ZOMG, this product contains cannabis!

Does anybody alive even remember why it was outlawed?  No, of course you don’t – but you’ll do yourself well to look over the historical – and hysterical – record.

Let’s take a few choice quotes from the era of marijuana criminalization, shall we?

“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”
[1934 newspaper editorial in favor of criminalization]

“All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”
[Texas legislator arguing for criminalization]

These weren’t just morons on the street.  In fact, Harry Anslinger, our nation’s first drug czar (under President Hoover), offered these ominous warnings for young Americans tempted by the evil weed:

“Colored students at the University of Minnesota were partying with white female students, smoking marijuana and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy.”

“Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis.”

“An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles” a childish name for marijuana.”

And today, we laugh at those old quotes – and movies like “Reefer Madness” – as if we’re soooo much smarter now.  But we’re not.  The current crop of “Drugs Are For Losers” public disinformation ads are hardly better.  I saw one recently with a teenage kid smoking pot, and somehow because of this – inside of 30 seconds – his little brother ended up drowning in the pool.  Boy did he feel stupid!  He didn’t know they meant “killer bud” literally!

The reason the ads are dumb, of course, is because they are tasked with the impossible – defending an indefensible policy.  There is absolutely no rational, cogent argument in support of the status quo with regard to marijuana.  None.  Well, at least there is no intellectually consistent argument for its criminalization that does not necessarily take with it alcohol, tobacco, cheesecake, and even sex (or at least sex with hot chicks.)

Since there is no actual, just, sensible reason to keep marijuana illegal (at least not for those who are non-authoritarian and non-idiot) we make stuff up.  There’s no science to support it; just dogma, so we must write very creatively.  From the heart to the heart, as it were.  I suppose the only truly “good” reasons are self-interest; say, if you work for a corporation or a big-budget government agency that benefits from the status quo – well, then, you’ll just have to make scary, dumb shit up.  Some people will even believe it.

The crux of it is that we need to deeply and seriously consider our assumptions on this issue and actually do something about it.  This is not a matter of a few hippies who want to get high.  We have created a colossal social disaster with our drug policies and spend billions of dollars every year punishing people for politically incorrect vices.  And the real tragedy is that most kids are not as lucky as Phelps.  Millions of supposedly free Americans – a vast majority of them poor black Americans – have been stopped, searched, arrested, imprisoned, separated from their families, stripped of eligibility for student aid, and eternally exiled from the world of gainful employment and upward mobility.  If that is not racism – if that is not consciously and deliberately knocking the socioeconomic wind out of millions – then please tell me what is.

Yet we build more prisons.  We sign the checks.  We assent – however tacitly – to these policies.  It’s not happening because of some bad people far away.  It is happening because of us.

Legalness does not automatically confer moralness nor justness.  This is especially true when the laws are based entirely on racism, ignorance, lies, hate, and fear – and completely unsupported by the facts.

We know there are plenty of immoral things that are totally legal.  It is likewise also true that all illegal things are not immoral.  To go further, some laws are immoral.  Thus, laws are sometimes wrong (hence the concept in legal philosophy of “natural law”).  And unjust laws do not deserve the same respect as laws that are just.  Our society has not evolved into a Utopia where every good and just thing has reached a state of permanent, beautiful, codified perfection while every dumb, bad thing has been rinsed cleanly away from our social fabric.  (One need only tune to prime time reality television to know this.)  On the contrary; there is legal laundry to do.  Many great thinkers have spoken eloquently at great length about the difficult social and legal work required to evolve a great, healthy nation.  To evolve, we must ask tough questions and be we willing to – however uncomfortable – face our brokenness and fix things when they are wrong.  And our drug laws are absolutely, totally wrong.  To borrow from Saint Augustine: unjust law is no law at all.

Now, back to Phelps.  Today, Kellogg said they would not renew their sponsorship deal with him because his behavior was “not consistent with the image of Kellogg.”

Wow – you’ve really got to love the delicious, high-fructose-corn-syrup-encrusted irony of Kellogg’s slamming Phelps’ private behavior while they market marshmallow Fruit Loops and chocolate banana Pop Tarts to millions of kids.

Are we a serious country?

Valleywag picked up a FriendFeed discussion between a few of us yesterday regarding the bailout bill within which Scoble blames “people like [me]” for the coming “breadlines”.  It rings a little hollow considering where I’ve been on all this and where he’s been (i.e. nowhere), but it brings a much more important issue to the fore.

To the thread in particular, I realize how acerbic my tone can be when discussing such things and try to be cognizant of that every time I write.  Sometimes my frustration – the result of a bit too much anguish about our national slumber – gets the best of me.  But Americans sat mostly silent as international and domestic crimes were perpetrated in their names and their economy was wrecked – choosing to glide along as if they had far more important things to think about.

Robert is right to describe the financial mess as the result of our collective idiocy.  The bill for one or two generations of stupidity has now come due and our remaining credit cards have been declined.  And for the moment, the social media characters participating in the specific tendril of web masturbation that is Robert’s “what to do” post have come up substantially empty.  So, I’ll see what I can come up with.

Louis Gray tells us the lesson from the long-foreseen economic crisis ought to be that there are no experts. I think that’s bullshit.  Perhaps in a stock-picking context it’s partly true, but the broad conclusion is flawed.  Historically in such things, there exists, in fact, those who were right and those who were wrong.  The arguments that were made on each side, and the subsequent decisions we made as a nation.   Yet, we are compulsively eager to skip over that kind of reflection and self-analysis, all too quick to “move on” and shelter ourselves from the requisite soul-searching that might illuminate us as to how, exactly, we arrived there in the first place.

And now – whether it was the War in Iraq, our brutalized Constitution, or the global credit fiasco now caving in on our heads – our tendency to continue listening with nary a critical whimper to the very voices who led us astray is criminally derelict.  We are heavy sleepers indeed.

It is now too late to escape serious economic pain; I won’t go into it all again here.  Rather, in the spirit of Robert’s sincere quest for solutions, I will suggest a serious way we can work together to fix the systemic ills that brought us to this place.

I’m not asking you to give up your gadgets nor to stop blogging about blogging.  Social media is unquestionably transforming our global culture and our politics.  But let’s devote less energy to the tools themselves and more to the fuller realization of their potential.  I suggest a little less time navel-gazing and a little more time using your voices, tools and networks to catalyze broad, deep, honest conversations about public policy.  And it will be contagious: in doing so, you will set an example for the millions who will see and hear you.

Scoble is also right that it is not without hope.  So, all of you: call your legions to arms.  Tell them a national emergency requires that they spend an hour a day seriously evaluating the American way of life, thinking critically about where we stand as a nation, how we got here, and how they might help in the rebuilding.  This is not politics; this is hardcore societal bodywork.  We face a national existential crisis — please consider that it’s at least possible this is not a bump in America’s road, but a big, dark, howling crevasse.  And as we speed toward it, contrary to popular mythology the people in charge aren’t in the White House or in the boardrooms of corporate America; they are buying shit on eBay and watching The Bachelor.

The Great American Experiment – for all its warts, the most successful social startup in history – is in serious peril, and only an awakened citizenry can restore it.

So, social media stars: ask your readers if all of this is what they had in mind for America and the world when they first formed their ideals about their country and their world.  Ask them if they want to talk about a society that is open, fair, honest, and free – or if they want to actually ensure it.  Give them homework; for a timely example, make them sit through Bill Moyers’ interview of Colonel Andrew Bacevich.  Command them to sit, open-minded, and listen to the whole freaking hour.

Ask each reader to take immediate steps to get vigorously involved in a political campaign, public policy issue, or a nonprofit they care passionately about.  It doesn’t matter what or who the cause is, so long as it stirs them to their core.  Tell them to call, write, show up for shit, volunteer, even give a few bucks if they can.  Ask them to do the things that make their hair stand up.  Whatever it may be, press them to take concrete steps toward nourishing something bigger than themselves – and demand that they to it today.

Tell them to “tithe” their time; for every hour they spend aTwitter or aBlogging, ask for 10 minutes toward something for their country, their planet, or their fellow human being.  Press them each to seriously commit a certain percentage of their time to something that, in their eyes, is likely to improve the human condition.  Not to spend this time – but to invest it in the collective good; to view it as a massive global-citizenship 401(k) in which we are all shareholders and beneficiaries.

And regularly inquire of your leagues as to how they are endeavoring, every single day, to evolve the nation and world they live in.

That’s what to do.

A few months ago – for some reason – that book popped back into my mind.  Who was that guy?  What was that book?  And off I went to figure it out.

The book was perfect for beginners – of course, almost everyone was a beginner to personal computing back then – but this guy’s way of narrating the strange world really opened it up for me.  His language was so colorful, his explanations so accessible, that I found myself glued to the book and returning to it again and again.  The pictures and jokes made me laugh, and his voice was so authentic that the book really touched and affected me.   He turned me on to the idea of phone-connected “data banks” like CompuServe, and I started a BBS a few years later.

I knew this guy had played a pivotal role in my engagement with technology at such a young age.  So, I decided I wanted to find him and reach out to him, see what he was up to, and send him a note of heartfelt thanks and gratitude.

I racked my brain for more clues, took to Google, and my research finally led me to Peter McWilliams.  Turns out the book was the modestly-named Personal Computer Book and first went to print in September 1982.  I ordered an old copy from a bookseller and spent some time with it this weekend.

I’m sorry to tell you that Peter is dead.  And if he had to be dead, I wish I could tell you it was something vaguely sensible and worthy of this guy’s place in my heart, like a high speed car crash in a Bugatti or a heart attack while having sex with two Russian models.  But on the contrary.  Eight years ago, Peter choked to death on his own vomit on his bathroom floor, after a federal judge told him that he could no longer smoke marijuana to keep his nausea at bay long enough to keep down his AIDS medication.  The judge (George King) even ordered Peter, as a condition of his freedom, to undergo mandatory urine testing to ensure his compliance.  Who among us feels this is justice?

We are all guilty in his death.  Some, of course, more than others.  But these barbarian policies are upheld and enforced with our money, our assent, and our power.  We could change them if we cared enough.  To that end, when was the last time you contacted your Congressperson or state legislator and told them what you think about federal and state drug laws?  When was the last time you contributed – time or money – to an organization committed to bringing an end to these draconian policies?  This shit – and make no mistake about it, we are signing the checks and the death warrants – will continue until we choose to end it.

Initially I just wanted to tell him how he affected me and thank him.  But now I want to say: thanks, Peter – you changed my life, and I’m dreadfully sorry about what we did to you.

What I really love about blogging – other than getting my opinion out there and pissing people off – is curating.  I love finding cool, random things that inspire or touch me in some way and sharing them with all of you.  My hope is that you see, read, or feel things you would not have otherwise.

It was one of the reasons – a year or so ago – that I started doing the “microposts” you saw in the sidebar for a while.  I wanted a quick way to say “hey, guys, check this out” without feeling like I had to actually sit down and write.  Maybe just make a snarky comment about the news, as I would if we were at a cocktail party or sitting in my living room watching television.  Or show you something funny, or beautiful, or dumb, or painfully hot.  That was the micropost idea.  In practice, blog posts got demoted to microposts, microposts got promoted to real posts, but with most things I just ended up doing nothing, leaving me pretty dissatisfied with that modality. It just didn’t work the way my mind does, and it still didn’t give people a quick and easy way to engage with the content.

Dozens of web tools have emerged that enable varieties of this – public bookmarking, sharing within newsreaders, meta-blog commenting, and all kinds of other stuff.  I’ve tried almost every one of them, and some of them are pretty good.  But most of them are siloed and still require a level of commitment, understanding, and engagement on the part of the “consumer” that leaves a huge portion of people out.  Most of my readers are regular folks – not technologists who are familiar with all the latest shiny social media objects.  So I’m generally reluctant to ask you to try this stuff.

Add to this the fact that I’m fairly active in a lot of other disparate online communities and would love a way for you all to see what I’m up to in those places as well (and, to the extent that you are also active there, see what you’re doing too.)  But it’s just plain dumb – and overwhelming – for us to expect each other to discover, find, and follow one another in all of these places.  The web is only getting bigger, and I want it to bring us together, not supply us with our own personal corners to hide in.  I might see a video on YouTube I think you should check out, add an item to my Amazon wish list and want to know what you think, publish pictures on flickR I want you to see, hear a great song, see a picture of a gorgeous girl I want you to join me in drooling over, or whatever – and there’s been no good, elegant way for me to do that.  And, the more I’ve thought about it over the last couple of months, the more I realize that this is primarily how I want to engage with all of you.  Yes, I want to scream and shout and stomp my feet occasionally, and I’ll continue to do that right here.  But mostly, I want to find, commune, and discuss.  I want to share, with all of you, this amazing online experience I’m having.  Because it’s not just about the online experience; all those bits are merely the trillions of tendrils that connect our minds together.   What I share and discover online reveals what’s going on in my mind, my soul, my world.  It imparts what I am doing (online and off), where I am going (online and off), and lays open to all of you who I am becoming.

And all of that is worth a lot less if it’s not a two-way street.  I want to see who you’re becoming, too – and I want us all to talk about it.

How the heck can we do this?

Well, all of this is why I’m using FriendFeed.  In a nutshell, FriendFeed lets you create a stream of your online experiences.  You add the various services that you use – say, your flickR account, your YouTube account, your blog, your Facebook, whatever – and stream all of them into one personal river that your friends can see, comment on, and reshare.  It’s young and has a lot of growing to do, but it works very well and is one of the most promising online tools I have seen in a very long time.

You’ll notice a new widget on the right that displays my FriendFeed stream [thanks, Evan].  I’ll no longer be doing those microposts; I will be using FriendFeed in their stead.  I added the FriendFeed “bookmarklet” – a little button in my browser that lets me quickly “curate” something for y’all – enabling me to share something without agonizing over how to write about it in a way that’s “worthy” of a blog post.  So, you’ll find that widget to be a fairly busy (and hopefully interesting) place.

You don’t have to sign up to see most people’s streams – although I hope you will, because then I’ll be able to see what you’re up to as well.  I don’t think I’ve ever recommended any social media tool in these pages, but I’m recommending FriendFeed.

So, that’s why I made the change that I did.  Those of you who get me via RSS will not get the FriendFeed stuff “pushed” to you like you did the microposts (unless you subscribe to my FriendFeed separately) but you’ll continue to get my normal blog posts as you always have.

Thanks, as always, for caring what I think – and here’s to crossing those streams!

However, having been exposed to FOX’s “Moment of Truth” show tonight, I see that we’re there, and in a much more tragic way than I had imagined.

“This is the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been on television,” said host Mark Walberg, introducing the show. “Quite honestly, if I’d had my vote, it would not have aired. But since the decision was made to broadcast it, I want to warn you, what you’re about to see is very difficult to watch.”

As her parents, siblings, and husband of two years looked on, contestant Lauren Cleary first answered some mildly embarrassing questions. Then things got worse. She reluctantly admitted to “keeping secrets about her father from her mother” and then to believing she “might have been in love with a former boyfriend on her wedding day.”

Then, for $100,000 – they surprised her by bringing her ex-boyfriend onto the stage to ask “if I wanted to get back together with you, would you leave your husband?” and “do you believe I’m the man you should be married to?” (to which she tearfully answered “yes”). Through all this, husband was doing OK, considering – until, in a subsequent question, she admitted to cheating on him – and his head fell into his hands.

This poor girl – admittedly on her own volition – sat before her family and answered questions that, in the host’s words, were “way over my line” (yet he bravely soldiered on.)

At one point, Walberg, trying to build drama and as if he felt he needed to remind viewers they were sponsoring a train wreck, told Cleary that “this is bigger than the game … you [might] leave here with $100,000 and go home with your husband and figure out where you two are.”

But the way the game works is in all-or-nothing levels. Once you accept another question, you can’t bail out. You can only bail out and take your money home before the next question is given. If you accept a question (in an effort to get to the next prize level), and your “honest” answer doesn’t jive with their polygraph results (which are highly flawed, as most people know) you lose whatever money you’ve accumulated thus far.

On her way to $200,000, Lauren answered “yes” to the question “do you think you are a good person?” Their faux-polygraph said that was false, and thus, the game was over. So, young Lauren didn’t leave with $100,000. She left with nothing – less than nothing, actually. She was summarily scolded by Walberg for “inside herself” not believing she was a good person – and then sent on her way. Not just with no money, but likely no marriage and a dozen or so big rusty new wrenches having been freshly thrust into her family relationships.

Walberg closed by saying that he hoped Lauren and her family could “make peace” with what happened and that he “wished them all the best.”

Now that’s some sick, heartbreaking shit. Real stakes, indeed. I never thought I’d miss those bull testicles.

On the night of Feburary 5, 2007, while walking around San Antonio to get some night shots, I noted the rather cool way one of the canals was being lit on East Nueva Street, so decided to take some pictures of it.

A few frames later, a man approached out of the corner of my eye (in plain clothes) and said,

“Can I see some ID?”

My instinctive response, before I saw what he was holding, was “no.”

As he shouted, “I better or you’re goin’ t’ jaail!”, I noticed he was displaying in his hand some sort of police identification.

Finding him unusually aggressive, noting his weapon and ID, and hearing his threat of arrest if I did not produce identification, I decided to show him my license.

“Are you taking pictures for personal use or a company?”

“Well, it depends.. probably personal, but I suppose if someone wants to run them, they can… why?”

(getting in my face) “You ever hear of September the 11th?”

“Uhhh, yeah, but I’m not sure what it has to do with this.”

“You are between two buildings, housin’ communications equipment.”

Scene of the Crime

“OK… and I am in a public place, taking pictures of things in plain view. There’s nothing secret or sensitive here. I mean, if I had criminal intent, do you really think I’d be out here in the open like this taking photos?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I would? Have you ever caught such a person?”

As he began a call on his cell phone (my license in hand) and talked (or pretended to talk) with someone, I noticed a news crew setting up about 50 meters away. He ended his call shortly thereafter and our conversation continued.

“How do I know you’re not going to give these pictures to someone [to do harm]?”

“Well, I suppose you don’t – but how do you plan to ascertain that by checking my identification?”

(shouting again) “LOOK – you give me any lip, and you’re goin’ t’ jaail!”

I was really beginning to feel physically intimidated by this guy and sensed that I could only “push” him so far until he would decide to arrest me on a bullshit charge or two for “sassing” him. He absolutely seemed like the sort of law-man who was not above exaggerating and bending the rules to teach a smart-talkin’ Yank a lesson.

Seemingly ordering me out of the view of the camera crew, he said, “stand over there!” and gestured toward the canal and rear of the buildings. I did not, as I had started to see the news crew as a sort of rescue chute. I was actually getting nervous with this guy, and knew if something nastier began to unfold, I could get it on the 11 o’clock news.

“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m standing up for my right to take pictures without being shaken down like this.”

Repeating himself, “there’s two buildings here, housin’ communications equipment…”

“Yes, you said that.. but what would be IN the pictures, out here, that would pose some kind of threat if someone saw it? And what about them [pointing toward camera crew]? They’re taking pictures.”

He nearly lept out of his shoes and got right up into my face, just a few inches away, this time jabbing his finger at my chest. He shouted,

“DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB, YOU UNDERSTAND? I WILL TAKE YOU T’ JAAAIL!!”

Noting he was approximately a hair’s breadth from assaulting me without any kind of provocation – not so much as a raised voice from me – I said,

“Be careful.”

I actually noticed him checking himself for a moment, the way a person does who’s gone to anger management classes. He backed off slightly, and said (a touch less loudly than the last sentence but no less enraged),

“Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

“I am not telling you how to do your job. I was telling you that they, too, are taking pictures.”

“That’s telling me how to do my job.”

“No, it isn’t. Look, am I being detained?”

“No.”

“Then I’d like my ID back and I’m going to leave.”

He put my license back into my hand, and pointed off into the distance behind me – still so close to me that when he did so his arm extended well over my shoulder – and yelled “GO!”

And that’s where my encounter with Lieutenant Phillip Dreyer ended. What upsets me is not just the ignorance and discourtesy of one Bexar County Sheriff’s officer. I realize my encounter sits ridiculously low on the Richter Scale of injustices. But it is one more drop in the ocean of shit Americans have gleefully sipped up in the name of “security”.

Several weeks later, two things are bugging me about this. First, when can we shed the misguided idea that taking photographs is somehow suspicious activity? This is absurd on its face. Can we dispense of this silly notion with zero basis in reality? It’s really sad when talented photographers are writing about how to stay “below police radar” when practicing their art.

The second thing that bothers me about this is that any sane, intelligent person knows that Lieutenant Dreyer, in his heart, had no honest suspicion about my behavior; he merely saw an opportunity to exercise his power.  He did so illegally – and such incidents are happening to people all the time – and at a much higher cost than I paid.

Yet, few of us seem to care – and I find myself wondering how far we will allow such madness to go.

Exploring Texas, where megachurches are more common than oil wells (and probably more profitable), lately it’s made my mind itch a little more than usual. I was raised a Pentecostal Christian, and these places remind me of the intellectual darkness I experienced inside the stifling walls of organized religion.

        Sagittarius Star Cloud by J P Stanley

That a hundred million of my fellow Americans believe these buildings are their best gateway to the Ultimate is heartbreaking indeed.

In my early teens, based on instinct and little else, I rejected fundamentalist Christianity and stopped going to church. My mother was (thankfully) open-minded about it and accepted my decision. I wasn’t sure why it felt so wrong to me, but even at that age I realized that my natural mode of inquiry was incongruent with their systemic resistance to questioning and self-examination. Growth and challenging one’s faith was heretical and an invitation to doom. You’re essentially told: accept the faith as it is or meet eternal damnation. I knew I had to move away for the sake of things much more real and valuable to me: my own intellect and personal experience.

This oft-tamped instinct of the young to grow intellectually, to question the underpinnings of their inherited faith, to attempt to integrate it into what they see and know – is well-described by M. Scott Peck, the late Buddhist-turned-Christian:

“In a very real sense, we begin with science. We begin by replacing the religion of our parents with the religion of science. . . . There is no such thing as a good hand-me-down religion. To be vital, to be the best of which we are capable, our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality.”

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins challenges the social acceptability of children inheriting their parents’ religion. At PopTech last fall, he described the religious practice of early indoctrination as a violation of childhood innocence with superstition. I agree with him entirely. I’d also take that thought on a (perhaps less atheistic) tangent to say that if you have the same spiritual convictions as your parents, chances are you’ve exposed the issue to about as much intellectual light as your choice of socks this morning.

Fundamentalists of all faiths blindly accept a version of God that was handed to them, and one that is no less ridiculous than the Invisible Pink Unicorn or Flying Spaghetti Monster of Internet fame. While most of these people have the clarity to see the absurdity of such deities (if perhaps missing out on most of the joke), they remain reliably blind to their own phantasms. This is because the truth can be so scary that the mind will do anything to shield you from it. For many, a life without their cherished version of God – or being forced to peek into the abyss that is the Infinite Mystery – is simply too scary to contemplate.

I’m attracted to Sam Harris’ sense that we need to be more intellectually honest and tackle such delusions head-on. Spirituality is saddled by fantastic beliefs that – were they not at the core of two billion earthlings’ identities – would be more at home in a fairy tale.

Throughout human history, empires have risen and fallen, wars waged, religions birthed and extinguished, treasures created and lost, trillions of interpersonal dances danced – all in the quest for these truths. While perhaps nothing is more important, fear prevents most people from even peeking behind the spiritual curtain.

I started by saying I don’t believe in God. Explaining this is where we get into the definitional trickery of spirituality and the limits of language, but I’m uncomfortable with atheism due to many of its adherents’ aggressive rejection of Greater Truths. Many tend to believe that we are witnessing All There Is, that consciousness is just an illusion, and there’s no point looking any deeper. I reject that view as wholeheartedly as I do the view that there is a guy in the sky presiding over a kingdom of gold.

For me, the problem of pure ashes-to-ashes atheism is that I believe I’ve had direct cognitive experience of the Great Mystery from which we all arise. Not that I could comprehend or explain it – our minds are simply inadequate – but I’d bet my life that I’ve at least feebly touched the hem of its dress. And it’s nothing like what the Christians, Muslims or Jews have in mind.

What have I learned while sipping from the ocean of the mysterium tremendum? Well, to butcher the words of Wei Wu Wei, I can’t be the moon, but I can point. I am a spiritually fulfilled person. I feel blessed to have lived as I have, and every day (ok, almost every day) feels like another drop into a cup already brimming. But my spiritual fulfillment has derived from direct personal experience of a world that feels – in its every detail and unfolding – like an infinite, interconnected, breathtaking miracle.

I’ve learned a lot about life and how to live it. I’ve learned that it’s possible to be both perfect as you are, yet still have a lot of growing to do. I’ve learned how important honesty is. But the most important lesson I’ve learned thus far is that the Universe wants to experience itself, to become itself. The meaning of life is not in figuring it out, but in the figuring. The infinite miracle is the process of discovering, seeing, and evolving. If you know this, you are well on your way to spiritual fulfillment.

Inquiry brings us much closer to Truth than any conclusion ever could – and this is why the brainwashing of theistic western religions is a tragedy and a group crime perpetuated en masse, all day, every day. To prescribe (and proscribe) religious belief while discouraging the process of evolution is antithetical to truth. Rather, it represents the ultimate in institutionalized darkness and repression.

This exploration is more than a little important; it’s literally the hunt of your life. At this stage in my life, I find myself subscribing to a personal brand of mystical atheism; an entheogen-steeped brew of Buddhism, pantheism, and the sciences of cosmology and quantum mechanics.

But that’s me and where I am on my road. You need to be committed to making your own journey. And along the way, there will be countless mistakes, meanderings, squabbles, misunderstandings and imperfections – for without them, the journey will have been pointless.

Anyway, I choose a smoking compartment because the non-smoking compartments are stuffed full, and I’m hoping to spread out and get some writing done. I am listening to my iPod as I settle in.

The smoker in my compartment, an older gentleman in a suit, faces me and will nurse a girlie cig every 45 minutes or so. His tie looks like one of those loaner clip-ons they give you at Sears Portrait Studio. His teeth are smoker teeth. He has a gold pinkie ring. He and the train attendant are some kind of buddies and laugh and exchange cracks in German as the attendant checks our tickets. The smoke from his girlie cigarette slowly drifts toward the window then gets caught up in the whirlwind from the wall-mounted vents, swirls quickly upward and disappears. I debate offering him one of my super-chic Nat Sherman cigs but think better of it – them’s for hot chicks (although I did make an exception and give one to Casey on the train to Vienna.) He reads a magazine, but the way his eyes cross it sort of looks as if he’s looking past the magazine and right at me. With his right eye, anyway. It becomes more than a little odd to look back at him while Eminem and Saint Dog rage into my ears….

I’m packin heat, I ain’t unprepared…

As I settle in and decide to do some writing, I notice that the outlet into which I’ve plugged my laptop is poorly grounded, so if i let my arm touch the steel frame of the compartment while I’m writing, I get a mild shock. Nice.

No more games… tear this motherfuckin’ roof off like two dogs caged…

The Austrian countryside is lovely. Uniquely-constructed homes make up small, cozy villages that hug the countryside. The homes are colorful and bright, but choose from the same limited palette. They are all laid-back colors, though – soft browns and beiges dance with the blues and yellows of an Easter basket. Resting against the gentle gray and blue of the sky, it all looks like it would be quite comfortable in the window of a Hallmark store.

More windmills – they seem to be synchronized to the music I’m listening to – and despite their steely look, they somehow fit – unlike the occasional industrial building that works about as well as a pimple on the face of a princess. Two small lakes whizz past, probably man made, almost as blue as the Easter-egg houses.

What really does look out of place are the high-tension power lines that stripe across the hillside. For some reason they bother me. Part of it is my photographer – they make almost any scene impossible to photograph well.

Then, as it has done so often during these past few weeks, it began to rain. We arrived in Munich shortly thereafter, and according to the schedule I had 9 minutes to reach my connecting train. However, my train was precisely 9 minutes late, and I was primed at the door to jump when we came to a halt. At that moment an old lady asked me to help her get her bag out of the train. I quickly grabbed her bag, lowered it to the platform, and ran for my train. Oddly enough, I made it.

For a while I had a compartment all to myself. But halfway through the journey a man in a plaid sportcoat and a woman in a black business suit joined me in my compartment. The woman almost immediately began talking on her cell phone and the plaid-coated man couldn’t have been more exasperated about it. He had some very old books and was trying to get some kind of writing done. He seemed to be practicing to give a speech, or was writing a song, or poem, or something – because his mannerisms were that of someone rehearsing. But, he did not like our seat-mate, Chatty Cathy. If dirty looks were currency, this was France’s richest man. He would occasionally look at me, curious either why I wasn’t equally upset or better yet, why I wasn’t doing anything about it. After her third conversation began, he got up in a huff, grabbed his things and disappeared just after flashing me a final look as if to say, good luck with this scene, man.

While we were in Germany, the announcements were made in German and English. Now that we’re in France, they are only made in French. I am fluent in NO foreign languages (although at this moment, French is not a foreign language, is it?) But I am OK with French, having spent a few years toying around with it in high school. I can dissect it when I hear it, I can do alright when I read it, and can even pull together a sentence or three. We’ll see how I do.

And after what seemed like forever, we roll to a stop in Paris. J’arrive!

As I board, I notice that Pig Pen from the Peanuts is a couple rows in front of me, slapping his duffel bag in this very odd way, as if he’s trying to either knock the dust out of it (he’s succeeding) or somehow reshape it. He brought some kind of soft porn catalog along – with grids and all that. Leif Garrett is one row behind me. No – not Leif Garrett now – Leif Garrett then. The guy in front of Pig Pen is blowing his nose super-aggressively. Is this a sequel of the train to Vienna?

As we speed up, windmills.

Ticket check. One scraggly looking younger guy seems to be trying some kind of trick – right when the ticket agent enters the car he heads for the door, but his plan is sort of screwed up by the fact that he needs to pass the agent. The agent stops him and they engage in a very long conversation where the scraggly guy seems to be doing a fake “i can’t find my ticket” routine and goes through every slip of paper and every pocket on his body at least three times. The agent, having seen this act a thousand times if he’s seen it once, is buying none of it. The conversation lasts nearly five minutes. Eventually the scraggly guy heads in the opposite direction with the agent behind him. I will not see scraggly guy again, so I don’t know if they made him get off the train or of they just executed him.

Expanses of farms, alternating strips of green, yellow, brown – almost like enormous carpets laid out over the land, leading off toward the deep blue mountains on the south side.

Horses work in circles, running some kind of mill. Now, some softwood forest patches with some standing water. A pheasant swoops through a small meadow. Some kind of old wooden guardpost stands long abandoned but still seems to look out diligently over the expanse. Nests sit tucked into the tops of a few trees. Little notches in the forests far in the distance mark roads or other man-made disturbances.

Hmm.. a lady on the train with an orange “life preserver” vest over a green chamois-type long sleeve shirt; she looks sort of like a park ranger.

Concrete plants, other plants with big silos. A big farm hosts a roadside sign with a smiling strawberry that waves at us as we pass. More little watchposts – what are these? Some of the grass is so soft and long and white that it looks like a billion feathers. On the north side, a few dozen white windmills… then, on the south side – wow – probably 100 or 150 of the largest windmills I’ve ever seen, some colored a deep metallic blue, some gunmetal grey, rotating slowly. Some have little red tips, some a green gradation on their bases. What makes it most stunning is the sea of farmland and yellow flowers they are standing in… and while it may seem a juxtaposition at first, both represent man’s attempt to harness nature’s power, so to my eyes they actually feel OK together. The one closest to us is at a dead stop, as if it stopped working for a moment to watch us pass by.

We pass a stopped train with automobile carrier train that is probably 50 cars long; it looks like one of those car-carrying trucks but a great deal longer. Each train car holds a couple dozen new Volkswagens of varying shapes, colors and sizes. So, Hungarians have fahrvegnugen, too?

A small flock of sheep looks down over the parked cars.

Another guardpost, this one with a stovepipe – and a dude in it.

If you are paying one whit of attention, it’s not very hard to tell when you cross these types of borders. While the barbed wire has fallen with the communist bloc, it’s still pretty clear what’s up. Ditches remain along the border, the architecture changes significantly, the equipment and hardware and such change dramatically… you can just tell.

Another pheasant watching over a batch of ten or so windmills at a complete standstill. Ten or so train cars parked off to the side, each car with four big silver crock-pot looking things. I bet they are not crock pots.

I’m starting to figure out this train document-check thing. When officials approach you, and you don’t speak the language, here’s how to determine what they want. If they have guns, they want your passport. If they don’t, they want your ticket. The two Hungarian guys-with-guns look over my passport, ask no questions, and stamp it. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to when you get your passport stamped and when you don’t. Almost all of my moving around inside western and central Europe (including into and back form Slovakia yesterday) has been a no-stamp scene. I note the Hungarian guys stamped it where it says “exit” even though I am entering. But, I don’t really think this matters (he said hopefully.)

There is a clear green field and standing back a bit is a bunch of yellow-grey corn. It looks like 1000 cornstalks are standing on a green stage.

Before we enter Groz, I see a colorful village that looks like it is made of marzipan. Immediately after, we pass a farm with at least 300 crows picking through it. This can’t be good news for the farmer, I think. On the opposite side, a pale blue Datsun sits in the middle of a field, and off in the distance a couple of drab-clothed men do some kind of work in the field.

A pile of brush burns.

These are very, very modest homes – but there is color and flair in some of the designs.

We cross a bridge and then I see a field of new Mitsubishis. Two black lab puppies play in the back of a delapidated home, just as happily and enthusiastically as they would in the yard of a Dallas mansion.

At Gyor, we get several new passengers in our car. The most noticable addition to our crew is a very pretty blonde, maybe 20 or so, with sky blue eyes, full breasts held at full attention by a push-up bra, and a tight olive t-shirt that says “Drama Queen.” Baby, drama is my specialty. Let’s skip right to Act Two, Scene Three, shall we?

Pig Pen takes a phone call. His tone alternates between angry and bossy. I wonder if he’s noticed the Drama Queen.

We pass a huge pile of what look like cinder blocks, but they are made of some kind of metal.

Another of our new passengers sits right across the row from me. He’s a cross between Mark Foley and Brian Dennehy. Dressed formally but modestly, his face shows years of wear, he looks sad and weary, while still emitting warmth and authenticity. He darts his eyes over at me occasionally to check me out when he thinks I am not looking. He’s wearing a little brown conductor-type hat. I debate whether I should say anything, but my nervousness about the language barrier stops me short. I have found that the older people are, the less likely they seem to be to speak English, and communicating via my European phrase book is just plain awkward. So, I stay silent as he and I look out together at perfectly organized rows of fruit trees. Surely he likes fruit, a guy like that. Probably in pies, though – that’s the most manly way to eat it. I wonder if he smells my vodka? He looks at Drama Queen the way a peasant might look at a castle.

Pig Pen is ripping things out of his soft-porn catalog now. I don’t want to know why.

Hat-man puts on some thick funky glasses and begins to read. Fruit pie recipes, perhaps? No – a Hungarian Agatha Christie book (Gyongyoza elan, it says.) No more fruit and Drama-Queen-gazing; time to get down to business.

We pass several enormous, abandoned industrial facilities – obviously old, formerly nationalized factories of some kind. I love exploring abandoned buildings, and would be especially interested in former state-owned places like these… I hope i get the chance; they look incredible.

Three happy teenagers walk along a path near the track, one holding a walking stick he’d picked up along the way. An old icebox lies, without its door, in the middle of a bog.

It’s not even 4pm and the pink-blue Hungarian sky is letting go of the sun. The double-paned glass in the train makes it look like two suns are setting. I can’t believe it, but I see McDonald’s golden arches on a giant white stick a few dozen meters off the railway just like you’d see on the side of a US turnpike – a shining beacon for all those citizens of the world in search of an American-style waistline.

Pig Pen dropped something and is crawling around on the floor, mumbling.

A giant flock of sheep is almost the same color of the landscape – just below them is a small army-green railroad car that has been repurposed as a base for the shepherds.

A couple of those tree-bowling alleys. Two cemeteries full of above-ground tombs.

A little after four, and the sun has sunk below the horizon. The orange-and-blue sky looks like a painting. An orange glow covers almost the entire visible south and western horizon.

Another blonde whom I had not noticed before – configured similarly to Drama Queen but not as pretty – starts walking up and down the train. A single deer stands near the edge of a field looking south. Drama Queen would think that cute; too bad it’s too late for me to consult my Hungarian phrasebook and point it out to her.

Nose blowing guy has decided to incorporate intense coughing fits into his schtick. Is everyone sick in this world?

Some of the villages we pass have long stretches of homes that look so *alike* – but right when I get to thinking about how unoriginal they are, I see a group of homes that stand out – they look almost like something I would have built with my Legos as a kid. Red, blue, crisp, fun.

Drama Queen gets off the train at the first Budapest stop (Kelenfold), and Agatha guy follows her. Good luck, man.

And shortly thereafter I would arrive in Budapest’s Keleti station and find my way to my hotel.

Other than a ticket and passport check and some interesting scenery along the way, the train ride was shorter than I expected (about three and a half hours) and relatively uneventful. There was little question when we crossed the border because (beyond the passport checks) the world beside the tracks looked much different. The style of living for these people was still very hard – the fall of communism and the arrival of open markets has changed the landscape out here very little.

We arrived in Bratislava and the sunny blue sky was being rapidly overtaken by gray clouds. No sooner had I walked into the station when it began to rain. As I prefer to walk and explore, I hoped that it was a quick storm, or else I would lose much of my day of wandering. I decided to wait it out inside the station – I needed to get a city map anyway, grab some local cash, and orient myself. First – not to spoil any surprises, but I saw more beautiful girls in my time in the Bratislava train station than I saw in Boston all summer.

I located an ATM and found my way to a withdrawal screen. I was stupidly unfamiliar with the local currency and exchange rate. The ATM presented me with a few options for withdrawing cash – 2,500; 1,000; 500 or 250. I had no clue how much these were in USD, so I just picked 1,000. That turned out to be around US$35, and way more than I’d need. I then procured myself a map of the city, determined where I was, and decided I would take the bus toward the city center and spend the afternoon and evening walking around.

I boarded the bus that seemed right, and about one or two stops later nervously re-consulted my map. A man near me looked at me and began speaking to me in Slovak. I gathered he was trying to help me, showed him the map, and pointed where I wanted to go. He pointed to himself, to say, I am going to the same place – you follow me. I said OK. Then a couple approached, having overheard our exchange, and the lady addressed me in very good English, also offering to help. Then another woman came up behind them but said little – she seemed just to be listening in. On that bus ride, I was already learning about the warmth and friendliness of this part of the world.

Then, our stop. The man got off, as did listening-lady. They both were looking back to make sure I was following, and I was. The couple said good-bye, and I offered a clumsy Slovak “dakujem” (thank you.) Listening-lady disappeared down a flight of stairs, and the man said “down” and pointed to where listening-lady had gone. As I got down below, I saw that listening lady was actually waiting for me. She said she could tell I was “from United States” and that she would show me the way, as she was also headed toward the center of the old town. A couple of blocks (and some smalltalk) later, she pointed me in the right direction and headed in her own – just after giving me a couple points of interest to look for along the way (the old executioner’s house, this old church, this romantic street, etc.)

Thus began my solo walk around old Bratislava. Wow – this was a completely different place from any I have ever seen. Marks of communist oppression, but a lot of up-and-coming creativity, vibrance and hope. Restaurants, lovely buildings, friendly people, and a rich, if rough, history.

After a lot of exploring and picture-taking, I stumbled across a slovak-italian restaurant (that’s right!) and had a great dinner. Appetizer was mozzarella and tomato salad, the entree was a really delicious type of long noodle with creamy sauce, and I had a glass of local white wine to go with it. During dinner, I had a great conversation with the maitre’d, a nice guy who had relocated to Slovakia from Italy several years ago. He had a lot of great things to say about the US, about Slovakia, and not much nice to say about his homeland.

When the bill arrived, I was having a very hard time believing that my currency calculations were correct – but they were – the total tab (with tax and tip) was about US$13. And (as I noticed later,) he had actually charged me for two glasses of wine.

I slowly made my way back to the train station, knowing the last trains back to Vienna were around 10 and 11. As I got into the main parking area for the station, I saw a guy in a suit and tie on the ground, with a briefcase beside him, in a state of total inebriation. The police were trying to help him get up but he was so gone that he couldn’t even begin to right himself. He was just rolling around in the dirt, doing a sort of playful shoo-away of the cops and they were laughing pretty hard. Eventually they called an ambulance (and drunk-man did the same thing to them) and the medics carted him away.

As I entered the terminal I saw that the train to Vienna left from track 6 in about 15 minutes. Perfect! I diligently located track 6 but saw no train there yet. So I walked around – and as departure time approached, re-checked the departure display (one of the older, mechanical ones) and saw that it still indicated an on-time departure from track 6. But track 6 was empty. I heard an announcement within which I understood only the word “Westbanhof,” the station in Austria to which I was headed. I asked two people where track 6 was, just to be sure, and I was in the right place. A few minutes later, at 10 sharp, I noticed a train on the other side of the tracks. As I was contemplating how much it looked like the kind of train that brought me here, it rolled off into the night. Of course, I’d later find out that that was my train, and the announcement had been that the train was on a different track (but I guess they can’t update the display?)

Luckily, another train would leave an hour later for Vienna.

I spent the next 45 minutes in the Bratislava station, sadly noting considerably fewer young hotties than I’d seen earlier in the day. I did note, however, a guy who had somehow passed out, upright, leaning against a heating radiator. I felt real bad for the dude and put a big candy bar in his pocket. I walked around checking things out – not very much to see, really, since the hottie exodus – and sat near the center of the station for a while, sipping coffee and watching the passed-out-guy sort of roll around on the radiator. While I was trying to figure out how he was holding himself up, as if I had jinxed him, he fell to the floor, sending the candy bar sliding across the floor. A woman rushed over, and I thought she was trying to help him, but she was going for the candy bar. I prepared to confront her about that, but she gently put the candy bar back in his pocket.

Train time arrived, and it was one of the not-so-nice EuroCity trains. While staking out a cool (well, decent) place to sit, I walked by a blonde guy who was hiccuping as very drunk people often do. I sat about four or five rows from him, facing in his direction. He was soon joined by a friend who was not hiccuping. A sophisticated-looking couple sat in one of the rows between us. Diagonally opposite me was a guy who looked eerily like one of my old Timberland bosses, Jeff Gatchell. I wondered if Jeff Gatchell would be caught dead wearing a sweater with little racing stripes up the sides and arms, then decided it wasn’t him.

I did a little reading and window-gazing. About an hour and a half into the train ride, I heard a funny gushy sound and the sophisticated couple bolted upright like they’d been hit with cattleprods and beelined for the other car. Hiccup man was throwing up. He and his friend thought this was really funny. After hiccup man settled down, he and his friend tried to clean themselves up with a few scraps of newspaper, headed out of the car in the wrong direction (like, toward open track – I thought they were going to jump off the train for a minute,) then went the other way into the other car where sophisticated-couple went (much to their delight, I’m sure.)

When we arrived in Vienna, I hit the subway. Oddly enough, also on my subway car headed in the same direction was Sophisticated Couple, the Jeff Gatchell impersonator, Hiccup Man, and his friend.

The Gatchell Impersonator would be the first to leave our little ad-hoc travel clan. At the first subway stop, he just got up and left without a word or a glance. Dude – after all we’ve been through – the train, the puking incident, the subway – you can’t even say good-bye? Sheesh.

The extra bonus, though, to make up for the hurtful, cold departure of the Gatchell Impersonator, was that we were joined by a gorgeous girl who walked and dressed like she was on a runway at Fashion Week. What a treat this time of the evening. Of course, Hiccup Man and his friend were making little comments and gestures from the back of the subway car. She didn’t know or didn’t care (both, actually.) It was then time for Hiccup Man’s sidekick to depart. After getting off the subway, he stood on the train platform waiting for the train to go, so he could make dumbass gestures to Hiccup Man as we sped off. Hiccup Man made a finger-gun at his friend as if to say Yeah, man – what a night! You and me! I puked, even!!

Then, it was my turn. I jumped off at my stop, hoping Runway Girl would follow, but no luck. She was trapped on the car with Hiccup Man, and only God knows what happened from there. I had to catch another subway line for just two stops – and while waiting for it, I saw a big Austrian dude who looked like he was probably Central Europe’s D&D Champion. He actually had some kind of horn or tusk on his waist. Odd, I thought.

There were several workers unsuccessfully working to get a manhole type cover open. D&D Champion got up, offering to help, and borrowed a couple of their tools. I really thought he was going to be able to do it, but it turns out his bark was bigger than his bite. (Or, perhaps I should say, his constitution was bigger than his strength? Sorry, D&D joke.)

I boarded my train and D&D Champion was right behind me. He began speaking to me in German, but immediately switched to English at my first English word, asking me which direction we were headed in. I told him, and this pleased him. He then gave me a mischievous look and said, vant a drink? I then realized he had his mysterious horn in his hand. I asked him what it was and he said, limon wodka! I thought, what the fuck, and took a swig. It was actually good. I told him so. He was really pleased about this, too.

Then, as we came to my stop, I thanked him, bid him adieu, and called it a night. Why can’t all my days be like this?