Wednesday, April 30, 2008

"Metaphysical Bus Trip" A Short Story

“The City Bus”
By: Mark Stegman

The bus was heavy, loaded thick with the air of silence, loaded thick with the weight of the engine rumbling loud and smelling thick diesel fumes. The lone reddish pink light of the interior of the bus lit the silent people sitting next to one another, yet a mile apart from each other. They averted their eyes from one another and looking at whatever is not a person, unless their happens to be an unfortunate walker by, then the entire bus takes brief notice; if the unfortunate walker by happens to be a beautiful women, then the men continue to look well after a short glance, there is nobody speaking, a sad trip.
The bus roars and halts, the riders lean forward together in g-force unison. At this stop no one gets off, but a jester boards through the front door. Tis’ a modern day jester, not a decorated hatter colorful banjo toting feather in the cap wearing jester, but an ordinary jester that one couldn’t tell if this funny man was a jester at all or anything but a crazy man smiling like he is at everyone as soon as he boards the bus. His sudden presence though, like color in a black and white world, like rain on starched bleached desert sand, strikes sparks in the lines of reality in the bus. The rider’s on the bus became conscious of the reality of the bus, like the past was pre-life and suddenly time was born, awaken by the stimulus of oddity. This man saw the space between the people and laughed out loud and beamed smiles around the space. He sat next to a giant of a man who has been frowning at everyone since he boarded the bus. As the jester sat next to the large man, all on the bus saw the space in the air between all the people become filled with colorful electric photons zipping and spiraling, snapping, hissing, whirling, and then dropping, halting as each person averted their eyes, looked away from each other shyly with curt smiles. Yet as the sullen riders saw these dim glowing laser beams zipping and whirling and the unaffected smile of the colorful jester, they began to smile. Faintly at first, their smiles enforced the dim lines of energy’s paths and they began to open just faintly, showing colored plains of green and blue. Thus the jester laughed at the exposing awareness and some of the older people began to giggle. Children jumped into the aisle and swiped at the speeding electric lines zinging about, moving right thru their tiny chests harmlessly. They jumped right into their pathways waving their tiny hands; they could feel the pulse of communal electricity in the laser lights. The young teens and hipsters began to shed their cool pose and began awing and talking of these strange energies exposed. “What could it be?” They asked. The elders, being much wiser, knew that what was being exposed was there all along. “It’s only the pre-existing reality.” The older folk told the young teen-agers. The colorful Jester has made it all become visible.
Through all the laughing and kids at play, even the bus driver was smiling and could be heard laughing, there was one man not stirred, one man actually stirring in his own homebrew of hate. He was a brown wall impenetrable, this the jester thought most amusing, and laughed and “hahad” and sent playful arches of energy toward the giant man. The man looked up and with his eyes said
“What the hell you looking at? I’ll kick your ass!” His silent words reflected off the inside of the brown wall surrounding him and broke apart, fragmenting into the air. The jester frowned mockingly, momentarily stunning the giant. While the giant sad man looked confused, for he has never seen anything like a jester, or anyone ever make faces at him like that, the colorful jester swooped his hands up through the brown murk wall surrounding the giant. The people gasped and became silent, their chatter stunned, everyone turned and watched. The jester, taking the dripping brown softball size murk ball in his hands, rolled it into a ball. The giant looked up and speaking through his eyes once more said,
“Huh?”
“What?”
And “Dha?”
The jester smiles a wide grin and quickly shaped the mud into a dove and opens his hands like a magician. A brown dove flew upward to the ceiling of the bus. The happy people gasped and cheered and laughed; the children “Oohed” and screamed for more. The giant took a sudden interest that quickly faded and vanished. The jester turned, turning his smile upside down. At the same time the dove turned upside down and melted before everyone. The crowd on the bus went silent. The jester asked the giant with widened eyes, “Do you see what happened? Do you get that?”
The giant, finding hidden language in ancient energy patterns, growls back, reverberating low waves that bang into each other and creep through the brown wall surrounding him that said, “You can’t possibly understand my hurt, my pain, my anger!”
The jester once again arched his outstretched stretching hand sweeping up ward thru the giants murky wall scooping a heaping handful into his hands. He shaped it into a circle then with one gulp, he swallowed it. The people on the bus choked on their own teeth stunned. Then the bus broke into laughter. The laughter on the bus was quickly curtailed as they saw the jesters face suddenly pale and green.
“He bit off more than he can chew.” One of the old ladies near the back said as she watched the colorful man intently. They watched the jesters eyes speak.
“Ahh yes, a big bite indeedee, painful like all emotion, made of energy, made of light, and(he grunted) with that(he shifted in his seat) we can ( another grunt) make anything into anything we want(He opened his mouth and echoed loudly a rictorious burp). He lifted a leg passing a tsunami fart that literally blew the hair up of the sad large man next to him. A moment of silence then everyone, including the giant, cracked up rolling with laughter ( some farting as they laughed making more laughter). The giant lifted a leg, the hole bus ducked and covered (as if that would help the nuclear affect of such transformed energy, the giant burst out laughing and screaming(no fart); the understanding was made.
The bus had stopped, the driver laughing and wiping tears from his eyes; the jester departed and disappeared unnoticed as all the people were doubled over in laughter with tears of life in their eyes.
Mark Stegman 5/30/2006

Monday, April 28, 2008

A report on school shootings and mass murders

I have never been in a movie and needed work; so I was too excited when I received the call from the casting agent to hear what the movie was about until I hung up the phone. Then it dawned on me that the guy had said the movie was about the 1989 school massacre in Montreal, Canada.

Oh man! This was one of the earliest mass killings in a school environment since Whitman’s sniper from the tower in Texas. The mass murder in Montreal changed our social reality as we knew it and could be considered the birth of the nineties as we experienced them. As the survivors said they thought they were being robbed or it was a joke, no one thought a man would just open fire on innocent females. Today School shooting tragedies are a regular part of our lives; there have been four in the month of February in the US alone.

How can an individual become so separated from humanity as to not see the emotional damage they cause when they rip into reality wielding guns and murder? How can we continue to ignore this reality as more and more people experience the sudden tragic loss of loved ones? The answers are not simple, the cause is complex, and unfortunately implementations of measures to ensure our safety from the outburst of mad men are in direct inverse to our valued freedoms. There are some answers though.

First, as a society we can take pre-emptive measures to avert the kind of frustration that builds in an individual that causes these kinds of outburst of rage. The availability of psychologist and councilors should be doubled on all highs school and college campuses. Unfortunately not too many people, especially the ones who most need them, take advantage of these services; if we can create an environment were it is intelligent to use these services then we can reverse the astigmatism that is associated with talking to specialist about our thoughts and feelings. It is the nature of an intelligent person to try to handle things by themselves; we need to make it the intelligent move to handle things with professionals who have a wider view of the big picture. Society is slowly moving in that direction as more people use life coaches, financial planners, PTSD is diagnosed and “treatments” are created; in today’s fast paced world help should be valued and sought after, openly discussed, and considered the smart thing to do.

The creation of online networks could allow people to ventilate and seek help for all types of issues from the privacy of their computer with their identities hidden. We could create online support groups for all types of issues; bi-polar online support groups, AA support groups, Anger management support groups, PTSD, dating and relationship support groups and even how to be a better man or woman support groups. Yet once again if an individual does not seek help there is not much we can do to recognize the hidden emotions that brew and get misdirected towards seemingly innocent people. As our society grows and becomes more competitive we need to keep pace with the emotional support networks available and education of the psychological experience that happens in this new 2.0 technological society.

I support the idea of allowing civilians to carry concealed fire arms. As the law stands now it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon, so the people who follow the law are un-armed and the violent murderers that don’t care about the law are armed and ready to kill. Many women are killed each year by violent men who are angry that they can’t be with the women anymore; and if you know anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of being in a violent relationship it can be one of the most psychological frustrating and traumatizing events that can occur to people. If we arm certain people, ones who can pass a shooting test and ethics test, then when a violent person in crisis walks into a school shooting, the armed and trained sophomore in the front row puts a quick end to the rampage; saving many lives and lessening the PTSD by an untold amount. Many people think that situation would be like the Wild West with people shooting at each other in shoot outs, I disagree. I think if you had to be trained and tested to get a concealed fire arm permit that only a small percentage of the population would carry a gun and they would be trained and mentally stable enough to know when and not when to use a gun; there are still grave consequences for the mis-use of a fire arm. There would be some initial precedent setting cases of the first time a man tries to rob a store with a bat and is shot with a gun, and when innocent victims of cross fire are killed in the shooting while a rampaging murderer is being put down. These experiences already happen today when the cops are shooting. The innocent people who are killed in crossfire at least had someone fighting for them and were not killed executioner style at point blank while armed police waited outside. The number of cross fire deaths would be much less than the number of deaths that are occurring as mass murders walk into an unarmed population and open fire uncontested.

The creation of a dual role in-school guard could put a first responder on the scene in colleges and high schools; this would be good job for the right kind of individual. A good guard would have a particular dual personality of someone who is half teacher/ psychologist and half trained soldier. They would be someone who can watch the student body and talk to individual students and get to know them. Then if a student wants to try to kill as many of their piers as possible they will be aware that they will have to take out the guard first; the guard that they have come to know. Maybe the guard had already heard about the plans or suspected the murders. It’s possible that the knowledge of a guard alone might stop the murder plans and attempts or at least give a warning to the unarmed student body that shots are fired as the initial contact would be with a trained and ready guard instead of an unsuspecting unarmed 16 year old girl busy thinking of her dress for the prom.

Before I continue with any social solutions that take entire community involvement to implement, we must first allow our mentality to evolve to the new reality. People, our colleagues, students, associates, are turning to mass violence and taking people with them when they choose to off themselves. Now that we understand this better than we did in 1989 we should be able to respond to these incidents faster, recognize them quicker, react in appropriate manner. School councilors should not take anything for granted when they have premonitions of mental duress on their campus; yet pressing charges for writing a violent story is unconstitutional, it’s a matter of being ready and versed. The councilor has the right to talk to other teachers and parents about the behavior of students and talk to the students themselves. First responding police officers should not wait for the demands of hostage takers or back up, they should get in the situation and put the shooter down before the suicidal maniac uses every last round but one on innocent people. If you are in a public place and you think you see a gun or hear a gun, get the hell out of there. And if you are dumb enough to bring a gun or a fake gun to school you should be dealt with like yelling fire in a movie theater.

These outbursts though are showing signs of a frustrated public. We need to update our lifestyle and education to reflect modern times. Society has changed dramatically yet we are teaching 1950’s style school systems and classes. We work very hard for a living and in some places have limited choices of expression. These topics I will leave for another day. For now though, allow me to leave you in a moment of silence in remembrance of all the victims and their surviving families who suddenly faced untold violence, may we all find peace in our hearts.

Thank you.

Mark Stegman

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Elected Leader Boot Camp


By: Mark Stegman

America can not risk having another president of our country being so far out of touch that they do not have a clue what it is like for the millions of Americans everyday struggling for survival. These men who rule our country do not have a clue what it is like to be part of the 90 percent of the population who are forced to live in the system that they establish. That is why I am suggesting that all candidates must go to the “Elected Leader Boot Camp”.

Elected Leader Boot Camp, or ELBC for short, is a two week camp located at the fabulous Army boot camp at Fort Jackson Columbia, South Carolina. There, the politicians will endure the rigors of ELBC right alongside the fine young Americans who they are personally sending overseas to wage war. Achieving for some the first lesson of ELBC which is to offer first hand the experience of what it is like to live the reality that politicians throw around only knowing as words or statistics.

The first week of ELBC is the hardest, humblest, and substantially the most important and life altering week the candidates will ever experience. This is a five day fast. The purpose of the fast is three fold; first, it relates to the future leader of the free world the feeling of hunger that millions of people in our country, and billions, around the globe, experience every day. The candidate will feel the hurt of hunger pains, the fear of starvation, the lack of energy, the slow thoughts and the alienation from the world that eats three squares daily. They will look with hungry, hot eyes and see the soldiers who eat everyday and who do not give a second thought to the hungry potential candidates, for they are fed and have no idea how bad hunger hurts. Secondly, the fast offer a chance of a new profound respect for all things in life that are provided like beds, blankets, housing, shade, a place to sit down; fasting enhances the small beauties that are always present in our daily lives but we overlook in our quest for domination over our environment. When a person fasts they see things in a new light; if politicians were ever truly hungry in their lives they would never make the decisions they continue to make such as spreading war, death, pestilence, and hunger. The third learning part comes on day four and five of the fast were it truly gets hard. Like in real life for those who need food and support the most instead of getting help, they get evicted. Now the candidate who is hungry has to find a place to bed down, if they are seen by a soldier the soldier will wake them up and harass them; symbolizing the constant harassment the most vulnerable of our society receive when they are in need.

After that week they will have two days off to eat, relax, and think over the experience that millions of Americans go thru every day. Then the second part of the camp focuses on the realities of the minorities. This can be creative but serious.

The candidate is put in a wheel chair and told to fill out a form and have it done by the end of the day. They must maneuver in a wheelchair to various offices around the camp acquiring signatures on the form; the last office they must get to will not have wheelchair access.

On day two they will be informed that for the rest of the ELBC they will not have medical coverage. During this period they will realize that if anything were to happen too them like a fall, a cavity, or god forbid a broken bone or stroke, then they would experience what most experience if this happens to you without insurance, your in serious debt and done for; forget about a family, forget about a future.

Day three they have to get up early and work hard all day in the cafeteria. After the days labor in the cafeteria when they are finished cleaning up and restocking for the next day they are given the paycheck most people receive from working in the service sector, minimum wage minus taxes.

The elected leader boot camp is not real; I am not seriously suggesting its implementation. What I am suggesting is the need for our leaders to get re-acquainted with the American experience, what it really is like living and working in America. These men and women are so rich that they do not feel the same daily struggles that 90 percent of the country experience everyday. Our elected leaders are so out of touch with the people and the reality of being human on the Earth that they continually make decisions that create more harm, more pollution, more suffering, intimidation, and even torture and death. I believe if they were to experience a camp like the Elected Leader Boot Camp that they would not continue to spread violence, pestilence, pollution, and greed upon the Earth and would start seeing the good that they all claim to cherish and admire.


By: Mark Stegman