HEY SOUL SISTERS AND BROTHERS

I want to write a letter to everyone's soul. I want to ask it how it's been. What's it been doing since this whole thing started? Has it noticed the elasticity of time, how one day can seem infinite and brief at the same time. I want to ask it what it thinks about opening up the country again, even though it is most likely going to mean more people will die than need to. And what thinks of the response, both locally, nationally, and globally. I will of course ask it about Tiger King. Maybe it has made some funny videos. Or written a blog. Does it howl at 8, or applaud at 7. Does it get cranky. Has it used the time to explore its inner workings. And after all the questions that have almost become routine, I want to ask it to please show up more often. Please. All ours souls are in trouble. Big trouble. This is the big moment, the climatic segment of the movie where the hero has to make that decision, take that action which shows us that she or he has changed, has learned from its ordeal, overcome whatever obstacle it was facing, and is now ready to destroy the one ring and save Middle Earth.

Show up, lost souls, wandering the night seeking solace. Show up and remind us who were are supposed to be. Lead us in dances. Give us the right words to say. Point out our mistakes, gently but firmly. Allay our fears, and boost our hope. Dole out love. Lots of it.

Have you noticed how those who speak with love are easier to listen to? Every day, on social media, and tv, and on the streets, I come across people speaking with love. Love for the world, for humanity, and themselves. You can sense it. There seems to be a grounding to them. A purpose. A desire to be part of this whole thing. And there are also those that speak out of fear. And You can feel that too. There is this nervous energy, a sense of dread, and the possibility at any moment of them lashing out, like someone in a corner and pushed to the brink.

Can you speak to that as well, O Souls of the World? It's a simple concept, I know, but we keep forgetting it. Love helps in every situation. Every single one. I can't think of anything where I would be able to say, "You know, things would be better here is we just had a little less love. That's the main problem, really. All this damn love. You know what we need? A little more fear. That would really get us going in the right direction."

When I howl tonight, I will howl for our souls. Loudly. When I play D&D with my friends tonight, I will do it in part to feed my soul. When I teach my classes online today, I will try and let my students instruct my soul on whatever they bring today. There is so much actual soul food out there. It's everywhere. In each act of kindness, each smile at a stranger, each phone call with a loved on. Each time I walk my dog. Each flower. And it's free. This too is nothing new, but somehow we always forget that. The answer to pretty much all our troubles is free. But we forget to stock up on it.

So Souls, go to the metaphysical Costco or Wal-Mart and load up the car with love please.

If we act out of love, we can get through this. We can figure out an economic system that takes care of us all and let's us live the lives we want to live. It will lead us to ideas that can let the planet itself thrive, with clean skies and pure waters. It will give us better music, movies, and books. And we will even tell funnier jokes, the ones that when you think of the next day make you laugh a second time.

Here's a song. It's Message of Love by the Pretenders. Love to you all.

And, here, as a bonus, one of my favorite things:

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

FINALLY FRIDAY

Dreamt of cars, the Empire State Building, and being buried alive. The cars one was strange. I was, for reasons unknown, staying at this low rent place kind of Air BNB, run by this strange pseudo-working class guy. It was in a small town near a race track. There was a main building that looked like it used to be a farmhouse, and lots of other little houses, a picnic area, a kitchen area with out door seating above a garage, and a race track not too far from there. The race track was for local stock car racing on dirt tracks. I was undercover for some reason. On the road and moving around the country like Sam and Dean in Supernatural, who use fake names and hunt down monsters and demons. Only I wasn't sure what I was hunting. The owner had a son, about ten, who seemed sad. The son was a latch-key kid, and said he never saw his dad that much. The kid was sent to school, and then the owner told me how there was a serial killer in the area, and he was pretty sure the killer had been outside the house watching him. The next day, I woke up at the same place, and there were hundreds of people outside, getting food, hanging out, all there to go to some monster truck kind of thing at the track. I went up to the restaurant, hungry and wanting breakfast. Some new guy in the dream who seemed to know me led me to the front of the line at the restaurant, where they were serving green chile, had them give me a big bowl of it, and then led me to a table. He was like the manager of the place, and told me not to mind the owner and his crazy talk about the killer. Then he told me he knew who I was, and that he too was a writer, and had a book he wrote about being having a father who left him when he was a little boy. I asked him if it was autobiographical, and he said no, which I found strange. Why write about what you don't know? Then I woke up, and as is usual these days, I thought to myself "got to remember this for the blog".

Then I fell back asleep, and dreamt I was on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Ever since I was about five and watched the original King Kong on Creature Features, I wanted to see the Empire State Building. On Halloween 1990, I took my first step in NYC, and there she was, tall and magnificent in her Art Deco splendor. My first apartment there was right down the street, on 33rd and Third, and I could go to the roof and gaze at her and contemplate life as a starving artist, which I did. Often. Anyway, I was on top of the building, and the deck was crowded, and everyone was talking about the Corona Virus. How nobody really knew what would happen next. And then, one by one, people started climbing over the protective guard rails and jumping off. And I woke up, and again thought "remember this for the blog". Padfoot, who had already gotten up in the middle of the night to perform his outdoor ablutions, was looking at me and making strange noises, so I let him out again, then went back to sleep.

And dreamt I was in a coffin, about to be buried alive. As I could feel the coffin being lowered, I woke up. And of course, thought "Remember for the blog!"

And I didn't even watch any news last night. We did, however, have along video chat with one of our friends, talking mostly about fun things, like Supernatural and favorite episodes and scary movies and whatever else came to mind. We talked about Jaws, and how she won't let her daughter watch it yet because she doesn't want her to become scared of the ocean. I told her how I had seen it when I was nine, and while it scared the crap out of me, it didn't make me more frightened of the ocean, because the ocean was already huge and mysterious and full of the unknown. I didn't need a movie to make it scary to me. I still loved it, and would swim in it every time we drove over the hill to Santa Cruz. But there is something about the ocean so huge and powerful and mostly hidden that, for me at any rate, is fearsome and not to be trifled with.

Speaking of trifling with large things, I have noticed of late more and more people who lean to the right politically trying to imply that the numbers of those who have died from Covid are somehow inflated, that the CDC guidelines are letting doctors falsely claim that people who die of things like car crashes or heart attacks are dying of Covid. Usually, this will then veer into the evils of the mass media, how there are empty hospitals in NYC, and so on. I suppose this must be a hard time for people who have supported the current administration. We are so screwed right now, and it feels like a lot of where we are at is due to mismanagement and a lack of preparation in January and February, coupled with a continuing lack of leadership. And we all know it. All of us. It just must be terrible to think you voted for a guy who is so clearly out of his league. So they try to rationalize, to lessen the blow by saying the numbers are inflated, which to me is both sad and awful. I mean, does it help them to think only 10,000 people have died in the USA as opposed to 15,000?

We can and will do better, and we are going to need to find a way to forgive each other for so many things, for ignoring the danger, for not social distancing earlier, for acting like jerks to our spouses and room mates or whomever we are quarantined with.

And that will be healthy. Forgiveness and acceptance are two things that have helped me my entire life. I fail at them often, but whenever I remember those two simple ideas, I am a better, happier, more productive human being. And I love being happy.

OK. Let's go out and forgive, accept, take no bullshit, speak our truths, dance our dances, howl when it feels right, wear masks in public, and figure out what we can do to make it better, for ourselves and each other, for a better world.

Here's a song. It's "Finally Friday" by George Jones.

https://youtu.be/yDiC7dGzT0g