How true. Mosquitoes do serve many purposes in nature. Thus, the whole thing is, does one want to live in nature, where everything is natural and designed by Intelligence that is, hands down, no doubt, radically above that of any man’s, about as far as daylight is from dark? I like nature. When I first moved to this place, in Southern Alabama, I was basically sterile and had not touched nature much until I was in my early forties. This placed nearly consumed me before I adapted. I got into poison plants just walking around on the 80 acre plot I bought, for example, which came a whisker from hospitalizing me. Everything in nature attacked me in this area and I was uncomfortable for a long time. Fortunately, the man in me is not the last word, but adaptation is. Ha, ha, ha. I adapted so well that I can now wallow in any greenery here that I desire and not be the worst for it. I must have adapted even to poison ivy, as I don’t get the rash any longer. The point is: one should adapt to nature the best one knows how, and be able to wallow in anything one desires without being harmed. Harm is the whole thing one wants to avoid, but even there, if God’s Nature is working with one, then let the harm come, turn it into the sun, and let it run. All that Jon says about CREATION is true, and every individual, which is of the nature I AM, has ALL CREATION within one. The question is really, “What does one want?”

We could go to one of “our” torture centers in the Middle East and spend a night listening to the screams. We could imagine that we are in one of those cells, trying to cling to a memory of our home and family while knowing our turn will come shortly. We could imagine facing the part of our self that “would do absolutely anything” to make the pain stop. We could imagine that the “anything” they want is exactly what would betray our closest friends, a group of freedom fighters, courageous men and women who have saved our own life many times over. What does it take to make that real for an American or European who has never lived it?

“If I ever get out of here, I promise I will….” But that’s exactly how you got in here in the first place, isn’t it?

You look down at your bloody, throbbing, nail-less fingers and toes. Everything hurts constantly, even through the numbing sleepless din of artificial noise and glaring lights. The blood, urine, and shit on your clothes doesn’t matter any more, nor your broken nose and teeth. The smell of disinfectant is all pervasive. “When will I break? What is it they really want of us? Are they even human?”

You have a flicker of imagining the American “patriots” who sold out their briefly free country, now sitting in their comfortable homes watching the news with potato chips, or maybe even reading the “not fake news” on their computers. You know that they work long meaningless hours to make the money to pay for your torture, and the weapons that blew up your house, your goats, and your olive trees. You don’t dare to think about your children. You try to picture the comfortable Americans again… “Tsk, tsk,” they say, “isn’t it awful what they’re doing to those poor people. What’s the world coming to? Hey, I think I’ll get another beer and see if the Giants won…”

Returning from this reverie, I see that Western “humanity” has become so media numb, I doubt anything could reach them. They will march to their own gulags, slaughter pits, and gas chambers just as have hundreds of millions before them. I spend endless hours trying to break through this mind trance with my clients. Its very slow going. “Maybe I’ll be ready to face that part of myself in my next life. I’m just not up for it today, I’m tired.”

When a film such as “12 Years a Slave” can’t get people to realize that what they are watching…, is about to be them in their very own “back to the future” nightmare, what could possibly move them? Oh yes, they get stirred up a bit, maybe even terrified for a moment, but it goes nowhere. They have no traction. The linkage from passively watching suffering on the inherently “not real” screen to motivating and engaging personal action is broken. Humans are like your ’47 Chevy in the junk yard with no transmission. Even if the motor runs, there is no transmission to the wheels of true compassion…, of will and action.

Reading your writing is inspiring, as is sharing my own with you, but I realize I would much rather do this than sit through Steve McQueen’s “12 Years as a Slave,” no matter how accurate, honest, true, and artistically beautiful. I’m an empath, and I’ve spent much of my life helping other human beings who have been brutally tortured, broken, and then taught to spend the rest of their lives torturing themselves. The pain is raw and real to me. I have lived through that myself. I don’t need to watch it in a theater. I have myself said those haunting words, over and over as if in prayer, “If I survive this and ever get out of here I will…”

An excellent detailed film review by Owen Gleiberman is at:
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/09/07/toronto-12-years-a-slave-is-a-landmark/