backuponthesea's blog: "onceuponthesea"

What is fu anyway?  Or maybe I should say  where. Where is fu?  Somewhere between imaginary and real. In cyberspace. It can be a tough neighborhood with all the scams and phonies, but it's like that in the "real" world too. Still there is more reality here than a lot of places. The salute prooves that there is a real person behind the scenes. Something real is behind it, redeemable in good will and pictures. Unlike the economy where they just keep printing money that's really worth no more than the paper it's  printed on.

most likely I will never meet any of you live and in person. Lucky for me I've got friends who love me down to my soul and I love them the same way. i've had to reduce my core group by 2 because of an unforgivable betrayal on their parts. Happens to the best of us sometimes. Some people are so afraid of everything, including themselves. If I mirror somebody's superficiality or cowardice back at them it  doesn't give them the right to throw shit at the mirror.

Now I will soon leave America behind one last time. I did it in '68 as an  alternative to going to Vietnam. It's even more fucked up now, in a different,  faster more covertly cruel and inhumane way. Protest and dissent have be all but stamped out. Everybody but the GFB's (Greedy Fat Bastards) is too busy trying to survive to get into it much.

I have several blogs going but I feel comfortable here and I willl continue to post my continuing adventures for my fu family and friends, as well as anybody else who many be interested in an expatriate poet's journey.

Take everything exteranious away and the only thing that remains is love.

Stay tuned.

'

I've been around it and through it, the cyclical ebb and flow of a life.Sent Exile Postcards (title of my novel)  back to America when I expatriated for the first time and will again a week from Thanksgiving.Belize this time. I am confident that I will find what I need there because I don't want anything more than a roof over my head and easy access to my favorite sea, the Caribbean.

I have a book to finish. I am easily entertained. I believe in karma, reincarnation and higher
consciousness. I have joy to spread, stories to tell,new things to explore. I am part jester part scribe.

I am also a foreign war corespondent, covering the shadow government here as it manifests in unspeakable cruelty and breaks bones and spirits. High functioning sociopaths and psychopaths who have positioned themselves to lord over the workingman, woman and child. Trying to devolve back to a world of bigotry and fear mongering. An Oligarchy of slave traders that some day will implode from the pressure of their ignorance. The sooner the better.

I can say anything because I'm out of range. Off the grid. I will show you America from outside,and you can compare your image of us with what the rest of the world thinks.The economy is a Ponzi scheme. This validated by eminent economists who have looked behind the curtain.

America is a country without a culture. The human element is ignored, threatened and spun around until it's too dizzy to stand. Never mind understanding the ongoing attack against our connections
to each other and to the larger forces that are waiting for us to wake up from our dream state so they can reveal the well trodden path to liberation.

It's about karma and correct action. We are here for one simple reason; to learn how to love.
To become love itself.

Stand Strong at the Mast

Life comes in waves

cycles of darkness and light

be brave- love saves

burns bad karma bright

Reincarnate in a brighter color

be kind to one and other

as it is our purpose to be

as I am you and you are me

Freedom costs maximum risk

but the rewards are high

Living your bliss

and sweet morning's kiss

Throw snowballs of past

into the constant fire of now

Stand strong at the mast

the wind will tell you how

Fortune favors the bold

You're never too old

to take freedom as your right

as pain transforms to light

Drop old axes to grind

Don't think with your mind

There's more than meets the eye

There is hidden wisdom in the sky

Copyright 2013

Marcus Stein

I try to put it into words, but I'm convinced that there are Larger Forces at play.

What if synchronicity is the Universe's way of telling us that we're doing the right thing?  What would happen if we all gave up our half-lives and stepped full into the blazing magnificence of it all?

Or am I just another crank talking about peace? I remember John Lennon and reading Ram Dass in my cabin on Ibiza. Einstein, John Steinbeck and my father whispering in my inner ear. Telling me the magnificence would be worth any price. Because we all must pay in some form. Be it prayer or blood.

To claim our unholy holiness-here in a world gone mad so many times over is a wonder there's anything left at all.

BEWARE:There is a great evil living amongst us. Those who are only in touch with their inner monster. Predators of the poor, the weak, the tired. Those too slow to keep up, culled from the herd and murdered. I have seen them fall near me. Dead or broken, left to their own devices if they have any. But they never do. Never enough. That's the way the game is rigged.

But it's also a fabric of light infested gravity and the after battle relief when you realize you're still alive. It comes with the power of a million suns, light years of heroes journeys , both told and unknown.

The American grind has ground it's artists down because the fat cats don't want people getting hip to the jive. The real artists are the ones who wake the fuck up to themselves and then try to wake everybody they can the fuck up too.

I don't know where I'm going. I will leave here with what I can carry and I will land in a particular area of the world that I find appealing. I could catch a sailboat to Bali. I hope not to end in some lost tribes' stew pot .But I believe I will survive because I try to do the next right thing

I don't worry about a thing anymore. It's all just life and as long as I'm here I want to be in the middle of it.

I am a strong, sometimes stubborn man. I don't like people who tell me what to do. I try to avoid them as best I can.

I can't express how grateful I am to be alive and free. There is every kind of chain being rattled by keepers, by judge-rs. Stay on the right track, they demand.

Well, sorry. No thanks. It's not my track. There are no tracks for the journey I'm taking. If there ever were,I jumped them long ago. Hypocritical boxcars of evil. Sweet harpsichord jambalaya, the stories I have to tell. They'll all coming out now. Everything has caught up to now and I'm even again.

Poets were once valued,because they were able to widen the focus from Everything and then take it down and down inside your fears and your horrifying aloneness and then up out of that darkness like a breaching whale.To a place beyond where magic thrives love is alive. Got to keep them shut up,underpaid, overworked and crazy from it all.

Nobody wants the word to get out but everybody needs to hear it. Or go on pretending that your living when you know is feels more like dying.

THAR SHE BLOWS, MATEYS. THE GREAT WHITE LIGHT, THE DISTRUCTION OF YOUR PERSONALITY DISORDERS JUST SO MUCH FLOTSAM FLOATING IN THE WAKE.

FREEDOM IS NOT PIRACY.IT IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT, HOWEVER LONG WE MAY WAIL. WHEREVER WE MIGHT SAIL.

SOON I WILL WALK OUT AND MOVE ON.UNDER MY OWN POWER, OR UNDER THE POWER OF INTELLIGENT HEAVENS,IF THAT BE THEIR WILL.

I will keep reporting in. Stay tuned.

As some of you already know, I am on the verge of relocating, expatriating to Belize soon. It's not daunting to me because I have done it before. In 1968 I left to live in Europe because it wasn't Vietnam. I'm writing a book about this experience and have just completed a first draft. I have posted some excerpts in my other blog, and I wil continue to write about my continuing adventures there.

I will probably be a more occaisonal visitor to fu, depending on what kind of internet access I'm able to find there. If I can generate enough hits on my blog I will be able to attract advertizers and hopefully make a few extra bucks to keep me in beans and rice.

I'm asking you to please visit the blog, and if you like it tell your friends. The link is:

http://lifeasamove-marcus.blogspot.com/

It's a bit disorganized right now but will be in better order soon. I'm feeling the same. Kind of in limbo now in between lives. Ready to just get on with it. I'm leaving in a couple of weeks, December 5th. Until then its business as fusual.

Thanks.

Not This Winter

No more Hawk dodging
No more black ice watching
No crippled broken me again
it's back to sea and sun and sin again

Time for the
Phantasmagorical
identity changing
consciousness raising
metamorphic
morphism
into the next me
whoever I may be

A trip earned in blood and tears
long overdue after hard striving years
my reward for surviving
the Reapers shears

because we've all been though it
from the fires of '68
to this questionable state
of spiritual bankruptcy
rampant hypocrisy
that we find ourselves lost in
With vile venom with hate and spin

while we try to get along
know what's right or wrong
being fearless, being strong
even when we don't belong

sure i've lost a few steps
but i've still got one left
that i'm taking contretemps.
Before my days are spent

because I don't think
they roll over
into the next life
or the next

It's another quest
another test
coming like a mystery guest
well well worth the risk

Copyright 2013
Marcus Stein

My Imaginary Girlfriend

for Sharon

she sez i'm the man of her dreams

sez she's gonna meet me in Belize

for all I know she could be real

that would be a pip of a deal

she never says no

never tells me how to go

or where I fit

she has the exact body

I would make if I had a kit

she says she's broke like me

but she still wants to be mine

she'll even come on her own dime

I say lordly lordly that would be fine

it would be the payoff of a lifetime

who am I to say it won't be so

because either way I'm gonna go

She brings out the beast and the

best in me

seems okay

with the rest of me

She's only said no once

and in context it meant yes

I love my imaginary girlfriend

and she loves me

At least I will know soon

if she can be seen

what a twist

that would be

a real her and me

in the Caribbean mist

Matching kiss to kiss

Copyright 2013

Marcus Stein

Welcome

This will be an ongoing collection of my pre and post voyage existential and geographic reporting. At first things may be a little out of order. (I have been trying to make this page first, but I have cut and pasted it out of  existence. this is a rewriting.) I figure oh well. It's what writers do; write and rewrite.

It will be at first reflections on the pre-expedition phase; getting my ducks in a row. Like arranging for my social security to be sent there and  what to do about my octet of prescriptions. Maybe someday I will market  it as a guidebook for potential ex pats.

 I'm going fully mercenary about my writing for survivals sake.

Now I am preparing for an expedition. The difference between and expedition and an adventure is that an expedition has more or less set purposes and goals, while an adventure is by it very nature more indefinable and experiential.

If I go off on a tangent I promise to not run  you into a brick wall with it. I try to keep my tangents at least loosely connected to the basic melody of   the piece. If I tell you a story I want it to first of all be one you will enjoy reading and that it will make some kind of sense,however fractured that might be.

There will be some poetry,some pictures and the stories I will have little choice but to write. Travel like this invites serendipity and unusual characters and situations. I've said all I can say about how much I hate living in Skokie and America. Skokie will be a fleeting memory save the friends I have made here. The inexplicable tragic mess of America  as seen from outside might be a topic to  explore.

There is a bitter/sweetness in leaving.  I think of the people I love. and the people who love me. But I am not dropping off the end of the earth and will be in touch as much as is possible from whatever degree of civilization I will  have access to. So take your love and be  happy for me. What I'm about to do feels right on so many levels.

I figure  it's always a trade off. Nobody gets everything.. We make our  choices and take it from there. Since I have rebelled against domestication my entire adult life, I don't have the wife and the kids, now for  many of you grand kids, you  can't just walk away from it all and move to Belize. I can and I am thrilled that I can, and if I am not struck dead first i will do just that.

There's the trade off .

Cards on the table. More later.

Wild Ducks

Preparing to leave the country, this insane America,there are a plethora of details to attend to. From passport getting to making arrangements for my check to be sent to my new country of residence, Belize.

I will soon become, for the second time in my life an American Expatriate, commonly referred as expat. One of the reasons I am moving in Belize is the existence of an old and eclectic network of expats and a human-friendly environment. Which by any sane mans opinion America is not. As it veers and stumbles, leaving dead and maimed bodies overseas and class warfare at home.

Underfed children and men broken by the unrelenting demands of the unholy dollar. With too much falling down around them to stop moving, With life little but work and sleep. The daily war for survival. Worried about, obsessed by making it from day to week to month til year to the end.

The moneyed cowards huddled together in their plush theaters of deadly deception. Men without conscience or morals who send men to their deaths and lock their children in poverty

One day my former government will implode under the weight of it's own stupidity. I am going someplace where beauty still lives and the air is not so electrically damaging to our better angels.

Here where money is God is Mammon and you're damned if you don't have it. They will take you job take your house take your manhood, render you powerless. Take the meat off your bones, take your beating heart and feed it to their mad dogs.

Yes they are that evil, that unconcerned about the other. Komodo dragons in 3 thousand dollar suits. 

I'll take the fine white sand between my city toes. Look at coral reefs and sparkling sea, watch the sway and allure of bikini-ed women. Away from this bitter village of shrouds waiting to die.

My ducks are coming, their calm making of way above, their wildly pulling flippers unseen. 

My passport arrived today. It expires in 10 years. My expiration date was of course  not included. Gimme 10 and defy all evidence to the contrary. I would be surprised and grateful. I had a cat once who lived for 2 years after the vet told us that  "his  vitals were incompatible with life."

So nobody knows anything it that regard. We think we do. Or deny it's even real. Imaginations of immortality crushed as dead as Bambi by inexplicable fate.

I had a well stamped passport the first time I was an expat. A fugitive from the war that no one to this day has every presented a plausible reason for; our war with Vietnam.

This is the subject of the novel I'm writing about; what it's like to leave behind everything you've ever known for the great Unknown. It  is more exhilarating than frightening. Fear will keep you ashore, weak in the knees. Fine you, jail you and prevent your attendance at the party they were throwing just for you.

I dont' want to miss mine.