Posted on October 21, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
“Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.” ~ Andy Goldsworthy
We journeyed to her place of origin. Circumstance rather than intention took her home.
We retraced the steps she took as a child. We sat at the spot in the harbor where she once wrote poetry and lyrics for songs. We retraced the streets and avenues where she once drove in her ’71 VW Beetle. We ate baked clams. We visited the beach that lives on as one of her sacred places. She told me stories of her life. Before.
After walking the beach, after gathering rocks and shells, we sat on a weathered bench and listened. We felt the power of the place. The tide was coming in. The gulls flew high and dropped clams, attempting to crack them open. The warmth of the fall day was tempered by the cool wind off the sound.
My job was to hold the silence.
She was communing – not only with this sacred place – the origin – but with the young girl who rode her bike to this beach half a century ago. She walked to the water’s edge looking for that girl. She reached back in time and held out her hand. The young girl, unsure of what the future might hold, cautiously opened her hand and accepted the offer.
Posted on September 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” ~ Carl Jung
If you have not yet seen it, the short 18 minute documentary of Bernie Sanders in red-red-red West Virginia is worth watching. It is illuminating to witness what is possible when the misinformation bubble is breached. Though we’ve been pitted against each other, our division is not between the red and the blue. Not really. We are united in wanting a government that works for us.
I shuddered last night when I heard Mark Elias say that he no longer believes that media, universities, law firms…are capitulating to the demands of the dictator-wannabe. He now believes that they are collaborators. They offer no resistance because they are collaborators. Who would willingly sacrifice their first amendment right to free speech, freedom of the press…unless it profited them mightily to do so? Mark Elias’ contention certainly answers my question about the missing congress: over the weekend we read a public message from the president to the attorney general instructing her to prosecute his enemies. No actual crime needed. That he was not immediately impeached is sad proof of Mark Elias’ assertion. Profit over Constitution. Personal interest over sacred values. We heard more than one commentator say something akin to, “This makes Watergate look like kindergarten.”
One of the symbolic meanings of a pyramid shape is integration. Bernie Sanders sat at table with people who are economically drowning. They want the same things that I do. They want their rights protected. They do not want to be lied to by their government or their media. They want to be represented and not exploited.
This hot fire in which we live has the power to reduce this nation to ash. But it also has the possible power of alchemy, to forged a union of the red and the blue. The heat might wake us up. We just might realize that we are being distracted by demonizing each other. It might wake us up to how thoroughly we’re being exploited by those who claim to be representing our interests while simultaneously selling us down the river.
Pie in the sky? The corruption isn’t being hidden. The cowardice isn’t being masked. The voters in West Virginia are sitting at a table with Bernie Sanders and recognizing they have much more in common than they’ve been led to believe.
Posted on August 20, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
We have watched Barney-the-piano change over these many years. As he ages and falls apart we discuss how he has become more beautiful. It is a sentiment that we do not allow for ourselves as we have also aged and changed over these many years.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ~ James Baldwin
There are days that I do not recognize myself. I look in the mirror and see my grandfather. I look in my heart and am surprised by what I see. In these past months I have discovered my intolerance and I am proud of my intolerance. I have discovered my hard lines of belief. I do not believe that masked men should be plucking people off the streets. I do not believe we should scrub history to make white supremacy palatable. Now, when I look in my heart, I know exactly what I believe. And I like what I see.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ~ Nelson Mandela
I recently wrote a play about this nation’s resistance to education. Educated people ask questions. Educated people are not easily drowned in propaganda. Educated people do not fear learning that they are wrong because the point of education has nothing to do with right or wrong answers and everything to do with expanding hearts and minds. Minds that expand reach toward the unknown. Minds that close stagnate in the safety of what is known. Entropy, the gradual decline to disorder.
“Change is the only constant.” ~ Heraclitus
Barney is beautiful. He has been home to chipmunks. He is a resting spot for squirrels. Birds revel where he once sported keys. He has dropped all illusions of grandeur and each day reveals his true nature. He makes progress toward earth. He does not resist his natural path. That is the secret of his beauty.
“Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.” ~ Maya Angelou
Master Marsh once told me that when caught himself complaining about something that he had three choices. Shut up (stop complaining). Do something about it. Or leave. In the current reality of our nation I am not able shut up. In fact, I feel it is necessary to raise the volume. That is what I am doing. We write and write and write. We ask ourselves every day, “What more can we do?”
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ~ Albert Einstein
In their advanced age both Maya Angelou and Albert Einstein arrived at the same conclusion. They agree with Leo Tolstoy: to be better on this earth, we need to change our thinking. We need to think about changing ourselves. Looking at our nation (ourselves) doesn’t it beg the obvious questions: What are we thinking? Are we capable of changing our thinking?
Perhaps, as we dissolve, as we crumble like Barney, we will discover at the core of our national story the rot of exclusion. Then, perhaps, we can face our dysfunction, root it out, and change our thinking. Perhaps we can become the inclusive home that our nature – and our founding ideals – intended us to be. Beautiful. Perhaps.
The space between our garage and the neighbors fence is a narrow passageway. It is out-of-sight-out-of-mind. As the original debris field of the house, there are mounds of earth that I long ago learned I’d never be able to dig out. A shovel cannot penetrate the bits of brick and wood, old cement and wire, that have long since petrified and are covered by a thin layer of dirt. Gnarly weeds grow in abundance, some taller than I am.
The passage is a neighborhood animal trail for the fox and opossum so we occasionally toss old broccoli or carrots gone rubbery for the critters to eat. Tossing critter snacks is the only time I ever visit the passageway. On a recent snack-toss-expedition I was astounded to see a mighty sunflower rising high above the weeds! A sunflower towering above the debris field. It felt auspicious. An affirmation. A positive sign of good things to come.
I looked at the sunflower in utter disbelief. It looked at me with amusement. I ran into the house to grab Kerri so she could marvel at our happy harbinger.
There are few things on this earth that human beings have so thoroughly endowed with positive symbolic meanings as the sunflower. Happiness. Health and longevity. Good luck. Abundance. Loyalty. There is no dark undertone, no shadow symbology with sunflowers. It is the Shirley Temple of symbols.
From the outside, our life together this past decade probably appears to most like a debris field. Our career implosion left bits and pieces of us scattered all over the tarmac. And yet, you would be hard pressed to find two happier people, two more intentionally grateful human beings.
Yesterday we discovered chunks of tar on the back patio. Looking up we saw that part of the roof over our sunroom had peeled back, probably from the recent wind storms. As I prepared myself to panic, Kerri smiled and said, “I am going to choose to be grateful that we found this before it really became a problem.” My panic hissed out of me like air from a balloon. No panic necessary. No need to get lost in the problem. Just gratitude with an eye toward solutions. I clamped the layers down until the roofing guy could come.
From the top of the ladder I could see the sunflower. It looked like it was watching over us. I remembered the lesson of one of Aesop’s Fables: what looks like a tragedy is often a gift. What looks like a boon sometimes brings a curse. And, in time, the curse will eventually open the way to a blessing.
“Is it a good thing or a bad thing?” I quipped with the sunflower. It simply smiled in reply.
As if the world was not topsy-turvy enough, last evening, just as the sun was setting, I opened the back door and was met with a wall of rising heat. The sun was going down and the temperature was going up!
We are in the land of Lewis Carroll. Logic spins like a wheel of fortune. Alice awoke from her Wonderland dream when she stood up to the Queen of Hearts. She awoke when she’d had enough of chaos and challenged the madness. It was a threshold moment, marking the passage into adulthood. Everything we need to know is in the story.
Do you remember Field of Dreams? “If you build it, he will come.” It’s a story of the power of following a dream no matter how irrational. Lately I’ve thought that our democracy is like the baseball field built in the middle of a cornfield. How irrational is it to imagine and then create a single nation, a field, that attracts and is home to people from all over the world! A nation where a wildly diverse populace governs itself. By the people, for the people, of the people. Build it and they will come.
Redemption is one of the themes of the movie. As is true in life, redemption for the characters comes after reconciling with their past. All of it: the good, the bad, the ugly. Redemption is a door that opens when a person or community – or nation – is brave enough to honestly look at and deal with the full scope of their history. There’s a good reason that Honesty is the first step in the twelve steps of addiction recovery. An honest reckoning opens the door to the pathway that leads to a second chance. It clears the vision, clarifies the dream.
Challenge the madness.
Say, “Enough!”
Get honest.
I took some small comfort when I read these words this morning: “…it’s never too late to reconcile with the past and find peace.” Follow the dream “…even when it seems impossible or irrational.”
It is a warm evening. The breeze has shifted and comes off the lake, blessed cool. The bird alights on the pinnacle of our roof. Like us it pauses in the refreshing breeze. It drinks it in and rests. This image, this moment, is ancient and I am taken by it.
In the midst of the chaos of the country, the seeming unprecedented circumstances we now face, it is somehow comforting (to me) to remember that no one escapes the cycles of mythology. Mythology is a universal growth pattern, cutting across culture, delivered through story. It is a human-life-map. It is unwise to confuse mythology with make-believe.
Our collapse of moral authority in leadership is not unique in history. Neither is the rise of our tyrant. Neither is the corruption of our court Supremes or the silent cowardice of Congress. We follow a historical pattern just as we perform a mythological cycle.
The Roman Empire fell for much the same reasons that the American Experiment is now wobbling: political corruption, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots eroding social cohesion (maga, the impact of inanity like “trickle-down-economics”, unfair taxation, granting “personhood” to corporations…), the exploitation of division, overspending on the military, limits imposed on innovation and education (the impact of DOGE and the decimation of research among other things).
When servant leadership is upended by self-serving-leadership, the path becomes explicit. It doesn’t happen all it once. It is gradual, this erosion of the foundation takes time. This is a mythological death.
Of course, each death signals the birth of something new. As Joseph Campbell wrote of times like these, it is wrongheaded and naive to try and go back in time to capture some imaginary heyday. It is equally misguided to try to force the fulfillment of some imagined ideal. Both facilitate dismemberment.
Our protests of autocracy, our resistance to brutality, plant the seeds of our transfiguration. We will never restore our democratic republic as we’ve known it. Neither will we fulfill it as first conceived: exclusive; democracy for the few. Fire transforms and what will emerge from this hot collapse is anybody’s guess. I will probably not live long enough to see it. Gestation like this takes time, too.
However, I take heart knowing that the cycle will eventually present us with a new generation of servant leaders, people who rise from the wreckage and sacrifice personal gain for the common good. People who were transformed by this current fire. They will carry in their hearts the pain of their ancestors’ regret.
The bird on the pinnacle served as a herald of that distant day. The wind shifts, cutting through the heat, bringing with it sweet relief and the promise of the cycles of change.
The juxtaposition was startling. At the exact moment that we were packed in a raucous dancing and cheering crowd, watching our son Craig, an EDM artist, perform at PRIDE Milwaukee, the dictator wannabe was threatening martial law and sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell what his toadies are trying to call “an insurrection”.
The celebration of individual freedoms meets the crushing of individual freedoms.
A protest is not an insurrection. What we witnessed on January 6, 2020 was an insurrection: a violent uprising against the government. What we are seeing in Los Angeles is a citizen’s right to protest.
The music pulsing, the crowd reveling, I was suddenly overwhelmed. I stopped dancing and watched the people. PRIDE began as a commemoration of resistance: in The Stonewall riots and demonstrations the LGBTQ community “fought back against government sponsored persecution.” 55 years later, I recognized my privilege to stand with a community of people celebrating their individual freedom and triumph over government sponsored persecution.
What’s happening in Los Angeles and across this nation? It is the Republican-led government violently uprising against the fundamental rights of the people. It is – just like January 6th – an insurrection against our democratic institutions and ideals. Make no mistake: the people in LA are coming together to fight back against government persecution, the creation of a police state and authoritarian attack on our democracy.
I can only hope that 55 years from now, some proud father, dancing in a crowd of thousands to his son’s thunderous music in a commemoration-celebration of the people’s triumph over their government-run-amok, will, like me, be overwhelmed when he recognizes the profound meaning of the moment: the exercise of his privilege in a nation that, once, when faced with authoritarianism, vehemently defended individual freedoms, democracy and the right to protest. For a moment he will stand in awe and then, swept back into his son’s vibrant music, will give himself over to the pulse, the heartbeat, the freedom to dance.
I wish – oh, how I wish – we could awaken from this nightmare. Democracy dies by gaslight, by demonization, by unbridled lies, by a Me-Me-Me philosophy. By Republican insanity (inanity?): madness put to ill use. Cowardice two-stepping in a righteous cowboy costume.
Viktor Frankel wrote: “The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.” Could there be a better definition of sanity?
We are witness to a national nightmare. It is the tug of war of dueling realities. One, madness put to good use, is called Democracy. It is a dream meant to serve “liberty and justice for all”. To uplift. Equally.
The other reality is discriminatory, exploitation of the many for the profit of the few. It is madness put to toxic use. White nationalism in a self-righteous-wrapper. It is in-sanity. Un-hinged. Ab-normal. To abuse others for personal gain. In-humane.
We fly the flag upside down as a signal of distress. I imagined the bumper sticker was placed upside down to reinforce the point. Stay Weird. The current purveyors of authoritarian insanity intend to hammer us into compliance. To silence the voices of opposition (goodness). They attack judges while freeing criminals; they would have us believe that the rule of law is criminal so that the criminal might lawlessly rule. They would have us behave, stay quiet. Look down or bury our heads in the sand. Goosestep.
There has never been a better time – or more necessary time – to stay weird, to put our mad-ness to good use. To speak up. To act out. Surround and protect the judges: the last line of defense against the authoritarian takeover. To bellow to our AWOL Congress: WHERE ARE YOU? And to make sure they feel the impact of their inaction, their abdication of responsibility. Their betrayal of oath.
Our mythos is full of symbols like Paul Revere and The Boston Tea Party: people giving of themselves to serve a greater cause. The love of others. In our dream of democracy, we know exactly how to deal with an out-of-control wanna-be king. We fly the flag upside-down. We put lanterns in church steeples. We toss money-hoarding and unfair taxation into the harbor. There has never been a more important time to stay weird, to focus our madness and put it to good use – for each other.
Our ferns came on like gangbusters. One day they were little seahorses poking their heads from the ground. The next day (it seemed) they were standing tall, mature, a thick rich green forest of fern-fandango.
Fandango is a Spanish dance. It is also a slang term for extravagant behavior. Gangbusters is an idiom that originated from a 1930’s radio crime show and means “with enthusiasm” or “with great energy”.
I loved that she thought to take a photo from the top, a birds-eye view looking down into the dark secret center. It made we want to reach in, to discover the mystery of the fern fandango.
An enigma is always a Siren’s call to the human mind. It’s why we sail to the edge of the world or send rockets to the moon. It’s why we crack the genome or climb to the top of the mountain. It’s why we travel to foreign lands or seek the center of our paradoxical belief.
What is over there, in there, beyond? It is human nature to ask, to ponder, to relentlessly pursue questions. Questioning is the epicenter of science and the arts.
Our curiosity is greater than our fear. Ultimately, it is the reason that I have some small hope for this nation, currently in a frenzy of curiosity-killing, book-banning, history-scrubbing, white-washing, bible-thumping, mind-numbing, heart-clubbing, immigrant-ousting, truth-drowning…A whipped-up, full-on fear fandango meant to blunt all questioners.
People die when fear and panic rule their actions; they become incapable of thinking. People wilt when narrow pat-answers are forced down their throats. Authoritarians are gifted enemy-creators – enemies provide easy answers as long as no questions are permitted. Critical thinking is an authoritarians greatest foe. But, sooner or later, as is always true, the panic-stricken public tires of eating dross and have no recourse but to question the need for so much fearmongering and panic creation. Questions are the antidote to fear, the cure for toxic dictatorship because questions build the road to truth.
Questions are what drive the little seahorse ferns to pop their heads through the crusty soil. Questioners seek the light, they reach for the sun.
People blossom when curiosity calls and they answer. They join forces and mobilize. When disaster strikes, when corruption poisons the body public, people come on like gangbusters, rallying around hot questions like, “Now what?” They join hands and step together into the mystery fandango that holds the promise of leading to a better world – for all.
There are some small cracks of light. Cory Booker’s marathon speech on the floor of the senate, the thousands attending Bernie Sanders and AOC’s rallies. And then recently, a possibility that finally – finally – carried an action-beyond-words, something that could impede this march to authoritarianism:
“The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!… And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!” ~ Heather Cox Richardson. Letters from an American, April 13, 2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongfully deported to prison in El Salvador, is a union brother, a sheet metal apprentice. His brothers and sisters in the union want him home. They want due process respected and restored. For all of us.
“Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.” ~ Letters from an American, April 13, 2025
In case it’s not clear, we are experiencing a Constitutional crisis. The administration is ignoring the judicial branch. The elimination of due process is the straw that breaks democracy’s back.
As individuals we have no recourse beyond our vote – and it is currently not clear that we will have another chance to exercise that basic right. We can speak. We can gather and rally but have no leverage with an executive that refuses to acknowledge or adhere to the law. He is supported by a Congress that refuses to perform its duty as check-and-balance to the executive. His hand-picked Attorney General, in the midst of egregious and obvious crimes by this administration, is great at playing hear-no-evil, see-no-evil but is otherwise a useless toady. The Supremes rolled over and died when granting presidential immunity. Is anyone surprised that the executive is ignoring their ruling?
Keep in mind, due process is a basic right – as is voting in a free and fair election. Any administration that suspends due process under the law will need to either corrupt the election system (as is currently happening) or terminate voting altogether – by invoking the Insurrection Act (as is currently being discussed).
In the midst of so much darkness, union president Sean McGarvey opened a small crack of light. Unions leverage power by stopping work. They shut down the machinery of production until power is willing to listen.
I gave myself permission to dream: we could stop this nonsense now if we joined a nationwide union work-stoppage. If we made clear to our government that they should fear us; we should not fear them (as the elimination of due process is meant to achieve). As Sean McGarvey said, “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue…”
We are – all of us – the citizens of the United States, the backbone and beating heart of America, a democracy, guaranteed fundamental rights in our Constitution.
We need not be passive during the assault on our basic rights as guaranteed in The Constitution. We do, however, need to recognize that we are neither red nor blue; we all lose equally if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not brought home. We lose all – if the basic rights guaranteed in the Constitution are not honored and extended equally to all people.
It is way past time for the backbone of America to step off the job and sit for a spell. If Congress and the courts cannot – or will not – do their jobs, perhaps the citizens should follow their lead and stop doing their jobs. Perhaps we should cease productivity – all of us – until the oligarchs and the authoritarian-wanna-be, the hapless Congress and kowtowing Supreme Court recognize that working people are the engine that fuels democracy – and capitalistic democracy is the system that feeds their out-of-proportion prosperity. And, more to the point, remind them that they work for us – all of us – and not the other way around.
The Direction of Intention 