Life, love, lust and lunacies from the Sage of Topanga

There’s a darkness over the world, one of those periodic cycles of woe that has everyone edgy and nations unpredictable. I’m beginning to feel like a guy I used to know in Oakland who walked around under a dark cloud like the cartoon character Joe Btfsplk, living a life of grim expectations. Ask him what the trouble was and he’d say “Everything,” which caused the rest of us to fall into his gloomy state, anticipating the worst, hunched over and sad.

Well everything does seems to be the matter today. That oil spill tops it all off for the moment, spreading a gummy mess through the Gulf of Mexico, polluting the sandy shores and threatening the wildlife. But then there’s that Iceland volcano too sending up clouds of smoke so thick you can’t fly through the damned stuff. The essentials in peril.

Periodic earthquakes up and down the west coast and elsewhere in the world, tornadoes in the Midwest, a recession throughout the land, hatred in Arizona, a bunch of banjo-plucking protestors who call themselves the Tea Party following an emptiness like Sarah Palin to, by God, set things right, and layoffs in L.A. that are going to send hundreds more shell-shocked jobless people to the bread lines.

What’s going on here?

Even fun places like Greece and Italy and maybe Spain that no one takes seriously in the economic strata are causing money problems and what about that nut who pushed the wrong button on Wall Street and sent our own stock market into what they’re calling a flash crash? A chef is charged with trying to hire homeless guys to kill his wife and the mother of a dead girl visits the guy in jail who killed her daughter and says she forgives him.

What? Huh?

Everything Is out of synch. The music’s wrong, the words don’t scan, the beat is erratic. One expects that at any minute Godzilla will rise out of the sea and we’ll all run screaming like the Japanese in Tokyo, dashing blindly through the Ginza, but in L.A. it’ll be down Sunset Boulevard or Broadway in New York, depending on whether the monster rises in the Atlantic or the Pacific. He’ll eat us all.

The feeling of doom is one I can’t shake. Forget the war, that’s penny ante horror compared to everything else that’s going wrong and could go wrong. Our troubles are in the core of the Earth and in the very atmosphere we breathe and no one seems to know what to do about them. We blame each other, we blame God or government, we blame nature, fate, kismet and the radiation we’ve loosed in the air, and the acid rain falling on our heads.

Yesterday the cat bit me. It was a big bite for no good reason and it drew blood. Great, I’ve got a bad heart, bad lungs and a convulsive stomach but I’m going to die of cat fever like some kind of small prey that wiggles into stillness in the last painful moments of life, screaming beyond our ability to hear, a wee cry into eternity.

“You’re just lumping all of the bad things together, which makes the world look terrible and life as bleak as the face of the moon,” my wife says. “It is bleak,” I say, “even my fish are dying. I had six in the tank and now I’ve just got that one scrawny thing staring out at me. He knows, the fish knows, but the fish aren’t saying.”

She used to say that bad things happened in threes. The refrigerator would stop working, the dryer would break down and the car wouldn’t start. Now it’s in far greater multiples, affecting everything around us, damaging our auras and dimming our electrolytes.

Then I look out the window. The rain has stopped. Drops of water glisten on the new green of the oak trees. The world glistens. OK, I say to myself, the oil still leaks, the volcano still rumbles and the wind blows evil circles through the cities and the farmlands, but there’s sunlight too.

Cling to the brighter things, I say with a will. Let a little light shine in.

Almtz13@aol.com

It has been suggested in the past that these are the “end times”. Even the Bible talks about it. 2012 is supposed to be the climactic time. Most likely, we will learn that we can’t continue on the same old caveman path, and will have to finally grow up and move on to higher and better things. We will have to learn to love - not groin - each other and stop fighting in wars. We will have to value people over money. We will have to clean up our earth house to get rid of pollution and global warming. We may even meet up with alien beings who will show us the way. If we don’t finally “graduate” into a better awareness of things, we may end up like the Neanderthals - who it seems left some of their DNA in us.

July15,2010(2553 in Thailand)
Greetings Elmer Tinez-
(been a while, huh?)
oh good, there’s one from late May… i was beginning to worry that something worse than a cat bite had befallen you (too much bacon for the pig valve???- although “SouthPark” creators Parker&Stone had several hilarious clips announcing their archived DVD episodes, “MakinBacon with Macon”, in which they continously fed huge quantities of bacon to a pig, “Macon”)
Love,
jenifer

Having kept track of your medical forays into the Valley (via the DN), I’m pretty much up on your physical well-being. I’m very happy to hear the good news about Karen and her progress against cancer! As always, prayers are with you and your family.
I’ve also been glad to have seen one of my letters side by side with your column in the Daily News 2 or 3 times… until you were booted to the front page as a columnist, contributing or otherwise. It’s always a treat to read your pieces, and nice to know you’re back in print on a regular basis.
Of course, I’ll still enjoy your blog. How else am I going to keep track of Cinelli and the rest of your family? Hugs ~ Ellie :O)

Oh Elmer,
You sound like the voice in the back of my mind. “Apres nous, l’deluge.”
I got a subscription to the Daily News Sunday edition just for your columns. Wish they ran every week - but, hey, you deserve a lighter schedule.
Glad to see you blogging again.
Glad the chemo working.
Glad your garden doing well.

Glad to see you back. Your still in great form. The good news about your daughter’s health was uplifting. I share your feelings about the state of the world. At 78 I know it won’t get fixed in the little time I have left. Hopefully it is just a bad dip in a cycle and we will come back up again. I try to dwell on the beauties of nature and the friendships I have. The qualities of these two things never seems to change. Looking forward to more posts..

My dark thoughts tend to focus on the tension between world population growth and the diminishing supply of the earth’s resources, but your points are all reasons for concern too. Now we can add to these the insensitivity of those who insist on building a mosque near the 9/11 site and the hatefulness of certain U.S. churchgoers who plan to publicly burn the Koran. There are people who must have things their way or they will die trying, and they don’t mind at all if they take the rest of us with them. Though the media leads us to believe otherwise, I cling to the hope that reasonable people still far outnumber the fanatics and can resist the impulse toward polarization. Keep on serving as a voice of sanity, Al.

Hey…. I was pleased to see you got a job and became an honest person again (okay.. I am retired and don’t have a job but I enjoy your articles). The Valley News has their head on straight…. I have known that since the mid 50’s when I delivered the Green Sheet.

Good to know you have a place to share your thoughts… I am an interested reader…………. and happy to hear that your daughter is working on her situation and doing okay. I have a couple of friends who have done well in a similar situations…. so I will be thinking of good thoughts for your daughter.

I will keep reading …

Thanks

Roy

So sorry your cat bit you! I’ve never liked cats anyway, I’m allergic to them. Actually, his biting you is probably kind of like road rage, it’s not its fault, it’s nobody’s fault. Animals and people simply cannot handle the amount of disruptive energy that the Earth is experiencing. You may find this totally absurd, however, ask any Astrologer and you will be told that the mayhem that surrounds us is caused by — gasp — (is this lady nuts?) the planetary energies that have been bombarding the Earth in increasing intensity, leading up to what many people — not really all weirdos — anticipate as the actual beginning of the Aquarian Age.) So, be of good cheer. There is light at the end of the tunnel — we just have to have the stamina, determination — and health (ah, that’s a challenge with passing years) to keep this physical vehicle vertical when required. (BTW — many years ago a prominent , highly respected scientist was asked why he “believed in Astrology.” He replied, “I, Sir, have studied it.” {I’m not talking about the little blurbs in the daily paper, but the real understanding of the challenges with which we were born, as laid out in the blueprint called a Horoscope, and how that interfaces with the current position of the planets, etc.}) Be that as it may, hope you will continue to write your blog as well as your new column for the L.A. Daily News. It’s always a pleasure to share your written words! Blessings, always, SP

Al….I hope it’s okay to adress you as such, as I feel like I known you most of my adult life having read your articles in the early 80’s while assigned as policeman working a footbeat in downtown L.A.

I, like Ms. Moore also check on your blog site frequently to see what (new’s - stories) you bring to us. I only wanted to say that I hope you feel well and continue to write for as long as possible…..

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