Posted on August 28, 2014 by Billy Ray Chitwood


                                                                   Was Einstein Right?

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Okay, perhaps it is natural that an aging crustacean (as in ‘Crab’!) like me should be writing a post like this…you know how we are: grumpy, bitching and moaning about this and about that. But, know what? We have never been here in this place!

This place?

This place in the chronology of humankind! This place where cell phones are accessories to killing people on our streets…this place where a romantic dinner is interrupted by the musical chime-ring of the latest ‘carry along do-it-all’ world data gatherer and communication gadget that everyone just has to have – sort of like the past when we tried to keep up with the Jones or Smiths…this place where the intellectually informed folks who maybe ought to know what is happening in their country and world are not making the rounds so much…this place where the new games on these weirdly-wired gadgets show the blood and gore of our imaginary kills…

You know this place of which I speak, and, yes, technology has its upside – the dictionary is there in your pocket or your purse to check the big word someone used while trying to impart something boring and unimportant.  That little gadget can allow you to really blast someone you do not like, call her/him names, make threatening and obscene remarks, and you can even do it anonymously. What a sweet deal! You can be the bully without getting punched in the nose!

Oh, there are a few who are not so addicted to this great technology of ours that they have time to see armies clashing around the world…they have time to see the ineptness of our own government in forming goals and objectives for countering the new world of terrorists – or, should I be politically correct and say ‘radical Islamists’? Well, you know of whom I speak, those creepy crawling bugs that have been around for thousands of years spewing their hatred and genocidal actions, vowing to kill all infidels and to rule the world… Yes, those of you playing your monster games, these terrorists are infiltrating our countries, our cities, and the minds of their youth, finding it easier and easier to corrupt and dislodge great historical principles and wisdom, ‘shredding’ documents and laws by which generic man has lived in hope and security.

We have made a few blunders in our living… We have given too much to those who would wish us harm and death. We have misread the tea-leaves of history too often. We have made noble efforts to make our country and the world a better place. Despite our blunders, we are the bold and the good of everyman. Are we now to somehow prove to the world we were frauds in our ideals? Damned tootin! I’m talking about America, the greatest nation on earth. We all thought that was the case. Are we not still? All countries in the world look toward our shores, many relying on us not only for support, monetary and otherwise, in their times of crises.

We got to this place somehow, maybe through all the doubling and re-doubling of knowledge that brought us tremendous growth in technology – and those cursed chatty cell phones…wonderful inventions but easy substitutes for our real selves. Scientific knowledge and technology are good but it seems in so many ways we are making them bad. This place in which we find ourselves can be very scary and depressing. We need government leaders of grand vision and wisdom who can ignite that greatness that I felt and saw during the greatest generation, leaders who do the peoples’ business without posturing and wavering with the tools Science and Technology have provided. We do not have to stay in this place! We need to kill the ‘terrorist bugs’ that are attempting to fulfill their ‘virginal’ quests.   

We might find Einstein was partially right in his observation…but, idiots, we are not, even those using the cell phones, playing their games and forgetting how to socialize without cell phone messaging.

We are, after all, the United States of America. As our English brethren might intone in Winston Churchill’s fashion, “Let’s show these buggers what we have!”

By Billy Ray Chitwood 

A Common Evil - MY NEW BOOK!

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Yes, I’m bad! Plugging my new book – the sixth and likely the final book in the Bailey Crane Mystery Series. Each of the books in the series stand alone… Really, shouldn’t you read these books? They’re fun reads, and Bailey always gets the bad guys! All twelve of my books (mystery, suspense, romance, memoir, politics, government) are presented on http://billyraychitwood.weebly.com.

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Our Crazy Wonderful WorldPosted on August 13, 2014 by Billy Ray Chitwood


Our Crazy Wonderful World

Do you ever idly surf youtube.com, listen and watch the musical and singing talent that appears on the various global ‘got talent’ and ‘X-Factor’ shows? I spent a morning doing just that and felt some strong emotional stirrings bringing tears to the brim.

Musicians and singers as young as nine years old, some as wide as a small VW, female, male, all colors, shapes, and sizes, came on stage giving the judges preconceived negative notions as to their talents. When the unique and wonderful quality of their instruments and/or voices reached those doubtful ears of the judges and the audiences, eyes opened saucer-like, faces altered, and mouths were momentarily locked in a community gape of jaws.

The cameras focused on the stunned people as they slowly began to utter their words of OMG and disbelief, stood in unison to applaud and roar approval. Tears came to many eyes on the judges’ stand and in the large auditorium.

“Unbelievable!” said the judges. “This is incredible!” said the judges. “Amazing!” On and on the praise was delivered to the thrilled singers, most of whom cast their lovely humility and thanks.

My morning idling led me to search my heart, mind, and soul for appropriate digestion of what I saw…being a hopeless romantic and aging seeker of metaphysical truth. The best I can offer is this:

I saw the ‘beauty and the beast’ that abides in all of us…

A long-haired, obese and scraggly young male appears on stage with a young and pretty female. The male is shy and barely audible as he answers the questions of the judges. The petite female is more casual and open in her responses. There is a palpable awkwardness felt all the way into my great room television. Then, magically, there comes the beautifully booming operatic voice of the obese male and the accompanying female’s harmonious notes of unity, a tour de force with everyone standing and applauding.

I saw a young girl, Melissa Venema and her trumpet join the official orchestra of Holland and Andre Rieu to play magnificently ll Silenzio, a version of Taps.

I saw a handsome fourteen-year old lad from Australia sit on a stool with his guitar and bring the tears to all assembled with a voice so vibrant and clear, singing songs he himself wrote.

I saw nine-year old Amira Willighagen sing O Mio Babbino Caro with Andre Rieu’s orchestra, with outstanding beauty and clarity.

As I spent most of my morning surfing these venues on YouTube it came to me that our world is rich in beauty and talent, regardless the skins and structures our DNA dictate, regardless ages. The big question I asked myself in listening to the music of the varied many, why did it evoke tears? Were the tears a natural protocol of the aging masses? Tears of joy for the performing youth? Tears of sadness that these joyous sounds had only this momentary passage in my life already lived? Tears of remembrance for beloved comedians who made people laugh with their pieces of genius?

The only answer which satisfied me was that my soul recognized some eternal message of the ages – Love conquers the beast (the evil) that hides in all of us. The caveat that followed? It seems so much of the world in its misery cannot accept the beauty that surrounds it, and the soul cries in torment. Are the tears but another way in which God tries to reach us, to tell us that there in eternity we will find the beauty found in some idle morning of surfing?

                                                                                   Billy Ray Chitwood

(This post dedicated to ‘crazy and wonderful’ Robin Williams who made all of us momentarily forget pain and suffering with his frantic comic genius… Rest in Peace, Good Robin!)

                                                                                               ***

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Writing And Me Posted on May 22, 2014 by billyraychitwood

                                             Writing And Me

It is more than likely that we who write have many idiosyncrasies, patterns, and similarities. Some authors/writers have a special time during the day when the prolific flows occur. Some of us prefer early morning, others late night, still others when the spirit moves them. Presumably we can all agree that the time-element for writing is an individual thing.

What I write does not always do it for me but it comes close enough to make me feel that it is good writing. Sure, even after all the editing and re-writes, I can probably go to any page and find a word or phrase that I would change. Also, almost assuredly, there will be a small number of careless and clumsy typos and/or noun-verb disagreements. Will it bother me? Of course, it will bother me because I try for perfection – like we all do.

The plot, sub-plots, characters, and action? Will they be all that I want them to be? In some instances, yes. In some, no. However, if the tie-ins meet my approval, if the characters are drawn well, I will settle for the finished product. The essence here is that one strives to write the perfect novel, short story, blog, flash fiction, but can always find flaws, minor though they might be. I have come close, by my reckoning and my measuring stick, to writing an almost perfect novel, better than the first, the second, or the others I have written. I say ‘almost’ because there was something else that could have been written to make it all the way perfect. The reason that ‘something else’ was not written? So much time was consumed in the writing, in the re-writing and editing, that I tired and my impatience settled in the end for what was there.

So, what am I trying to say? Like the good golfer who can never win his first PGA tournament, like the good tennis professional who just can’t win the big final, like the carpenter who thinks he can get by with nails instead of screws, we as writers are good but cannot quite take it to the next level. We have the talent but maybe we lack that special spark of enlightenment, that patient ‘stick to it’ quality that will make our books best sellers and movies.

Do not get me wrong here. Writing does it for me. When I turn that special phrase that says everything I want it to say, that’s magic. When I write something that emotionally rouses me to tears or to anger, that’s really special for me. When my fingers dance merrily around those laptop keys in an almost automatic flowing, and, in the re-reading, it knocks me off my feet, that’s a winning lottery ticket. So my plots are not too convoluted and my stories are rather simple. That’s okay because somewhere in that mesh of words is part of me, visible on and between the lines – my legacy to those who love me and those who wish to know me.

With so many million writers across the globe, some for real, some not so much, the odds are long and near impossible for us to reach that pinnacle for which our egos wish to attain. When I ineptly try to market my books with my many tweets (ad nauseam for many folks, I’m sure!), add some amateurish book trailers, do Facebook and LinkedIn, offer KDP freebies, and doctor up my Amazon US and UK author pages, and nothing seems to bring the sale numbers up, do I despair? Sure, it is a natural reaction. Do I give up? Not in my make-up. I’m staying the course, writing for me and the world. It might take a while for the world to reach me, if ever it should, but I will have a writer’s life of ups and downs. There is so much to learn in this digital world and so much of it is a jigsaw puzzle I cannot put together. Being in Twilight, set in some of my ways, I’m not willing to spend so many hours of my day trying to figure out RSS feeeds, SEOs, Widgets, Apps, and the mechanics of cyberspace. So, I will write, do what I minimally can on the internet, and hope for the best. Plus, I’m too cheap to hire someone to do it all for me.

Careless and clumsy errata? Sure.

Good writing? Damned straight, it’s good!

While I won’t be making the NY Times Best Seller List anytime soon, I’m having a ball, writing my blogs and my books… It keeps me young and obstinate! 

Who knows! Maybe one day all the elements come together, that extra spark of hidden genius, that incredible flow of words that say everything in perfect connection, and suddenly the total package of fulfillment comes… Author Stardom!

If one truly believes he/she can write, gives honest assessments to their skills, and, most importantly, loves to write, then I say, stay the course. Success or no success, I have glimpsed life and have given my pen the joy of describing it. The desire to be known, the ego, will always be there, but, beyond all that, I intend to enjoy the process of writing for itself. Many of us wish for those elusive moments of fame and fortune, and some cannot seem to handle it once it comes. If that fame and fortune never comes, you and I will have found much bounty and joy in the writing process. 

Writing does it for me! (Warts and all!)

Billy Ray Chitwood – May 22, 2014

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Happy Birthday, Jesus!Posted on December 20, 2013 by billyraychitwood1


                                         HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS

Though it seems likely you were born in April, the date of December 25 has become the date much of the world has designated as the day we celebrate your birth. Here in the United States, most of our citizens enjoy your birthday as a paid holiday. On your birthday, many of us celebrate by gift sharing with our family and friends, participating in a special tradition of giving for which you are so very well known.

We do not know of every word you spoke and every deed that was rendered. Much of your living our historical experts cannot account, but from what has been recorded we know that you were unlike any other person on our earth at that time, that you spoke to the masses in parables for living an honorable and charitable life, that you spoke of God, your Father, and His Kingdom. We know that you were reviled and hated by the Roman rulers and were considered an enemy to their pagan icons and political agenda. At the end we know how you suffered from the stones and thorns of hate, how you carried the heavy cross to Golgotha, there to be fixed by nails to that cross and die a slow and painful death.

Some among us doubt your message of faith and the Kingdom of God, your Father. Some doubt that you died there on Calvary’s cross for the sins of humankind. Some even mock your words and arrogantly pronounce all your goodness as mere mythology. But they are few, dear Jesus, and there are a great majority of us who have read of your short time among us, believe in your message, who are not without sin but strive to grow our faith and believe in the miracle of creation – that incredible and meticulous nine months of a child’s birth, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the great order of the universe.

Our world today has changed not so much from the world you entered, dear Jesus. We still have those political and iconic problems throughout all parts of our planet. We have our ‘machines’ now that make our lives so easily disposed to sloth and idleness. We have our poor, our wealthy, and our in-be-tweens. We have created a bureaucratic welfare system that keeps so many of our people dependent on a government’s treasury, that makes it more sensible to stay at home and receive other people’s money than to work for it themselves. Yet, we do have those who truly need the goodness and help that comes from the heart, those teachings you passed along to us.

We still have famine and wars, so many prophesied in the Bible. We seem to be coming to some end-point, Jesus. We have terrorists who wish to kill us because they believe it part of their religious mandates. It appears we do not learn from the lessons of history. The world seems to be imploding while the good minds among us seek a paradigm for peace and prosperity.

So, in celebrating your birth, dear Jesus, I wish this long birthday card was a testimonial to how far we have come in loving our neighbor and honoring all of your Father’s ‘Ten Commandments’. Our knowledge is exploding. There are lots of new machines and toys for living, maybe even some tiny robots that go roaming around in our bodies to extend our lives, but, for good will and love, I fear we have not come so far since that awful day you were nailed on the cross near Jerusalem.

For me, Jesus, I’m trying to grow my faith, endeavoring to be better than I am, wanting that eternal life in that great Kingdom by your Father’s House.

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Billy Ray Chitwood – Christmas, 2013

 

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A Parable Of SortsPosted on June 30, 2013 by billyraychitwood1

It’s curious how the mind can wander off into a story…

During a ‘time out’ from working on my WIP (“The Reluctant Savage”) my mind began its wandering and somehow settled on some of the world’s more problematic issues – at least, from the perspective of someone living in the USA and being bombarded each day with unsettling news from far away places, news of Syria’s internal devastating turmoil, of Iran’s new leadership and how it might hold some slight promise for relieving old angers and hatreds, news of a North Korea that seems always deleterious and scary…

I reached for my laptop and began to type this rather small piece that became a fanciful story. I decided at its conclusion that it had some ‘nuance’ here and there and decided to give it a title, “A Parable of Sorts.” I’m posting it here because I’m a writer who can hardly ever let anything I write, good or bad, go to waste. Hopefully, this little tale will not be too disconcerting to the senses. With this said, here’s the tale…

                                                                            “A Parable Of Sorts”

Sasha begged him not to go. “You belong here with me, Leonid. The battle is within you, not with North Korea. What of us?” She tugged at his tattered coat.

He smiled benignly, “You’re a lovely and silly girl. You do not understand the reality of our time. To stay would be to defy my beliefs, my convictions, and, yes, my anger and hatred.”

“You would die for these beliefs and convictions, this anger and hatred?”

“We all must die, Sasha.”

“You brought me here to be left alone in a strange country?”

“Hong Kong is not a strange country, foolish one. We’ve been here sometime now. You know many of our native people. Go to them when your money runs out. Stay with them. Should something go wrong, I will return for you.”

“Please, Leonid, you go to die and you know it. You’ve told me of your plans. You go on a suicide mission. I’ve begged before and I beg of you, now, please stay!”

At the door of the small efficiency apartment, Leonid paused with his hand on the door knob. His dark eyes and handsome face held a strange and wistful look. He removed his hand from the door knob, returned to Sasha where she stood by the tiny dining table. “You are so beautiful, my blue-eyed wonder.” He embraced and gave her a long passionate kiss.

He then quickly twisted her head until he heard the snap. The lips were still in a half-smile as her head dangled and fell to his right shoulder, her blue eyes large and vacant in their death stare. In a whisper, he spoke, to the face he had loved, “Better you go this way, my dear Sasha, than to linger in life’s pain. You cannot know but I did love you.”

Leonid gently lowered her body onto a soiled stuffed chair just a few feet from the dining table, gazed upon her splayed form for some seconds, then slowly left the apartment. Tears welled but he willed them away, a final and essential part of his being had snapped and was forever lost to him.

                                                                                    *****

Night, reluctant to shed its vagueness, was slowly showing its lightened eastern clouds as the sun gave way to earth’s perpetual orbital pattern. Leonid walked in the shadows along streets leading to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. It was still quiet in this city known as ‘Flat Land’ in its translation. In his backpack he carried explosives with timer mechanisms that he would plant at key buildings. The explosive carefully strapped to his body he would save for the KMP.

His thoughts were well focused on his morning’s mission but he could not deny the flashing memories that brought him to this point in time…

His father, mother, and brother had been ruthlessly killed here in Pyongyang in 2012 by a squad of government gangsters of the ‘People’s Republic of Korea.’ His family was shown no mercy as they were chopped to death by machetes, labeled spies against the state. Four hours later his older brother and sister were pulled from their lodgings, beaten, and then chopped to death. The government squad had no ears to listen to his family’s protests of innocence, their legitimate reason for being in the ‘Flat Land,’ their labored cries of mercy.

Pyongyang’s government never wavered from their ill-gotten information about his family. Never mind that his mother had pleasantly refused to cater a special luncheon for the squad and their friends, the sole event and motive that brought the hatred and the killings. Never mind that his sister would be raped before she was chopped. The killings were all justified, each query quashed and forgotten by the government.

His marriage to Sasha prior to the family murders made home life an hourly ebb and flow of emotions. When sleep would come there were the hellish nightmares, waking, screaming the names of his dead family, his body slick with sweat and tears, Sasha clinging to him, sobbing, trying desperately to slay the night-dragons that possessed him.

Then came the job loss and it was as though the people of Hong Kong could see the rage in his eyes, the stench of hatred from his body. He became a man avoided and feared. Sasha tried to get him help, would set an appointment for him to see someone who might be able to help him, but he would not arrive at the set time. Sasha was the only person in the large city who could give him moments of relative calm, but then those times of surcease became fewer and fewer.

He would not bathe nor shave, only when Sasha would run his bath and physically pull and push him to the tub and wash and rinse him. For those few precious moments Sasha could almost sense some warmth come to him…but it never lasted long. The strange hatred that occupied him never resulted in personal damage to her. She did the talking, asking questions of him, and he bluntly answered the questions – until the fateful day he killed her! It was only some modicum of revenge that would fulfill what was left of his putrid life…

As he walked in the shadowy stillness, a voice came to him from an alleyway just a few feet away: “Leonid, I must talk to you. Come walk with me in the alley.”

Leonid stopped, momentarily startled…no one knew his name, knew that he was here in Pyongyang. “Who speaks my name?” He braced himself against a building corner near the alley, moving his hand near a detonator that would vaporize him and much of the immediate area.

“A friend, Leonid. Please come these few steps and talk to me. There is no harm intended. We will talk, and you can do then what you will.” The voice had a calm and soft cadence, and Leonid knew that the man spoke the truth.

Leonid walked a few feet into the alley until he saw a man’s form. What struck him were the man’s eyes. They glowed in the semi-darkness, matched the tenor of the stranger’s voice. Oddly, Leonid was not afraid of the stranger and walked some fifty feet further down the alley, stopping when the stranger sat on a wooden crate. The stranger bid Leonid to sit on another wooden crate nearby.

“How is it that you know me and what do you want?”

“I’m just a man who knows the pain you carry within you and the mission that you are on.”

“How could you possibly know such things?”

“I have been with you all the way from Hong Kong, Leonid, mourning with you the loss of your beloved Sasha.”

“I killed her! With these ugly knotted hands, I killed her. How can you know this, Tell me who you are and why you are here, or, I will…”

“Leonid, just a few questions I have and you can be on your way.” The stranger’s voice was mesmerizing, measured in softness and tone. “Why is it, Leonid, that we are here on this spinning orb we call earth?”

There was rapture in the stranger’s voice that commanded a response. “We are here to live in parables and to die and be no more.”

The stranger’s eyes seemed to glow more brightly and the long beard he wore was a pellucid whiteness that seemed somehow unearthly. Leonid quickly considered whether of not he was awake or in a dream.

The stranger spoke. “So, why is it that the moon falls from the sky, the sun does not bring us daylight, and birth has no precise process to follow?”

Still taken by the stranger’s soothing voice, but a bit nonplussed, Leonid responded. “But you know that is not so. What is your motive here?”

The stranger seemed not to hear the question. “Why is there no evil and good in the world?”

“Stop confounding me with your Socratic silliness. Of course, there is evil and there is good in the world.”

“And why do you think that is so?”

“God only knows.”

“You speak His name as though you know him, Leonid. Do you know God?”

“There is no God!”

“Yet, you say He knows about evil and good.”

“Look, your aura wraps me in some kind of spell and I seem compelled to listen to your words. Please tell me what it is you wish me to know.”

“One last question, your response, and I will say my final words to you. “Did you truly love Sasha?”

“Of course, with all my heart I loved her, but my heart and soul is heavy with grief and hatred.”

“Like the hatred of Jesus’ enemies as they crucified Him on the cross? Like the hatred of the Americans for the Japanese during World War Two? Like the psychotic hatred of serial killers?”

“Yes, yes! How else can I answer such questions?”

“You can answer such questions by having Faith that there is more to come beyond this life, by believing that evil only spreads when good people are paralyzed by anger, fear, and hatred. To Love is to have Faith. To have Faith is to have Love. These noble elements of living decide our ultimate destinies. People have choices to make all their earthly lives. They will not always make the right choices, but Faith and Love will make all the wrong choices bearable and inconsequential when the last grain of sand is gathered.”

As more light came to the alley Leonid thought that he understood what the stranger was saying to him. He wanted to say something but no words would come.

The stranger lifted himself from the crate and stood in front of Leonid. “May I touch your head, Leonid, so that it might bless you?”

With tears now flowing, Leonid merely moved his head downward. The stranger touched his head. Leonid sensed warmth on his head and a coursing flutter through his body. Then, the hand left his head.

When Leonid raised his head, the stranger was gone and daylight streamed throughout the alley.

                                                                                    *****

When Leonid awoke, his head was on his own pillow. He was gazing at the adjoining pillow into the wondrous blue eyes of his beloved Sasha, a sweet smile upon her face.

“You look different somehow, my love. Do you still intend to carry out your vendetta against North Korea? Please say that you will not.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled her face to his chest.

“No, my precious love, there will be no vendetta, not ever…” Leonid tightly wound himself around Sasha and gave her a long and tender kiss. “I’m torn,” he said, “making love to you, or, bacon and eggs?” He paused only briefly, “Oh, to hell with the bacon and eggs…”

[END of tale]

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The World Is Stretching And Yawning - Posted on June 14, 2013 by billyraychitwood1


The picture is a younger me! Okay, it’s a much younger me! During the days when this picture was taken, the world for me was a rare giant oyster with many lovely pearls. Oh, sure, there were some moments of regrets and despair but, generally, life was piano bars, pretty women, and usually too much of the amber fluid. Drugs were around my life but never really in my life. It was a busy time for making fun the order of every day, impressing the girls with my wisdom and wit, and, of course, my ‘etchings.’

For the most part my friends were attorneys, textbook salesmen, and mostly anyone who answered one question correctly. That question: “Are you a turtle?” If the answer was not, “You bet your sweet ass I am!” it would take a little more time but, really, anyone could be my friend. The turtle question? Just something silly my generation thought up to keep everyone amused – as you can see, it didn’t take a whole lot to amuse us! Sort of like some of the weird words and phrases of today… There was, however, a most definite difference ‘then’ as opposed to ‘now.’

‘Then,’ there was not the subterranean build-up of world issues. There was not the economic and job worries of today. And, certainly, there was not Terrorism – oh, there was some mayhem and murder, that kind of terror, but not the kind that gets into your subconscious mind and bubbles up too consistently in the current ‘now.’ I’m not writing about ‘the good old days’ – yet, there were good days mixed with the ‘down’ days when I allowed myself to think about the mistakes I was making or the sadness that was of my own making. In the ‘then’ days there were bad governments and there were good governments, depending, of course, on political leanings. Perhaps what I remember most about the ‘then’ days was the feeling of Freedom, that sense that, even with my periodic goofs, our world was reasonably within some tolerance level of diplomatic solution.

‘Now,’ it is more a feeling, a sense, that the world is ‘stretching’ and ‘yawning’ in some peculiar and scary ways. Some say we are seeing ‘Revelations’ come to pass (for those who might not know, ‘Revelations’ is a book in the New Testament of the Bible). Some say we are on the downward slope of our Democracy, that when Freedom and Liberty are eroded by too much government control and entitlements, we are heading down the proverbial slippery slope. Some say we are just going through a generational phase where the digital world is making our lives more accessible and bringing the world together too fast. There are new ‘words’ in the ‘now’ lexicon. There are new faces appearing in the crowds, their lips speaking in different tongues and their gestures not always friendly.

I guess we have always had our calamitous moments, mass murders, our children kidnapped and killed. It just seems tougher today to know who to believe, who to trust, when and where to visit, what to do and how to act when we get there.

Of course, when I think about it, I’m in ‘Twilight,’ and perhaps my senses are losing (or,  have lost) some of their acuity. Maybe those ‘then’ days are happening for someone else as I write these words. Maybe the ‘now’ is not so bad after all. Yeah, sure, and maybe 9/11 did not happen at all!

The world is stretching and yawning! A lot is happening, perhaps too much for the old brain to process, too many social networks to monitor, too many machines. If not stretching and yawning, is the world getting too tightly bound? It just seems to me we’ve lost some stability, lost some of the old standards that were so important to us once upon a time, lost some of the texture that made our part of the world so great. We write about our world and what is happening in it, but who can truly say where we stand on the timeline of history? Who has the compendium that can accurately foretell our future. Is it our government? Is it the Bible? Is it God?

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Different Shades Of RealityPosted on May 23, 2013 by billyraychitwood1
            
Looking down from a skyscraper in New Your City, the people look so small, as puppets moving on a giant invisible string. The cars, taxis, trucks, and buses crawl along like toys in a make-believe gift set. From this height a small body stops to look into a window filled with miniature pieces. Two bodies emerge from a taxi, met by a doorman, and are ushered into a hotel or ritzy apartment complex. All movements seem surreal from this lofty perch, and I’m all alone up here for my mind to imagine and scheme all sorts of life plots. What if I were higher, unable to see any movements, only able in my quasi-existential being to know that these puppets and toys are there and are continuing their movements? The mind ploy thickens.

We each see the working of our world in different shades of reality. We are similar in ways, dissimilar in others. We believe in a Deity. We are agnostic or claim to be atheist. We like a political party for that or this reason. We are truly who we say we are. We wear masks to hide what really abides inside of us. We contradict ourselves. We say exactly what we mean. We are habitual and predictable. We are wisps in the wind and simply go with the whims of our emotions. We convince ourselves that we are the masters of our own fates. We are filled with doubt and frightening scenarios in our existence… We are all these things, and, more.

From so high a Lofty Perch are our lives being controlled? Are we the puppets on a string? Is each of us performing an act that must play out before we become too obsolete to perform any longer? How can any one of us, any group of us, know with certainty the meaning of our time on this rotating orb we call Earth? We are filled with action to go and do marvelous deeds. We are timid and without any sort of resolve. We are violent and we are peacemakers. We are Saints and we are Satans…

So I awake from this silly dream, this exercise in futility, and find that I need to find for me a point to it all! ‘Cogito ergo sum’ works well enough, but I know somehow that, to keep going, I must keep dreaming, keep believing that something Wonderful got me here and will take me to where it is I’m supposed to go when the time is right. Yes, I am a man of Faith, a man who believes that puppet Master is up there pulling my strings, giving me my role to play out, just as He gives similar and dissimilar roles to us all. Some of us need my kind of role to keep sanity – it is the only role that I can play. For those given other roles, how can I truly say you are playing the bad role? How can you say that I am playing the bad role?

Thus we walk among each other in our different shades of reality.

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      A lucky man I have been. A lucky man I am. I get to be old now and watch the rest of the world in a blur of uncertainty, unrest, unified, and not unified. With all my mistakes upon this spiraling speck of universe, with all my unfulfilled dreams and wishes, with all the modest achievements, I can bring no ultimate wisdom and leave no notable legacy. But, here is what I believe has sustained me along all the orbits made on this magical place we call Earth. Luck has of course sustained me, but the most exquisite and precious gift of sustenance has come from Love.

"The Bible" Spectacular just concluded on television recently. The 'Special' was watched by millions and it was ignored by millions. Raised in an area of the United States often referred to as the Bible Belt, Appalachia, Hillbilly Country, and other names that could easily be determined unflattering by many, I watched "The Bible" with special interest. All through my early years of lower class mobility and family separation, there was a bewilderment that only a child can know and have difficulty in expressing, the anxious feelings, the fear, the frustration, the great unknowable elements that controlled his life. There are two indelible memories that have remained in my mind with some relative clarity for all the years and have convinced me of their subtle manipulations of my life, my wanderings, and to the ultimate conclusion that Love must be the most precious gift.

Number one memory, there were the family disconnects, the broken home, the terrifying and ugly fights of Mom and Dad when they were together (all too brutally one-sided against my Mom). The memory is so clear, sitting, paralyzed by my fear, too small, too scared and stupefied to make any kind of difference, so smothered by the invisible walls that surrounded me. My sister was there in her own little hellish enclosure during these fight scenes but I was totally immersed in this electrified frenzy within me. The facts would later settle within me that these fights were the result of the times, the Appalachian poverty, no jobs, the economy, health conditions... My sister and I would spend time in state institutions until the times got better. In these institutions we would see the good, the bad, and further bewilderment. It is perhaps impossible to quantify the effects this number one memory brought to my later life.

Number two memory, there were my Southern Baptist church experiences that came during those times when my Mom would make another attempt to reunite us as a family. There were the loud sermons that conveyed to me all the many sins that would keep me out of heaven if I did not repent from my evil ways (it seemed that the preacher man was talking directly to me although there were hundreds seated in the big congregation). There was not the paralysis that overtook me during the ugly fight scenes, but there was a heavy emotional magnet pulling me to the front of the church at altar call time. "Just As I Am" and "Let's All Gather At The River" and other beautiful hymns were sung by the choir and by the congregation throughout the big church, and there went I, this elementary schoolboy, down the aisle with tears on my cheeks to confess to sins I knew little about... I just somehow knew that I must go and be saved. Memory number two would contribute to the enormous sense of guilt my later life would carry

These two memories have in so many ways shaped my life, have driven me to find love and family. What do these simple memories say about 'matching and mixing' and about a world anomaly? What do they have to do with the TV Spectacular, "The Bible"?

My memories are not so unique... The world offers up so many memories like my own, some much more terrible and laced with the darkest edges of evil. "The Bible" TV Spectacular reminds me that the world has been fighting since the recording of it started in our oral and written histories. The world has known poverty and family disconnects by the millions. Church leaders still sermonize about the wicked ways of man. Today, we have more sophistication to go with our wars and with our family fighting and feuding. What is relevant today and through the ages is the incapacity of people to find peace within themselves and among the nations... Pretty tough when you think about it: different languages, different cultures, different skin colors. There is so much mistrust, envy, and hate to be found in any city, town, village, and country. AND, there is Love...

Love! Faith! Hope! Love is the greatest gift of all, but it won't come to everyone in the right proportions during anyone's lifetime...that is, with all of our differences, how could it be otherwise?

When I look back on my Southern Baptist experiences and my family disconnects, somehow I know that Love and Faith have to become something that each individual finds on her/his own. My God-view has been altered since my childhood, but I still have my faith, fragile though it has been. I believe the Bible has truth and that different interpretations can be drawn from its pages. I believe in Jesus, that He lived, that He performed the acts attributed to Him, that He died for our sins, that He was resurrected, that all who believe in Him will live again after death. My early experiences in the Southern Baptist environment does not portray my God of today, nor does it make me feel cheated. Forgive the truism but we all do not believe the same. My faith was not destroyed by my childhood. My childhood experiences and my life up to now have simply clarified my faith for me. I cannot look at the orderly turn of each orbit of our Earth, at the Sun, the Moon, the planets and stars, and make a choice as to the 'chicken/egg' conundrum of our existence. I cannot look at the precision of a nine-month birth cycle and determine that we exist because of a 'big bang.' No, I have Faith that we exist for a reason other than just living, making our marks, and dying. Yes, we must exist in a matched and mixed world of happy and sad, good and evil, confusion and doubt, but, up to the very last mortal breath that escapes us, even in that last fleeting second, we can see the eternal light of God.

I believe that Love and God are somehow synonymous, and that tug at the soul that brings a tear of sadness at a sad book and movie is a tender reminder of Love at a most spiritual level. My search for Faith and Love took many turns, right and wrong. I was lucky to find Faith and Love a number of times, only to misplace Them. But that search has led me to this point in the world anomaly. This post is not about corrupting anyone's belief system, not about converting anyone to Faith, Love, and God. You are superfluously allowed your own turns, right and wrong, in life. It's just my hope that we all keep steering our lives toward Faith and Love. In that striving may we find our peace.

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There are some things we feel, instinctively know, that we hold dear and very few counter positions can sway those special holdings. I'm talking about the feelings we have about the books we read, our children, our faith, family values, friendships, movies, political views, television shows, and other venues of thought that generally fall under the 'subjective' heading. These are things shaped by the merging of our childhood and adult hemispheres, feelings and thoughts that are inveterate, solidified, and otherwise likely not to undergo major alterations during our lives. Yes, there will be room for modification to these basic parts of us but, in most instances, they will speak of who we are to those people who might care to know us.

No big startling revelations in the foregoing paragraph. You know of what I write here. These determining factors bring us our world communities, our caste systems, our classes that define supposedly where we belong in the hierarchy of groups. Some of us are not as lucky as others, perhaps born into poverty, wealth, or somewhere in between. Some of us don't get the luck of the draw on that intelligence quotient chart. It is all well and good that each of us has our very own unique DNA network, but we will find our ways into the groups in which we apparently belong. Sure, there are those in the poverty group who are blessed with a promising IQ and have a burning desire to move into another group. There are those in the wealthy group who do not get an accompanying IQ that is promising, but they are less likely to go to another group. There are those in all the groups who are handicapped in some way. Some are skinny and stay skinny. Some have a propensity for weight gain and with some exceptions, stay overweight. There is some universally unwritten codex for determining who among us is cute, handsome, pretty, and who is not so. Funny, the way this programming came, the evolution from ape to man or the intelligent creation that places us where we are. We are born as equals perhaps but we don't stay that way.

When I hear, read, and/or see something spectacular that I don't understand like space/time continuum theories, galaxies, universes, black holes, splitting atoms, generally the mathematical and scientific stuff, I'm really out of my league - or, my group. I'm dumbfounded and fascinated by the world of cyberspace and all the technological advances, by quantum physics, by the rapid doubling of knowledge, by parallel worlds, by the 'Star War' movies, by the digitally enhanced Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino films, and by some of the marvelous books that envision worlds that I might or might not want to inhabit... Aah, the things I don't know! We truly do have geniuses who give our lives adventure, excitement, and new knowledge. But, gee, it is also truly staggering the things I don't know.

I guess maybe it comes down to this. In all that programming by God (I'm in that group!), it's like He gives us this big rock of knowledge and each of us chip off a bit of this huge boulder and that becomes our main interest in life. Einstein with his chip gives us that theory of relativity thing. The Greek, Euclides, with his chip gives us his Mathematical theories. Michelangelo takes a large chunk of that rock and gives us Art with his Italian Renaissance brilliance - like, the man does it all as an architect, an engineer, a painter, a poet, a sculptor! Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (recently departed) with their chips off the rock of knowledge add so much to our devilishly exciting world of the internet.

With my chip, what am I giving? I write blog posts, books, poetry, and songs. Poverty is where I begin my journey. Along my way, there are many mistakes. There is membership in that aforementioned Middle group, and I don't quite make it to that Wealthy status. It is my belief that God did give me a gift, much of it frittered away over time in gin mills and romantic pursuits, and I'm now trying to make up for the lost time. Whether my humble writing appeals to the hungry readers of our E-world day remains to be seen. My books are simple reads without a lot of complicated and convoluted plots, but I do promise the reader that pieces of me are there on and between the lines.

It is truly remarkable this new digital world in which I find myself, and I'm planning to stay awhile. I'm slowly adapting to the internet world, immersing myself in the merry madness of it all. I'm even giving away free books on amazon, one at a time. This next five days my first fictional memoir is FREE at amazon - fictional but over ninety percent accurate. The title: "The Cracked Mirror - Reflections Of An Appalachian Son." The true non-fictional brother to this book is just recently out (shamefully, 100% true): "What Happens Next? A Life's True Tale." These two books have seven more of my fictional books as company on amazon. For the next few weeks (for five days on amazon each week) my plan is to give away a free book.

It's my observation that this is a great time for readers. It is also a great time for authors and writers of all genres. Possibilities are unlimited. What amazes me is the incredible talent that is among us. What utterly confounds me in my reading is discovering the things that I don't know.

Please follow me on twitter (@brchitwood), check me out and scroll the 'home' page on my main website/blog at http://www.goo.gl/TeQpP. There's a quick bio sketch and a number of links at http://www.about.me/brchitwood. I belong to the following author groups: ASMSG, IAN, AHA, and TBSU. You can browse my books at http://www.goo.gl/fuxUA or scroll down the 'home' page of my main website/blog (above).

Charles Wells, Wellston Publishing, a good southern writer and twitter friend of mine, has given me permission to post a little story for you. It’s a story that hopefully you will enjoy and appreciate the homespun humor of it all. Charles and I are from the south, with me a bit more ancient than Charles, but his story here rattled my rib cage and I wanted to share it. Born and bred in Appalachia many years ago, I love the people, the purity, the simplicity of life in my native south.

We people in the south get a lot of teasing about the way we talk, our drawls and our ‘you all’s.’ A lot of  jokes have been created at our expense — we’re right up there with the Polish folks! It’s all okay for people to laugh at us southerners. We laugh at ourselves. Our gentility is fairly well known world-wide and gets its share of teasing. But most of the fun-poking goes to our hill people, to our rural folks who eschew formal education to work hard and play hard, who plow their fields and harvest some of the finest food for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner tables, who strum their guitars, ukuleles, banjos, fiddles, and ‘juice harps’ for a mix of music that comes straight from their hearts and souls. Maybe some of these good people get a little push from the home-brewed ‘white lightning’ and the beer they drink.

Now, the following ‘scholarly essay’ from my buddy, Charles, deals with the more colorful of our southern brothers and sisters. It’s my hope that it doesn’t offend anyone because surely we can laugh at each other. It's what makes this big country of ours such a wonderful place. We have freedom here. We can poke a little fun at college professors, CEOs, Presidents, Vice Presidents, government workers, people from the East, West, Midwest, North, and South. They're likely getting few and far between, but I'm betting we still open doors for the ladies down south. That doesn't necessarily mean that we don't believe in equality for women. It just means that's the way most of us were raised in that part of the country. Today, though, we're poking a little fun at my people, the southern 'rednecks.'

Sit back, take a swig of the suds, and read Charles Wells' account of “Billy Joe’s Night Out.”

                                                     They Call It Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer and Baptist Church
                     
      
There's a small town about 15 miles from where I live in Georgia. I'm not certain if it has a legal name of incorporation or not but I am sure the people who live there, all 119 of them, could care less what you call it. After all, it's their community and they love it. For writing about it, I'm going to call the town by the name most everyone around these parts uses, and that's simply, "Bubba's" but that's the short name. The full one is "Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer, and Baptist Church".

The reason everyone calls it Bubba's is probably because nobody has ever given this little area of God's earth an official title of any kind. Bubba's has been around about as long as Budweiser beer and the name sort of just blended on over to the location.      

Bubba's is located on a two lane gravel top County maintained road and has the worldly reputation as the origination of the old joke about "don't blink or you'll miss it". Every place is famous for something and that is Bubba's eruption to fame in that joke.

Bubba's main street is about as long as a four lane interstate highway is wide. There are no city services beyond volunteer fire and county sheriff but the unspoken reputation of the area protects these people well enough. The last fire that happened was one night when Billy Joe got drunk and then got hungry so he went on home from Bubba's Bar. Now don't get all fussy about drinking and driving because Billy Joe took a cab, which really pissed off Carlton the man who owned it, but that's another story for another time.

Anyhow, old Billy Joe got home and left the cab in the driveway with the motor and the meter running, then went inside his double wide trailer at 2 AM and proceeded to fry up a mess of catfish. His wife, June Ann, was sound asleep. She'd been up late watching a Honey Boo Boo marathon on TV so she didn't hear him come in. Billy Joe got the fish grease nice and hot then dropped in three cats he'd caught the day before at the river. What he did next is where the fire came from. He passed out cold on the floor in front of the stove and that hog lard grease got so hot it finally caught fire.

Fortunately, June Ann woke up smelling the smoke and realized the trailer was on fire. She grabbed her two children and some of their clothes, and then took them outside near the road to safety. She pointed a finger at them and snapped, "Now ya'll stay right here and don't move or I'll set your britches on fire, you hear me?"

When the kids nodded, she went running back inside the smoke filled house where she gathered up and saved her two cats and a parakeet from sure fire death. She got them outside with the children and then back into the trailer she went again. With much great physical effort and power, she managed to drag and roll her mama's old sewing machine out the front door, into the yard, and safely away from the burning structure.

By that time, the volunteer fire department arrived and told her to stay put and don't go no place. They'd do the rest. June Ann yelled at them, "Just make sure you run down the hall to my bedroom and get my daddy's old shotgun out of there before it burns up".

One fireman asked, "Well where your husband, Billy Joe and what's Carlton's Cab doing parked here in the yard with the motor running?"

Waving one hand toward the mobile home, June Ann said, "Hell I don’t know but I think I saw him lyin' on the floor near the stove but don't bother waking him up. He gets pretty mean after he's been drinking all night."

The fireman nodded then raced into the house. One of them found Billy Joe passed out near the stove and carried him outside to safety. June Ann told him to go put him back since that seemed to be where he wanted to be but they refused. Fact is Billy Joe owed Andy (the fireman) ten bucks and he wasn't about to let that slip past.

About five minutes and a living room sofa in flames later, a medic showed up and gave Billy Joe some oxygen out of a bottle. Pretty soon, Billy Joe coughed, gagged, spit out a pile of black soot and most of the last hours worth of Budweiser. Then he looked up at his home and asked with tears in his eyes, "Can they save the tires at least? They almost brand new."

The last crime that happened anywhere near Bubba's was the night Carlton's cab got stolen right out from in front of the Bar where he parked it most days. I don't really see no need to describe that incident to the readers though. I mean, ya'll have been paying attention so far, ain't you? 

So that's the story behind Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer, and Baptist Church. Maybe next time I write about it I'll go over some of the finer points of the neighborhood. Might even talk about the world famous Redneck Games held a few miles away from there. It's interesting I promise you.


Catch up with Charles on twitter @Charles_E_Wells or email at chasw@wellston.org


                                                                    Charles E. Wells - Wellston Publishing