City of Legends

 Yes, inspired by Robert Oppenheimer’s personal translation of the Bhagavad Gita on the occasion of the Trinity test of the first Atom bomb.  We do not need guns and bombs and tanks and napalm and poisons and weaponized diseases to kill.  Only lies.  When we turn Words, with a capital "W" into just "words", we diminish more than a single letter.  We diminish ourselves.  This is dedicated to my friend and brother in poetry Larry Jaffe.

I am become man, the destroyer of Words.
I will bend your thoughts to my own purposes.
I will eat the soul of your dreams.
I will barter for what I want with what you need.
I will justify myself in flags and books and fire
that bleeds into the skies of poorer peoples
and their waters and their lands, that I might prosper.
I will lie to you when there is no need to.
I will fall upon you when peace is the only way.
to resolve the conflict of ideologies and theologies.
I am become man, the destroyer of Words,
who mocks the purposes of a benign God
who takes many forms and facets to teach us
to reach us with the sanity that, in our vanity,
escapes us, rapes us of the innocence of peace.
I strike from the corners and the shadows,
proud of my conceits and deceits, my heart beats
with a black and bitter rhythm fashioned of bile and guile
that I will explain away as necessary to a higher purpose
that I lack the soul to recognize as I kill it with honed irony.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

Back when I was quite young, early teens, I had a paper route.  Back when alarmist TV shows and paranoia had not yet paralyzed American culture.

My favourite customer was a man I called "The Republican".  I won’t give his real name here.  But I called him "The Republican", because that is what he was.  Deep dipped in the image and label at a time when the Republicans weren’t abusing the Consitution by getting into bed with the Evangelicals. 

We used to have long, complex talks on politics.  I was a Democrat with slight left wing tendencies (I backed Humphrey in 1968).  He felt that you should never vote a straight ticket unless it was Republican. 

He told me once about how his son was an undercover agent for the federal government, busting drug dealers and their suppliers.  He and his wife used to tell me that he was not welcome in their home, as part of his undercover work required he have long hair and look like a drug user and they wouldn’t allow that in their house.  They were proud of his accomplishments, but ashamed of his appearance.

Later on, years later, when I had my brief flirtation with the Republican Party during the Reagan Administration, I though about him.  I never knew what he did for a living, or where he was from or even what church he attended, but I could tell you his political affiliation.  He was The Republican.

My mom called this morning to tell me she saw his obituary in today’s paper.  He was 90.  I wonder if he ever reconciled with his son, ever voted for a Democrat.  I wonder how he weathered Watergate and the dismal failure of Reaganomics (a word not even coined back when we spoke).

But, he was an honorable man, an honest man.  Perhaps a bit primitivist in his motives and attitudes, perhaps looking at the world as a far simpler place than it really was and is, but he was a decent fellow.

Good night, Republican.  Sleep well and dream of a time before Carter and Clinton and Obama.  Your dreams would be my nightmares, and much the reverse.  But I can still thank for, in all the time we spoke of great national and international issues, you never treated me as a 13 year old kid.

That was important.

Let me start on an up note by wishing my Father, and all Fathers everywhere, a joyous and fulfilling Fathers’ Day.

Dad, for better or for worse, you had a great hand in steering me to what and where I am, and I am most grateful.

On a down note, by now you may have seen the video or pictures of "Neda", the young woman killed (just one of many) in the election protests in Iran.  I wrote a poem of and for her, which I posted to the Amomancer blog.  If you wish to share it with others, be my guest.  Her Father, no doubt, is in more pain than I hope to even imagine in my own life, but her sacrifice serves purpose and I hope he feels, in time, great pride in her.

elegy for Neda

With America and the world watching. Barack Obama has become the 44th President of the United States.  He inherits a difficult world.  He will need our efforts, our good wishes and our prayers, but he is the man for the job and he is now my president.

In about 262 hours, Barack Obama becomes the President of the United States, inheriting an economy and a foreign policy in shambles and a military-industrial complex out of control.

He’s got his job cut out for him.

But, so far, he has looked deep into the pragmatic realms of his soul and decided to surround himself with individuals who have experience, grit and passion. He will need their counsel, their experience and their determination if he is to succeed.

But by what yardstick will we measure success?

He represents more than the usual person stepping into that role. He is our first "person of color" to be elected to that office, beating out a man who would have been the oldest person to have ever been elected, and only slightly edging she who would have been our first female President.. Demands placed upon him by this status will be mighty. The price of failure will not only resonate down the political canyons of this country, but also down the ethnic and sociological paths. If he fails, fifty years from now people will still be using his failure as an excuse to refuse to vote for individuals of all sorts of non-Northern European ethnicities.

It is to his credit as a person, as a politician and as a visionary that he was not dogged by many of the same problems in this campaign that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was dogged by when he ran in 1984 and 1988. I recall that the mantra of the media was to ask the question "What does Jesse Jackson really want?" as if wanting to be a black man elected President was so absurd as to confound reason. I have in my scrapbook a political cartoon of Jesse Jackson being sworn in as President while a reporter at the fringes of the crowd is asking a dignitary "What does Jesse Jackson really want?".

I hope, I pray, that Barack Obama will be a wise and just leader. A man who can reach for consensus, follow his own moral compass, and be honest with us when things go wrong. Bill Clinton accomplished a lot, including balancing a budget now decimated in just 8 short years of infantile insanity, but even he can not be the yardstick for President Obama. We are not looking for a Prophet or a King, we are looking for a Messiah as we face wars in diverse places and an economy that has already cost us nearly three million jobs in the last twelve months.

But, fortunately, as we are not a Monarchy, he does not have to do it alone. As long as people of good will keep their shoulders to the stone, we can work our way out of our crises. We will do so, we will accomplish yet great things.

Ani DiFranco said in one of her songs that "Don’t you think that kitten gets out of the tree whether or not you ever show up?"

I do, I’d just rather it not stay frightened too long or get hurt too bad when it jumps or falls out.

And that is going to be a major part of the necessity of Barack Obama as he takes his place at what Teddy Roosevelt called "the bully pulpit" He must help us feel good, feel strong, feel safe as we get out of that tree.

I supported Hillary Clinton, tooth and nail, for the nomination. I believe that John McCain is a noble American and would have made a good President. But I will be among the first, come the 20th of January, to say, with pride, "That’s my President" and I only hope and pray that four or eight years from now, he has done his best, it has been good enough and that we recognize the impact he has had on the Presidency, on the nation, on the American people, and the world.

I am putting together a list of the ten most important sites, to my use of the web.

My #10 pick is Real Clear World (www.realclearworld.com), a site that collects news and features from around the world. A sister site to RealClearPolitics, which I became hooked on during the recent Presidential Campaign, this is a superb resource for anyone as into foreign affairs (stop snickering) as I am.

Joe Klein nailed the coffin for the final days of the Bush II (the lesser) presidency in his article in the latest Time, entitled The Lamest of Ducks.

View it here.

With all the America-bashing that occurs in the world, it is nice to once in a while get credit for getting things right.

An editorial in today’s Times of London entitled "A Masterclass in Democracy" that praises the American system and her people in the way this Presidential Election played out was extremely gratifying (yes, be shocked, I regularly read news from other nations…London, Eastern Europe, China, Japan, Paris South America and occasionally even South Africa…I like to know what the unfiltered truth is, as our media does have its biases (even without softcore tabloid Australian billionaires trying to control the definition of "American conservative values" by buying up and/or creating news outlets)).

For the full text of this all-too-kind editorial, see

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article5093551.ece

I stayed up last night long enough to watch the networks call the election and to hear John McCain’s gracious and magnanimous concession speech.

It is a time to come together and work for the better future that we want, not only for ourselves, but for our children and their children.

The world is breathing a collective sigh of relief as we move into a new generation of hope, of faith, of awareness that we, in the United States, are not alone in the world and must work with the other peoples and governments of the world to ensure peace and prosperity for all.

The Pretendent nears the end of his bastard reign.

for what it is worth, for what there is…I have finished my exile.  Today, November 1st, I am back in this world. 

I apologize to you who worried needlessly, as to my health and safety.  I am fine, and strong and well.  I just needed a time to walk paths I would not normally, to breathe the ether.  I have filled my lungs with my native atmosphere and now dive back into the world through which I must swim.

Later today, early tomorrow, at latest, we will begin posting the new CD "truth" to williamfdevault.com

I am announcing that I have pivoted to reality and will be casting my vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday.  I still wish it was Hillary Clinton I was voting for, but the decision of the McCain campaign to select so odious a running mate as Sarah Palin has driven me to take action for the survival of my country and the freedoms we enjoy.

New book?  Sooner than you might expect.

To all of you who have regularly visited the Amomancer blog and kept it alive and well, I thank you.  Your devotion is touching.

I do need to clean up the feeds and referral/subscription subprocesses, they were vandalized in my absence.  Trust, like love, is just word until made manifest in action.  I live, I learn, I grow and evolve.  I am stronger and smarter than I was not so long ago.

Barbara, again thanks for the interview and the concern.  Mariya, for the inspiration.  Liza, for the understanding.  Jazz, the heat.  Sarah, the vision.  Robert, the trust.  Pam, the consistency and strength.  Elric and Dante, the clarifying joy.  Peri, for being my crucible lens.  And to God, for all these things, and all there is.

We still have, by all rational estimates, a few decades to do what is entrusted to us.  Time for dreams and the dreamers.

Lovely cover, isn’t it?

Not really. The book, published in China and available internationally, features a cover by my friend, American artist and photographer Jean Fan. Its full title is 钱.性.孩子–好女人不可不知的婚姻雷区(爱情智慧系列丛书 (Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage).

Only, she didn’t give permission for the photo to be used.

Everyday thousands of new products, millions of not so new products, and all sorts of adaptations of products are stolen, "borrowed" and hijacked in places like China, where there is no respect for the rule of international law, business ethics and common decency.

Jean is lucky to have found out about it. A friend saw a copy for sale and sent her a photo of the cover.

The watermark across the middle of the picture has been skillfully removed by the thief, but it is her picture (See below for the original, reprinted with permission).

It is not that stealing other people’s work and making money off it is new (right, Mr. Gates?) and we really can’t completely expect people to play fair when we don’t even play nice in our own sandbox. In our culture, which has suffered under the parasitic nature of capitalism for centuries, we still haven’t quite got it right, how are we to expect foreign lands that are just now coming to grips with the Darwinian forces of the marketplace to understand?

Jean, sorry this is happening to you. Sorry we so much want the market that is China that we don’t slap meaningful sanctions on them for this sort of conduct.

It is a lovely picture, though.

Side-note to those waiting to hear word: Barbara Holmes and I completed the first round of her interview with me today. Awkward. She asked some questions, particularly based on my recent list of cultural influences and my muses, that I was not sure how to answer. So I did the smart thing. I spoke the truth.