The Power

(The following was written in installments between February 2010 and December 2011.)

"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble." --Joseph Campbell

I know there are people out there who have never picked up a tall black book called The Power of Myth. It is one long conversation between the quintessential intelligent journalist, Bill Moyers, and the person who knows more about more kinds of Mythology than anyone ever, Joseph Campbell.

The book serves to sum up Campbell's life's work in easily digestible slices of truth, magic and history. The message of the book is often over-distilled down to his mantra of 'Follow Your Bliss,' but that ain't even the ever-halving half of it.

Recently, after reading the book cover to cover again, I was vividly reminded of my first go-round with the Power. It dug deep into me and made some real changes in the deep fabric of the titanium overcoat that separates and protects me from the other beings on the top level of the food chain/slash "most dangerous predator list." Which, at the present time, takes the form of all my old buddies, Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I have prattled on before about how the Earth is Gaia, the living, sentient being. Campbell explains exactly how -- or at least in which manner -- humanity developed from "part" of Terra to "master" of the entire crust of the planet (and we would probably go ahead and parcel out various currents of mantle magma if we can just figure out how to run our Ipods off it). We own and want and need and get and get and get. We've woven fact with myth and Myth with lying. The evil that underlies our consumer culture is the Guardian at the Gate of Wisdom. The constant bombardment of our eyes, and not to mention our children (and especially during this season of Xmas with a capital X), with demands that we buy that which we not only do not need, but just as likely will simply store on a shelf until some future day when the item is determined to not be box-worthy in the next move on to somewhere better with better schools and more convenient grocery mega-malls manned by struggling workers willing and able to make the lowest living wage possible and providing service to match.

But (as is wont to occur), I digress.

Part of what I learned from Dr. Campbell is that our disconnect from the planet is our biggest weakness in body and soul. Our placement of Deity itself in the Sky, away from us, where we have to stretch and strive and push push push yourself towards something you will never reach... I bet it tastes like carrots when you finally get it.

I don't even like carrots.

I like the big fat lady with her big ol' boobies that they found all over the place from a time when Homo Sape was not obsessed with striving toward the removed, but instead focused on being part of the seasons and the cycles and the freakin' Nature itself. Instead we have paved it over to put up the proverbial parking lot.

Please read the next line in my most non-zealotous voice,... I think you would enjoy reading The Power of Myth, it's good.

I have recently also discovered a perfect film of the real history of everything. It is on PBS stations right now, but they are able to make it last two hours with all their please pleas. I know, we gotta have PBS at least, give 'em some money, but the show that happens in between is the game changer.

Journey of the Universe tells more in one hour about who we are and where we came from than any hour you've ever spent. It weaves Campbell with Newton with Einstein and everything else. Check your local listings, it's on right now.

But don't get too jazzed up about being so far along the path, it's practically 2012 anyway. If the Mayans are right, it doesn't make any difference one way or the other....

Of course, if they miss on this one, I plan to keep listening for Gaia to tell me what to do next.

Peace.

In the Belly of the Black-Winged Bird

Lay me down in a field of flame and heather
Render up my body

into the burning heart of God

in the belly of a black-winged bird

--Counting Crows

Now that the Super Bowl is over, and football is put away in the Man Closet for another sad season, I can reflect... upon the bittersweet agony that is being an Atlanta Falcons fan.

The number one seed. Big clutch wins all season. In the spotlight? The fearsome #6 seed come to town, annnnd....Good night. The Packers were the better team that night, and indeed the best team in the league,... but still.

It's not like I should be surprised.

I have loved the Atlanta Falcons for almost as long as I have loved football. Hold your applause. Before the tale of star-crossed love begins, I must first disclose a brief and meaningless fling I had with "America's Team" of the Bold Blue Star. The Cowboys were 9-1, looking every bit as good as the defending champion, and dreaded, Steelers. The Cowboys were the reigning champs of the NFC, ultimately 21-17 victims of the Steelers in X, but EVERYbody's favorite team had come back strong in '76 and had barely been chinked on their run to almost Super Bowl XI.

Anyway, the larger-than-life Cowboys came to Atlanta and Dad got us tickets to the game, on (what a little research shows) was November 21, 1976. Our nation had turned 200, I had turned six, and the Falcons had turned stomachs for a decade on their way to missing the playoffs in every single year of their miserable decade of existence.

The Pre-Dirty Dirty Birds came in at 3-7, Dallas came out and quickly went up 7 on a TD run by one of the quintessential Cowboy Cowboys: Scott Laidlaw. (How much more Cowboy could you get? Well, maybe they'll trade for Colt McCoy.)

It was still 7-0 at the half, but the diminutive Efren Herrera (I'm sorry to digress again, but Efren would later become momentarily famous for wrapping his essentially circular Latin American frame around a 20 yard pass on a fake field goal that embarrassed the Falcons on Monday Night Football) added three in the third. 10-0 Dallas.

Somehow, by some sort of miracle, Atlanta put up a field goal early in the fourth. The dribble of life that it gave the crowd kept us from leaving to beat the half-full (well, probably half-empty) stadium traffic. I remember the outcome of the rest of the quarter, but I had to consult the stats for how it happened exactly. The most thoroughly un-Cowboy name on the field had to be Mike Esposito, who is remembered in Falcon mythology as 'that guy who scored against the Cowboys that time,' ran in from 35 out to tie the game. With just minutes left, the back-up to Steve Bartkowski's back-up (Mike Moroski), Third-string QB Scott Hunter plunged it in from a yard out and the Falcons held on to give Dallas its second loss of the year. The win also propelled the Falcons on to a 4-10 record and another solid legacy of crap that would stretch only two more seasons.

But I was in.

That day that we sat the Cowboys down in the big, blue round edifice of mediocrity that was Atlanta-Fulton County, I made a decision. I was going for the home team, for Dad's team, and for football on the grand scale. I took down my Cowboys pennant, and replaced it with a bright red Falcons pennant. I started collecting football cards, I had all my friends getting them, we would trade and try to put teams together. I added other hard-luck teams to my stable as they made little runs at the big boys, the Chargers, the Cardinals; expansion franchises in Seattle and Tampa. I read magazines and cut out headlines and glued them into geeky little scrapbooks. But I dressed, slept and breathed Falcons as they finally finished the season at .500 in '77, but my passion was completely out of control by the time they scraped into the playoffs as a wild card in '78. They had three divisions and two wild cards then, we played the NFC East runner up Eagles in Atlanta and came from behind in the last two minutes to push on to Dallas the following week. (That entire game is on You Tube) And then, oh damn you Dallas! Why do you treat me this way? The Falcons fell to the eventual Super Bowl losers, and little solace came from the Cowboys' inability to rise to meet the Steelers yet again in XIII. Those Cowboys fell from the top of my list to the very bottom in two years' time, and they didn't help their cause any when the knocked the Falcons out of the playoffs the next time they made it too, but that's another story -- a 'Too Tall Tale' if you will.

So, that's how this year is better than those first few flirtations with fabulousness so many years ago. At least the Packers were kind enough to beat the Steelers (in the house of the Cowboys) after tromping all over my poor, poor heart. And we're still a young team, just missing a couple pieces, and various other cliche's notwithstanding, we are on a roll. There is a Super Bowl out there for us in the next three years at the most. And when that glorious day comes, we will erase our lingering Atlanta sports demons, those that still hung under the glorious eaves of A-FC Stadium even after Glavine took Game 6 against the Indians, those spectres of Bartkowski and Bubba Bean and even stupid old Jeff George and the Vick mess, can all just float away. It's been 45 years. It just has to happen soon.

This is not a political article

I was driving down 421 the other evening, ipod wailing, sunroof open and sunshine pouring in, and I thought, what if every American, upon reaching 25 years of age, received $50,000 cash from the U.S. Government?

I think of it as some sort of catapult program. The government would expect the money to be spent on establishing a solid foundation for a young adult: modest home, solid transportation, all the proper insurance, and the benefits would be even more far-reaching than that.

The way you qualify for your "pre-heritance" is by staying out of trouble up to that point. For every run-in with authority, you would lose a portion of the money. Rather than lock a kid up for his first public intoxication charge, dock him a grand out of his fifty. Let him earn it back with appropriate behavior.

We are not doing a great job in our country of teaching children right from wrong. There is a lack of structure and discipline in far too many children's lives. We have to put something in place to motivate children extrinsically. As much as I hate it, nothing does that better than money. It's a fact of life, and particularly of American life. My boys say "Money can't buy me love," but they also warn you of the power of the "TaxMan." Children in our culture equate money with freedom -- which is a grand commodity. If they know they will get at least a shot, a boost, they will strive to do everything necessary to reach the goal.

Graduating high school gets you a bonus. Graduate college, roll into the courthouse and pick up your $75,000 check. The possibilities are limitless, but it should be simple. I would love to see a pilot project in one of the states. I guarantee you, teen crime would go down. Bring them in to sign up for the program. They can come in when they are twelve, a rite of passage into adolescence. You sign a paper that says: "I intend to receive my 25 Catapult payment from Uncle Sam. I understand that this is a privilege, not a right, and that I could lose portions of the payment for inappropriate behavior. Amen." Then, you get $100 on the spot. Who wouldn't sign up?

OK, obviously, I hear the realist in the corner, "Where will the money come from Glenn?"

I'm probably not the first one to come up with this funding plan, but couldn't we build one less airplane or boat for a year or two, and just redirect that money from whichever millionaire was going to get it, if it cuts the crime rate, ups high school and college graduation, and infuses a constant stream of money into the economy? I'm being naive I'm sure. It just seems to have some good points.

And the IRS can start collecting it back with the 25 year olds first paycheck. Just start pulling 25 percent out until half of it has come back to the government. That's fair. Steady stream of income for Uncle Sam again.

I don't know, it makes sense to me. I'm thinking of putting it into play at my school. How about I offer a $2,000 college scholarship to students that stay through eighth grade and then go on through high school and get accepted to a college. Then they come back to me and claim their scholarship. Same principle. Maybe I'll be the pilot. "Over Unger, Unger, Dunn..."

This is probably an influence of near socialist England still lingering on me from my three months there. This ol' worn out US of A probably can't afford it. We'd rather just keep letting our 19 year old kids keep gunning each other down in the street, losing everything because they have nothing to live for anyway. There has to be a better idea. I'm just trying to get the ball rolling.

Grizdawg Out.