While I'm Plugging Things

Here's a link to my podcast, which has a lot of gratuitous sex and rock and roll.  Plus poetry.

www.vcaruso35.podbean.com

So come on down and check it out.

One Astral Day

http://www.amazon.com/One-Astral-Day-ebook/dp/B006EPFYGK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324486731&sr=8-1


Here's a series of 10 poems I published on Kindle.  Buy if you're interested.
Thanks.

On Inevitabilities

Money exchanges between drug deals or grocery store attendants and shoppers or gun runners and dealers, etc., and so on and so forth.  So ubiquitous is cash, is a credit card, that we take for granted its prevalence in our lives.  We take for granted that there will be taxes and debts. 

Hammurabi of Babylonia was the first to codify laws on money, which haven’t changed since.  Every historical figure has had to contend with money.  George Washington, Stalin, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, your favorite actor or director or writer.  Money is, like Adulthood, an Inevitable.

From the Marxist standpoint, you can shake your tribal head at money, but still you have children to be responsible for, or yourself to be responsible for, or your rent.  Either way, freedom does not ring true and we have Free Will, but not freedom from the chains of money and power and all the inevitabilities of life.  No one can escape the Inevitable, which of course connotes death.  But look around! There are inevitabilities all around.  You can’t escape.  You are in a straightjacket of capitalism and power hierarchy. 

The way we escape is through sex, drugs, TV, bars—and if you can make money off of sex, drugs, TV, bars, off the Inevitabilities, so much more power to you, like an owner of a Strip Club.  You have your whores sell your TVs or food.   It’s funny how the corporate stratosphere has congealed this working model.  We call this commercialism.

And Nature is no escape, Peace no altruism.  What’s the difference between meditating and jacking off in your room, when the world is jaded from hazmat men cleaning up the mess of our lives?  If the apocalypse comes, it will be by our own hand and in that hand will be a credit card.   

The Importance of People

I once believed in the importance of people.  Sure, I’m not evil, wicked, or mean.  But unlike me, some people actually value others over food, money, and time.  And the rare person who values another more than their own life we call hero.

As I sit here writing, 11/20/11, I muse on just how much people are important.  After all, I’m one of them.  I look, though, out the windows, and see traffic, see headlights zoom back and forth, faceless, uncaring of each other and me, who sits in here beyond their imagination.   There are a lot of f-ing people in the world.  In the room right now at Starbucks, including workers, 20 to 22 people are here.  In one Starbucks.  Out of this population, only workers would talk to me for any reason, and their reasons are most likely Starbucks related.  The rest who are non-workers are with their friends, family, and computers (like me).  But this is Morgantown,WV, and I have revisited this Starbucks for the last 3 months nearly nonstop.  I can guarantee you no one is going to sit at my table, interrupt me and tell me their life story tonight.  I would bet more money than I have on this.

Human beings deep down are conflicted with each other, place up boundaries they’ve learned since childhood, and generally stay away from each other’s personal space.  When I say they are conflicted, I mean, they find each other’s company irritating unless they are familiar with the other.  Very beautiful women and famous stars have to hide from men and women, because they will want something as personal as sex with them or something as simple as an autograph.  I too would want privacy. 

So why are there people in Starbucks at this moment, but they’re not all hugging and introducing each other?  It is an unspoken agreement that we do not know each other well enough to introduce ourselves to each other.  Or, the importance of the people around ourselves is absolutely zero in comparison to, say, the worker who sells me coffee.  We all are close enough to talk, but do not.  And I, for one, won’t be going to another table to strike up a life story with someone.

I think I used to get lonely and be bitter about these facts, though it went unverbalized.  Once you have been cultivated with boundaries, you get slightly comfortable.  If I had to say hello to everyone on earth, I would die of exhaustion.  Yet there’s something oddly misaligned, as in the value system that places such an importance on loving one another.  Here one ignores and avoids contact.  Too much conflict, big boundaries, there is no real love from stranger to stranger here.  It is only the stranger in need we help.  If they’re a big boy or big girl, ignore.  Avoid.  Unless the importance of what we WANT from them supersedes the unspoken isolation. 

This is not true of ALL people.  Some people generally do try to reach out to strangers in a sincere way, to help.  I know a girl who helped a stranger with her groceries, for no reason at all, just this morning.  There are exceptions.  And without these exceptions, it would be an even chillier human race.  Without the exceptions of people who don’t think in terms of what can I get from that stranger, we would only be using each other, I say.  Families would disappear, because these exceptions are kind and give to strangers, not because of the return.  And that kindness and giving are necessary for two lovers and then children… well, you know that story.  But yet the truth is that families end up having unspoken agreements to isolate themselves from the rest of humanity.

Sadly enough, it is a world of strangers, isolating from each other, when really so much love could be given.  I daresay, this is a tragedy of humankind.  And only in times of masterful destruction do strangers join forces against a giant force.  They love as the ants love then.  And then back to our family and friends.  After all, you can’t trust anyone until you know you can trust them.

On Wisdom

I wish I was wise, you know?  As a writer and reader, you expect pith and depth and grace and elegance.  You expect to be led by a grandfather or grandmother, who sits on a rocking chair, as you sit on the porch swing, and the grandparent just says the right words—no, not the words you want to hear, but the weight and gravity of very truth itself.

No, I’m not one of those Mark Twains, or Ben Franklin, or even stretching back to the eloquent Roman orator Seneca.  I feel you sort of have to eat your vegetables, wake up early, earn a living, reach a maturity of experience, to say the words that people so desperately need to hear, there on that porch swing, with the sun going down.

Truth was, for me, killed, or rather, I sort of am in pursuit of the corpse of Truth.  And if I find Truth alive, perhaps, then I will be wise, both on paper and in life.  I feel alone in believing that truth was killed long ago.  How could anyone know truth then or now? 

Perhaps wisdom is not the synonym of truth.   Perhaps wisdom wins the battle over the biases of men and women that are called truth.  Perhaps wisdom weighs more and is bigger and grander, shining like the sun out there where you and I meet.  Perhaps wisdom is simpler than intelligence, but harder to grasp, to take hold, to believe, to believe in.  Perhaps wisdom is in tune and in accord with the reality of nature, like a Gorilla or pigeon, somehow infinitely wiser than the verbal human.  Perhaps the reason we worshiped animals long ago was not as gods but as creatures of wisdom.  Is a gorilla or pigeon the truth?

  

Days Were Golden

When I was about 6 or 7 or about the age when days are golden and long and filled with fun, the time after school and before bed time, you would find me in the “wee” room.  It was a messy little loving room.  Toys everywhere, table in the center, and eventually a large shelf, with a TV and computer, a Commodore 64—all constructed in maybe 10 x 10 feet, if that.  Our family had called it the “wee room,” just as the Convenient Store was the “wee store.”  I assume it came from Irish origin OR Wee people, the toy people with holes for bottoms.  Nonetheless, there is Irish somewhere in all of this.

But you would find me shaggy dark brown haired, red Izod shirt, and blue shorts, and probably Keds.  Or Kangaroos, I think they were called, had little zippered pockets you could stuff stuff in, like a quarter, per se. I would have my nose to the TV, if I wasn’t playing Nintendo or games for the Commodore.  Literally, my nose was almost touching the little TV in the wee room.  And I was a wee guy too. 

I watched cartoons like Thundercats, GI Joe, Heathcliff, and so many on after school or on Saturday morning.  There were other TVs in the house, one in the living room for grownups, and, eventually, one in just about every room, including my teenage bedroom.   In school, I remember kids who didn’t have TVs, which was confusing.  And like any confused boy he makes fun of what he doesn’t understand.  Like John.  John was a friend of mine, but the fact he didn’t have or wasn’t allowed to watch TV was in fact a funny bone of contention as far as I was concerned.  Just how could you not watch TV?

So I had my nose to the TV, watching all the Gen X and Gen Y goodies.  Stuff that was just original as all get out.  And the commercials that came on—whatever the toy was, I had to have.  I mean, seriously, like kicking and screaming, until I had the latest toy water gun or whatever the fuck.   If you watch a commercial for toys, they really do make it irresistible to be without that toy.  Just ask any 7 year old.

I think by 13 videogames, films, and primetime TV, were my main forms of entertainment, aside from interesting tidbits at school.  Right there, I was with you.  You would find me and Seinfeld smiling and laughing at Kramer, or tears rolling from my eyes with laughter from Al and Peggy’s 5 minute sex routine, that was implied by only a clock.  And if you would see me beat Mother Brain with finesse, you could.  I was in the pop culture thick of 1993 just like everyone else.  And this routine of videogames and films and primetime TV didn’t stop until puberty and friends in puberty.   We would hang out or go to parties or do what school commanded of us.

The myriad of different teenage activities of small town American life soon blended with boredom, horniness, and, eventually, a burning desire to escape the town from which I came.

Around 1995, a book came from nowhere.  Like a note just dropped on the table and I look and nobody’s around.  Like I really don’t remember why I picked up the book, why I desired to read it, or anything of that sort.  It was not school related.  It was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

And now I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and I don’t watch TV, play video games, or watch many films.  I am aberrant because I don’t do these things.  And there are many reasons I don’t, but you would think me crazy.  I know you would.  A TV in every household, 60 year olds playing videogames, and derivative films sold by the millions.  I’m not going to try to persuade you that any of that last statement is strange or anything.   I will say, however, now, when my folks or friends or whomever are watching TV or go to the movies, I would rather be jerking off stories, essays, and poems.  I’m crazy.  Deal with it.

          

A Letter to the President

Dear Mr. President,

I write with hopes to persuade you to think about the state of government itself.  Perhaps, you love the way the government is run by each branch and each state.  I won’t point out one single flaw with the U.S. Federal and State government.  This letter is not to point obvious things.  When you shower, drink your tea or coffee, or make a single decision, I want you to ask yourself one single question, and before I get to that question, I want you to understand that everyone looks to you in the world, whether they should or should not.  You are the most important individual on the global stage, and hence bear the graying burden of responsibility for yourself, your representation of the government, and your people.  So with this all in mind, I want one question to be asked: Is this elegant?

When we all first learned Mr. Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC², we learned the end formula, as you know.  Maybe you know how he derived the formula, maybe you don’t.   Mathematicians, scientists, physicists, and so many in the math and science fields can explain how Mr. Einstein came to his formula, and can explain what it means.   This is not a lesson in science or relativity or anything such.  The importance is when confronted with a long series of equations, ideas, calculations, and so much more, that make up a problem, it is of the utmost importance to simplify and reduce to the most elegant formula, equation, solution.  Precisely, what Mr. Einstein did with his mass-energy equivalence.

A word on the primary sense of the word: elegance can mean fancy, tasteful, etc.  However, Mr. President, if you have studied math or science, elegance means something vastly more substantial.  It means taking a challenging problem or theory and solving it cleverly and simply, such as the example with Mr. Einstein I referred to above.

Ronald Reagan said something like: a government big enough to take care of all the needs of its people is big enough to control them or something like that.  Rhetoric from political parties uses words like “big government,” “small government.”  This rhetoric gets us nowhere.  What I think is a better term, Mr. President, is, you guessed it, “An Elegant Government.”  If a government is to solve problems, cost, employment, the global state of affairs with certain countries, should NOT come into play FIRST.  Approaching the problem, the first question should be: What is the most elegant solution to this problem?  And if you, Sir, do not know the elegant solution, find the people who would know the most elegant solution.  And then solve it.

If you have followed me thus far, I thank you for your attention.  I want you to think about all the myriad ways theoretically and pragmatically the government works, from taxes, wars, to laws and bills.  If you have to walk out into the woods, and contemplate the state of the government itself, please do so, and I’m sure you know where this is leading.   Do you know with certainty that we have an elegant government?  Would you publish this state of government in a paper now and win the Nobel Prize for it, like Einstein and his formula?  If this answer is no, then what’s the question?  Not how to make the government bigger or smaller or, even, better, but the possibilities of its elegance.

The Constitution is Elegant, which is why we Americans have followed it.  It is paper, though.  Why should an elegant political document do most of the work, while the government does not all of it?  Why does it need to depend its reputation on Amendments and Amendments alone?

I am no mathematician.  I don’t do everything elegantly all the time.  But the burden of one of the most powerful countries does not rest on my shoulders.   It rests on yours and the many that surround you.   Don’t think bigger, smaller, better, efficient, or anything else, I say Mr. President, think elegant.