How Do I Get My Wife Off Drugs?

Archive for January 5th, 2010

My wife was prescribed generic Percocet to take after her tonsilectomy. It’s been helping with the pain but she feels like garbage when she’s on it. She’s been experiencing coldness, paranoia, racing thoughts, etc. She’s been taking it for 5 days now and wants to stop. How long will it take for it all to get out of her system and for her to start feeling normal again?

Conservative Poet

Tom Zart’s 87 Poems of Love
Family & Faith

LIKE A LILY AMONG THE THORNS

Like a lily among the thorns,
So are you among the rest.
Your love is my joy of life
Which by God’s grace is the best.

When I sleep my heart is awake
It is the vice of love within.
By day or night I seek your love
My life mate, my partner, my friend.

You ravish my heart with just one look
When I’m less than you desire.
Your eyes speak without words
As displeasure kindles your fire.

Your beautiful and extraordinary
Like a fragrant flower from the wild.
I dream of the day you softly whisper
“My love, I carry your child.”

The vines put forth their tender grapes
The fig tree her sweet fruit of life.
My love for you is everlasting
As you nourish my need for a wife.

God gave man a woman to adore
And a woman a man to respect.
God gave us children we love till death
To provide for, cherish and protect.

Until it’s dawn and the shadows flee
I will hold you close and ponder
Our life together past and present

And may our future be blessed by wonder.

RELATIONSHIPS

One of the most rewarding things, each of us can do

Is the acknowledgment of others and their fears.

To promote their happiness and sense of worth

By our love, concern, laughter and tears.

Staying eager to display are willingness

To recognize our support from others.

Where would we be without the people we love

Friends, mom, dad, grandparents, sisters and brothers.

We treasure our relationships and pray to maintain them

As they give us our passion and purpose in life.

Cherishing our family, our faith, our country

Our honor, our husband or wife.

A SCORNFUL WOMAN & A SELFISH MAN

A scornful woman can rip you apart

Destroy your libido and harden your heart.

They shout their list of your every flaw

Declaring you’re lucky you get it at all.

A selfish man can become even worse

When they lie, cheat, beat, steal and curse.

Always demanding to stay king of the castle

As they force their partner to suffer their hassle.

A happy woman thrives on love, faith, family and friends,

A worthy man provides, protects and defends.

Say “No” to Satan and cast him out

Say “Yes” to Jesus and become his scout.

MY HOPE TO FIND LOVE

So here I am, like many times before
All alone with my face to the moon.
Down on knees praying God
For someone who will love me and soon!

The smallest deed done is better than intention
When you wish to receive wisdom from above.
No matter what happens, I refuse to give up
My hope to discover the magic of love.

The better the reason for my existence
The better the life I will live.
Searching for someone who will share their love
By their joy when it’s their turn to give.

My hope to find love has somewhat diminished
Though my need for romance still remains.
Sometimes I feel like Sampson himself
Broken hearted and shackled to chains.

THE GREATEST LESSON ONE CAN LEARN

The greatest lesson one can learn
Is how when loved, to love in return.

Joined together through night and day
Equally yoked in work and play.

Remaining true both body and soul
Never loosing our common goal.

Sharing each other the best we can
Before we are but bits of sand.

Mutual love is beyond compare
Serving one another in the life we share.

Without compassion humans lose
Simply by the path they choose.

Love is a miracle from God to man
How some deny it I can’t understand.

WINGS of HEAVEN

It’s a wonderful situation
To be in love with you.
All my thoughts have changed
Because of everything you do.

I lack the desire for others
No yearning for their love or favor.
All I wish is a life with you
Till it’s time to greet our Savior.

I was afraid I would never find love
Leaving no stone unturned.
I had to suffer through stupidity
To grow from all I learned.

Life is too short to remain a fool
Who doesn’t see blessings handed down.
From now to judgment I will love you
Till the wings of heaven whisper their sound.

SO DEAR TO MY HEART

So dear to my heart are my loved ones at home
As I toss and I turn in my bunk all alone.
Everyday I see death, hate and corruption
Combat is God’s proof of man’s malfunction

For family, comrades and myself I pray
To my love with this poem I wish to convey.
I knew I loved you though never how much
Till by war, I’m forced beyond your touch.

Where violence thrives, there’s the stench of death
With the taste of fear on every breath.
Who shall prevail, who shall die?
As the sadistic kill beneath God’s sky.

Baghdad has become man’s highway to hell
Where the hearts of darkness are alive and well
I count each day till it’s time to come home
And be with my love and never alone.

Love You
Your Marine

MARRIAGE SEX AND ROMANCE

Some other time, I’m not in the mood
Why cant we just cuddle and watch TV?
When couples drift into the celibate zone
It’s not long till someone will flee.

Sexual fulfillment helps preserve love,
Parenthood, marriage and self-esteem.
Those who maintain it avoid saying no
To be blessed by its pleasure and gleam.

While dating we tend to be more romantic
Putting forth the best of our charms.
Sharing dinners, long walks and lustful weekends
As we spend more time in each others arms.

How many times have you said “not tonight”
Exposing your happy home to harm?
Today’s crushing deadlines leave little time for love
Leaving partners with sorrow, sadness and alarm.

So share one another with red wine and time
Dial your own number and leave the phone off the hook.
Enjoy some romance, sex and laughter
Improving your mood and the way you look.

MOTHERS

There’s no greater power on earth
Than the love we get from our mothers.
They feel our fears within themselves
Far more than sisters or brothers.

As seasons pass; in time we learn
We can’t always rely on others.
No mater what our mistakes may be
We know we can run to our mothers.

Mothers have great big aprons
To hide from the world our flaws.
They kiss and scold when we do wrong
Teaching compliance of laws.

From birth to death mothers lead
Our angels of kindness from above.
They give us more than anyone else
Preaching the importance of love.

Moms are certainly God’s gift to earth
So if you still have one, let it be known.
You can’t imagine your life without her
While the seed of your future is sown.

DON’T  FORSAKE  ME ?

Don’t forsake our love my darling
On this night before our wedding day.
I know your ex is crying to get back
But that’s just the price he’ll have to pay.

Good guys provide for their families
Tell the truth, pay bills and remain true.
Bad guys procrastinate, chase women and party
Then blame their shortcomings, on “you”.

I will love you only and tend to your needs
Never to lie, steal or cheat.
Giving all I have to share and prosper
And when wrong I will accept defeat.

Your happiness is my inspiration
For when I please you, you please me.
I wish to father our children and give them love
And be the best husband a man can be.

MY FAVORITE POET

My favorite poet is God above
Who gives Earth its rhythm and rhyme.
Not pied pipers of misguided souls
Who promote distrust, hatred and crime.

Poetry is nature serenading in song
The peaceful roar of the oceans waves.
The wind through the trees and over the hills
And the flowers in the fields by the graves.

The sound of rain as it waters the thirsty
The songs of children at play in the park.
The far off rumble of trains or thunder
As they pass through the night in the dark.

The joy of our babies first words and steps
The passion of life with its heroes and clowns.
The on going struggle to survive our sins
As we proliferate in hamlets and towns.

My favorite poet is our Father of love
Who was first to know us before birth.
His poetry prolongs every thing we love
As His deliverance gives life its worth.

I WHO HAVE NO ONE

I who have no one, no one at all
Envy others as in love they fall.
Sleepless nights, with inward burning
Feeling hopeless, tossing and turning.

Lord please forgive the fool I’ve been
Hiding from goodness in the shadows of sin.
I humbly pray to heaven in space
For one more chance to regain my grace.

I’ve lived my years indulging myself
Leaving decency and principle on the shelf.
Now that your light shines on my face
I pray for forgiveness in shame and disgrace.

All I ask is your life mate for me
And I pledge to become all I can be.
A soul without love is empty and void
No wonder so many become destroyed.

Outside my window there’s the thunder of rain
And the haunting sound of a far away train.
I feel your presence as I silently cry
For someone to love before I die.

JESUS IS A FISHERMAN

Jesus is a fisherman
Who saves the souls of man.
Dead or alive He leads the faithful
To the streams of promise land.

He sees us when we’re happy
He hears us when we’re glad.
He whispers words of hope to us
When we face something sad.

As wicked thoughts control the mind
Evil deeds control the heart.
Jesus is who we turn to
When from sins we must depart.

Jesus is a fisherman
Who baits His hook with love.
Casting His line in your direction
From the banks of heaven above.

LOVE CONSUMES ALL

Love consumes all physical functions
Hearing, taste, touch, thought and smell.
It can heal, destroy, weaken or bond
Those caught in its presence and spell.

May I be remembered by tears of love
When my hands lay across my chest.
Displayed for view to say goodbye
To my family, friends and the rest.

Until it’s time for my final farewell
I will serve whom I love even more.
These words of passion inhabit my heart
Conveying my need for all, I adore.

PASSION AND LOVE

Samson so loved Delilah
He ended up grinding grain.
Anthony so loved Cleopatra
He lost all and was slain.

David so loved Bathsheba
He drifted from God’s command.
The way I feel makes it easy
To imagine and understand.

You‘re the inspiration of my day
And the delight of my night.
The joy we share as we conceive
Makes everything feel just right.

Thank heaven for passion and love
Blessings from God to man.
Without them we’re mere creatures
Subsisting like ants in the sand.

TO BE BLESSED BY LOVE

Darkness submits to the brightness of day
For all rich, famous or peasant.
God gives us love as a tool of endurance
For what is glorious, painful or unpleasant.

He gives us friends that mean so much
Though His greatest gift is fathers and mothers.
From them we learn the guidance we need
Or from grandparents, sisters and brothers.

How rewarding it is to share our concerns
Of the burdens that trouble man’s soul.
With words of love, passion and faith
With happiness and purpose our goal.

To be blessed by love elevates life
Projecting a radiance of grace to our face.
Like the heavenly bodies that illuminate the night
As we voyage through the vastness of space.

THE JOY I FEEL

The joy I feel within my heart
Has overcome my void.
No more foolish, selfish acts
Risking love to be destroyed.

You’re the rainbow of my day
And the tiger of my night.
Your style of loving me
Leaves no reason to fuss or fight.

Happiness shuns the selfish
Who fail God’s test of time.
Contentment comes as a gift
To hearts of the thoughtful and kind.

I obtain my daily need
As I awake to find you near.
The love we share celebrates life
As we laugh or cry with tear.

Through out each day, there are moments,
I find I need you even more.
You’re the radiance of my life
Who I worship, serve and adore.

I LOVE BEING LOVED BY YOU

My life overflows with happiness
As my favorite dreams come true.
My days and nights are magical
Because of everything you do.

You stand by me as troubles occur
And listen to my worries and fears.
You share my burdens and my joys
With faith, compassion and tears.

God’s gift to man is someone to love
Which can be both splendid and rare.
Throughout life there’s nothing better
Then those who will love us and care.

There’s the past, present, future, and beyond
Which will test our measure by what we say and do
Too many overlook the thrill of now
But not I, “for I love being loved by you.”

WE’LL ALL REUNITE IN TIME

Fame, wealth, prestige, and wild women
For too long were my passions of life.
One day I found sweet liberation
When God gave my heart to my wife.

33 years we loved one another
Sharing all we possessed and more.
Last year she passed in the middle of night
Never to shadow our door.

I’m sure in rapture, she awaits
For me to arrive in heaven divine.
I’ll miss our children and grandkids too
But we’ll all reunite in time.

THE LAST GOODBYE

I’m on my way to greet my Master
And shake His hand when I die.
I’m on my way to john sweet Jesus
In His mansion beyond on high.

I’m on my way to escape man’s woes
Where the faithful rise to tell their story.
Following the path of love and compliance.
Guided by God’s magnificence and glory.

As I journey to and from all I love
It hurts to say my absolute goodbye.
I’m on my way to divine fulfillment
But for those left behind, “I cry.”

The Last Goodbye

MOMS

Millions of dewdrops greet the dawn
As hungry of bees buzz the clover
Dazzling butterflies flutter about
As moms give love the world over.

Lessons learned at our mother’s knee
Last a lifetime till we grow older.
Popping up when troubles accrue
Like a whispering angel on our shoulder.

Gods gives us friends that mean so much
Children, fathers, sisters and brothers
Though far, far above all the rest,
No one loves us more than our mothers.

In and out of friendships, jobs and partners
Our mothers always remain our evening star.
Those who where born to a selfish mom
Make the rest us realize how lucky we are.

How great life is to have a good mom
Who reads what we feel but can’t say.
Nothing means as much, as her tender touch
And for all who are without one, “we pray.”

SHOULD TOMORROW START WITHOUT ME ?

Should tomorrow start without me
Remember I love you
Looking down from up above
Seeing everything you do.

If I become a casualty
I pray you will love again
Whom ever makes you happy
I’ll consider my friend.

Should tomorrow start without me
Remind our boys, God loves all who care
And when life seems too harsh and cruel
With “Him” they must share their prayer.

I have proven I’m not a coward
Who breaks and runs to survive
Always fearing death will kiss me
As the streets of Baghdad I drive.

Should tomorrow start without me
Be proud I choose to serve
Our faith and our patriotism
Earn the freedom we deserve.

I miss home more than ever
It breaks my heart to stay away
I can’t help but want to hold you
And whisper what I say.

PASSION

Passion is any strong feeling or thought
Of love, hate, fear, anger and grief.
The emotional joy of sexual desire
Sometimes the suffering of saint or thief.

The cruelty of man nailing Christ to the cross
His treatment subsequent to the last supper.
Continuing conflict with endless war
Make it seem we’re prone to suffer.

All must carry their own cross in life
While they struggle to survive the day.
Passion reveals how much we desire
As we race toward our outcome and pray.

WHO?

Who wrote the tune the songbird sings?
Who made the diamonds we wear on rings?

Who caused the snow and rain to fall?
Who made spring, winter, summer and fall?

Who gave man a woman to love?
Who made the clouds and sky above?

Who lights the stars and moon in the night?
Who makes heaven and beyond so bright?

Who gives us babies we follow till death?
Who made us able to speak with our breath?

Who gives us heroes willing to die?
Who made the tears we shed as we cry.

Who shows us hope and guides our way?
The same one who loves us night and day.

SATISFACTION

Too many people never know satisfaction
For their goals for happiness are placed too high.
Most of us complain about what we can’t have
When we’re not bedfast or in the grave, we lie.

No one finds satisfaction from serving themselves
Contentment takes place, by our unselfish concern.
The more we repent and regret our wrongs
The more we are able to retain what we learn.

So tally your blessings and be thankful for life
And remember there are those who wish, they were you.
Satisfaction and love are what mere mortal’s pray for
Though the lucky among us, who feel both, are few.

LOVE & HATE

Unselfish concerns are the footstones of love
Though far too many still waste time on hate.
Real happiness happens to the lucky in life
Who’ve bonded to others with love as their fate.

Malice, disfavor and ill will complicate life
To where our days resemble frustration’s hell.
The warm rush of love can turn things around
Enabling the sleepless to again rest well.

Tender love and affection generate fondness
Where hatreds repugnance eats body and soul.
Friendship, attachment, good will and charity
Are the mother’s milk of life, when love’s our goal.

So recognize hate for what it truly is
And reject it when it whispers in your ear.
For the power of love is the only way
To avoid corruption, resentment and fear.

MY TRUE LOVE

Lord, have mercy on my soul
For all the wrong I’ve done
When I was young and foolish
And searching for some fun.

My daddy told me, son
You reap what you sow
Everything I’ve learned the hard way
Are the only things I know.

I searched all the honky tonks
And every bar in town
The right woman for me to love
I had not yet found.

My mother always said
Why not look at church
There’s where you’ll find
The right one to end your search.

So, here I am singing a song
To the music of a choir
Next to me is my true love
Who sets my heart on fire.

I can see her left hand
And there’s my wedding ring
She catches me peeking at her
With every line we sing.

A man and wife are equally yoked
In everything they do;
That’s why I celebrate
God saving me for you!

CHRISTMAS

Husbands with ladders hang lights on their home
As all who have no one feel sad and alone.
The churches are full of the faithful that sing
For the birth of our Lord, is a spiritual thing.

The sound of Christmas sweetly fills the air
While frantic shoppers hustle from here to there.
The windows of storefronts at this time of year
Reflect all their wonders as Christmas draws near.

Little ones stand looking with their nose pressed to glass
As model trains on display come speeding past.
The path to Santa is lined with girls and boys
With a list in their heart of their favorite toys.

The stores shelves are crammed with dolls that crawl or walk
Games, cars, trucks, planes and stuffed toys that sing or talk.
The miracle of Christmas comes once a year
When all that we love seems more precious and dear.

THE SEED of LOVE

A kindly woman can make a sad man sing
With her love and affection winter seems like spring.
Of all the pleasures in life given to a man
There’s nothing beats the touch of a woman’s soft hand.

God saw Adam alone on Eden’s floor
Then decided to give him Eve’s love and much more.
So take what you need from she chosen for you
Then rid thyself of others and to her be true.

The Lord planted love within mankind’s heart
Though things can grow sour when from Him we depart.
Love and hate are but two sides of life’s golden coin
So be ready for both no matter whom you join.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

To tell you the truth, it still hurts to share;
Even though with him your heart is not there.
I’ve tried hard to think what brought this about
For we’re not the type who enjoy sneaking out.

Your husband, my wife, were into themselves.
Like old Christmas toys, they placed us on our shelves.
Somehow we managed to take ourselves down
And found one another while out on the town.

You gave me your number for reasons well known
And now you weep as you drive home alone.
It’s hard to make love when the romance is dead
It causes confusion in your heart and your head.

There’s a battle inside as your mind and heart fight
While you lie by the wrong one in the middle of the night.
We now know the meaning to the words of that song
That it hurts to love someone and to the wrong one belong.

HOLLYWOOD WOMAN

Hollywood woman, I’m in love with you
Though you’re always on your own stage.
Some days you love me and some days you don’t
No wonder I’m in such a rage.

You baited your hook
Then threw me a line
And like a big crayfish
I thought you were mine.

But you have that fever
To fish other streams
And you’ll be the cause
Of many men’s dreams.

For other men have loved you
And other men have cried.
Every last one of them
Has felt you inside.

Before long you’ll grow old
And your looks shall fade
And all you’ll have left
Is your video parade.

Those who once loved you
Will be dead or gone
And you’ll lie alone
In silence till dawn.

A MAN’S BEST FRIEND

A man’s best friend is still his faithful dog
Who anxiously awaits his return home.
Where would man be without his canine love
When his human mates have left him alone.

If a man was as good as his dog thinks
He’d be more famous than a football star.
It’s too bad our wives don’t feel the same way
I guess its because they know how we are.

Man has no fear of his dog’s love for life
Though it’s usually man who buries his pet.
It matters not be they large or small
What animal has loved man more, as yet?

GETTING OVER HER

I thought we’d raise our only child
And feed him with a spoon
But, his mother loves another
And they’re on a honeymoon.

All my friends say I must stop
Loving her, of course
So I drove my Ford to a honky tonk
Still lonely from divorce.

From out of my chair, I must get up
And ask someone to dance
For, if I plan to get over her
I know I’ll need romance.

The dance floor is almost full
Of country kings and queens.
I feel a pair of eyes
Just checking out my jeans.

I can see a smiling face
I’m almost at a run
For I know if I dance
I’m going to have some fun.

She stands up from her table
And reaches for my hand
Then I lead the both of us
Right up in front of the band.

Somebody turned the spotlight
Toward the dance floor ball.
She is so beautiful
I’m afraid I might fall.

Here I go, a-gambling
A gambling with my heart
For when I love a woman
It always hurts to part.

BODY HEAT 1O5

We drank several glasses of champagne
In the living room of her house.
Around 9:30 that evening
I found myself in her blouse.

I fondled and kissed her so gently
Like the soft footsteps of a mouse.
To my surprise, she opened her eyes
And said, “look, we’re not going to play house.”

I right away replaced her clothing
And buttoned her blouse once more.
There was no doubt of my defeat
As I lay there upon the floor.

She said, “tell the truth, are you angry?”
I answered, by far I was not
“It’s more important what you think of me
Than what I may not have got.”

She wiped away a tear from both eyes
And said, “you’re my kind of man.”
At that point, she did arise
And to me she held out her hand

She led me away like a blind man
Who had somehow lost his cane.
When we reached her bedroom door
I thought I’d gone insane.

Before long, we found ourselves naked
As she held me in her palm.
Can you dare imagine, my friend
How hard it was for me to stay calm?

We touched all the forbidden places
As our body heats reached 105
If love’s relief had not been achieved
I doubt if we’d still be alive.

WITHOUT LOVE

Life is simply a circus
With too many fools on the stage.
There ‘s greed, fear and indifference
As many hearts suffer from rage.

Divorce is like a bad book
Where the heroes get killed off to soon.
When we reach the point the light goes out
Then we’ll stand up and leave the room.

Without love we become such fools
In a desert which has gone all dry.
When the one we love ignores us
There’s nothing to do but cry.

The worst curse that one can endure
Are those who just wish to take.
When all we give is our own love
To find out we’ve made a mistake.

Of all the prizes life may bring
To be loved is by far the best.
That’s why so many search for it
For without love, what good is the rest?

THAT OLD COVERED BRIDGE

We returned to that old covered bridge
Where as sweethearts we used to go.
To kiss, hug, and squeeze in the shadows
While beneath us the water would flow.

Up under its wood roof of shingles
Is where we took refuge from the rains.
Carved in some boards within that old bridge
Side by side you’ll still find our names.

Our memories of our past childhood
Are a gift from God for us to keep.
Like that picture you once gave me
Which I peaked at before I could sleep.

We find ourselves back at that old bridge
Only now, with our kids to catch fish.
We pray someday that they’ll find love
And come here with someone, just to wish.

SOME MEN PRAY

Some men pry to marry the woman they love
Where my prayers can’t help but somewhat vary
As I humbly pray to heaven above
That I am loved by the woman I marry.

The essence of love is its spiritual fire
And there’s nothing more sought after on earth.
Man’s only escape is his own flight
But what, without love would his life be worth.

Love can be man’s worst pain or best pleasure
A dangerous gamble he must take in life.
For he who falls in love with the wrong woman
Shall find all he’s worked for belongs to his wife.

THE COAL MINER

Coal mines in my daddy’s day
Were dug with strong hands and back.
They got larger and deeper
As the lungs of the miners turned black.

Cave-ins, fires and explosions
Were my father’s daily fear.
But what choice has a man
When the wolf of hunger is near.

With three small kids and a wife
There were five stomachs to fill.
As we lived in poverty
In our shack below a hill.

I feel his blood within me
As the years of my life pass by
I’m proud that dad dug King Cole
For a miner so am I.

Life to me is but a rose
Though it’s thorns can make me cry.
And like my dad before me
To my Lord I will not lie.

In cold earth someday I’ll sleep
With a shinny stone above.
Carved in it, shall be the words
I have known the joy of love.

ADAM THE LONELY

Adam, the lonely was chased from God’s land
When Eve picked that apple with her foolish hand.
Delilah, the evil, cut a champion’s hair off
When Samson; the strong man’s heart became soft.

David the shepherd, a king among men
Was teased by Bathsheba and driven to sin.
A man needs a woman to build up his pride
To bolster his ego and to lay by his side.

Life mates are a treasure and difficult to find
I feel like a blind man who’s lost in a mine.
Lord, I’m a sad soul with no hand to hold
Searching for someone who’ll love me when I’m old.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

Our house is big, though our family’s small
The phone’s off the hook, cause we don ‘t want a call.
I need you darling more than anything
For your sweet kisses make a sad man sing.

I can feel life’s clock as it pounds away
While the moon says hello to the dying day.
I pray to partake every sight and sound
While I still enjoy the right side of the ground.

Nothing beats the love of a willing mate.
So little time for fun before it’s too late.
The Lord made you for me and me alone
And not for others that you might have known.

LOVER’S TOAST

Come to me with just your love
And I will pledge you mine.
Feel my lips and share my glass
And we shall sip red wine.

You’re the red rose of my day
And the lily of my night.
Nothing is so grand in life
As when you seize me tight.

Love’s uncertain future is
Where mankind’s torments dwell
With both it’s pain and pleasure
Our lust is alive and well.

DADS AT WAR

Where would I be without you dad
My hero of night and day?
I’m so glad you love my mother
And take time for us to pray.

The last time we played baseball
You reached for me with your hand.
I looked at you, then made a wish
That I might be just half the man.

I love my father of earth,
And I love my Father of heaven.
It’s a lot for me to love, you know
For I’m only eleven.

Mom and I sure miss you
Since you left to defend our flag.
When others ask, where is your dad
I can’t help but boast and brag.

MOMMA

Oh, I love my momma
She’s the reason I’m alive.
Her total love for me
Has made her struggle and strive.

Jesus had a momma
Who bore Him in a cave.
She couldn’t help but love Him
From His birth to the grave.

Should I hang on the highest hill
My momma would be there.
I know her love would follow me
My Angel of despair.

Her hair is now all silver
As I hold her fingers, worn.
Oh, God, bless this wrinkled brow
From whose body I was born.

LETTERS

We were just the best of friends
I knew him all my life.
I’m sure that he, towards the end
Found out I love his wife.

He drove his car right off a cliff
And crashed into the sea.
I know it was no accident
For a skillful driver was he.

He must have found our letters
Of love that shouldn’t be.
He’s the type to harm himself
Instead of killing me.

As I looked in his wife’s eyes
She sadly said to me,
Instead of us, he killed himself
Because of lovers, such as we.

Lord, have mercy on our souls
For her husband, my friend, has died!
No one else may ever know
But God how much we’ve lied.

HONEYMOON CRUISE

The gulls have gone long ago
As we sail a peaceful sea.
The skies are blue, soft and kind
Where else would we wish to be.

Late at night, as we embrace
In front of a reggae band.
You kiss me, and then you whisper
I want to be alone with my man.

A little after midnight
We both slip away.
In such of some time
For the games lovers play.

Alone in our cabin
Your skin is so soft.
I’m just that angel
Who fell from aloft.

After twenty-five years
Of our love has gone
It’s a honeymoon cruise
We find ourselves on.

May the Lord show mercy
On any of those
Who have never been loved
Or ever been chose.

MY LOVE of LIFE

Wise men learn more from watching fools
Than fools do from watching wise men.
I should know for I’ve been both
I can ‘t believe how lucky I’ve been.

Everyday as I speak out
With verse I come alive.
My lust for life shall be fulfilled
As another day I survive.

I take the clay of every day
And mold it to my fashion.
All I need is my true love
Whose heart flows free with passion.

I thank the Lord who watches us
For blessings which are mine;
That I’m festive, fit and free
To love my wife who’s sweeter than wine.

LITTLE BABY

Little baby, I love you
For you are a part of me
Each and every inch you’ll grow
I want to be there to see.

Someday you’ll chase fireflies
Who ride the breath of the winds.
Someday you’ll be all grown up
And out on the town with friends.

You have your daddy ‘s freckles;
You’ve got your mommy’s eyes.
I pray to God every day
You’ll survive all of life’s lies.

Little babies shoot up fast
As they need to stretch and grow.
They do such things as children do
In a world they’ve yet to know.

Someday you will understand
How your parents feel inside
Someday you’ll have your babies
And raise them with great pride.

Of all the gifts that life may bring
A sweet baby is still the best
Your mom and I shall love you
Till the day we’re laid to rest.

ONE MAN’S PRAYER

Where are the women who need a good man?
Where are the women with love in their hand?

Where are the children who played on the lawn?
Where are the children when mom and dad are gone?

What about the marriage that began with smiles?
What about the marriage that ended in trials?

What about the future of all involved?
What about the problems that must be solved?

Answer these questions that tear at my heart.
Answer these questions that keep us apart.

WHAT LOVE MEANS TO ME

I know now for sure what love means to me
It’s a chance to be needed and to give happily.
For I’ve felt what it’s like to be sad and alone
And wish for that someone I could call my own.

It’s just like young Adam when he lost his rib bone
God gave him Eve, so he wouldn’t sleep alone.
When a man loves a woman, there’s many lessons he’ll learn
As she respects him, her favors he’ll earn.

One thing for certain, when your thoughts are for real
As you hug and you kiss, you love how you feel.
Some live a lifetime just a step from love
You are that person who gave me my shove.

The world has both givers and those on the take
Life can be bad if your love’s a mistake.
I can’t help realize how lucky I’ve been
For you are my wife, but best of all, my friend.

I WON’T BE THERE

It‘s true; I’ve been living with a looser
And it’s been going on too long
I’ve prayed for the courage and, now I have it
To sing you your farewell song.

I won’t be there in the morning when you need me!
I won’t be there when you call on the phone!
I won’t be there in the bed beside you
As you lay by yourself alone!

Too many times at night I’ve cried
Wondering why you won’t just come home
Staring at the clock on the wall
As I lie half awake by the phone.

For so long it was enough that I loved you
Though now my heart needs more.
So, I’ve packed up my bags and my pictures
And I’m on my way out the door.

WHEN YOU LOVE A MEAN WOMAN

When you love a mean woman it hurts down deep
In the middle of the night when you find you can’t sleep.
I remember those times we kissed in the park
Covered by moonbeams and stars in the dark.

You told me you loved me and would never run away
Though now, there’s another with whom you play.
Somebody tell me what I’m doing wrong
Somebody show me before I’ve waited too long.

Other women I’ve met, they remind me of you
It makes me afraid of what they might do.
But life without love isn’t living at all
Everyone needs someone who waits for their call.

I thirst for a woman who will love me again
One who needs both a husband and friend.
Dear Lord, I pray for my angel of love
So I may fly high on the wings of a dove.

SHE’S MY BUDDY

Adam and Eve lay beneath the stars.
I wonder if their love was as strong as ours?
Darling, I love you, I’m not afraid to say
Our love just grows with each passing day.

I was afraid our love would grow cold
That’s what I’ve always by others been told.
I’m glad they were wrong, so I sing this song
For you are the woman to whom I belong.

Without your concern I have nothing at all
There’s no one to help me should I take a fall.
I need your love it builds up my pride
Bolsters my ego and stands by my side.

Many men still search for someone like you
Case to find a good woman isn’t easy to do
Lord, I thank you for the love of my life
For she is my buddy as well as my wife.

OUR MOTHER’S LOVE

Our mother’s love like a candle
Burns brightly upon the shelf.
As she lights the way for all others
Never thinking of herself.

Seven little kids in a farmhouse
By my moms hard work survived.
Through her love and faith in Jesus
We learned how to struggle and strive.

The lilacs still bloom by the window
Where our mom would quilt and sew.
In the winter she’d sing by the fire
To the tunes she thought we should know.

Our father labored at a quarry
In the dust of the earth every day.
He worked so hard for his money
For the bills our family must pay.

Little sister came down with pneumonia
And almost died in bed.
Our momma lie sick beside her
Putting cool rags on her head.

We were sure glad to see daddy’s face
As he drove up our driveway
He ran up and into the house
Then knelt by their bed to pray.

Oh, Lord, please save my family
From the fever that burns within
For we have always loved Jesus
And will serve Him till our end.

Our mother and sister survived
But daddy, he died long ago.
When it’s our time for heaven
We’ll see many that we know.

TILL THE END of TIME

I feel like Samson pushing the stone
For I gave into love and now I’m alone.
Betrayed by a woman, I gambled and lost
And now I suffer what disloyalty cost.

Samson was blinded by the blade of a knife
After his capture by the love of his life.
Imprisoned forever and forced to grind grain
To spectator laughter, the whip and the chain.

The same so am I, a victim of chain
For I’ve too many memories of you in my brain.
Together my darling from a window we shall peer
It will be from heaven both faraway and near.

The heirlooms of tomorrow the woman and the man
Waiting for our ashes to sift through the sand.
I will  love you always, till the end of time
Now and then dreaming of when you were mine.

SAD DAD IN JAIL

They put me in prison for the deed I’ve done
I killed the drunk driver who crippled you, son.
Your mother, my wife, she died in the wreck
That’s the reason I broke that man’s neck.

His dad was a rich man, who pulled lots of strings
So well connected he could do many things.
I live in this hellhole with all sorts of men;
I’m sure glad most like me and call me their friend.

The food here is so awful, I’ve lost many pounds
I’d rather feast on the vittles the guards toss the hounds.
At night we play cards and you don’t dare cheat
For if you get caught, you’ll be stomped on by feet.

Most inmates fashion some sort of knife
To help out their odds in a fight for their life
I took me a padlock and snapped it on a chain
Then hid it in my pant-leg to keep from being slain.

I get to see you on our family day
The worst part about it, is when you cry as you play.
Many times you question, “Dad, when can you leave?”
As the tears from your eyes drop to my sleeve.

Our visit is now over as they wheel you away
I whisper, “I love you” and you see what I say.
It’s time to go back to my one-room, shared cell
And try to write a song about a sad dad in jail.

SOLDIER IN THE RAIN

I’m just a soldier who stands in the rain
My memories of home are what keep me sane.
Back home is a land of milk and honey
Ruled by lust and love of money.

But, what can I say, when I serve her true
For I volunteered to see this war through.
Now, that I’m here, it’s hard to believe
We’re just the victims of those who deceive.

As darkness falls on the rice fields of Nam
Scared men with rifles walk the shadows of the calm.
It’s thousands of miles to the steps of my church
With its stained glass, steeples and lost souls who search.

Off in the distance I see an arc light
Bombs being dropped on children at night.
I’ve seen that evil they call the “yellow rain”
And how life withers when it’s sprayed by a plane.

All of my buddies have been taken away
No more touch football will they ever play.
Zipped in their body bags for the long trip home
Are some of the bravest, I’ve ever known.

War is a hell, devised by man
There’s death in the sea, the sky and the land.
Lord, I can’t help but wish I were home
Back with my love, whom I hope is alone?

WE WISH YOU WERE HOME

I remember that fair in September
As we waited for a Ferris wheel ride
Just as you reached for my fingers
I felt how I loved you inside.

The next thing I knew we were airborne
Above all the eyes of the crowd
Surrounded by rainbows of neon
As the moon popped from behind a cloud.

You asked, “daddy, do you love me”
I answered I couldn’t live without you.
Then you reached up and tugged on my collar
As we flew in that chair painted blue.

Now you are grown and gone
And have marched away to war.
As I’m writing this letter
I yearn for your knock at our door.

I got out some rags and the wax
And gave your old Ford a rubdown.
I went for a ride of remembrance
While its mufflers made your favorite sound

I drove by the park to ponder
Those ball games we loved to play.
I can ‘t help but worry and wonder
If you’ll ever come home to stay.

Your girlfriend still teaches school
We see her every seventh day.
There’s no doubt who she thinks of
When she folds her hands to pray.

Your mother still talks to your picture
As she works at her sewing machine.
I hope my son you realize
How much to us you mean.

PLEASURE SEEKERS

That road of pleasure seeking
Has so many deep pitfalls
And all the while we walk on it
In the distance the devil calls.

Some folks drink those bubbly spirits
Or smoke that tall green weed
Anything to dull their conscience
As they sow their wild oat seed.

I’ve been no angel in my life
Though I fell from a righteous shelf
When I took those risky chances
And tried both, many times, myself.

Now I’m tired of being foolish.
So I sing my songs at church
With one eye on my hymnbook
And the other free to search.

If you’re yearning to love someone
Let’s get together and seek no more
Kiss and fondle by the fire
And push pillows across the floor.

For we need love, health and money
And may we live to enjoy them all
Before we ‘re old and in our autumn
And our leaves begin to fall.

THE FIRST ONE TO LOVE ME

The first one to love me was you; Lord
And nothing can take that away.
My soul is refreshed by living water
While my heart flows with love each day.

I thank you for the love of my family
And I thank you for the love of my life.
I thank you for all of the blessings
You give to each husband and wife.

Your glory rides high on the sunsets
Your voice is the thunder of rain.
I thank you for all of the heavens
And Jesus who came to be slain.

I feel when your eyes are upon me
As you listen to my humble cry
You’ve redeemed the soul of your servant
To dwell in your mansion on high.

I’ll claim each and every promise
From the Lord of the earth and sky.
I’m so glad I’m free from my bondage
Of the grave where my body shall lie.

I thank you for parting the darkness
And guiding my footsteps each day.
I thank you for being my shepherd
You’ve walked with me all the way.

I know your armor protects me
From the devil in search of his feast.
And all who are lost without you
Shall dwell in hell with the beast!

CHRISTMAS IS COMING

Christmas is coming and I’m all alone
With no one to snuggle at night.
My wineglass is empty to help dull the desire
To kiss you by soft candlelight.

A rare pearl of value, you don ‘t leave alone
Or someone will steal them from you.
After they’ve gone and flown far away
It’s hard to know just what to do.

I’m watching my neighbors hang lights on their tree
With tinsel and striped candy cane.
I took you for granted and didn’t hug enough
And now I must suffer my pain.

Lord, I’m so lonely; I wish I could die
Then be born to relive again.
I realize the value of someone to love
And the danger of my selfish sin.

There’s a ring on my phone and a knock at the door
Which do I dare go for?
If neither is you, I’ll break down and cry
And again pound my fist on the floor.

I run down the hall and the doorknob turns
As the swirling snow rides on the wind.
There, in my doorway, it’s the face I love
Such a beautiful present to send.

Now, I am happy and dancing around
With a permanent smile on my face.
As children are singing their Christmas love songs
And the world is a wonderful place.

PATHWAYS

Lord, I’m so lonely, I thirst everyday
In search of the love I need
like a man in prison with no warmth at night
A slave who seeks to be freed.

For I need a woman who will heal my heart
So my life won ‘t seem so wrong.
I’ll lie down beside her and gamble again
Then sing of our love in a song.

Remember, young Adam, your first favorite born
Who slept in your garden alone.
You took form his body and transformed some flesh
Then gave him a woman unknown.

Whichever the pathway I should choose to take
I realize that there will be brambles.
For the man who has visions everyday of his life
Will always be the same who gambles.

Now, to heaven I pray, for my treasure of life
After searching the deserts in vain.
I’m tired of mirages from fool-hearted women
Please give me someone who’s sane.

May her eyes be turquoise with cheeks like peaches
Ripe and ready to risk.
Soon they’ll turn rosy when she sneaks a peek
To the tingle of where I kiss.

Though I will love her, I shall never follow.
Nor will I ever lead.
I’ll walk beside her and share all I have
For the children who spring from seed.

If we should argue about foolish things
I ‘d rather be loved than right.
Then when I lie down at the end of my day
I’ll sleep with a smile at night.

ENCHANTED

Over any man who feels lost without love
God gives women divine powers.
They can break our hearts or deflate our ego
And cause us to buy diamonds and flowers.

They have compelled kings and presidents to beg
Wild singles to commit to change their way.
Loving us with pleasures problematic to replace
With flashbacks of their passion night and day.

Women mother our babies who we love till death
For us to raise, protect and provide for.
They contribute revenue, affection and direction
With love, companionship and more.

They insist we never abuse or disgrace them
Cheat, lie or take their love for granted.
Which helps us to become more than we are
In love and totally enchanted.

WHISPERS

The one thing I’ve learned about happiness
It will never last pretending you’re not you.
Somehow, someway the truth will arise
And all that you hide will show through.

Sooner or later, one way or another
Something in your life seems wrong.
You go to bed unhappy and awake the same
Repeating life’s mistakes too long.

One day, to yourself, you begin to question
Is this who I am and wish to be
How will I choose to live the rest of my life
Till the angel of death comes for me?

Most people wish to be at peace with God
Oneself, and those we love.
Frequently taking a look at our past
Praying for guidance from above.

Thank heaven for the whispers from the heart
Which remind us that evil has it’s voice too.
It’s always a battle amid right and wrong
As we ponder and perform what we do.

LIFE

Life’s a book written through
Where the pages are the years.
There’s good, evil, false, and true
With laughter, sweat, and tears.

Our days are songs composed by God
As we set them to music with pleasure.
His cup of life is for us to drink
Though, He, decides the measure.

Hurried and worried, dawn till dusk
There’s no time for a curtain call.
We burn our candles from both ends
And we’re lucky to be alive at all.

Cards are shuffled and hands are dealt
For all to place their bets.
Youthful blunders, adulthood struggles
And old age, with its regrets.

It matters not, how long we live
But more, how well we play our part.
For the road to heaven is always near
As long as there’s truth in our heart.

EYES OF LOVE

A mind may see a thousand eyes
Though the heart yearns for two
When the eyes we love have up and gone
To the arms of someone new.

Eyes that twinkle, I distrust
For they are the distant stars.
Eyes in love have a steady glow
Like Venus, the Moon or Mars.

Eyes of love, like planets at night
Use borrowed light to shine.
Eyes are the living lenses
To the camera of our mind.

Eyes tend to believe themselves
Like the blind love of mothers.
Eyes speak without words
To the hearts and souls of others.

LOVE

No rope or cable can hold so tight
What love can do with twine.
No kiss can taste so bittersweet
As the one which captures our mind.

The first sign of love is the last of wisdom
As eager hearts fulfill desire.
Love is just a staple of life
Though heaven sparks the fire.

Heaven knows no rage like love
Once to hatred it has turned.
How wise are we who are such fools
Who forget the lessons we’ve learned.

Love, indeed, descends from heaven
Like a shooting star across the sky.
Love sometimes stirs the dust,
Till tears fall free from the eye.

God must love people in love
Or he wouldn’t make so many.
Those who claim it’s a mental disease
Have never been loved by any.

Love is stronger than life itself
And jealousy more cruel than the grave.
Men and women have loved one another
Since they spent their nights in a cave.

When the hands of love
Touch the strings of souls
There’ll be babies on the way.
That’s the basic rules of life
No matter what games we play.

Like the flowers in the fields
We shed our shields
To be warmed by the sun.
We live our lives the best we can
Till death catches us on the run.

MY WILD ROSE

You ‘re the full moon of my nights
And the sunshine of my day.
Like a queen upon her throne
You rule what I do and say.

It’s God who makes us beautiful
And the Devil who makes us mean.
It all depends on whom we follow
Which way our lives shall lean.

With one foot in the future
And one foot in the past
Let us try to live our days
As though each was our last.

You’re the wild rose of my life
My flower of desire.
Made by God for me alone
Out of earth, stars and fire.

MY WIFE

You’re the bone of my bones
Who I love for my wife.
The flesh of my flesh
And my partner in life.

For me to have and to hold
For better or for worse.
To love and to cherish
Though we might fight and curse.

Be I richer or poorer
Till death makes us part
I will give you great portions
Of my soul and my heart.

Heaven won’t be heaven
If I don ‘t see you there
May the first to go
Be me, is my prayer.

FAMILIES

The first stage of a family group
Begins with husband and wife.
Shelters are rented, bought or built
As they yearn for more from life.

Families are found throughout the world
In bone clusters buried in caves
Where ancient people lived and loved
‘Till death placed them in their graves.

Humans still have that need to group
As a family to survive
They love and care for each other
In the world in which they strive.

Families are a nation’s crown jewels
Far more than a golden coin.
Members find love and sympathy
From the groups they’ve chosen to join.

TEARS

Tears are the raindrops of the soul
And there’s one for all who die.
They are the silent words of grief
As they fall free from the eye.

The shortest verse in the Bible
Is the one where Jesus wept
So, if you hold back tears, “shed them”
When your pains too harsh to accept.

Tears are lovelier than a smile
When they come from those you love.
As they seek relief from sadness
When you’re summoned from above.

Tears are a love-mates humble gift
When it’s time to say goodbye
Though the eyes are wet and swollen
With time and patience they dry.

LOVE & ELECTRICITY

Love and electricity are a lot alike
For we never seem to miss them till their gone.
We need both, every day of our life
And even more so between twilight and dawn.

Love resembles a self-consuming amber
A static current of both pain and pleasure.
It can warm our bed and lighten the darkness
And for most who don ‘t have it, it’s a treasure.

We can turn it on or we can turn it off
Depending on whatever we’re forced to do.
It may shock us, please us, thrill us, or hurt us
Though once without it, we can’t wait to renew.

THE SEED OF LOVE

A kindly woman can make a sad man sing
With her love and affection winter seems like spring.
Of all the pleasures in life given to a man
There’s nothing beats the touch of a woman’s soft hand.

God saw Adam alone on Eden’s floor
Then decided to give him Eve’s love and much more.
So take what you need from she chosen for you
Then rid thyself of others and to her be true.

The Lord planted love within mankind’s heart
Though things can grow sour when from Him we depart.
Love and hate are but two sides of life’s golden coin
So be ready for both no matter whom you join.

FORGIVE ME

Forgive me, forgive me
And I’ll kiss your tears away.
You’re the first thing and the last
I think of every day

Let bygones be bygones
And be willing to forgive.
And I will love you only
Every moment I live.

I love you and I need you
It’s a fact and not a lie
So if you plan to punish me
Say anything, but good bye.

PARTING

The truest words, which portray my love
I speak to you from within m

House is a TV show where the main character is a brilliant, but misanthropic doctor who trusts no one, especially not his patients. Broadcast on FOX, its 6th season started in September with an amazing 2-hour episode! New to House? Feeling lost? Then this recap is for you! Keep in mind that it is not exclusive at all; only major plot points are explained so that newer viewers can understand what is going on.

Missed episodes can be viewed for free on TVShows4Download.

SPOILERS BELOW!

Season 1
Gregory House and his original team are introduced. Foreman, a former juvenile delinquent, is a neurologist; Robert Chase is an intensivist engaged because of his dad; and Allison Cameron is an immunologist who wants to see the best in each person. Lisa Cuddy – the Dean of Medicine – and James Wilson – House’s best friend – are also presented. They all work for the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital.

Billionaire Edward Vogler becomes the new chairman of the board of PPTH, thanks to his $100 million donation to Princeton-Plainsboro. He tries to fire House, but fails and quits the board.

Cameron develops a crush on House. Both go on a date, which turns out to be a disaster.

House’s ex-girlfriend, Stacy Warner, comes back to him to get help for her sick husband. He first refuses, then accepts.

Stacy is engaged as a lawyer for the hospital.

Season 2
House’s parents visit him; he tells Cuddy that he hates his father.

While treating a gay man with AIDS, Cameron accidentally receives contaminated blood onto her face. Anxious about the idea of being infected, she takes drugs and ends up having sex with Chase. Later during the season, her test results confirms that she doesn’t have AIDS.

Chase’s dad dies.

Foreman replaces House as the boss for two episodes.

House and Stacy kiss; Stacy quits the hospital.

Cuddy wants to become a mother by in vitro fertilization, without any success.

Foreman catches a life-threatening disease, but survives with only minor sequels.

A former patient of House seeks revenge and shoot him. House demands to be put on Ketamine for his leg pain.

Season 3
Ketamine has cured House! Free from Vicodin, the grumpy old man is now someone who loves to run and tries actually to improve his patients’ life. Sadly, both his leg pain and his Vicodin resurface soon enough.

After being assaulted by House, detective Michael Tritter seeks revenge. He finds out about his Vicodin addiction, sue him, try to force him into rehab, but ultimately he fails.

House admits to one of his patients that he has been abused by his father.

Chase has feelings for Cameron, but she doesn’t want a serious relationship with him, only some casual sex.

We discover that Cuddy already had sex with House.

Foreman quits the team as he fears to become like House.

Chase is fired, Cameron quits the team and they finally get together. House is now alone.

Season 4
House launches a huge Survivor-like game to pick his three new fellows. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, Chris Taub and Lawrence Kutner are the winners.

Cameron and Chase are still in Princeton-Plainsboro; he is a surgeon while she works in the ER.

Foreman is fired from New York Mercy; nobody wants him because he acts like House, so he is hired back to Princeton-Plainsboro, working again for his old boss.

Amber Volakis, one of the applicants for the job, becomes Wilson’s girlfriend.

We learn that Taub already had an affair, that Thirteen is bisexual and that Kutner’s biological parents were shot when he was six years old.

Amber dies in a bus accident, partially because of House. Thirteen discovers that she has Huntington’s disease, meaning that her normal lifespan will be no longer than 40 years.

Season 5
Wilson’s bereavement isn’t going too well. He decides to leave the hospital and to break up from his friendship with House. House puts a private detective, Lucas Douglas, on retainer to spy on Wilson.

Taub reveals to his wife that he had an affair.

House’s dad dies; we discover that he was his adoptive father. Wilson, reconciliated with House, returns to Princeton-Plainsboro.

In vain, Cuddy tries to adopt a baby. House kisses her; however, both are not ready for a serious relationship.

Foreman enrolls Thirteen in a clinical trial for Huntington’s. While it doesn’t give results, a relationship begins between them.

Cuddy finally becomes a mother by adopting a baby that she names Rachel.

Wilson confesses to a patient that he still lives in the apartment of his dead girlfriend, Amber.

Out of the blue, Kutner commits suicide.

House has hallucinations of Amber. When he realizes that he also had hallucinations of having sex with Cuddy, he admits himself into Mayfield, a psychiatric hospital.

Chase and Cameron get married.

I’m just wondering if you smoke cannabis or eat it or whatever, and yet you have a good job, treat your wife right (never heard of someone getting high and going home to beat up their wife) And don’t use it for evil, is it still considered a sin?

I know your not suppose to put bad things in your temple but if that’s how it is, should we stop consuming energy drinks (messes you up), sodas, junk food, and caffeine. Because those things do mess your health up afterwards.

By the way I’m just wondering, I’m not a stoner or anything.
So Is weed good or is it the “devils drug”

Thanks for all the answers guys :)
Heroin, Coke, Meth, and all of that is processed in a lab.

and the husband who is drunk can also say wrong thngs to the child that can disturb the child?
and the woman must endure…and feel bad and unable to concentrate to her life?

Applied Educational Research Journal (AERJ)

22 (3) 2009

 

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: An Epistemological, Philosophical and Comparative Treatment Based on the Theoretical Framework of the book Ways of Knowing Through the Realms of Meaning by William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to show how the writings of Ayn Rand can be understood and developed through the work of Dr. William A. Kritsonis utilizing the Ways of Knowing Through the Realms of Meaning.  In the literary masterpiece of Atlas Shrugged, Ms. Rand brings her philosophical views alive through the narrative of her story and the lives and dramatic events faced by each of her fictional characters.  Her views on objectivism, capitalism, and man’s inherent sexuality are only a few of the controversial topics discussed in her book and revealed poignantly through the themes and motifs of her stimulating and challenging novel, Atlas Shrugged.

________________________________________________________________________________

The First Realm:  Symbolics

 

            The first realm of meaning is symbolics.  “These meanings are contained in arbitrary symbolic structures, with socially accepted rules of formation and transformation, created as instruments for the expression and communication of any meaning whatsoever.  These symbolic systems in one respect constitute the most fundamental of all the realms of meaning in that they must be employed to express the meanings in each of the other realms” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 11).

            Atlas Shrugged is rife with symbolic communication.  Themes, symbols, and motifs add intrigue, interest and mystery to the writing style of Ayn Rand and lend credence to her literary expertise and philosophical ideas and beliefs.  The symbolism in Atlas Shrugged adds depth and complexity to her overall meaning constructs and analytical observations.

 

            One of the first and most obvious symbols of her novel is found in the title, Atlas Shrugged.  Atlas, in Greek mythology, held the burden of the heavens on his shoulder.  To John Galt, and the other societal producers, the weight of the world was placed on their shoulders as they bore the responsibilities of producing for a world deplete of reason, strength, and appreciation.

 

            The dollar sign becomes the symbol of a strike of the mind led by John Galt.  By each striker symbolically associating himself with the sign of the dollar, the strikers intuitively illustrate their belief in capitalism and the reward of the capitalists.  In Atlas Shrugged, there is no shame weighted with the possession of money.  Instead, it is seen as just compensation for productivity and creativity.

 

Another symbol inherent to the understanding of Atlas Shrugged  is the bracelet Rearden created using his new metallurgical discovery.  The bracelet is symbolic of Rearden’s entire life work and accomplishments.  The bracelet is beautiful, but unappreciated by his wife, just as the development of the new metal Rearden has created is seen as a threat to those who do not care for or appreciate ingenuity, creativity, and invention.  Despite the resistance that Rearden faced with his new discovery, the metal he conceived and developed is a beautiful representation of the practical beauty that can be found from one’s individual life work and commitment.

 

            Motors were also symbolic throughout the novel Atlas Shrugged.  The motor designed by John Galt had the power to harness energy and provide power to the world.  Without the motor, the world’s production would come to a halt.  It is symbolic of the power of the mind and how producers are needed in the world to power the creative thoughts and abilities of the true thinkers in order for the world to survive and become productively active and successful.

 

 

The Second Realm:  Empirics

 

            “The second realm empirics, includes the sciences of the physical world, of living things, and of man.  These sciences provide factual descriptions, generalizations, and theoretical formulations and explanations that are based upon observation and experimentation in the world of matter, life, mind, and society” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 12).

 

 

 

John Galt:  The Physicist     

 

In Atlas Shrugged, “one of the producers, John Galt, a titan among physicists, decides it is time for ‘the Atlases,’ the men who have carried the world on their shoulders to stop supporting [their] destroyers – to shrug” ( Moritz, 1982, p. 234).  His science has benefited the looters, those who live off of his own creativity and expertise.  In a decision to proliferate a strike of the mind, “he retreats with other ‘producers’ to a secret mountain citadel in Colorado.  There they remain until, in their absence, industry and trade grind to a halt and the collectivist social system collapses” (Moritz, 1982, p. 234).  With the collapse of the society that once was known, Galt gives a lengthy speech to tell the word that the fight is over.  “The road is cleared. We are going back to the world,” says Galt, as the elite band re-emerges and he, raising “his hand over the desolate earth….trace[s] in space the sign of the dollar” (Moritz, 1982, p. 234).

 

Biology

 

            Biology is the science of life.  For those who believe that man is nothing more than just a physical being without a soul or spirit, their conclusions are in-line with Dr. Pritchett, one of the characters in Atlas Shrugged.  “Man?  What is man?  He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur” (Rand, 1999, p. 131).  Those who espouse that man is nothing more than a metaphysical creation are less likely to believe in the supremacy of the soul and the virtue of spirituality that requires accountability and surrender to a life goal and pattern higher than one’s own self and being. Dr. Pritchett’s comments continue, “once he [man] realizes that he is of no importance whatever in the vast scheme of the universe, he will realize that no possible significance can be attached to his activities” (Rand, 1999, p. 132).

 

In Atlas Shrugged, abortion is mentioned as a right of the state.  The People’s State of Mexico wants to “raise everybody’s standard of living and provide a roast of pork every Sunday for every man, woman, child and abortion in the People’s State of Mexico” (Rand, 1999, p. 123).  At the first publication of Atlas Shrugged, abortion was illegal in the United States.  The debate for a “woman’s right” did not fully ensue in this country until the ruling of Roe vs. Wade in 1973.  This is another example of how controversial social issues were ingrained in the writings of Ayn Rand even before the issues reached a national level forum of discussion and debate.

 

Socialism

 

            Socialism is an “economic system in which government owns some factors of production and has a role in determining what and how goods are produced” (Clayton, 1995, p. 567).  In Atlas Shrugged, socialistic ideas began to emerge that threatened the capitalistic way of life.  Those who bought into the socialist way of life included those who supported a new government initiative entitled the “Equalization of Opportunity Bill.”  This bill’s purpose was to put limits on capitalistic production, therefore limiting creative capitalists and entrepreneurs from becoming too powerful or wealthy.

 

            The “Equalization of Opportunity Bill” also sought to put limits on the output of the creative, literary mind.  Balph Eubank, a literary leader of his time, was in favor of the “Equalization of Opportunity Bill”.  “Certainly, I approve of it.  Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism.  Men have lost all spiritual values in their pursuit of material production and technological trickery…so we ought to place a limit on their material greed” (Rand, 1999, p. 133).  Eubank was willing to surrender his creative mind to the state.  “It would work very simply,” said Eubank.  “There should be a law limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies…If people were forbidden to buy a million copies of the same piece of trash, they would be forced to buy better books” (Rand, 1999, p. 134). 

 

            In the United States, citizens are encouraged to improve upon inventions, create new horizons, and develop new services and products that will benefit mankind.  Without the motive of profit, many of our greatest inventions and accomplishments would likely not have been achieved.  Rand is against socialistic societies that take away the rights of the individual for the watered down benefit of the masses who choose not to produce or create to their highest and fullest potential.

 

Communism

 

Karl Marx authored The Communist Manifesto in 1848.  He divided society into two groups.  The first group was the proletariat.  These were the people with no means of production who owed their livelihood to the second group in society, the bourgeoisie, better known as the capitalists.  His division of society is analogous to the two major groups “at war” in Atlas Shrugged, the looters and the strikers.

 

            The looters were people who did not use their own creativity or power to create wealth.  They were totally dependent upon the creative thinkers in the world, which later became known as the “strikers of the mind.”  The strikers were those who created, built, and engineered the framework for modern society.  In Atlas Shrugged when the “strikers of the mind” left society, society as it was known previously collapsed.

 

            Theoretical communism states that if everyone were equal, “everyone would produce to the best of their abilities, and everyone would consume to the extent of their needs” (Clayton, 1995, p. 476).  However, in today’s society, communism has proven itself to be a dismal failure.  In a pure Communist state, a man or woman’s career is chosen for that particular individual at a young age.  Regardless of their ability or ambition, there is “equality” in pay for all.  Educators, doctors, lawyers, garbage men, and street sweepers are all equal.  When a person is not challenged according to their own individual talents and creative potential, production will decrease.  Without hope of achieving any significance in one’s life work, society itself would be reduced to a mindless, wondering proletariat under a repressive and dictatorial form of government.

 

When the government owns the means of production, there is no incentive for creativity.  Everything is done in the name of progress.  The government leadership, which holds power with an iron hand, prohibits success to anyone who wants to succeed or profit outside of the veil of government interventions and legalities.

 

Capitalism

 

            Capitalism could be considered one of the most fundamental disciplines in the realm of the social sciences.  Capitalism is considered a virtuous pursuit by Rand and many of her primary characters in the novel.  Atlas Shrugged espouses the virtues and benefits of a pure capitalistic society and seeks to enunciate and pronounce these values succinctly throughout the novel, espousing the virtues of capitalism and the power of the mind.

            Paramount to the perfect society John Galt believed would exist when the producers were in charge is the concept of “free trade and free minds” (Rand, 1999, p. 1067).  Rand defines capitalism as “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Uyl and Rasmussen, 1986, p. 173).  

            “One of the unique features of Rand’s defense of capitalism is that she neither considers capitalism a necessary evil (as do many conservatives) nor tries to defend it simply in terms of the benefits it produces, as do many economists” (Uyl and Rasmussen, 1986, p. 173).  Rand sees capitalism from a moral perspective that supersedes capitalism for purely monetary reasons and then becomes a mantra for a philosophical way of life that focuses on intelligence, rationality, and reason. 

            “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve ‘the common good’…The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is justice” (Uyl and Rasmussen, 1986, p. 173).           

In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt believes that a collective society will include those who are willing to work and enjoy the fruits of their own labors.  He predicts the demise of a system led by looters.  In its place he sees a society that believes in the individual and the contributions that individuals can make to their world and society.  Not willing to let looters into this new world who are not committed to his goals and philosophical bent,  John Galt opens the door of invitation and hospitality only to those who would choose to espouse the virtues of an individualistic, capitalistic society.

            To those who were willing to commit to a renouncement of their looting mentality, Galt states, “when the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves….We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter, a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate homes……With the sign of the dollar as our symbol – the sign of free trade and free minds – we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor.  Those who choose to join us will join us; those who don’t will not have the power to stop us; hordes of savages have been an obstacle to men who carried the banner of the mind” (Rand, 1999, p. 1067). 

 

            “The conduct of the market may be greatly facilitated by the use of money, that provides a convenient medium of exchange…From the standpoint of understanding and control, the use of money is of far-reaching importance, for it permits economic activity to be measured mathematically.  Because of the money system, qualitative preferences can be quantitatively assessed, and the powerful resources of mathematical computation can be brought to bear on the study and management of economic processes” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 266).

 

            John Galt’s symbol of the dollar was a rallying cry for the producers to produce and to fall in line with the pseudo-religion of wealth and prosperity based on one’s individualistic ability to produce and his or her enjoyment of such activities.  For Galt and his followers, this was success and the true essence of life.

 

            To reiterate the value of a thinking society, John Galt speaks to the looters in regards to what the retreat of reason, thought, and creativity had brought to the world through the strikers of the mind.  “If you want to know what you lost when I quit and when my strikers deserted your world—stand on any empty stretch of soil in a wilderness unexplored by men and ask yourself what manner of survival you would achieve and how long you would last if you refused to think, with no one around to teach you the motions, or, if you chose to think, how much your mind would be able to discover….ask yourself whether you would be able to discover how to till the soil and grow your food…then decide whether men of ability are exploiters” (Rand, 1999, pp. 1048-1049).

 

Feminism 

 

            To those who were led to believe that a capitalistic society was an evil commodity, Dagny Taggart was a symbol of everything that was wrong with a society based on capitalism and productivity.  She was a woman, who for some, had overstepped the bounds of societal acceptability in the fact that she had not chosen to marry or to establish a traditional home, which was such a prevalent mainstay of most homes during the time of the initial writing of Atlas Shrugged.  Balph Eubank looked upon Dagny as “a symptom of the illness of our century….Machines have destroyed man’s humanity…There’s an example of it—a woman who runs a railroad, instead of practicing the beautiful craft of the handloom and bearing children” (Rand, 1999, p. 138). 

 

            In Rand’s writing, marriage is not a value that is esteemed, as evidenced in the marriage of Hank and Lillian Rearden.  Lillian despises her husband and his work.  Hank merely tolerates his wife.  It is not until he meets Dagny, that he finds someone who will share his love and appreciation for his work and life goals and accomplishments.

 

Affairs are not considered inappropriate in Rand’s writings. Fidelity is not considered a virtue. There is not a long term, committal approach to marriage and sexual activity.  In addition, children were never mentioned in the text of Atlas Shrugged.  In Rand’s world, if literature truly reflects life, children would have been a burden and therefore something that she would not have chosen to have or to commit to.

 

 

The Third Realm:  Esthetics

 

            “The third realm, esthetics, contains the various arts, such as music, the visual arts, the arts of movement, and literature” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 12).  By seeing the artistic qualities of a literary work, meaning and understanding can be enhanced and deepened for a more intuitive and firmer grasp of the specific meanings and nuances of a particular work of literary genius and artistic quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art

 

            “Ayn Rand held that art is a “re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value judgments.  By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, [and] respond” (Rand, 1999, p. ix).

 

            When Rand talks about a self-created universe, she is mirroring her philosophical view of writing.  Rand was able to create a reality of her own choosing through her penned imaginations and her creative expressive abilities and expertise.  She was able to create images through the written word and convey meanings and philosophical content through her own literary artistic talents and skills.

 

Music

 

            Richard Halley is Dagny Taggart’s favorite composer.  He is a masterful musician with a bent toward writing beautiful concertos and operas.  At the age of 24, Halley’s first opera “Phaethon” was performed.  He met with wide spread humiliation and professional disfranchisement by the critics when his opera was booed and heckled by patrons of his first musical debut.

 

            On his second debut, years later, he met with the success he had longed for since his youth.  However, shortly after receiving a rave review of his musical composition’s performance, Halley disappeared.  It was another example of a producer leaving the “world” to go to the “perfect world” of the intellectual elitists who retreated to a distant place which came to be known as John Galt’s gulch, a place where men could be productive using their own talents and gifts, whatever they may be, for their own personal pleasure, development, and reward.

 

Literature

 

            Atlas Shrugged is a mixture of genres and literary devices that combine a fluid story of romance and love based on Ayn Rand’s most basic philosophical beliefs.  “Atlas Shrugged is more myth than novel.  Miss Rand’s heroes and heroines are godlike creatures who, in their leviathan strength, resist the wickedness of the pernicious weaklings around them and achieve their ends at will” (Riley, 1975, p. 423).

 

            Reason and rationality were together the basis for the novel Atlas Shrugged.  Before ever starting a novel, “Ayn Rand wrote voluminously in her journals about its theme, plot, and characters” (Rand, 1999, ix).  In her journal writing for Atlas Shrugged, Rand demonstrated “her mind in action, confident even when groping, purposeful even when stymied, luminously eloquent even though wholly unedited.  These journals are also a fascinating record of the step-by-step birth of an immortal work of art” (Rand, 1999, p. ix).

 

            “Ayn Rand’s basic purpose as a novelist was to present not villains or even heroes with errors, but the ideal man—the consistent, the fully integrated, the perfect”  (Rand, 1999, p. xii).  The perfect man in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt.  He is heroic in nature and a “towering figure who moves the world and the novel” (Rand, 1999, p. xii).  Galt is truly a man for all seasons and times and is pivotal to the story and philosophical views found in Atlas Shrugged. 

Rand relates to each of the characters in the book in different and distinguishing ways and presupposes characteristics for each figure involved in the novel.  Ideas personified are”for Dagny-the ideal; for Rearden-the friend, and for Francisco d’Anconia-the aristocrat; to James Taggart-the eternal threat; and to the Professor – his conscience” (Rand, 1999, p. xiii). 

 

            Rand’s writings have given impetus to philosophies and objectives that have inspired many to take a new look at different opportunities and options to personal fulfillment and success.  Rand herself concedes that she seems “to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction writer” (Rand, 1999, xiv).  Rand wrote for discovery.  “For my purpose, the non-fiction form of abstract knowledge doesn’t interest me; the final, applied form of fiction does.  I wonder to what extent I represent a peculiar phenomenon in this respect” (Rand, 1999, xiv).  Rand also believed that she was much like her character, John Galt.  “He is a combination of an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and the man of action together” (Rand, 1999, xiv).

 

            For Rand, her writing was romantic.  In writing, Rand chose to make characters either “black or white” from the context of their commitment to their own moray of values, ethics, and lifestyles.  Therefore, characters became a mirrored version of her own reality and of society as she perceived it to be.

 

 

The Fourth Realm:  Synnoetics

 

            The fourth realm is synnoetics.  “Meanings in the synnoetics realms are subjective (and inter-subjective), concrete and existential” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 430).  Synnoetics is relational.  There are two fundamental concepts within this realm that provide a deeper understanding of man and his interaction with his world and those individuals who become a relational part of that world.  The “I-It” relationship is how we respond to inanimate and worldly manifestations and structures.  The “I-Thou” relationship is how we interact and re-act to those around us.  Sexuality can be classified as an “I-Thou” phenomenon in the form of proper relationships and attributes.

 

From a Freudian perspective, “the source of instinctual energy (particularly the sexual energy or libido) is the id.  The id is regarded as part of the unconscious, an aspect of the personality below the level of the conscious mind” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 413). Relationships between Dagny and those she chose to commit herself to were below the level of the conscious mind.  Where reason stopped, passionate relationships began.

 

In Atlas Shrugged, there are several love interests with the main female character of the novel, Dagny Taggart.  These relationships are each viewed from a different perspective based on Dagny’s work and relationship to each man she committed herself to, even if only for a brief period of time.

 

Lifetime commitments were never a conditional part of Dagny’s intimate relationships.  For the most part, her relationships were based first on common interests and goals, then on romantic passion and desire.  Her love interests included Hank Rearden, John Galt, and Francisco d’Anconia. 

 

 

 

 

The Fifth Realm:  Ethics

 

            Ethics, according to Dr. William A. Kritsonis, is that which “includes moral meanings that express obligation rather than fact, perceptual form, or awareness of relation” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 13).  Morality, according to Dr. Kritsonis, is simply that “which reflects inter-subjective understanding.  Morality has to do with personal conduct that is based on free, responsible, deliberate decision” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 13).

 

            Rand’s view of morality is exonerated by her impressive portrayal of John Galt’s impassioned views about morality expressed during his long and elaborate discourse on morality and objectivism.  “A rational process is a moral process.  You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest—but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking” (Rand, 1999, p. 1017).

 

            For John Galt, reason was the moral basis of all life.  “My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom:  existence exists-and in a single choice: to live.  To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling value of his life:  Reason-Purpose-Self-esteem.  These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness:  rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride” (Rand, 1999, p. 1018). 

 

            Rand does not believe man has a moral responsibility to his or her neighbor.  This tenet of Rand’s ethical theory appears at first glance to be harsh and uncaring.  John Galt restated Rand’s theory of isolation and moralism and held that such attributes were proper and appropriate in his own world view.  “Do not say that my morality is too hard for you to practice and that you fear it as you fear the unknown.  You kept sacrificing your virtues to your vices, and the best among men to the worst.  This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself”  (Rand, 1999, p. 1060). 

 

            The question might be raised, “When do the needs of others supersede one’s own needs and desires?”  According to Rand in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, there are times when she believes that it is acceptable to help others.  “Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him” (Rand, 1964, p. 51).

 

             Ethical and moral decisions each have their own consequences.  Rand also believes that in all ethical decisions, the ultimate choice of what is right or wrong lies with the individual.  She believes that “the moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness” (Rand, 1999, p. 55).  Selfishness, therefore, remains a strong foundational principle of Rand’s ethical and moral philosophical basis for her idyllic view of society and life.

 

 

 

 

The Sixth Realm:  Synoptics

 

            Synoptics refers “to meanings that are comprehensively integrative” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 13).  Synoptics covers the realms of “history, philosophy, and religion” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 13).  Understanding the synoptic realm of meaning in these fields allows a continuity of understanding that helps to develop a deeper meaning and understanding of the specific work studied.

 

History

 

            Historical parallelisms can be found in the story of Atlas Shrugged and important events in our own country’s history.  In 1939, Albert Einstein informed President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the Germans had the makings of an atomic bomb.  The first country to develop this method of mass destruction would be at a decisive advantage in the framework of global dominance and power. 

 

Einstein in someway parallels the strikers of the mind when he decides to leave Germany and begin his new work in the United States.  Just as John Galt did not want unthinking men to reap the benefits or responsibilities of his own creative genius, Einstein did not want the Germans, who he considered a danger and threat to the known world, to have the power of the atomic bomb.

 

 Unthinking men with this unpredictable form of new power could cause grave destruction and chaos to the known world.  Einstein knew this and made the decision to join forces with the United States in order to give his power and creative genius to a country that would be responsible and prudent in its dealing with this new form of power and technology.

   

Another historical parallel can be noted when the People’s State of Mexico promises a “roast of pork every Sunday” (Rand, 1999, p. 123).  This is analogous to the campaign promises of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he advocated that lack and poverty would soon be a thing of the past.  He promised a “chicken in every pot” to every American who would believe in and support his bid for the presidency of the United States of America.

 

Philosophy

 

            “Philosophy provides analytic clarification, evaluation, and synthetic coordination of all the other realms through a reflective conceptual interpretation of all possible kinds of meaning in their distinctiveness and in their interrelationships” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 13).   Ayn Rand believed that righteous self-interest superseded all morality and goodness.  She “challenged the prevalent philosophies of our time with objectivism, a ‘morality of rational self-interest’ repudiating all forms of altruism, including religion, as ‘collectivist’ traps incompatible with a free society” (Moritz, 1982, p. 331). 

 

When writing Atlas Shrugged, “Ayn Rand had to go beyond ethics: she had to originate a new system of philosophy, identifying the nature of man’s means of knowledge and of the universe he seeks to know” (Hull and Peikoff, 1999, p. 290).   Ms. Rand’s philosophical bias lies with her theory of objectivism.    Her philosophy of objectivism is mirrored in the pages of the novel Atlas Shrugged.  Her philosophy is based essentially on the selfishness and individuality of the person who chooses to take responsibility for his or her actions and be responsible for their own view of personal happiness and success.

 

            “My philosophy in essence,”  Miss Rand has said, “is the concept of man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only guide” (Moritz, 1999, p. 332).  Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism states that “reality exists as an objective absolute, reason is man’s only means of perceiving reality, man is an end in himself, and the ideal political-economic system is a laissez-faire capitalism” (Ayn Rand Institute, 1996).  John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged reflects Rand’s philosophical bent toward her reasoned stance on objectivism and its value to a coherent and productive society.

 

 

Rand’s Objectivist Philosophies

In the novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt’s perception of the world around him conceptualizes Ayn Rand’s objectivist’s views and philosophies.  Therefore, it is important to see how her actual stated philosophical views are reflected in the fictional writings of Atlas Shrugged.  Each axiom can be seen through the eyes of her created, heroic character, John Galt. 

Objectivist Axiom #1:  “Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears” (Ayn Rand Institute, 1996).  In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt states, “Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason.  Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth” (Rand, 1999, p. 1017).

Objectivist Axiom #2:  “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life” Ayn Rand Institute, 1996).  Happiness, therefore, as explained through the words of John Galt “is the successful state of life.  Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values” (Rand, 1999, p. 1014).

Objectivist Axiom #3:  “The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church” (Ayn Rand Institute, 1996).

      John Galt’s perception of the ideal political-economic system saw the ultimate view of man as one who was totally in control of his life and work.  He believed that “every man is free to rise as far as he’s able or willing, but it’s only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he’ll rise” (Rand, 1999, p. 1064). However, Galt holds disdain for those who benefit from the contributions of those who have reached their potential and exist at the top of the intellectual and creative pyramid of intellect and creative knowledge and power, and yet do not produce themselves.  

“In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns” (Rand, 1999, p. 1066).  Therefore, in Galt’s mind, as well as Rand’s, there is a disproportionate reward for those who create and for those who simply partake of the intellectual creativity of others.

The motto for Galt’s objectivist theory is found at the end of his infamous and revealing speech which epitomized his views on society, life, objectivism, and the reasons for his departure from the world, even if only for a short time.  “You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:  “I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (Rand, 1999, p. 1069).

Galt’s speech is totally aligned with Rand’s basic philosophy of the nature and purpose of selfishness in one’s personal, as well as corporate life.  “Since selfishness is ‘concern with one’s own interests’, the objectivist ethics uses that concept in its exact and purest sense.  It is not a concept that one can surrender to man’s enemies, nor to the unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and the irrational.  The attack on selfishness is an attack on man’s self-esteem” (Rand, 1964, p. xi). This attack on one’s self-esteem was not an attack that John Galt chose to let emerge in his own personal life.  Therefore, he retreated in order to gain supremacy over his own life, creative thoughts and abilities.

            Selfishness to Rand and to Galt was not something to be avoided.  Selfishness was to be embraced and celebrated.  Rand’s views were that the attack on selfishness was “an attack on man’s self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other” (Rand, 1964, p. xi).  As Galt’s final self-interest led him to retreat from a society he believed was comprised of moochers and looters, he demonstrates fully his philosophical and moral agreement with Rand that the idea and practice of selfishness as a virtue should be lauded and held high in the realms of intellectual honor and esteem.  

Galt, although not a philosopher by trade, influenced his generation through his own philosophic thought and commitment to his ideas. His contributions thereby exceeded those that only a scientist could bring forth.    “Perhaps the greatest contribution of the analytic philosophers is their personal witness to the importance of meaning and their faith in the possibility of making meanings clear” (Kritsonis, 2007, p. 73).  Galt contributed, in essence, new meaning and life through his innovative leadership and objective philosophies and intellectual premises and pursuits.

Religion

            Ayn Rand was a self-proclaimed atheist.  Her “god” was the capitalistic society where each man produced from his own individualism and creativity.  Worshiping a god, such as the Christian God, was to Miss Rand a representation of naïveté and a misunderstanding of the essential purpose of life. 

            In the Christian gospel, the value of the individual is paramount.  Whether rich or poor, well-known or hidden from the vastness of society and its existence, Christianity presupposes the value of the individual.  God, as Creator, values the individual and provides a way of redemption for his creation to ensure their eternal happiness, reward, and eternal longevity which are ensured to those who believe in Him and trust in His providence and guidance throughout life with the hope of securing a future and destiny in-line with God’s purposes and design.

            For Rand, the individual who does not conform to her romantic idealized version of life is potentially unworthy of respect or consideration.  This view could have influenced her view of abortion and the rights of the unborn, who at birth are truly “non-producers” and who are totally dependent on someone else’s care, generosity, and commitment   To Rand, “an embryo has no rights.  Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being.  A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born” (Hull and Peikoff, 1999, p. 337).  Rand’s view of abortion is that it is a “moral right which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved” (Hull and Peikoff, 1999, p. 337). 

            It is interesting to note, that in Atlas Shrugged, sexuality is not mentioned as a form of pro-creation, but simply as an act of encounter that does not require continual commitment or a dedication to a relationship that has the ability to transcend time and become an integral party of one’s entire being and ultimate life legacy. 

            Rand’s ideology is in many ways in direct contrast to Christian values and virtues.  Christianity espouses the centrality of a triune God who is benevolent and caring to the population of mankind.  In contrast, Rand’s god was materialistic.  Rand’s heroic characters were those who lived for themselves.  Dagny Taggart’s sexuality was in direct contrast to the Christian teachings of morality and purity.  Where Christians are admonished to “die to one’s self”, Rand encourages the “self-life.”  However, Rand’s writings do give the astute student of philosophy a chance to compare and contrast the values of the world and therefore choose for oneself their own vision of morality and justice.

Concluding Remarks

 

            In conclusion, Atlas Shrugged is a novel based on the importance of rationality and man’s own individuality and freedom of choice.  There are ten major issues which are discussed in the novel and that lend credence to Rand’s philosophical views which include the purpose of life and man’s destiny and responsibilities for individualized happiness and success.  Ten prominent themes outlined in Atlas Shrugged  include, but are not exclusive of: (1)  Rand’s theory of objectivism (2) capitalism (3) socialism (4) communism (as seen through the division of labor (i.e., the looters and the strikers of the mind)  (5) feminism (6) a woman’s right to choose (7) man’s spirituality (8) man’s sexuality (9) art in literature and life and (10) the historical parallels of Atlas Shrugged with actual historical events.  By reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, readers can gain a new appreciation of her philosophical and literary contributions to our society and how their applications to everyday life and academic study can enhance one’s search for knowledge utilizing the comprehensive framework of the Ways of Knowing Through the Realms of Meaning.

 

 

References

Clayton, G. (1995). Economics, principles and practices (pp. 476, 567). New York: McGraw Hill. 

Hull, G., & Peikoff, L. (1999). The ayn rand reader (pp. 290, 337).  New York: Penguin Putnam, Incorporated.

Kritsonis, W.A. (2007).  Ways of knowing through the realms of meaning (pp. 11, 12, 73,266,413,430).  Houston, Texas: National Forum.

Moritz, C. (1982).  Current biography yearbook (pp. 234,331,332).   New York:

The H.W. Wilson Company.

Rand, A. (1964). The virtue of selfishness (pp. 51, 55, xi, xii).   New York: Penguin Putnam, Incorporated.

Rand, A. (1996). Ayn rand institute for the center on objectivism. Retrieved November 17, 2006, from aynrand.org

Rand, A. (1999). Atlas shrugged (pp. ix, xii, xiii, xiv, 55, 123, 131, 132, 133, 134, 138, 1017, 1018, 1048, 1049, 1060, 1064, 1066, 1067, 1069).  New York:  Penguin Putnam, Incorporated.

Riley, C. (1975).  Contemporary literary criticism (p. 423).  Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Company.

Uyl, D. J. and Rasmussen D. B. (1986). The philosophic thought of Ayn Rand (p. 173).  Chicago, Illinois: Illini Books.

Can you trust your culture’s leading authorities? Inflammatory Breast Cancer Rash Can you trust your culture’s government? Can you trust your culture’s private industry?”

We asked those questions in 1995, at the end of our book, Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras. Before writing our book, we sent details of our research to the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, President’s Cancer Panel, American Women’s Medical Association, National Organization for Women, National Women’s Health Network, and National Women’s Health Resource Center. There was no response. Not one. Given the lack of interest, we decided to publish our findings in a book, getting the information directly to the women who needed to hear it.

But are women getting the message?

It has been 12 years since our book was first published. Over that time, more than 500,000 women in the US alone have died from breast cancer, with another 2,000,000 having been diagnosed with this terrible disease — a disease that is in most cases preventable by simply loosening up or eliminating the bra. And yet, this lifesaving information has been actively suppressed and censored by the medical and lingerie industries.

Examples of Suppress and Censorship

A large public relations firm in New York City was willing and eager to help us release this information to the public. “My wife just had breast cancer, and I’m sure you are right,” the head of the firm confessed. A big media announcement and celebration were planned. Days later, however, the firm withdrew its offer to help, stating that one of their clients, a large medical center, objected to their working with us.

A Sydney, Australia public relations firm agreed to help publicize our work when we were doing outreach efforts in their country. But it, too, reversed itself. We had asked if they had any conflicts of interest, such as lingerie industry clients. They said they had none. But as it turned out, they did represent a pharmaceutical company that makes a breast cancer treatment drug, and the prevention of breast cancer and its treatment are in conflict, they explained.

The Intimate Apparel Council (which is the US trade association for the multi-billion dollar bra industry) threatened our publisher, Avery Publishing Group, with a lawsuit if Dressed To Kill was released. The publisher said the publicity would help spread the word. The lawsuit never materialized.

After the book was released, the NBC television news show, Dateline, was interested in doing a story on our work. We were extensively interviewed by a skeptical reporter who became a supporter. The story was then abruptly terminated. The producer confidentially explained that the policy of General Electric, which owns NBC, is to avoid airing news stories that can adversely impact on other GE interests. As it happens, GE is a manufacturer of mammography machines.

Women’s magazines, such as Glamour, Self, and others, ran critical stories condemning our work, and finding “experts” to encourage women to continue wearing bras. Elle magazine planned a positive story about the bra/cancer link, but was coerced into pulling the story by bra advertisers. In various newspapers around the world, such as the Guardian in the UK, stories were pulled prior to publication because of fear that they may “panic the public”, including their lingerie advertisers.

The British Fashion Council (which is the UK’s equivalent of the Intimate Apparel Council) published the Breast Health Handbook in 1996 to oppose our efforts. They announced the formation of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Foundation, which was to receive donations from bra sales to fund genetic research into breast cancer. The book criticized our work, claiming, “The idea that wearing a bra encourages cancer by trapping toxins was recently put forward by researchers at the Institute for Culturogenic Studies (sic) in Hawaii. Researchers from more august establishments promptly dismissed it as claptrap.” Without any medical evidence or research, the book informs women that wearing bras is a health necessity, and should be worn as early in life as possible to prevent breast damage.

Our original publisher, Avery, was purchased by giant Penguin Putnam in 1998. The new publisher did not list the book for three years and refused to revert publication rights to the copywrite holders, Singer and Grismaijer. The book was virtually unavailable, and it was thought to have gone out of print. Finally, after repeated requests, the publishing rights were released to us in October, 2001. (ISCD Press has been keeping it in print since then.)

A television documentary was produced in the year 2000 by Channel 4 in the UK, called, Bras- The Bare Facts. In the documentary, 100 women with fibrocystic breast disease went bra-free for 3 months to document the effect on breast cysts and pain. Two prominent British breast surgeons conducted the study. The results were astounding, and clearly demonstrated that the bra is a serious health hazard. We were interviewed for the program to discuss the bra/cancer connection, which was considered highly plausible and important by the doctors interviewed. Some theorized that, in addition to lymphatic impairment, the bra could also cause cancer by overheating the breasts. The documentary made newspaper headlines in British Commonwealth countries throughout the world, but no mention of it was made at all in the US. The following day, headlines in the U.K. tried to suppress fears of the bra/cancer link, and the doctors in the study quickly distanced themselves from the cancer issue, telling women to continue wearing bras. Their research for the documentary was supposed to be published in a medical journal, but never was. And no further research ever materialized to follow-up on their work, which they said they would do. Extensive news coverage of the program was available on the Internet soon after it aired, but most articles were removed shortly thereafter.

No follow-up studies have been done to refute or confirm our research. None. While a Harvard study, published in the European Journal of Cancer in 1991, discovered that bra-free women have a lower rate of breast cancer, the results were not central to the research they were conducting and were considered unimportant and not followed-up. In fact, apart from our initial 1991-93 Bra and Breast Cancer Study, discussed in detail in Dressed To Kill, and our follow-up research in Fiji, discussed in our book, Get It Off!, there are still no other studies on the bra/cancer link. Not even a letter or discussion of the issue can be found in any medical journal. After decades of breast cancer research, the bra is still completely ignored as even being a potential factor for consideration. It’s like studying foot disease and ignoring shoes.

Keeping the Public Mystified

Lung Cancer Secrets Revealed Click here

This lack of research, and the consequent ignorance, are then used by cancer organizations to justify further suppression of the issue. As the American Cancer Society states on its website, (ignoring the Harvard study), “There are no scientifically valid studies that show a correlation between wearing bras of any type and the occurrence of breast cancer. Two anthropologists made this association in a book called Dressed To Kill. Their study was not conducted according to standard principles of epidemiological research and did not take into consideration other variables, including known risk factors for breast cancer. There is no other, credible research to validate this claim in any way.” And they don’t seem interested in funding any such studies in the near future, either. There are other organizations that are similarly critical of the bra/cancer link for lack of research evidence, while at the same time discouraging any research on the subject.

Of particular interest is when breast cancer organizations antagonistic to the issue declare the bra/cancer link to be “misinformation” or a “myth”, without any scientific study supporting their claims. They say bras are important for women to wear for support, without any evidence showing bras are safe or necessary. They then encourage regular mammograms, cancer prevention drug therapy (not realizing that “prevention therapy” is an oxymoron), and even preventative mastectomies (which means that those who are high risk for breast cancer but who don’t want to get it can have their breast removed as a prevention strategy). Of course, it is better to remove the bra instead of the breasts, but bra removal is not a billable procedure.

Keep in mind that bras have been associated with other health problems, such as headaches, numbness in the hands, backache and other postural problems, cysts, pain, skin depigmentation, and more. And lymphatic blockage, which is the result of bra constriction, has already been associated with various cancers. Clearly, the bra/cancer link needs further research, while women take the precaution of loosening up.

Why the resistance?

What harm could there be in following our simple advice, or in even researching this issue? Why the defensive reaction?

There are three reasons:

1. The bra industry fears class action lawsuits. Many insiders have admitted to us that for years the industry suspected underwires were causing cancer. They know that tight bras cause cysts and pain. It is only a matter of time until a lawsuit is made against a bra manufacturer. As a defense, the industry is shifting the blame to the customer, claiming that most women are wearing their bras too tightly, and should get professional fittings. (How do you get a properly fitted push-up bra?) Breaking ranks with their industry peers, and trying to capitalize on the bad news, are several bra manufacturers that now offer newly patented bras claiming to mitigate the damage, including cancer, caused by conventional bras.

2. The medical industry is making billions each year on the detection and treatment of breast cancer. As mentioned above, there is a conflict between the prevention and the treatment of disease, especially if the prevention does not include drugs or surgery. The fact is that our treatment-focused, profit-oriented medical system is making a killing treating this disease, and has billions to lose if breast cancer goes out of fashion along with bras.

In addition, the bra issue will revolutionize the breast cancer field, embarrassing many researchers. Breast cancer research to date that has ignored the bra issue is seriously flawed as a result, which is why the “experts” are still unable to explain the cause of over 70% of all breast cancer cases. Career cancer researchers who have ignored the bra issue will have to admit this fatal flaw in their work, which they are not inclined to admit in their lifetimes.

3. Finally, there is the dogmatic, fearful resistance from some women who find their personal identity so connected to their bras that they would rather risk cancer than be bra-free (which some women have actually told us.) Women are cultural entities, and so long as our culture scorns a natural bustline, many women will submit to the pain, red marks and indentations, cysts, and even the threat of cancer rather than face potential public ridicule (which never really happens.)

There are also women who believe the myth that bras will prevent droopy breasts. The bra industry admits this is a myth, while it still promotes it to improve sales. In fact, bras cause breasts to droop, as the breasts become dependent on the bra for support and the natural supportive mechanisms atrophy from non use.

Despite the resistance, however, some women have gotten the message. And many health care professionals, who have also suspected bras for years, are now spreading that message. As women hear the news and discover that eliminating the bra also eliminates cysts and pain, the news further spreads by word of mouth.

There are now thousands of websites on this subject, many from health care professionals including medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, osteopathic doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, lymphatic specialists, nutritionists, and others who care about women and helping end this epidemic. Grassroots efforts to keep this information alive and spreading have supplanted the traditional medical research approach, which has disqualified itself for lack of interest and conflict of interest.

When a disease is caused by the culture and its habits, attitudes, fashions and industries, there is bound to be resistance to change. Industries that contribute to disease will be defensive, and industries that profit from disease will be conflicted. However, the truth has a way of getting out, despite the resistance and suppression. Thank Goodness the truth does have a way of getting out.

Sydney Ross Singer is a medical anthropologist and director of the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease, located in Hawaii. His unique form of applied medical anthropology searches for the cultural/lifestyle causes of disease. His working assumption is that our bodies were made to be healthy, but our culture and the attitudes and behaviors it instills in us can get in the way of health. By eliminating these causes, the body is allowed to heal. Since most diseases of our time are caused by our culture/lifestyle, this approach has resulted in many original discoveries into the cause, and cure, of many common diseases. It also makes prevention possible by eliminating adverse lifestyle practices. Sydney works with his co-researcher and wife, Soma Grismaijer, and is the author of several groundbreaking health books.

lung cancer treatment breakthroughs Click here

was a drunk, with dry heaves and I asked her to marry me from the urine soaked floor of a barroom toilet to keep her from leaving with my best friend Bobby Joe Maxwell. Looking back, I should have just let her go. She wants to go back to that bar tonight. I’m thinking Mcdonalds might be more pleasant.

we don’t want to tell anyone for the first 2-3 months that we’re pregnant, but we have several holiday and dinner parties to attend. not that my wife drinks to excess, but it will be noticeable if she spends 3 hours at a party and doesn’t touch a glass of wine. “I’m sick” won’t work – everyone knows that excuse already and will see right through it.
again, to repeat, “i’m sick” won’t work. That includes ear infections, antibiotics, etc. We will have friends at these parties who know we both enjoy wine. And some of these parties are at our house, where the designated driver excuse won’t work. I like the “low carb” diet answer so far – more answers along those lines are helpful. Insights into society’s position on drinking and why people ask their friends why they’re not drinking are not so helpful…

I grew up in Chicago. I also live in the suburbs for several years. I have moved to South Dakota for school and am amazed at how scandalous and dysfunctional country people are. I thought small towns were the heart of conservative Christian American values, but it seem the opposite. People sleep with their friends wives, alcoholism, domestic violence, laziness, lieing, mooching and white people on welfare. How did this happen?

Good readers, you may be included among that fortunate group of people or the less fortunate. Why do I mention that? People who are fortunate people who are fun, joy and happiness along the ha .. not correct. While the less fortunate, of course, the opposite in accordance with the sentence that I mention above, namely … wistful, less happy, are not satisfied, stroke from negative emotional depth that somehow the stress, depression, despair, anger, a frustrated prolonged. Have your say .. see a stiff hip, which only worked in the market and he always seems cheerful smile .. look no sadness on his face. Of course for us this is very awkward considering he lives all the limitations that have not yet meet the needs of his life alone in her children of course not an easy thing. However, there is no visible distress in the face .. just smile cheerful laugh .. which is very far from downhearted and sad situation .. Now I will invite readers to see the condition of the other. You can view eg a director or executive levels on which it is financially well-established, the withdrawal has a large house building, beautiful wife, children, the beautiful and handsome too. But see it’s face of reporter  always looks cheerful and happy, always smile whether caparison face except only at the time are highlighted in the media or television . Too many heavy responsibilities he holds, the burden of the company, its employees, too many demands from  his wife finally discovered the children, which involved the association anak0anaknya free fall until the end to end drug dealing with police and entered rehabilitation house … Is he happy? Have a wealth guarantee his happiness? The answer is of course NOT …

I believe that by reading the first paragraph, the reader is to understand the true definition of happiness. True happiness is actually located in our heart .. if we are happy then our life is happy and sinarilah your day-to-day with a cheerful smile. Maybe we just underestimate, “ah apalah means smile, I can do but also why I do not feel happy, there are always just a little.” Means that people like this have not been enjoying the bliss that was. The idea is to feel the heart join kebahagian. Start from the heart you used to feel happy and smile through the show. How do I still feel difficult? Hold relation with the title of what I bring it. Relation is very close. According to research by the doctors in the United States, unhealthy mental condition contributed to participate 80% of the causes of disease. Whether the heart disease, stress, lever, and so forth. Why be so? Because the nerve network in the present electrical signals from the brain to organs throughout the body. Do not feel the feelings of the heart begins to forward this stimulus to the brain. Suppose you feel offended, resentful, discouraged, and so forth, feeling it will be your heart to the brain, which then will forward to all the networks nervous. The effect is caused very diverse, ranging from sluggish, tired, tired, pain in the chest, head feels dizzy up to a serious illness when it occurs perasaaan prolonged. Well how to start the fight feeling / emotion that is negative. Here are some tips that worthy try.

1. Start the morning wake up and be grateful

This case seems to be a very paltry and no relation. Try the morning you wake up, sempatkan time for a moment out of the house and breathe fresh air slowly while the deep sense of gratitude to God YME. Feel the air flowing through the pore-pore nose, to the lungs, syukurilah you can breathe normally .. Feel what is happening in your body. You will feel the extraordinary freshness..Grateful  … also other things that you still provide the health and well-being can still move, doing activities and others … Experience the changes that occur in your body .. Do this while standing, Relax bersedekap and hands in front .. chest as a sign of prostration to the Lord YME. This ritual can be any religion you … Make it for 10 minutes

2. Keep on Good Mood

If you already felt comfort after exercise , you must kept it on.  Doing like this, closed your eyes, started to  smile and say it to your heart, “this day I feel very blessed, truly blessed,” repeat the word many times to truly penetrate into your heart until you feel genuinely happy. Difficult to do? Not at all. However, if you are beginning again annoyed, angry or emotional force not followed this emotion .. not easy .. but it slowly you started to feel the difference .. inner start feeling even more difficult to calm smile … do not do it all that need training.

3. Today is you felt happy, a truly happiness

Not easy, kept on that felling, do not want to be influenced the negative emotions that often perch in the head and  talked too much like impish monkey. I can do it, so do you. See what is happening in the environment around you. Started to observe any changes occured in your life, how your wife / husband acte to you, your children, office friends, superiors or the surrounding community.    See their reaction and they must be suprised about the change of your personality and for a moment, they acted nothing and confused.  Don’t be worry, it was natural.  Initially if you are an ill-natured or difficult to smile , of course they were very astonished, not to do anything. He began to greet you with a tender-hearted wife, “good morning dear, how kabarmu today,”  maybe she suprised why you changed  but do not make her upset, and say it  you will be always smiling to her and to children every morning.   Not just for your family, but do this for all your firend, neightbourhood, boss, office mate and your staff even genitor.

Well, how you are interested .. please do not hesitate try it again .. taste the difference that occurred in the body of your health .. It is very impossible when you have done this, you still bad temper, emotion,  dizzy or any bad psychology conditons.   Of course, in addition you also have to keep eating and diligent is pro sports.

If you are interested in this article I let the others know….

I have no reason to doubt her, except one of her friends ( a former alcoholic) told her off and doesn’t speak to her any more; I found that suspicious. Plus she says she remembers everything, but I don’t think you can when you’re that drunk, can you?

Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales has taken various directions : some critics have praised the portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality, adroit psychology and vividness of felt life; others, working in the genetic direction have pointed out actual historical persons who might have sat for portraits; others appealing to the light of medieval sciences, have shown the portraits to be filled with the lore of Chaucer’s days and to have some typical identities like case histories.

Resemblance to the Tales of Decameron

According to W.H.Clowson, The Canterbury Tales resembles to Boccacio’s Decameron in 4 ways:

• The tales are told in succession by the members of an organized group.

• This group is brought together by special external circumstances.

• There is narrative and conversational links between the tales.

• There is a preceding officer.

‘The general tone of the framing narrative and the general topics of its tales are very similar to those of Chaucer’s. […] and in Boccaccio’s apology for the impropriety of some of his stories he makes the same defense as that offered by Chaucer for the same fault — that he must tell what happened, that the reader may skip any tale he wishes, and that such stories are purely for entertainment and are not to be taken too seriously.’

But the majority of the scholars of Chaucer believed that this link is not established properly. More over there is no evidence that Chaucer met Bocaccio in 1373 — during his brief vist to Florence.

Unity in diversion in Prologue

Chaucer in his Prologue, tried to present portraits of all the ‘strata’ of life, but this variety is only the interior frame work which functions with the exterior circle which gives unity to all the characters. Such a unity, it may be argued, is fulfilled only due to the reason ( in A.W. Hoffman’s words) that ‘ all the portraits are portraits of pilgrims’: “and pilgrims were they alle”

Treatment of ‘Love” in Prologue

Love has been treated in the prologue from the beginning as a character, a matter of the body and spirit.

The note of love that is sounded in different keys ball through the portraits, such as :

The Knight : “… he loved chivalrie…”

The prioress : “… Amor vincit omnia …”

Wife of Bath : “… of remedies of love she knew perchance, For she koude of that art the olde daunce”

The Pardoner : “… com hider, love, to me!”

The pilgrims were represented as affected by a variety of destructive and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movements can be described by the mixture of love that drives them and love that calls and summons.

Character sketches in Prologue

According to William J. Long, ‘In the famous “ Prologue” the poet makes us acquainted with the various characters of his drama. Until Chaucer’s day popular literature had been busy chiefly with the gods and heroes of a golden age: it had been essentially romantic, and so had never attempted to study men and women as they are, or to describe them so that the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes, but as his own neighbors. Chaucer not only attempted this new realistic task, but accomplished it so well that his characters were instantly recognized as true to life’

Throwing light to another aspect of Chaucer’s characterization A. Compton Rickett writes: ‘[…] His people always on the move. Never do they become shadowy or lifeless. They shout and swear, and laugh and weep, interrupt the story teller, pass compliments, and in general behave themselves as we might expect them to in the dramatic circumstances of the narrative. It is never possible to confuse the story teller: each is distinct and inimitable, whether it be the sermonizing Pardoner, the hot-tempered Miller, or the exuberantly vivacious Wife of Bath, who has had five husbands, but experience teaching her that husbands are transient blessings, she has fixed her mind on a sixth!’

Prologue copies the exact life: Ambiguity and Double view of pilgrimage

The prologue begins by presenting a double view of Canterbury pilgrimage ¬¬¬¬—– one tiny manifestation of a huge tide of life.

This is not so as only because Chaucer sketched the varieties of different species from the human society, but also because of the presence of the Double View of pilgrimage in his portrait, which is also a miniature of the real social life and this one is enhanced and extended by the portraits where it appears, in one aspect, as a range of motivation. This range of motive spreads from the sacred to the secular and on to the profane. All the pilgrims are in fact granted a sacred motive —- all of them are seeking the shrine. But when we move to actual motivation among the portraits and we find the difference. The Knight and the Parson are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Same is the case of Summoned and the Pardoner.

In A.W. Hoffman’s words : ‘And the pilgrims who move, pushed by the impulse and drawn by vows, none merely impel and none perfectly committed . and this reflect the common human ambiguity in real life’

William Blake’s Observation : Characters of all time

William Blake says : ‘[…]The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises […] [,but] we see the same characters repeated again and again […]. Names alter, things never alter’ and this is the special characteristics of Chaucer’s portraits.

And moreover what is interesting , according to Blake is : ‘[…] As Newton numbered stars […] Chaucer numbered the classes of men’.

Pattern of description of the characters in Prologue: from high to low ranks

The military estate is followed by the clerical estates; the clerics by the laity; an upper middle class by a lower one; with the rascals at the end.

Further Chaucer had used the arrangement in apparently causal order of descending importance of merit. Even there is an arrangement that has moral patterns.

Personality of Chaucer

E.Talbot Donaldson proposed [in his essay ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim', PMLA, LXIX (1954)] that Chaucer the pilgrim was a fictional creation of Chaucer the poet, with a distinct personality of his own which was very unlike that of his creator. This pilgrim is an amiable, exceedingly naïve bourgeois who admires success of every kind, but especially material success, who uncritically accepts the values of the upper class, as these are embodied in the Knight, the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar; and who recognizes virtue and wickedness only when they are thoroughly obvious.

But Jhon M. Major [ in his essay ‘The Personality of Chaucer the Pilgrim', PMLA, LXXV 9June 1960)] says that there are still many things which fall out of this theory and for which ‘we are forced to construct a different kind of narrator from the one Professor Donaldson has represented’. ‘Granted that Chaucer does employ a persona in the Canterbury Tales; still, he does not employ him very consistently.[…] we think narrator as a kind of alter ego of the poet himself, with just so many shades of difference as allow for ironic play, no difficulty is raised by the alternating points of view. This narrator reveals himself to be, like his creator, perceptive, witty, sophisticated, playful, tolerant, detached, and, above all, ironic. Such a man is very well aware of the significance of what he observes, though he may show his awareness by subtle means.[…]That real persona, who is far from being a fool, understands what he sees ought to be clear from a number of indications. Not that he is given to moralizing; Chaucer the pilgrim, like his companion the Parson, has a wide tolerance of human weakness, and he can warm up to almost all of his fellow pilgrims, especially if they are convivial. Most of what he observes, both the good and the bad, he reports with a straight face with a deliberate irony.’

Some important characters of The Prologue to Canterbury Tales :

The Knight and the Squire:

The Knight and Squire with the Squire’s Yeoman lead the procession, as Chaucer has placed them in the first position.

William Blake says that : ‘ the Knight is a true hero, a good great and wise man; his whole length of portrait on horseback, as written by Chaucer cannot be surpassed.’ He is ‘that species of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against oppressor.’

The portraits of the Knight and the Squire have a particular interest. The relationship between these two are governed by natural one that of a father and son. Again there is a dramatic relationship between these two as each one of portrait is enhanced and defined in presence of another. For instance the long roll of Knight’s campaigns and Squire’s little opportunity; a series of past tenses, a history for the Knight and for the Squire breaking forth in active participles. Even appearances and dress of both are compared.

Knight’s pilgrimage is more nearly a response to the voice of saint.

The Knight is defined in terms of his virtues (lines 45-6) and actions to defend the faith far more than by his words. Knight’s fighting in battle field had a religious cause. He is the antique pattern of the chivalry of Edward- III’s time.

The Nun ( Prioress)

Prioress is described as of the first rank, rich and honored. She had certain peculiarities and little delicate affections. She was accompanied by what is truly grand, polite and elegance.

Chaucer has portrayed this character with such care and tenderness that it is often remarked that Chaucer really liked the prioress very much, even though he satires her so gently —- very gently. But E.T Donaldson believes that this is just an understatement and Chaucer may not be said to be have liked her, rather he was only charmed by her beauty.

Eileen Power’s illustration show with what extra-ordinary skill the portrait of the Prioress is packed with abuses of typical 14th century nuns. Though these abuses are petty, it is clear the Prioress is anything but a perfect nun and attempts to white wash her.

It has been argued that Chaucer’s appreciation for the Prioress as sort of heroine of courtly romance actually due to Chaucer’s sophisticated living, where he cared little whether amiable nuns are good and this sophistication permits itself to babble superlatives.

Anyway Prioress’s very presence in the pilgrimage, as many point out, is the very first satiric touch. In the case of Prioress blemish is sufficiently technical to have only faint satiric coloring. But this places her at a spot in the sequence — at one end — in which more obviously blemished Monk and friar appear.

In the portrait of the Prioress the double view of pilgrimage appears both in ambiguities in the surface and in an implied inner range of motivation.

In the surface there is a name Eglentyne — means romance — and ‘simple and coy’ is a romance formula, but she is a nun. There are coral beads and green gauds, — a religious emblem. What shall be taken as principal? Are her courtly manners or her dedication at divine service explains her? And on the front of motivation, the perfect explanation lies in the lines of A.W.Hoffman : ‘There is such an impure but blameless mixture as Prioress …’. Deficiency of knowledge may be remedied (which caused due to Chaucer’s attempt to make more gentle criticism on the Prioress). It is because, as many believe, Chaucer has a sister or a daughter who was a nun.

Prioress is the character who is found to be pre-dominating in some ages. William Blake has observed that ‘The characters of women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight’.

Wife of bath

William Blake has observed that ‘The characters of women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight’.

The main features of her character are common-sense and pre-occupation with sex, and an important element in Prologue is her desire to explain life in terms of her values. For instance: ‘She is willing to admit, for her convention’s sake that chastity is the ideal state. But it is not her ideal.

In prologue, she explains her five husbands.

She was a good woman but unfortunately rather deaf. The deafness is a significant detail — the result of a blow from her fifth husband.

In medieval theory and law, biblical in origin, the man is the head of the woman, and should be obeyed. The Wife, however, is not receptive to this doctrine, and her deafness is the symbolic of this unwillingness to listen. Physical characteristics in her portrait have a moral import. Other such characteristics in case of Wife of Bath are the following. The Wife is a gate-toothed. Medieval students of physiology held that to have teeth widely spaced was a sign of boldness, falseness, gluttony and lasciviousness. The Wife born under Venus (who was not saint) regards it as confirmation of venereal nature. Her ‘gate-teeth’ gave her many opportunities to wander off the road.

The Wife’s portrait begins with a standard feature of the dreadful women, whom clerks in the Middle Ages liked the same way as the wives of the Guilds men (lines 376-8). This liking for display is cleverly combined by Chaucer with her profession (cloth-making). Her stockings are scarlet and tight laced, and her shoes are “moisten and newel”. She is thus the scarlet woman, whom preachers against female vanity love to hate. But this is Chaucerian as she is both sexually attractive and at the same time ridiculously over dressed.

The Wife turns out to be the monster of anti feminist comedy — aggressive, nagging, gossiping, lustful and wasteful. Yet she is not unattractive.

Apart from five husbands and other youthful company we are told that she had passed “many a strange strum”. Then : “Of remedies of love she knew per chance

For she koud of that art the olde daunce”

(lines 475-6)

The ‘remedies’ and ‘olde daunce’ do not suggest virtue. All in all she is quite contract to the chastity, modesty and refinement of the Prioress.

Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales has taken various directions : some critics have praised the portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality, adroit psychology and vividness of felt life; others, working in the genetic direction have pointed out actual historical persons who might have sat for portraits; others appealing to the light of medieval sciences, have shown the portraits to be filled with the lore of Chaucer’s days and to have some typical identities like case histories.

Resemblance to the Tales of Decameron

According to W.H.Clowson, The Canterbury Tales resembles to Boccacio’s Decameron in 4 ways:

• The tales are told in succession by the members of an organized group.

• This group is brought together by special external circumstances.

• There is narrative and conversational links between the tales.

• There is a preceding officer.

‘The general tone of the framing narrative and the general topics of its tales are very similar to those of Chaucer’s. […] and in Boccaccio’s apology for the impropriety of some of his stories he makes the same defense as that offered by Chaucer for the same fault — that he must tell what happened, that the reader may skip any tale he wishes, and that such stories are purely for entertainment and are not to be taken too seriously.’

But the majority of the scholars of Chaucer believed that this link is not established properly. More over there is no evidence that Chaucer met Bocaccio in 1373 — during his brief vist to Florence.

Unity in diversion in Prologue

Chaucer in his Prologue, tried to present portraits of all the ‘strata’ of life, but this variety is only the interior frame work which functions with the exterior circle which gives unity to all the characters. Such a unity, it may be argued, is fulfilled only due to the reason ( in A.W. Hoffman’s words) that ‘ all the portraits are portraits of pilgrims’: “and pilgrims were they alle”

Treatment of ‘Love” in Prologue

Love has been treated in the prologue from the beginning as a character, a matter of the body and spirit.

The note of love that is sounded in different keys ball through the portraits, such as :

The Knight : “… he loved chivalrie…”

The prioress : “… Amor vincit omnia …”

Wife of Bath : “… of remedies of love she knew perchance, For she koude of that art the olde daunce”

The Pardoner : “… com hider, love, to me!”

The pilgrims were represented as affected by a variety of destructive and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movements can be described by the mixture of love that drives them and love that calls and summons.

Character sketches in Prologue

According to William J. Long, ‘In the famous “ Prologue” the poet makes us acquainted with the various characters of his drama. Until Chaucer’s day popular literature had been busy chiefly with the gods and heroes of a golden age: it had been essentially romantic, and so had never attempted to study men and women as they are, or to describe them so that the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes, but as his own neighbors. Chaucer not only attempted this new realistic task, but accomplished it so well that his characters were instantly recognized as true to life’

Throwing light to another aspect of Chaucer’s characterization A. Compton Rickett writes: ‘[…] His people always on the move. Never do they become shadowy or lifeless. They shout and swear, and laugh and weep, interrupt the story teller, pass compliments, and in general behave themselves as we might expect them to in the dramatic circumstances of the narrative. It is never possible to confuse the story teller: each is distinct and inimitable, whether it be the sermonizing Pardoner, the hot-tempered Miller, or the exuberantly vivacious Wife of Bath, who has had five husbands, but experience teaching her that husbands are transient blessings, she has fixed her mind on a sixth!’

Prologue copies the exact life: Ambiguity and Double view of pilgrimage

The prologue begins by presenting a double view of Canterbury pilgrimage ¬¬¬¬—– one tiny manifestation of a huge tide of life.

This is not so as only because Chaucer sketched the varieties of different species from the human society, but also because of the presence of the Double View of pilgrimage in his portrait, which is also a miniature of the real social life and this one is enhanced and extended by the portraits where it appears, in one aspect, as a range of motivation. This range of motive spreads from the sacred to the secular and on to the profane. All the pilgrims are in fact granted a sacred motive —- all of them are seeking the shrine. But when we move to actual motivation among the portraits and we find the difference. The Knight and the Parson are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Same is the case of Summoned and the Pardoner.

In A.W. Hoffman’s words : ‘And the pilgrims who move, pushed by the impulse and drawn by vows, none merely impel and none perfectly committed . and this reflect the common human ambiguity in real life’

William Blake’s Observation : Characters of all time

William Blake says : ‘[…]The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises […] [,but] we see the same characters repeated again and again […]. Names alter, things never alter’ and this is the special characteristics of Chaucer’s portraits.

And moreover what is interesting , according to Blake is : ‘[…] As Newton numbered stars […] Chaucer numbered the classes of men’.

Pattern of description of the characters in Prologue: from high to low ranks

The military estate is followed by the clerical estates; the clerics by the laity; an upper middle class by a lower one; with the rascals at the end.

Further Chaucer had used the arrangement in apparently causal order of descending importance of merit. Even there is an arrangement that has moral patterns.

Personality of Chaucer

E.Talbot Donaldson proposed [in his essay ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim', PMLA, LXIX (1954)] that Chaucer the pilgrim was a fictional creation of Chaucer the poet, with a distinct personality of his own which was very unlike that of his creator. This pilgrim is an amiable, exceedingly naïve bourgeois who admires success of every kind, but especially material success, who uncritically accepts the values of the upper class, as these are embodied in the Knight, the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar; and who recognizes virtue and wickedness only when they are thoroughly obvious.

But Jhon M. Major [ in his essay ‘The Personality of Chaucer the Pilgrim', PMLA, LXXV 9June 1960)] says that there are still many things which fall out of this theory and for which ‘we are forced to construct a different kind of narrator from the one Professor Donaldson has represented’. ‘Granted that Chaucer does employ a persona in the Canterbury Tales; still, he does not employ him very consistently.[…] we think narrator as a kind of alter ego of the poet himself, with just so many shades of difference as allow for ironic play, no difficulty is raised by the alternating points of view. This narrator reveals himself to be, like his creator, perceptive, witty, sophisticated, playful, tolerant, detached, and, above all, ironic. Such a man is very well aware of the significance of what he observes, though he may show his awareness by subtle means.[…]That real persona, who is far from being a fool, understands what he sees ought to be clear from a number of indications. Not that he is given to moralizing; Chaucer the pilgrim, like his companion the Parson, has a wide tolerance of human weakness, and he can warm up to almost all of his fellow pilgrims, especially if they are convivial. Most of what he observes, both the good and the bad, he reports with a straight face with a deliberate irony.’

Some important characters of The Prologue to Canterbury Tales :

The Knight and the Squire:

The Knight and Squire with the Squire’s Yeoman lead the procession, as Chaucer has placed them in the first position.

William Blake says that : ‘ the Knight is a true hero, a good great and wise man; his whole length of portrait on horseback, as written by Chaucer cannot be surpassed.’ He is ‘that species of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against oppressor.’

The portraits of the Knight and the Squire have a particular interest. The relationship between these two are governed by natural one that of a father and son. Again there is a dramatic relationship between these two as each one of portrait is enhanced and defined in presence of another. For instance the long roll of Knight’s campaigns and Squire’s little opportunity; a series of past tenses, a history for the Knight and for the Squire breaking forth in active participles. Even appearances and dress of both are compared.

Knight’s pilgrimage is more nearly a response to the voice of saint.

The Knight is defined in terms of his virtues (lines 45-6) and actions to defend the faith far more than by his words. Knight’s fighting in battle field had a religious cause. He is the antique pattern of the chivalry of Edward- III’s time.

The Nun ( Prioress)

Prioress is described as of the first rank, rich and honored. She had certain peculiarities and little delicate affections. She was accompanied by what is truly grand, polite and elegance.

Chaucer has portrayed this character with such care and tenderness that it is often remarked that Chaucer really liked the prioress very much, even though he satires her so gently —- very gently. But E.T Donaldson believes that this is just an understatement and Chaucer may not be said to be have liked her, rather he was only charmed by her beauty.

Eileen Power’s illustration show with what extra-ordinary skill the portrait of the Prioress is packed with abuses of typical 14th century nuns. Though these abuses are petty, it is clear the Prioress is anything but a perfect nun and attempts to white wash her.

It has been argued that Chaucer’s appreciation for the Prioress as sort of heroine of courtly romance actually due to Chaucer’s sophisticated living, where he cared little whether amiable nuns are good and this sophistication permits itself to babble superlatives.

Anyway Prioress’s very presence in the pilgrimage, as many point out, is the very first satiric touch. In the case of Prioress blemish is sufficiently technical to have only faint satiric coloring. But this places her at a spot in the sequence — at one end — in which more obviously blemished Monk and friar appear.

In the portrait of the Prioress the double view of pilgrimage appears both in ambiguities in the surface and in an implied inner range of motivation.

In the surface there is a name Eglentyne — means romance — and ‘simple and coy’ is a romance formula, but she is a nun. There are coral beads and green gauds, — a religious emblem. What shall be taken as principal? Are her courtly manners or her dedication at divine service explains her? And on the front of motivation, the perfect explanation lies in the lines of A.W.Hoffman : ‘There is such an impure but blameless mixture as Prioress …’. Deficiency of knowledge may be remedied (which caused due to Chaucer’s attempt to make more gentle criticism on the Prioress). It is because, as many believe, Chaucer has a sister or a daughter who was a nun.

Prioress is the character who is found to be pre-dominating in some ages. William Blake has observed that ‘The characters of women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight’.

Wife of bath

William Blake has observed that ‘The characters of women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight’.

The main features of her character are common-sense and pre-occupation with sex, and an important element in Prologue is her desire to explain life in terms of her values. For instance: ‘She is willing to admit, for her convention’s sake that chastity is the ideal state. But it is not her ideal.

In prologue, she explains her five husbands.

She was a good woman but unfortunately rather deaf. The deafness is a significant detail — the result of a blow from her fifth husband.

In medieval theory and law, biblical in origin, the man is the head of the woman, and should be obeyed. The Wife, however, is not receptive to this doctrine, and her deafness is the symbolic of this unwillingness to listen. Physical characteristics in her portrait have a moral import. Other such characteristics in case of Wife of Bath are the following. The Wife is a gate-toothed. Medieval students of physiology held that to have teeth widely spaced was a sign of boldness, falseness, gluttony and lasciviousness. The Wife born under Venus (who was not saint) regards it as confirmation of venereal nature. Her ‘gate-teeth’ gave her many opportunities to wander off the road.

The Wife’s portrait begins with a standard feature of the dreadful women, whom clerks in the Middle Ages liked the same way as the wives of the Guilds men (lines 376-8). This liking for display is cleverly combined by Chaucer with her profession (cloth-making). Her stockings are scarlet and tight laced, and her shoes are “moisten and newel”. She is thus the scarlet woman, whom preachers against female vanity love to hate. But this is Chaucerian as she is both sexually attractive and at the same time ridiculously over dressed.

The Wife turns out to be the monster of anti feminist comedy — aggressive, nagging, gossiping, lustful and wasteful. Yet she is not unattractive.

Apart from five husbands and other youthful company we are told that she had passed “many a strange strum”. Then : “Of remedies of love she knew per chance

For she koud of that art the olde daunce”

(lines 475-6)

The ‘remedies’ and ‘olde daunce’ do not suggest virtue. All in all she is quite contract to the chastity, modesty and refinement of the Prioress.

This was a case that happened long ago. Stanley was a U.S. military sergeant who volunteered to particapte in a program which would test the effiectiveness of clothing against chemical warfare. Unknown to the thousands of military men that all volunteered they were given huge doses of LSD because the army wanted to see the results of what LSD would do to the human body. Years afterwards he suffered massive memory loss, he often had hallucinations, and he sometimes would wake in the middle of the night and beat his wife and kids and forget about what he did in the morning. He became divorced later on, and stanley left the army in 1969 after over a decade of service. 6 years later the army contacted him to ask him about the long-term effects of what the LSD had done to him. It was the first time he knew he was given LSD. He sued the army for destorying his life, however no court would hear the case, it went all the way to the supreme court and i think they rejected, anyone know results?

A man’s wife politely asked him not to go to the bar after work.

6:30 came and he was drunk at the bar. In fact he was soo shwasted he puked on himself.

So he asks the bartender “what should i do? I promised my wife I wouldnt go to the bar after work, and now I reak of beer and i puked on myself”

The bartender says “here’s what you do. You take this $10 bill back, and when you get home you say “I stayed late at the office and on my way out to my car this drunk guy comes up to me asking for a ride and pukes all over my shirt. See look he felt so bad about it that he even gave me 10 bucks to get it dry cleaned”

The man thought it was a great idea and decided to say it to his wife.

“HANK!!! she yelled”….”Why are you so late getting home and you reek of beer”

The man replied “honey I can explain. I had to work late at the office and on my way out to my car this drunk guy pukes all over me. See look he felt so bad about it that he gave me 10 bucks to have my shirt dry cleaned”

The wife took the money and said “Hank this is a 20 dollar bill”

To which Hank replied “Oh yeah…. he sh*t in my pants too”

Did you like? You got any doozies? :-)

Kari Ann Peniche, a former Ms. Teen USA winner, has been involved in a sex tape with Grey’s Anatomy star Eric Dane and his wife, Rebecca Gayheart. The trio is obviously intoxicated in the video, as they engage in some bedroom fun. The video shows them sitting around naked, thinking up porn names for each other. Says Eric Dane, “My alter-ego name is Peter (and) my dog growing up was called Cocaine, and I lived on Manor Drive, so I’m Cocaine Manor.”

At one point, Rebecca Gayheart says she needs to lay down because she is “so high.”

Gawker’s Defamer.com first reported the sex tape by posting an edited version of the video on Monday August 17th. Dane and Gayheart’s lawyer Marty Singer insists he will sue anyone who publishes the “private, confidential tape,” adding “from what I’ve seen, it’s a naked tape, not a sex tape.”

This is all after Kari Ann Peniche was on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew for her sex addiction. She was thrown off the show amidst back-and-forth accusations that she punched out a cameraman, bringing over druggie types, and stealing from her roommate. Classy!

This will probably give Kari Ann a huge boost in the celebrity rankings. I bet E! comes a callin’ shortly for a show of some sort. The video has already hit the web, but with that comes a bunch of fakes, so be careful. It’s definitely NSFW.

Answer our poll and you could receive a $500 gift card from Target!

Have you seen the video yet?

YES NO

PROGRESSION LITERATURE: THE LITERATURE OF DENOUEMENT:

INTRODUCING A NEW LITERARY GENRE

 

    What one hears, reads, says, sees, tastes, feels , remembers, and experiences affects our understanding.  It is ‘truth’ as we perceive it.  Remembering, in particular, evokes attitudes and emotions linked to ‘true’ knowledge of past events. Such experiences affect how we experience and interpret the present – especially if a past event is somehow linked to a present or impending event.  For example, if one had been bitten by a white dog in the past, seeing the same white dog again can bring forth an automatic reaction, such as fear or aversion, even if the dog now appears friendly to others, who may then not understand your apprehensive reaction.  Your perception of reality is different, though you and the others are both presented with the identical stimulus and information at the present moment.

       In fact, much of what we might believe to be a ‘fresh’ experience is likely to be based on many past experiences that may or may not be directly related.  A beautiful woman, never before seen by a particular male, may attract, have no effect on him, or repel, depending on past experience/ inexperience.  First impressions are often based on past experience, learned prejudice, or instinct:  a classic study in Scientific American showed pictures of the same male face, but with different amounts of hair, to respondents.   Hairiness ranged from totally bald to long beard and long hair, complete with mustache.  Respondents were asked to put the faces they saw in order, according to attractiveness.  The shaved face, without mustaches and with neatly trimmed hair, was chosen as the most attractive.  Total hairiness and total baldness were lowest on the list.  In addition, the presence of a mustache reduced confidence.  The faces presented were identical in every other respect. Progression from stage to stage of hairiness versus baldness was judged as a factor of attractiveness, but the test subjects didn’t see the face progress in cumulative stages (progression).

    Progression in literature  (cumulative stages of revelation of facts) is what makes reading enjoyable: we aren’t certain of the outcome, and what we think is true can develop in different directions, depending on the information given.  In fact, different readers guarantee different reactions.  A fine novel captures the attention and interest of most readers. 

    Real world experiences are not, generally, as complete as a crafted novel.  Modern writers, of course, reflect the chaos of our emerging modern world in what, for convenience, I term chaotic literature, white noise literature, with more or less deconstruction or minimalist influences.  The result is discomfort for most readers, who must deal with the same stressors in real life.  Time, for example, is short, and many of the most popular works, such as Stephen King’s works, are eagerly read because an entirely different world is spread out to relish and enjoy, however macabre.  Fantasy and science fiction works have their loyal followings, too.  In all writing, ‘truth’ is important — a guideline in the fog, a face in the mirror, or a beacon in the night.  But ‘Truth’ is perceived through a mist of the prejudices we gather in life experiences over time.  Truth’ has impact: among other possible repercussions and reactions to its revelation, emotions and thinking can be stimulated or depressed. At any time, what is perceived in the real world as ‘truth’ can suddenly change.

   Ian F. A. Bell describes Tony Tanner’s approach to this phenomenon in his introduction to Tanner’s The American Mystery:

 

“Tanner conceives of the dematerialization of language in American literature, the move beyond the structure of binary opposites, as a continuous process of self-invention. This move involves literary strategies of transformation: the construction of ontological identity, character, and modes of representation.  As Tanner observers…if life was in “flux” or constant “metamorphosis,” then writing should be the same.  As Emerson says, “In the beginning of America, was not only the word but the contradiction of the word.” 

 

Bell goes on to describe Tanner’s analysis of Hawthorne’s language in The Blithedale Romance:

“…The Blithedale Romance does not ask what constitutes the real, much less the Real, as reality is only “known by the conviction that you have not got it.”  As an American Romantic, however, Hawthorne may be suggesting that to know that reality is not real could be the beginning of a Real experience.  Tanner tracks the binaries between fact and fiction, forgery and real money as a means of determining the “true” copy; whether “forging” the uncreated conscience of one’s race or forging money, “both ‘forgers’ work by putting falsities/fictions into circulation.”

 

And finally, in his study of Melville’s The Confidence Man, Bell notes what Tanner says about “reversibility” and “interchangeability”:

 

“Melville’s novel about trust and confidence in the new world of America, shows how “reversibility” can be re-cast as “interchangeability.”  This term, which Tanner borrows from Thomas Mann, registers “the multiplicity and sheer ontological dubiety of the self” in a world where identity, as determined by the constructivist nature of language, is constantly being reinterpreted.”

 

     Whether it is Newspeak, Orwellian style, or Spin City, whether it is a news report or a personal experience, above all, we trust personal experience, and then the Voice of Authority.  Anyone with intelligence, plus sufficient interest in the case, can eventually recognize the spins and spirals in the Official Version of the Kennedy assassination. Calling people who discard the Official Version “conspiracy theorists,” while calling supporters of the Official Version “assassination analysts” exemplifies the polarization that can occur in searching for the ‘truth.’ 

 

Christopher Sharrett reviews Art Simon’s book, Dangerous Knowledge (concerning truth and imagery in the JFK Assassination debate) with some acerbic insights:

 

“the endless debate…came to constitute an “epistemological crisis,” as each official and nonofficial investigation refuted a previous truth claim, and interpretation formed a huge Moebius Strip that traps the body politic and renders truth itself indeterminant but continues to provoke discussion.”

 

Sharrett notes a lack of moral center in these twisting and turnings of the truth:

 

“Simon invokes Michel Foucault’s remark that “Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes.” This simultaneously compelling, obtuse, and arid remark is emblematic of much postmodern discourse… Foucault’s linkage of the gaze to power is not the sum and substance of Simon’s method, but it does much to turn this work into a studious, eloquent, but labored exercise lacking a real political and moral center.”

 

Even Official Versions can be abandoned when necessary: enough time has now passed that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which provided an excuse to bomb Hanoi, is no longer presented as the ‘actual truth.’  Evidence suggests the incident never occurred, but it’s too late for Hanoi, and for many Americans who haven’t seen the new evidence, American ships were fired upon in the Gulf of Tonkin.  ‘Truth’ for those who have come upon or noticed the new evidence differs from those who did not, and both groups will claim they have ‘the truth.’  Progression of knowledge from the former stance to the latter was incomplete.  Incomplete transmittal of ‘the truth’ occurs constantly, creating divisions and conflicts.  In real life ‘truth’ is almost a commodity.

     Literature can be replenished and reach new heights if the principles of progression and perceived ‘truth’ are properly developed by the innovative writer.  In the examples presented in the small sample collection of short-short stories provided in this paper, the potential range for progression literature (the genre could also be called the literature of denouement) can be stunning – mind-blowing—and i9t can happen in ‘real life’ as well.  Films such as Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction exhibit progression/denouement qualities. A killer known to be dead is shown very much alive after his death, with incredible impact.  To the patrons in a restaurant, terrorized by robbers, they’ll never know that one of their ‘saviors’ later died, or that the two men had come into the restaurant to eat after cleaning out a car full of gore and pieces of brain.  Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire brought the same approach from stage to film: we slowly realize that the ‘truth’ will never be fully known to Stella, whose passions are manipulated by Stanley, her brutal husband.

     Much can be done to fully develop the new genre. The short-short story collection shown here presents controversial religious experiences and interpretations, as felt or reported by persons under widely different conditions.  Time can change ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ for the reader or for those in the stories, as more information is obtained.,  The information might be false, however, leading to false conclusions, which may or may not alter others’ perception of what is ‘true,’ or new information might reveal a ‘new’ or unsuspected truth, or confirm a suspicion.  Anything is possible, for ‘truth’ is what is perceived by each individual, or accepted due to the voice of authority.  Those impacted by the ‘truth’ can create or live in entirely different universes, depending on the individual, to say nothing of the vicarious experiences felt by the reader or viewer (via literature, film, video games, etc.).

    In addition, the writer-as-truth-teller can present the ‘truth’ more vividly and with greater emotional impact, employing the arts as well as the sciences, setting the ‘truth’ in proper proportion to right and wrong, with the potential to sculpt a moral perspective that a simple, arid recounting of events cannot, thus revealing a social aspect and interpretation to ‘truth’ that delivers a personal weight to the individual.  Engels, commenting on the impact of Balzac’s Comédie humaine, observed how Balzac delivered “a most wonderfully realistic history of French society … from which, even in economic details (for instance the re-arrangement of real and personal property after the Revolution) I have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together.”

     A simple progression example is to reveal how two people meet after years of absence.  They assess the differences now present, compared to the past. These may be psychological as well as physical.  What if one person s simply pretending, and isn’t as he seems, or perhaps isn’t the person from the past at all, but is merely masquerading as such?  Would/will/can the other person ever find out?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Denouement to the reader can be exhilarating, shocking, disappointing, etc., to say nothing of the reactions that can be created by the writer as the story progresses.  Truth becomes an object of itself, with its own life, its own history, created within and outside the progression, and may not be ‘true’ after all.  Yet the ‘truth’ may be more important than ‘reality’ for political, practical, or social reasons.  ‘Truth’ ends up being what we finally believe.  If our information remains slight, or even if supporting facts accumulate, the ‘truth’ remains unchanged unless conflicting information enters that is accepted by the recipient.  And what about experiencing only conflicting, untrue information at the very onset?  We are all familiar with the effects of advertising and propaganda. Hence, ‘truth’ is a hostage of fortune.

     Progression could highlight how people change through time – perhaps a sinner really can become a saint!   Yet another kind of progression involves revelation, where a character is developed before the reader via actions, events, and so on, but then unravels or morphs due to what we next learn.  There is always the chance that what we think we know is not real.  Dialogue – actual conversations – might reveal ‘the truth’ – and can be persuasive – if ‘the truth’ is being fully revealed.  What if it isn’t?  I use the example of  a person thought to be a scammer turning out to be a saint, but seen by the world in the news, upon learning of his suicide (which isn’t presented here) as a man with a checkered reputation who took “the coward’s way out.”  Read the short-short stories yourself, then decide how cruelly you could make the news story reflect the ‘truth’ as the Official Version would have it.  There are two ‘saints’ in the short-short story collection: progression literature tells us much more than meets the eye.

     In the literature of progression, just as in real life, ‘truth’ is indeed in the eye of the beholder, so I hope I will be forgiven for appropriating the cliché for the short-short story collection.  In the examples of progression that I choose to present, brevity is used – but I stress that the objective is not to be gimmicky or to play tricks on the reader, nor necessarily to be brief, for the skilful writer now has a tool of power.  I suggest a respectful treatment of the original perspectives in the foundation stories of progression literature, as they can relate marvelously, in talented hands, to the perspective which emerges or is revealed or appreciated later.

Nevertheless, my thesis material included several foundation stories in the genre which anchored my ideas for progression literature in the domain of short stories Think of the ramifications of knowing a ‘truth’ – unless the dog now treats you in a friendly manner. Where, then, is your ‘truth’ to others?  

     The literature of progression invokes past events, but might now address a different part of a different story altogether, and ‘you’ may be in a different situation: for others, your story of a biting dog may seem utterly senseless, if this dog is known to be friendly to all. And so on. .

Why? Thus untruth, or mistaken perceptions, or misinterpretations, can happen before or after the offering of the  ‘truth,’ and we may be unable to discern which version/experience is ‘true’ even though one story, in this case, involves misperceptions and conclusions based on misconceptions and experiences which were ‘untrue’ but seemed ‘true.’ Denouement cannot bring forth the ‘truth’ because of the sheer volume of conflicting declarations stating the ‘truth.’

    There is the element of the voyeur or the rascal involved in writing the non-fiction novel, related to our concerns, where historical characters are fleshed out fictionally to enhance or comply with a stereotype originally created to advance an Official Version that is controversial. Particularly disturbing is when the stereotype is advanced to ‘truth’ by the new fictionalized treatment. If the writer is actually unfamiliar with the historical person, of necessity then relying on what remains of the ‘truth’ in the Official Version  [or other extant] records, the ‘new truth’ can become the final and lasting impression.  For example, Don DeLillo’s Libra presents a cold-blooded view of Oswald’s treatment of his wife, based on her reports.  The brutal glimpses DeLillo gives us of Oswald’s treatment of his wife are seared into the memory: what Oswald told me about his fights with his wife has no place in the version of the ‘truth’ DeLillo created.  

 

    Nevertheless, denouement literature, in progression format, can wrest — even from a DeLillo opus — a new and relevant perspective.  David Foster Wallace summarizes the challenges to the writer of great literature in today’s fast-moving world, where entertainment is cheap, easily accessed, and well-designed:

 

“(There is)a contempt for the reader, an idea that literature’s current marginalization is the reader’s fault. The project that’s worth trying is to [make]…the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it’s also pleasurable to read… Part of it has to do with living in an era when there’s so much entertainment available…and figuring out how fiction is going to stake out its territory in that sort of era. You can try to confront what it is that makes fiction magical in a way that other kinds of art and entertainment aren’t. And to figure out how fiction can engage a reader, much of whose sensibility has been formed by pop culture, without simply becoming more shit in the pop culture machine. It’s unbelievably difficult and confusing and scary, but it’s neat. There’s so much mass commercial entertainment that’s so good and so slick, this is something that I don’t think any other generation has confronted. That’s what it’s like to be a writer now.”

 

      Progression literature can be exciting and relevant. It can do many things: turn the reader’s perspective upside down, enhance understanding of human nature, restore truth to history — depending on the author’s intentions and abilities.  “The literature of denouement”, or, “progression literature,” in more skilled hands than mine might well provide a revitalization to modern literature, with new depth and excitement in its inimitable approach to crafting.

 

Judyth Vary Baker   Stockholm, Sweden (degrees in anthropology (BS), Creative Writing (MA), and  English literature and linguistics (ABD)… genre developed at UF and U of LA @ Lafayette 1986-1999

 

References

 

Tanner, Tony. The American Mystery: American Literature from Emerson to DeLillo. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000,242pp., ISBN: 0521783747  £15.95 (Pbk)

 

Sharrett, Christopher. Review of: Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film, by Art Simon.

Philadelphia, PA:

Temple University Press, 1996. 257 pp., illus.

Reviewed by Christopher Sharrett

Vol. 22, Cineaste, 01-01-1996, pp 59.

 

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. On Literature and Art. Progress Publishers. Moscow 1976; p 91. (trans. Andy Blunden)

Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland; Or The Transformation: An American Tale. Gutenberg’s etext version 2008. 

David Foster Wallace.  Quote from an interview about his best-seller, Infinite Jest, by Laura Miller, for Table Talk, Internet forum.

 =================an example of Progression Literature in fiction:

 

THE EVANGELIST (story #1)

 

 

     The Holy City…a battered fortress of gray and brown and white stone blocks, where two thousand years ago Roman soldiers marched the Jews into the Temple’s center, and slaughtered them…where a thousand years ago the Crusaders had come, with their banners and emblazoned crosses, announcing “Convert or die!” to Muslims, and dying themselves, overcome by those who cried “Death to the infidels!” And where Jesus, in incredible patience, hung from the cross, when a single thought could have saved Him from agonies indescribable… but He was Love Itself, and conquered all of these things.

       So thought Jeremiah Mosley — pale of face, ascetic of form, trembling in his own exquisite agonies because he was – after great financial sacrifices – actually present in Christ’s own city — and Christ might come again at any time, like lightning from the sky, it would be so sudden — Christ would separate the sheep from the goats and save the believers, and was he, Jeremiah, ready for that?  He had come to Jerusalem to seek a saint’s advice, to seek, too, a sure sign that he had really been called to become an evangelist –to spread the Word, the Good News– wherever he might be sent by God, the Living God, not some fairytale character, but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who had come to him in a dream, and touched him on the shoulder, and told him, “I love you.”

      He had spent a large portion of his savings to get this fine room overlooking so much of the splendid, if war-ravaged city.  The porters had been civil, even if they had snickered when they saw his battered suitcases and the way he kept his head down and prayed just under his breath.  To them, the young man with black, curly hair was just another fanatic on a pilgrimage.  When they brought the bread and wine to his room as he requested, they were surprised at the size of the tip he gave them. They didn’t know it constituted almost all he had left in the world.

 

   “I’m in Your hands,” Jeremiah whispered, pouring out the dark wine into two crystal goblets.  One for Jesus, one for him.  He broke the unleavened brown bread into two halves and placed the broken loaf in the center of the little table with its two glasses of wine on either side.  The white tablecloth was pure linen.  With a burst of emotion, Jeremiah threw himself on the floor and whispered, fiercely, “Come, come, Lord Jesus!  Only take a sip of the wine, that I may know You hear me, and that You accept me!”

    Then he waited.  The sun descended, sending trembling, ghostly shadows across the room. Blue mist filled the valley below, and red-orange clouds lit up the sky as the sun inched down, down… and still, he waited.  Sweat beaded on his forehead.  –Please!—I must know this is what You want!— It was such a little sign he sought, just as the fleece that Gideon threw down, asking only for a bit of dew on it, with none on the ground all around.  A sip of wine, when he wasn’t looking…. Was it tempting God? …it is a humble request… only take a sip of the wine, excellent Lord! — Please!—

    On the windowsill, as the sun set, a white dove flew down, sat for a moment looking into the room with its sad supplicant, and then, with a little dip of its beak, and a low coo, it pulled a feather from its breast and dropped it on the windowsill.  On the ivory white shaft was a single drop of dark blood.  The wind whispered away the feather with the evening wind.  The dove dipped its beak in a courtship gesture, then flew off with a whirr of its soft, white wings. 

    Jeremiah was never quite sure that he saw it.

 

================================================

 

   He was wearing a two thousand dollar linen suit, hand-made for him by one of the world’s best custom tailors – he had specified only pure white linen — and the glittering diamonds on his hand proved that he was prospering mightily with the people.  Outside his dressing room, as Jeremiah finished grooming his hair precisely as it should be combed, he could hear the choir across the street finishing the hymns he had selected to rouse the people from their torpor into hope and praise to God.  His black hair had thinned and was not so curly as it once had been, but implants had corrected the receding hairline: he looked maybe ten years younger than he really was, and with any luck, he’d outlive all his critics, by God!

     “Pastor Mosley!” came his publicist’s voice, “it’s time!”

     “Just a minute, Rachel!” he answered.

     Rachel was so efficient.  He needed that.  He was such a slacker, such a romantic. He almost put on his Rolex, then decided against it: too showy.  With a spray of Parisian cologne to each wrist, and a quick look in the mirror to make certain his necktie was in perfect order, Jeremiah paused to look more closely at the reflection there:  —Would you buy a used car from this man? — he asked within himself.  His critics said they knew better.

    They said he was crooked… that he stole from the people, filled his coffers with their dollars and threw away their prayer requests.  That healings didn’t take place.  That the Holy Spirit wasn’t a holy spirit, just a sly show calculated to separate the gullible from their money.

     He didn’t know how else to get people to listen, except putting on a show to get their attention.  If it was so wrong, why were there were twenty thousand people out there, waiting for him to come out, and help them transform their lives (as if he could do any such thing!).  It was God who had done this. As always, he felt himself shaking, because he was really, deep down, ultimately a shy man who would have preferred a quiet life in a monastery.  Instead, the show must go on. And on.

      –Please, God!– he whispered to the image in the mirror.  — Please!–  It was his only prayer, just a choked exclamation of half-strangled hope, that some of the people out there would be healed, would have their lives changed because of God’s Hand moving among them.  Ah, the Hand of God!  –Jesus!—he managed to say, before his throat closed up with terror.  To face all those people again!  He had seen so many in wheelchairs come, then leave, disappointed.

    He threw himself down against the mirror, onto his knees, and raised his arms high in the air, letting them finally rest against the mirror.  “God, God, God!” he breathed aloud, and then, with a half-strangled voice, he added, aloud, -“Please, God, have mercy on the poor people!  Take my life, if you want it, but help your sheep!”

    He calmed himself, got up off his knees, brushed away the talcum powder that clung to the knees where they had touched some of the fallen white dust that perfumed his undergarments… he wiped his forehead with a pure linen handkerchief… took a deep breath….

       —–Pastor Mosley!– came Rachel’s almost angry voice on the other side of the door.

       He opened the door, was half-blinded by a bank of photographers and their flashing lights.

      “What are they doing here?”  he demanded, pushing past the photographers, and directing his anger to his publicist, the woman with black-rimmed glasses who held a walkie-talkie to her ear.

      “They say you’re being sued by some guy who claims you didn’t heal his eyes after all,” she replied.

      “He’s a maniac!”  Jeremiah snapped.  “I don’t heal, Jesus does.”  He put on a brave face and began striding down the hall.  He was God’s Man, he could not allow these people to see any fear.  He smiled and kept on walking, his publicist and two underpastors at his side..

      “But there’s some good news, too, Pastor! Someone’s been healed, and they’re calling it a miracle! Yes, Pastor!–  Someone’s been healed!—“  he could hear the excitement in her voice, and in the crowd.  He hoped it was true.

      Deep within, he wondered if a psychological event occurred that had convinced someone they had been healed, or was it a set-up, by someone once again trying to prove the ‘healings’ were all fake?  Maybe this time it was for real.  It did happen, sometimes, despite what his enemies said.  He never knew exactly when anything miraculous occurred, or what to expect from the crowds, for it was just the power of their faith in action.  He remembered what the Bible said, that Jesus visited his own city, Nazareth, but could do no mighty miracles there because the people had no faith.  —A prophet is despised in his own country—

      A lot of ‘miracles’ were just psychological, but even that was something. Better than hopelessness, helplessness. Somebody had to care. And occasionally, there were unexplained, mysterious changes hat doctors couldn’t explain.  He would have liked to have had seen some sign from God during his prayers today, but as usual, he ran on empty.  The signs were so rare. Just enough to keep him from drowning in terror.  Was he doing the right thing?  If not, Jesus could take his life, that was okay.

     –Seek– Christ had said, –and ye shall find.–

     Except for me, he thought. –I do not doubt that You will drink wine with me someday, but it’s been fifteen years now—

     Now he was walking calmly between rows of photographers, reporters, and people begging him to heal them. As if he could heal anybody! “Praise Jesus!” he told the people. “It is Jesus, who will heal you!”  — O You secret, hidden, unattainable, silent Lord…!–

      A drifting sense of peace came over him then.  He got into the elevator and the door closed.  Blessed silence… and most of the photographers and reporters were now cut off.  Now to cross the street…  With the pastors on his right and two security guards on his left, Jeremiah crossed the gauntlet of the street with its masses of shouting people. He entered a huge auditorium, composed himself a minute, hiding behind a big screen, while choirs sang and a huge organ played….the audience had been worked up for about an hour, singing with the choir and watching huge screens that showed miracles and events at other crusades.

       –Please, God!– he prayed, once again the same old prayer, seeking, seeking…stopping in the midst of it — done with crossed arms– to notice that somehow, in the rush, he had lost a solid gold cuff-link.  “Damn!” he said, removing the solitary golden cufflink.  “Lost another one!”

He thrust the cufflink into his coat pocket.

     It was peaceful in the evangelist’s hotel room. A sleepy guard sat on the big bed, making sure nobody who came into the room would steal any of the pastor’s things for a souvenir.  As he half-dozed, two maids entered the room, with dust-cloths and a vacuum cleaner, to freshen it up.  On the mirror, where the famous evangelist’s hands had pressed momentarily against the glass, the white talcum powder had, interestingly enough, created a pair of white doves.  One maid began wiping them away, when, too late, the other, with wide eyes, stopped her.  They both knelt and began to pray, weeping, but Jeremiah never saw any of that, nor did the sleepy guard.

===============Story #2=======

APPEARANCES  (Story #2)

    by Judyth Vary Baker

      There she was, lying on the rumpled bed, the evening light fading. She could see her legs stretched out toward the window with its plum-striped curtains and the green, swaying trees beyond.  There was an ochre glow in the sky, as the sun set, with crimson-edged clouds bathing the darkness. Her legs looked spindly, too thin, but then, she was a model, with the skinny frame desired by clothiers and designers. She wanted to eat, but dared not: outside, where she saw the birds flying in black punctuation points against the red-rimmed clouds, she thought how they could eat as they wished, without a thought as to appearances: they were all soft, downy, fuzzy, fluffy. Fat, perhaps, according to clothiers and designers.

      There were little sparkles of raindrops on the windowpanes, for with the final light came a quick showering down of rain, against the deepening deep blue of the sky.  The yellow and gold of the last sun’s rays faded away to a soft tangerine glow, outlining the tall buildings and skyscrapers that rose on the horizon.  She wiggled her toes, stretched them wide, thought to herself, I have prehensile toes!  She could pick up anything with them – a talent for which none would pay her a penny.  She saw how her knee-bones stuck out more than they should, her thighs began behind the knee-bones, too thin, too thin. But there was no help for it.  She knew that they would put makeup on to hide the dark circles of starvation that made her large, brown, glowing eyes look even more mysterious, and that she’d walk down the red carpet on the arm of Max Taylor, Movie Star, smiling and waving to the adoring crowds, her photo snapped, her gown declared simply ravishing, her hair declared adequate for the occasion.  Max was homosexual and she liked being with him, being ordinarily too exhausted for sex: they made a good pair.

     Well, she had fourteen hours before she had to get ready for tomorrow’s appearance at the Oscars.  Fourteen hours, phone calls turned away, and Room Service bringing up, in another hour, her dinner, composed of a cup of clear broth, a chicken wing, and a leaf of lettuce, with vitamin capsules. She wanted to bathe after that, but wondered if she had the strength. Staying in bed, for she felt so cold, was best: her nails wouldn’t get chipped that way.  Why turn on the telly?  Why not watch the raindrops gather, as the wind blew them sideways on the glass, watch how they merged and became fatter, then dribbled down the clear pane, falling to oblivion… 

     She looked again at the alarm clock: forty-five minutes to dinner.  There was a slight prickling along the bedcovers that crossed her flat belly, and she looked to see what caused it, but nothing was there. The white hotel sheets, the white hotel blanket, the white hotel mattress with its plum-colored stripes, were as in all hotels everywhere: a formal luxury, her common fate in hotel after hotel.  Sheared carpet and sleek lamps and slick wood with glass: the brochures of the hotel, the beckoning pamphlets listing cafes and cabarets and caffe au lait. One hotel was as another: either filled with antiques stiff with gaudy gilt and lace and carved balustrades and flowers, or modern-sterile, Isn’t it Good Norwegian Wood?

     What was life about? She wondered. I’ll strut my stuff a hundred more times, then what?  I wish I could believe in God.

     Incredibly, she felt the electric touch upon her belly again, and again looked down, past her hunger-shrunken naked breasts to the blanket and sheets twisted over her middle in the shape of a white cross, the plum-red stripes making a big “X” as if blocking her empty belly off from the rest of her body.  As she breathed, the “X” went up and down, up and down…and as the night sky darkened to deep purple, she thought she saw the “X” waver, and move sideways.  As it did so, the prickling sensation returned.  This time, she drew the sheet and blanket up to her chin, covering herself.  I’m cold all the time, she thought to herself.  How good the hot broth will feel!  She looked at the clock again: in fifteen minutes, they’d bring dinner.  She remembered, as a child, saying Grace over a meal of bacon, eggs, toast and jam, with hot cocoa on the side, and how her sister and brother grabbed for the last pieces of toast, but she was content to let them go for it, she had more than enough to eat.  Donny was dead, now, and so were Mom and Dad, in the car wreck that so suddenly took their lives. As for Donna, her sister, she hadn’t seen her for several years: Donna was heavy, having had children… ashamed of her stretch marks and her after thighs.

   .  I think I will say Grace over the broth and chicken wing and the lettuce, she thought to herself. Jesus!  I wish You’d appear!  But those things don’t really happen, do they?  It was always mere legend. 

     Then it happened.

     The broth had gone cold.  The lettuce lay untouched.  They had forgotten the chicken wing, but no matter.  She was washed over with heat and warmth, lavished with it….she lay stretched out, her arms flung wide, her eyes moist with tears. She rolled from the bed, drawing the sheet and blanket with her, and the quilt that had twisted to make the “X” as well.  On her knees, she whispered, Thank you!  Thank you! Thank you!

 

 

    “But such things are hallucinations,” he told her, as he warily watched her eating a normal-sized meal. “What about your contract?” he asked, anxiously. “If you change sizes, you’ll be fired from Victoria’s Secret, and the rest will follow.  And what will Henri say, if you stop going out with him?  He’s always getting you good film deals.”

     “I’m rich,” she said. “I don’t need Victoria’s Secret anymore. And I don’t need Henri, either.””

     “Well, I’m not rich!” he told her, heatedly. “And you have a contract with me to be responsible. You’ve had a god-damned hallucination.  As your agent, I insist that you see a psychiatrist.”

     “You don’t have that right,” she told him.

     “Of course I do. I‘ll sue you if you don’t go. Then see how rich you’ll be.”

 

     There she was, lying on the rumpled bed, the evening light fading. She could see her legs stretched out toward the window with its plum-striped curtains and the green, swaying trees beyond.  There was an ochre glow in the sky, as the sun set, with crimson-edged clouds battering the darkness. Her legs looked spindly, too thin, but then, she was a model, with the skinny frame desired by clothiers and designers. She wanted to eat, but dared not: outside, where she saw the birds flying in black punctuation points against the red-rimmed clouds, she thought how they could eat as they wished, without a thought as to appearances.

     Henri would be by tonight, to sleep with her again. He was a powerful Senator.  They met all over the world: her ‘photo shoots’ were all lucrative deals. Some of them were real photo shoots… After all, she was so much thinner than his wife, Bernice, who was trying to get pregnant.  Models on the make were much more fun to be with, and the contracts and magazine covers he got for her made the hotels and the meals and the dreams keep coming.

===============Story #3=====

REVISION  (Story #3)

 

By Judyth Vary Baker

 

     “Henri Ballantyne was very near-sighted, and middle-aged, but he still carried a handsome shock of blonde hair, and had the body of an athlete. The fact that his wife had just died made him one of America’s most eligible bachelors, though he was still avoiding dating.  Henri’s career as U S Senator was reaching its pinnacle: he was a powerful man who now found himself stalked by paparazzi, aching for a photo of him with some movie star.  At Bernice’s funeral, Henri had let himself go a little, drinking too much and saying some unwise things about his wife’s untimely and sudden death.  “Of course, those people are fools,” Henri told Charles. “All that blather about rising again, about the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. What I wanted was her, damn it all. Now I have to go find another respectable woman.”

    “Why didn’t you keep your opinion about that ‘blather’ to yourself?”  Charles asked, wishing it had been his wife, instead of Henri’s, who had kicked the bucket. Charles had silvery hair now, and a paunch, but his wife looked even worse. Charles looked down at his bad left foot, that leg two inches too short that made the thick, heavy shoe so necessary, then glanced with scarcely-concealed envy at his younger client, a former Olympic star whose biceps were still firm.  Charles was barely interested in Henri’s latest problem, but it was his job to keep Henri popular. Right now, his job was in jeopardy. Henri surreptitiously lit another cigarette, which Charles ardently hoped the waiter wouldn’t see.

     “Perhaps we should move onto the terrace,” Charles suggested, picking up his wine glass. “There’s a cool spot out there under the umbrellas.”

    “It’s all the same to me,” Henri told him.  They moved outside to the restaurant’s rocky terrace, sheltered under rows of bright red umbrellas with ‘Coca Cola’ emblazoned in white, curling letters. Charles was glad to be back in Budapest: he looked forward to the mineral baths, the good, cheap wine, and the pretty women who would sleep with him willingly, despite his bad left foot.  That clump-clump of his shoe followed him everywhere, and most women glanced down at the thick sole of the shoe, hearing the heavy sound of it, and instinctively avoided intimacy with him.  It wasn’t fair.  Charles was also accursed with a gloomy cast of the eyes, a sad down-turning of the mouth, and with a voice so raspy he couldn’t succeed, as he had dreamed, in politics. He was forced to function as a mere advisor, well-paid to guide candidates into high offices, and keep them there, by making certain they said the right things and did the right things.. At present, he was worried about Henri, whose chances for re-election had been very good, until today. 

   Henri was part of a Senate committee on a fact-finding mission touring the European Union, with a stopover for fun in Budapest, where he had just dined with the Minister of Culture, stating his opinion that religion was a sham, and that Jesus was probably a closet homosexual.  Damn!  Charles sighed to himself. Henri had made his opinion known to the new Minister of Culture – a devout Catholic — not to the old one, who had been an atheist.

      “This story isn’t going to ride well with your constituency in Maryland, Henri.”

       “I know, I know! So what the hell should I do now?”

       “Maybe show up at church. And make sure people know about it.”

 

 

     “If you can’t fix this, I’m quitting politics,” Henri told him, peeling off a few thousand into Charles’ hands. “This should cover costs for your quick little trip over here. Do what you can to cover this up. Okay?”

    “I’m not Mr. Fix-It,” Charles complained. “I suggest you stay away from religion altogether after this.  I’m sorry I ever mentioned the word ‘church’ – but how was I to know you’d end up attending a healing session in some Praise-Jesus-Hallelujah cult?”

     “It has twenty thousand members,” Henri said lamely. “And I have to admit, I was entranced.”

     “Hypnotized, not entranced,” Charles corrected. “I should have set up the right church for you.”

     “Yes, you should have,” Henri said. “So now, get me the hell out of this mess!”

     Henri, whose poor vision was the result of a botched operation to reduce his near-sighted condition, couldn’t wear contact lenses anymore and didn’t dare risk a repeat of the operation until methods became more advanced.  Maybe any day, he thought to himself. Meanwhile, he was stuck wearing glasses, and hated it even more than getting old and out of shape. He’d really been caught up in that Jesus-Hallelujah-Praise-God jamboree, and, mesmerized, walked in a daze to the altar, knelt there, and said he believed.  A man stood over him as in a cloud, his vision actually became dark, as if an angel hovered somewhere, blotting out all the hot lights overhead, and then the evangelist asked if he could ‘lay hands’ on him. 

     “Do you believe you can be healed?”

     The fellow looked a little tired and was in a hurry, as there were dozens more who also sought the ‘hands-on’ experience.

     “Healed of what?”

     “Whatever your need is, of course. God will heal you now, if you believe!”

      What was that shiver of hope that flowed over him, as those hands were laid upon his head?    

      He felt an exquisite sense of peace overflow him.  The evangelist’s hands seemed full of electricity.  It was uncanny.  From Henri’s lips burst out his secret desire.:

      “I want my eyes to be healed!”

     “Then – be healed, eyes!  In Jesus’ name!”

 

    What a fool he’d been!   Such an utter fool!  For nothing had happened. Not a thing. He’d had some blurry spots in front of his eyes, like a thousand little dark dots, just as he came down the aisle to the front, and yes, those little dots disappeared, but that was all. He was still as near-sighted as ever.

     They’re all fakes! he thought to himself. He didn’t see a single person healed at that altar, except maybe one little old lady who said she was healed of cancer. Oh, sure! He’d ‘believe’ when he saw the doctor’s report!  He got the old lady’s name and address. He’d fix that so-called ‘healer’ if she died of cancer.

————————————————————————————————————–

 

     “Okay,” Henri told Charles, “it is true that the little black spots went away. And the woman with cancer got better. But then she died of a stroke.”

 

     “But you get those dots in front of your eyes when you drink, Henri,” his manager told him. “It comes and goes. Think of the consequences!  They snapped your picture there, with that crazy preacher’s hands on top of your head. Good God! It’s front page news in every damned tabloid in the country!”

     I know,” Henri said gloomily. “But what can I do?”

     “At least, you didn’t get ‘healed’ of something and feel like you had to proclaim it to the world,” Charles said. “That would have really wrecked everything.”

      “I sure got psychologically drawn in,” Henri admitted. “They have that service set up like a fine art. And of course, I didn’t get healed. I feel like closing down their operation. They’re raking in money like crazy, you know.”

       “I suggest you do nothing of the kind,” Charles told him. “At least, don’t directly be his source of trouble. Just promise me that next time, you’ll stay away from anything to do with churches.  For the rest of your life — or it’s bye-bye, career.”

      “Of course I will!”

      “Instead, start going to hospitals. Go visit some sick kids with cancer. Kiss some lepers. Do something nice, but stay away from the goddamn churches. Maybe they’ll forget.”

      “I hope so,” Henri said. “I sure hope so.”

 

 

    It wasn’t the paparazzi who were responsible, as Princess Diana had been hounded, but the auto accident was photographed by the paparazzi.  The stunned senator was photographed, too, mourning the fact that the accident wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t taken so much valium

And here she had been pregnant!

 

Then the fellow had a nervous breakdown.   The tabloids reported that he killed himself with sleeping pills in the very house where he’d been born. His suicide note was short and pitiful.

      Jesus hadn’t been there to rescue the guy: the evangelist had been on his own in the Valley of Death.  Now Henri was in the hospital.  He’d fallen on some ice and was currently getting his back pulled straight — in traction. He was doubly irritated because he was experiencing double vision from his concussion.

     The ophthalmologist came in, with his apparatus, to check his eyes, and Henri heard him shake his head, as he made little clucking sounds like a mother hen worried about a chick.

       “You’ve had some real problems with these eyes, haven’t you?”

       “A guy like you botched an operation on my corneas,” Henri told him. “Wrecked my chances to get away from glasses.”

       “But the other condition, I mean,” the doctor said. “Just when did you have that operation on your retinas?”  He was peering deep into his right eye with that blasted irritating bright light.

      “What operation? What are you talking about?”

      “Your right retina was obviously torn loose, and was reattached by lasers. The left eye had some work done on its retina, too.”

       “I never had anything done to my retinas!”  Henri thought how the evangelist had laid hands on him, and a kind of bitter horror began to build up inside.

       “Well, it’s been some time, I suppose. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, though I can’t imagine you would.  If it hadn’t been for this obvious emergency operation, you’d be blind in your right eye.”

        The ophthalmologist looked again into the left eye.

       “Yes, same thing, just not as bad” he said. “Your left retina has also been re-attached.  Surely you remember seeing a flood of what we call “floaties” in your eyes? A feeling of a shadow falling down over your eyes, as if a curtain was closing down your vision?”

       O, my God!

       Suddenly, Henri undersood.  The darkness of his vision, as he knelt down, shielding the harsh overhead light from his eyes as he knelt— and the hundreds of little dark spots that swirled in his eyes, as the trembling hands of the evangelist gently touched his head, and Henri had asked to be healed.

      “Oh, God!” he whispered, as he lay stretched out on the hospital bed.  “Oh, God!”

====================Story #4====

REPARATION  (Story #4)

     Jeremiah was ready to die. He had long been prepared for the event. His only regret had been that he’d not had enough true faith to heal everyone upon whom he’d laid his hands – for which he had prepared with much prayer and fasting. He’d never really seen a vision, though others around him reported white doves always landing on windowsills wherever he went – hotel after hotel.

    That was strange, indeed – but he had never seen a single white dove himself. Still, he had tried to follow Christ’s example, believing he could lay hands on people and heal them if they had enough faith, just as the Bible had promised, in Christ’s name.  He’d seen a number of miracles – nobody could deny it!– but there were so few among the thousands he’d hoped to see walk again, be happy again, have hope again. It was distressing, for he also could not deny that there had been hundreds of stunning failures. Psychosomatics. Self hypnosis, maybe. His tireless nemesis, Henri B., had even planted “cured people” in his congregation to proclaim they had been healed.  Jeremiah’s best-selling book, unfortunately, included a few stories from fake ‘healed’ people who had infiltrated the church, paid by Henri B.  They had lied.  They had been included in the book— along with a dozen genuine cases –  (he assumed they were genuine!) – all to glorify God’s name and His holy powers of healing through Christ’s shed blood. Instead, outrage and mockery. Accusations of fraud.  Prostitutes had even come forth claiming he’d slept with them. Lies, lies, lies!

      Henri B., the Senator, revealed that he was sick of scammers acting in God’s name, so he’d paid actors to pretend they’d been healed. The evangelist had not been told by his ‘God’ which people had really been healed. He was utterly clueless. His ‘God’ had let him down.

     All of this had come about because the evangelist had laid hands on the Senator’s head and declared that his eyes had been healed. He had done so on inspiration.  He had been impressed – even certain — that the Senator’s eyes were been about to go blind – yet at the last moment, they had been saved, either by being healed, or because Henri himself had gone to an eye doctor and got operated on.  Whichever way you looked at it, Henri B’s eyes had been saved. 

     But Henri didn’t see it that way.  The doctor – alone—was the healer. Jeremiah had asked him to go to the doctor to have his eyes checked, to make certain they had been healed, and the doctor had insisted on operating.  Since then, Henri B’s persecution had been relentless.  Thoughts of suicide had crossed Jeremiah’s thoughts again and again.  Now, the waiting was over. No more fasting and prayers in the lonely nights. No more tears, lying prone on his face, begging for people to be healed, begging for conversions to his hero, Jesus.  He could even consider this final, terrible event as martyrdom. Dying for Jesus

He finally decided to write that the devil was forcing him to die, it was not his choice at all.

     Jeremiah was so shaky that he only had the strength now to put a little cross under the words “I forgive all my enemies and place all my faith in God’s mercy.” The word ‘mercy’ had a long, smeared trail of ink after it because he could no longer see what he was writing, could no longer feel the pen in his numb hand.  Pain was eating his belly alive.  He dropped the pen, as a convulsion from the drugs he’d taken filled his body. He knew he would soon be dead.  “Father, forgive my enemies,” he tried to say, but with so little breath left, other words came out….

—————————————————————————————————————-

   

     Henri had moved to a monastery in Sweden.  It was built in the fifteenth century of hand-cut stones. It was cold and had always been cold.  It was dark and had always been dark.  Bernadette – Bernice’s sister — had suggested the monastery as a suitable place for private penance, a new life. The Catholics would let him find some peace in his soul, perhaps, in a primitive way that his take-charge mind could understand.  In his jealousy, he’d murdered his wife.  Then he’d driven the evangelist into bankruptcy, and to his death.

     Too late, he’d learned that the eye doctor hadn’t operated on his eyes. Too late, he realized that the evangelist had indeed – by some unknown power — healed his eyes.  And for doing so, Henri had destroyed him!  Had thrust his church into financial ruin!  A million dollar check fixed that, and his declaration that he had been healed wiped out much of the onus caused by the fake ‘healings’ mentioned in the book that had disgraced the evangelist so soundly. But none of this could bring back the man of God who, in his suicide note, had written, “I forgive all my enemies…”

   As Henri whipped himself (he slashed his body with twenty lashes every evening, except on Sundays), he gritted his teeth and let the fierce pain sink into his flesh.

     “God forgive me, I didn’t know what I was doing!” he prayed, each night when he finished, cleaning the blood from his back and off the stone walls. Then he laid down on the hard, flat bed, letting the cold creep over him. The cold sank into the mass of festering wounds on his back.  With his diabetic condition, he knew he wouldn’t last too very much longer — maybe a year or so.  As for the Brothers and Monks, they thought him a wondrous saint-in-the-making, and with their silent gazes of admiration, they allowed him privacy in his holy efforts to make reparation for his sins, and for the sins of the whole world.

     ‘Brother’ Henri prayed constantly, begging forgiveness particularly from the man he’d destroyed, mindful of the power of that Silent God who had healed his eyes.  How many more blows from the length of electrical cord he wore around his waist (when he wasn’t using it) could his body take? When he had no more strength, he would quit eating. Finally, his pain would be over. Forever.

========Story #5=====

DIVISION  (story #4)

 

   By Judyth Vary Baker

 

     Henri Ballantyne was very near-sighted, and middle-aged, but he still carried a handsome shock of blonde hair, and had the body of an athlete. He was one of America’s most eligible bachelors, a powerful man who found himself stalked by paparazzi, aching for a photo of him with some movie star.  Charles, his political manager, was told to find him a suitable lady to date.  Henri still missed his dead wife: “What I wanted was Bernice, damn it. Now that she’s dead,” he told Charles, “you have to go find me another respectable woman.”

Charles had a big Rolodex and a vast reservoir of email addresses, but the combination of Movie Star and Respectable Potential Wife eluded all attempts. Then, a break: Bernice’s sister – Bernadette—called.

 

   

        She very well knew that Henri was cheating on her. It was a shame that they couldn’t have children.  Too many times, he’d demanded to know if she had finally become pregnant, only to be told that once again, everything had failed.  When the problem was finally diagnosed as Henri’s fault, not Bernice’s, she celebrated by getting drunk.  The relief!  The blessed relief! Henri, seeking to make himself feel and look better, got an eye operation that same week, but something went awry, and both his corneas were damaged, forcing him to stay in thick glasses. Henri tried to sue the doctor, but papers he’d signed before the operation, and the doctor’s good reputation, resulted in a settlement out of court. Bernice had done what she could to help: she tried to get inside information: she became friendly, before the lawsuit ensued, with the eye doctor, and even had a little minor surgery, which the good doctor gave her free of charge, knowing how upset Henri had been.

        Then came a meeting after regular office hours, when Bernice, noticing that the doctor had the same tastes as she for good music, invited him to accompany her to a Bach concert. It came about almost by accident: she had spotted Henri with a Pretty Young Thing on his arm, and with jealous ire, she called Dr. Richardson.

       They met outside the Concert Hall: he looked very fine with his bright blue contact lenses and his thick, blonde hair, much reminding her of Henri’s own tawny mane.  By evening’s end, she was calling her escort ‘Paul.’ By the end of the month, they were meeting regularly for concerts and more. 

————————————————————————————————————–

    I should feel guilty, she told herself, as she combed through her own dark, glossy curls. But I don’t!  She was still a stunningly beautiful woman.  She carefully examined her still-glamorous figure in the hall mirror, wishing her stomach was as flat as his secretary’s…but who can compete, at thirty-eight, with women fifteen years younger?  She felt a bit under the weather lately – was it age creeping up on her already? — and this made it seem all the more important for her to spread her wings and bring an adoring man into her arms.

Henri is discrete in his indiscretions, she told herself.  And so am I! It’s good that we didn’t have children to complicate matters.  She chose the correct purse for the evening, checked her hairstyle from the back, then took the elevator down to the foyer. Paul had sent a nice New York limo to pick her up – yet unaccountably, as she entered the limo, her thoughts turned again to Henri, who was treating her so much nicer, now that he knew it was his fault, not hers, that there were no babies.

 And he always brings me such nice gifts, now…for it is he, she decided, who is feeling guilty!  He’ll soon be going to Europe, and I’ll be left behind, but we’re only acting as Royals have done for centuries.  Generous to one another in public, and we still even sleep together!  She would not dare compare the two men in bed, for Henri had known her such a long time now, and Paul’s fascination with her might fade.   She should be grateful for good sex with two good men, in a comfortable life.

 

 

His spies told him that Bernice was pregnant, and that she had been seeing the very eye doctor who had destroyed his chances to look handsome again!  No – more than seeing the eye doctor!  More than that!  The divorced doctor had two children of his own and was obviously the source of Bernice’s sudden pregnancy.  How dare she!  And next year was election year! Did she think she could hide what she had conceived, when he had photographs, and even a videotape?  True, she was being very careful – she of course did not wish to harm Henri’s reputation – but what in hell possessed her to allow herself to get pregnant?  Damn it all!  

    “Women want babies,” Charles told him. “She knew it was hopeless with you, so—“

      He had to pause until Henri’s teeth stopped gnashing.

     “I have to be very blunt with you, Henri,” Charles told him. “Your little trip overseas, your lack of sorrow when she died, has been noticed. Her family has received a telephone call –“

      “—No doubt from him!”

      “It seems they’ve received information that’s disconcerting to them. Something about your hiring a private detective, who now wants a payoff to remain silent. Or else, he’ll speak to Bernice’s family. They, too, have reputations to consider.”

     “It’s not against the law, what I did,” Henri said gloomily. He tried to pretend that he wasn’t as deeply concerned as he was at the fresh bit of bad news.  The first bad bit was that Bernice’s sister was going to exhume the body, to have an autopsy done.

      “I thought Catholics didn’t do things like that,” he complained.

      “Apparently, sometimes they do,” Charles said. “I suggest you get yourself a good lawyer.”

 

   

 “I can’t begin to express to you how much I despise you,” Henri said to Dr. Richardson, who sat uncomfortably with him in the lawyer’s office. “I found her diary, you know.”

       Paul Richardson said nothing.  The smoldering hatred in Henri’s eyes was enough to keep him quiet.  He didn’t want Henri to jump up and choke him or something. They were waiting, with a wary-eyed male paralegal, for word on the DNA test on the dead fetus within Bernice’s womb.  Henri had demanded the test.

     “Another thing,” Henri said. “This all began when she volunteered to spy on you, for your information.  Prior to my bringing a lawsuit against you.”

     “She told me all about that,” Paul said, mildly. “And she apologized.”

     “She never was good at such things,” Henri admitted. “That’s why I was so shocked. That she got away with all of this with you.”

      “You weren’t around much to notice.”

       “I was around enough!” Henri snapped. He dropped his face into his hands, then, as if he were about to weep.  Paul was surprised at this sudden shift of emotion. He hazarded a comment.

       “I think we both have missed her.”

       “If only I had never had that operation!”

       “Well, I’m sorry it was botched up.”

      

Just curious. I know if I’m with my ‘wife’ and I’m 21 and she’s 19-20 she’d probably be offended if I refused to buy her alcohol or something.

I just want to know could you get charged / put in jail if you somehow got caught.
Pennsylvania

A REAL ESTATE STOCK PLAN

Click to Get Best Penny Stock Pick Program

Getting out of the bleachers and into the game!

This report is going to explain or attempt to give the stock market investors a basic one-on-one interview with a real estate portfolio manager who has consistently made a profit on 100% of the investment products that were actively chosen and managed. Never a loss, always tax advantaged and sheltered.

This report will not contain any high-tech, gobbly-gook, stock market charts, graphs, trends, analyst picks, projections, company reports or insider tips. In real estate, you personally have the power to develop and create all of those things yourself and I for the life of me could never trust other people’s second hand opinions or publicly disseminated information to get the jump on the herd.

Now if I were a company officer, or majority voting shareowner, or a paid agent of those individuals, I might think differently, for the simple fact that I am getting the jump and I can make some dinero if I know something the majority does not. Overall, people are told to build companies so they can sell it to the public through offering pieces of their company to the public in the form of stock. So I know from the very beginning that the owners of companies are selling me a piece of paper which they say is worth a certain amount of whatever value a dollar is worth at that time.

Let me see if I understand this. I transfer my hard-earned cash and I pay a fee and/or commission to do this, and you give me a fancy certificate and a promise that this represents a solid investment decision. No way!

I’ve seen people lose their life savings counting on other people’s paper promises. I am not comfortable sitting on the sidelines rooting for everyone else to make money for me. Who are we kidding? I would be last in line and get paid after all of them. And just how are they getting paid? Well, I see it as this: They get me to buy more fancy certificate paper, backed by more promises, while at the same time encouraging me to hold onto the previous certificates. All the while, the value in those is slowly liquidated to pay salaries and expenses of the inside corporate raiders of my blind faith and trust.

Boy, am I a skeptic. Let me shift gears here and take everything back I just said because often what I just said is dead wrong and two words will prove me wrong quite often. Those two words are “Blue Chips.” Many companies do provide value, dividends and growth opportunities. Who am I to talk bad about the stock market? Don’t get me wrong. It’s an awesome institution and a complex and intricate financial function of the world’s economy. Everyone feels the effects of this juggernaut and many people are afraid to upset the world powers by saying anything that will get the ire up of the kings of Wall Street, so they just clam up and slump into obscurity.

To heck with that attitude! Take control people. Actively manage your own hard assets and get off your *#!, and quit rooting for the other guys out there to make money for you. I’m not saying if you’re 60, 70 or 80 years old, that I expect you to go out and start swinging hammers and saws. That’s not necessary.

Use your brain at any age to control directly the events that are going to add to the bottom line. With real estate, you can use relatively simple math and your two eyes to see the whole picture. No charts, graphs, prospectuses, opinions or guesstimates. You invest less than ten miles from home in your own neighborhoods so you know all about market activity and current local economic conditions. You know prices and demand for your investment, as the local classified section of your newspaper is an instant picture of your markets fundamental outlook. Your competition advertises its position and you react immediately.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t stay up late reading small print, trying to find all the loopholes in company reports and federally mandated quarterly and annual filing and disclosure documents. That is a total waste of my time because in the end, nobody makes any promises to anyone. You in the end invest at your own risk; that is made clear.

Even when they catch the bad guys that use fraudulent accounting procedures and cook the books and shuffle assets and count them twice or commit some other white-collar crime, the fact remains that the money is gone and your out of luck.

Well folks, I’ve never been out of luck and I never will because I decide what is a good deal. I buy my houses below market price, add value to them in a hundred different ways and capitalize on those assets in many different ways. It’s hands-on, eyes and ears open, active, direct control. There’s no guessing, no hoping, no cheering, voting or scanning for loopholes in incomprehensible legalese boilerplate.

I circulate, select and direct. I negotiate and use my own strategies and tactics. I rehab valuable hard assets and use them to generate income, build equity, access tax-free cash, shelter other income from taxation and lower my tax brackets. Almost everything in my real estate business is deductible, so my gains are my gains. I can defer paying gains with 1031 exchanges and a host of other legal and ethical, easily understood ways to secure my future profit picture. You don’t need a license to do this, just a pulse.

If you feel real estate investing is more difficult than stock market investing, I believe you are wrong. It’s much safer to the average individual who doesn’t have all kinds of crazy options, puts and calls, true insider tip-offs or hours and hours of time to hopefully understand more than the next guy in order to sell your stock to the next person for more than you paid for it. Unless you’re accredited, you should be institutionalized.

With real estate, if I buy my investment property with owner occupied, 10% down financing, I am using 90% loan-to-value leverage. I don’t suggest you do that in the stock market. If you make a little timing error, your investment career could be over.

So to put it in general terms, $1,000 controls $10,000 and $10,000 controls $100,000. Now if I buy a house that costs $100,000 and I put $10,000 down to control it and the market appreciates 10% the first year, I get my $10,000 back and keep the asset. It becomes a perpetual money machine and I don’t have any of my own money at risk.

There are closing costs but they are deductible as expenses. Here is another point. My rich Uncle Sam wants me to provide housing for his citizens to live in, so he let’s me take depreciation on my investments to encourage me to rent them out to others. This explains a tax benefit in real estate that helps us common people who actively participate in the management of the investment who are not making over $150,000 a year in adjusted gross income.

For example, if you pay $100,000 for a house, Uncle Sam says that this house will slowly disintegrate to dust in 27.5 years and for non-residential real property, 39 years. The land will always remain so they say 20% of the purchase price was land. So you only depreciate the house’s value. In this case, that would be $80,000 and $80,000 divided by 27.5 years = $2909.09 per year for 27.5 years. That benefit can get you in lower tax brackets by reducing your taxable income on other income, such as your regular job or other investments.

Thus, you save today’s dollars, and when you sell the house years later Uncle Sam recaptures that amount but it is later on, after your investment has increased in value and the dollar hasn’t. Believe me, it helps you a lot more than it ever hurts. A good C.P.A. will use it to make you money now. Note: A 1031 tax deferred exchange can delay repayment of capital gains indefinitely.

Click to Get Best Penny Stock Pick Program

Here’s how to play a decent game of real estate investment! Buy something at 20% below its market value. This is not hard to do. It may take you, as a new investor, 3-6 months to find it.

You’re learning curve will let you acquire under market value property at faster and faster rates from months to weeks to days. It takes practice. Use the book, Magic Bullets, to move fast.

So you find a $100,000 property and you put down 20% (investor rate) as the down payment plus $2,500 in closing costs. The bank loans you $80,000 to buy it. If you’re getting older, then pay someone to clean it and paint it. Get the bank to reappraise it for its true value of $120,000 or more. Take out an equity line and get all your money back, tax-free. Now let the tenants pay it off for you while it goes up in value and throws off positive cash flow, and shelters itself from taxation. This is not hard to do – www.magicbullets.com will walk you through it.

I personally believe the hardest thing to do is to hold on to the real estate investments that you do acquire. What people tend to do is get tired or itchy and they sell the goose. When you sell, you do get a lump sum of cash but now you have to go out and find more. This can become like a revolving door. You have to keep going in and out of the market buying and selling again and again. Sound familiar?

If you just buy and don’t sell your investments they will grow in value through inflation, appreciation and equity accrual/mortgage reduction. Eventually, you will own them free and clear, and with 4 or 5 houses throwing off $1,000 or more each month, you will have approximately $60,000 a year in retirement income. I know my parents could live on that…how about you?

Then as you get older, sell one, preferably the one you have spent two of the last five years in as your primary residence. The reason for this is because Uncle Sam says that you don’t have to pay any capital gains on the sale of your primary residence until you have exceeded $500,000 in sheltered gains.

For example, lets say you just sell one home. You’re in your early 60’s and you have had the house for 25 years. Lets assume you paid $100,000 for it and it has appreciated at a moderate rate of 5% each year on average. For those 25 years, its present value now would be $338,635.31. That is a capital gain of $238,635.31. You pay zero, nothing, in taxes on your profit, using your exemption up to a $500,000 lifetime cap for married couples or $250,000 for single folks.

The entire $338,635.31 is yours to do with whatever you please. It is 25 years later, so your buying power as a result of 3% inflation has eroded your buying power but think about all the people who have no real estate to fall back on. Ouch! That’s no way to live.

No surprises here. You can actively manage your own properties for years and if you do it right and use my methods of acquiring tenants, you just might get lucky and get a lifetime tenant. I’m not going to let you say that it’s impossible because I’m going to agree with you that it’s probably not going to happen.

Here’s what the statistics say (no charts or graphs). People move on average every 5 years so you should reasonably expect to have at least 5 different sets of tenants.

That’s fine because every 5 years, you can update your properties appearance and raise the rent to match current market conditions. Long-term tenants always seem to keep you from achieving a true market rent if they stay for 10-15 years, and they do stay. I see it all the time and I still get market rent…you’ll see!

The figure that says people on average move every 5 years applies to you too. If you get itchy to move or sell, then do the following: Don’t sell anything! Just use equity lines to acquire your next, nicer house and don’t move further than 10 miles away from your investments. Even the pros blow it on this one.

If you pay attention to what I just said, you should retire comfortably, with more money than the average person ever needs. You have a choice.

I will use a true story to illustrate my point. My wife’s uncle bought 2 ½ acres, in what his buddies from his telephone company job used to say was no man’s land. He bought it for $15,000 in 1972. He financed his 3 bed/2.5 bath/2 car garage, ranch style, block home construction for an additional $32,000, for a total of $47,000.

Well, he sold that house in 2001 for $365,000. He paid no commission (I showed him how) and he paid no capital gains. That’s a real life story of a $318,000 tax-free gain or profit on a $47,000 investment. He did hold it for 29 years but he has no money worries and lives a life of ease and comfort.
So my point: Collect a few houses and don’t sell them. That is the Magic Bullet of this story!

I’ll admit to you that I’ve shorted the stock market a few times and never lost on stocks either, but there are way to many closed-door conversations that I’m not allowed to listen to. I have a feeling that there is a reason for that. Can you guess what it is?

I learn more, make more, have more, do more and help more by actively managing my investment from less than ten miles away. I know all the players and there are no closed doors. My business associates are true friends, who help each other make money by providing excellent value for our customer’s dollar, and that customer is my tenant.

My rentals are superior to my competition, to the degree that my wonderful tenants remain tenants for life, or they buy it from me if I decide to sell.

Rental real estate is a rewarding investment. It is not just the money; it’s the value that you personally deliver.

I choose to live with purpose, passion and desire. I can’t do that in the stock market. How can I help you personally by investing in stocks?

Author Biography: Dan Auito is a dual-licensed real estate agent and appraisal assistant. In addition to being a 20-year veteran of the United States Coast Guard, Dan has also founded a non-profit drug prevention corporation, a real estate consulting group and is the author of “Magic Bullets in Real Estate.” This 300-page power-packed book comes with a website that further supports its readers.

 

Click to Get Best Penny Stock Pick Program