anny howard

HOW WE SEE IT

JOYFUL PHILOSOPHY

 

chapter 07

I was raised in a Fellowship Baptist family of one father, one mother and one younger sister. I was a golden child. Though conceived out of wedlock, I was the first for 2 parents and 5 grandparents. One was a step grandmother. Better known as Mary. She kicked my mother out of the house when she moved in. Mom took it personally. Which is understandable.

On the other hand, what don't kill you gives you a nice scar. And my sister and I didn't have to fear some kind of action like that.

The detail I missed was my mother's mother was 16 with my mother. Eleven years and four children later, she realized she was a young woman that hadn't had any fun yet. So she took off and left 4 kids.

No one talks about that. But that was the deepest cut. Mary came because she wanted to have a family and Mom was obviously in charge of it. It wasn't personal. Purely political.

I like it that my parents come from two different sides of the track. And I like both sides of the track. The train don't come any more.

And we jump to 71 in London or a year later. But the memory is in combination with finding salvation at eleven.

I didn't want salvation. It never really made sense to me how some people believed one thing and others something very different. And how the hell did believing something make anything different.

It was a magic show for kids. At the church. A Christian magic show. A lesson. Evangelical. At the end, like on America preacher TV, he asks us if we wanna go to heaven all we gotta do is come up front and we'd get saved.

Two of my friends thought it would be cool to do it. Mike was up for any adventure. Even if it meant giving his soul to Jesus. So I figured I'd do it too. I was going to have to do it some time.

A couple weeks or months later I got baptized up at the front of the church. In a Baptists church they do it like John the Baptist in the story. Dunk them under water.

It was a moving experience. It all seemed like it was happening. I was the person it was happening to and when I had dried off and sat back down in a pew, it got very weird. It hadn't changed me to make me one of the congregation, I suddenly felt I was in the wrong place.

They were just pretending. That's what it was all about. Pretending to be a Christian.

But I kept going to church. I wasn't the only one my age that went to church to do the family go to church thing. I actually enjoyed sunday school and was usually the teacher's favourite because I asked so many questions.

"When I grow up. I'm going to be Jesus and fight the religion of my ancestors."

"That's a nice idea. But we are Christians now."

"I don't see much of a difference. Certainly, for the many, nothing has changed."

I didn't say that then. I had no intention so clearly defined at that age.

Eventually my adversity toward my family's belief came to a boil. Two years it boiled between my mother and me. Until we agreed to disagree. And talk about anything else.

Now her son is a leading Bible scholar.

Life's a funny thing. And it is really silly to fight life to preserve rules written in an old book. It is a grand book and I love it and recommend its reading.

But a book is always subjective and the Bible was not written to be objective. To hold it as holy is myopic madness. And bloody dangerous.

It is not for us to be made stupid by propaganda. All written word is propaganda.

chapter 08

In the café I sell my brownies each Saturday is eight pages of the New York Times in the French News Paper. The Moon or something.

And I play the writer in Germany sitting in a café reading from the New York Times. It's not anything unusual. Many people can read English in Germany. I used to take them with me until I heard the voice of my mother in my head telling me other people wanted to read it.

And that's okay. She's write. Right. Fuck. I am sometimes too. It's relative of course. We are all handy capped. We know too little about most things. The News never really tells the truth. Too many fingers are in the news. Owners and advertisers.

The story, no surprise, is Iran. Now that we have practically forgotten Afganistan, the East European place, Vietnam makes too many films to forget. Iraq is an issue. It used to be a land where people lived. Now it is a serious issue.

And the writer of the article said there would be no American invasion or bombing of Iran. No one wants that. Or planned it. And in brackets (trust me). And I don't want to give out any secrets. Trust me in brackets sounds like a warning. So does Israel do the first strike. Iran troupes already at the boarders. It's a game. And the preamble to war is always the same. A big lie or a contrived event and the next place will be bombed.

Not prophesy. It's always the same. And I know me, or someone just like me, has written this a million time.

They are really fucking with us. And we must remove them.

chapter 09

When I was a kid and especially on trips to Florida or somewhere far away, I checked almost every telephone booth or any automat that might have money left in it. It was more than my allowance. I often came back to the car and told of my $1.45 or 60 cents. Sometimes just a dime.

I was thinking of the saying it brings good luck to find a penny on the street. It's not true. Not anymore. A hundred years ago it might buy half a loaf of bread. So that was lucky. 40 years ago, a penny didn't cut it. And now when I drop eleven cents on the Lidel parking lot, I'm most likely to let it go. Someone who wants to bend to pick up eleven cents has earned it.

And why does it take more money to be lucky. Well, they keep printing more and more of it. So everyone can have some. And feel lucky. Even if they are fuckin' slaves that are so obedient that the slave masters have left for higher ground.

It's a funny game, this elite fuck the slaves over and make them like it trick.

In fact, it's so fuckin' funny, I think they should have the Masters of The Big Fuck Over award. And the game is over.

Pretty fucking crazy, 6 or 7 billion sleepy slaves that could easily wake up to the fact that we are animals. And all the laws of survival must be adhered to in our game.

I don't hear you screaming.


chapters 10 - 12