Ghostwriting is a terrible way to live, but there's all sorts of crap people do to pay the bills. First of all, some of us have what's called a "faulty decision-maker". We believe we have greatness inside, and we don't want to spoil the deal. The theory then goes on to describe how sinking into a couch, while holding a soggy beer cozy that sports the logo, '"Welcome to Moronville, population: YOU" in your hand leads to greatness more readily than seeking gainful employment.

Some of us, on the other hand, have some inkling of what we want. I do. Nevertheless, I've cleaned the nasties off the walls and bathroom tiles of by-the-hour motel rooms, and I've inserted catheters for a very intelligent, paralyzed young man who knew he was going to die. Most recently, I ran the foster care system for adults with developmental disabilities in my county.

In the under-funded, uninterested state of Oregon, this last one was the worst. Beyond the consistent cases of gross negligence or the outlandish, highly-common instances of physical and sexual abuse enacted by care providers, the simple, unbelievable fact remains that citizens of my glorious state refused, for the second year running, to support a measure that would fund developmental disabilities- and mental health support (two divisions, two budgets) along with financing for five day school weeks for kids everywhere (yeah, I said five day weeks). My job was secure; but when the second measure was dismissed with distinction, twenty percent of patients in our county’s mental ward (the figure was different in other counties) were summarily ejected, sans guardian, sans housing. In my county, one client was killed by the end of the first week.

So it goes. There’s a point I’m trying to make–something to do with hearing, then accepting your calling–but I haven’t reached that point in this blather, yet.

I studied English and completed an honors thesis of short fiction as an undergraduate. That was many years ago. Since then, as you may have successfully deduced, I social-worked my way through an era spanning a hair’s breadth under a decade. During several disjointed periods of the decade, I traveled around the United States and Canada, followed Mediterranean Europe from Portugal to Greece. I armed myself only with a backpack, a train pass, a hefty yet compact Lonely Planet Travel Guide (the real bible), an inspiration to travel alone, and my notebooks. I wrote. That was the point–or so I thought.

I fled the expensive world of Holy Week in Spain only to plunge headlong into a more expensive version of Holy Week in Italy. Even my Lonely Planet did not know that the week takes place on different weeks in these countries. Later, of course, I would discover that the celebration continues for an additional week in Greece, as well. By the time I had spent a week in Italy, I had spent a week in Italy without shelter or food. I could not afford anything beyond a small room and a pepperoni sandwich from a bar, on my first and only night in Venice. Ever after, I ate potato chips and slept standing on overcrowded night trains, heavy hiker’s pack strapped to my back, from one part of Italy to another. I took the longest, uninterrupted routes for better sleeping.

In Brindisi, Italy, while involved in a moderately kosher breaking-and-entering (I was locked out of a hostel) the local sleaze stole my backpack and all writings contained therein. I collapsed, sat frozen mentally and physically on a thin bunk mattress for a day and a half. Then I met Lizardo, a fugitive from Santiago, Chili, and after using the remainder of my money to purchase a boat ticket, we ferried on to Greece, to Cyprus, and eventually to Haifa where I ate good, cheap falafel and met a shockingly robust woman.

But I left my will to write in Italy, and I was quit for good–yes, for almost an entire decade I silenced myself, pondered fate and free will–until this last job for the county unlocked my tongue. So I’m back to it again, writing and wondering how I can make it pay the bills.

I picked up a despicable contract, recently, and I’ve written more articles than I can really say–during February alone. Ghostwriting articles forces you to slur your words, lose the content, dribble out a line when you’d rather say something else. Around the World Wide Web, many, many articles decorate a small business front page, with no author’s name signed below. I don’t even know where they are. I couldn’t locate them if I tried.

But I’m writing again. I don’t remember the name of my couch (there was a name, I think). I drink beer from an uncozied bottle that sports the logo “King of Beers”; and, did you know, if you honestly and unequivocally try hard enough, you can taste the uniquely Beechwood-aged savory undertones? And I’ve learned by taking this absurdly unpredictable path that writing was the point. Isn’t that funny? I discovered that writing was the point, after all. And I have dead and abused and Italian people to thank for reminding me.

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"Jews" for "Jesus"

"Jews for Jesus" is a fascinating advertisement campaign. In order to explore, we need to build two labels: "Secular Christianity" and "Community Christianity". The first denotes a default orientation: a Christmas-celebrating, Jingle-Bells-singing setting. The second describes a certain directory of one of many Christian sects, containing individuals of faith who share the faith with their Christian brethren.

None of this explains the coalition on the street corner with the baseball caps and the tee-shirts, handing out subway-litter to every passer-by with a sense of embarrassed politeness. These aren't the sleekly-dressed bicyclers or streetwalkers fulfilling a coming-of-age mission, interested in spreading the Mormon words to everyone, Hear Ye, Jews, and Hear Ye, Christian Seculars and Ye Christian Communities; Hear Ye, one and all. Jews for Jesus wages a campaign for Jews--and Jews only--to join the new Tribe--a select, modern equivalent to head the "welcome home" committee for Jesus.

So who are these Jews for Jesus? We defined two grossly general groups with Christianity, for the purpose of explaining that Jews for Jesus explains a distinct spiritual and metaphysical cosmology. Some evangelicals believe that 144,000 Jews need to convert, must find the Christ before Jesus will return--and this 144,000 figure doesn't bode well for the remaining Jews, who should expect an uncomfortable living condition for all of eternity. Jews for Jesus denotes an apparent paradox, an oxymoron, especially as viewed by Jews . . . sort of similar to a vegetarian ordering a bratwurst with bacon bits at a Milwaukee Brewers game in August.

Jews for Jesus, as a term, depends on two ideas. The first defines Judaism as a race, a people descended from the tribes of Judah and Israel; Jewish tradition agrees with this definition. More: Jewish law requires a Jew to have a Jewish mother. If your mother is Jewish, so are you. The second idea suggested by the unlikely name "Jews for Jesus" demands that no-one is born a Christian. Faith in Jesus is not genetic, not instinctual nor automatic. Faith and faith alone defines a Christian.

Therefore, of course, a community of individuals with the proper credentials might accurately be labeled "Jews for Jesus"--or, to put it another way, a Jew who believes in Jesus would still be a Jew. While this concept is the most offensive and ridiculous for Jews of traditional belief, it is the most essential for Jews for Jesus members. All belief centers around the fact. Not all Jews for Jesus congregants are Jews, though. They collect a mighty army that numbers people of many races and creeds in order to help the Jews evolve.

My dilemma is this: I believe the effort is a waste of debatably valuable energy. To attempt to sway someone from a path that leads to spirituality for the sake of another path that may also lead to spirituality, is to create karmic waves of the worst sort. To believe that one's path is the uniquely correct path to spirituality is the most base, closed-minded tripe on the market. Jews for Jesus as a spiritual marketing device strikes me as a morally bankrupt conception that, if such things exist, will receive just dessert upon the arrival of whatever messianic era or spiritual awakening that may wait for humanity.

Strangely enough, I do see another side. Let me suggest two motivations for the misguided individual on the street corner. Her salvation is in the balance. His faith must be proved. The conditions required to deliver her unto the promised land have not yet been met. As such, I denounce these infidels as selfish, blinded fools who yet sink their souls deeper into the muck.

But what of the individual who has seen? Such individuals exist. They know. A woman feels the touch of god upon her heart when all seems lost. A narrow-minded man, in a sudden, unsought and unexpected epiphany understands a story for the first time. An unprepared woman with an average and easily predicted life finds herself confronted by the spacious infinite and discovers herself to be small, unloved, and irrevocably alone . . . until she remembers a phrase from her disinterested years as a Sunday school student. These people have seen and in fact they have seen the truth, albeit only one, narrow path of truth. These men and women standing nervously upon the street corner are speaking aloud only to fulfill an ethereal, courageous obligation they feel to their messiah. It behooves me to accept that they are not doing it for themselves, nor really are they doing it for me. They are doing it in the name of the truth they have found.

While I may understand (or believe I understand) that the roads to truth are many, and the truth of life is that the path under your feet is the only path you may take, I will take a bow to you, if you are one such individual, though you misunderstand me unto time eternal. Millions of individuals in the world (me included) piss our lives away, and have no firm ground from which we might justly criticize what you have discovered. I feel you moving in my heart.

But you of the first group of preachers, take special note. You cannot accumulate enough spiritual street credit to achieve what your more honest, more sincere sidewalk curb-mates have discovered.

You can't earn a large enough commission on your sales to save yourself from the wasted life you've created for yourself. Take a breath and count to three. Look deeply and honestly into your heart.

Your God is looking for you.

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After another slow, lidless scrabble game we were recruited to support a "Part V" viewing in a Star Wars marathon. Interestingly enough, I guided Brooke through the exact marathon only three weeks earlier. Sometimes you're in the mood. Last night was not such a time, but we had ducked a couple of other engagements recently and I had a twinge thinking about my resurfacing anti-social tendencies.

Maybe this story should have started when we hung up on our phone conversation last night. Brooke asked me who He was. I explained about Hunter and the gonzo journalism phenomenon, to no avail. I suggested that she probably had heard of Fear and Loathing . . . (I probably should have started there with my explanation). Now she was on the same page. I proceeded with this ill-advised lecture about how "J. Depp played Hunter in the movie, but Hunter had also written several blah blah blahs, and Did you know the movie Fear and Loathing . . . was a combination of blah, blah, and blah?"

By the time we left the apartment, my feelings about the suicide were next to nil--closer to nil.

There's no way could I express to you how much the gonzo revolution speaks to me, me being a certified and licensed madman, me knowing and writing through the swirling, rhythmic depths of lysurgic acid and the honesty and majesty of Psilocybin, all the while struggling to appear sane for the benefit of my society.

However, the IDEA of Hunter Thompson, the craze, dies when I open one of his books. The root of gonzo is self-indulgence rather than insight or even "Searching for Truth". Not that it would have happened, but a chronicled interaction between Hunter Thompson and, say, Flannery O' Connor or Ernest Hemingway would have filled out an archive for the ages. I'm not an absolutist like those two stately nutjobs, but imagining either of the two staring one Hunter Thompson between his blurry, bleary eyes, and articulating every syllable of a declaration such as "Self-indulgence is the murderer of fiction" or "There's not one true sentence in your heart" overflows my soul with self-righteousness. Not pretty, I know that. But it's true.

The irony of the fact that Hemingway shot himself, too, isn't lost on me, but I havent had time to sort it out, yet.

The point is that, often, when someone mentioned Hunter, like you did about 1 1/2 years ago tellling me that he was holding down an on-line ESPN column, my first reaction was surprise. The guy is alive and capable of turning on a computer? Again, about a month ago you mentioned the "speech at U Penn" story. He shows up an hour and a half late, shwilled, tripping over himself and smelling like Victory Gin. He speaks for twenty minutes then prepares to leave, and someone asks, "Do you really have the nerve to stumble your way in here, drunk as a lord, spew your nonsense for twenty minutes and then leave without an apology?" He shouts "Guilty!" and the crowd cheers for joy. And I thought "Wow! The guy is still alive!" Yes, the speech took place before the column began, but that changes nothing. The fact that the guy was alive wasn't proof of the power of will or an uplifting triumph against the Man. His survival was simple surprise, as in "I'm surprised the guy isn't dead" or "that guy should be dead" or "that guy gave away everything--I thought he was dead. What the hell ever happened to him?"

So I wasn't affected too deeply, at first. But as Brooke and I walked to our Star Wars engagement, I considered your response to his death. I wondered whether it was the suicide, whether it was the fact that a writer you once loved was dead, or whether you were very drunk. I wondered if a public figure's death would move me like that. When Cash died, I was sad in a nostalgic way. If Bob Dylan rubbed himself out I might commit myself to institution. Seeing R. Pryor looking the way he does now makes me feel terrible, but in a generalized, "a great one is going" sort of way.

Recently, one of my favorite short story writers of all time, Andres Dubus, died. After a few days had passed, a shadowy unnamed feeling took root inside me--not sadness, not loss, not depression or shock--an emotional chemical compound resembling fear or anger but with a difficult ratio to define.

Nobody knew Andres Dubus. No-one. He wrote unironic, nonwitty stories at a time when irony and wit carried the day. Vonnegut and Gardner ran the show, but he didn't care. Older, lifelong authors who knew him . . . well, they loved him and pimped his works for him. But now, if you give him a google, you get three engine-result pages about Andres Dubus III--the House of Sand and Fog (which I refuse to read or see--until, at least, someone remembers his father) guy.

So that guy dies, nobody knows, and I get the jeebies.

When we arrived at our friend's place, I mentioned that Hunter was dead. Picture it: there are four other college-edumacatedly smart adults in the room. Responses: Who? Wait, I know that guy. What was he in? Pipe it, Dickweed; he's a writer. He's the Fear and Loathing guy. How did he die?

"Suicide," I say.

Holy shit, they say. Suicide, really? Unbelievable.

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