I just dont see why the past has to matter.

Sometimes I feel like were a knot too tangled to be taken apart.

Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation. It makes history possible.

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders and to hobble along by our side under the monkish trammels of priests and kings as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason freedom of the globe I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.

When reading the history of the Jewish people of their flight from slavery to death of their exchange of tyrants I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable cruel revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over and that they would soon in the land of Canaan surrounded by their wives and little ones forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty this God forgetting every promise said to the wretches in his powerYour carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted. This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart cannot be accepted as a revelation from God.When we think of the poor Jews destroyed murdered bitten by serpents visited by plagues decimated by famine butchered by each other swallowed by the earth frightened cursed starved deceived robbed and outraged how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah Pharaoh was a benefactor and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God.While reading the Pentateuch I am filled with indignation pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert the prey of famine sword and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree governed by falsehood plundered by hypocrisy they were the sport of priests and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy and death their only friend.It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable hateful and arrogant being than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He only is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music beauty nor joy. A false friend an unjust judge a braggart hypocrite and tyrant sincere in hatred jealous vain and revengeful false in promise honest in curse suspicious ignorant and changeable infamous and hideoussuch is the God of the Pentateuch.

I existed on my own terms. I was different my entire life. Some called me divergent wild crazy unpredictable and unconformedan apostate to the rules of the majority. I called myself Gods creation and found purpose in the madness. When that day came I didnt allow other people to dictate how I should feel or act. I learned there was no shame in imperfection because history had shown being different had the power to change perspectives and eventually the world. This is when I realized that flaws had responsibility. This was the day that I learned I was truly BLESSED.

Theres folly in her stridethats the rumorjustified by liesIve seen her up closebeneath the sheetsand sometime during the summershe was mine for a few sweet months in the falland parts of December To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation one must first become familiar with the physical emotional and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. I found her looking through a windowthe same window Id been looking throughShe smiled and her eyes never falteredthis folly was a crime The very essence of war is destructive though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive and gives more meaning to the word futile. Others like Edmund Burke would argue that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing. She had an identity I could identify withsomething my fingertips could caress in the night There is such a limitless landscape within the mind no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other.What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. Have you heard the argumentThis displacement of men and womenand women and menthe minds we all havethe beliefs we all shareSlipping inside of usthoughts and religions and bodiesall bare Without darkness there can be no lighthe once said. To demonstrate this theory during one of his seminars he held a piece of white chalk and drew a line down the center of a blackboard. Explaining that without the blackness of the board the white line would be invisible. When she leftshe kissed with eyes openI knew this because Id done the sameSometimes we saw eye to eye like thatVery brieflyshe considered an apotheosisa synthesisa rendering of her follyinto solidarity To believe that a world-wide lay down of arms is possible however is the delusion of the pacifist the dream of the optimist and the joke of the realist. Diplomacy only goes so far and in spite of our efforts to fight with words- there are times when drawing swords of a very different nature are surely called for. Experiencing the subsequent sunriseinhaling and drinkingbreaking mirrors and regurgitatingjust to start againall in allI was just another gash in the bark Plato once saidOnly the dead have seen the end of war. Perhaps the death of us all is called for in this time of emotional desperation. War is a product of the mind only with the death of such will come the end of the bloodshed. Though this may be a fairly realistic view of such an issue perhaps there is an optimistic outlook on the horizon. Not every sword is double edged but every coin is double sided. Leaving town and throwing shit out the windowdrinking boroughs and borrowing spare changeI glimpsed the rear view mirrorstole a glimpse reallyIve believed in looking back for a whileit helps to have one last viewa reminder in case one ever decides to rebelin the event the self regressesand makes the declaration of devastationonce more Thus if we wish to eliminate the threat of war today- complete human annihilation may be called for.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake with my eyes closed when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead I guess in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long curved band of color. As I came closer I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a womans tweed scarf the longer I studied any one spot the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length I started to look for my time but although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric I couldnt find my time or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldnt make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time all the individual people I understood with special clarity were living at the very moment with great emotion in intricate detail in their individual times and places and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people one by one like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band that was a good time then a good time to be living.And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing one by one in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running waterI saw may apples in forest erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean and I seemed to be in the ocean myself swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks under which wilds ducks flew and called one by one and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space and I recalled the oceans shape and the form of continents saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet Yes thats how it was then that part there we called France. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.

And eventually in that house where everyone even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors Hanifs dream which horrifies his dream-invading mother who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself he finds his eyes straying upwards up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta the cloth of modesty until eyes meet eyes and then