners' triple windows were removed using Photoshop.