Wrestling with Religion

           In the height of the American occupation of Iraq, a young soldier was manning the machine gun at a checkpoint in Baghdad. The others at the checkpoint had rifles, but his was the only weapon capable of stopping a vehicle in one burst, killing most or all of its occupants. Its purpose was to prevent suicide bombers from ramming the checkpoint. A car approached and rolled on after it was warned to stop. The commanding officer ordered the young soldier to open fire, but he hesitated for a few seconds--maybe doubting that the car looked like a threat--and it stopped near the checkpoint. A man, his wife, and two children got out and asked directions. They hadn't noticed the warning, maybe because they were too busy trying to figure out where they were.  After the interpreter gave the family directions and they drove off, everybody at the checkpoint understood that the young soldier's hesitation had saved four innocent people, two of them childr...

  Lights up on Spud. Myrna enters. MYRNA: Hey, Spud. Whacha doing? SPUD: Thinking. MYRNA: Who says so? SPUD: Huh? MYRNA: There must be two people inside you . One thinking and one noticing thinking.  ( Counting on fingers. ) One. Two. SPUD: OK. Well, I did notice myself thinking-- MYRNA: Now it's three. One thinking, one noticing, and one noticing noticing? SPUD: Three me's? Gee, you're right, Myrna. I did notice myself noticing. MYRNA: Now it's four. SPUD: And if I agree with that, it's five! That's amazing! I can see us all now! MYRNA: That makes six. SPUD: Wow! A minute ago I could have sworn I was alone. Now it's downright crowded. You're right, Myrna. They're all here. MYRNA: Seven now. SPUD: I'll never be lonely again! ( He sighs happily. ) MYRNA: But I was just wondering, Spud-- SPUD: What? MYRNA: Where are all these people? I just see one. SPUD: That's easy, Myrna. They're in my brain. MYRNA: I don't know...

It's another motion picture, Maybe a miniseries, And you don't have to ask who is the star. It's shot in living color In surround-sound Audi-uh-oh on location where you are. The shooting crew's inside your head. They run the film unedited. The budget won't allow reshooting scenes. It's rated R, X, and PG, A comic, tragic mystery, And its up to you to figure out what it means. The rumor is the author's dead. The director shouting in your head Is under the impression it's all a dream. It's self-indulgent, the critics say, Too much improv, too much play Of light across nostalgic, static screens. It's another motion picture, Maybe a miniseries, And you don't have to ask who is the star. It's shot in living color In surround-sound Audi-uh-oh on location where you are. Since I wrote "Another Motion Picture" in the 1990s, I've sung it and asked if audience members ever felt like life was a movie they we...

We are supposed to grow wise in old age, the same time we suffer dementia, so there must be some Goldilocks year when wisdom is ascendent. With my birthday coming up, it may be time to share my best thoughts on the subject. One way of looking at wisdom is piecemeal. People with life-experience can identify worn brakes, scarlet tanagers, or minor seventh chords just by the sound, but I call that knowledge, and that does come automatically with experience. Old people are usually knowledgeable this side of dementia. But wisdom is something broader, applicable to anything or nothing. It's about the big picture, about how to live. We have all known old people who were angry, fretful, hateful, defensive, obsessive, greedy, vengeful, or delusional. We've all met--even seen in political office--ancients of undiminished intellect but the wisdom of drunken adolescents, ideologues fortified in some mental gulch and damned if they'll retreat. This kind of cocksure narrowness may attr...

Robert Stacy in New York On Oct 15, 2019, at 9:34 AM, Robert wrote: Buono Martedi, Verdi, Lying in bed this morning, and needing to take a break from the usual lustful phantasies, I veered away (in an effort to resuscitate my elderly intellect) to the subject of religion. The following therefore is a mini-essay from the top of my head, now transcribed from the top of my head: In pondering religion one must of course first free it from the trappings on myth and folklore, from all anthropomorphizing, and from all hokum; the fathers in Heaven, the heroic saviors walking upon the water, the promises of eternal life for the forgiven, and so forth. What one is thereafter left with is the bottomless, sublime and magical mystery of Being. And since Stacy's First Law states that all of life is paradox, ambivalence, and ambiguity, it follows that, with respect to being, there's no there there----and yet there is. This is a transcendent reality for which there is no understanding, a...

  Ego (Greek for "I") refers in its broadest sense to all the predicates of I used by a given person. My ego includes all of the attributes of my body that I'm aware of. I might say I'm alive, tall , tired , human or hungry . Ego also includes my intentions, tastes, desires, and inclinations. I like oysters , for instance, or love my dog or need a nap. Ego includes all my past preserved in memory. I am, for instance, an actor, a retired professor, and an American who once ate a pizza in Rome and made comic videos in Kentucky. My ego includes all that I have consciously been, felt, thought, or intended--my entire conscious footprint in the phenomenological world--but excludes what I've done without conscious intent. If the wrong word slips out, I absolve ego by saying, " I didn't mean to say that."          Ego is a constructed identity that may (and usually does) differ from how I appear to others. I may deny that I'm lazy and co...