Impossible

Steve Martin said once that it was impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose.

There are impossibilities.

You can't build a stairway to the moon.

There is no way to stop time.

I will never be an Olympic athlete.

Impossibilities are limits.

Limits define the extent of expectations.

Humanity has and continues to impose limits on itself.

What it believes to be impossible.

We can't provide housing for free.

We can't educate those people.

We can't feed you unless you work for it.

We can't provide for your safety because that would limit our access to guns.

The Constitution can't be changed.

You are not equal to me.

Those people are lazy.

I'm a winner you're a loser.

A good portion of humanity believes that the world is set in stone.

Or it should be.

Belief in the power of the impossible means shelter from reality for too many of us.

If equal rights are impossible, why even try?

If the 2nd Amendment can't be changed, just shut up and bury the dead.

If a President won't sign a bill, why would we want to talk about that?

Belief in the impossible allows the shallow-minded evil of low expectations and high personal interest to hide behind a straw man.

It is the foundation of nihilism.

Nihilism rejects the value of your life and mine.

It is the Bible from which the sociopath preaches.

Incidentally, that's a bit of irony because the nihilist rejects all religious and moral principles.

From its conception, the idea of nihilism was created as an intellectual canard.

It is a dull instrument used to smash the ties that bind humanity together.

Like a plow forced into the solid ground of society, it turns over the soil of compassion and destroys trust.

Nihilism is the acid that is thrown onto hope.

Nihilism is the friend of the tyrant.

That tyrant is only limited by their access to power.

Not all of us know a dictator personally, but we do have a relative or friend who believes in the impossible.

Isn't there always someone who says that's impossible, why would you bother, don't waste your time, you can't do that?

Why do these people in our lives want to set a limit on the possible?

Who are they?

What is it they want?

They want you and me to live in fear.

They are your brother and sister, your friend, your parent, your relative, your pastor, priest, Rabi, police, congressman, senator, President.

Fear is used by tyrants to manage expectations.

Fear is used to keep the possible from happening.

There are a lot of people selling fear these days, isn't there?

There are a lot of people throwing a rope around expectations and trying to pull it back in.

Trying to keep things from changing.

They can feel the world tipping up onto its side and all the pieces on the chessboard of life falling out of place.

They the tyrant, the nihilist, those that believe in the impossible don't like the world we who believe in the impossible are working to make a reality.

They don't want to share a lunch counter with a person with brown skin.

They don't want to buy a cake from a Gay baker.

They don't want strangers coming to their country.

They don't want you to have a home and a hot meal.

Their god told them that the world was only for them and not for all of us.

We're upsetting the apple cart.

We need to sit down because we're rocking the boat of expectations.

Some of these people are so angry they will kill us because of our belief in the possible.

Their belief in fear is that deep.

Their oneness with hate knows no limit.

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore, it's just impossible.

Can you keep justice for all from falling down upon our nation, it's just impossible.

Can you stop the brotherhood of man from filling our hearts with hope, it's just impossible.

That sound you hear in our country that echos down that street where a guy is being beat.

That sound you hear when voices shout for the re-establishment of our democracy.

That sound you hear as feet march for our human right to exist free from fear.

We are the ones to take up the challenge to make the impossible possible.

Don't say no say yes I can.

Do right.

Peace

DFrey

Fallen

Seeing evil and stopping evil.

Most of us can see an act of cruelty and recognize it as wrong.

However, some people don't see cruelty as wrong.

These people have desires.

These desires must be filled no matter the cost.

No matter the cost to their community, their friendships, their family.

Psychology has defined them as sociopaths.

Their desires, their passions, their pure lust must be gratified regardless of who they hurt.

One such person caught in a web of evil was me.

I was in a bad place of my own doing when evil entered my home.

I had lost touch of myself, which is a thing to say but doesn't describe the reality accurately.

I had lost touch with the world.

I had become isolated.

I had convinced myself that I did not deserve love.

Day after day, the weight of other peoples fears and especially their anger washed over me like an unrelenting tide.

Many days I couldn't catch my breath.

Other peoples anger would make me run.

Peoples' emotions had since the first day I could remember struck fear in me.

In my early years, most of which I cannot remember, I know that my father was a rageaholic.

His physical and mental abuse was continuous.

But my tale is not about my father.

It's about how I was hanging onto my life by a thread and how that thread was cut by a sociopath.

I found myself running into oblivion because of my own fear of anger.

I never forced myself to ask why a person was angry.

I had always assumed I was the cause of other peoples anger.

So as to not anger them, I would never ask for clarification of their emotions.

I internalized others pain and gave back humor.

My wife and I never argued.

But year after year, I receded believing in error that she was angry with me.

Empathic personalities like my own are not magical.

We may be sensitive to emotion, but we're not mind-readers able to discern the origin of a feeling.

As in my case, my total lack of self-esteem always dictated to me that I was the cause.

So in the last summer of my life, I determined I was going to leave this wicked world.

Previously a person came to live with us.

It was during that time I came to find out through a four-year conversation that a 20 something sexual predator slept under our roof.

Their preferred victim was middle-age housewives going through a divorce.

The graphic details of their constant exploits are horrendous that this person would tell me all on their own.

Their bragging at first, I thought was the talk of a blackout alcoholic drug abuser which they also turned out to be.

That was until they provided me proof of their exploits that they kept in a notebook.

Their reason for showing me their monster?

They thought because I did not believe in a religion that it meant I was part of their club.

The club of the immoral.

The club of sociopaths who will do whatever is needed right or wrong to achieve their goal.

The club that would lie about everything and even that is a lie.

The club that weaves a web of deception that the sociopath believes no one can see through.

That club that says as long as it's short of murder you can use people however you want.

This person allowed me into their mind, their reasoning, their wants, their desires, their lusts.

They falsely believed I was a monster like them.

I wanted to get away from this person.

I wanted to leave this world behind and all it's evil.

I knew I didn't belong here.

Then a friends voice, a single drop of human kindness gave me pause in my dark journey.

I stopped on the edge of forever and listened.

It was at this moment the beast entered.

The beast put their sights on my friend.

I told the beast repeatedly to leave my friend alone.

The beast dismissed me and consequently destroyed my lifeline.

I fell.

I fell into the dark of night.

I fell.

When I hit bottom and realized I was not dead, I heard a voice call my name.

I turned and saw no one.

The voice came from inside me.

It said I was ready now to begin the good work.

To spread hope.

To talk of love.

Unexpectantly, the crucible I had lived through had gifted me.

I now had in my hand the sword of justice.

I had learned of evil which had given me my armor.

I had fallen so that I could stand.

If you have fallen, you can stand too.

It is not through our blessings that we are useful; it is through our trials and hardships that make us into who we are meant to be.

Do right.

Peace

DFrey

Baby Teeth

The world is growing up.

Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.

When you are a child, you think you will have your teeth forever.

Then one day one of them comes loose and soon they are all falling out.

Your expectation did not match Reality.

Most of us believe in the stories told by those in authority over us individually in our early years our parents, our caretakers tell us.

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is someday you will have a job.

Most of us get some level of education, and from there, we make choices and pursue a career.

Life sometimes throws us a curve ball, and instead of a career with a 9 to 5 job, we get an hourly wage at a fast food joint.

When, we were told we would grow up to have a career, and we dreamed what that career would be the difference between Reality and our dream can be strikingly different can it not?

Right now, you and I are living in a time of change.

We are witness to what I'm calling a clash of expectations.

Each of us expected our lives and the world to work one way only to be confronted with something very different.

That difference is Reality.

This clash of expectations today occurs because we for the first time in history can have the truth as well as lies delivered into our hands and into our minds instantly.

Steve Jobs wanted to put the power of the computer into everyone's hands.

He saw it as a way of incorporating, of blending together, of merging the human race in a specific manner to embrace the harmony of humanity through knowledge.

He helped usher in the communication age.

People like Buckminster Fuller saw that the desktop computer was going to be the most revolutionary power to pull all aspects of humanity onto a critical path of knowledge.

For the very first time in human history, humanity would be able to know information instantly.

Unfiltered.

Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, saw a canyon opening up in humanity's future.

As Arthur C. Clarke put it, humanity was coming to its own childhood's end.

It was going to lose its baby teeth.

Campbell rightly witnessed the end of humanity's transitional traditions.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, and when I became an adult, I thought as an adult.

Childish things are to be put away when we become adults.

Campbell saw that the world over had lost those cultural traditions which told the child previously that now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.

Our modern society…

As the adult, you are responsible for the common good of the whole.

Children conversely are only concerned with their own happiness, their own welfare, and are selfish.

Previously in the West, this time of transition from childhood to adulthood was called the age of responsibility.

When a person reached the age of eight or thereabouts, the child was recognized by the adults in the community as being able to understand the difference between right and wrong.

Being aware of that difference meant they could be held responsible for their actions not only for themselves but for the community.

They realized Joe was old enough to trust that he could take the cows down to the river for a drink and not leave them there to go off and play.

Responsibility…

The individual left behind their childhood and took on the role of the adult to support and defend the common good.

Our modern society has allowed that tenant of humanity, what it means to be a human and an adult to drift away, much like Wilson the soccer ball did in the film Castaway.

Today we allow 40-year-old grown children to act out in public precisely as if they were toddlers.

Somehow collectively, we are afraid to tell these adults to put away their toys, clean up their rooms, and behave like an adult.

There is obviously a whole host of issues that these childish expectations from these immature adults can come into conflict with Reality.

I deserve a trophy!

I will marry Prince Charming!

I will have the perfect career!

I'm always right, you're always wrong!

You can't make me!

I'm winning you're not!

I'm better than you!

It's mine!

Children.

Children.

The Child/Adult can resist growing and being responsible for more than just their selfish interests well into their 80's.

However, one day, they will have to face Reality.

The truth.

We only get one chance at life, and sitting at the children's table living as a petulant child tyrant is a sad existence.

A sad existence for the child and the parents.

In America today, we find many people who we have previously elected to Office that demonstrate that they are still children.

These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, these Senators are throwing a tantrum because they refuse to do the chore that they were sent to elected Office to do.

Their expectations of power and prestige as a member of a representational government has come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical their self-interests or the Constitution?

They resent that they must serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.

The Constitution which is written for We the people, not I the indulged child/adult.

At the head of our government currently sits a particular kind of a spoiled brat.

Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those that served his father, he believes himself to be his own law, his own justice, his own judge.

He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.

It's time that the adults in the room introduce this child President to Reality.

It's time to give him a time out.

Peace

DFrey

Self Interest

Why has the Republican Party jumped off a cliff?

What has happened to that political movements reason?

How can a majority of Republicans embrace hate yet deny the history of hate and the disaster that the future will bring to their party?

Spite.

Spite is one of the answers.

Spite.

Bitterness.

Animosity.

Hostility.

Vengeance, are all included in spite.

One day during the two terms of President Obama, the Republican Party majority woke up that day and realized that the world they believed would never change…

Did.

Somewhere between poor people getting health care and Trans people using the same toilet as them, their collective heads exploded.

The myth they had consistently told themselves that being White and conservative in America would protect them from having to share the wealth with brown people evaporated in their minds.

They were painted into a corner…

This mental realization of the change, the broadening of the social good for all drove a hot knife into their guts.

The reaction has been the Republican Conservative Party would instead burn America down then allow one Black, one Brown, one other to share in "their" Homeland.

So among the many things that this executive branch has done while in Office to go where doomed political parties have gone before boldly…

Was when their President and his people declared they were to defund the Special Olympics.

A moment of pure joy and a revelation to the nation…

The conservatives in this country exposed the dark heart at the root of the hate that is being fed.

The Republican Party and conservative America believe that it is in a fight to its death.

They will not listen to reason because they are in a struggle with what they believe is true.

I've said it before, have you ever tried to take a bone away from a jealous dog?

These conservatives will bite your hand, they will claw your face, they will rip out your life apart to protect what they believe has been given to them by God.

Their rightful place as stewards of this country.

I personally know the depths of this feeling being born into this conservative culture.

It is not only believed but preached from the pulpit every Sunday in America.

The story of White supremacy is taught to this very day not just in alley's and in bars out by the highway.

White supremacy is in the Office, in the home, in the church.

The idea of segregation and Whites being the stewards of the earth is in the book of Genesis.

You don't believe it?

The racists believe it.

At least that's how White racists interpret it.

So trying to reason with the Republican Party currently is a losing strategy.

When was the last time you asked a card-carrying Christian to stop believing in Jesus?

A story that says you'll have eternal life if you believe in me.

That is not something that can't be casually laid down, can it?

No.

Especially when through the long dark history of racism in this country, the two stories of racial superiority and Christianity have been woven together into an ugly basket of hate.

I honestly have no concrete answer to this problem of our current day.

I don't know how to stop the fear conservatives have that they are losing their world.

The reason why is because they are losing their world.

The world is waking up.

The light of truth is shining into the dark places of our society and revealing an ugly dark hearted mold growing there.

We today are working to clean out that mold of the heart and mind.

Those that are happy to live in that darkness are upset that we are letting in the sunshine and spraying bleach around.

Like that show Hoarders…?

They are furious that we want to clean the trash out of their house.

They love living in their filth.

They are comfortable with the status quo, and we are upsetting the apple cart.

In one respect, we are watching conservative America ride their anger off the cliff of history.

We who are looking towards the future are watching the past commit suicide.

We, the people, the majority, stand at the mountain top and ask aloud, "Why did they do that?"

Love binds people to move towards truth and justice.

Love can bind the wounds of a people too.

Love can sweep away the nightmares in the mind, and restore hope.

Conservative America's last hope is if they can separate truth from lies.

Conservative America if you can hear me, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Peace.

DFrey

Fear

Fear creates false stories.

If you are afraid, you are willing to believe the worse of the thing you are scared of.

It has been going on in the minds of humanity for a very long time.

Entire faiths, entire societies are based upon fear.

Fear of death.

Fear of the stranger.

Fear of new ideas.

Fear of change.

Fear of you.

That's right.

Somebody, somewhere right this very minute is afraid of you.

Of what you represent.

What do you represent?

Are you working for peace between your brother and your sister?

Or do you work against them because you don't trust them?

Or do you fall into the third thing which captures the majority of us which is you do nothing?

Fear will render the most logical person to accept the illogical.

For all of Time, there has arisen out of the emotion of fear a false narrative.

A false story.

A false idea that there is a choice to be made.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Upon the question of immigration, we are told you must have security first then possibly consideration will be given to why undocumented immigration happens in the first place.

Why can't we do both?

We have adopted an ugly discourse of narrowly believing there is only one way to solve a problem.

We search for a magic silver bullet that we can fire off and finish off the beast.

We want to kill off the thing that makes us worry and work as quickly as possible.

We want a better world without doing any work.

I'll declare that to be a lazy, sluggish way of thinking.

It ignores our reality of life.

Let me put it this way…

When your parent cleaned your bottom, did they do it only once?

Did they say I'll find the best method of cleaning my child's bottom and I'll be done with that!

They cleaned your bottom once and walked away.

They were self-satisfied that they did the job in the best, the most efficient way they knew how and never came back?

No.

Life is about messes and how we do our duty to attend to them.

Messes are renewed on a daily basis.

Your parent didn't have a fear of their duty to love their child.

Your parent saw it as a privilege to care for you.

As it is our privilege to care for each other.

Each of us has an ability no matter how large no matter how small and humble to reach out and care for each other.

We can both walk and talk.

We can both care and have standards.

We can praise and critique.

Fear wants us to believe there is a binary choice between yes and no when, in reality, we all know that the world is gray.

Evil never wants a compromise.

A compromise would mean giving and giving is not what evil is about.

Our duty to each other is never-ending.

Love doesn't stop at the border.

Love doesn't stop at the patient's bedside.

Love doesn't stop at the arrest of a suspect.

Love doesn't stop at the bench before the judge.

Love doesn't stop with the words in our Constitution.

Love asks more.

Love asks you to do all things with a glad heart.

You don't get to choose on the path of love how you can segregate your heart.

The realm of good ideas all has a seat at the table of humanity.

Love demands that we do all of them together.

We do not get to choose.

Love knows we can handle it.

Only fear tells us to choose one.

Life is not like Sophie's Choice.

We are not at the point of a gun to choose the life of one of our children over another.

We do not live in a world of a Paleolithic culture having to decide which child we must sacrifice to the "God's" so that we can have a good crop next year.

Attention!

The world has moved beyond that cultural, mental restriction of child sacrifice.

Human sacrifice for a hollow safety.

Although some who feed fear want to feed that monster continually.

Blood doesn't have to be spilled for us to realize what is the right thing to do.

No.

We can keep both children.

We can keep all the children.

We can keep your children and mine.

Hasn't the world gone through enough to realize that compassion has a huge hug?

We can do both…

It's not difficult.

It's called love.

Peace

Cannibals

Straight up.

The wealthy cannibalize society by hoarding wealth and stealing its dignity.

Through all of recorded time, this has been a fact.

It has never stopped.

It's a fact.

It has never stopped.

Why should it?

The wealthy are a crafty type of parasite for the most part.

They feed off their host to the point of making the host weak.

But the rule for the wealthy is not to bleed the host so much that they die.

In recent centuries the French Revolution is a good point, in fact, demonstrating how the wealthy lost control of their greed.

Centuries of no justice, enslavement, destruction of the common good to enhance the coffers of the wealthy made a lot of ordinary people in France really upset.

So upset that they believed chopping the heads off the wealthy would lead them to a better society.

It got rid of the immediate problem of the local wealthy ignoring the needs of the host they were feeding on, but it wasn't a cure.

Killing is never a cure.

Government sponsored killing, primarily of the non-wealthy, is a part of the cycle of justice put into place by the wealthy so that the larger society never addresses the source of the problems we all face.

People who cannot and will not share.

Some of us may recall the words of the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or as the wealthy use that same sediment but with a twist, do unto others before they do unto you.

Wealth does a terrible thing to people.

It enhances their character flaws.

If they were a small ass, they would become an enormous ass with a wealth injection.

Sharing is not a trait that we are born with.

It is a fact.

If you are not aware of this, then please look into the current human genome project on how we are all born selfish, Are Babies Born Good by Abigail Tucker, Smithsonian Magazine 2013.

Sharing has to be taught by "caring" people.

Some of us get the lesson while others are naturally predisposed to be resistant to sharing.

While others still may have had bad parents who never took the time to instruct or demonstrate sharing with others outside your immediate family.

Sharing means to give up some of your resources to help another.

On a hostile planet with a rapidly changing environment, resources to keep you alive are critical.

It's sort of obvious why an inborn trait of not sharing would be a universal fact in all of humanity everywhere.

By not sharing the hoarding of resources to self, it allows the individual to survive and pass on its genes.

However, this biological method of survival is antimatter to a society.

Society is all about cohesion, right?

Sticking together?

The rugged individual who is the self-made man who is always winning, the top dog, the alpha male, the wealthy is the complete opposite of what a community stands for.

Right?

The wealthy tell the poor we are better than you because we won't share.

So in point of fact, the wealthy are the best at being humans who survive to pass on their genes and their inhumanity.

They survive at the expense, the lives that they destroy.

Is there a cure, is there a way to prevent this cannibalism?

There has been a cure right in front of our faces that have been in competition with those that are self-serving.

Love.

Love is the answer.

Love derives from our better angels.

We all have the instinct not to share.

But right there from the very beginning of our lives, a whisper tapped us all on our hearts.

You may or may not have recognized it.

The wealthy shout in our faces to follow their example, to deny each other and our selves to serve them.

Some listen to those callous voices thinking they will be like them one day.

Yet in the quiet spaces of all of our lives, the voice of love asks us to do more.

Love asks not to do one act of love but to do many acts of love at the same time.

Love knows we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Love knows we can share bread with the lost.

We can heal those who cannot pay us back.

We can protect those that cannot defend themselves.

We can lift the hopeless and hold them in our arms till they feel safe.

We can wipe away the tears.

We can do all that any one of us all in just one day and do it again the next.

Love is stronger and more profound than the instinct of the wealthy not to share.

Love is a code that existed in this universe long before the earth did.

Love is a code as elaborate or as simple as those who want to hide from it versus those who want to walk with it.

Love is wealth that never can be taken away.

Peace

Never Done

When we use to own a home, the North side of the house had a problem with peeling paint.

Every summer I had to get the ladder out, scrape the bubbling paint and repaint it.

Each early spring, my father went out to trim the old growth on his fruit trees.

During the previous growing season, the tree would sprout sucker branches which would leach out the strength of the tree and not put that energy into growing fruit.

Some days there never seems to be enough time to complete what we need to do.

That's why there's a tomorrow.

Many tasks take more than one day to accomplish.

Doing a part of the task each day with due diligence will get us to our goal.

In the late 1800s, vitamins were discovered, sort of.

It was realized that some foods made people's health stronger than others, but they didn't know why.

Grand claims were made by health food hucksters of the day that they could cure anything from ingrown toenails to woman's complaint with their mixtures.

People then as now didn't go out of their comfort zone and habits.

It was known that inmates developed a sickness and death from eating just cornbread and nothing else during imprisonment but the authorities didn't know why?

It wasn't until 1912 that Casimir Funk isolated and confirmed the biochemical properties of what he termed Vitamins that the public became aware of their benefits.

It turns out the adage, a man can live on cornbread alone is not valid.

You need a whole range of vitamins to live a healthy life.

Eating cornbread only and water will lead to a gruesome death.

However, knowledge of the right things to eat didn't flip a switch in people's diet.

Society abhors change.

People, on the whole, don't like to expend energy, do they?

For many, there has to be a crisis before they take action.

The house has to be actually on fire before they think about taking the stacked newspapers out.

People have energy at the beginning, but for most that enthusiasm dwindles with time.

They plant an herb garden and come back a few months later to see the weeds have taken over.

Our nation needs to tend to its democracy right now.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. admonished us all that the task of equality and justice for all wasn't going to get done in a day.

We each have our part to do.

The forces we fight will not give up.

Evil is not lazy.

Bigotry doesn't take the day off.

Racism feeds upon ignorance every day.

Injustice sprints ahead of the common good.

The weeds of intolerance grow in the fertile soil of anger and hopelessness.

Our challenge is not to succumb to apathy.

Nihilism.

If you've never picked an acre of beans, at the start, the task seems long hot and daunting.

The sun beats you down and stings your eyes.

The fly bites your ankles and the blood flows.

You take a break, but that nagging feeling grows telling you to get up and get it done.

While you're working, a friend stops by and lends a hand.

The neighbor next door sees you working and brings you a drink of cold water.

That neighbor joins in, then the guy across the way brings a sandwich and helps with the picking too.

A community has come together of brother's and sisters, young and old, rich and poor all joining hands and hearts to share in the work.

To share in the riches.

To share in the love.

To share the burden of the task.

A human thing.

We will get there together, all of us one day.

Love has always been stronger than hate.

Always and in all ways.

Peace.

DFrey

Keeping It Real

Keeping it real is a turn of phrase that means you stay true to yourself.

For the past month, we have seen leaders in our government display their true selves.

We saw a Speaker of the House stand for the people of this nation who are not afraid of the future.

We saw a leader of the majority in the Senate hide behind his office and not until the President laid his own head on the chopping block did he meekly say I think you're wrong Mr. President.

We saw a president who has an apparent personality disorder that doesn't allow him to tell objective truth.

Our President can only say what he thinks we want to hear.

Our President sees no difference between doing what is right or what is wrong as long as he gets his way.

This week we also observed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, who kept it real.

Keeping it real.

What does that mean to you?

As you go through life and get older, you may be able to attain wisdom.

Where wisdom comes from is learning from your mistakes.

If you don't learn from your mistakes, that's a sign too.

Time and time again, the President makes the same mistake.

The mistake that the President makes is that he believes we don't care.

We don't care about refugees.

We don't care about those who don't have health care.

We don't care about government workers.

We don't care about non-white people.

We don't care about what this nation has stood for these past 200 plus years.

This nation has stood for freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

He believes we will all be satisfied with the status quo with White men making all the decisions and everyone else waiting around to serve them.

That's the world from which he came.

From his perspective he's…

Keeping it real.

Physicians take an oath.

That oath they swear to says they are to do no harm.

They are to do no harm.

I think our elected officials from dog catcher to President should take that same oath.

To do no harm.

Hurting people for political power for political gain is evil.

Sociopaths the world over practice that ideal as a large part of their personal philosophy.

In the book, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, Ph.D. tells us that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths.

That means if you know, 100 people 4 of them are sociopaths.

The sociopath is the one that's making trouble and never taking responsibility for the disaster they created.

Doesn't that sound like the President?

Should the President be pitied?

No.

He knows the difference between good and evil but doesn't care which device he employs as long as he gets his orgasm no matter what that may entail.

We, as a nation, are learning what it means to have a president with this kind of personality disorder.

I've said before that I have had personal experience with a sociopath who almost destroyed my life.

It is illuminating as well as tragic to see our nation go through the same experience I had as we as a nation suffer at the hands of this man our President.

Keeping it real.

Remember.

This too, shall pass.

We will all learn from our mistakes.

We will protect ourselves in the future from repeating this tragedy.

On the other side, we as a nation will learn to take better care of ourselves, and we will be better people.

Keeping it real.

Peace.

DFrey

Without Our Permission

Change happens without our permission.

That's a fact of this Universe.

The Universe does not wait for our approval.

You can have an opinion about it, but it doesn't change the facts.

Can you stop the tide from rolling in?

Can you stop your child from growing?

Can you stop the sun from setting?

No, you can't.

I can't either.

Nobody can.

Change is the fundamental nature of life.

We are born, we live a life, and then we die.

Each step along that path, we find the world changes around us as we change.

Some of the changes are welcome.

The look of your child as they master riding a bike.

Watching your daughter's face as she marries the person she loves.

That new job you've worked so long and hard for.

Suddenly is gone.

Gone.

Some changes are not welcome.

Your dog is ill and needs to be put down.

There's no work in your town anymore.

The McRib will no longer be sold.

The biggest unwanted change…

The death of a loved one.

Today, March 24th, 2018 in the streets of America and around the world, a collective shout demanding change was issued.

A choice, a demand that life be preserved versus the right to kill.

Why do we reserve the right to kill in this nation?

Could it be the lagging cancer on our soul of racism?

Fear of the other?

Fear of the stranger?

A new voice was raised today to join the old chorus of the past.

It's beat, it's melody unfamiliar to the ears of an older generation, yet, at its heart, it's driving beat as familiar as that old gospel sung by other marchers for freedom from tyranny.

Change comes without our permission.

You can be part of the solution, or you can step aside.

A better world, free of the fear of gun violence has always been in our hands to make real.

The eyes of a nation have been lifted up by the spirit of their children.

March for our lives.

Peace

DFrey

Again Begin

Did you know I'm an artist?

I drew before I could write and I still draw down onto paper my observations, visions…

I draw upon my life and experience.

Being an asthmatic child and adult.

Of dying when I was seventeen.

I forgot my family and had to be reintroduced to them and the world.

Of being an orderly tending the sick, applying CPR on over 114 people, of caring for the dead.

Finding love, of losing it and finding it again, of the gift of a beautiful son and daughter…

To that end and a new beginning, I have begun a monthly extended graphic novel around the central drive of my life to help make the world better.

To point to an open door where our better angels wait for us all.

Again Begin is a journey to the central problem in the world the human race.

It has been a story I've worked on for the past 40 years.

Personal disasters, failures aside, I have turned over this story many times as I lay myself to sleep each night.

In light of the times, in the light of dim direction, plainly no light at all going on in some heads we give the title leader, I will bring to revelation this tale of science fiction wrapped around an ancient parable to stir our genetic memory.

A new myth…

Thank you, Joseph Campbell.

Below is a page exclusive to this website from issue number one of Again Begin available through all the outlets of ebooks as well as a printed version at Amazon.com

Peace

DFrey

Man In Black

I’ve been asked why I always wear black. Here’s the answer…

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,

Why you never see bright colors on my back,

And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.

Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,

Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,

I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,

But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,

Or listened to the words that Jesus said,

About the road to happiness through love and charity,

Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,

In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,

But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,

Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,

For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,

I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,

Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,

Believen' that the Lord was on their side,

I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,

Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,

And things need changin' everywhere you go,

But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,

You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,

And tell the world that everything's OK,

But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,

'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

–      Johnny Cash

Can’t say it any better.

DFrey

Peace