2013, lucky year or more bad news?

Well, I’ve had a bad cold going on three weeks, so that doesn’t bode well. But other than that, it took Congress literally until the last minute to pass a deal to avoid falling over the “fiscal cliff”—for now.

On other fronts, the $60 billion promised to Hurricane Sandy for storm recovery was also withheld until a furor from both individual Democrats and Republicans shamed the Congress into granting $9 billion now and the balance of $51 billion after the new Congress was sworn in, delaying the monies needed yesterday for the wrecked communities of New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut. Nice going fellas. You’re getting off on the wrong foot to the end.

Your record for doing nothing is almost unbeatable. Your whining about budget cuts didn’t include those that could be made by cutting tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires who abundantly populate our present plutocracy. So instead of tax loopholes closing on couples earning $250,000, the number was pushed up to $450,000, down from the GOP-desired $750,000. In D.C. this is called compromise. Anywhere else it is called selling out.

On other fronts, Syria continues to get bombed into the stone-age by US, Israeli and NATO supported guerillas. The urge for regime change from Assad rolls in a sea of blood and destruction. The havoc in Libya continues. The president is making his kill list and checking it twice. And the NDAA has kept its pristine mandate for presidential power to arrest and detain anyone, including US Citizens, indefinitely, without evidence, the right to a lawyer, and no explanations necessary. Sounds like the Same Old Story (SOS) to me. P.S. Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, two heroes for freedom of speech and press, continue to be demonized.

This had the net effect of my not even wanting to address all this crap again. I’m considering a career in greeting card writing, perhaps short story writing like Pete Hammil’s The Christmas Kid: And other Brooklyn Stories, set in various parts of my old Brooklyn turf of yesteryear, back in the late 40s and early 50s. It was a kinder gentler time, not without its fist fights or gangs or cruelty. But it was very direct and conflicts did not go for a decade or more, but the real time of mano a mano contact, either alone or with a gang, as long either could keep standing up to one another.

Today’s hitters, gangs, armies and good guys, like Egypt’s, had to contend with tearing down the tyrant Mubarak, fighting his army to the wall, only to be handed Morsi, with a goon squad backed by more U.S. billions, and have to contend with swallowing the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule—or back to the streets to tear them down too.

Nor has the fun stopped in Israel, with the ongoing war against the Palestinians, despite their new observer state status at the U.N. The mass grave being dug by Netanyahu is reaching hell. Hopefully, he’ll fall in.

In my native New York City, a woman pushed a man in front of an oncoming train because he was “Islamic looking,” and she said she always hated Muslims and Hindus for committing 9/11. I propose the sentence for this bulbous simian to be brought to the same station in Queens, publicize the event as beheadings were in Shakespeare’s day, and have her thrown in front of a train for the masses to see. A little Sharia law goes a long way.

As to the ongoing shootings of people by felons and felons by police continues, even as the Sandy Hook mass murdered children and their teachers are fresh in the grave, several gun shows have been cancelled, a glimmer of light, although NRA proposals of an armed cop in every school in America would darken us with the stone-age mentality of feckless gun freaks. Assaults rifles and expanded cartridge holders are still up for grabs. A ride down I-95 will bring you them. Pack them in your trunk, bring them up north again and you’re good to kill.

Then, too, Another Mass Murder in Aurora, Colorado, has occurred, renewing the violence there. “The Mercury News is reporting that a gunman killed three people and possibly himself after barricading himself in an Aurora, Colorado home for several hours. Aurora is the same city where another shooter killed 12 and wounded dozens of others just six months ago.

In this latest event, “An Aurora SWAT team engaged the man in a running gun battle after he retreated to a second floor window and began shooting at them. A police spokeswoman said that it is not clear whether the man was killed by police gunfire or by his own hand.

“At approximately 3:00 a.m. police surrounded the townhome after a woman called 911. She had herself escaped from the home. After the man barricaded himself inside the home, police evacuated most of the neighborhood.”

This comes as James HolmesJames Holmes, charged with killing 12 people six months ago in an Aurora movie theater, will appeared in court on Monday to face charges for the first time. So the craziness rolls on.

The best day I’ve had in weeks was to drive off to my favorite New York State Park and sit by the fire roaring in the great stone fireplace of a two-wall stone shed that opens onto the woods and the elements. The pleasure of sitting there in the silence as the cold wind blew through the warmth of the fire was indescribable. Stacks of chopped firewood offered you hours, days of warmth.

I would be happy to stay there or someplace like it for the rest of my days, in total solitude from the masses of barbarians called mankind. I felt in a state of bliss, crunching across the snowy fields and around the dirt and snow-covered road in the woods, and scaling a hill with a walking stick I picked up at the fireside. I could see a huge hawk sailing in the sky and making its inevitable dive from time to time. He was only doing his job in the inevitable Samsara of life, clearing our way to Nirvana.

If you think I’ve lost my mind, I haven’t; I’m just trying to lose my cold (which substantially improved in my time in the woods.) The air was so fresh and pure, smelling piney and of the sun-melted frozen lake. The drive home in my durable Volvo (nearing 100,000 miles) gave the strobing effect of the light through the naked trees, silhouettes of hills and mountains over empty highways under the alternating robin’s egg blue, slate-gray skies. This was the manna of the soul I was looking for. Do I know if 2013 will reverse its unlucky last two numbers, or be a banner year for free-love, popcorn, and the American way? I do not.

I do know that in solitude the earth’s love is always available to us, as well as that of the larger universe. Its depth echoes in our ears if they are open like our minds to listen to their voices—of beauty, a verifiable eternity of stars, and a chance for ongoing habitation of this marvelous planet and universe.

Attaining this peace begins with pursuing it and not just the seductions of our so-called civilization. Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, all the American Transcendentalists were aware of this. Emerson thought us all connected by an “Oversoul,” and we are, contained in that spirit with all human spirit. Thoreau advocated for Civil Disobedience, which we must pursue, like it or not, if we are to survive this awful surveillance state closing in us every day.

And then there is Melville’s Captain Ahab and his destructive pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick, the force of nature itself, from his whaling ship, Pequod, whose diverse crew was a compact of America’s people. In his blindness, Ahab, who’d previously lost a leg to the whale nevertheless pursued his mad business, which ultimately claimed his violent life. Will that be our fate if our destruction of nature continues?

Thus, as I float away in this turmoil “Call me Ishmael,” the teller of Melville’s variegated tale, swimming to shore for safety with my brothers. I will tell you if we want peace, we must pursue peace, in every conceivable way. We must use our hearts, minds and souls to seek it out and make it work wherever we desire it to be. That is the lesson whistled in the seed-bearing wind of winter as in spring and fall. We are consciousness or darkness. The choice is ours. The tales of each are endless. But if darkness has the last word, we are lost in a wood of error, in which love must once more shine, if it is to bring the light or life again.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.