Your most excellent article from a few years back... I found it! "Small Town, Big Sleep" was posted below by "SheThinksLiberty" so all I had to do was poke around here. Every oppressive development beginning March 2020 you so accurately described was my experience. Out here in the sticks of Santa Fe County there's several gray metal mailbox clusters down the road. Folks have applied different stickers so they can find their door more easily. Then there appeared a Ukrainian flag on one of them. A year went by and one day I scribbled with a black marker, "There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm Where All the Money Goes" into the yellow portion of that blue & yellow flag. The next day that sticker was gone. And gone are my subscriptions to the New Yorker and several other periodicals I used to enjoy. You described the return of spring so well. I was born in New Jersey sired by Manhattan parents and I still travel east to soak in the old country. You mentioned James Kunstler as a favorite and he's one of mine, too. Just this morning of March 14th Kunstler describes spring in loving detail. It's heartwarming for me to know you and Kunstler and a few others are still out there. So many former passions have withered for me. The movies, restaurants, reverence for musicians... so much I've given up on. Joni Mitchell was so against corporations and poisons. She's afflicted by the mysterious "morgellons" fibers sprouting from her skin so I was shocked she'd join Neil Young when they protested the "antivaxxers." Maybe it was that massive stroke she suffered and Joni capsized to fellating "the man" instead of fighting him. The hippies of Santa Fe are now the pro-war suicidal robots. If I'm in Hudson again I'd love to meet up with and share notes, James.
James, you got me wanting to read Pirsig’s book again, which I read back in 1986. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 17 and just turned 69. Currently own a Moto Guzzi Griso. Like you, I stopped watching television way long ago. I’d watch the occasional PBS thing then shortly after 9/11 that ended my viewing forever. I believe every household with a satellite dish got vaxxed.
Hi Tom: Thank you for your comment. I was riding motorcycles throughout my teens and into my early 40s. Then I had an accident and although I emerged unharmed, I thought that might be a sign to stop riding before something else--and far worse--happened to me. The last bike I owned was a Kawasaki 550 LTD. A fast bike (in-line 4-cylinder engine). The last long trip I did on it was from my home at the time in NJ, up into the wilderness of northern Ontario (James Bay), back down through Michigan, then back east. Like Pirsig's Honda 350, it was a small bike for such a long trip. But I'm glad I did it. I eventually bartered it in 1999 with a friend in exchange for some construction work on a house I'd just bought. I sometimes dream about getting another bike. Like a BMW. But with all the crazy drivers around and texting at the wheel and vaccidents happening all over, I always talk myself out of it. And I'm going to be 72 this summer and my reaction time is not quite as fast as it used to be, so there is that as well. But you've a nice bike so enjoy it and ride safe!
Thanks for writing back, James. I was so taken by your article you wrote a couple of years back... about wandering about Hudson, New York in horror of what the locals did to themselves... and you vowing to never frequent certain businesses again and lamenting of the friendships you'd lost. I can't find that item now but at the time I forwarded it to the few I still know but the many I've lost. To me, just like you, I didn't believe the covid psyop for one minute. From Nome, Alaska down to Tierra del Fuego EVERYBODY assumed the position... and with self-righteous glee and determination! People actually enjoyed it! They'd never felt such inclusion before; to be part of something so big and scary. To me their postured position wasn't a line in the sand, it was the Grand Canyon. They were so far on the other side I couldn't even see them.
I'm in Santa Fe County about 10 miles from a capitol city of liberal insanity. People are still wearing face masks here. Car bumpers still display stickers supporting Hillary, Obama/Biden, Resist, Bernie Sanders, Biden/Harris, Harris/Walz, you get the picture. I was refused entry to multiple businesses and ordered to leave grocery stores for refusing to wear a mask. I'm a sign painter and I'd never stood on a street corner with a sign until 2020. I painted one that read "One World Order, You Masked For it." On the other side it read, "Stop Obeying." I had so much fun with people throwing fingers... and throwing kisses, too, that I painted another that read, "Got Immune System?" The other side read, "Refuse the Vaxx." People went insane driving by. Such fun.
Yeah, I'm watching the traffic. Still riding the Guzzi and keen with situational awareness. I've no desire for a ride over a hundred miles. Here's one of my favorite quotes... "Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men experience it as a whole. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller. And while I've got my quotes file open here's another for your enjoyment...
"I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.” - Cornell University professor Dave Callum
I love this observation of yours: "They'd never felt such inclusion before; to be part of something so big and scary. To me their postured position wasn't a line in the sand, it was the Grand Canyon. They were so far on the other side I couldn't even see them." That really hits the nail on the head. So well said. And I love the posters you made. Hilarious. I too live in a bastion of liberal insanity here in New York's Hudson Valley. It feels like I'm living behind enemy lines. It was never this way before covidmania. And I don't know if we're ever going to be able to bridge this great divide. By the way, the essay you are thinking about it is this one: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/05/no_author/863243-2/
70 years of television can only be described as mission accomplished. The vast majority of human brains have been transformed into absorbent sponge-like matter. William Casey was Reagan's CIA spook and he said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Walter Cronkite assured everyone "That's the way it is" and most were convinced they were responsible for attending daily TV briefings. I was impressed by the destruction of 9/11 until the official scenario was criticized and Dr. Judy Wood showed video of 100 ft. steel beams vaporizing into dust before they ever hit the ground. 9/11 was just another test to see how compliant the rabble could be, but they needed to invent another false flag that would "get their attention" as Bill Gates promised. When they were informed a deadly airborne virus was floating through the air finally it got Personal! People jumping from the towers to their deaths wasn't anybody they knew. Easily forgotten. So many people in Santa Fe are organic. They purchase at Whole Foods and avoid the deadly GLUTEN!! (so deadly) but were convinced overnight that they didn't have an immune system. All that expensive eating and buying all those years for nothing.
The covid scam empowered the sheep to bray and lash out at me for not obeying the arrows and 6 ft. distance circles on the floor. Their masks didn't work because I wasn't wearing a mask. That's science. You and I lost friends and neighbors forever. I'm on acres of property in an HOA neighborhood of 35 other houses. 2020 there was no annual HOA meeting because... well, you know. In 2021 the board emailed a message asking who would like to offer their house for the upcoming meeting. I emailed back inviting everyone to my house. I said, "Everybody's been vaxxed so you don't have to wear a mask to attend the meeting." The hatred and curses that emitted from my monitor blew back my hair. I was called a racist but there's nothing but white folks here. I was called anti-science, a holocaust denier, a misogynist and a ranting crank. People I've known over 20 years. I wrote back and reminded them they love going to restaurants. They are willing to risk going outside amidst the deadly virus, wearing their masks as the menus are fetched and they are seated... where they take off their masks because everybody knows there's no virus "down there." That's science. Standing up is the zone of death. Sitting down is safe. I asked my neighbors if you come to my house, once you're seated do the masks come off? More curses and hatred was hurled and the board declared the 2021 meeting would be via zoom call. I didn't participate.
You like Albert Camus and here's a quote of his you will appreciate... "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Thanks for the "Small Town - Big Sleep" link, James.
I just finished the piece and find I am left with two particularly strong awarenesses. One, the significance of attention, how there is so much power and strength just in attention. So it makes sense that those who would weaken us go after our attention. And how taking that attention back, resisting the impulse to "check my emails" is such an effective act of defiance and non-compliance. And secondly, I am left with a very warm appreciation of Persig as a person. How he cared for his own thinking and process, and how that care was just reflected in maintaining your motorcycle, not just riding it when it works. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the book and bringing it back to life for me.
Thanks, Jim! You made me want to re-read it, so I searched through all my shelves for its pink cover, and alas! I dimly recalled giving it away to some young guy, a weekend rental guest who seemed to need it. I'll have to buy it again, because it really should be here on my shelf. Or on the too-high stack of to-be-read books next to my bed, with bookmarks in both Flannery O'Connor and Richard Brautigan (clearly my reading is different from yours).
But from that book, among its many other strengths, I'll always remember "Pirsig's Brick" as one of the best pieces of advice about writing that I've ever received. It's excerpted here: https://www.readthesequences.com/Original-Seeing
Thanks for your comment, Brent. I'd forgotten about that "Pirsig's Brick" lesson until I re-read the book to write this essay. It's a great piece of writing advice indeed. He must have been a good teacher, although I'd read in other sources that he didn't like teaching at all. Before a class he'd sometimes get so anxious that he'd get sick to his stomach. The book is worth re-reading. None of it really seems dated at all. In fact, the things he wrote about are in many ways even more apropos to the world today. He was ahead of the curve for sure.
You know, getting a rave review in the NY Times by George Steiner who compared your book to Moby Dick must have been like getting a thumbs up from God.
That was some very deep thinking. The first paragraph brought something to mind that always reminds me that real truth does not force itself upon the people, they have to be in a position to reciprocate, like the Scriptural equivalent of your opening paragraph would be:
" Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20)
In a world of so many people divided by so many paradigms, one can only wonder where the expression "Truth stands on it's own" came from. If individual truths can be quarantined to certain prescribed limits within the confines of those who will not rule over themselves,but are quick to assert rule over others, then it is a vain and futile attempt to persuade anyone who is openly resistant to common sense approaches. Do children have two parents or a village? If the local resident happen to be cannibals, and you are just passing through, do you also get a vote (voice) in what's for dinner? When the lines are blurred between "rational fears" and "irrational fears" to the point where the tried and proven are always "settled science" even though it only offers answers that cannot be questioned, instead of asking questions that cannot be answered. "The puppet masters" is one of many descriptions of a caste/class of men who are so sordid in their "solutions" that their impatience for "the final solution" tends to boomerang back on those who hurl the question begging epithets from the beginning... Thank you Jame's this will be added to my treasured reads of logical discourse.
One of the most important books of the 20th century and the easiest to read and comprehend book of philosophy ever written. A life-changer. Thanks for spotlighting this one. Hopefully, more people will now read it, or re-read it.
I read 𝑍𝑒𝑛 a thousand years ago. So appreciative of being reminded of it with this wonderful essay.
Lots of great commentary, too. I gravitated particularly to your point about pretension. That whole paragraph encapsulates so much. Pretension came to the fore in a way I'd never seen it, I don't think. Its evil counterpart, IMO? Sanctimony. That vice, too, was everywhere, is everywhere it seems.
I just learned of the murder of Persig's son here. It made me gasp. So heartbreaking.
Thank you again for this. A remarkable contribution is 𝑍𝑒𝑛. I hope Robert Persig rests in peace.
Thank you for your kind words and I'm glad you enjoyed the essay. Yeah, so tragic about Pirsig's son. I've known about it for a while but just remembered it as I was writing this essay. Regarding pretension, I wrote a little about it my column on M. Scott Peck's "The People of the Lie." I'm learning more and more about it and, like sanctimony, as you mentioned, is everywhere you look for those with eyes to see.
Your most excellent article from a few years back... I found it! "Small Town, Big Sleep" was posted below by "SheThinksLiberty" so all I had to do was poke around here. Every oppressive development beginning March 2020 you so accurately described was my experience. Out here in the sticks of Santa Fe County there's several gray metal mailbox clusters down the road. Folks have applied different stickers so they can find their door more easily. Then there appeared a Ukrainian flag on one of them. A year went by and one day I scribbled with a black marker, "There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm Where All the Money Goes" into the yellow portion of that blue & yellow flag. The next day that sticker was gone. And gone are my subscriptions to the New Yorker and several other periodicals I used to enjoy. You described the return of spring so well. I was born in New Jersey sired by Manhattan parents and I still travel east to soak in the old country. You mentioned James Kunstler as a favorite and he's one of mine, too. Just this morning of March 14th Kunstler describes spring in loving detail. It's heartwarming for me to know you and Kunstler and a few others are still out there. So many former passions have withered for me. The movies, restaurants, reverence for musicians... so much I've given up on. Joni Mitchell was so against corporations and poisons. She's afflicted by the mysterious "morgellons" fibers sprouting from her skin so I was shocked she'd join Neil Young when they protested the "antivaxxers." Maybe it was that massive stroke she suffered and Joni capsized to fellating "the man" instead of fighting him. The hippies of Santa Fe are now the pro-war suicidal robots. If I'm in Hudson again I'd love to meet up with and share notes, James.
James, you got me wanting to read Pirsig’s book again, which I read back in 1986. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 17 and just turned 69. Currently own a Moto Guzzi Griso. Like you, I stopped watching television way long ago. I’d watch the occasional PBS thing then shortly after 9/11 that ended my viewing forever. I believe every household with a satellite dish got vaxxed.
Hi Tom: Thank you for your comment. I was riding motorcycles throughout my teens and into my early 40s. Then I had an accident and although I emerged unharmed, I thought that might be a sign to stop riding before something else--and far worse--happened to me. The last bike I owned was a Kawasaki 550 LTD. A fast bike (in-line 4-cylinder engine). The last long trip I did on it was from my home at the time in NJ, up into the wilderness of northern Ontario (James Bay), back down through Michigan, then back east. Like Pirsig's Honda 350, it was a small bike for such a long trip. But I'm glad I did it. I eventually bartered it in 1999 with a friend in exchange for some construction work on a house I'd just bought. I sometimes dream about getting another bike. Like a BMW. But with all the crazy drivers around and texting at the wheel and vaccidents happening all over, I always talk myself out of it. And I'm going to be 72 this summer and my reaction time is not quite as fast as it used to be, so there is that as well. But you've a nice bike so enjoy it and ride safe!
Thanks for writing back, James. I was so taken by your article you wrote a couple of years back... about wandering about Hudson, New York in horror of what the locals did to themselves... and you vowing to never frequent certain businesses again and lamenting of the friendships you'd lost. I can't find that item now but at the time I forwarded it to the few I still know but the many I've lost. To me, just like you, I didn't believe the covid psyop for one minute. From Nome, Alaska down to Tierra del Fuego EVERYBODY assumed the position... and with self-righteous glee and determination! People actually enjoyed it! They'd never felt such inclusion before; to be part of something so big and scary. To me their postured position wasn't a line in the sand, it was the Grand Canyon. They were so far on the other side I couldn't even see them.
I'm in Santa Fe County about 10 miles from a capitol city of liberal insanity. People are still wearing face masks here. Car bumpers still display stickers supporting Hillary, Obama/Biden, Resist, Bernie Sanders, Biden/Harris, Harris/Walz, you get the picture. I was refused entry to multiple businesses and ordered to leave grocery stores for refusing to wear a mask. I'm a sign painter and I'd never stood on a street corner with a sign until 2020. I painted one that read "One World Order, You Masked For it." On the other side it read, "Stop Obeying." I had so much fun with people throwing fingers... and throwing kisses, too, that I painted another that read, "Got Immune System?" The other side read, "Refuse the Vaxx." People went insane driving by. Such fun.
Yeah, I'm watching the traffic. Still riding the Guzzi and keen with situational awareness. I've no desire for a ride over a hundred miles. Here's one of my favorite quotes... "Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men experience it as a whole. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller. And while I've got my quotes file open here's another for your enjoyment...
"I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.” - Cornell University professor Dave Callum
I love this observation of yours: "They'd never felt such inclusion before; to be part of something so big and scary. To me their postured position wasn't a line in the sand, it was the Grand Canyon. They were so far on the other side I couldn't even see them." That really hits the nail on the head. So well said. And I love the posters you made. Hilarious. I too live in a bastion of liberal insanity here in New York's Hudson Valley. It feels like I'm living behind enemy lines. It was never this way before covidmania. And I don't know if we're ever going to be able to bridge this great divide. By the way, the essay you are thinking about it is this one: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/05/no_author/863243-2/
70 years of television can only be described as mission accomplished. The vast majority of human brains have been transformed into absorbent sponge-like matter. William Casey was Reagan's CIA spook and he said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Walter Cronkite assured everyone "That's the way it is" and most were convinced they were responsible for attending daily TV briefings. I was impressed by the destruction of 9/11 until the official scenario was criticized and Dr. Judy Wood showed video of 100 ft. steel beams vaporizing into dust before they ever hit the ground. 9/11 was just another test to see how compliant the rabble could be, but they needed to invent another false flag that would "get their attention" as Bill Gates promised. When they were informed a deadly airborne virus was floating through the air finally it got Personal! People jumping from the towers to their deaths wasn't anybody they knew. Easily forgotten. So many people in Santa Fe are organic. They purchase at Whole Foods and avoid the deadly GLUTEN!! (so deadly) but were convinced overnight that they didn't have an immune system. All that expensive eating and buying all those years for nothing.
The covid scam empowered the sheep to bray and lash out at me for not obeying the arrows and 6 ft. distance circles on the floor. Their masks didn't work because I wasn't wearing a mask. That's science. You and I lost friends and neighbors forever. I'm on acres of property in an HOA neighborhood of 35 other houses. 2020 there was no annual HOA meeting because... well, you know. In 2021 the board emailed a message asking who would like to offer their house for the upcoming meeting. I emailed back inviting everyone to my house. I said, "Everybody's been vaxxed so you don't have to wear a mask to attend the meeting." The hatred and curses that emitted from my monitor blew back my hair. I was called a racist but there's nothing but white folks here. I was called anti-science, a holocaust denier, a misogynist and a ranting crank. People I've known over 20 years. I wrote back and reminded them they love going to restaurants. They are willing to risk going outside amidst the deadly virus, wearing their masks as the menus are fetched and they are seated... where they take off their masks because everybody knows there's no virus "down there." That's science. Standing up is the zone of death. Sitting down is safe. I asked my neighbors if you come to my house, once you're seated do the masks come off? More curses and hatred was hurled and the board declared the 2021 meeting would be via zoom call. I didn't participate.
You like Albert Camus and here's a quote of his you will appreciate... "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Thanks for the "Small Town - Big Sleep" link, James.
Oh, and I super-loved the "checking emails in the monastery" story! Oh yes. I sure know that one. :)
I just finished the piece and find I am left with two particularly strong awarenesses. One, the significance of attention, how there is so much power and strength just in attention. So it makes sense that those who would weaken us go after our attention. And how taking that attention back, resisting the impulse to "check my emails" is such an effective act of defiance and non-compliance. And secondly, I am left with a very warm appreciation of Persig as a person. How he cared for his own thinking and process, and how that care was just reflected in maintaining your motorcycle, not just riding it when it works. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the book and bringing it back to life for me.
Thanks, Jim! You made me want to re-read it, so I searched through all my shelves for its pink cover, and alas! I dimly recalled giving it away to some young guy, a weekend rental guest who seemed to need it. I'll have to buy it again, because it really should be here on my shelf. Or on the too-high stack of to-be-read books next to my bed, with bookmarks in both Flannery O'Connor and Richard Brautigan (clearly my reading is different from yours).
But from that book, among its many other strengths, I'll always remember "Pirsig's Brick" as one of the best pieces of advice about writing that I've ever received. It's excerpted here: https://www.readthesequences.com/Original-Seeing
Thanks for your comment, Brent. I'd forgotten about that "Pirsig's Brick" lesson until I re-read the book to write this essay. It's a great piece of writing advice indeed. He must have been a good teacher, although I'd read in other sources that he didn't like teaching at all. Before a class he'd sometimes get so anxious that he'd get sick to his stomach. The book is worth re-reading. None of it really seems dated at all. In fact, the things he wrote about are in many ways even more apropos to the world today. He was ahead of the curve for sure.
You know, getting a rave review in the NY Times by George Steiner who compared your book to Moby Dick must have been like getting a thumbs up from God.
That was some very deep thinking. The first paragraph brought something to mind that always reminds me that real truth does not force itself upon the people, they have to be in a position to reciprocate, like the Scriptural equivalent of your opening paragraph would be:
" Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20)
In a world of so many people divided by so many paradigms, one can only wonder where the expression "Truth stands on it's own" came from. If individual truths can be quarantined to certain prescribed limits within the confines of those who will not rule over themselves,but are quick to assert rule over others, then it is a vain and futile attempt to persuade anyone who is openly resistant to common sense approaches. Do children have two parents or a village? If the local resident happen to be cannibals, and you are just passing through, do you also get a vote (voice) in what's for dinner? When the lines are blurred between "rational fears" and "irrational fears" to the point where the tried and proven are always "settled science" even though it only offers answers that cannot be questioned, instead of asking questions that cannot be answered. "The puppet masters" is one of many descriptions of a caste/class of men who are so sordid in their "solutions" that their impatience for "the final solution" tends to boomerang back on those who hurl the question begging epithets from the beginning... Thank you Jame's this will be added to my treasured reads of logical discourse.
One of the most important books of the 20th century and the easiest to read and comprehend book of philosophy ever written. A life-changer. Thanks for spotlighting this one. Hopefully, more people will now read it, or re-read it.
I read 𝑍𝑒𝑛 a thousand years ago. So appreciative of being reminded of it with this wonderful essay.
Lots of great commentary, too. I gravitated particularly to your point about pretension. That whole paragraph encapsulates so much. Pretension came to the fore in a way I'd never seen it, I don't think. Its evil counterpart, IMO? Sanctimony. That vice, too, was everywhere, is everywhere it seems.
I just learned of the murder of Persig's son here. It made me gasp. So heartbreaking.
Thank you again for this. A remarkable contribution is 𝑍𝑒𝑛. I hope Robert Persig rests in peace.
Thank you for your kind words and I'm glad you enjoyed the essay. Yeah, so tragic about Pirsig's son. I've known about it for a while but just remembered it as I was writing this essay. Regarding pretension, I wrote a little about it my column on M. Scott Peck's "The People of the Lie." I'm learning more and more about it and, like sanctimony, as you mentioned, is everywhere you look for those with eyes to see.
Excellent. I’ve not read “Zin and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, but I’m going to now. Thanks for an interesting read.