The Late Writers & Readers festival – Day Three – with Simone de Beauvoir

Tête-à-tête with Simone de Beauvoir of The Second Sex

Before I begin this report on the third day of the festival, I wish to thank Bapak William J Furney for giving me space in The Bali Times to resurrect long dead writers whose works had impacted societies across the world resulting in changes in social behavior, attitudes and laws.

This is a celebration and renewed acknowledgment of these writers who continue to inspire generations. The tongue in cheek reportage is intended to entice many among us away from the idiot box and ‘other places’ to visit bookshops to take part in the festival.

For all those women who have been and continue to be subject to male chauvinism through coercion and/or benign enslavement in social, religious and sexual obligations; here’s a few words of enlightenment and encouragement from eminent French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir author of the ground breaking magnum opus The Second Sex.

Simone and her friend, longtime lover Jean-Paul Sartre, are attending the festival more as spectators then participants. The Chinese whispers doing the rounds suggest that they are jointly working on a thesis to define the sexual parameters, profundities and existential dilemmas confronting a-sexuals and metrosexuals in the After Life.

I met the distinguished couple at a café over Kopi Bali, diced steamed Tempe and Kretek ciggies to chat primarily with Simone.

But before I share with you the details of the tête-à-tête let us take a quick glimpse at the life and works of Simone de Beauvoir that gave impetus to the feminist movement and highlighted the social, religious, historical and anthropological aspects of women in a strictly male dominated environment.

Simone was a French existential philosopher, who became the youngest teacher of philosophy at age 21, is the author of – The Ethics of Ambiguity(1947); The Second Sex(1949) which was/is a cult book for feminists and had been banned by the Vatican for its radical perspective of woman’s position in the world; The Coming of Age(1970); in addition to numerous short stories, novels, plays; and observations on America and China as a result of her travels to these countries.

In her teens, Simone had a crisis of faith that transformed her into an atheist. She preferred the life of an intellectual (though Sartre had proposed to her) than that of married life.

It is a known fact that she never shared her home with Sartre but remained his lifelong companion, while at the same time conducting affairs with both men and women.

I began by asking her to briefly outline her controversial book The Second Sex that arguably shattered the age old sexist and unchallenged views on women held both by men and women! This deeply insightful book continues to be the basic foundation of study in philosophy and feminism.

“My book contains two major themes. The first part delves into the “Facts & Myths” about women and in the second part I have attempted to dismantle the perceived notions that women are born feminine. When I wrote that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman I meant just this that women become feminine through the process of social ‘brainwashing and stereotyping.

Women have been relegated to being the “Other Sex” whilst man has taken on the role of Self. In simple terms, Man is the Absolute and the Woman is the “Other”.

I have paid heed to the facts including biological-scientific, psychoanalytic, materialistic, historical, literary and anthropological perspectives of women.

A woman’s experience of giving birth, lactation and menstruation are alien to man and therefore this prompts man to ‘view’ the woman as lesser of the two sexes, basically an unequal.

In the first part of the book I had explored the myth of the “Eternal Feminine” such as the myth of the mother earth, the virgin, the motherland, mother nature etc. This myth creates an unattainable image of the woman thereby ‘collaring’ her and disregarding individual circumstances and prevailing conditions of women in various societies.

On one hand the mother is venerated and on the other she is reviled as the messenger of death. She is both hated and loved and this contradiction traps individual mothers in their respective situations.

In the second part I have researched the role of wife, mother and whore to portray how women instead of progressing through their work are forced into the humdrum daily existence of pregnancy, giving birth, looking after the home and being the vessel for the male libido.

However, I cannot surmise that all women are innocent in the subjugation. Many of them who are living in Patriarchal societies have willingly allowed themselves to be oppressed for the reason of the advantages accruing, as well as, respite from responsibility that freedom/emancipation entails and offers/brings.

My existential belief is that every individual regardless of sex, class or age must define oneself and take individual responsibility that comes with freedom of Self.

I have shown the modern woman as one who takes the reins of her life in her own hands by empowering herself through actions like working and creating on the same level as man. So instead of maligning the male sex she seeks to pronounce herself equal.

My book suggests changes in universal childcare, equal education, contraception, legal abortion and the economic freedom and the casting off of the ‘dependence’ on man.

In 1970, I launched the French Women’s Liberation Movement by signing the manifesto of the 343 for Abortion Rights. Incidentally at that time abortion was illegal in my country.

An interesting part of my life with Jean-Paul has been the assertions made by my contemporaries that my work as a philosopher was not original. They probably based their misplaced assumptions on the fact that as we were engaged in a physical relationship ‘the other sex’ (me) was not an accomplished individual in her own right but merely an appendage to the Self i.e. Man. This only confirmed my hypothesis.

By the way, what is the position of women in this 21^st century? Has there been significant positive development since I died in 1990?” she asked.

I told her that wife beatings and burning, social imprisonment in stifling societies, female foeticide and more are alive and well and progressing in the world. Some changes are taking place in many countries where women are now on parity with men in some areas. Unfortunately, there still remains much work to be done in the field of education, protection and enforcement of women’s rights. The heartening development has been woman’s increasing participation in politics which has brought about a new kind of empowerment.

“Jean-Paul and I have noticed that there are quite a few single western women who have made Bali their home. Any thoughts on this subject that you can share with us?” she asked.

I suggested that they meet some of the women in question; adding that they (women) were not discards from the countries from whence they came but probably fleeing their apparent masculine culture to the safe haven of Bali’s ‘feminine environment’.

Simone nodded her head and looked at Jean-Paul who by now was listening intently to our dialogue. She told me that they had been to a delightful Kecak dance performance the previous day and were now looking forward to their weeklong sojourn in enchanting Amed.

Prior to leaving the café, Simone wrote down something on a piece of paper, folded it and handed it to me.

After their departure I opened the folded paper to read what she had written…

“If I do not actively seek to help those who are not free, I am implicated in their oppression”.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

The Late Writers & Readers festival – Day Two – Oscar Wilde in Bali

We are now into the second day of this lively festival of internationally renowned dead writers who have arrived in paradise wearing coats of many cultures waxing eloquent on the frailties of life and the temptations of physiological attractions.

When I dropped into the festival office to collect my Press Lunch Pass I was greeted by the apparition of Oscar Wilde singing platitudes in a longitude position, sipping ever so gently on absinthe whilst tapping his upright knee with his index finger.

He glanced at me and said with a flourish, “My dear fellow are you one of the locals? Could you be so kind as to tell one what a gentleman of leisure may indulge in after 10.30 pm in Ubud, for I’ve noticed it gets awfully quiet and submissive to the elements?”

I invited him to join me on a nocturnal run, down to Kuta, to partake of decadence in throbbing environs.

“You’re a good soul, if ever one exists. Thank you,” he replied.

Before I embark on an evening with a Victorian celebrity permit me to enlighten you on the distinguished gentleman in question.

To understand this famous Irish Playwright of the Victorian Era it is essential to read his two famous works, a play titled The Importance of Being Earnest and the sole novel that he wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in1854 and died penniless in Paris in 1900. His life as a dandy and bisexual was the subject of much gossip in the hypocritical and suppressed Victorian society. His downfall came when he was convicted of homoeroticism and incarcerated for two years. On his release he quietly left for Paris where he spent the last three years of his life under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth. He is buried at the Pére Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The works of Oscar Wilde continues to be relevant even today where sections of society in many countries still remain suppressed by self appointed moralists masquerading as keepers of a faith.

Later in the day when the sun had set and the full moon rose to the occasion, we drove down to Mix Well on Jalan Dhyana Pura to witness the likes of Priscilla Queen of The Desert perform, in the heat of the night, a hip displacing rendition of Dancing Queen.

The steamy atmosphere, blinking lights and perspiring bodies of plebeians sandwiched between Johnny Walkers and Bintangs was acutely unbearable even for Oscar who appeared flustered by the scene.

“Let’s go somewhere else, please”, he said.

We walked across the street to Kudos and ensconced ourselves on a cement sofa festooned with red cushions; and soon we were whetting our whistles with strawberry martinis and gazing, albeit a bit distractedly, at the shenanigans of the night crawlers.

I turned to Oscar and asked, “Could you share with the readers of The Bali Times some of your thoughts on life in general and a brief sketch of your novel The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

His reply encapsulated a number of his witticisms from his published works and is probably familiar to Wilde’s avid followers. However, for the benefit of those unfortunates who have yet to encounter this literary giant’s outpourings, here’s a taste of Oscar Wilde!

“Let me begin by saying that it is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

Mark, I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good character and my enemies for their good intellect.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

What a fuss people make about fidelity. Why even in love it is purely a question of physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not, old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

And when it comes to reason, I have this to say – I can stand brute force, brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

As for society – civilized society, at least is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals.

However, I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

I was married once and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. Most of the time, I never knew where my wife was and my wife never knew what I was doing.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies. Therefore, one should always be in love. That is the reason why one should never marry.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.

I believe that if a man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream – I believe that the world would gain such fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism. But the bravest among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure or the luxury of regret. The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

And speaking about temptation, let us yield to another round of martinis. What say you my friend”, said Oscar.

I ordered another round of drinks. By now two Bancis (pretty boys) were sitting at our table listening to Oscar craft each sentence and enunciate every word, rolling them on his tongue and spinning them out. Though they didn’t understand a word it was apparent that they were mesmerized by Oscar’s theatricals.

A rough sketch of The Picture of Dorian Gray:

Dorian gray is an effeminate and beautiful young man whose portrait is painted by an artist named Basil Hallward. When Lord Henry, a friend of Basil’s, meets Dorian he convinces him that beauty and fulfilling one’s desires were the main essentials of life. Aware at this point that he would in time lose his beauty the narcissist in him comes to the fore.

“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait, “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June…If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

Though Dorian’s wish comes true his portrait absorbs all the ugliness of his life. It slowly morphs into a grotesque image. Dorian in a fit of conscious rage murders Basil Hallward (the artist) for having created the portrait. At the end of the novel he attempts to destroy the picture with a knife. He fails and is discovered by his servants in a mummified form with a knife in his heart. The picture reverts to its original splendor.

Oscar took a sip of his drink and looked at me and said, “Aaahhhh! …fair youth and beauty are impostors for they lull us into false notions that we can remain the same forever. But youth is a passing phase, just one part of our whole lives. Narcissism reigns supreme when we feel the freshness in our loins and the brightness in our hearts. For a moment we think we can be young and beautiful forever.”

Loud music suddenly erupted in the restaurant drowning out all hopes of further conversation. I fondled my drink as Oscar went into spasms trying to communicate in sign language with the Bancis. After a few minutes he turned to me and patted my hand to catch my attention. He gestured that he would not be returning to the hills with me that night.

I left the pulsating place for the comfort of my room and the words spoken by one of the greatest playwrights who had fallen from grace in his mortal life but was resurrected in death.

“It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat”.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

The Late Writers & Readers Festival – Day One

This is the first in a series of meetings with remarkable writers who are attending the festival. In this issue we discuss with D.H.Lawrence his controversial book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Tell me a word

That you’ve often heard,

Yet it makes you squint

When you see it in print!

Tell me a thing

That you’ve often seen,

Yet if put in a book

It makes you turn green!

Tell me a thing

That you often do,

When described in a story

Shocks you through and through!

Tell me what’s wrong

With words or with you

That you don’t mind the thing

Yet the name is taboo!

– D.H.Lawrence, Conundrums.

Some months ago when the moon played truant with the night and the shadows had taken a day off, a visitor from the twilight zone dropped in unannounced to invite me to the festival. The visitor, the director of the festival, was none other than Sylvia Plath. Her captivating melancholic demeanor was overwhelming so I had to accept the invitation.

There are no tickets or dinners or literary lunches or congregating culture vultures or for that matter book launches or book signing ceremonies. The uniqueness of this 24 x 7 festival is that every visitor can conduct a one on one with any (late) writer or poet by simply walking into a book shop and picking up one of his or her works; and then, reading it in the confines of one’s mind.

So join me dear readers of The Bali Times on this truly enchanting journey through the labyrinth of the lexicon world of (late) authors who have often brought enlightenment to oppressed or suppressed peoples.

Just the other day I bumped into David Herbert Lawrence and wife Frieda (nee von Richthofen and cousin of the German Ace Fighter Pilot Baron Manfred von Richthofen aka the Red Baron) walking through the mist covered rice fields.

I invited the couple to high tea at Casa Luna, which they graciously accepted. So come the day we met at the restaurant to partake of decadence punctuated by the brilliance of David’s words.

This soft spoken author of such controversial works as Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1929) that was greeted with lawsuits for obscenity in England in 1960; and the collection of poems titled Pansies (1929) which was banned on publication in England; had been lambasted by the self appointed guardians of misplaced morality. They had uttered such statements as “…if a search were made through all the literature of all the ages, as foul a book might be found, not fouler…” and “…this book excels in filth…it was created out of the turgid vigour of a poisoned mind…”

After the pleasantries and pastries and steaming Kopi Bali, I asked David to tell me why he wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover in a style deliberately to provoke the public.

“Mark, I lived in a society that had ‘corseted’ itself in narrow-mindedness to a point that even mention of sexual acts was an abomination. Putting it in print was vulgar. Yet promiscuity thrived in the privacy of homes, boarding houses and wheat fields. My novel is justified in so far as stating the truth, exposing the hypocrisy at that time. I detested the stifling contemporary morality.

The protagonists in the novel, Connie and Mellors, are symbols of individuality for they in a way, crafted their own moral code outside the confines of a prevalent culture. The love affair between an aristocrat and a game keeper is a challenge to society and instigation to reassess its social and sexual prejudices. The graphic rendition in words of the explicit sex scenes was a deliberate attempt to press home my point of view.

Has anything changed since I died of tuberculosis in Vence, France in 1930?” he asked while sipping his Kopi Bali.

“Not really”, I replied, “There are pockets of morality that are entrenched in medieval mentality. Methinks the world in your time and now seems curiously unchanged in many ways. Your novel may still be banned in many countries for obscenity. I guess enlightenment is still on its way”.

For those readers who haven’t encountered this prolific writer’s book, here is a very brief synopsis.

Constance (Connie) Chatterley is married to Sir Clifford, a writer, intellectual and landowner who is confined to a wheelchair as he has been injured in Flanders in the Great War. The couple reside at Wragby Hall in the Midlands. Connie has a short but unsatisfying affair with a well known playwright, Michaelis, which is then followed by a steamy and passionate relationship with the game keeper, Oliver Mellors. She gets pregnant, goes to Venice to obscure the baby’s parentage. Finally, Connie decides to tell her husband the truth for she wants to be married to Mellors who is already married to someone else. The novel ends with Connie and Mellors, briefly separated, awaiting divorce from their respective spouses.

I requested David to read an excerpt from his novel that showed his sensitive portrayal of a woman. I handed him my copy.

He took the book from me and said that he would read aloud a part prior to Connie finding love in the arms of Mellors.

–When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for a long time: took off her clothes, and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking for, or at, very definitely, yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on her.

And she thought, as she had thought so often, what a frail, easily hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is, naked; somehow a little unfinished, incomplete!

She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she was out of fashion: a little too female, not enough like an adolescent boy. She was not very tall, a bit Scottish and short; but she had a certain fluent, down-slipping grace that might have been beauty. Her skin was faintly tawny, her limbs had certain stillness, her body should have had a full, down-slipping richness; but it lacked something.

….her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there….

She looked into the other mirror’s reflection at her back, her waist, her loins. She was getting thinner, but to her it was not becoming. The crumple of her waist at the back, as she bent back to look, was a little weary…the longish slope of her haunches and her buttocks had lost its gleam…only the German boy had loved it, and he was ten years dead, very nearly. How time went by! Ten years dead, and she was only twenty-seven. The healthy boy with his fresh, clumsy sensuality that she had then been so scornful of! Where would she find it now? It was gone out of men. They had their pathetic, two-seconds spasms like Michaelis; but no healthy human sensuality, that warms the blood and freshens the whole being.

…but the front of her body made her miserable. It was already beginning to slacken, with a slack sort of thinness, almost withered, going old before it had ever really lived. She thought of the child she might somehow bear. Was she fit, anyhow?

She slipped into her nightdress, and went to bed, where she sobbed bitterly. And in her bitterness burned a cold indignation against Clifford, and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his sort who defrauded a woman even of her own body.

Unjust! Unjust! The sense of deep physical injustice burned at her very soul. –

David put down the book and for a moment looked out at the pink bougainvillea cascading over the ledge. The silence that hung heavy in the air was broken by Frieda’s soft voice announcing that they had to catch the Red Baron’s plane which was due to take off from the nearby football field.

But before leaving the restaurant David put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I have traveled with Frieda to Italy, the French Riviera, Germany, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Mexico and the United States. Alas, I wish I had come to Bali and tasted its unabashed sensuality and luscious lifestyle. Maybe I will return in a coming lifetime for it appears I would be accepted here without prejudice.”

Twilight had set in as the plane roared off into the rising moon. Night fall blanketed my soul as I walked home to my woman friend clutching in my sweaty hands the paperback edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

Next week: A walk and talk on the importance of being earnest with Oscar Wilde down Jalan Dhyanapura.

The loneliness of a writer

Somewhere in Bali: This is about the author of this column who arrived on the shores of Bali to complete his unfinished book and to write for publications in other countries. Nearly two years down the line the words seem to flow in all directions creating a brand new world for him with the ever-shifting sands of time. The island embraces him like a mother breastfeeding her child. The kaleidoscope of a vibrant culture with its beautiful people gives him the adjectives to write down for posterity stories of the here and now. He is afraid that he will die one day without sharing all the wonderful things he has seen, felt, tasted and communed with; for it will be lost forever in the darkness of space.

Arriving from London, he walked Kuta beach in search of people. Amidst the cacophony of civilisation gone mad he reached out to those who existed on the nectar of hope; hope for a better life through connubial joy with people from far off lands. The sunrises and sunsets darkened his skin and grayed his hair. The sea air tasted salty on his lips as he gazed out to sea while sitting on a beach pulsating with human life. He was the outsider in a world that was teeming with life.

His first acquaintance was a Kuta cowboy who shared with him the sweet sorrows of parting; the many loves that had come and gone along with fading dreams of ever finding a partner to dwell and procreate with. This was the first lesson given to him by Bali. He knew then that the call of the wild life would take him away from the path well trodden and into the mouth of the beast that slowly ate his life away; gnawing at his soul and forcing him to chronicle the images his senses recorded.

He dwelt in a room made of wood surrounded by a lush tropical garden full of flowering plants. The uninvited guests were the geckos that serenaded him every night. An army of ants would raid the unwashed dishes as he lay in bed watching the shadows of flying insects dance across the ceiling while sucking on his cigar and blowing plumes of smoke into the air. Words were his friends for they never failed him; unlike the new found love that appeared in his life like the smell of fresh earth after the first monsoon rain. She hung around like an animal in oestrus enticing him away from the writing at hand. It was a momentary lapse of concentration that scrambled his brain and tied his tongue for he could not remember the word called love.

As the months passed and the year came to an end she grew weary of his loneliness and walked away. The elixir of love had eluded him for he was not looking for it but was trying to define it in words.

And as one story ended another began as he drove across Bali in search of new vistas that would open him up to another string of accidental encounters with people. He found it along a rocky coast in the simple life of the rural folk who had nestled on the hillsides. Many travellers he did meet to the sound of music on Saturday nights. The intoxicated amorous youths that he befriended on the way caressed his ego and ignited an aging heart. The words came thick and fast. The smell of newspaper ink on his hands was an aphrodisiac that aroused within him the desire to belong to a living-breathing world of sensuality. There were intimate moments of indiscretion that cried out for coherency and lasting continuance. Sadly this did not happen for life had dealt him the card – the joker in the pack of cards. People saw him laugh, cry, dance, sing and speak loudly above the accepted decimal limit and they mistook this for a party animal. The façade was perfect for it had closeted him in a world of past, present and future (continuous) participles.

In between the times of travelling alone, he communed with the wild dolphins off the coast watching them play in the wide-open sea. The sense of freedom and joy inspired him to reach into the deep recesses of his mind to translate the images into words.

The change of season cajoled the spirit within to venture out into the world of warungs and the midnight runs on the bars that dotted the isle. The many blurred faces of people from around the world congregating at these digs added spice to the stories he narrated to voracious readers. He had immersed himself in the cauldron of wasted lives so that he could breathe life into them with the printed word. Their lives became stories for others to read and to ponder the rationale for living in a paradise that was peppered with paradoxes.

In the ensuing inebriation he found a muse. She was like the Lady of Shallot waiting for Lochinvar to come out of the west. The rush of adrenaline caused havoc with his syntax and grammar and brought with it yet another loss of memory – the meaning of love.

The muse wavered ever so often between the men she loved. It was a cruel parody of life of which he was a passive participant. He imagined that she would become a part of his novel but yet he did not want to take her home. The feeling of returning to an empty room was a luxury that was not to be squandered in the heat of the moment. When her words became invasive and there was a danger of it intruding into his world of the lexicon he walked away for fear of belonging, belonging to someone else’s biography.

It has been a long trudge through the fields of muddied thoughts with insanity lurking in the shadows on a full moon night and the haunting cries of wounded souls searching for the ultimate paradise.

In between bouts of manic travelling, he returns at nightfall to his room to ponder the many days’ events and to unravel the inconsistencies of existence and the paradoxes that confuse and confound him and the people he encounters. Then as if on cue he regurgitates it all onto paper.

The only sound that can be heard is the pen drawing a montage of words. While the slices of cheese and stuffed olives accompanied by a cold glass of wine calms the rising desolation he feels – the loneliness of a writer.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

Hawkeye’s view of America

Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide hijackers learn that huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have mastered the language. They understand that the use of disproportionate violence against innocents is a way to make a statement.

We leave the same calling cards.

- Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

The name of the person I met has been changed to Hawkeye, the protagonist from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.

Recently I met a Native American at a small café on Sanur Beach who asked me if I was Spanish.

“Indian, with a Spanish grandmother,” I replied.

“And I am Cherokee, another kind of Indian,” he said.

We both laughed.

“So what are you doing here, my friend?” I asked.

“Hawkeye, they call me. I’m on the last leg of a trip around Southeast Asia and will be returning to New York tomorrow.”

I prodded him to share his views and opinions as a Native American on America and the upcoming presidential election, and he graciously obliged.

The ensuing discussion between us has been written in first person narrative for the sake of brevity and coherency.

We were colonized by people from Europe and later by the slaves they brought with them. They took away our lands and put us in reservations like animals.

Our victory at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the massacre of Native Indians at Wounded Knee by the US Cavalry confirms what Plato said – Only the dead see the end of war.

The foundation of this great nation has been based on war. War with us. War between themselves. War with other nations. And if there is no battle to join, they often create or instigate one.

In the 90s, a government think tank came out with a document on the New World Order. Interestingly it states that Americans wouldn’t accept a war with another nation barring a Pearl Harbor-type event. Ironically, this is what happened on 9/11.

I admit I voted for Bush. I also bought the propaganda and joined in the chorus and frenzied chants – Let’s get the f…ers. The “enemy” was not a regular army, so invading a country like Iraq made sense. Americans could see the “enemy” and “feel good” about the horrors inflicted on them. Revenge had to be seen to be done even if the facts were manufactured or fudged. Ignorance of an ancient culture and its religion were self-evident when Bush declared a “crusade.”

I quote Chris Hedges: “Once we sign on for war’s crusade, once we see ourselves on the side of angels, once we embrace a theological or ideological belief system that defines itself as the embodiment of goodness and light, it is a matter of how we will carry out murder.”

We have created a bloody mess in Iraq. And despite of our best efforts at using our soldiers as cannon fodder, Afghanistan continues to roll out more Taliban and large quantities of heroin.

Let us not forget that we are the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war and that, too, on civilians; we have liberally sprayed Agent Orange (a deadly toxic defoliant) on Vietnamese and committed atrocities on them and elsewhere under the delusion of promoting, preserving or even enforcing democracy.

So naturally with these “war games” follows “collateral damage”; suffocating and intrusive homeland security – the Patriot Act, etc.; most of which are invasions into our civil rights enshrined in our constitution. The government has gone one step further by the signing, in May 2007, of a presidential directive that gives the President dictatorial powers in the event of a national emergency. The document itself is ambiguous and leaves room for misinterpretation.

I fondly remember in the 60s Abbie Hoffman, one of the Chicago Seven, who proposed a freedom that bordered on anarchy. He is also the author of Steal this Book and Woodstock Nation. Abbie believes that people have to take care of each other, their families, relatives and friends. That the government is not God and its role should be limited in society.

Today the growing involvement of the state in the private lives of its citizens is a disturbing trend. Read the book The Rise of the Fourth Reich by Jim Marrs, and you will understand what I am talking about; the purpose of laws being enacted is to encroach upon civil liberties on the pretext that there exists an enemy within. Maybe this is another planned move towards a form of benign totalitarianism.

And so amid the sound of gunfire and “the smell of napalm in the morning,” our hysterical media is taking sides in the upcoming presidential election.

On one side we have Obama, the much-touted first black presidential hopeful whose mentor is Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former national security advisor, who holds the distinction of setting up the Afghan Mujaheddin Network that later formed the Taliban, which shelters Al Qaeda. And on the other side, John McCain, a former guest at the Hanoi Hilton that offered room service torture. He does not qualify as president for peace because he has been quite candid about the duration of the Iraq war, affirming he would support it even if it carried on for 100 years.

Obama, in my opinion, appears to be well groomed by powerbrokers seeking to create a JFK illusion or model for the people. Maybe Obama will play along like JFK did until he is elected, then change course. Incidentally, when JFK became president, he appointed his brother Bobby to take on organized crime. He also made noises about doing away with the Federal Reserve. His life was snuffed out, and so was Bobby’s.

We are aware that the path to the next presidential election is booby-trapped with disinformation. But there is no other option for Americans because the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are dead and buried along with what they represented. We have to make it work with and through Obama.

However, in our zeal to elect Obama, we must not overlook the questions raised by ordinary citizens. Obama must answer them.

1.What have you done for the American people at home, so far? (And we are not talking about high-voltage combat zones across the world).

2.Who are the people who stand behind you – the kingmakers?

3.Will you repeal the Patriot Act and other laws that infringe on civil liberties?

4.Will you stop creating and conducting wars and begin looking after your own people’s welfare: healthcare, housing, jobs?

The bitter pill that all Americans have to swallow every day is that their nation is financially and, more importantly, spiritually bankrupt by cultural arrogance, burgeoning corrupt business practices and a political system fast losing its ethics and integrity.

Probably the time is nigh when Native Americans must rise up to help the descendants of the colonizers to rediscover the meaning of peace, love, truth, honor, moral values which they seem to have misplaced. And when this happens, the long-awaited non-violent Second American Revolution will come, bringing with it an avalanche of peace and prosperity for all who reside in America.

Hopefully Obama will be the catalyst.

Our earnest prayer is that we live to see this day.

The evening ended with two Indians departing for home – one to a nation bleeding from war and on the threshold of redemption and the other to the serenity of Balinese religiosity.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om