Follow That Dream.

I was watching old movies on TV such as "Follow That Dream" with Elvis Presley and "How The West Was Won ", both of them from 1962 when  I was twelve years old. The theme of both was seeking out one's destiny and fulfilling one's potential. Back then I adored both films as they overflowed with heavenly music, love and adventure, and promised that I, a poor kid from a housing estate on the edges of Melbourne, might have a life full of similar joys.

As Elvis sang "Angel" I couldn't help but cry, from nostalgia and sadness, as we all know what happened to him and, in my life, things didn't work out as brilliant as I'd hoped either. I didn't know about upper class elitism, private school old boy networks, political corruption, religious cult brotherhoods, homosexual oppression and, most hard to pin down of all, sheer bad luck.

As a child, when visiting my grandfather's house, I noticed among his huge collection of bric-a-brac, a porcelain statue of a tramp stretched out upon a park bench with playing cards scattered at his feet and a legend written on its base that read something like, "The man who got trumped by spades!" It intrigued me endlessly, I couldn't work it out and, no matter how many times I asked my grandpa to explain it to me, he would just grumble and say, "You'll find out some day."

I now know that it meant, "You can take a gamble on many things in life but you may not win, especially if you make the wrong moves, like get into substance abuse, and/or if the cards are stacked against you." I worked hard, I studied, I tried my hand at many things, I even had some talent, I never cheated, stole, plagiarized or back-stabbed, and yet, here at the end of the road, I'm a bum, never met that impresario or lover who would back me, and I actually got fucked over by the penal rat-race we have here in Auz. Luck and fairness just wasn't with me.

Boo hoo hoo! Oh well, I did have a go, and at least I've got my health and brains still hanging in there. And my life sure was an adventure, you don't really need success and money for that. And one more blessing, I never got myself brainwashed and my life lost by some nut-job religious cult.

Me as a young, hopeful filmmaker, 1978.

I just saw the stunning film documentary, "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief." What a shocker, it scared the shit out of me! Machiavellian cults like this have the power to take over the world, much as the Nazis in Germany hoped to do, only Scientology has even creepier, more techno tactics. It's unbelievable that people fall for such nonsense, they must be desperate, lost souls to begin with. What a fuckwit Tom Cruise is, I'll never go to one of his movies again! Somehow I was blessed with a rational mind that can see the bullshit from a mile off. My parents never indoctrinated me into any religious superstition such as Christianity and that was a good start.

When I was a young wanderer on the infinite road of soul seeking, here in Auz and in India, I passed through many camps, had a close look at the big gurus for three days, then moved on, never giving myself over to anyone, all of them just a scam to get control, enslave me for cheap labor and squeeze me of my money. No matter the charisma, the crowd hysteria, elaborate costumes and sets, I never fell for anything. Thank nogod! One good thing to say about how my life panned out, I'm my own man, independent, free, clear thinking, fun loving, adventurous, I maybe even had more fun than Elvis, I stayed alive a lot longer that's for sure, poverty means you don't over-eat.

If we add up all the cults infiltrating this world, it's a wonder there's any free thinking souls roaming about. I include religions in this, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, all with nonsensical beliefs, virgin births, walking on water, infinite levels of heaven and hell, resurrection after death, virgins in paradise, etc etc. Protestants, (Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists,etc), Hillsong and Moonies. The Catholics, (Opus Dei, Jesuits etc.) The Orthodoxies, Russian and Greek, all amassing vast piles of lucre on Earth. The Mahayana, Hinayana and Zen Budhists, Jehova Witnesses, Mormans, 7th day Adventists, Freemasons, Skull and Bones, Satanists, Order of the Golden Dawn, Raellians,  Kenjans, Freemasons, so much fucking madness secretly running the world.

Next we have all the Indian cults, Hare Krishnas, Maher Baba, Rajneeshis (Osho), Divine Lighters, Ma huggers, Satya Sai Baba zealots, Muktananda, Satchitananda, etc etc. Then there's politics, the communists, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, very much like cults. I guess "a wise philosophy to live by" is what everyone is desperate for, instead of just living, co-operative, compassionate, and rational.

I'm sure this list of cults is only partial, there must be plenty more I've forgotten or don't know about. Again, are there any people who live without any religious/political crutches, only the facts of science and a compassion for suffering humanity to go on with? Then again, a science of living, "going clear" is what Scientology promises, so what the fuck, you can't win. That's why I call our species homo sap sap sapiens, we might know that we know but we're also real saps about knowing crap when it comes right down to it.

Repeat, for all the bad luck and injustice, I'm glad I'm the nihilist deadbeat bum the world made me. And I'm not trying to start another cult with this rave, I consider it too late for any improvement in this world, I just want to end my days hiding out from all the madness in peace, painting/writing what I want, following my own dream.

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If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

The Big Censor in the Sky.

At around the time I wrote "A Demon is Summoned to Push Me Over the Edge", which is a scathing assessment of the Catholic Church and those who convert to such an irrational, medieval and tortuous religion, I was suddenly dropped or blocked from a readership I'd managed to attract over ten years. I had mentioned the name of that most powerful of all tyrants, Rupert Murdoch of News Inc and, though possibly just paranoid, I can't help wondering if he has cyber-hackers on the payroll looking out for any bad press and dealing with it by blocking it?

Such megalomaniacs don't like even the smallest bit of criticism, especially if it's spot on, such as them kneeling to a non-existent god and getting absolution for their sins in the confessional. What a lurk, do any crime and you'll be forgiven in the priest's box. Hmmmm... and let's face it, the Church itself has a terrible reputation, but with worldwide power its quasi-cultists everywhere can snoop and torch at will. (The other religious denominations are just as uptight, it seems there's only a few of us on this planet who don't suffer from the "God bug" contaminating our brains.) With all the Powers out to control me I don't know which way to turn. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean THEY are not fucking with me!

Or could it be that I got dropped because I don't write enough porn, as that's what a lot of Web surfers seem to desire. I've noticed my most sexy stories are the most read, such as "7 Fucks in a Sex Shop", "On the Beat, Not Beaten", "The Freak at Loose Ends" and "The Freaks Who Conquered Goa" but in all these stories I satirize the obsession with sex, not masturbate for perverts. News Inc, in it's infamous phone hacking and lowest common denominator scandals, goes for the jugular of people's sex lives, thereby hoping to unsettle or destroy them, and titillate the redneck unthinking mob, but that's not my bent.

Satirizing sex, even my own, is how I combat Big Father's fascistic attempt to control our lives. Just when it looks like one of my tales is heading towards some juicy sex, I hit a wall and lose my libido. I've had enormous fun creating a character, who in all his picaresque adventures, a compulsive gay fool getting close to the hottest guys, never actually consummates his liaisons, never gets a fuck, never finds satisfaction, is forever the loner. It's flying in the face of most pornography and fantasy, where there's a cum shot at the end or Mr. Right waltzes off into the sunset with the protagonist. It's going against the grain of most romantic shlock, and actually the story of my life.

I'm not interested in writing pornography, there's enough of it in every nook and cranny. I write a post-modern combination of biography, history, travelogue, fantasy, journalism, philosophy, satire and Gothic non-romantic hyper-realism. I don't want to tell too much about my personal sex life, for after fifty years of struggle I really have lost my libido and, for me, the frisson of sex is in it being private. But Sex is certainly an undercurrent in my work, it's one of the great motivating forces in existence and can't be wished away, it's not there in my creative writing to bring on orgasm, it's there to have a laugh at and not take too seriously.

Or could it be that I write too much about sex? So many autocratic societies are uptight about any discussion of sex, even democracies such as India, and THEY ban all mention of it outright. I've noticed that many of my stories about my childhood and sexual growth get absolutely no readers at all which is strange as they're good stories. Could it be that filtering systems block these stories from the Net with the bullshit excuse that they are "child pornography"? They are realist tales of what actually happened to me, studies in contemporary societal behavior, history, psychology, anthropology, not meant to be wanked over, but in fundamentalist autocracies no discussion or study is allowed at all. The interception of this content might originate in my own country of Australia as it would not want the world to know what happened to its citizens as they and the nation matured, THEY want to maintain the illusion of squeaky clean goody two-shoes suntanned beach himbos.

Sadly I'm not so cyber-literate, I know very little about coding, encryption, linking with like-minded souls, or how to get on the Dark Net as a member of Anonymous and keep my work out of the hands of Big Father. I've only got this Blog site to tell my tale: smarter, nastier, wealthier forces can block me, wipe me, destroy me, like gods of cyber-space stomping on me from on high. I still hope that the original ideal of the Internet holds sway, a space for Equality and Free Speech to find expression. Like a global nervous system, if one neural pathway is blocked, another synaptic connection opens up and the blockage is by-passed, the story still getting a hearing. While my readers dropped to zero for a few weeks,  they've picked up again, free-thinking readers somehow finding a way to my site. Everything comes in waves, there's no even distribution of information in this universe.

I've just read "Black Code" by Ronald J. Deibert of The Citizens' Lab in Canada and I realize I've been terribly naive and flaky about our present-day Internet. The ideals of it's invention and application have long been compromised by big corps, crime syndicates and govt. spy agencies so that the concept of "Free Speech" has gone down the gurgle-hole. From the choke-points of IPS boxes to filtering programs and interception systems, content and identities are pinpointed, wiped and incriminated. Where once I had a big readership in America, that "land of the free" and greatest of all so-called literate democracies, my numbers are now almost zero.

I get no readership in the UK at all which is strange as English is our mother-tongue and my histories involve our symbiotic relationship. I had a readership in Russia, which after the bans on homosexual propaganda, dwindled to zero, but have now picked up again, as if some few have found a way around the blockages, or I'm being read by Govt. agents and crime lords! I'm read regularly by one or two in China and again it could be by an uptight govt. spy as China is virulently anti-gay. (Dumb because gay lib would go some way to mitigating their population explosion!)

What to do? I am actually a nobody, with no power, criminal intent or world-shaking abilities, just a libertarian-socialist agenda. We are now in the future Dystopia of Big Brother/Brave New World control, where we have acquiesced to constant surveillance by our addictive tuning into technology and consuming/believing every piece of CRAP handed to us. The ELITE running the world want an ant-colony-like society with no discourse, disruption or dissent.

This is a tough, mysterious, exciting, scary world we're all sharing, amazing to stay alive with enough brain-cells and health to find one's way through the maze, figure out the puzzle, have a Satori and dissolve in ecstasy. I am Nothing, I can go down any moment, the Dark Force might rule, but HERE NOW, I can try to struggle against it, have a go at Reason and Compassion via a life-story, and maybe some others will get consoled, informed, intrigued. It doesn't matter if I fail, at least I'm not chopping off heads or robbing pensioners' bank accounts.

And if those dopes who had me on their "Favorite Blog" sites dropped me because I was getting boring, good riddance, they were collecting advertising revenue at my expense and I can live without them, I'm not getting paid for this, just getting hairs out of my cake-hole and stashing my stories in one of a few safe places. (Another reason I could be blocked, by Google ITSELF, as I don't accept advertizing on my site!)

had

I want to write about sexual/gender liberation, particularly for gays, who are still outlawed and brutalized in many parts of the world. I also want to encourage co-operation, caring, sharing, protection of the environment, rebellion against false gods like the Heavenly Father, rampant consumerism, celebrity elitism, Mammon sitting on mounds of bullion etc etc. Much of this fight is on the Green Libertarian program, but the opposite of the progressive stuff mentioned above is what the Rulers of this planet earn their billions from and thus will fight any attempt to be curtailed or critiqued. I'm a softie, a flake, a dreamer, maybe even a loser, who cares? It was a wild ride, that can't be taken away from me!!

I know this sounds like so much anarcho psycho-babble. The future will either end in a class revolution, a draconian police state or a Mad Max waste-land, (all three versions of further tyranny.) What the fuck? To talk by the camp-fire is programmed into our species, I'm compelled to keep going, keep blabbing. Many of these stories will soon be on Kindle Books, it's a project to keep me alive, keep me hoping. Writing is where it starts: movies, movements, moving emotions all begin with brave writing, daring to do it, to say it. Crush it if He can, the imaginary, digital God on high, ruling cyberspace, can go fuck himself!

 P.S. Of course I was just being paranoid, as if THE POWERS THAT BE would give a shit about little old me. But that's part of the character I'm creating, at the center of his own storm, worried Big Daddy's forever looking over his shoulder. As soon as I wrote this the Murderochs were in the news, Big Father seems to be getting a bit wobbly, he's handing over the reins of the company to his son, James, the fool in charge when the phone hacking scandal was rampaging. News Inc will maybe crumble as I just don't think the twerp can cut throats as deeply as his old man can.

With all the trouble in this world, refugees from Africa and Syria pouring into Europe in their millions, war in the Ukraine, Syria murdering its own, The Islamic State rampaging in Iraq, terrorist attacks in major cities, the major powers engaged in a new Cold War that's tearing the world apart etc etc, the trammels of one fucked-up soul in Auz, me, are meaningless. Yet most of us on the planet are not in a war zone, we're plodding along, trying to have lives of peace and achievement. 

Thus my story can be similar to many a poor sod's travail, trying to make headway through the flood of billions of laboring humanity. One doesn't have to believe in a god to pray for downtrodden humanity, prayers are good vibes sent out in compassion and hope. My Blog is a long narrative prayer that trouble can be ameliorated and we can all, somehow, get a life and realize our potential.

But what to do about zealous murderers and tyrants? We fucked the planet, we fucked our future prospects, we're all fucked together. Maybe we can only meditate and find the peace within ourselves, before it all blows up in our face?

Peace and love from Auz.

www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.