The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--46. Headed Towards a Day at the National Steinbeck Center without Knowing It

Destiny, Salinas, CA April 13, 2022, Steve Brown

1.  Open to the Pulse of the Moment

I want to write, write well, and maybe say something in the process.  Certainly, a lot needs to be said.  But a poem is as much an energy as it is a thing that says something.  A poet doesn't write poems, a poet is receptive to energy--the movement of clouds, wheat being whipped at forty miles an hour, gunfire at the 7-11 down the street, or simply Grandpa flushing in the toilet--it's motion that counts.  When you say something, it's because the energy is right, not because you feel like saving the world.  The rest of the time you're open to any pulse you can get, and you put it down.

I was quite young when I wrote the above in 1992 for a magazine a friend and I published.

That is how a poet operates.  I am here now.  I sit down, confident that as I write, my presence now will take me someplace.  I surrender and follow the flow wherever it goes. 

Maybe a life isn't much different than a poem.  Maybe way back then I wasn't just writing about poetry. Maybe opening up to a poem was just my initial way to begin to open up to life.  Maybe I wasn't quite ready to view life as energy, so instead, I was given an initial glimpse of poetry as that.

I've been reading and listening to Wayne Dyre recently.  He asks a lot of us.  He asks us to believe we are already living the divine life we have already chosen, and that by opening up to a version of our self--our energy or spirit--that is greater than our fear-based ego, we can each discover our own individual sacred quest.  He's asking us to shift from constant doing to constant being, which he calls inspiration.

I'm pretty open to this idea.  Afterall, I do know it is difficult to write a meaningful poem by setting out to do so.  Meaningful poems are a result of trusting that the poem will know where it needs to go.  It's not a process of creating, but rather of following.  A poet doesn't make poems.  A poet is receptive to poems.  When I wrote poems, I understood that very well.  I never sat down to write.  I sat down to open.  In fact, I named a blog where I will still occasionally post poems The Only Poem Open that Day.  The title suggests that the poet wanders around the city and finds whatever poem is open the same way one would find whatever bakery or coffee shop that is open late at night.  The poet is not the creator.  The poet is the customer.  Not all poems are open at all times.  You take in and enjoy the one open to you that day.

Maybe it is no different with this book.  Maybe I need to stop trying to write this book, and instead, let the book write itself.  

Maybe it is the same with life.  What if to fully blossom, all we need to do is let go of our ego and just let life happen?  What if fear keeps us trying to write a life for ourselves that doesn't want to be written?

Maybe much of the turmoil we feel is nothing more than our ego trying force us to do things against the will of our silent sacred self.

What if we are wild words of wonder stuck in greeting-card prison waiting to roam and wander this great big, glorious universe oh so grandly, but instead we've allowed ourselves to be packaged and marketed by the greeting card company called Ego so that we offend nobody and say little of importance, opting for a life that can be mass-marketed in a world of mediocrity.  What if we do that to ourselves?  What if we are born into life tart and tangy, hot and spicy, wild and wonderfully grand, and out of fear, we take on silly rhyme-schemes and sentimentality and become nothing at all really, but words forced upon us by the expectations of others?

It's a hard thing to believe we're already living the life we've chosen so far, and that it was something we decided long ago.  But it shouldn't be.  After all, the life we have is the one that is.  What else adequately explains it?  Something had to get us to now.  Why not simply us?   Not that there haven't been outside influences.  For some, without a doubt, there have been brutal ones.  Not every life is planted in the same soil.  It is extremely egotistical and unempathetic to think otherwise.  Some of us, like me, are very lucky that way.  Some of us got good soil.  However, some of us got planted in toxic waste dumps.  It's not fair, but it is.  Some come from families of love and stability.  Others do not.  But what if we actually chose that?

I have no clue if that is true or not.  However, it is very useful as a thought because it frees us from any resentment that we have against life so far, and that in return, allows us to open up to a life more abundant.  If I believe I chose my current now, I can own that and let go, and then I'll be more willing to open up to whatever comes next.  Afterall, no matter what life I've chosen up to now, I'm here, I've survived, and I know somehow that I've been up to that task, or I wouldn't be here.  If I believe that life just happens to me randomly, I may believe that I am not up to the task, and my ego will shut me down into a dry, thorny, bony twig of existence to protect me from the dangerous life I assume is. I may still exist, but I certainly won't blossom.

I choose to believe I sit here now writing this because every choice I have made up to now has given me everything I need to write it, and if I just open up, the words will come.  I express profound gratitude for every choice I've made so far because without making those choices, I would not be here now writing this particular thing, and I would not have all that I need to do it well.   Some part of me in the past accepted a life where I would be bullied because I know my ego, and I know how much I crave attention, and I know without the experience of being bullied, I'd be a complete ass.    I'm open to the idea that some higher self within me knew that and said, "It won't be fun, but I volunteer for that whole high school geek role because I know it'll do me good, and more importantly, I know I've got what it takes to survive that and move on without a grudge."

Maybe other people said something like, "Yeah, I think I'm up to that whole near-starvation thing" or "Yeah, I think I can still love a real asshole for a dad.  Why don't you give me Fred?  He can be my pop.  We'll duke it out until we both finally give up our egos and grow a bit." What if it is really like that?  I don't know, but it could be.  And whether or not it is, there is great power in thinking it so.  And it's an honest thought-train.  Because it incorporates reality as is instead of denying it.  It is a sort of is-thinking.  I don't have to deny that I needed to be bullied in order to be empathetic.  I can accept the real me.  The guy with the asshole dad can accept both the fact that his dad is an asshole and love him anyway.  I can live in poverty and not hate God for being born into it.  I can accept it as is if I believe I had some choice in the matter.  And then, because I believe I chose it, and know that I survived it, I can also choose to let it go.

I chose my shyness.  I write around it.  I'm not sure why I'm not quite ready to move on.  Something sometimes screams out from deep down inside me, Shutdown!  It doesn't happen at a conscious level, but rather at a cellular level. I don't seem to have any control over it.  It comes as an instant panic attack.  All I want to do is get somewhere by myself and be alone where I feel safe.  I don't know where that comes from.  But I believe I chose it, and just like everything else in my life, at the right moment--which possibly could be right now--that shyness will give me everything I need to write or do or say the perfect thing to help someone, and so I am good with it because it is.  I have chosen a life where I am now grateful for whatever is because I find reality extremely beautiful on its own terms.  I don't need to alter it to love it.  

If I didn't panic in the company of others, would I have learned to love silence sufficiently enough to recognize God speaks through the absolute stillness found in places like Death Valley?

I don't know.  

Maybe that same peace exists wandering through a room full of people, casually opening up and exchanging energy with each individual, feeling that connection to the one through everyone around you.   Maybe there is profound stillness in casual conversation too.  I haven't felt it.  But that doesn't mean it isn't there.  

An experience doesn't exist for anyone until it does.

2.  Destined to Break Down

April 12, 2022

It is late afternoon.  The sun is a hands-width above the horizon on the ocean, low enough the caps of the waves are starting to get golden-glazed.  Marci and I don't get to see that though because we are headed east into the golden hills between Monterey and Salinas.  Yet, I know where the sun is above the horizon by the color of the light.  Therefore, I know the view back at the place we left behind as well as I know the view in front of me.  As Emily Dickenson noted, there is a certain slant of light, and you know it when you see it.  Even the darkest oak leaves take on gold tint, and even the wide trunks come to life as the light picks up each crag in the coarse bark.  This is the time of day when each blade of dry, golden grass along the tar-crumbles and gravelly shit along the highway sings out in singularity, its individual distinctness dazzlingly divine.  

And here we are, winding through a sort of canyon, our heads angled slightly up to see hills blobbed with bulky islands of vegetation surround by golden grass, the occasional grove of trees down in the canyon with us, over-arching the road, sending shadows ticking across each of our faces with time, a metronome of light and shadow.

And then things open up.  We are on the flat.  There is a long straight road with a lot of traffic on the outskirts of town.  We're bypassing Salinas to get to our campground near Yosemite.  I notice we're low on gas--just as we pass a gas station.  I do a U-turn and flip around.

I stand here, pumping gas.  The sun is low--that time of day when the ugliest of buildings becomes gloriously beautiful in intense light.  It is an ugly, dirty gas station with not a bush for landscaping, but in this light, it needs nothing.  As beautiful as it is, I'm rushing the pump in my mind because it's windy and cold.   Also, we have quite a few miles to cover.   I hate setting up camp in the dark.

I go in, pay for the gas.   I get back in, turn the key to start the car.  Nothing.  The engine groans a bit. But it simply will not turn over.  The battery is dead.  What now?

The cars rush by, their lights on--a humming swoosh so steady that in its constant noise it almost creates a sort of silence, like the hum of a fridge or air conditioner.  I stand and lean on the car, wondering what to do.  An old truck from the 50s turns in, its headlight shining at us.  Maybe he can give us a jump.  I worry though.   I'm an idiot when it comes to automobiles, but even I know that car batteries don't normally go dead in the middle of long drives.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--45. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Human Rights Rally and March, Utah State Capitol, February 8, 2025, Steve Brown

And this I believe:  that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.  And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.  And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.  This is what I am and what I am about.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden 1952

Although now is the focus of this book, I am completely ill-equipped to understand today.  The United States has changed so drastically in the short time since Trump took office again through acts that are blatantly antidemocratic, blatantly anti-Christian, and blatantly inhumane, and also appear to be incredibly stupid, causing harm to not only his country but perhaps also to Trump himself, as resistance builds, including the following:

• Trying to remove birthright citizenship.
• Deporting illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, which is not an official U.S. territory, where occupants can be denied the basic rights the U.S. constitution provides to everyone within its borders, citizens or not.
• Threatening to incorporate Canada, Gaza, Greenland, Mexico and Panama into the U.S.
• Bizarrely claiming Ukraine, not Russia, was the aggressor, and that President Zelenskyy rather than Putin is a dictator.
• Cutting off USAID money to those who most need it.
• Trying to shut down all media who factcheck Trump.
• Gutting the Department of Justice of any independence from the president.  

As much as I attempt to understand the many good Christian people who support Trump, I cannot possibly wrap my brain around how any of the above proposed or literal actions fit into the basic principles of Christianity based on who Christ is as depicted in the New Testament.

More broadly, I can't wrap my mind around how America First itself is a Christian principle.  Since when did Christ teach that the way to freedom is through putting yourself first?  We are going through an era of extreme collective egoism that pits us as a country against the world, and I don't see how that can bring collective happiness any more than personal pride and avarice does.  Christ teaches that the personal path to freedom and happiness is by forgetting yourself in the service of humanity.  The more you seek personal gratification, the less you find happiness.  The more you forget about yourself and serve those around you, the more peace and joy you find, which is exactly what Mother Theresa understood.  Happiness comes from demolishing the ego and entering now in the service of others--not what you obtain materially or through honors.  It's totally illogical that the means to collective good would be any different than the means to individual worth.  The only America I can believe in is the America that is in the service of mankind, an America that gives aid to Ukraine not to get something in return but out of love and empathy and dedication to the principles of democracy and respect for the borders of sovereign nations.

However, I know absolutely no argument I make here will convince all those good, Christian Trump supporters of the errors of their thinking.  If anything, it will just cause them to dig into their position.  Who likes to be wrong?  I know I don't. 

Rather, feeble as it may be, this is an attempt to understand our times, which I've got to admit, I find completely baffling.

Which is okay.  It has to be okay.  Because it is.  Reality exists whether I like it or not.  If you live in an era of legalized slavery, you have to on some level accept slavery as the reality, whether as the slave or the slave owner, whether you like it or not, or believe in it or support it in any way.  Because for the time, at least, it is.  The slave has no real tangible means of not-being the slave in such times, and though in hindsight, it seems like it would be easy for the moral slave-owner to simply free his slaves, at the time that would have seemed almost impossible because of the extreme social pressure not to do so.  Afterall, if you let your slaves go, what ideas are you planting in the minds of your neighbor's slaves?  It is easy to make moral judgement on people outside your time period while it can be incredibly difficult to be moral now in your current reality.  Slavery is perceived as moral in a slave society.  Lynching is perceived as moral in a society where it's accepted.  Segregation is perceived as moral in a segregated society.  This is as it is meant to be:  societies are designed to make it easy to continue as things are.  You are meant to feel comfortable and at ease when you join in with the status-quo.  You are meant to feel uneasy and radical when you decide you believe in something superior to what is.

Because we live in an ego-driven world, Christianity, which calls on us to abandon our egos, is never a comfortable religion to live unless you develop two minds that don't talk to each other, which is exactly what happens.  The slave owner is a moral person.  He goes to church, he raises a family, he gives generously to local clubs and organizations.  But because slavery is inherently evil, he must beat and vilify the enslaved to justify his continued practice.  And if, by chance, his two brains do accidently talk to each other, society is there to put on the social pressure to keep him living the status-quo.  The great minds of the times develop theories about how blacks are cursed by God and genetically inferior to whites.  They reinforce the idea that the slave owner is in fact a good man, reminding him of his generous offerings to the community and how much economic good his plantation does.  But, if he doesn't listen, he himself is vilified and rooted out, so that slavery can continue.

But none of that changes the fact that slavery cannot possibly be a Christian institution.  Good people can and did participate in it, but slavery itself could never be Christian because Christ was incredibly concise and articulate about what He knew was the path to personal and collective freedom.  You can create whatever ideology you want to justify slavery as an institution, but the minute you open the New Testament and read the words attributed to Christ, slavery is abolished immediately in principle if not in practice because the Word is perfect.  It is above argumentation.  We instinctively know the principles of Christianity are true.  We are designed to love.  We are designed to care.  We are meant to lose ourselves in the service of mankind.  Nothing can make those beliefs untrue because they are who we are at our core.  

Hate has to be fueled constantly by drumming up fear, separateness, distain for others--driven by the ego in a society of competition.  Love is automatic.  It is our survival instinct.  Two people alone on an island will not kill each other.  In fact, I'm almost positive they will fall in love.  We need that human connection.  Take a free man and a slave place them together alone on an island and you will have ended slavery--at least until a third person is added.  Slavery needs society.  Wickedness needs society.  Wickedness is just another name for fear.  Jealousy is just another name for fear.  We do bad when we fear.  Intelligent, insecure men use our fear to motivate us to do things we would not otherwise do.  The slave owner enslaves another because he fears resources are limited, that if he doesn't participate in the economic system he is given, he will lose his position and the respect of his peers, and so he retains his slaves and continues to go to church and worship Christ, and because part of his brain registers the disconnect, he grows to hate his slaves.  They seem vile to him, almost inhuman.  He wants to beat them to death even though that makes no economic sense.  A healthy, happy slave is bound to produce more than one that's been whipped almost to the point of death.  But at this point the slave owner is no longer rational.  He just has to find a way to justify his enslavement of another.  Hate blots out his natural love and connection to his slave.  But if you removed all other pathways for his love--took away his family and his society--he would soon love his slave.  It is impossible not to.  We are built to love.  

There are exceptions, of course.  There are sociopaths.  There are tyrants who are sociopaths.  But there are not societies of sociopaths.  There have been societies of good people who support slavery though.  Many societies and many good people who called themselves Christian have supported incredible evil throughout history.  The same in Nazi Germany.  All those millions of Jews were killed by the support of good people.  It could not have happened without them.  However, it also could have been stopped by them.

I believe Trump is a sociopath, that everything he does is the opposite of what Christ would do, and I am making a choice to do everything peaceful in my power (which admittedly is next to nil) to change the trajectory of this nation, which I still love, despite what is now going on.  I will be at every rally I can attend against him.  I will be boycotting any company that doesn't support diversity, equity and inclusion policies, because I believe in those things, and I will give as much support as possible to fund opposition to Trump, mainly through the Democratic party, because that's where the most resources exist to fight him.  

However, those are my beliefs, and although I personally cannot fathom how Trump supports Christian values in any shape, way, or form, I do not need others to believe the same as I believe to be okay with them.  I personally know many loving people who support Trump.  They are good.  They are intelligent.  Many of them are even well-informed.  I wish I could somehow convince them that we are at the same point in history that Germany was when Hitler came to power because that is what I know to be true.  I can't even begin to understand how they can support a man who claimed Ukraine was the aggressor against Russia when we saw Russia attack Ukraine in real time.  But I don't need to understand all things, and I don't need to agree with someone to love them, to see them as equally human, as equally intelligent, or as equally divine sons and daughters of God.

I hope my Trump-supporting friends, family and acquaintances feel the same way and can accept my choice to stand up to what I see as tyranny.  But I'm good if they don't.  At some point the man who wants to be free from a society that believes in slavery has to be willing to let go of all that binds him--whether he be the slave or the slave holder.

At some point I have to be willing to let go of an America that believes all its problems are caused by diversity, equity, and inclusion--because I love diversity, equity and inclusion.  I hear DEI and I don't feel fear--I feel love, protection, and the possibility of a better world.

Therefore, I will be marching in love for the right of everyone to celebrate their diverse heritages, cultures, religions, and beliefs.  I'll be marching in love for the right of everyone to have equal treatment under the law.  I will be marching in love in hopes of an America that is includes everyone--gays, lesbians, minorities, immigrants (legal or not).  I will be marching because I've already done it once, and it felt great.  And I will be marching because my soul knows that's what Christ would also do.  And no matter how flawed I may be as a person, I know that doing right feels damn good, and that when I hate, it is my fear and ego talking.  So, I'm telling my ego to take a hike and gladly holding up the banner Snowflake no matter what the consequences are.  At some point someone has to step out of a society gone-wrong and say, "I still love you, but I cannot in good conscience go along with this".  Otherwise, Nazi Germany is bound to repeat itself under other names and in different places.  I will not be a part of hate. 

Illegal immigrants are not animals.  They are simply people, like you and I, doing the best they can to get by in a difficult world.  Their status as citizens means nothing to me.  Their status as humans means everything.  The Christ I believe is Christ of creation, and I believe His love knows no boundaries.  I don't believe any other Christ is worth worshiping.  I only believe in Him because I know the words attributed to Him in the New Testament are perfect.  I believe in that perfection, no matter how far I may currently fall from it.

Trumps America does not represent those words, that love, any more than Slavery-America or Segregation-America did.  But the America promised in the Declaration of Independence and established in the Constitution at least in word do.

That is the America I pledge allegiance to.  And I will support no other version of America ever--no matter what America those around me choose to give their allegiance to instead.  

My goal in life is to be happy and happiness cannot be built on lies.  Trump is one great big lie.  The lie is that happiness is found by placing yourself first in the world and making those around you kneel in subjugation.   America First is a one-way collective ego-trip towards misery.  I'm not going to ride that train.  Instead, I'm hitchhiking across DEI America as long as I possibly can, the hippy I was born to be, a vagabond snowflake, a rallying rolling stone, out for good music, good vibrations, God-intentions and love.