So the pope is visiting Cuba. And, as a sort of human welcome mat, some 3522 people are being released from prison by the Cuban government. These human beings are coming out, to taste free air, even as we speak.

So I am thinking: if the cause and effect here is that when the pope visits Cuba, people are freed from Cuban prisons, maybe the pope should cycle through Cuba every couple weeks or so, until all the prisons there are emptied.

Then the pope should take this show on the road. To all the other nations on the planet. Until all their prisons are emptied too. For prison has always been stupid and cruel, and it is long past time for it to be over.

Since the Catholic Church itself filled a dungeon or ninety-eleventy-billion, and over two millennia, and all over the globe, seems to me it is right and meet that the chief primate of the outfit now take the lead, in prison abolition. Like, after all that endless burning and thumbscrewing, the outfit now, to its credit, crusades against the death penalty and torture.

Next up, in penance for all that lunatic downpressing of fucking, perhaps the Vatican should set itself up as libertine central.

The pope is also visiting the United States. Which is causing the wingers to fret that while he is there he will get rid of the money.

"The Pope Is Ready To Trash Capitalism To Money-Loving Americans"! shrieks BloombergBusiness. He is scheduled to deliver 17 speeches and homilies over six days across all the American land, the pope, and the wingers are filled with fear that he will not be able to restrain himself from going on about money being "the dung of the devil," dung that should all be dumped, with long tongs, into those Doggie Dooley subterranean shit systems that people sink into their backyards so maggots can there munch up all the dog turds.

They just know, the wingers, that he is coming roaring up out of of his pope-hole, to utterly stain the nation with Anathemas like these:

Money sickens our minds, poisons our thoughts, even poisons our faith, leading us down the path of jealousy, quarrels, suspicion and conflict. It drives to idle words and pointless discussions.

We can never serve God and money at the same time. It is not possible: either one or the other. This is not Communism. It is the true Gospel! They are the Lord's words.

Money begins by offering a sense of well-being. Then you feel important and vanity comes. This vanity is useless, but still you think you are important. And after vanity comes pride. Those are the three steps: wealth, vanity, and pride.

"But, Father, I read the Ten Commandments and they say nothing about the evils of money. Against which Commandment do you sin when you do something for money?" Against the first one! You worship a false idol. And this is the reason: because money becomes an idol and you worship it. And that’s why Jesus tells us that you cannot serve money and the living God: either one or the other.

The early Fathers of the Church, in the 3rd Century, around the year 200 or 300, put it in a very blunt way, calling money "the dung of the devil". And so it is. Because it turns us idolatrous, fills our thoughts with pride, and leads us away from our faith.

Whenever the guy pronounces blasphemies like that, flying squads of weeping eunuchs come flapping out of the Vatican to "explain" what he "actually meant." But because the pope is not an internet person, he does not concern himself with these trolls seeking to denature his words. He pays them no mind at all. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant. And so he just goes right on, to decreeing the next Heresy.

Like, now this pope likes lesbians.

Francesca Pari, author of Piccolo Uovo, a children's book featuring a pair of gay penguins, and two lesbian rabbits raising a family, sent that book, and several others, to the pope, and received in response a papal blessing, together with a letter reporting that "his holiness is grateful for the thoughtful gesture and for the feelings which it evoked, hoping for an always more fruitful activity in the service of young generations and the spread of genuine human and Christian values."

When this became news, the usual Vatican eunuchs commenced the usual trollish garment-rending about what the pope "really meant."

But they can put a sock in it. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQWyEVK3rE0]

My guess as to the continued existence of this fellow involves the notion that the veteran papal poisoners all died quite suddenly of bad age. And when the new crew went down into the catacombs to retrieve the venerable how-to poisoning tomes, they found that, somehow, the things were Gone.

Hillary Clinton is a person who will not ever be pope. She will not be president, either. Too many people instinctively recognize that she has contracted a mental disorder, and so could go Lucy Jordan at any moment. They can see it in her eyes.

And now, as her clown car careens ever closer to the ditch, she has decided to position herself to the right of even Ronald Reagan, that embarrassing Alzheimer's sufferer who shuffled goofily through the White House for eight long years. For, while this week assuring those assembled at the Brookings Institution that she is fully prepared to go Major Kong on Iran, she said:

You remember President Reagan's line about the Soviets: "Trust, but verify"? My approach will be: "Distrust, and verify."

Heretofore I had not suspected Michael Moore of a brain affliction, but, you know, things change. For here is what Moore said yesterday about Lucy Jordan:

But I have to say this too about Hillary [Clinton]. I’ve started an essay I'll post in a couple of weeks. Don't sell Hillary short about what she may do as president. I believe it's very possible with her as president that we are going to have a Pope Francis moment. That once in, remarkable, incredible things are going to be done.

What does this even mean? That she's somehow going to become an Argentinian, a man, and a priest?

That's not an endorsement. I'm just saying there is a way to go with this. I have my problems with her—she voted for the war, etc., etc. But I think she's a good person. I think she has a sense of humor. I've only met her a couple of times, but she's funny.

Right. She's a complete laff riot.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y]

Just from afar, she seems like a really great mom. And I think you can tell a lot about people about how they treat their kids.

Well, I don't know about that, Mike. What about this kid?

Has she ever appeared in public with this child? No. Ever, in all the millions of words that have flowed from her mouth, uttered one syllable about him or her? No. The thing has been kept forever chained in a series of darkened basements, like some red-headed step-child, and if ever there is somehow a rescue, and the creature is brought into the light, s/he will be as at sea as was Kasper Hauser.

Another person who is not going to be president is Rick Perry. He was one of the 786,458 people to declare himself for 2016 a candidate for the presidency as a Republican. Now he has quit, because he has no money, no one wants to vote for him, and the people who once worked for him deserted him to work for The Hairball.

Perry is best known as the first farm animal to seek the nation's highest office. He is a human/animal hybrid, bred on the island of Dr. Moreau, from a human being and a Holstein. He served many terms as governor of Texas, because voters there, when considering gubernatorial candidates, do not care who or even what you are, so long as you are not a Negro and/or a Muslim, and promise to kill plenty of both.

In 2012, for a time, many people thought they would like the farm animal to be the president. But then it became increasingly clear, through his public appearances, that his brain had been removed from his body. Most famously when, in a debate, he could not recall the names of the three cabinet departments he had vowed to eliminate. Perry eventually confessed that during this period he was totally fucked up on painkillers, which he had been prescribed after suffering a serious back injury in bucking a rider during a campaign-fundraising rodeo.

When Perry returned for the 2016 campaign he claimed he was no longer gobbling pills, and also he wore glasses, so he wud luk smarrt. But it didn't work. The people had moved on from the farm animal.

Perry blamed Jesus for the collapse of his campaign.

When I gave my life to Christ, I said, "Your ways are greater than my ways, your will superior to mine." Today I submit that his will remains a mystery, but some things have become clear. That is why today I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States.

With the farm animal out of the race, the stupidest person remaining in the hunt for the presidency, from either the Democratic or Republican party, is Ayn Rand Paul, who this week said that American Indians would not suffer so in the United States if they would just give it up and become white people.

I think assimilation is an amazing thing. A good example of how even in our country assimilation didn’t happen and it's been a disaster for the people has been the Native American population on the reservations. Um, if they were assimilated within a decade they’d probably be doing as well as the rest of us[.]

A real flake off the old nutbar, that Ayn.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igQlbesF0zA]

Bitcoin has now been swallowed by Wall Street. So that's that.

Time to look into local currencies. They're anyway prettier.

Amusing exception to the Russian government's current war on Wrong Food: caviar. Yes, while other EU foodstuffs must be bulldozed if they creep across the border, Agroittican Lombardo, an Italian sturgeon farm, is permitted to run fish eggs into Russia.

In doing so, however, the company has to Lie.

Says the company managing director, Lelio Mondella: "We've had to put a Russian brand name on the tin, and we don't put 'Made in Italy' on it."

He understands this, though. "The Russians want to eat Russian caviar. I understand that. Who would buy mozzarella cheese made in Russia?"

In other Slavs, the world has recently been treated to photo ops of Vladimir Putin working out in a gym, grilling meat, and cuddling a kitten. By far my favorite, however, is the stunning photographic evidence that Putin now roams the land, shirtless, aboard a Ritz cracker.

Clearly, this requires from the Americans some sort of Response. Perhaps Obama can be persuaded to ride an Oreo.

I suppose there should be some obligatory reference to September 11. Alright then. That Halloween, of 2001, some six weeks or so after, I attended my brother's annual Halloween party as a member of the Taliban. Clad in sandals, a jesus robe, some sort of appropriate headgear; I had, naturally, and at all times, the beard; a staff I beheld in one hand, while a Koran, which I had dipped into from time to time over the decades, I gripped in the other. I moved through the party reading, sometimes, from it, but mostly I recited, in a low rumbling voice, lyrics that, from self-defense, I had written to the tune of "God Bless America," as that song became inescapable, in the weeks after 9/11, to anyone in the United States not interred in a Doggie Dooley.

allah bless afghanistan
land that i love
stand beside her
and guide her
as the bombs they rain down from above

from the mountains
to the deserts
to our leaders' mouths
white with foam
allah bless afghanistan
my bombed-out home

Somewhere there is a picture of this, but I think my mother has it.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0EYRC4NQ-Q]

Far, far more interesting, are the photos still coming in from Pluto.

As the Science Men are now admitting, if only obliquely, heretofore they knew nothing at all about Pluto. Because they had never seen it. But now that they have seen it, there are new things about it that they say they Know. But all that will change, when once they touch it. All of which will then change, when once they taste it.

We do not yet know what Pluto sounds like; that is, in the sense of the electromagnetic vibrations of the planet (and it is, a planet). But, as a taste, below is a sound of the rings of Uranus, a Pluto neighbor: of "the rustling of the cosmos."

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mqQPl2r1io]

We do know, now, that Pluto is a very lovely world. As all the worlds are very lovely. In all the universes. We know that Pluto is far more complicated and complex than humans had heretofore imagined. As all things are more complicated and complex than humans imagine. We know that now that Pluto is not so much of a mystery, it is even more of a mystery. As all things, when not so much of a mystery, become even more of a mystery.

The important thing, now, as ever, is: isn't it pretty, mysterious, of wonder?

As Lew Welch wrote, intuiting the workings of the universe(s):

Guard the Mysteries!
Constantly reveal them!

Science is useful, science is interesting, science is exciting, but in the end it's just another form of guessing. Which is why until the 19th Century, at least in the West, it was considered but a branch of philosophy. There were no "scientists"; instead, there were just "natural philosophers."

A common curse of philosophers, of any stripe, is arrogance. But this arroagance became compounded exponentially, in the philosophers who decided to break away and pronounce themselves "scientists." For they decreed they had devised a "scientific method," which virtually guaranteed that all their (philosophical) musings were in truth Right and Meet.

That we currently live in an age of galloping scientific advancement, this actually belies the "scientific" assertion that the Science World, it is a world of Truth.

As we see of Pluto: which was one thing. Until it was actually seen. And now it is another.

As the tree of human ancestors was believed to be one thing . . . until this week . . . and now there must be a re-branching of the tree.

As there is the "first there is a mountain/then there is no mountain/then there is" understanding of Mars: where first it was scientifically Decreed no life had ever existed on Mars; then it was decided life was once there and still could be; but now it has been Decided a "catastrophe" blew all life away, and the planet is as dead as Dick Cheney's pulse.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9wrgzRiN30]

There is the "sudden" and "unexpected" resolution of the planet's Southern Ocean, to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which is, as the Science Men say, a "puzzle."

There is the black hole, that, for the Science Men, is "too big" for its galaxy. And they, the Science Men, must therefore rewrite the Rules.

There is the dark matter, where the models "disagree" with the data; it is, it seems, all more complicated, complex (as ever), than the Science Men ever previously thought.

There are also other pressures on science.

There is, for instance, Bought Science, where people, "scientists," for payment, will, as an example, decree, and for decades, that a poison, is not a poison.

There is Suppressed Science, where, say, psychedelic compounds that can really make a difference in the suppression of human suffering, are themselves suppressed, and for decades, because, as a side effect, these compounds also allow people to get "high."

There is Bonehead Science, where it was believed human infants felt no pain, and therefore slicing off, without warning or anesthesia, the foreskins of male babies, was just alright; and animals, too, felt no pain, and so therefore whatever you wanted to do with them, in your little science labs, was a-ok.

There is Being In The Belly Of The Beast Science, where, as best example, Werner Heisenberg postulated, correctly, that an observer, always, changes what it is that s/he observes. Meaning, by the mere act of Looking, s/he who Looks, changes, what is being Looked at. Meaning one can never truly Look, and See, what the Other, truly is.

Theodore Roszak articulates a variant: how the brain-scientist, in a city setting, cannot accurately diagnose another's brain, because the "scientist," s/he occupies the same insane space, as the patient:

I've talked with some fledgling eco-psychologists who have developed very strong reservations about the possibility of treating problems of neurosis within an urban framework. That is, what if the city is itself shot through with a kind of madness? And I'm talking about something that's so apparent in the pace and tempo of our daily life, that I think it’s almost taken for granted, that we are living a kind of crazy life. All we have to do is be caught on the freeway in a traffic jam, to recognize the madness of the way we've constructed the world around us. The amount of waste and the amount of stress and the amount of tension that we inflict upon ourselves. There’s something crazy about that.

Now my problem is, and this is what I observe in my book, The Voice of the Earth, that when we say we are crazy, with what we’re doing in this urban environment, this quite simply has no professional meaning. Because psychiatrists who are themselves products of an urban culture, and practice within an urban context, are often not prepared to call into question a context that they themselves are tied to. But the madness of cities is an important consideration in eco-psychology. And cities are becoming the only way of life left in the modern world. There’s very little that's outside of the city. And if the city is a crazy context in which people live, then that would also be a crazy context in which to carry on psychotherapy.

And then even the, these-days, bedrock anchors of Science are, in "truth," fungible, nugatory, transitory.

For instance, gravity on this planet is allegedly a given, but I cohabited for more than 15 years with somebody who, in the Hawaiian right of it, could just take off and fly. I myself have journeyed to various times and spaces that are supposedly non-attainable. It used to amuse me that the Science Men would observe the "edge" of the universe and then puzzle that all of a sudden there's nothing there: now, they're starting to get it: that a mass object can flip over into an energy object. In fact: happens all the time. For instance, when any creature on this planet "dies."

I had originally intended in this piece to pull up, at this point, out of oo-ee-oo land, to address the "migrant crisis."

However, by the "time" I got all the way down here, there seemed to have developed, for me, a "time" problem.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPb-86NlTUQ]

Like, I was out of it. ; (

And in attempting the Ornstein exercises to stop clocks—which do work—I discovered I could not summon the necessary relaxed state; which is not surprising, as "relaxed" and "deadline" (JtC says open-sesames should be published by 6 a.m., 20 minutes from now) do not really cohabit comfortably and easily in any reognized way.

So, instead, I'll conclude with an even deeper dive into oo-ee-oo: that is, the Potemkin Sun Reality.

Which might actually be useful for folks around here, who seem so often to dive into the blues, and not in the good-music sense, but in the world-is-dying-dying-dying-dying sense.

So. The Potemkin Sun Reality goes like this:

Some years ago I received a communique from a person said to be conversant with the ways and means of alien beings. This person, while completing post-graduate work in psychic school, was one night orally apprised of the fact that, some time early on in the Clinton I administration, the sun went nova, and the earth was burnt to a cinder. However, no one here noticed this, because of the efforts of the "good aliens" (the thinnish creatures best known for their attempts to protect us from the "bad aliens," those no-good-'uns prone to picking us up off lonely interstates, playing with our gonads, implanting chips in our brains, and then setting us loose).

In this instance, the good aliens allowed our brains to believe that the earth was still here—and so were we. They kindly threw up into the sky a Potemkin Sun, so that we could go on believing that everything was Normal. They did this, it is said, because during the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987 human beings apparently proved to be "worthy," and almost ready for "the next step," which involves not needing bodies. The good aliens figured it a shame to allow us all to burn off like bugs on a grill, and just a few short years before we would no longer be bothered by such things as roaring jets of molten flame. They will take down the Potemkin Sun, so goes the theory, when we no longer need it, when, I guess, we will all sort of join together and swirl away as energy beings, a la the close of Childhood’s End.

So, the lesson of this Reality is this: it's all okay, people. Everybody, they, we, already made it.

So, in that, please, and all and every, have yourself, a real good day.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceF0c-TJ2Xo]