Light Your Candles and Burn Your Incense

Tags: light candles, burn incense, ring bells, I Am Sam, Saturday night, TV room, Day Room, lounge, forge, anvil, U.S. Vets, hodgepodge, homeless veterans, homeless shelter, veterans shelter, military, veterans, Fathers Program, social services, honor, fealty, service to your country, civilian thiefs, civilian liars, fatcat, geopolitical ambition, factotum, jarvis, marquisdejolie, Revver, Inglewood

Go ahead, light your candles and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out because God will come, and He will put you on His anvil and fire up His forge and beat you and beat you and beat you until He turns brass into pure gold.---Sant Keshavadas

Watched a movie called "I Am Sam" Saturday night in our homeless veterans shelter TV room. The TV room is a little 20 by 30 converted office with a hodepodge of donated Salvation Army couches, folding chairs and half broken office chairs with one large screen donated TV in the corner. We're allowed in there from noon to midnight.

"I Am Sam" is one of those feel good movies. You should've seen all the teary-eyed, hard-core, Godzilla killa's in there trying to hide their wet eyes. The movie really touched us.

When it was over, veterans stood and clapped and sighed and wiped their eyes one more time and damned-near turned to the guy next to him for a hug and we all stood there in the vets dorm theater room with our hearts open and our families far far away, as usual, and all we had at that moment, when our hearts had been opened, was each other.

As usual.

What a bunch of romantics, I thought as I looked around the room. Half of them are probably in the FAT program (fathers who have been separated from their children by unpayable child support payments), so they were especially vulnerable to this movie about a retarded man trying to hold on to his daughter when social services wanted to take her away.

Still, the room was full of romantics: men who at one time in their lives believed stupidly in ideals such as service to your country and honor and fealty and all those dumbass lies we were told in junior high about civic responsibility.

The truth is it's all about the cash, man. That's the REAL truth. You ain't right until you've got a pocket full of green. All that other crap about service to your country is just a trick the competition uses to get your job and your wife and your house and your kids while you're off in some strange country serving some fatcat's geopolitical ambitions.

I looked around the room full of romantics and once again felt a sense of belonging. Haven't felt THAT in quite a while. I AM a romantic and I'm taking my beating, my God-forging beating, like a man . . . well, best I can.