"There will be no Holocaust."

[byronius]

Chant led by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, at the commencement of the Kerouac Conference in Boulder, Colorado, 1982.

I was there.

My friend posted this:

He said this:

"Sorry if this post offended anyone – well I guess I’m really not because I can’t even imagine such a thing. This is my most unspirited Christmas ever, and Eric Idle’s song sums up my feelings about this overwrought holiday perfectly. In my opinion, cancelling this obscene celebration of useless consumption (what, you say it’s somebody’s birthday as well?) would be the best thing for the world other than a complete conversion of everyone to a vegetarian diet. I’m not going to get either one of those things and it’s really depressing, so thank you Eric for momentarily raising my spirits.

Happy Solstice everyone!"

And I replied:

"Yah, it was great.

For me, the legions of despairing and unfed outside of my sight but inside my circle of responsibility make it hard for me to feel okay about this holiday.

:: There are actually people in this nation paying other people to make certain that 1) things go bad for Americans and 2) the black guy gets the blame.

::There are actually powerful people in this nation and on this planet who privately don’t give a fuck whether the human race continues to exist after their own personal death. And it would be nice if they would just express that openly (some do), but the most insidious cloak themselves in a pious posture of dogmatic semi-caring that becomes altogether grating during this particular holiday season.

::We haven’t had a mass die-off in a long time. A lot of people want one. They dream of it. Love films about it. Fantasize about being the only survivors starting all over again. Most of us don’t know or haven’t experienced the specter of mass, violent death, and after it gets rolling it’s too late to stop the fucking ball.

::Speaking of which, that report about how most chicken in the US is contaminated with antibiotic-proof superbugs combined with the news of a deadly outbreak of H1N1 in Texas (read ‘The Stand’) has made me a little nervous about the numbers ’2014′ which are after all but a skip away from ’1914′, a number which denotes the commencement of one of the Big Ones, die-offs that spike the graph.

::I’m grateful for everything about my life. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my critters.

I love words.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

'There will be no Holocaust. There will be no Holocaust. There will be no Holocaust.'

(Trogyam Chungpa Rinpoche, 1982)"