‘THE RETURN OF THE THANKSGIVING SQUIRREL’ !
Oddly enough, my pet name for my daughter Seraphina has always been ‘Squirrel’, so it was with pleasure & excitement that we had the chance to welcome her here in Milano for a few days last week before she returned to her London home to gear up for more of the Musician’s Vagabond Troubadour’s Nomadic existence. A life she loves full of the type of people she feels most at home with & amongst.
I was fortunate in being able to give her the best education possible, so it was with great bemusement that after graduating, & ostensibly having other sundry options at her disposal, she STILL wanted to hurl herself headlong & footloose into a profession as headscratchingly numbskulled as ‘Ye Old Music Business’ where Music Is Held In Great Suspicion, and being overheard muttering the word ‘Art’ could get you blacklisted & thrown into an unmarked van with a hemp cloth sack over your head.
I offered her what help I might, while trying everything within my persuasive perspective to discombobulate her enthusiasm, but she was adamant that she’d not only persevere past my reticence, (“They’ve ALREADY Fucked Your Father’s Mind, Body, & Soul, SO WHY ON EARTH would you want to be involved in this wicked game of leveraged deceit ?”), but would use only the first two names that I’d given her (her ‘mimmers’ let me name her) & resolutely refuse any & all associations & assistance. Yet despite this incurable madness displayed by my first born English Rose, I’m proud as a dad of how she clawed her way through a business so notoriously mean, that it hurt even Charles Manson’s feelings.
A Great Time for Giving Thanx Indeed !
In a dinner table conversation with my family last week, I was pontificating as can be my fatherly wont when attentive ears are made available by bellyfuls of warm satisfaction, about the true nature of people being TRIBAL, as opposed to the pseudoscientific political contrivance of ‘Race’ & the Convenience afforded to the Governing Power Lords of the State as it regards the often forced contingency of ‘Nationality’.
Despite our best efforts to divide, conquer & claim otherwise, WE ARE THE HUMAN RACE, & everything that falls within its temporal domain qualify not as ‘Races’, but as TRIBES. As ‘From the One, Came the Many’. My point to my bambini being that Tribal Identity is far & away of greater emotional importance to how we instinctively identify ourselves than any other consideration. Thus the unifying necessity of a ‘National Language’ to bind the varying tribal collectives into a sense of Nationhood.
(Once upon a time, there were no ‘White People’ in Europe, but PLENTY of Romanians, Bulgarians, Irishmen, & Norwegians. Likewise ‘Black People’ never existed in Africa until OUR SCIENCE INSISTED that they see themselves as such, & not as Kenyans, Nigerians, Ethiopians, & Somalians).
Otherwise, & with little prompting, a Sicilian is a Sicilian, THEN perhaps an Italian, & a Catalonian is a Spaniard ONLY by parochial insistence, & what other incentives may be brought to bear for the Shepherding of Souls towards a Common Flag, waving in a breeze stiffened by the rhetoric necessary to convince a Genovese to give equal credence to the life & values of a Neapolitan, neither of whom finds it hard to abstain from telling a Roman to go & fuck himself.
Though in the Course of Common Cause even both a Rhode Islander, & a Mississippian, as well as a Native Californian will tend to agree that ‘WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, STAYS IN VEGAS’.
I asked my youngest Son, Federico Elvis whether he felt more Italian or Milanese, & his 11 year old’s reply was to the effect that he felt more identified as a Milanese (still heavily influenced attitudinally by their centuries as a City State), more so than an Italian (though both he & his brother embrace with both hands their Italian Heritage) because in his words, he was by blood only ‘Half Italian’, but was a full blooded Milanese by Custom & Culture. And this from a kid who surprised us when he was 4 years of age by proclaiming in his specific didactic Milanese dialect that ‘THE WORLD IS NEVER FINISHED’ (‘il Mondo Non Finisce Mai’).
What prompted this excursion into this exposition as so far stated was hearing one of my True Idols (Yes, I’m an ‘Idol Worshipper’ when I feel it warranted by my judgment of those worthy of it), STEVIE WONDER, a man to whom I owe a great deal, & for whom I retain a tremendous & abiding affection, post a message last week expressing his Appeal for Peace, along with perhaps a little bit more Love, Tolerance, Restraint, & Understanding, which is consistent with what he’s been peddling through Words, Music, & Example his entire public life.
It touched me, & gave me pause for inner examination amidst the general fugue I often inhabit oscillating between the rhythms that separate Chaos from Repose. I wanted to pass his message, as well as to share what my own contemplation had wrought, & settled upon my brow. A pretty erudite & perceptive dude with the lovely Mexican name of ‘Jesus’ suggested that we should ‘LOVE ONE ANOTHER’.
Nor did he dare suggest that we were obliged to LIKE ONE ANOTHER, because that in itself might be asking too much of Stars that Fell & are still too Dazed & Confused to see straight, when all we can see are the same Stars we Fell from, Dancing in Mad Circles in front of our bulging eyes like Blinking Astral Flames.
But to LOVE is to be willing to accept that we don’t NEED to like everyone in order to RESPECT THEIR RIGHT TO BE AS LOST & FUCKED UP AS WE ARE, & as much as our blinding judgments allows us to see that THEY TOO, in their OWN WAY are Searching for the Light that Shines, & the Ties that Bind our Spirits to Reason.
To LOVE is to be willing to STOP TRYING TO UNDERSTAND what isn’t OURS TO UNDERSTAND, UNTIL we understand it, if we should EVER understand. All that I can FOR SURE Understand is that YOUR CROSS IS CUT TO YOUR WEIGHT, & to the SHAPE OF YOUR STRUGGLE, & to presume as has been already said by the Immortal Poet Walt Whitman that;
“EVERY ATOM BELONGING TO ME AS GOOD BELONGS TO YOU”.
The Legendary Sam Cooke (with the Soul Stirrers), along with many of my Appalachian Ancestors sang:
‘FARTHER ALONG,
WE’LL KNOW ALL ABOUT IT,
FARTHER ALONG
WE’LL UNDERSTAND WHY
CHEER UP MY BROTHER,
LIVE IN THE SUNSHINE,
I KNOW THAT WE’LL
UNDERSTAND IT
ALL BY & BY.
And THIS IS THE GREAT WORK TO WHICH WE, HAVING TAKEN HUMAN FORMS, HAVE COMMITTED OURSELVES TO UNDERTAKE. And what cannot be as of yet comprehended, WILL in due time through Haze or Hindsight be revealed. I SEE YOUR CROSS, & I raise you my own & with a view towards the Far Horizon that like Glistening Pebbles Hug the Shoreline of Infinity, like Jigsaw Puzzle Pieces in Search of Posterity’s Portrait, I’ll see you when we get there, if you don’t see me first. And if Michael don’t Roll the Boat Over, before he Rolls the Boat Ashore.
From my Heart, my Family, & ALL the Heads at TreeHouse Publishing,
‘HAPPY THANKSGIVING’ !
23 November ‘23
Milano, Italia.
Written by Sananda Maitreya & Edited by W. Marmoset Yarn
for EIDMAR & ‘Shoot First & Ask Christian Slater’ Productions. (*)
#SanandaMaitreya #HappyThanksGiving
© 2023 TreeHouse Publishing – All Rights Reserved.
(*) I’m in no way professionally affiliated with the Slater Organization, but I DID bump into him by accident once at a Fruit Market in Topanga Canyon & he advised that I make sure to try the delicious (& quite nutritious) Guava. He said that he’d seen Stallone purchase some & I figured ‘Well, If It’s Good Enough for Sylvester, then it’s Good Enough for Me.’ Then I thanked Mr. Slater, A Fine Actor, & went home contentedly to a very timely & scrumptious Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich, some Goat Milk, & the philosophical musings of ‘The Simpsons’.
Happy TreeHouse Thanx-Giving ‘23 !