1999. I drove me ole fingers to the digital bone this annum! Possibly, I’d say, up my annum. But, hey, Latinized jokes are what insiders trade-on. So, the novel Nihil Obstat. Another sectarian chuckle. “Nothing Forbidden.” Stamped inside books. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and all the good guys. Back among the black-robed dreamers of collegiate days, I had wandered upstairs behind an aging, stooped Benedictine monk who was holding a foot-long stick with a six-inch key chain—I swear that I am not making this up!—following this pre-{Umberto} Eco figurine up winding, creaky, winter-dusted stairway to a grey-paint-flecked door, wobbly round knob … into the monastery’s Librorum Prohibitorum: The Library of Forbidden Books. At an instant, standing amidst papyral howls and crazed renunciations of centuries, the flesh dried upon the floor but yet the blood still fresh-freckling the walls, did I have need of the Malleus Maleficarum, which I did not know of at that particular moment? Or some guide to the horrors, which were only fascinations to my young reckless mind … I digress! Ahem. There then comes forays into fresher imagery, undressed experiences, surprises—whiffs of change. Characters into whom I have transubstantiated.
“The First Meeting.” Do you grant us this conceit? My artless bumbling into a Genesis like tale without the Biblical trappings? Is this growth? Maturity? New language. Or, total abandonment? Hmmm. The homoerotic mythos. Piercing Pierce. A not too disguised crucified son? But, truly, that was not a conscious awareness, back-then. I often reread—or I only reread, choose your school of hermeneutic foolishness!—and I are delighted by the playfulness, here.
The novel, Beloveds. Oh, slay me with my own desire! There is so much of her and Her. There is such an unquenchable thirst, and so much immersion in fragrant waters. Here, I am, in 1999, totally off my wonk! Delicious. Delirious. Deathly.
A collection of short fiction: To Everyone Else It Was Only Sex. There came times, again and again, when I said, “Maybe I can get a short story published?!” Tried and tried. Small presses of all ilks. Scouring alternative journals—and scrounging up rejections from those I thought that I was heartfeltly serving. “Jean.” Where are you, today, Jean? “Looking at Woman.” For every son and every daughter. “Stirring” the pot. So much in love with cooking and the meal. You might expect the women, but it was the men! “Treasures?” Domestic gods, ha! … Can you get used to being a meal? … “A different kind of fire” is what I am all about. The hearth of Earthfolk. Did you laugh at, “We’re all just ass backwards”? Jeebies, I can’t help but roll on the floor and hump the couch when I read that, again and again. Maybe it’s too revolutionary for ya? Anyways, these are all pokes in the holes of my very selves. “Letters” reflecting the facticity of x,y,z experiences.Still 1999. The novel, vOYAGE. Why the lower-case “v”? Give me a break! Okay. I went into an historical rampage. But SunBlossom sat down upon me so that I could do proper research. Here my pen became quite French. Nevertheless, it was D. Follow the story! If it fails as a history of patriarchy. If you get all bollixed up with group-sex stuff, well, get a grip! Throughout these writings I’ve come up against Group Eroticism, or Societal Eroticism, or Cultural Eroticism—Mythic Eroticism, which thrives collectively and communally. Have you been paying attention during all these years? War as ritual. War as liturgy. The Holy Mass as Sacrifice: slaughter of an innocent. The Crucified Son. Has it sunk in? The peculiar type of group-sexual ritual you’ve been immersed in every day of your patriarchal, Biblical, Capitalistic, Scientific life? Hmmm. If you weren’t kin: Family, Holy: this would be a great time to say, Fuck it! and just amble off to a trailer park to roast weenies and get drunk every day. (Oh, hopefully laid, of course!) … But it ain’t. For it is the communal rituals which are the mythos. It’s that, just like Oedipus (whom I don’t mention except here), part of the Biblical mythos is a self-inflicted blindness. Isn’t this another way to see Genesis? Doesn’t it sound like the story of someone enraged by his/His blindness—can’t see woman, the feminine, The Mother, goddess… okay, been there, done that. Let’s move on.
In vOYAGE I get back to an old haunt from my fledgling philosophical days. “What is flesh?” I mean who else but the Friar and FXK and the Primate X would even ask these whacked out questions? Selene, Rian, Karen—naw! Possibly, just possibly, they aren’t. But maybe you are? Are you asking these questions? You who are part of meWE which I was just about to discover? Not just the masculine to my feminine, but the deathless to my liveliness.
2000. Did it happen? Or am I still trying to decide: ’00 or ’01? Which plays up the fact that the Millennium never happens as it is always happening. Just a literalist grab on the old jockos, shouting, “Got ‘im by the balls!” … not!
The novel, Intimates. Oh, spare the parents within all of us! “What about the kids? How should I have raised them?” I mean, I could have argued for days about how culture must change in terms of child-rearing to prepare them for a robust eroticism seeking intimacy … but I settled on The Shot. Cheap trick, so some burped. Anyway, who cannot fantasize about how different it could have been? About childhood—especially those frolicking teen years!—where I would not have the crippling hang-ups of the Biblical Sexual Taboo and body hatred and women are evil and all that crap? Ya need some distortions: so back to some Mormon ballyhoo and onto some sci fi imaginings … a good time. Jeebies, why can’t reincarnation transmit conscious memory so that I can build on my own lives?
The novel, meWE. The absolute renunciation of the Lone Male God without firing a theological or exegetical shot! Verily, I relish the days. True, I’ve been a Will-less servant to the Monastic Hours: intoned the Divine Office: calloused my knees crawling each Station of the Cross all around the perimeter of the church … but I—alas!—we humans are all creatures of phased awareness. Certainly, I need not be crucified on the Cartesian clock—not a trivial insight, for it is how Work, which is Capitalism’s Eros, is ritualized. Being late or missing an hour or work …odors of unholiness scent you! … meWE: so someday may all be!
2001. Of course, if you’re an old Sixties fart, you can’t hit this year without thinking about Kubrick and where you were when those apes tossed the bone and it became the space station … Hal and all that: but it was actually a freer moment—when the short story, “Hummingbird” came. Many were a bit taken aback. Even if Ana was a hummingbird, did I want this story set free? For many it was freighted with too many possible misinterpretations. That it would be read as betrayal instead of faithfulness … were I not to submit to my own What Is Not, Is? After all, it was Year One!
The novel, Generations. A once again Look Backwards. A once again Look Forward. It is the last section which rocked and rolled. “What are you/I saying?” It was read and re-read. Torn apart and scotch-taped back together (virtually, that is). But it stands. If “Revelations” stays attached to the Bible, why not something like Generations? Okay. Trash it as poor writing. Garbled mish-mash. But I was not drunk. Nor stoned. Not on an island like old Patmos. Simply, had to listen to my fuller self.
“Poems.” They set down anchors of forgetfulness. Monastery. Prison. Yearning for Madonna. Stuff like that. There’s an exposure here which comforts, at times, only the writer! … Exuded over decades.
Closing down on a cycle. Yurgan, maybe. Just sensing that there was a type of closure. That is why the words started coming out a bit more simple and straight-forward. There is a sub-genre of “Towards” type books. To us, notably in the philosophical and theological arenas. Not a hesitancy, but more of a swipe. Like an “Over yonder!” flail of the arm without looking up, just spitting to the side, accepting being a sign-post to those who travel to where you may never arrive. Amen. A nonfiction, Towards a Sacred Sexuality.2002. A time of distancing. Some movement, like water flowing to other levels. Saving an ancient pre-prison piece, “Patriotism Means Resistance.” The trials of the "Minnesota 8" with excerpted transcripts, personal testimony ... somewhat a journal and historical tract. Good ole scanning technology allowing this survivors of the typewriter to become ASCII. Through the work of Cheryl Seal, two-part article, “The Trials of the Minnesota 8.”
2003. Another version of “Prison, Bottoming Out, Mother” is “Prison and the Mother.” With a piece written to answer questions of a nephew, Gary, who is more of the virtual generation although in heart a Sixties conspirator! The essay, “Presidential Evangelist for War” was a response to The Appointee’s invasion of Iraq. Has a lot to do with the Civil Religion—the most conquering religion of the Ages! It will be updated in 2012.
2005. In the summer, I returned to Minnesota to develop the “Peace and War in the Heartland” project at http://www.pwh-mn.org to support the play commissioned by the History Theatre and the Playwright Center and co-produced by the Theater Dept. of the U of Minnesota in 2008. “Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war.”http://www.minnesota8.net/peacecrimes.htm I started work on the Earthfolk website and actively maintain it each year. I wrote, “Sensual Preciousness,” unpublished.
2008. In the summer, I moved to Viroqua, WI to write and research. I write some poems. Small articles for the “River and Roots” local newspaper. I maintain the websites: “Minnesota 8,” Earthfolk, and Peace and War in the Heartland. I rework “Sing” into “To kill the dove!” which I post on Kindle in 2012.
2011. I get two articles published. “An Outlaw’s Theology," Cross Currents (Vol. 61, No.2) June 2011. Cross Currents is the journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life. And, “A vision of coupled presence,” Theology and Sexuality (17.1, 2011). “Outlaw theology” is a phrase given to me by editor of Cross Currents, Prof. Charles Henderson.
2012. I rewrite “Presidential Evangelist for War.” Begin work on second part of “coupled presence”—focused on masculinity. Prepare, “Mother’s Courage,” an essay about the Vatican’s attack on Catholic nuns. Create Outlaw Visions website, http://www.outlaw-visions.net Start putting writings on Kindle and Smashwords.