Author: Gary Lindorff

I’m white.
But I can’t breathe.
I’m suffocating.
Maybe I’m dying.
 

I tried to run
But I got caught
Thinking terrible thoughts about my twisted country.
Dangerous and dark thoughts,
Like a German might have thought
When the Nazis were beating up Jews.
And the zeitgeist was shouting at me to stop.
Don’t shoot! I shouted,
Peeing my pants,
I’m white!
I’m the same color as Jesus!
But the zeitgeist
Wasn’t a Christian.
Wasn’t even a white cop.
He was a friggin’ octopus!
And he wasn’t interested in anything I had to say.
I only had enough air to get out one more lie:
I gasped,
America is awesome!
But I was falling
And my sight was obscured by a red curtain
As the zeitgeist pulled me down.

It’s just those CEOs and Senators!
The damn 1%! Can you believe it?
They’re having a keg party in the medicine circle.
But this is our neighborhood. Do you want to join them?
Wait a second! Now they are calling out obscenities to the four directions.
They’re making racist jokes about the president.
Blame it on the booze.
Let’s shake our heads in unison.
Let’s disapprove. My God!
But it looks like fun, being out of control like that
In the medicine circle of all places.
Shall we call it quits on this whole game of life-as-we-know-it
And join the debauchery?
There is plenty of room in that medicine circle
For every kind of greedy, drunken, asinine tom-fool.
Why shouldn’t there be room for people like you and me
Who aren’t doing much right now
Except going to work or not going to work. . .
As long as it’s going to make jobs, let them binge!
I think it will make some jobs.
Maybe they have some kind of grand plan.
Even though they are pasty and stumbling around
And ripping their shirts
And vomiting all over themselves,
They must know something we don’t know
Or they wouldn’t be so rich and powerful.
Don’t you wish you got paid for cutting your toe-nails?
Anyway, I’m torn.
It’s a medicine circle. Isn’t that some kind of Indian thing?

Ebola, “Black River”,
Thank-you for giving your name
To a killer virus.
Those scientists, those doctors,
The ones who discovered the germ,
They looked at a map
And they saw the river Ebola.
That’s a good name!
They almost named it Yambuku
After the town
Where the virus was actually discovered.
It was three o’clock in the morning.
That’s how these things go.
Now in the midst of all the fear,
The suffering,
Paranoia and heroism,
And the usual belated scrambling
To do the right thing,
I am thinking,
What a beautiful name
For that little river in the Congo:
Ebola, Black River.
 

—Gary Lindorff

GL: Well, here we are. I don’t know where to start. What should I call you? Mother? Earth?

Gaia: Either one. Mother is fine. Or Gaia.

GL: OK Gaia. I was going to start by asking if you are really alive but I guess you’ve already answered that. But my guess is that people are anxious to hear it directly from you. So, are you alive?

Gaia: Yes. I know that is hard for your kind to grasp. I am more alive than you because your life depends upon my aliveness. You partake of my aliveness.

GL: Wait a second. So, if the human race migrated to another world, we wouldn’t survive?

Gaia: Well, not exactly, but you would eventually metamorphose into something different than you are now.

GL: So what you are saying is, if we colonized Mars, and those colonists stayed on Mars in isolation, after a certain number of generations, those settlers would start to become Martians?

Gaia: If Mars came back to itself and was able to support human life, their DNA would gradually become Martian DNA.

GL: Oh, our scientists will have fun with that! So, how do you feel about the human race? What we have done to you.

Welcome to Walmart,
How may I help you?

You can start by reading my shirt.
On the front it says: Leave while you can.
On the back: Follow my ass.

Outside the day-sky is black.
There is a static energy crackling from
Every plant and rooftop.
Everything is charged.
There is an acidic tang to the air,
A volatile fried plastic smell.

I am homeless.
I will do anything for food.
Wash your car, clean your garage.
I am a middle-aged starving, fat American.
I see myself crucified on a solar panel.

I do not trust my governor,
My senator, or my president.
And least of all myself.
I tread lightly.
I’ve been trying to grow wings.

Where can I find reading glasses and socks?
I wander the aisles of Walmart
Trying to focus on my inner life.

Every-day-low-prices suckle my brain.

I have a real barcode on my butt.

When I get my glasses and my socks
I will stand in the parking lot.
I will squint at the sun
Which will be smiling
And pointing its bright middle finger
At my car
Which is on fire.

That is the future.
There are no cars in the future,
No bees, no Walmarts.
It isn’t anything like this.
That I promise.

But people will have wings.
 

—Gary Lindorff

Shopping at Walmart

Welcome to Walmart,
How may I help you?

You can start by reading my shirt.
On the front it says: Leave while you can.
On the back: Follow my ass.

Outside the day-sky is black.
There is a static energy crackling from
Every plant and rooftop.
Everything is charged.
There is an acidic tang to the air,
A volatile fried plastic smell.

I am homeless.
I will do anything for food.
Wash your car, clean your garage.
I am a middle-aged starving, fat American.
I see myself crucified on a solar panel.

I do not trust my governor,
My senator, or my president.
And least of all myself.
I tread lightly.
I’ve been trying to grow wings.

Where can I find reading glasses and socks?
I wander the aisles of Walmart
Trying to focus on my inner life.

Every-day-low-prices suckle my brain.

I have a real barcode on my butt.

When I get my glasses and my socks
I will stand in the parking lot.
I will squint at the sun
Which will be smiling
And pointing its bright middle finger
At my car
Which is on fire.

After yesterday
I’m afraid to go down there
Into my own garden.
I went down after sunset to water and
There it was, crouching
Like a gargoyle among the tomatoes.
I got a good look at it
As I stood there afraid to breathe
While a spray of water
From the hose soaked my shoes.
It had two heads
That look exactly like John Boehner,
Terrible to behold…

Close the gate

I’m tired.
Don’t visit,
I’m not home.
Why should I have to explain?

Now you show up.
I hear your voices.
You come in a group.
You turn on the tap.

I hear the squeak of the faucet.
I hear the water running
Through the pipes.
I go to the door.

There are a lot of you.
Go away.
Can’t you see I’m busy?
I’m working on something.

I can’t be disturbed.
Follow that path
Through the garden.
Close the gate.

New Wasichu, Crossing: Our Story is Just Beginning.
 

A Silent Spring for the new century? Gary Lindorff’s new book, New Wasichu, Crossing: Our Story is Just Beginning is, on one level, a bold attempt to disturb the silence of denial that has muted our ability to reverse Schweitzer’s curse quoted by Rachel Carson right at the threshold of her prophetic narrative: “Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.” Perhaps if we had heeded Rachel Carson’s shot over bow of Western post-industrial “progress” we would not be where we are now. Silent Spring is one of those books that you don’t necessarily have to read anymore because it is in our bones, just like the strontium 90 that was falling with the rain back when Carson was writing. But what good did it do? Maybe that still remains to be seen. .
 
………………………………………………………………………………………………
 

Hello TCBH! readers. I am pleased to announce the publication of a book I have been writing for the last 3 years, spanning the deaths of both of my parents, a period of time fraught with disturbing change and upheaval across the board. I am no longer young but that’s not a bad thing. My heart is strong and, dare I say, wiser. I have read that a heart that reacts unpredictably (or spontaneously) to the emotional climate it finds itself in is a healthy heart. Our heart is not just a pump, it is the organ that gets us through the maze of multiple realities that has become our world. Sure, I use my brain but I have come to depend upon my heart for everything, especially since the head (our heads) seems to be running out of ideas.

New Wasichu, Crossing: Our Story is Just Beginning, is the distillation of several decades of experience, study and practice in three over-lapping fields of access to certain wellsprings of creativity and transformation: Jungian Psychology, Native American wisdom traditions and shamanism. What is offered here is a way through the ominous darkness of our times. In this work I braid together a colorful, carefully researched, sometimes autobiographical narrative-lifeline that will guide the reader ever deeper into a landscape of dreams, intentionality, revelation and real answers to the problems that we face as human beings. Chapter by chapter the path to the future becomes less metaphorical and more substantial and walkable.

The writing explores certain archetypal themes. One such theme is crossing for spiritual survival. At the same time the reader is equipped to orient him- or herself by a new (or older than old) set of coordinates, facilitating participation in an epic crossing to something more human and more sustainable. Another recurrent theme is the return of the doppelganger or our soulful double, which, it turns out, embodies the template of the undamaged self.
The author and his book (Click on image to go to Amazon page)

There is a man reporting on how bad the smog is in China.
He is saying,
“See, right there,
at the end of this street that you don’t see
is the second tallest building in China.”
I squint. . . I don’t see anything!
“In fact”, he’s saying,
“the smog is so bad,
I’m actually standing right here in front of this camera,
so you wouldn’t have seen the building anyway,
but you can’t even see me!”
This guy is good!