Where does passion come from?

From where does passion spring to fill your heart, mind and soul with the fire that rages unquenched until the moment you wrap your hands around that thing you need more than all things in creation?

Like adrenaline rushing through your veins at the moment of greatest fear, passion ignites your being and charges you with the overwhelming desire for satisfaction.

It comes from within, you create it yourself. And when you find it, it must be expressed to the world.

Passion is the reason we explore, why we set our sails into the wasteland, to go where we’ve never gone before.

is the reason we create art, from the walls of a cave to the Venus DeMilo, it drives us from our sleep into a half-waking world of ecstasy, shaking with agony until our art is expressed.

Passion is the reason we tell stories, the reason we make up profound lies to guide others toward our strange revelations.

Passion is the reason we love, that goes without saying, and you know I’m not talking about sex! Sex without passion is for poor dead souls who have forgotten or who don’t know how and why we love.

Passion is the reason we weep, in any season, in any land, in any heart, in any soul, from a mud floor hut to the Taj Mahal, the reason we give our all, is for our passion. You must give it away.

Passion is the reason we feel joy, and because we are born of love, it is our nature to share our dreams with destiny. What do you suppose is the best way to share our joy?

It is with The Word.

The Word is the most powerful tool that exists.

The Word is Power and Power is The Word.

Learn to write and you learn to sing. Raise your voice and there isn’t a thing you can’t have, no…thing is beyond your grasp, except the things somebody else has already got, and the things you just can’t have.

Reckon I drifted off a bit because my Tepco china was stone cold in my hand when I finally came around. I may have been dreaming. The sun was heavy plate overhead the vibrant pastels and bronzed hues of sunrise had dissipated.

The coffee was bile.

Sam mozied over and sat his haunches. He stared at me, his pink tongue lolling about his lower lip. He laid on his “What are we doing, huh?” look.

I get irritated when anyone has expectations of me anymore. Even a dog. Any mammal, certainly.

Hell, I’m retired. Everything/one can kiss my ass.

At that spurious but largely ignored pronunciemento, Sam shot up to all fours, raging in his half-bark, half-howl. My neighbor had bolted the iron gate and crunched his leather pumps across the gravel to where he knew he would likely find me this time of morning.

Reverend Blackcherry loves to pick my mind for sermon ideas and to get away from “the Mrs.” She actually has a name, she calls herself Mrs. Blackcherry, but if she’s feeling saucy she likes to be called Ms.Rev.

The few occasions I’ve had to chat with Ms.Rev have left me with the impression the sauce is a bit thin. I don’t see her swelling with joy anytime soon. She’s just not the passionate type, and seems about as maternal as a hatpin.

Norbert Blackcherry is driven to my deck to rant and rave because he knows he can. He paces back and forth preaching the dark sides of his sermons.

He likes to bounce things off of me and Sam, who perpetually attempts to skulk away quietly, but knows I’m shooting him a rotting cattle look over his shoulder.

He’ll turn and recurl at my feet…the apt listener.

Sam ceased harking the Rev. as the gate clicked, squeaked and grated to the open position and Blackcherry made his entrance. It couldn’t matter less what had been at hand before he met the room, a monk could be penning a scroll, John Glenn could be taking a step.

“By God! What a beautiful morning it is, eh, Colonel?”

I waved him to his usual spot, an iron and leather lounger I brought from Constantinople that has spent centuries indoors, and in fair weather gets pulled to the deck for Norbert.

His sharp, curious eyes swept about the premises searching for a conversation starter, grasping indelicately for some way to ingratiate, to insinuate or adhere, bolt or nail himself into my morning.

As soon as the Rev got comfortable, Sam rose up on two feet, thought better of it and shouldered to the floor. The Reverend’s eyes locked onto the Mason jar, but before he could engage himself in a worthy discussion of said mysterious contents, he blurted out his assailment du jour.

“You know, Colonel, my family landed here in 1734, having left Bavaria under very suspicious circumstances. We were here before the United States was even a wet dream.

One of us has fought in every war, I have fought in three. I have little idea what America was like in 1734, I have less now. America has become everybody’s whore. The world makes fun of us but we have everything they want.

They mock us, but can’t wait to get here. They despise us, but can’t wait to get their hands on our breasts. They humiliate us, but are dying to bend us over.

America is nothing of what I remember in my youth. America is like humanity itself. It began as a wondrous idea full of hope but now drags its monstrous, bloated body toward Bethlehem with nothing but mockery in its voice.

My family came to the new world because people were trying to kill us in Bavaria. Especially the French and Italians. Every time some fruity little prince got shut out by his boyfriend they would assemble an army and kill some of my people.

The English. Now there’s a fine lot. Fine chaps, mucking about the world stealing everything from everyone. Ah, and their Church…now there’s a bastion of intellectualism. They have nothing good to say about anyone, even themselves, but their best and brightest come to America to learn.

We dragged ourselves kicking and screaming out of the Iron Age, only to become confounded here in the Age of Irony. Not a damn thing makes since anymore. If this is such a terrible country, then why not stay home, wherever that is, and rent the video ‘America the Beautiful.’

It talks about how people came to this land to make a new start. It got ugly at times, but ugly happens wherever people gather in numbers. Majority rules in America. That’s the idea we pounded out under constant threat of death from our fathers.

The video talks about the land…what it took to take it and grow it. How we fed the world and took pride in our work. It talks about the Henry Ford way of industrial lust…build your own from your own materials and take care of your workers.

Keep it so local you can touch every aspect of the process.

It talks about the beauty of the country itself. the physical immensity and overwhelming natural resources that bring nothing but promise in to the future. How America is strong because our families are strong.

How America welcomes all faiths, but recognizes its roots and the strengths those roots carry through the centuries.

Every idea in America is an idea in progress. Everything is, and always has been, subject to change. Novelty drives the universe, and new ideas drive America. More than anything else, each citizen is part of every new idea in America, the video goes on to explain.

It even shows a street that looks a lot like the street I grew up on: twostory homes hidden behind huge trees in fall splendor under a cloud-laced, deep blue sky. It showed a tire on a rope over a lazy creek just like the one near my Grandpa’s farm. The one where I broke my arm.

It showed an America of peace and order, sweeping plains ripe with wheat, sunny farms and herds of sleek cows bulging with milk, forests teeming with a thousand score of perfect trees and crystalline lakes jammed with flipping trout and huge dams holding back the ragged nature that would overwhelm us immigrants.

I went to the new library in Seattle to find a copy of “America the Beautiful” but the last copy was stolen back in the 70’s. I tried Craig’s list but he was dumbfounded, and Google didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.

I’m sure I saw the film, where else would I get such an idea?

What the film didn’t show, or even touch on, was what went on behind closed doors, places where cameras were never allowed back then. Ironically, everything that went on behind all of the closed doors, the stuff we never discussed, helped make America what it is today.

The backroom deals, the bedroom compromises, the boardroom agreements all inspired by greed have made this old whore tired. She can barely defend herself and everyone wants a piece of her. Once you’ve lost your home you become everyone’s victim.

The alphas start sniffing, then the betas and eventually even the thetas are taking what they want from you. Before you know it, even the zetas are reaching up to grab your tit. You can’t ever have enough for every bastard child of earth.

I never used to care much for politics because I thought I didn’t have enough information to draw any particular conclusions. People seemed to know more than me because they had…opinions. I always wondered where they got all this special information that would lead to such strong conclusions…such symmetry of agreement among cliques and groups of people.

The herd. Many humans have an overwhelming need to bond with others and this process is clearly more successful if all parties are in agreement. Oddly and ironically, we like to think of ourselves as fiercely independent…individuals. Proud to the point of arrogance.

The free thinker is just free enough to generally be sorted to the outside, the margins of the group. The view from the fringe can at times be breathtaking, stimulating, exciting.

The lonely part of living on the fringe is seeing those who still surround you can be hardcore obnoxious unlikable bitter and often destructive people who refuse to conform, yet still look, act and talk like each other.

In the middle of the herd you’ll find the pompous, well-protected rich. They like to believe they are on top of the herd, but they need the herd to serve them, so they are never very far from the teeming masses.

They hate having to see us at all. Many like to think that if they are from some ‘special’ place like New York City…they are even more elevated from the herd. Truth is they are pretty much like ‘everybody else’ except a huge mass of people despise them. The people generally don’t need specific reasons to despise those who are certain they are better than everybody else.

The most pompous of the herd are always our Presidential candidates. They can’t see beyond their fawning subordinates, and won’t recognize anybody not connected or helpful to, their group.

Us, in other words.

There are many Americas. One I knew in the past. This lumbering, bloated thing we have now as well as all the Americas of everyone else’s lives. Presidential candidates come from some other America.

A place where people don’t generally have to tell the truth, where justice is relative and relatives are richer than most everyone else. As a member of the working poor herd all my life, I can tell you than no Presidential candidate has ever taken an interest in me beyond my vote.

One candidate clearly supports the very rich, the other always promises a new frontier for the middle-class. It’s capitalism that determines the mix. Nothing else.

If the latter wins, they always dump money into massive social programs that put some folks to work while paying others to not work while 12 percent of the population rakes in huge profits from mismanagement and fraud, so must hire more cronies to redesign everything.

If the former wins, they cancel the massive social programs and hire cronies to prove why massive social programs don’t work, and then they go to war. 12 percent of the population rakes in huge profits from mismanagement, fraud, waste and poor military planning, and consequently hire more cronies to redesign everything.

People often suggest a bigger picture, encouraging us to believe our vote really matters. Please. America does what America does no matter who is in charge. The ‘two-party’ system is a distraction, and it is expensive. It is a system, not a personality cult. The system is in charge.

It’s a system designed to keep people at odds (Liberals like to call Conservatives ignorant, Conservatives think of Liberals as ineffective)

Many of the most bigoted people I know are Liberals who feel liberated enough to be free with their hate utterly convinced of their intellectual superiority. Some Conservatives I know cling to the most vacuous ideas in humanity, convinced of their utter righteousness.

There are as many Conservative queers as there are Liberals. Ironically and oddly, unfortunately and unwisely, few talk about it.

When they do, they are usually ineffective or ignorant, but they still manage to seduce each other though there may be endless discussions about who gets to hang the flag where. If they are women, there won’t be a flag. It’s a guy thing. Like dying in combat.

Capitalism creates a need for war. America is capable of a modest attempt at serving the needs of the headless giant. America goes to war to create more manufacturing at more compelling wages. It may be construed as a consequence of war, but it always happens.

The cheap goods we get from Vietnam were worth losing the war to the capitalists, who didn’t lose a thing, and would have lost nothing as a result of any end to the war. The net result is the same…cheaper products.

We’re in Iraq now for cheaper products. The Asians are getting too cocky. It’s pretty easy to figure that anybody who would let a moron, thugs and gangs rule the country should be ripe for democracy…that’s what we do here, after all.

Regardless of any outcome of our occupation of that unfortunate turf, the result will be the same…in a few years we’ll be buying goods manufactured on the outskirts of Baghdad. Call it ironic, but it isn’t odd. It’s sound business practice. Besides, they are hungry and their fathers are dead.

Besides, if we are to combat the threat of worldwide pollution, we need to build more factories so we can consume more cheap goods under the guise of political righteousness because…because smarter consumers buy a little less stuff, stuff that’s more efficient, but (ahem)…it’s going to cost a little more.

Appears to me as though the aim is to have Communists and Muslims produce 90 percent of the goods (the remainder will be nostalgia units, environmentally specific…curios…who am I kidding Communists and Muslims could make everything anybody needs)

Capitalism only needs Americans to consume this stuff. If we can’t build it in any significant numbers or quality, then we damned sure better be buying it (in a cleaner atmosphere than that of the manufacturing nations) or the rest of the world will simply run out of tolerance for us.

We stopped tolerating them a long time ago. It’s been a struggle defending ourselves from them. But we made it to a free land where they can’t plague, murder, rape and plunder us any more. Oddly and ironically, they like it over here, too.

In Europe, my people were murdered for being bastard children. I can still hear the ringing in my ears. Some sounds can’t be silenced by centuries. Some sounds scream in the blood.

You think a vote for your candidate is going to change that. Just think of the sucker who stands up and says they are going to challenge the gas-gougers. Right. See you next spring. What about the fool who stands up for health care reform?

You can’t change health care by changing politicians or voters. You have to change the 12 percent who run health care.

Change them!” ......

Blackcherry shook his fist.

Sam swung his hairy head around and shot me a baleful look.

"Yo! Rev!" I injected heartily. He stopped...his jaw closing in on one more juicy vowel.

"I'm betting the java was pretty good this morning!"

He paused.

I surreptitiously loosened the ring on the Mason jar and handed it to Reverend Norbert Blackcherry.

"He squinted his eyes tight as walnuts then they slowly spread open, as though taking in the light for the first time.

"You know.." His voice trailed off into what I presumed was still morning.

"Yeah. I know." I screwed off the lid and gave him a thumb-sized bud. He stared at it, rolling it around in his palm.

"How about I knock off a chunk of this and you take it home...come back a few hours later and we'll reboot this conversation."

"?"

“Consider it anthropological tribal studies or whatever...it just flew in from Malawi with the good professor and I am not at all interested except for it's possible didactic, etymological...qualities. You, on the other hand, could use some mellowing out."

"When I went to Indiana State, man I saw more of this stuff than anybody, I mean. I guess wow. I mean, what do I owe you. What do you call this stuff?"

I'd never seen such an efficient contact high. Yet he was nowhere near a point of combustion. He fiddled nervously with this and that and the other thing as I scratched Sam’s furry skull and pondered a phrenophor or two.

The Reverend was silent as I paced two and fro, gathering my conjunctions, prepositional phrases and sentence objects jamming my arsenal of protocols.

I began my delivery as I walked into my subject and took his space. I slowly withdrew as my words sank into his head.

“A rogue storm stalks the dark alpine canyon where I work my way by headlamp down a thin, muddy trail toward a massive tangle of most unfriendly trees…sullen, vacant places devoid of humanity, festering with dark and fatuous jungular complications known only unto itself.

Lightning blisters roiling black clouds; it shimmies, then leaps onto a strobelit crag and pounces leopardlike into the deepest woods, pulverizing a treetop under which I'd planned to pass.

The state flames with careless as well as natural fires following a scant winter and an even drier spring. Many conflagrations have been beaten back by the hard work of crews from all over the country, as well as limp winds and fortunate rains.

The overwhelming heat in the City, in addition to the series of bold arson fires in the dangerous hilly neighborhoods has been pushing everyone closer to the edge. You couldn't leave your house without hearing about ‘the fires’.

The look of fear, concern and curiosity mixed into the face of your average citizen in our fair City was new to me, though I’d seen it virtually everywhere else I’d served the bulk of my career.

Slanted, shivering rain pellets rattle my raingear, splatter my muddy pants. The headlamp's hot yellow beam snakes up through the rocks, skitters over slick, granite boulders and perches on my waterproof journal.

The thirteenth fire took the first victims: two cats who succumbed to smoke, though the home was destroyed, the family escaped.

Fire fourteen was not so lucky. The Feds were in on that one, too, but couldn't make it in time to save a family of five. The next night, a woman burned to death in her wheelchair, trapped in the little cottage behind her daughter's house. Her little dog burned, too.

While I feel a bit edgy about leaving the city in it time of crisis, I'm delighted to be where I am even as the icy rain turns to snow. I dump my pack on a rock ledge to catch a breath and shoot for a satellite fix on the GPS.

It won't work in this nasty weather, but it asks for fifteen minutes to look for a fix. Meanwhile, the delay affords me the opportunity for a wee spot of Tullamore Dew and a puff on the old Meerschaum, the privilege of every Irish storyteller.

I switched off the hot yellow headlamp and turned on two lithium area lights strapped to my pack. Their crepuscular, craven dim glow illuminates and eerie scene, rather like a postcard from purgatory. Could be LED area lamps, could be the pipe and the flask, but faint, blue snow seems to obscure everything in sight.

I wake up and wipe snow off my glasses. I’ve a reading on the GPS. I’m on target, but can no longer see the trail. Soon, I’ll be in deep woods, the GPS will be useless.

Magellan would have trouble charting a course through this thickening snowfall. They said this stuff could kill me, but I’m warmed by the flask and pipe, so now I’ve got 103 ways to die out here.

Sure, there was a woman. The heart of every good story beats inside of one. I made mine up…I can do that, I’m a writer. It’s what we do.

I examined her from every angle, an orchid hunter alone in the jungle with no one looking over my shoulder. I could not, nor did I wish to capture her, yet it seemed I could not live without her.

Nine years of enchantment was all I could handle. In the end, there’s nothing left but words frozen to a page.

My lap has filled with snow. I guess it’s time to go. Each of us has the power to create destiny. Warmed by the Tullamore Dew and funky meerschaum, I could easily camp right here and be happy.

But I wouldn’t be home for Christmas, and by the time I wake up, the trail would be impossible to find.

I switch off the area lamps and turn on the headlamp. With aid from one of my trekking poles, I am miraculously raised from the rock. My inbound tracks are gone, I’ll follow the GPS until the signal is completely gone.

I am curiously comfortable out here, more than that provided by an aggressive ration of expensive technical gear or the flask and knob. I seem to know where I am going, beyond the GPS, the compass, dotted lines or notched trees.

My handmade French mountain boots have got bones in their teeth as they haul through foaming fresh powder. Thick woods, deep snow and pitch dark don’t bother me. My 45-pound pack seems to lead the way, and I must struggle to keep pace with it.

With the money I’ve spent on this gear I could have, well right now I’d be in bed, watching a rented movie about a cat who goes out in the woods to make a fool of himself over some dame.

My laughter is sucked instantly into the silent night.

Poles and boots punch their way up a snowy ridge toward a plateau. The snow ceases, a full moon glows bright behind scudding cumuli. A cozy glow throbs from the ridge above. My steps are light, as though carried on air.

The trees scatter, the ground flattens and before me stands my home, under a thick blanket of snow. My snuggly cabin reaches out to me with golden window panes and four smoking chimneys, beckoning with ham and pie in the ovens, and coffee on the stove.

Every stone and log is as it has always been. The path winding from the heavy oaken door leads right to my feet. A gaslight hangs from a pole to light my trail, and from it hangs a wreath, tied with red ribbon, a luminous satin bow at the top.

I plunge past the door and its well-oiled hinges, leaving the dark and empty, perilously alone far behind.

This is home, as I left it a lifetime ago.”

I scratched Sam behind the ear as Reverend Blackcherry stared off beyond the Cascades...he looked like he might be in Idaho.

"Yes." He murmured.

"I see your point."

Sam got up, shuffled off the deck, down the stairs, thus avoiding the squeaky locked gate, and waited for Blackcherry.

"I suppose I'd better get home to the missus."

His leather pumps crunched across the gravel as he meandered toward the fence. His head was full of fresh ideas.

Reverend Blackcherry couldn't wait for tomorrow.

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