Here in this house of clouds, I'm awakened by the flapping of wings. I hear the call of birds. I fly over mountains.
Like the shadow of an airplane that passes over open water, I vanish with the wind. Here in this house of clouds, I'm awakened by the flapping of wings.
it
cannot be recalled, the action cannot be undone;
it
has become a part of that green continuum.
Reality
has been changed,
altered,
rearranged.
I met
him in the eighth grade.
He
took LSD on the weekends and was already
a
guitar virtuoso.
He
loved the early Yardbirds, jazz and blues.
He
taught me how to jam.
He
once fired me from a junior high band
but
he was always kind. Years
later a storm blew in.
Voices
roared in his head.
He
wanted to banish them to the darkness.
But
how could he win
against
such a big wind? Where could he begin?
Wishes
changed nothing.
So he
taped his ID to his wrist and put a gun
to
his head
and
squeezed the trigger until he was dead.
Each
night his mother longs to
dream of her only son,
before
the voices and the gun.
She
once believed in happy endings but no more,
not
without her son, not in a world undone.
*Note:
While the poem above was written some years after learning of the
death of my childhood friend in 2004, the one below was written
shortly after hearing the tragic news. My old friend struggled with
both addiction and a mood disorder. I played rhythm guitar for him in
eighth and ninth grade and in exchange he taught me how to play lead
guitar and bass; he played with breathtaking virtuosity. He went on
to become one of the finest jazz bass players in the Twin Cities.
Sadly I lost touch with him after I left Minnesota in the mid
seventies and was never able to carry "the message" of
recovery to him; that regret echoes in the lines below. What a
loss...
This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.
In my
mind, I hear your voice
telling
me that you had no choice.
That
there was nothing left to do.
That
your world had gone from black to blue.
Do
you have nothing left to hide,
there
on the other side?
No
more secrets, no more lies,
no
more need for alibis?
Was
there nothing I could say
to
make you want to stay?
Did
you really have to go?
That's
what I want to know.
Andy Warhol made movies of folks doing nothing. George Costanza, in the comedy “Seinfeld”, tried to persuade NBC to make a TV show about nothing. As much as I like “Seinfeld” and Andy Warhol, this journal won’t be about nothing. I won’t try to make something out of nothing. I will try to focus on the turning points, the moments of heartbreak and high drama (at least as they seemed to me). Not that I won’t engage in some navel gazing but I will attempt to cut away the rind, and get to the juice. Many things will be left out. In no way will this journal be an all inclusive representation of the events in my life. It will be more of a series of vignettes, incidents, stories and poems. Memory is a funny thing. It is not an event in itself but the fragmentary replication of an event, made of fleeting impressions, feelings and images. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is dependent on us, on our brains, on human consciousness. In the end, memory is a kind of fiction, an illusion, a magician’s trick, where the past is revived and pulled out of a hat.
On French TV, I once saw an interview with an American actor who used the expression “12 step program” instead of AA to protect his anonymity. In subtitles this was translated as Alcoholics Anonymous. The American actor did not break his anonymity, the translator did. While I will refrain from using last names (including my own), those referenced may recognize themselves. They may be wrong, or not. So be it. Of course, as the details of my life emerge in these pages the possibility of who I really am will become narrower. Then again, I may be making all of this story up or at least parts of it. Half remembered conversations certainly will become fictionalized. One cannot experience an event like God and see and remember all things. What happened decades ago flashes back to us in an instant, but it is not reality. Reality is long gone. Maybe the past is out there somewhere in an alternative universe, but access to it is uncertain. It seems to be locked away in a house with very few windows (where we can peer in and glimpse its inner secrets). It is in the realm of ghosts, the realm of dreams; it is in a far off country that one only hears rumors about (and no one really knows if any of those stories are true); it is in another world.
Folks whose names I have forgotten will be given new names; in more than a few cases, I will intentionally change even the first names of those who were once close to me.
We miss much of what goes on around us. In writing this, things may become clearer to me. I may discover things that have been buried, repressed, forgotten. So we will take this journey together. We will see what we can see.
.________________________________________
1971 was the best year of my life. My dad got sober. I turned fourteen. I had my first wet dream. I found love. It was also the year, I discovered drugs. We moved into a new house: a big two story with a fireplace and a rec room with shag carpet in the basement (where I could play my electric guitar and listen to records). It became my studio apartment and later band rehearsal space. I was in heaven. Even so, I had a lot of strong feelings for the old house. In the winter, I could ski from my backyard to a park that had a tow rope and ski hill, or I could walk up the block to a skating rink and play hockey. In summer, I played endless innings of baseball in the neighborhood. I played football in the fall. While I had many great experiences in the old house and neighborhood, the new house promised something new, something different, and it delivered. While the new house was on the fringes of the Minneapolis suburb of New Hope; New Hope was, both figuratively and literally, just on the other side of the road.
I would change schools. (Later I would attend high school with the same kids from my old junior high and grade school.)The new house was just a mile away from the old house down Medicine Lake Road (where my father once crashed and rolled a car while drunk). But that was while living in the old house, that other life, before my dad found permanent sobriety (over forty years).
The years before that grand event were both magical and traumatic. If not my for my dad’s drinking, my life would have been perfect, idyllic. Even so I had a lot of fun. In the fall, my father would take me deer and pheasant hunting. Since my dad’s drinking was periodic, when sober I could not have hoped for a more tender and loving father. During vacations, I would go fishing with my grandfather (my mother’s step-father) in southern Minnesota. A one time big band leader, my grandfather played saxophone and owned an organ and electric guitar. He loved Ray Charles, Hank Williams. He always reminded me of an old bluesman; he had black kinky hair (he was Black Irish). He championed my interest in learning how to play guitar.
The move to the new house meant that I would have to give up my morning paper route. In winter, I would have to get up before five (on my bike in summer the route took less than thirty minutes; when there was snow and ice, it took over an hour). In many ways, I enjoyed my morning paper route. In the late night hours the world is mysterious, full of long shadows, most everyone is asleep (except for paper boys and insomniacs and those up to no good). One morning, I saw the shadow of a man digging a hole in his front yard. I imagined the worst. The move took place in January, so there would be no more delivering papers in the cold, subzero dark. It was soon replaced with an evening paper route in the new neighborhood.
On my route, I often would listen to music from my transistor radio with an ear piece, privately, so as not to wake anyone up. Late one night, while in bed at home, I heard the news through that tiny ear piece that RFK had been assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles(that too was a traumatic memory from the old house).
* * * *
On my first day of the ninth grade, I arrived at the bus stop early. Johnny O soon joined me at the bus stop. We did not know each other well but over the next few years we would become close friends. Johnny was a year younger than me and had recently formed a band with my old pal Roger on bass. Johnny was the front man, the guitarist and singer. He was small, good looking—he had that whole David Cassidy, Mick Jagger thing going for him. With my long wavy, blonde hair, I looked pretty good myself (earlier that summer I had gotten chubby but I dieted on Fresca and yogurt and with the help of a major growth spurt; I was once again a contender for the girls’ hearts). I was dressed in my new schools clothes, a lavender shirt, corduroy bell bottoms and boots. (Soon there would be no division between school clothes and play clothes; I would wear blue jeans and whatever shirts my mother had laundered that week.)
The ninth grade would be wild. While I wouldn’t become a total stoner (that would come later), I would dabble with drugs whenever I had the chance. I would find the girl of my dreams and then lose her. I would then be asked to join Johnny and Roger’s band (the best junior high band in the Twin Cities) and then be asked to leave. The thing about good fortune, about good luck, is that there always the chance of a reversal of that good fortune, of that glittering prize being stolen or lost. But a loss (and in particular a loss in love) can bear its own kind of fruit, its own kind of wisdom, bittersweet and dark. This dark night of the soul can change us, transform us, if we let it. After all, it brought us the cantos of Dante after the death of Beatrice, and a whole world, no a whole universe, constellations, of poetry and song.
* * * * *
There was a pond behind my house, and beyond that another pond and a large field and creek. In winter, the ponds would freeze and everything would turn white. In a few months (that coming spring) Roger and Johnny O would name the field Peachland (after the cover art from the album “Eat a Peach” by the Allman Brothers). As long as I can remember I loved Christmas vacations and this one was turning out to be the best yet. Dressed in my father’s old Air Force overcoat, I trudged through the snow. I pulled out a corn cob pipe and filled the bowl from a dime bag of marijuana (mind you, this was nineteen seventy one; I’m sure prices have changed).
I lit the bowl and took a puff. My eyes turned upward and I began to ascend into the clouds (in that Air Force overcoat, I was a pilot alright). This is what I had been looking for, I thought, total bliss. But I could not just stay up there in the clouds, I had a mission. I had bought a gold locket for my girlfriend, Laura, as a Christmas gift. Inside the locket, I placed a picture of myself from my Canadian fishing trip, one that I had cut out from a group photo—all that remained was a kind of head shot, and really all that could be seen was my hair shining in the sun.
Laura had an identical twin, Lisa. In the beginning, I could not tell them apart. But that soon changed. To me, they were just sisters—as different as sisters can be. Not that they weren’t close, there was a bond between them. But their personalities were their own. They shared the same interests and history but there was a difference in vision and attitude and there certainly was a difference in how I felt about them (I had no romantic feelings for Lisa and she had none for me).
The twins would often accompany me on my paper route. My customers did not consider that I was a long haired stoner, opening their doors and invading their space. They thought I was a girl (my sister, Anne, often collected for me). I would correct them when they would call out to a spouse: “the paper girl is here.” During this time, I grew as tall as my mother (five foot four) and then to my father’s height (five foot seven). Soon I would tower over both of them and I would no longer be mistaken for a girl no matter how long my hair was.
I first noticed Laura the spring before when I saw her and Lisa out smoking cigarettes in Peachland. They waved at me, I shouted back but nothing came of it. Later we hooked up and made out at a party at Boone’s farm. (I call it that after the two bottles of cheap wine I drank before I arrived. Still it really was a farm.) Johnny and Roger’s band played that night. Roger asked if I wanted to play Johnny’s cherry Gibson ES335. I tried to play but I was too drunk. (Roger insisted that I was a good player). But Johnny was not impressed.
Laura and Lisa lived close by, just across the field and up the block, ten minutes by foot. (Later, after the break up, it was if Laura lived on another planet, she seemed so far away. That distance, that feeling of emptiness, lingered in my soul for a long time.)
After I arrived at Laura’s house, I pulled the gift box from my pocket and gave it to Laura as Lisa and her mother looked on, smiling, touched.
“But I haven’t got you anything.” Laura said.
“That’s alright,” I said.
“I will get you something.”
She did get me something, a watch, but the gift I wanted, I already had, Laura. Such an intelligent and tender girl, a true paradox, wild yet innocent, and like Roger sadly prolific in her use of drugs, including LSD.
In seventh grade (I was 12), I went to school wearing a black armband in protest of the war in Vietnam. My young social studies teacher (a recent University of Minnesota graduate) had been accused of influencing me. Her job was on the line. Later in class, she asked me why I wore the black armband. I knew why. I had an answer. I was thinking of all the young men, who were just a few years older than me, who were needlessly dying overseas. I was also aware of the Vietnamese children (just my age) who were being incinerated by American weapons of war. But before I could answer her, she spoke up and accused me of wearing the armband as a fashion statement (this answer, of course, would get her off the hook; she couldn't be responsible for a student's way of dress; the sixties were a wild time). I was humiliated and shamed by her answer and never voiced my own true sentiments. In my anti-war poems (many of them posted on this blog), I hope to make amends for that silence.
*Note: in fairness to the school (Carl Sandburg Junior High), no one ever asked me to remove the black armband or to go home. I wore the black armband the entire day.
Americans have taken part in peace initiatives across the United States to protest against the continuing war in Vietnam.
The Peace Moratorium is believed to have been the largest demonstration in US history with an estimated two million people involved.
In towns and cities throughout the US, students, working men and women, school children, the young and the old, took part in religious services, school seminars, street rallies and meetings.
Supporters of the Vietnam Moratorium wore black armbands to signify their dissent and paid tribute to American personnel killed in the war since 1961.
The focal point was the capital, Washington DC, where more than 40 different activities were planned and about 250,000 demonstrators gathered to make their voices heard.
"I do believe this nation is in danger of committing itself to goals and personalities that guarantee the war's continuance." Senator Edward Kennedy
Some peace demonstrators gathered on the Capitol steps last night singing songs and holding a candlelit vigil until rallies began in the morning.
Addressing a rally in Washington, Dr Benjamin Spock, the child care expert, said the war was a "total abomination" that was crippling America and must be stopped.
Outside the White House, there were scuffles and several arrests made when police clamped down on black activists.
In Portland, Oregon, 400 protesters clashed with police after an attempt to prevent conscripts entering an army induction centre.
Administration supporters have been critical of the moratorium. General Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called protesters "interminably vocal youngsters, strangers alike to soap and reason".
In a letter to President Richard Nixon, 15 Republican Congressmen have called for an intensification of the campaign.
Supporters of the war made their views known, too.
In New York, where the mayor, John Lindsay, had ordered the US flag to be flown at half-mast for the day, police officers and fire fighters drove with their headlights on in protest at the moratorium day as did many ordinary American citizens.
Some offiicials wore badges that read: "USA - Unity and Service for America".
But Senator Edward Kennedy, a vocal anti-war campaigner, called for combat troops to be withdrawn from Vietnam by October next year and all forces by the end of 1972.
Speaking in Boston, Senator Kennedy was careful not to accuse the president of perpetuating the war.
"I do not believe that President Nixon is committed to continuing the war in Vietnam, but I do believe this nation is in danger of committing itself to goals and personalities that guarantee the war's continuance."
President Nixon continued to work from the White House without comment, as thousands marched around him.
Peace activists congregated outside US embassies across Europe. In London a crowd of some 300 people demonstrated opposite the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
In Context
American combat troops had been fighting the Communist Viet Cong in Vietnam since 1965.
Some 45,000 Americans had already been killed by the end of 1969. Almost half a million US men and women were deployed in the conflict, and opposition to the war was growing.
The Moratorium for the first time brought out America's middle class and middle-aged voters, in large numbers. Other demonstrations followed in its wake.
Nixon had already established a gradual programme of withdrawal of US forces, but the war continued, supported by his "silent majority" of voters.
After an established ceasefire in 1973, US deployment in Vietnam ended. Saigon eventually capitulated to the Communist forces on 30 April 1975.
He wasn't like the other boys;
He played with ICBMs instead of tinker toys.
But no one made too much of a fuss.
No, no one made too much of a fuss.
After all, he was one of us.
After all, he was one of us.
When he peddled an unwinnable war
Amongst the Joint Chiefs and the Marine Corps,
No one made too much of a fuss.
No, no one made too much of a fuss.
After all, he was one of us.
After all, he was one of us.
When some were heard to say
That he took the head shot that killed JFK,
No one made too much of a fuss.
No, no one made too much of a fuss.
After all, he was one of us.
After all, he was one of us.
--Will James "Isn't this business about the President awful? Everybody seems to be upset and shattered by it. Naturally we heard about it and the shooting of Oswald and all the rest. The whole thing is very strange isn't it? What is the intelligent comment on it? I hope to heaven things will calm down and something good will come of it. The speech he was going to read at Dallas when he was shot down, is being read in the refectory. Strange things: he lists all the increase in our weapons, missiles, bombs, polaris submarines etc. etc., and after doing so says this would put a stop to any sinister plans of aggressors and ... assassins. With all those missiles and submarines, all it took to do him in was a rifle and two bullets--one extra for the Governor of Texas. I think probably this angle of it is one of the things that has unconsciously unnerved so many people. But then too he was young and vigorous, energetic, lively, etc. It is this stopping of life that shocks everyone. And in such a figure. So symbolic. I am very sorry for him and his family, but more sorry for the national dance of death, which of course is understandable, but it is a symptom of our whole condition. Oof. What times we live in..." A letter from Thomas Merton to James Laughlin (Nov. 26, 1963).
Merton writes in his journal... "When I came
down to the monastery from the woods this afternoon one of the
novices met me in the door of the novitiate and told me that
President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas, an
hour and a half before. At first I could not believe it. I told him
it must be an irresponsible rumour. No, it was quite true... The
whole thing leaves one sick. Sick at the madness, the useless
ferocity, the aimless violence that marks so much of the life of this
country. No matter who killed the President or what his motives were,
this act was simply one more in a whole long series of senseless,
brutal, stupid, pathological killings." CGB pp.343-44
*Below is the speech that Merton alluded to in his letter (that JFK was to deliver in Dallas). Merton was forever promoting peace (his beloved brother John Paul was killed in World War 2). He spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Ironically, after his death in 1968, his body was transported from Bangkok, Thailand on a United States military plane alongside dead American soldiers from Vietnam.
President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963
I am honored to have this invitation to address the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council, joined by the members of the Dallas Assembly--and pleased to have this opportunity to salute the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest.
It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting. For they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city--and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial and political support and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities--from MIT to Cal Tech--tend to attract the new and growing industries. I congratulate those of you here in Dallas who have recognized these basic facts through the creation of the unique and forward-looking Graduate Research Center.
This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.
There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.
But today other voices are heard in the land--voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest single threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.
We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.
I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this Nation's strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion. Displays of material wealth cannot stop the disillusionment of diplomats subjected to discrimination.
Above all, words alone are not enough. The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.
I realize that this Nation often tends to identify turning-points in world affairs with the major addresses which preceded them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere--it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall's speech at Harvard which kept communism out of Western Europe--it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.
In this administration also it has been necessary at times to issue specific warnings--warnings that we could not stand by and watch the Communists conquer Laos by force, or intervene in the Congo, or swallow West Berlin, or maintain offensive missiles on Cuba. But while our goals were at least temporarily obtained in these and other instances, our successful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend.
This strength is composed of many different elements, ranging from the most massive deterrents to the most subtle influences. And all types of strength are needed--no one kind could do the job alone. Let us take a moment, therefore, to review this Nation's progress in each major area of strength.
I.
First, as Secretary McNamara made clear in his address last Monday, the strategic nuclear power of the United States has been so greatly modernized and expanded in the last 1,000 days, by the rapid production and deployment of the most modern missile systems, that any and all potential aggressors are clearly confronted now with the impossibility of strategic victory--and the certainty of total destruction--if by reckless attack they should ever force upon us the necessity of a strategic reply.
In less than 3 years, we have increased by 50 percent the number of Polaris submarines scheduled to be in force by the next fiscal year, increased by more than 70 percent our total Polaris purchase program, increased by more than 75 percent our Minuteman purchase program, increased by 50 percent the portion of our strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, and increased by too percent the total number of nuclear weapons available in our strategic alert forces. Our security is further enhanced by the steps we have taken regarding these weapons to improve the speed and certainty of their response, their readiness at all times to respond, their ability to survive an attack, and their ability to be carefully controlled and directed through secure command operations.
II.
But the lessons of the last decade have taught us that freedom cannot be defended by strategic nuclear power alone. We have, therefore, in the last 3 years accelerated the development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, and increased by 60 percent the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe.
Nor can Europe or any other continent rely on nuclear forces alone, whether they are strategic or tactical. We have radically improved the readiness of our conventional forces--increased by 45 percent the number of combat ready Army divisions, increased by 100 percent the procurement of modern Army weapons and equipment, increased by 100 percent our ship construction, conversion, and modernization program, increased by too percent our procurement of tactical aircraft, increased by 30 percent the number of tactical air squadrons, and increased the strength of the Marines. As last month's "Operation Big Lift"--which originated here in Texas--showed so clearly, this Nation is prepared as never before to move substantial numbers of men in surprisingly little time to advanced positions anywhere in the world. We have increased by 175 percent the procurement of airlift aircraft, and we have already achieved a 75 percent increase in our existing strategic airlift capability. Finally, moving beyond the traditional roles of our military forces, we have achieved an increase of nearly 600 percent in our special forces--those forces that are prepared to work with our allies and friends against the guerrillas, saboteurs, insurgents and assassins who threaten freedom in a less direct but equally dangerous manner.
III.
But American military might should not and need not stand alone against the ambitions of international communism. Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others, and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. For our assistance makes possible the stationing of 3-5 million allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining a comparable number of American soldiers. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas, necessitating direct United States intervention, would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program, and might cost us heavily in American lives as well.
About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc--nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression--Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result. In short, the $50 billion we spend each year on our own defense could well be ineffective without the $4 billion required for military and economic assistance.
Our foreign aid program is not growing in size, it is, on the contrary, smaller now than in previous years. It has had its weaknesses, but we have undertaken to correct them. And the proper way of treating weaknesses is to replace them with strength, not to increase those weaknesses by emasculating essential programs. Dollar for dollar, in or out of government, there is no better form of investment in our national security than our much-abused foreign aid program. We cannot afford to lose it. We can afford to maintain it. We can surely afford, for example, to do as much for our 19 needy neighbors of Latin America as the Communist bloc is sending to the island of Cuba alone.
IV.
I have spoken of strength largely in terms of the deterrence and resistance of aggression and attack. But, in today's world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles--on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny.
That is why our Information Agency has doubled the shortwave broadcasting power of the Voice of America and increased the number of broadcasting hours by 30 percent, increased Spanish language broadcasting to Cuba and Latin America from I to 9 hours a day, increased seven-fold to more than 3-5 million copies the number of American books being translated and published for Latin American readers, and taken a host of other steps to carry our message of truth and freedom to all the far corners of the earth.
And that is also why we have regained the initiative in the exploration of outer space, making an annual effort greater than the combined total of all space activities undertaken during the fifties, launching more than 130 vehicles into earth orbit, putting into actual operation valuable weather and communications satellites, and making it clear to all that the United States of America has no intention of finishing second in space.
This effort is expensive--but it pays its own way, for freedom and for America. For there is no longer any fear in the free world that a Communist lead in space will become a permanent assertion of supremacy and the basis of military superiority. There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system. In short, our national space effort represents a great gain in, and a great resource of, our national strength--and both Texas and Texans are contributing greatly to this strength.
Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.
It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output--by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $ I I billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.
This Nation's total output--which 3 years ago was at the $500 billion mark--will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $too billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes--which have risen 43 percent in less than 3 years--have an annual level of $27.4 billion.
My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.
That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions--it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations--it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.
We in this country, in this generation, are--by destiny rather than choice--the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
Is that the humming of a god or a fallen angel that he hears?
There is so much white noise that it is deafening.
It comes in waves. As he sits in the courtroom, his hair dyed red and orange, his mind wanders. He is not dreaming. He is wide awake.
He sees things no one else sees. He heard sirens wailing months before the killing. He saw pools of blood at his feet. He saw birds trapped in a cave with no way out. (Schizophrenia is a diagnosis but not an explanation.)
A woman holds a white rose and prays for the dead, others join her, their heads bowed in sorrow. A newborn baby is placed on his father's belly. He does not know his child is there. He is in a coma.
There is a bandage over his eye where the bullet entered his brain. A ventilator helps him breathe. He does not know that twelve died in the back of theater nine. He does not know how the movie ended.
Is that the humming of a god or a fallen angel that we hear? There is so much white noise that it is deafening. It comes in waves. Our minds wander. We are not dreaming. We are wide awake. We see things that no one should ever see.
Long into the night, I drift in and out of a fog, with numbers whirling around my head, with clouds hovering in the darkness, with zeroes made up of nothing but air,
with stars floating on the edge of an indigo ocean.
If I had a rocket ship, I would search those stars out
and then make a map and mark their exact location,
so others could then plot a course and find me there, an astronaut, a kind of sailor, unmoored .
In many ways, he became like everyone else. After all, a poet cannot eat his words. Often, he hid behind the curtains in his room, shuttered in the dark.
One night he dreamt of a bird, a starling I suppose, gliding on long black wings. He longed to follow that bird
so he stretched out his arms as he lay in his bed, and drifted up into the sky. At first he was afraid as he looked at the world below
until he realized there was no power left on earth to pull him down, that gravity didn't exist in dreams. That it would be impossible to fall.
