DACHVARD

It is easy to feel hopeless these days. But remember these are the best days that humans have ever had.

Sometimes the Beauty of the world blinds my eyes and the kindness of strangers soak them. Do not despair.

There are people on the far extremes of both political parties here in the US hell-bent on scaring us as much as they can.

But think of your life and think of all the times you have been scared by events in this country, this world.

Think of the plagues that were to kill us, the leaders that were to destroy us, the intrinsic evil of our friends and neighbors.

But they were all myths. There is more money in fear than in anything else.

So, if you become too afraid, talk to a friend, a loved one, and a stranger.

And do not fear. Know simply that there is great profit for those that trade in fear.

Embrace fear with all the might at your disposal, and it will collapse upon itself, and be transformed in to the one true thing: Love.

People underestimate the power to love. They think it is difficult, or even unattainable.

So long it took me to learn that giving love to receive it is empty, sad.

Instead, love those who will hate you back. Love all there is, all there ever was, and will be.

Look around and hear the words. There is no love in the words. and this terrifies us.

But instead of seeking love, give it. Give it to every single eternal soul you encounter in this astounding, beautiful world.

People are ok.

People are good.

Don't try to change people. Just love. This will change more people than you will ever imagine. This is the only answer.

And, if it was not the only answer but just one of a trillion answers, it would be the greatest of all answers.

If you are unhappy, it is not your fault. Life has made you cold. But there is always a powerful fire of love deep beneath everything.

Love remains deep within most of us because of its power. We are frightened of showing it, frightened we will look weak.

But no one can destroy you, only your own fear. Love with all your might and you will see the world for what it is. And you will be happy.

And you will be happy when you stop searching for happiness and simply be. And that is when your love will pour into the world.

And, finally, finally, you will be happy. Happy for all of time. Love. Sleep well. Tomorrow is a wonder waiting.

Today was very tough. I am writing a novel and finally finished the first draft at 800 pages. After full day of agonizing, I am scrapping it. There is a peculiar pain that comes with waste: waste of time. Anything else you can get back but this time, this time. Gone.

I began close to eight months ago and worked at least two hours each and every day. This was my promise to myself. The typical day would usually be 7 or 8 hours. It came easily, like it was coming not from me but from outside of me. I suppose that magic feeling should have been a clue. It can never be easy. Unless there is a flaw alive and metastasizing. It was false. When you read words so empty of anything but tricks, you are humiliated. But it's ok. It was never published. But the time. The time. When I would take a break from the book, my mind defaulted to stand-up.

Stand-up is a very modern art form, barely out of its infancy. Comedians working today are very lucky it is nascent. I think the perfect length for a set of comedy is 20 minutes. I don't know why and don't care. It is. But an hour is what someone decided once. And so I have become programmed to think in one-hour increments. I try to find a theme and make sure everything I say fits the theme. The theme has to be invisible to the listener. But the theme is the abdomen, the core, the center of the power that the 60 minutes should contain. I have heard some comics begin each new hour from scratch, after selling the hour they have to television. I would not have the courage to go on stage for an hour with all-new jokes. So I have four one-hour sets before I consider releasing one.

What destroys any art, or any life I suppose, is ego. Step one is to remove the audience from the equation. That can be difficult. But the almost impossible is to remove one's self from the equation. I am lucky to be friends with comedians who work at the very highest level of comedy. It is my joy to discuss things with them. I very much enjoy comedy experiments and urge all comedians to understand this art form is brand-new and to try things. But only funny things. And these experiments should begin at very low-stakes. The time should not exceed ten minutes and seems to work best at ten minutes. To experiment with a full hour requires a great deal of time and effort. But it is possible. A book is an entirely different thing.

A great book requires of its author much education. I possess none. It makes me sad. Not as sad as the gone time. Gone time.

The most common question I see here on Twitter is if I have any advice on being a comedian. I have never given any but I will. It is said that you must write what you have experienced, that great comedy comes from truth, or from tragedy. All of this is nonsense. I am crushed by the time, gone and irrevocable, that these 300 pages have cost me.

But here are a couple of stand-up tips. I am not sure if this can be done by the novice, but if I could go back and do stand-up differently, I would. The big problem, oddly enough, when a comedian performs, are the laughs. Stand-up comedy, as it is customarily produced, is a craft and not an art. Here is the reason. The stand-up comedian must create a noise among his audience. The same noise at the same time by as many people possible. There is no room for interpretation. All in attendance must agree with the stand-up's notion of where the laugh comes. Anything short: failure.

But an art can be part of stand-up. It can be the central part. But it must be carefully hidden beneath perfected craft. Here is the biggest problem with stand-up as art. The laughs. Laughs are something all people like to get. Laughs that you create make you feel good, make you happy. Laughs cannot be seen as that. There is a point when some comedians understand that getting laughs is something they must not become addicted to. Because the stand-up comedian does not earn laughs. He must divorce himself from this pernicious idea.

At its highest form, which is all that interests me, Stand-up must exist beyond both audience and performer. During a show, there are three participants. The Stand-up Comedian, the audience, and the comedy itself. Stand-up begins with hard hard work. It should be worked and re-worked until structurally unbreakable. If you try to avoid any and all tricks, you are on the right path. So you have a bit that has been sharpened to the best of your ability. This is the end of the process. No. It is the beginning. You have done all that you can do and now you show the audience and it does what it strikes them to do. And that is the beginning.

There is a third player. But it takes time to understand it is the only real player. It is the comedy. I am not speaking metaphorically if I assert that the comedy is a live thing, that neither you nor the audience is responsible for. Knowing this, you can quickly intuit that there is a different way to create comedy and the first step is to understand it cannot be created. I know this must sound like a riddle of no practical use, but I urge you, if you are interested in stand-up, to consider it. Comedy has a voice, of course, which is laughter. And there is nothing cynical in looking at what makes people laugh and replicating it. It is good to make people laugh, even if the goal may not be that, may be something more cynical. May be money. More likely is the way it makes you feel to make people laugh. Until you understand you cannot make people laugh, you cannot move on.

In the comedy club, there are 3 things. The comedian, the audience, and the laughter. Only one matters. And the laughter was not created by the comedian or by the audience. It cannot be created. It has always been and always shall. As my book became worse and worse with each page, my stand-up has not. I don't know what I will release next. I'm a coward so I have hours. But the new stuff is a radical departure from any stand-up I've ever done. It is not written. It is not created. It already exists. I have found a process that allows me access to this endless library. But it metes itself out very slowly. I have about four minutes. The way to find it is to make sure you are not involved. That you are just an observer. It is so impossible to describe. I think the key to writing a book exists within this same exterior place. With creating stand-up (and perhaps anything) the key is to understand it cannot be created. It was, is, and always will be. There is nothing metaphysical in what I am doing an awful job in explaining.

You see, it has all come to me just tonight, after scrapping the hundreds of book pages, and looked for solace at a few minutes of stand-up. And I looked up (a habit) with wonder at what I always thought I created but had created me just to get out and about itself. It was a day of crushing disappointment, a day I understood I had been fooling myself for a long period of time. Gone time. Gone time. I will rest now. Rest for a week and then buy new pencils to replace the pile of broken ones surrounding me. I'm on to something. I'll share it with you guys. Peace. Love. And apples too.

Listen, I'm a great guy.

I once heard that isolation makes mentally ill people even worse and that, furthermore, the mentally ill people living on the streets are never touched. It stayed with me, that notion, that not ever being touched by another person can make you crazy.

So I decided that the next time I encountered a homeless person in New York City, I would hug them.

Well, that didn't last long.

First guy punched me hard in the chest, the second was a woman who cried, I think out of happiness. The third guy tried to jab me with a needle and made a homophobic slur, which was stupid because I'm not even a homosexual, believe you me.

But the worst part of the whole experiment was the unbearable stench. The unbearable stench of being. But at least it proved one thing. I was a great guy.

Now I live in Los Angeles.

About four months ago a tent city appeared underneath a bridge a half-mile from my apartment. So I'd go there a couple of times a week with a pocketful of 20s and be a real life Santa Claus.

And I'll say one thing about homeless people.

They recognize a great guy when they see one.

And that's more than I can say for people who live in homes.

When I showed up under that bridge handing out the double-sawbucks, everybody would bow and look down at the ground while they thanked me and called me "Sir" or "Captain" or "Chief" or my personal favorite, "Maestro".

"God bless you, Maestro, you're a scholar and a gentleman."

"No. I'm not", I'd say. "I'm just like you guys, no better and no worse."

Anyways, with all this talk of Corona in the air, I thought I'd mosey over to the city under the bridge, and see how my good friends were doing. They could sure use a visit from me in these times.

But nope. Everybody was gone.

On my way home, I saw one of 'em, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk rolling himself a cigarette. He was talking to himself so I took a seat on a grassy embankment a couple dozen feet away from him, just like the doctors say to do. I sure wouldn't want to infect him somehow.

I guess it's true what they say, that in times like these people really come together because he started telling me his whole story.

"I once lived on the nickel and I was a wino and most of us were. We knew all the places that give out the free meals so I can honestly say I never had a hungry day."

"They had a place called the Upper Room, and somebody told me that was a bible story, and they made a big breakfast spread. Then, around noon the Hare Krishna boys put on a big buffet, all vegetarian, prolly cuz their cows over there are sacred and all."

"Both them places were religious all right. But neither of 'em ever preached to you or nothing. Just seemed to be charity, is all. And none of them ever expected any thanks."

That line stung.

"But the best were the nuns. They'd make these great big thick sandwiches, roast beef and turkey and even a veggie thing, and you could grab two and they wouldn't say a thing, just give you a little smile. And you didn't stay and eat there neither."

"Nope, you'd get in line, they'd open the door at five, you'd pick up them sandwiches, eat 'em before the sun went down and then uncork the jug."

"Them were good times all right, bein a wino on The Nickel. Christ, we shoulda charged money."

"Yep, when the sun went down, that's when the cars showed up. It was like one of them Safari parks and we were the monkeys performing for them."

"And I admit when some station wagon slowed down, me and my pals would start up with the antics, yelling at each other, yelling at them in the car, takin a piss in the street. Christ, the kids always got a big kick out of that when you took a piss in the street."

"Them were some good ol days on The Nickel. Warm all over from the Thunderbird or the red wine, just like a teenager, playin and cursin and fuckin and fightin. Goddam that was fun. But nothin lasts forever, I don't have to tell you."

Wait, why didn't he have to tell me? Maybe I didn't set the world on fire with my comedy, but I did all right. And that's not the important thing anyway. The important thing is being a great guy.

"It was the meth fucked me. Before you know it you're living under a fucking bridge like those trolls they taught me about in school. Get real fucked up at night and then wake up all bloody and bruised."

"I'll tell you, no rich man ever hurt me, ever robbed me and beat the shit outta me. The only man ever scared me is the poor man."

"Hey, that's not true," I said. "Sure, some poor people might be bad but most are real great guys."

"Whatever you say, Mac."

"Anyways, everything changed about a month ago. I was trying to score and my dealer, Vic, he just laughed. 'Where you been, fuckhead, they've been drying up the street ever since this shit started.'"

"Then Vic tells me about this new AIDS what's in the streets. Cept it's way worse than the old AIDS. The new AIDS a guy don't give it to you with a needle or a dick. All he does is sneeze near you. Sneeze near you, Motherfucker."

And the thought of that made him laugh real hard, and the laugh became a rattling cough, which had me scrabbling backwards up the grass embankment.

In a sudden I remembered his name. I try to remember any man's name, regardless of his position in life. "Hey, aren't you Glen?"

"Yep."

"Yep"? That's his reaction? Like people are remembering his name all the time. I remember this guy and he doesn't remember me? He somehow doesn't remember the twenty dollar bills I always had my pockets filled with?

Then I got scared. Maybe he did remember.

"What's your last name, Glen?"

"Wouldn't you like to know, Jack. Where you live anyway?"

A minute ago, I was Mac. And now I'm Jack. Things are going from bad to worse. But what am I supposed to say, "No, I'm Maestro."?

"I live in an apartment down the way. Nothing special."

"Inside. You live inside. I live outside."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"You worry about your money. I worry about my life."

"I guess so." I was beginning to wish I had some Meth.

"Well, what say you go home now. And, me, I'll follow you. And when we get there we'll decide who lives inside and who lives outside."

Glen stood up.

I wanted to show him I knew this was all a big joke and that I sure wasn't scared so I laughed. But here's the thing. When you're scared you can't laugh properly. It comes out all wrong.

And guys like Glen, they can hear that.

I looked around for help but Glen and I were the only two people in the world.

Glen started to approach me and I sat there wondering if I could beat him in a footrace where the stakes were which side you lived on. But I decided I probably couldn't beat him in a footrace because I couldn't stand up.

Then I got lucky.

Glen began laughing loudly and cruelly, but his laugh once again turned into a ghastly death rattle, and it might be his death and it might be mine.

But it stalled his approach because he bent over coughing. So I reached into my pocket and threw a handful of twenties into the air where it danced side by side with the virus.

I ran and I ran and I ran and only looked back once to see Glen chasing the money.

Then I was back at my apartment with my lungs burnt.

And I thought maybe the worst thing about this whole pandemic is that people would turn against their brothers. And great guys wouldn't be allowed to be great guys.

And then I thought, I have to get myself some guns.

One of my earliest memory was when my mom took us to town and the park.

There were monkey bars and slides and go-rounds and I never got any of them.

I was only interested in the swings.

The entire time I was at the park I was on the swings.

When I walk by a park, and the park is empty, I swing.

The swing does not know my age and makes child of me.

The swing takes away all the years and weight and pain and shame.

The swing is a time machine.

I come from a place where nobody knew a thing.

I now live in a place where everyone knows so much.

I come from a place where we were all afraid and uncertain.

I now live in a place where every one knows the truth.

I come from a place where the work was so hard, there was no time for thought.

I now live in a place where not working is work and there is much time for thought.

I come from a place where discussion was about family and friends and local gossip.

I now live in a place where discussion is about famous people and Leaders of countries and international gossip.

I come from a place where we knew we knew nothing.

I now live in a place where we know we know everything.

I come from a place where we knew we were nothing.

I now live in a place where we don't.

May God forbid us.

When you start forgetting, it's a puzzling time.

But as you keep forgetting, it's a frightening time.

You think everybody's joking, telling what you said and did.

So you go along with it, but you wish they wouldn't kid.

But now I know that it's no joke.

Don't know what I did, don't know what I spoke.

Have to take your word for the things I done.

Who's that boy knows so much about me?

Who's that boy looks so much like me?

Don't tell me that cause it just can't be.

Why do you lie, why you make me cry?

There's a ring on my finger but this just can't be.

Whatever happened to yesterday?

Whatever happened to the month of May?

How can a man forget to pray?

I know who you are, you're the best there is.

I'll never forget you for as long as I live.

But you gotta stop lying about the things I do.

The things you're saying just can't be true. They can't be true.

I got a ring on my finger and so do you.

Please tell me it's true. Please tell me it's true.

Can't remember nothing cept I have to sleep.

Everybody looks at me with fear.

Something's wrong. Something's real real wrong.

Don't let me ever forget you.

Please. Please.

He went over the top.

He drowned in mud.

There's such thing as loyalty. There's such a thing as country. There's such a thing as duty.

Or is there?

He went over the top.

He drowned in mud.

There was Liege and Mulhouse. There was Lorraine and Charlerois. There was Antwerp and there was Ypres.

And soft boys died a hard man's death.

It smelled like pineapple and pepper. But you couldn't smell it too damn long. It filled the lungs and suffocated. Dead before you hit the mud.

When the shells hit, no trench could ever save you. The fragments flew in bright red glory. The fragments burned you right in half.

He went over the top.

He drowned in the mud.

Remember. Goddamit.

You are the last, so you cannot be the first, and you are dead so cannot be alive.

But a voice is in my ear.

And the voice sayeth it is the second death that is to be feared.

But it is beyond my will to fear anything but the first death.

And the voice in my ear weeps for me.

Upon the white stone, the voice says, a new name wrote, a name others will read and you will unread.

You ask too much of me. Far far too much.

For the weak like me, the ones too weak to deserve a crown of gold, is there no reward, is there only the unforgiving sword?