Argus Joseph Thompson, Insane, on Love

In the fall in Jackson Hole the frost swipes the leaves from the trees like a mad painter stripping wet paint from his canvas.  But this fall the frost had touched only lightly, and the aspens and the cottonwoods had turned translucent and yellow.   The first light stroked the cornices of the Gable Peaks, and the granite rims turned pink, and the snow at the top was also pink.  The leaves of the chokecherries turned the color of tree-ripened peaches, and the mountain ash was red with its clusters of seeds as shiny as red porcelain peas, and the wild geese flew across a Mediterranean sky proclaiming their profound joy, and the early light was aglow on Jenny’s face and on her hair.

“Soon the leaves will fall down,” I said. “It makes me sad.

“The leaves have no regret,” she said.  “It’s only change, and change is beautiful.”

Then it came blurting out: “Jenny, there must be something wrong with you.”

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with me,” she replied still gazing into the early morning light.  The light was light yellow.

“Then why would such a woman as you fall in love with the likes of me?  You’ll have to admit, there must be something wrong.”

She turned to study me.  ”Argus, are you feeling bad?”
I tried to explain to her that it was as if she were blind, and being blind had fallen in love with a person who people with eyes would have found unattractive to the extreme.

“You can’t see yourself, Argus.  You can’t see your soul and you can’t see your beauty.”

“You can’t see how crazy things are in here,” I said.  “It’s like the lions are loose inside the circus tent and the people are panicked and running every which way trying to get out.”

“You’re very brave to live in such a place, Argus.”

“No,” I said.  “I am the world’s greatest coward.  And I think I am insane and…”

“Argus,” Jenny said putting her arms around me and looking up into my eyes—she didn’t have to look up very far—”that is what I love about you.  You are who you are and…”

“Maybe I’m crazy, Jenny,” I said.  “Maybe that’s the truth.”

“No, Argus.  You’re not crazy. It’s crazy out there.  Not knowing what’s real is real.”

“My God!” I cried.  “That’s really crazy!”

“Besides, you’re an animal,” she said bearing her teeth and letting out a growl and laughing, and then she grabbed me in ways and in places, and we were like mating tigers, growling and wrestling and screaming, and after that when we lay together in each other’s arms she said, “I love you for many, many deep reasons,” and I felt clear about it for the moment, and I felt beautiful.

That is what falling in love is about, I thought.  It’s when the other shows you your own beauty in such a way that you can, for that magical instant, see it, and you can feel love for yourself.

 

Argus Joseph Thompson, Insane, on the Environment

Since in these days we have become more interested in the environment I thought it helpful to quote Argus Joseph Thomspon, Insane, on some of his scattered and irrelevant thoughts on the subject.  He begins describing the early light in the mountains of Wyoming.

Ah, the early light is the light!  Nets of light.  Yellow lattices of light.  Great tubs of light spilling on the aspens, and the tips of the sagebrush glow like embers in the blacksmith’s forge, and the jagged edges of the mountains turn molten.

In the early light the air is brittle and snaps at the ears.  Magpies squawk and the marmots shoot chirps so straight and shrill old boulders crack, and squirrels chip—chip, chip like squeaking wagon wheels, and the coyote yaps until the sun warms the tips of his shedding fir.  Then he curls up in the early light and, silent as blue bells, he smiles and slumbers.

In the early light the breath of horses make golden mist, and their long nose hairs are light yellow with frost, and you can see their jaws smashing golden grasses and yellow prairie daisies, and once at such an early time a great bull elk, its rack in velvet, walked among the horses and then disappeared into the web of shadows.

He has a girlfriend named Jenny.  They are searching for a nearly extinct creature named the “Two-toothed snail.” Argus continues in his description:

Through the cabin window the early light touched Jenny and left her ablaze in joy, and she glowed in a strange wisdom that usually only animals and children possess.  Some call it innocence, but it is wisdom all the same.  The forest creatures acquire it from walking with their bare feet touching the earth and from eating from the earth and from being nourished by the earth’s wisdom.   In the early light Jenny’s eyes were like the wild doe—soft and deep and focused on a place beyond my vision.  And I felt such joy, such pain, I thought, if only I were struck in eternal rejoicing like a rock.

“Rocks are happy!”  I cried.  “I can actually feel their happiness!”

Jenny touched my cheek with golden fingertips.  “Yes, rocks are very happy.”  And oh,

I wondered how

Such as she

Could ever love

The likes of me.

But their joy is interrupted by a knowledge that General-O Dynamics, a mammoth multinational corporation, is about to invade the forest and destroy it for lumber to sell to the Japanese.  Some of the trees are four hundred years old.

Then as quickly Jenny fell into deep shadows.  “When they come with their bulldozers and their chain saws and strip the forest bare and muddy the stream and turn the air blue with diesel exhaust, the last of the Two-tootheds will be gone forever.”

“Maybe we’re too late anyway,” I said.

“You must keep your faith on,” Jenny said. “I know they’re up there, Argus.”

I said, “When Judge Hammond hears about what General-O Dynamics is going to do to the forest he’ll stop ‘em cold with a TRO as we lawyers call it, a temporary restraining order.”

“Argus, the law doesn’t protect the earth.  The law protects those who destroy the earth.  The Constitution doesn’t protect animals and trees and buttercups.  A corporation can murder fifty million buttercups and not one can sue.”

But the Constitution protects everything.  Great legal minds like Judge Scalia claimed the Constitution even protected unborn human pollywogs in the first trimester, and if the Constitution protected pollywogs then it ought to protect the two-toothed snail as well.

“Judge Hammond is a Reagan appointee, and he understands the right to life,” I said.   “I’ll explain to him about the Great Wheel Up in the Sky and how the two-toothed is a spoke, and. . .”

And then Jenny grabbed me and kissed me for the longest time, and I thought that all that legal talk about TRO’s and constitutional law must have excited her.

When we came up for air I said, “TRO’s are rendered only if there is no adequate remedy at law, and… ” and sure enough she kissed me again.

Dear Friends

I am honored that I sometimes get comments that are pages and pages long.  I just can’t absorb these, nor, probably, can most of you.

I am sorry to delete some of these, but I just have to.  Hope you understand.

Gerry

The Great Gift of Rejection

Rejection has been the greatest of gifts to me.  Let me make my case:

I was rejected in high school and college from any of the elitist clubs.  Never asked to join a fraternity.  Had no fraternity pin to pin any girl with, which was tantamount in those days of being nobody and nothing.

I never was elected to any student body office.  I was rejected by the Wyoming Bar because initially I failed the bar exam – the first honor student to do so. I was rejected by the people of Riverton for a judgeship and by the University of Wyoming as a law professor.  The voters of Wyoming rejected me when I ran for the United States Congress.  Publishers have rejected some of my books, which made me a better writer.

As I look back on my life I realize that had I been accepted at any of these stops on the play-board of life my life would have been vastly different, and I wouldn’t trade who I have become (whoever that is) for any judgeship, seat in any law school or one in the Congress for that matter.  By having been rejected by those who I wanted to take me I have, involuntarily remained free, which has been the greatest gift of all.  Those who rejected me knew best.  I owe them great thanks, and by this writing acknowledge my debt to them.

Gerry

The art of caring

Two absolute requirements for a trial lawyer, yes, any lawyer are (1) a conscientious caring for his or her client and (2) the credibility of the lawyer. One cannot exist without the other and absent either, the lawyer is but an actor, usually a poor one, a gross pretender.

I argue that caring is contagious. One cannot ask a jury or a judge to care if the lawyer does not care. We tend to like caring people. That’s because we like to be cared about, and some of us like to be cared for. We tend to trust caring people. I say caring is a disease that can easily be caught. But true caring is sometimes hard to come by. Trial lawyers are asked to care for vicious killers, for people who commit horrible acts of cruelty, persons who do evil things, hurt children and cheat old people out of their life’s savings.

But the accused were once innocent children. As all of us, they began life with a clean, pure unmarked canvas. Much of what is written on the canvas is the cruel psychic graffiti, the ugly splashes, smears and slashes laid on the canvas by those who were parents qualified for that sacred trust only by virtue of their reproductive organs, by those who themselves were never cared for. To that extent, not caring is also a disease – one that is often fatal to a useful and productive life.

I suspect that we could put a wiggly little loving Spaniel puppy in a cage, starve it, poke it with sharp sticks, never pet it, ignore its need for love and sustenance and convert the pup into a vicious attack animal when it was grown. But there still remains in that dog the puppy. 

The metaphor is imperfect and sentimental, but you get the drift. One wonders if we are not placing our condemnation in the wrong place. Ought we not be prosecuting the puppy’s owner?   Extending the argument, are we not often prosecuting the wrong person – the parents, those who were responsible for the child, those who by hate and ignorance molded the child into the killer and the rapist – ought they not be the accused in the case? 

My view is simple:  I see the innocent child first. When I see the monster the child has become I feel sadness at the waste and horror at its consequences, and I feel helpless over my inability to change either the accused or the system that created the accused, a system that now prosecutes him with more of the same – more fear and more hatred. Indeed, hatred and fear are the most contagious diseases of all. But one thing a trial lawyer can do – and must do.  He or she must give the accused, the first victim, a caring and competent defense. 

Sometimes we can do more.

Here is an email I just received from a close friend of mine, Joey Lowe, a fine trial lawyer who is defending a soldier in a court martial proceeding. He is doing more and writes:

Dear Gerry:

Sgt. Nelson was a foster kid from New York inner city. He never knew his father, and his mother died when he was only 8. Family was something that Santa Claus could not provide but the Marine Corps offered and so he enlisted right out of high school. He was in the battle named Operation Iraqi Freedom where he was a combat troop who fought his way from Kuwait all the way up to Baghdad. There he saw some pretty terrible stuff especially at the Battle of Al Nasariyah.

He was then brought back again in 2004 for the worst urban combat fighting that the Marine Corps have participated in since the battle for the City of Hue in Vietnam, and some say Iwo Jima because of the close quarters and hand-to-hand combat necessary to root out the jihadist enemy.

There, he and his unit were taking fire from an entrenched and barricaded enemy. Sgt. Nelson watched helplessly as his best buddy was shot and bled out into the dirt streets because the Marines were pinned down and could not get to him fast enough.

The Marines gained access to the house only to find four military aged males sitting on pillows in this barricaded house pretending to be just innocent residents. Despite the fact that the Marines had dropped leaflets for weeks informing the residents to leave the city and that anyone who stayed behind would be considered enemy combatants, these four males said they were just house sitting even though the house was locked from the outside.

Once the Marines had searched the second story of the concrete house they found all kinds of military assault rifles, AK-47s, RPK which is a Russian Military machine gun, loads of ammunition and spent brass from the bullets they had just shot at the Marines. When the jihadists were confronted with the weapons, the spent brass and the smell of cordite (gun powder) throughout the house they just smiled.

The Platoon commander ordered that the jihadists were to be shot and not captured.

The platoon commander, an officer, was given immunity and never charged, the Sgt.-in-charge was tried and acquitted out in town, the second-in-charge was tried on base and acquitted and now they are trying to convict Sgt. Nelson, mostly because he refused to testify against the first two Marines. The Government put him in federal prison on Memorial day to force him to testify, but he still would not.

We have filed this petition because we believe that the command, through the prosecutor Capt. Gannon, have committed undue influence over the prosecution and according to military courts-martial rules and case law, the case can be dismissed if the judge finds that the acts by the prosecutor would leave the public feeling a loss of confidence in the fairness of the proceedings.

Therefore, we are asking for circulation of this petition for direct proof that the public perceives that these proceedings appear unfair.

All that they have to do is to click on this link http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sgtnelson/index.html and if they fill out a few fields, it will record their support.

Joey

For the love of murder

Why do we care about murder?

We murder every day as regularly as we take our coffee in the morning. We murder in the fields of poverty, the poor beating out less than a bare living like slaves without the benefit of more comfortable ways to die. We murder in the name of war – which is but an acceptable excuse for the mob to kill other mobs. War is only gang killing by grownups. We murder in the gas chambers, or with the executioner’s needle on the gurney. We murder children, that is, we smash their beauty and creativity early on so they conform like beasts under the line and yoke.

The murder demon lurks evilly, furtively, insidiously in all of us. We have felt it. As born killers we have seen it in our mind’s eye. We deny it with all due vehemence. Have we ever thought of murder? Of course, not. No. Never.

Have we ever threatened murder? Weren’t we only joking, or simply expressing our passing anger when we said “I ought to kill the sonofabitch?” Just a way of speaking, so to speak?

But why does the idea of murder enthrall us so? The television marketers know it – their endless violent murders. Why do we stare so at the screen, excited like waiting hyenas for the kill? The psychologists call it sublimation. It is our deeply repressed need to kill that attracts us to the murder movie. Thankfully we can kill by watching killers. Violence and blood is a requirement because a neat and quiet killing does not satisfy.

We are all killers at heart. We know this, but we do not admit it. That is why we are so taken by the killing of others and their stories – like golfers like to watch golfers. OJ. Why did a nation become captured by a brutal killing committed by a man of little intrinsic worth? He could run his ass up and down a football field but he had little more to show for himself. If he’d been charged with sniffing glue or stealing baseball cards would we have cared? Even if he had been convicted of wife beating it might have made the headlines of the “National Enquirer” for a week or two. But a murder? A murder by OJ was something that would mesmerize a nation. Indeed, we were captivated by a single murder while we allowed millions elsewhere to die needless deaths from starvation or curable disease, which, when knowingly and intentionally permitted, could be argued as nothing less than murder.

It is the terror of murder – both our fear that it might be perpetrated against us or our loved ones, and that we, yes, we, might in some fit of passing insanity murder another. We do not speak of this although the kindest, most gentle know in secret places that they have fantasized murder – thank God we have our senses, our defenses so well poised against this monstrous crime – but we have seen it in our own mind’s eye. And the murderer was we.

It takes so little to arouse the murder gene within. Especially among the young. We make soldiers of these just-past-children because they can murder so readily. We teach them to intentionally kill, to kill with malice aforethought, to murder, not one but as many human beings as possible if they wear a different color cloth on their bodies (called uniforms) or if they pray to a different invisible entity (called their god.)

Perhaps murder is the easiest of all human skills to teach. It is easier to teach a young man to kill than to ice skate or shoot a decent game of pool, or to recite the Ten Commandments accurately, the sixth of which is a commandment against murder. One notes that having no other god before one, or creating a “graven image” or using the name of God in vain, or keeping the Sabbath holy or honoring father and mother are all commandments that come before the Bible’s admonition against murder. Presumably it is more sinful to work on Sunday than to murder.

And because murder is so much a part of us there is a powerful subliminal defense against murder. Legally one cannot cut the throat of a surprised bed partner of one’s wife, but a jury will often find ways to acquit such a killer because murder in the juror might explode in full force were he faced with the same situation. I am only saying that murder is so much a part of who we are as humans that we accept the horror of it with horror, mostly because the horror of it, in the end, explains who we are.

The first step toward freedom

The man who sleeps under the bridge enjoys a certain freedom. The stag in the forest is also free. The first is free to starve and to die of exposure, the second to become a trophy on the hunter’s wall. The man with a family has lost the freedom of a bachelor who, in his single state, is free to suffer loneliness and perhaps a life without direction.

The worker has sold his freedom to his dead employer, the corporation that was never alive, but he can buy frozen dinners, a TV set and mortgage his future wages for his new SUV and a tract house that will own him. He is free to leave his employment and seek a more fulfilling job, but the new job will likely be as stifling as the old. The worker is free to vote for anyone he chooses. But his choices were sold out to the dead before he entered the voting booth.

Fathers and mothers are free to scrimp, sacrifice and save in order to send their children to college. Once qualified, the children will be sold to another dead corporate master in another city where their choices are substantially the same. None of us, not the homeless, the stag, the well employed, the mothers and fathers, the CEOs of the dead who are only the overseers of slaves—none of us are free.

The good news comes when we recognize our state as slaves. For recognition of that truth will permit us to take the first steps toward our personal freedom. Be patient with me. We cannot find our way out of the jungle until we recognize we are lost. There are many ways out. We shall find them together.

The way out

So we all want solutions—solutions that will free us. Solutions come in easy words. Give us easy words, Gerry, words that do not anger or frighten or hurt. We want words we can pass quickly by and then pop a Bud. We do not want words that cause us to pry open the thick door to the inner self—to the deep places where our status as a slave will be revealed.

We do not want our friends to say we are slaves. That word is too damning, too frightening, too unkind. Friends like you, Gerry would not say this word. No. Not a friend.

But if we seek change we must be prepared to abandon easy words. When we have searched the width and breadth of our slavery, when we struggle against the psychic chains and wince at the invisible lash at our backs then the pain will lead us to solutions.

What do I mean by our slavery?

I mean that state in which the person has no effective control over the course of his or her life.

Surely that is neither you nor me. Surely.

I mean, if no matter how he struggles, no matter how she labors at the task, if neither cannot explore their boundless uniqueness they are enslaved.

I mean, if he has lost his only power, the power of the self, he is enslaved. And if her passion for life is encaged by duty and the expectations of others, she is not free.

But surely this is neither you nor me. Surely.

To all of you who have shared your comments:

This is an exploding new experience for me. It is as if I have been wandering around in this forest looking for my tribe, and suddenly I have found you. There you are. I am seeing you, and speaking to you, and you to me, and it is a magic that leaves an old man weak. Thank you for your caring revealed by your comments. I have often said that caring is contagious.

I don’t know what to do. I am reading comments that startle me—that is to say they are intelligent, and insightful beyond expectation—some should be writing this blog rather than I. I marvel at the collective insights. Look for yourselves at the responses I have just received.

But there is not enough of me to respond to each of you. And I worry that if I respond to just a few then others, those equally inviting, will feel left out—sort of like the middle child who is loved but gets overlooked. So I don’t know what to do.