“Kill the Dove!” – a tale of the revolutionary 1960s
Francis X. Kroncke
225 South East Avenue
Viroqua, WI 54665-7 123
608-807-7357 cell
fkroncke@minnesota8.net
· General fiction
· 170,010 words
· MS completed June 2009 ©2009
Contents
I. Kill the Dove! stands alone
Author’s Biographical Information
MARKETING & PROMOTION
Kill the Dove! – a tale of the revolutionary 1960s
By
Francis X. Kroncke
Kill the dove! is a tale of the revolutionary 1960’s. It stands alone—no one has written a novel that covers these religious, political, imprisoned and sexual experiences. It follows the love, betrayals, failures and triumphs of three radical anti-war and feminist activists: Jared, Aaren and Char. They share Jared’s experiences in federal prison as the impact of the Vietnam war, sexual violence, racism, sexism and the failure of traditional moral and spiritual value systems play out in their lives. It is a semi-autobiographical narrative inspired by the author’s personal experiences of the monastery, trial, prison and personal revolution.
II. Audiences
Based on the marketing and promotional plan described below, Kill the Dove! appeals to several audiences. These include:
Baby boomers and the Flower Children of the 1960s, now aging and eager to remember the era
The expanding segment of newly minted youthful social activists—a segment that crosses all categories from the new evangelicals to the first-time politicos energized by the election of Obama. His presidency is sourced in the Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience movements of the Sixties. For decades America has indulged in cultural amnesia and young activists know little about the Sixties. This novel is a referential work.
Movie producers—Kill the Dove! and its source materials provide a comprehensive and inspirational resource for film producers and other creative talents (as it did for the 2008 theatrical play Peace Crimes www.minnesota8.net/peacecrimes.htm )
Progressive political individuals and groups
Nonprofit social justice organizations
Religious organizations that preserve the values of the Sixties
Higher education institutions that need a Sixties resource and classroom materials
Those segments of the women’s and men’s movements that are developing a vision of earth-centered spirituality and a new sacred-sexuality spirituality, e.g., Margot Anand, Starhawk, David Deida, Ken Wilber, New Warrior Training of the Mankind Project, et al
Libraries—Kill the Dove! is an original and unique novel and resource about the Sixties
III. Marketing drivers
Marketing and promotion will be driven by
1) My professional and personal marketing and promotion experience
2) The rising interest in the Sixties and social activism, as demonstrated by the recent presidential campaign
3) The negotiation of a movie deal for the book
4) Endorsements from nationally and regionally recognized political and cultural figures
5) The development of an aggressive Web-based marketing project that includes using Internet video sites, such as YouTube
6) Tapping into long-standing social, educational and politically progressive communication networks
7) The strong educational appeal of the novel and the coordinated development of collegiate classroom teaching materials
8) Workshops developed for high-interest niche markets, such as religious and politically progressive communities, organizations, and associations
9) A comprehensive media campaign that builds upon the recent promotion of the theatrical play Peace Crimes in print, radio, TV, and website channels. There is a specific campus-based promotional synergy between the novel and Peace Crimes. The docu-drama theatrical play is based upon the core materials and experiences from which Kill the Dove! is drawn. The documentary produced by a public TV station about the play, namely, Peace Crimes— Backstage is a great advance promotion video-streaming advertisement. (See www.minnesota8.net for streaming video of Backstage)
10) Linkage with progressive political and nonprofit social justice fund-raising events and established public forums, such as book clubs, poetry readings, etc., where the book will be sold and also used as a fund-raising incentive
1. Personal Marketing and Promotion Experience
My twenty-five years of sales and marketing experience includes community organizing, door- to-door selling, development of national sales teams, distributorship development, senior manager and vice president of sales and marketing for small to medium-size organizations, national launch of products and services, business development consulting services, and the promotion of a theatrical play produced, collaboratively, by a university theatre department and an Equity theatre. I’ve worked in the nonprofit, higher education, and corporate sectors. See resume in Appendix. See www.minnesota8.net and www.pwh-mn.org Resume www.minnesota8.nt/killthedove.html
2. Rising Interest in the Sixties
“Timing is everything.” Reagan numbed and dumbed down America. For decades, colleges and high school history books skimmed over the Sixties and the Vietnam era. As I witnessed during the promotion of the theatrical play Peace Crimes, which is drawn from the sources for the book, the staggering lack of knowledge about the times is greatly outmatched by an intense and fervent desire to hear about the Sixties and anti-war stories.
President Obama’ s victory is generating interest about the history of social justice and political activism in America. The foolishness about the “domestic terrorist” Weatherman Bill Ayers only underscores the need to explore and understand a historical era that is, presently, profoundly misunderstood by all educational and media vendors and services.
The continued growth of alternative media, notably Web-based news sites, and the formation of new progressive networks, such as the Network of Spiritual Progressives, provide an ever- expanding infrastructure for disseminating information about Kill the Dove! through articles, interviews, excerpts, etc. The novel will be launched with collateral material available on a series of linked websites, such as was used to promote the play (see www.pwh-mn.org and www.minnesota8.net). This will include workshop events and materials for college classrooms.
3. Kill the Dove! - the Movie
The Sixties. Anti-war. Religious zealotry. Free Sex. Gays and lesbians. Prison. Sex and violence. There are many themes that support a film storyline. The life and love story of Jared, Aaren and Char is headed for the big screen. Kill the Dove! combines elements of drama, action, and romance. There is a network of Hollywood star-activists who helped develop and produce the Catonsville 9 movie, about Fr. Dan Berrigan, S.J., and the first nationally famous draft board raid. George Mische, one of the Nine, will be a main driver in this regard.
Given the recent marketing of movies about the “Chicago 10” and the “Camden 28,” there is indication that mainstream entertainment producers have opened the door to stories about the Sixties and anti-war radicalism. The success of the general-release movie Across the Universe is a further sign of interest in the times.
4. Endorsements from nationally and regionally recognized political and cultural figures
The play, Peace Crimes, reawakened great interest in the novel’s background story of the Minnesota 8 and the activism of the Sixties. Several major fund-raisers were held, including one at the home of Garrison Keillor, a personal friend and primary supporter. He visited me and others of the Eight while we were in prison. Recently, he was the lead funder of the Peace and War in the Heartland project.
During the promotional events, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame and a witness at my trial returned for the play, the fund-raisers, and a major university and public radio event. I am one of the dedicatees in his book Papers on the War (1972). He remains a personal friend.
Peace Crimes also brought out regional artists and media personalities who were active during the Sixties. A “Poets for Peace” event brought out a line-up of poets, several of whom had served time in federal prison. Robert Bly has consistently held public readings on war and peace themes. I anticipate enthusiastic support from the arts community, generated through each major market’s local literary centers, such as Minneapolis’ The Loft Literary Center and Intermedia Arts.
The play promotion also established connections with current anti-war and pro-peace groups and new leaders, among them Colonel Ann Wright, Elizabeth de la Vega, Coleen Rowley (former FBI), and a host of other noted individuals and organizations. Veterans of the Vietnam era and of the Afghan and Iraq wars, along with other peace education organizations, participated in and supported the promotional events. Kill the Dove! will be promoted through the ongoing national campaign that is promoting resistance to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While it is premature to promise high-visibility endorsements, national celebrities like Garrison Keillor and Daniel Ellsberg who have direct connections to Kill the Dove!’s story will be invited to write jacket blurbs. Likewise, Kill the Dove! will be of interest to other genre-related Minnesota novelists, such as Tim O’Brien and Chuck Logan. Within the Catholic community, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., remains noteworthy, as does James Carroll. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky head the list of potential academic activist endorsers.
5. Web-based Marketing
I will host interactive web sessions using a) e-conferencing, b) video-conferencing such as Skype, and a c) blog. I plan a continual series of articles for Web outlets discussing the themes in the novel, how they relate to current events, etc. The “Peace and War in the Heartland” website, www.pwh-mn.org, will be redesigned to be “Peace and War in America” with the book as a centerpiece referent.
To promote the play, exploratory use of YouTube resulted in a short menu of video clips (see www.minnesota8.net and “YouTube” link on right-side menu). For Kill the Dove!, extensive video clips will be developed. This will include interviews with students, professors, etc., but its main strength will be linking the novel’s content to other content sites. All of the Minnesota 8 are still living, as are all of the witnesses (though time is not on our side in this respect!). Their personal stories linked to the book is a good fit for the video-clip generation.
TPT, a public TV station, produced a documentary, Peace Crimes Backstage that was aired at eight times in prime time. Print coverage included all the major newspapers, alternative papers, and campus papers, as well as Internet news sites. This documentary is still available through the University of Minnesota and can be downloaded and/or video streamed at www.minnesota8.net. The documentary and archived radio shows can also be viewed and heard at www.pwhmn.org/media.php
6. Progressive communication networks
The Obama campaign re-vitalized existing and generated new progressive communications networks. Traditional outlets, such as public radio and TV, are now complemented by an ever- expanding array of progressive communication websites, blogs and video outlets.
7. Educational Marketing – “Peace and War in America”
Kill the Dove! goes beyond my personal memoir and the play Peace Crimes to present an epic tale of the Sixties. Kill the Dove! is not just about draft resistance—it is about the many socially radical themes that threaded through the Sixties. Through the regional campus promotional events I’ve established networking contacts with campus leaders, key faculty and student organizations that have national linkage.
Kill the Dove! and the background story of the “Minnesota 8” trial provide a comprehensive picture of why Sixties youths resisted illegitimate authority. “Peace and War in the Heartland” play promotion project produced eight campus-based events. The lack of credible Sixties-based courses on college campuses was amply established. Likewise, I was consistently asked to provide educational materials. A complete workshop for teachers and a collegiate classroom curriculum will be developed for marketing by the time Kill the Dove! is published.
Commonly, colleges would teach American history through WWII, then stop. The sociology curriculum would handle cultural history by starting in the 1980s.
Kill the Dove!’s background story of The “Minnesota 8” trial has strong educational appeal since the trial was quite unusual. In most draft raid trials, such as the famed “Catonsville 9” (see http://c9.mdch.org/index.cfm), no witnesses were called. Defendants simply made personal statements from the witness stand. In our trial, 13 witnesses were called, including historians, theologians, ecologists, nonviolent teachers, a national journalist, and a former government official (Dan Ellsberg). Through witness testimony the historical, theological, sociological, political, ecological, and personal chapters in the larger story of resisting illegitimate authority are presented. Consequently, these materials and Kill the Dove! provide foundational and useful teaching materials.
8. Workshops
I have piloted a “Family as Peacemaking/War-making Storyteller” workshop that focuses on enabling participants to identify and write their own family’s peace/war-making story. I presented this to the Men’s Spirituality group at Wisdom Ways Spirituality Center (http://www.wisdomwayscenter.org/) for the 2008–2009 season. I also presented the same material to over 150 people at University of Wisconsin, Stout’s institute for retired learners.
I will engage national progressive religious organizations to sponsor and/or administer this workshop, which will have Kill the Dove! as the major content reference. Likewise, I will present at as many national/regional educational association events as possible.
There is also a special niche in the New Age market, the goddess spirituality sector, the neopagan movement, and the growing sacred sexuality market for speaking about the rituals of intimacy that Kill the Dove!’s main characters enact at the end of the novel. Barry Long, David Deida, Margo Anand, Deepak Chopra, Ken Wilber and others have opened a market segment that will be receptive to Kill the Dove!
9. Building upon Peace Crimes
There is synergy between promoting the play Peace Crimes and marketing Kill the Dove! Peace Crimes is specifically valuable to college theatre departments because it has fourteen actors. The play was developed to include four roles for Equity actors from the History Theatre (www.historytheatre.org) and ten for students from the University of Minnesota’s theatre department. The structure of the play and the theme make it appealing for campus promotion and production.
Peace Crimes was promoted in every media format and outlet, from University radio and newspapers to Web-based alternative news outlets to YouTube video clips. I am highly confident that TPT will be interested in developing a documentary around Kill the Dove! When I met with TPT’s producer, Tom Trow, I learned that he had been a beneficiary of our previous “Beaver 55” draft raid. On the very morning that he was setting out to report for induction, he read in the Minneapolis Tribune that his draft board had been burglarized and thousands of draft cards destroyed.
10. Book Clubs, Fundraisers, etc.
I will aggressively market Kill the Dove! through local and regional bookstores, public readings, book clubs, etc. Locally, The Loft Literary Center (www.loft.org) and Intermedia Arts (www.intermediaarts.org/) are the jumping off-points for networking with like organizations across the country. I will promote Kill the Dove! by fund-raising signings and book sales with shared revenue given to sponsoring organizations. The list of such opportunities is quite long.
“Kill the Dove!” – a tale of the revolutionary 60’s
by
Francis X. Kroncke
fkroncke@minnesota8.net
Précis
Kill the Dove! is a tale of the tumultuous Sixties, a time rife with radical calls for “Revolution!” It was a time of nationwide student protests. Mass rallies and marches on Washington. Hippies. Free sex. God is Dead. Weathermen bombings. Black Power and Black Muslims. Sisterhood is Powerful. Stonewall gay riots. Draft resistance and raids on draft boards. Attica prison uprising. All these themes thread through the novel. Jared, an anti-war activist who goes to prison, Aaren, a violent Weatherman bomber, and Char, a nonviolent feminist are lovers, enemies, betrayers and, in time, seekers of a radically new spiritual revolution that focuses upon the practices of a sacred intimacy as the foundational revolutionary act. To prevent him from organizing a revolt in prison, the FBI put Jared on the Ride, a circuit to various prisons. At Milan, Marion, and Attica he confronts his greatest fears and gains profound insights about violence, sexuality, spirituality and himself. During visits Aaren seduces and betrays him, vengefully working with the FBI. Char got pregnant but decides not to tell him about their child. Her efforts to send mail or visit are blocked by the feds. Char and Aaren develop as members of The Sisters, a radical feminist commune. Char embraces her lesbianism. Aaren and Jared marry, and all three commit to being family. Kill the Dove! is an impassioned, disturbing, and challenging but ultimately hopeful odyssey through the era when folks sang, “All we are saying is give peace a chance!”
Main characters
Jared Jennings, a white, nonviolent anti-war radical, is tall, mid-twenties, a former collegiate basketball star and an ex-Catholic monk. He’s believes that “Resisting illegitimate authority!” requires protesting and nonviolently disobeying both Church and State. His radical spirituality leads him to raid Selective Service draft boards and destroy the 1-A draft files. He’s arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. A series of troubling violent and sexual episodes while in federal prison upend all his beliefs. He is eventually broken in mind, body and spirit. Symbolically, he bears a telltale facial scar, the result of a well-intentioned rape intervention gone awry. To control his organizing a revolt, Jared is put on the Ride. This is a Black Ops mobile prison with numerous short stays at a range of jails and prisons. At one, he functions as a prison guard. During the famed riot at Attica State prison, he, unwittingly, steps forward as a leader and is wounded. Two women, Aaren and Char are his lovers and soul mates.
Aaren Foley’s fiery political passions focus on stopping all male dominated wars, both the Vietnam War and the bedroom War of the Sexes. She’s a violent Weatherman who believes more in bombs than protest. She purges and purifies herself through an orgiastic Weathermen ritual called “Wargasm!” A white, mid-twenties woman, she’s physically ordinary but surges with intellectual and emotional fire. Jared calls her Liquid Fire. She betrays Jared and works with the FBI. Only she gets to regularly visit him on the Ride. She lies about Char faithfulness and effectively seduces and breaks Jared’s spirit. Unexpectedly, she has her own breakdown. She meets Jared after his release from prison. They marry and search for what it means to be a lovers and spouses in an age of new revolutionary human truths.
Char Clark is a white, mid-twenties, female nurse. She shares Jared’s Roman Catholic upbringing and commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. As Jared enters prison Char realizes that she’s pregnant and also affirms her lesbianism. During several early pre-Ride prison visits she and Jared go upside down and in and out about having an abortion, moving into The Sister’s commune, and devoting her life to radical feminist causes. Char is from a small town farm community. Her sexual identity shift reflects the long-standing, inarticulate feelings and dreams of her mom and a generation of early feminist activists. She and Jared work through the Catholic underpinnings of their common struggles on the sexual politics/sexual violence front.
Plot
The singular life of Jared Jennings is writ large with the idealistic quests, hopes, visions as well as failures, losses, and sufferings of the Sixties: “These times they are a changin’.” A “Catholic Radical” anti-war activist, he raids Selective Service draft boards. Aaren Foley, a female Weatherman, is a raider who denounces nonviolence. Jared’s fascination with and passion for Aaren throttles him. He can’t publicly discuss Aaren with anyone because he’s living with Char Clark, another feminist activist but one committed to nonviolence. Ambushed by the FBI during a draft board raid, Jared is sentenced to five years in prison.
Jared is a zealous optimist who reads the “signs of the time” to justify the Resistance Movement. “Peace Now!” is a hope, a belief and the basis for a social-political revolution which Jared initially sees as a revelation of the Christian Holy Spirit. In prison, Jared faces his deepest fears and internal contradictions. He is suspected by other Resisters of being an FBI informant. He experiences his own violence as he pummels a gay inmate, is challenged by Black Muslim prisoners, condemns Char as she considers aborting their unborn child, and, through various dreams, confronts the sexual violence at the core of his faith and his male imagination.
To break him and control his radical activities, Jared is placed on the Ride. This is a continual excursion from one county jail to state prison to federal lock-up. On the Ride no one can locate Jared, unless the FBI allows it. Jared has key encounters where, among other things, he becomes a guard who beats a Black inmate, and confronts a religious visionary chaplain who sees Attica as a holy place. Aaren continually lies and deceives him. All letters from Char are withheld and Jared believes that she’s abandoned him. At a safe house in Georgetown, while waiting for an alleged visit from FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, Jared undergoes a profound transformation. Off the Ride his case gets bungled inside the FBI’s bureaucracy. For a year, Jared encounters the core of his own violence, in its political, personal, religious and sexual dimensions. Before ever visiting, Hoover dies and in the ensuing bureaucratic bedlam, Jared becomes invisible. Eventually found, like other Hoover Black Ops, the Ride is shut down and Jared is unceremoniously dropped off in Los Angeles, to begin anew.
Out of prison, Char reveals that he has a son. She loves Jared but chooses to raise their son within her lesbian commune. Jared supports her choice, and commits to fathering in this non-traditional manner. Aaren and Jared seek to breakthrough to a new realization of what it means to be fully male and female in a coupled relationship. The novel ends with a series of intimate encounters where Jared and Aaren confront the imagery and spirituality of the Old Way and tap into a practice called “dreamslipping.” Embraced as beloveds, they evoke the fire with which to forge a revolutionary vision and practice of sensual holiness. An epilogue brings the story up to 1981 as Jared and Aaren—married and with children—respond to the revolutionary vision of Ronald Reagan set against that of John Lennon.
Kill the dove!- A tale of the revolutionary 1960’s
by FrancisX. Kroncke fkroncke@minnesota8.net
1 - THE RAID, JULY 10, 1970 – SAUK CENTRE, MINNESOTA
7 - THE MESSENGER
11 - DRIVING TO PRISON – MILLSTON FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION (FCI)
13 - TROUBLEMAKER
14 - THE POPULATION
16 - EVENING'S REVERIE - ESCAPE!
20 - BLACK INTELLIGENCE AND IRON MOCASSIN
30 - AAREN'S VISIT: MILAN, FCI
31-GODS OF CRUELTY: MARION PENITENTIARY
34 - REVEREND CRAY - ATTICA STATE PENITENTIARY
35 - "WE ARE MEN!" - ATTICA STATE PENITENTIARY
37- CHAR'S LOOK AND AAREN'S FANTASY
38 - SAFE HOUSE, GEORGETOWN, D.C.
41 - THE GREYHOUND BUS DEPOT - LOS ANGELES
42 - THE RIDE HOME - MINNEAPOLIS, MN
48 - REVOLUTION!
49 - EPILOGUE - WE'RE HERE TO SING, 1981
“Kill the Dove” - A tale of the revolutionary 1960’s
by Francis X. Kroncke fkroncke@minnesota.net
PART I – THE OUTLAW
1. THE RAID, JULY 10, 1970: SAUK CENTRE, MINNESOTA
“Look, motherfucker, the days of non-violence are over!" Aaren sticks a
stone hammer in her knapsack, then bends to tape a stiletto to her left
ankle. "You warmed-over hippies might still think Jericho will fall if you
march and march wagging your fannies and farting Peace now! Peace
now! Give peace a chance!"
Aaren, a female Weatherman, challenges Jared, a nonviolent anti-war activist, as they and others make their final preparations to go out and raid Selective Service draft boards. Two key themes are set: violence and nonviolence, and the changing roles of males and females. Jared and his raid partner Matt’s personal backgrounds and values emerge as they talk during the ride up to Sauk Centre. Jared is a young ex-Roman Catholic monk, and Matt, a former Methodist seminarian and committed Gandhian nonviolent soul. Jared loves Char but struggles over his obsession with Aaren, who hates him. During the raid that night, the FBI ambush Jared and Matt. They are beaten and jailed.
2. THE CONSPIRACY
Two other raiders are caught, Sean and Corey. Aaren’s raid was successful. The Four,” as the jailed draft raiders are labeled by the press, are charged with “sabotage of the national defense.” They face a possible ten years in prison and a $50,000 bail. Jail talk shows how young activists felt during the counter-cultural Sixties. Charlie Burston, a newspaper reporter, interviews Jared.
Yes, another life—Burston’s memory is jogged. "Jennings, the Hermit
Jock!" Headlines and titles: "All State," "Minnesota Rookie of the Year,"
"College of St. Clement's First Little All American." Sure, he’s seen this
body of brawn dance and cavort and raise cheerleaders' nipples. But, then, a stud gone spiritual. Just what those monks wanted ... or was it?
The DA argues that The Four are part of the “international Catholic Conspiracy” led by the Jesuit Father Dan Berrigan and funded by Fidel Castro. The reporter is looking for an angle. He’s savvy and judges Jared to be an unworldly innocent. Jared’s background is described in fuller detail.
3. BEFORE THE COCK CROWED: HENNEPIN COUNTY JAIL
Jared is separated from Matt and placed in a cell with Bruiser, a Hell’s Angel gay bitch. While Matt gets brutally raped in the next cell, Bruiser spares Jared because Bruiser is a “catcher,” not a “pitcher.”
As Jared slumps off the bars and turns, his shoulder bumps his cellmate's. He recoils, more in shock than fear. “Back off, motherfucker!” The mate
says, “Neme's Brooza, wat's yers?”
“Jesus, motherfucker, you must be kidding me!” Jared almost
laughs in comic relief at finding a fucking polite biker! “You're a stone
motherfucking fag!”
“Yespth,” Bruiser winks, feigning a lisp.
Jared sidesteps to the far side of the cell. Bruiser drops his trousers, clutches his big cock and starts rubbing it, then waves it towards Jared like a radar gun.
“I'se nit lek Hareld nixt door. He'za real ass bangar. Nit me. I catch.” And with that said, he crawls onto the lower bunk and sets himself up doggie style.
“Efyer neece to me, I’se dun't snitch on yer.”
Jared can't believe this is happening. What's happening to Matt? Not
another sound comes from that direction. What’s this asshole fag, homo,
bitch queer doing here? Does he really expect me to bang him?
To cover himself, Jared beats Bruiser. He feels guilty in having luckily gotten Bruiser while Matt gets raped. Jared can’t communicate with Matt. Several dream sequences cover erotic issues from Jared’s Catholic past and his relationship with Aaren.
4. JAILHOUSE ROCK
Jared still can’t communicate with Matt. He’s put into another cell with a black inmate, Dikbar. An explosion rocks the jailhouse. Victor, an inmate trustee, slips Jared a note from the bombers. It sounds like Aaren’s Maoist rant. Dikbar is manic, and after denouncing Jared as a white boy he flips and sees him as the Messiah. Another bomb explodes, causing damage in their cell. But the building is an ancient granite fortress. Jared is half scared and half amused. At night he wakens to two guards beating Dikbar senseless. They challenge him to try and stop them. Jared confronts his cowardice and weakness, and his failure to resist nonviolently and help Dikbar.
Dikbar's groans have stopped pleading for help, though his silent screams
reach Jared's frightened ears. This is worse than his worst nightmare.
"You're just a fucking fag! I knew it," sneers Jared's attacker as he
turns to his partner, sharing his dark power. "He's a lily-assed cocksucking
fag. Just for that I should kick his ass for good."...
"So, you don't want to die for this uppity nigger? Maybe, you're more of a white man than we thought!"
... "Goddamn peacenik, you're a fucking pile of puke. You don't even have the balls to fight!" As they leave, each guard spits on Jared. One glob lands smack dab in the center of his forehead. It starts to drip down the side of Jared's left eyebrow.
5. THE FOUR
After several weeks in county jail, the charges are lowered and they make bail. They meet to discuss their trial. They discuss the reasons, motivation, ideology and spirituality that ground their common effort to “Resist Illegitimate Authority.” Their distinctive personal characteristics are shown. Corey pleads guilty. He says,
"Sean, we've had our fun. We've tweaked their noses. Look, I'm not doubting our wisdom. I'm just yielding to our ignorances.... I guess, I guess ... jail just freaked me out. Just sitting there in that cage. Being totally out of control of the situation. I've never experienced that. There was no bailout." Agitation rides his words. "They nailed us for sabotage. I mean, they really nailed us."
Sean and Jared have a long conversation about their beliefs and fears. Sean mentions that everyone wants to fuck Aaren. Jared is angered and conflicted about having expressed his feelings about her because everyone knows he’s with Char.
6. THE MESSENGER
Jared’s back in the Catholic seminary as Friar Otto. Friar Alfred, a slightly older, ex-Vietnam
veteran sniper and a photographer shows Jared shocking pictures of the war. He tells Friar Otto: Abruptly, with ambush startle, Alfred is back at Otto. “How the fuck can
you, in here? Look, you g-gotta get out of here. In here you, they—you know!—they'll lead you into false worship. You'll end up being a priest, not a saint. That's what you want, r-right, to be a saint?” ....“The children. He was always talking about ‘the children.’ How God does not want us to kill the children.” Friar Otto leaves the monastery, becoming Jared Jennings again.
7. THE LAST RALLY – January 1971
Jared listens at a rally as Aaren spouts her Maoist beliefs about “Revolution comes out of the barrel of a gun.” She snubs him. He speaks to the crowd about the pending trial and the shift in America after Kent State, the invasion of Cambodia, and other transforming events of the times. He realizes that the crowd is small, the day is freezing, and he calls for courage in others to continue protesting as he enters prison.
8. THE LAST NIGHT BEFORE
Char, a nonviolent feminist activist, shares Jared’s Catholic background. She doesn’t want to marry because she’s committed to the feminist cause. They are deeply, tenderly in love. Their conversation and relationship this night reflects the vision, joy, and erotic thrills of the free sex era with its companion fears, pains, and disappointments.
“Fuck it, Char, fuck it all. Fuck it all! You and I simply don't live on the same planet. Jesus, woman, tomorrow I'm going to prison, and all you care, all you fucking do, is go to meetings.” Then he gets downright nasty. “Ratting and tatting with your bitchy queer friends.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Char stands and grasps a window's ledge. No light comes to her eyes, but the warmth of darkness soothes her. A jagged silence vibrates between them.
“Jared,” spoken smoothly and firmly, announced, “I love my Sisters, and I want to be, will be, with them for a long time. It’s real, you're going to prison but—but we are in prison. I have always been in prison.”
9. THE DAY OF SURRENDER – January 5, 1971
Jared, the youngest of seven, meets with three of his siblings, Larry, Eddie, and Marian. His others sibs don’t attend this off-to-prison breakfast. Larry is a Korean War vet and Jared’s hero. Marian is the oldest and a hard-nosed nurse. Eddie’s a corporate accountant. They want Jared to either cop a guilty plea or go to Canada. They’ve made all the arrangements. Jared’s family dynamics, especially his close spiritual relationship with his deceased father, a World War II veteran, are shown. Jared’s expresses his convictions and commitment to staying in America to work for peace, even though in prison.
PART II– PRISON
10. THE FIRST NIGHT BACK INSIDE
Back in county, waiting to go to federal prison, Jared reflects on his recent visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A pompous confessor led to Jared’s aborting his confession and, for the final time, rejecting the Catholic faith. He then visited his uncle, a famous and influential theologian who is his mentor/adversary. He’s known to all as “Uncle Sam.” To Jared’s amazement, Uncle Sam has changed from a “soldier of Christ” to a mystic. He relates that during his early years as a sickly priest, while on a mission, he had survived Nagasaki. He and Jared thrash out the war/peace beliefs of the Church, argue about key themes of the times, but in the end absolve one another.
Wordlessly, his most valued gift, the crucifix presented to him by a group
of hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he loops from his neck
and presses into Jared's hand. It is the presence of Him, salvaged from the
wreckage of a melted Buddha by a craftsman whose creative light the
Bomb could never extinguish.
Jared carries the hibakusha throughout his journey into prison and beyond.
11. DRIVING TO PRISON: MILLSTON, FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION (FCI)
Jared’s county jail to federal prison driver is a FBI agent, which is a bit unusual. Normally, a federal marshal escorts transfers. The agent talks about the war, and judges Jared to be a deceived youth. He compares Jared to a recently deceased Black agent, Arthur.
He likes to think of their role as Guardians. Somehow it has a scriptural tinge to it that’s fitting. And he knows Mr. Hoover is fond of it. However, now they’re coming closer to the prison. And this young fellow, high in his ideals, but quite odd in how he squares what he thinks with what he does, will be out of his hands in a small bucket of minutes. That’s one of the problems with this fellow. He just doesn’t understand. “You still don’t understand, even standing at the gates of prison! That your imprisonment is your freedom. Someone who did what you did would be dead by now in most parts of the world. You just don't understand that prison is the proof of the truth of our democracy. Otherwise, I'd be driving your hearse!"
The agent presents the Establishment’s view of anti-war radicals like Jared.
12. SEGREGATION
Jared goes through the naked, bug spray Admission and Orientation process. He becomes number 8867-147. Then he’s thrown into Segregation. He doesn’t know why. Weirdly, it’s a pastel blue Holiday Inn type room. He freaks out when they bring him a humongous steak with several sides. He throws the food against the wall and then strips.
Rages while systematically, as if driven by ritual obligation, kicking each wall. Then, he pees. Zips out his cock and pisses a little here, a little there, marking out his territory, setting warnings to astral intruders. Then he takes the tray and smashes it against the back wall. Turns and slashes each wall with the hard chrome edge of the tray. That done, he grabs a spoon and begins to randomly, but with intensity, bang on the tray. Blonk! Bing! Thwack! Thwack! Nothing harmonious, rather increasing in energy as he hums louder as the clanging gets louder. Then, suddenly, Jared jerks to full stop. He throws the tray and then his bedding onto the floor. He starts to strip and tear his clothes. Fumbles at buttons, rips, whips off shirt and pants, BVDs and socks. He is birthday naked. He spends three weeks in Seg.
13. TROUBLEMAKER
Before being let out of Seg, Jared’s taken to an “Adjustment Committee” meeting. They threaten him with severe punishment if he tries to organize. He’s amused. If there’s anything he doesn’t want to do is more time in Seg. He’s told, “I know how you think and how you dream!”
14. THE POPULATION – February 1971
Jared is released to the Population but encounters suspicion from his fellow draft resisters since rumors fly about his special escort by the FBI agent and his wild time in Seg. He’s introduced to the racial and sexual geography of prison.
15. THE GAME
Jared is a basketball jock, top talent. He plays against a black phenom, Moses. Their game nearly causes a riot.
16. EVENING REVERIE-ESCAPE! – late January 1971
The border between violence and nonviolence gets slenderer with each day.
Jared struggles with the deep violence that girds his nonviolence. He begins to plan an escape.
“What isn't violence? We are accepting being here. Doesn’t that make us
collaborators? Good soldiers?”
Escape; only escape. Or, the effort at it brings back the possibility of living within the thoughts and images of their past lives of Resistance....
He hates himself; has wanted to escape even before he entered the first remote-controlled gate. Something deep within lunged at his mind, yelled at him, “Don’t go! Escape!”
17. MOM’S VISIT
A visit with his mom, sister Delores and her fiancé, Gene, provides insights about the family, including his deceased father. The close bond with his mom is described. The Waiting Room hack upbraids Mom for not sitting correctly.
18. CHAR’S VISIT: ELLEN – February 1, 1971
Char and Jared were living together before prison. He laments how masturbation is the only way he can feel alive while Inside.
“Char, it may seem perverse to you, and often it does to me, but if I don't masturbate I feel less than alive. Yet when I do, I feel so much the desert spaces of our life in here. Don't think it's guilt or sin, nothing like that. Probably though, if I'm honest, it's more a sense of being so utterly futile. Goddam!" Jared knows he must stop talking. "Goddam, I hate where I am and what I'm becoming."
She brings up that she’s joined a woman’s collective, which Jared anticipated, but then says that she has taken a lesbian lover. Jared is experiencing the “Dear John” scenario that occurs regularly in prison. He feels abandoned—truly alone.
19. CHAR’S VISIT: PREGNANT – February 25, 1971
Char tells Jared about life in the woman’s collective—and then, that’s she’s pregnant. She implies that she might abort the child in order to focus on women’s issues and run for political office. Aaren, Char alleges, has changed and is living in the commune. The Sisters have forewarned Char about Jared’s reaction. He goes from condemning her for this murder (according to their Catholic upbringing) to threatening her if she does not get an abortion!
20. BLACK INTELLIGENCE AND IRON MOCCASIN
The Black Muslims think that Jared is a FBI plant. He wakes up to a note pinned in the bedsprings of the bunk above him. “Praise Be Black Intelligence!” The Black vs. White atmosphere, a coffee-time discussion with other white recidivist inmates, and a basketball encounter with Iron Moccasin, a “State raised convict,” lay out the role prison plays in American society.
21. THE MAIL CALL RIOT – April 1971
A “Dear John” letter leads to a black on white riot. Linked arm in arm with liked-minded Black inmates, a group of anti-war inmates move in a nonviolent way to calm the riot. The leader, Harley, gets shot, as Jared watches this from his dorm window. He realizes that the shot was supposed to kill him, not Harley.
22. BETTY AND FILBERT
Jared encounters the homosexual side of prison. He dreams about “Betty.” Gay inmates are called by their female names, even by the guards.
“It was a simple matter. All the fella did was walk over, tells me he likes
my cock, and asks me to visit his cube after Lights Out.” How many times
have I asked myself the question? All that I remember is my spurting
hostility. Except for the guy's cool and calm manner I expected to see my
fist in his teeth. There he was in the stall. Penis hanging. Ivory white thighs relaxed and enticing. Aw, shit, I had often felt strange inklings when in
jock rooms before. How many times did I feel the heat—the Bitch's Heat— of a basketball locker room after a game?
23. WAKE-UP: DAVITT’S OFFER – May 1971
Jared wakes in the middle of the night to watch the guards move some inmates out. In the morning, he realizes that he’s the only anti-war activist left! Worse, he gets transferred to an all- Black dorm. Desperate, he starts a late-night fight with an old con out in the TV room. Jared gets thrown in Segregation, where he feels safe. He has to cut a deal with a Davitt, a Mafia inmate who can help him escape.
24. CHAR’S LETTERS
A memo from the Warden details how to “de-code” allegedly innocent looking letters. Char writes about her decision to keep the child. How some of the Sisters have helped her understand her mothering role. From the Warden’s memo:
“A case in point: the correspondence attached (re: J. Jennings, 8867-147).
She says, ‘I love you.’ Watch it carefully. You ask, ‘Is it code?’ Consider.
The ‘I’ is upright and can indicate the prison tower. ‘Love’ means heat and
can mean the furnace room which is adjunct to the tower. ‘You’ may stand
for ‘U,’ indicating that around the tower behind the furnace there are some
guns, explosives, or other devices. Never fail to check out these insidious
clues!”
None of Char’s letters ever get to Jared.
25.WAKE-UP: THE ESCAPE – May 1971
After three days in Seg, Jared is sent back to the Black dorm. Over the edge, Jared accepts Davitt’s offer—to have sex with “Sally” in exchange for arranging his escape.
Jared's hesitancy, once she’s fully aware of it, liberates a tittering that she
swiftly arrests with the back of her hand, sensitive to Jared's
embarrassment. It’s been a very, very long time since she’s been with a
virgin.
Clearing his throat, Jared's whispers, "Well.. .errr, let's get it over
with!"
Normally—how pleasant the reversal!—this is Sally’s unspoken
line.
Jared squirms with the question he has to ask, "Pitch or catch?"
Sally flutters her eyes coyly and exhales like smoke, "Both."
.....If Matt could survive it, so can I!
Davitt’ s henchman cuts the fence and Jared crawls through. He tells Jared that the boss will love the video. Jared is shocked that his sexual acts with Sally have been recorded. Halfway through the farmer’s field en route to his pick-up point, Jared looks back at Millston and reflects upon all that he’s done and is doing. He decides to slip back into prison. The next morning he’s snoring as a group of angry Blacks watch him, note his mud-caked shoes, and wonder what the Warden is up to.
PART III – THE RIDE
26.“EXIT, STAGE RIGHT” – April 1971
Jared is whisked out of Millston and placed “on the Ride.” The FBI wants to put him out of action, not send him out preaching.
On the Ride, Jared will be sweeping up time while in county jails, state and federal pens, sometimes in the Big House. He'll see many, most on stop-and-gos, one night stands, passing through a multitude of states. The Ride will make it impossible for his family or friends to reach him, visit him, or directly send him mail. By the time the prison authorities process his mom's persistent requests, he’s off, en route to somewhere else. Routinely they respond, “All we know, ma'am, is where he's been.”
27. THE COMPANION – May 1971
FBI agent Steve Witson is Jared’s driver. Witson goads Jared by telling him that he knows who betrayed The Four, that he was inside the Weathermen organization, and, devastatingly, that he’s fucked Aaren in the Weathermen sexual ritual of Wargasm.
“I did what I had to. I fought their war. It was a war of cunts and pricks. I fucked my brains out. They fucked my brains out!”
Aaren? Aaren? scorches Jared's brain.
“Group sex, orgy, whatever you want to call it. It was all as cold and impersonal as killing gooks. Just as simple. Bang, bang, you're dead. And then you simply move on. So I left them, a field of naked bodies, like a field of dead babies, all stillborn.”
28. DAYS ON THE RIDE
Witson gives Jared some civilian clothes, no handcuffs or chains. He fills their van with munchies and plays an endless supply of hip Sixties music.
Witson waits for Jared to cue him, but the only sound is Judy Collins singing—almost as if scored for this specific conversation—as a refrain from La Colombe drifts through the van.
“The dove has torn her wings
So no more songs of love
We are not here to sing
We're here to kill the dove.”
29. THE SCAR – June 1971
In Milan FCI, Jared watches a gay sexual exchange turn violent. He attempts to protect one inmate who’s been knifed by the gay prostitute. Not discerning attacker from defender, the prostitute slices Jared’s face.
What is not noticed is the other outline. It’s been frozen, totally freaked-out in that motionlessness that is absolute fear, existential dread and shock.
It sees Jared as just another outline. It makes no distinctions and so it slices again with the razor’s edge, enticing a draw of blood so effortlessly that it spurts forward like a chorus line, all at once along its length, in cadence, in one motion.
More than the cut, Jared feels the gush of air from the guy’s strike. He recoils, but not quickly enough. Red sprouts from mid-forehead down his temple and drops to the jawbone below his left ear.
... Striking back, Jared grabs the guy’s arm, spins him around, cranks the arm upward towards the back of his head, almost not stopping at the
Pop! Crack! as he busts it; almost yanks it off.
Jared does not see the disbelief in the eyes of the other cons. Hollow- eyed witnesses to the banality of cruelty. Horror and terror mingle, but
they’re also curiously entertained and satisfied. “Man! You really fucked
him, man!”
30. AAREN’S VISIT – Milan, FCI – June 1971
To Aaren, Jared’s always been a “revolutionary barrier” and, because of his commitment to nonviolence, an “anti-revolutionary obstructionist.” She joined the draft raiders to topple him from within. Witson recruits Aaren to fuck with Jared’s mind and drive him over the edge. She visits and plays an “I’m no longer a Weatherman” line. Jared is suspicious. Aaren protests and proclaims her love for him. Then she twists the knife with a lie about Char. Aaren readies to move in for the kill. She draws closer to Jared. She grasps his right hand and places it upon her belly. “This is not a murderer's womb!”
31. GODS OF CRUELTY – Marion, FCI
The Ride is having its impact. Jared now calls Witson, “Steve.” Steve’s supervisors press him to up the ante. Jared is taken to Marion FCI. Steve has Jared dress like a guard. Jared watches Steve-as-guard humiliate black and white inmates. Then he pushes Jared into a cell with a mentally unstable Black youth. Jared is attacked but does not fight back. Steve intervenes and saves his ass.
“You’re the fool! You walked me into this blind. What the fuck do you
think I was going to do? Walk in here and beat the shit out of him?”
“He’s black.”
“What the fuck?”
“Can’t you figure it out?”
Steve abruptly turns and starts to whack the back of the unconscious youth with his bat.
... Jared forcefully grabs Steve’s baton, lifts and heaves him away from
the body.
Steve taunts, “Do It! Show me you have some balls!”
32. CHAR’S RIDE VISIT – August 1971
None of Char’s letters are getting through. She believes that Jared has stopped writing. Witson arranges for Char to visit on the Ride at Aaren’ s urging.
For Aaren, Char is one of her most effective and cruelest weapons. The baby’s here now, and she’s confident that when they meet, Char’s broadsiding him with both her not telling him that she didn’t abort, and then making him feel the loss, even the guilt, of not being
at the birth, will rekindle the rage that ended their last visit. Actually, she’s hoping it will be more than rage—a double dose of fury at her for fucking with him over the abortion mixed with the poison of his being so powerless before. Aaren has gained a keen sense into Jared’s psyche during her Ride visits.
However, during this visit Char does not tell Jared about the baby. During the visit Jared has several half-waking dream sequences. These reveal his own deep sexual violence, his love for Char, and how complex their relationship is.
33. WOMANFIRE
Aaren goes from tricking Char to an actual transformative moment right in the midst of an orgiastic Wargasm event.
“Yes, Sister, yes! But Womanly violence, Motherly violence, the violence of Kali. We must become Black Widows. Females who once and for all and forever kill the Male, castrate him, gut him. Sexual technology can set us free from him! We must abandon him to his masturbation—that’s all he wants anyway!” ...
“Never, never. . .” Char is resisting.
“No, ever, ever! It must be done forever, now and for all time yet to come. Imagine and rejoice! For we can now seed ourselves. The ultimate contradiction of Capitalism is not just political, not just the Stateless State, but the cockless ecstasy. We don’t need them. Can’t you see how clear this is? You must join us, the Vanguard—witches! True
revolutionaries! Women without cock!” ...
“Right there, in the middle of Wargasm. Just like in the middle of
battle, Pow! It came to me. Ha. I came that day—eight, a hundred times, I don't know. I looked around and there were mouths and eyes, moving like fireflies in the late summer sky, flashing, and I came, orgasm and juice
flowing, and hard cocks all over me and my sucking this one and that teat, and Jesus, oh, god. Fuck it. I was really fucked! Glorious! That’s how it
happened. I came. Really came. What can I say? The weather’s changed!”
Breathless. It’s the only word that describes Char’s reaction, when she retells the story. “I was breathless! Imagine. Wargasm leads to love! Who would have ever thought that?”
“Isn't it wonderful!” as if concluding but actually asking for Char’s comments, her reactions. Again, “Isn't it wonderful!”
“What?”
“Love.”
“Love?”
“Blissful! Female love, Sister love. WomanFire!”
34. REVEREND CRAY- Attica June 1971
Steve flies Jared to Attica State Prison. Jared meets the chaplain, Rev. Cray, a former Catholic, turned Pentecostal evangelical. Cray sees America as a Blessed Nation. He finds Jesus present in prison. Here to save the inmates from the devil, he pounds Jared with traditional Pentecostal fire.
“Can you not feel the Presence? Can you not feel the difference between
these walls and monastic walls?”
Jared rejects Cray. The Reverend damns him to hell!
35. “WE ARE MEN!” – ATTICA STATE PENITENTIARY
The famous Attica Riot erupts. The prison is a jungle. Inmates roam. Rape. Murder. Protest for Rights. The Attica manifesto opens with, “WE ARE MEN! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed.”
Jared is pushed out into the Yard to face the governor, warden, and a small army of guns and grenades.
What is recorded is never the same, as happens to the stuff of legends. Jared walks, calmly—much to Cray’s admiration!—to the center of The Yard. He looks around......“I am a Man!” he booms. Clearly. Distinctly. It is a statement. It is a proclamation. It is an indictment. It is an act of rebellion. It is a moment of joyous celebration.....After that, the accounts differ. “They fired on him. Missed every time. He had protection. God’s angel was with him!” ...“No, Man, he was shot. Once, twice, three times. I saw his head snap back. Saw that in ’Nam, Man. I knows what I saw.” Stymied, “But I can’t figure how he lived? Did anyone see who dragged his sorry ass away?”
36. CHAR’S LETTERS
A sample envelope showing multiple forwarding marks and indicating that her letters never reached Jared.
“Forward to Milan, FCI.” “Forward to Lewisburg, FCI.” “Forward to Attica State Prison.” “FILE CODE: 237-JJ-001 TOP PRIORITY. SECURITY RISK.”
37. CHAR’S LOOK AND AAREN’S FANTASY
Presents key insights into the erotic character and sexual violence of Jared’s struggles, failings, and desires with and for Aaren and Char. They reveal his bond with Char and his sexual obsession with Aaren. Aaren’s fantasy is a recurring them at the end of the novel.
38. SAFE HOUSE, GEORGETOWN, D.C. – October 1971
Steve is relieved that the end is in sight. All he has to do is drop Jared off at a safe house in Georgetown in D.C. Supposedly the Boss, J. Edgar himself wants to meet Jared. Witson laughs to himself, “Maybe he’ll recruit him!” Jared is dropped off at a stunning mansion. He stays there for over a year as the Boss never shows, eventually dies, and Jared’s file is lost in bureaucratic snafu.
39. AAREN’S VISIT (2) – November 1971
When the butler tells Jared that he has a visitor, the one person he never expected to come is Aaren. That morning he viewed a video tape left on the breakfast table. He watches Witson and Aaren plot at the Black Forest to mess with him. Aaren’s truly diabolic nature is revealed. During the meeting Jared plays along with her, then he exposes, denounces, ridicules and damns Aaren. She admits it. Yet, she pleads guilty in the mode of confessing that it was all true but boldly stating that she has dramatically changed, that she is a new woman, a Sister like Char. Jared doesn’t believe her.
40. A BRIGHT CLOUD – November 71 to May 1972
Witson left Black Ops and started working in the new area of information technology. He realizes he has a special bond with Jared. When Hoover dies Jared’s file—and his bureaucratic existence!—is lost in a snafu. Witson realizes he has a concern for Jared and the day Hoover dies he creates a cover story for Jared that protects him. A theme is picked up that’s threaded throughout the novel—the transforming event of the Bright Cloud that arose when the atomic bomb was dropped. As America has been since that day living inside a Bright Cloud, so Jared enters one that rises from the hibakusha that was itself part of the bomb’s devastation. Jared relives in a dream state all of his relationships and he comes to grasp what Revolution! truly means, namely, personal, intimate transformation, especially of the sexual relationships between men and women. He grasps that the sexual violence that grounds the Warrior mythos (reflected in the biblical story of Adam and Eve) can be—must be!—countered. His insight is that as Adam did not couple with Eve, so it is his coupling with Aaren that is how the Revolution starts. One night he is drugged and dropped off the Ride in Los Angeles.
PART IV – DREAMSLIPPING
41. THE GREYHOUND BUS DEPOT-Los Angeles – May 18, 1972
Jared slowly wakes up hearing the pounding of surf. He’s been dropped off the Ride, unceremoniously, in Los Angeles. As he walks along the beach, he finds two hundred dollars in his pocket. Watching him, two beach bums attack him. He fights them off. For hours he walks around the Venice area of L.A. Soon, he realizes that he must go back home to Minnesota. He’s wary because he knows that the Feds have told his family and others various stories. Witson let him know that his mom was told that he’s a patriot. Jared waits in the Greyhound bus depot. He muses philosophically.
42. THE RIDE HOME-Minneapolis, MN
On the bus he wonders, “What is America in the spring of 1973?” Sally Jo, a Texan, flirts with him. He lies and tells her he’s an anthropology graduate student. Jared fails miserably at picking her up. Later, a kid running up and down shooting an imaginary gun jumps into Jared’s seat.
Chasing him, Jared meets the kid’s mom, Donna Sindowski. He tells her he just got out of prison. Her ex is in prison. She’s savvy about the state of mind and insatiably horny state Jared is in right now.
In this way he’s welcomed home. Laid and fucked silly in a signless motel in downtown Saint Paul. Taken by the hand and led to her car, a battered old Rambler waiting, two parking tickets secured by rusty wipers.....She knows he'll have enough for the place. Knows from his dress that he hasn't blown much. He confirms her analysis when he falters at taking a swig.
She assesses, “Not a boozer. Hasn't been laid.”
In truth, she’s being a “nice girl.” She no longer says, “I'm a nice girl.” She used to, but stopped that, one too many bus rides back. Now she doesn't care to say anything, she just wants his juice. She knows he has juice.
Jared’s back in Minnesota, but doesn’t leave the motel. He doesn’t want anyone to shout, “Welcome home!”
43. THE FARM
Char is at her parent’s farm. She’s there to discuss her lesbianism and plan to raise the child with
the Sisters. Her relationships with her father, brother and mother are described. The family
always wanted her to marry Jared. Char and her mother discuss the “L-word.” “Mom, I hope you can see, now, why I must say to everyone, everywhere that I'm a Lesbian. It's an affirmation of that feminine which was touched by God. You know, maybe you can even understand this better, that it is not a matter of sexuality. Sexuality is not the issue. That's where the traditional priest theology loses itself in sin—it’s all focused on genitals.
“I'm having a baby. I am having this baby because I am a Lesbian!”
44. UNWRAPPED – August 6, 1972
Jared stretches his homecoming into a two month plus event. A map of cheap hotels, soup
kitchen charades, always on the move, evading this shadow and that brightness. Everything from Inside, thins out. Loses its strength. Ultimately dematerializes in this Outside space of time. He’s left facing what he’s heard so many old timers describe. “You’re a loser, Jared. One stupid ass fucking loser.”
At last, he knows he has to begin anew. He seeks out Char, then Aaren.
45. THE FARM (2)
Jared meets Char at the farm. He’s dealt with his own violence when he dressed as a hack and beat up the black inmate, and has accepted that Char has aborted. He’s still angry, but he feels that he has to meet her, have some closure.
In a desperate effort to hold onto him, she blurts out, “You have a son! A
boy, Jared. A son.” From afar it seems to be the motion of a scythe
executing a corn stalk. He falls as if his head’s been cut off. Thud!
Although he’s now two, Char has not named the child. She’s been waiting for Jared. They agree upon Joseph, the name of Jared’s brother who died young. Char and Jared share the pains of their growth during the past several years. They bond. She and the child will live with the Sisters. He’ll be around to father.
46. COLD WATER FLAT
Jared rents a cold water attic flat in south Minneapolis. He’s waiting. One morning, Aaren knocks on his apartment door. He’s been waiting for her, but doesn’t know how to start. He goes upstairs to his flat. She sets about tidying up the place. They eventually sit down and discuss, argue, accuse, forgive and reconcile.
“But listen, it had to be—my journey, I mean. Look, you and I both had to become warriors. To battle in the streets, under the sheets and inside the sanctuary. Isn't that true? Don't you see, we’re like mirrors to each other? And I, I—oh, how painful!—only when I had waged with all my weapons, only after I fired every bit of my stock of ammunition, bullets, bombs, knives.. .only then, true, true, oh, then.. .only after fucking and being fucked, inside and out, only when I thought I had won, captured the male and his fire in my every opening,” and she points, mouth, cunt, ass, hand, teats, lips, tongue, “only then did I experience defeat. Defeat and victory, what is the difference? You know that.”
They agree that coupled intimacy is the core of their Revolution!
It marks that moment when they, in deepest knowing, grasp and image themselves as twin flames. She is to him a box of precious gems, and as he lifts her lid, she bequeaths him gold. He is like the goldsmith upon her, lightly pounding the malleable metal, forming a necklace for himself from her kisses, drawing from her breasts light pearls. Sweet and salty, he licks her, sucking from her healing milk, tapping into her inner network through her dark, dark nipples, and the softness of her hillock, as if with spring's first grass, tender of shoot and blade. He feels her, pets her, and feels himself. Breast to breast, they couple and lock on, she kisses him, his eyes the entry way to his soul, and she watches his hunger for her in the movements of his play.
47. DREAMSLIPPING
Their revolution seeks to counter the Warrior myth of sexual violence as told in the story of Adam and Eve. They grasp that all myths are collective dreams, and that they continue to be dreamed every day. They approach one another seeking to “dreamslip.” They seek to evoke that out-of-time primal moment when the first man looked at the first woman. For them, this is when the male and the female embraced.
Jared’s drowning in a torrent of erotic juice. His whole body is sodden, drenched with the sperm of a desire so strong, he fears that his hands will disengage from his arms and tear her to shreds. He’s mad with desire to have her. Possess her. Penetrate her. It’s as if his toes are ten little cocks, and his fingers ten medium ones, and his tongue a larger one, and his bodily self so large and gargantuan a penis that he bawdily laughs at seeing himself pull it up and position it atop her southern mound, there, positioned like an artillery cannon, all ready to Boom! But he has worked and labored to be here. He has, all day, warded off the many temptations to simply take her, have his way.
....As agreed, he repeats now what they’ve chosen to chant and image themselves with – I love you. I am not your enemy.
“I love you. I am not your enemy.”
“I love you. I am not your enemy.”
They do this to make present what is novel and fresh between them. Chant it because the sexually violent ways of the predatory Warrior are always there in their minds and hearts, as past is ever present and future ever past, and they must be acknowledged before they can be dispelled.“I love you. I am not your enemy.” Through this shared mantra, Aaren and Jared make conscious the sexual violence of the predatory Warrior. He who dominates and conquers her. Rapes. Who trivializes and casts off the females after she has quenched his sexual desire. Booty. Who obliterates any memory of Her or her as all he can see is Him and himself. You are my flesh. You came from my rib!
It is the mantra of a fresh beginning. It enables them to exit the mythic world in which they grew up. Together, they want this. To start anew. Be fresh bodies and souls, each for the other.
48. REVOLUTION!
Aaren and Jared move in together and focus on creating an intimate relationship. They throw out all previous political and theological language—all talk about gods and goddesses. They focus on the act of heartfelt embracing. The Warrior myth remains dominant insofar as men and women continue to look upon one another as sex objects.
In a moment of pure amazement, they realize that it is just this simple act of heartfelt embracing that is the revolutionary act. Heartfelt embracing is the act that stands everything the Warrior believes on its head. Heartfelt embracing is the act that puts flesh on their mantra, “Love as if you are no one’s enemy.”
The Revolutionary act, then, is the simple act of heartfelt embracing—honoring and respecting the other as a Beloved.
49. EPILOGUE-WE’RE HERE TO SING, 1981
Jared listens to Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural Address while holding his daughter, Amanda Rose. His son, Joseph, plays nearby. Jared sees Reagan as a Revolutionary. Aaren is less impressed. She notes that John Lennon was assassinated just the month before. Reagan’s victory raises the question “Who won?” Jared recalls the divisiveness with the Movement that was evident at his and Aaren’s wedding.
Char had worked hard to prevent the blow-up, but the recently revived chapter of SCUM —Society for Cutting-up Men— prevailed. They stormed the wedding, marched in from all sides, raucously waving banners, whooping and hollering. ... SCUM’s raiders.... “Marriage is evil! It is the rape of our Mother!” was shouted, screamed as Frog Pond’s sighful waterfall ran red with blood! Or, obvious to all, with red dye.
In concert, a dozen or so hideous butterflies burst forth from the adjoined Enchanted Garden ...These were wing-damaged, beheaded, squashed and uglied creatures who flitted around the crowd with the intent of unsettling everyone, notably the men. They pushed their bodies and faces lip close and twittered, “Kill all the males! Kill all the males!”
These butterflies were not in any manner the Enchanted Garden’s “magical creatures of transformation” described in their wedding invitation. For Aaren and Jared, the humble, hairy, squishy and
unremarkable caterpillar symbolized all that they, this day, came to proclaim as the core meaning of their marrying. “We seek to transform
and be transformed,” they wrote, “To marry rightly by honoring and making present through our everyday embracing the heart and spirit of the divine male and holy goddess. We do this as two separate, autonomous individuals who intentionally seek to create family – at once civil, holy and mythic.”
Jared can’t sleep. He recalls all the novel’s key characters and details what happened to each one. Finally, he sits down in front of the memorial to John Lennon on their mantelpiece. Jared listens to Joan Baez play Jacque Brel’s “La Colombe” (“The Dove”) which for him is the Sixties anthem.
“Look, John, I know. I know. I know the answer. We’re here to sing, right? We’re here to free the dove? All that symbolism. I get it. You’re a fucking genius. I love you, Man.”
Jared falls asleep listening to Lennon’s “Imagine.”
In the morning, Aaren, half-awake, sneaks her hand under the blankets to
stir her beloved spouse—Again?!—all she feels are cool sheets. She throws on her robe and as expected finds him—her lover, her husband, her divine spouse—snoring on the couch, earphones askew. Gently, she lifts
them off his head. She doesn’t have to ask. She knows the question. Looking up at John, she also knows the answer. Aaren knows. She knows. “Imagine!” she whispers to her dreaming beloved intimate Revolutionary. “Keep imagining!”
As Aaren turns and goes into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee and set out the bowls for the kids’ cereal that portion of their wedding vow that they sang to one another, that launched their own dreamslip coupled
Revolution hums through her head and becomes the day’s heartbeat.
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
END
Francis X. Kroncke is one of the “Minnesota 8” anti-war radicals who, in 1970, raided Selective Service draft boards and destroyed 1-A files as a protest against the Vietnam War. He served fourteen months of a five-year sentence in the federal prison at Sandstone, MN. A former Catholic seminarian, Franciscan monk, and lay theologian, he first became a Conscientious Objector, then a draft resister, and finally a Catholic Radical draft board raider. He has a master’s degree in theology (University of San Francisco) with doctoral studies in history and theology at UC–Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. After prison he headed a prison reform lobbying project in California for the American Friends Service Committee. For the past thirty years he’s worked as a strategic planner and senior sales and marketing manager in the high-tech world. Presently, Frank lives in southwest Wisconsin.
Peace Crimes: The Minnesota 8 vs. the War is a docu-drama based upon Frank’s unpublished memoir, “Outlaw or American Patriot?” Doris Baizley, the playwright, was commissioned by the History Theatre (www.historytheatre.org) and the Playwright Center (www.pwcenter.org) to write the script. The play was co-produced by these two organizations and staged at the University of Minnesota Theatre Department’s Rarig Center. Nearly 4,000 people attended sixteen performances during February–March 2008. (See www.minnesota8.net.)
Frank developed an eight-college campus peace education promotional event around the play. TPT, a local public TV station, produced a documentary about the development of the play, Peace Crimes Backstage—The Minnesota 8. Fourteen print articles and four radio programs were produced. (See site and “Media” link at http://www.pwh-mn.org/media.php.)
Published – See www.minnesota8.net (bottom navigation “Writings”).
“Resistance as Sacrament,” Cross Currents vol. XXI, no. 4 (1971), the journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, www.aril.org. As attorney pro se I argued my federal appeal. I was assisted by appellate lawyer Charles Bisanz, Jr. United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit 459 F.2d 697 (1972). A copy of the appellate decision can be downloaded at http://wings.Buffalo.edu/law/BCLC/web/appkroncke.htm.
“Prison, Bottoming Out, The Mother,” Cross Currents XXVIII, no. 1 (Spring 1988).
“The Healing of Vietnam,” Voices, in the “Healing A Generation, The Vietnam Experience,” Journal of the American Academy ofPsychotherapists vol. 27, no. 1 and 2 (Spring/Summer 1991. www.aapweb.com/
Interview, 2002 by Cheryl Seal http://www.minnesota8 .net/Writings/seal0 1 .htm
On “Peace and War in the Heartland” project, http://www.pwh-mn.org, and the “Minnesota8” at www.minnesota8.net:
“Outlaw or American Patriot?” – unpublished memoir.
“Vietnam Undeclared” – unpublished; source for “The Healing of Vietnam.”
Trial documents.
You ask me about Vietnam, my son, and words die upon my lips. For Vietnam is more than I or my generation can define, describe or express. As a word it is a dictionary entry, a noun denoting a geographical spot ... but beware this simple deception,for Vietnam is more than seven letters. It is seven letters with seven times seventy times seventy meanings. While millions have uttered it, few have heard it with identical understanding. For Vietnam is one of those rare words, one of an awesome few in human history, which is truly spiritual. When it is spoken, the deepest emotions of the human soul are unleashed. When it is voiced, a people dreams. Upon its sound America once again trembles, holds tight its pounding heart, and kneels in prayer. Yes,
Vietnam harbors this power. It brings individuals and we the American people to our knees. But to what or whom does Vietnam drive us to worship, to pray? This is why words die upon my lips. For Vietnam has delivered me
and the American people into a time and place which is sacred, but of a sacredness outside of our tradition, our history, our religious understanding.
Vietnam is word of incantation and exorcism. As such it draws forth all that is darkly evil and foreboding within the individual and American soul ... while simultaneously calling forth all that is brightly good and healing. My son, Vietnam is scrawled in blood across the corpse of my generation ... yet it is also our anointing for new birth. Vietnam is the last word of our death and
the first word of our new tongue. Be patient with whatI will say to you. Ponder it, reflect upon it, let it take you to the new sacred ground. Let Vietnam become your tradition, for it is my patrimony. Speak it to heal generations to come.
-1-
Vietnam was not a war
To grasp Vietnam, you must first understand war. This is requisite because Vietnam was not a war. Yes, it was killing, and murder, rape and pillage, atrocity ... all that describes a war. Likewise, it was heroic deeds, honorable actions and moral nobility, selfless sacrifice ... all that describes a
war. But it was not a People's war, it was not an American war. It was neither because it was undeclared.
What is the significance of being undeclared? After all, it can be argued, Vietnam was as described above. Indeed, men dressed in uniforms, appropriations were allocated, military alliances were strengthened, and the Evening News brimmed with footage of carnage, pain and triumph.
The significance lies in the historical singularity of the fact of being undeclared. School books fail to footnote another such American war which was not declared. Of greater
moment, the fact that "Vietnam veterans" as a social type have been outcast and abandoned, rendered socially invisible, and are denied legitimacy as veterans calls for an examination of this singular fact, for plumbing the many meanings of its singularity.
Being undeclared, Vietnam was not liturgized, and war is a liturgy. A liturgy is that which makes whole, which grounds an event of spiritual proportion to mundane time and space; it is that which provides borders, boundaries, in brief, the battle ground. Without declaration, nothing can begin nor end. Vietnam Undeclared is, then, without beginning and without end; it is a reality untethered to time and space. As such, it must be judged either trivial or of a profundity never before tapped.
My son, the word Vietnam is volcanic. Observe but those who speak it. But observe further that it is never received by ear nor loosed from the tongue in weak conversation. It is a word which beckons, entices, erupts; even its triviality addresses the profound.
War is the naming of an enemy
War is a public proclamation of the existence of an enemy. The enemy is proclaimed and named. War is the way in which a people defines itself as unified as it separates from this enemy. The public proclamation is a ritual which initiates the liturgy which unites a people on every level: individual, social, political, historical, psychological and religious. This ritual public proclamation is the clear and distinct beginning of memory. Through this public proclamation the people are made whole, become one people, one nation ... live their common name, Americans!
Under this common name, not their individual identities, war is waged. "America is at war!" shouts the proud citizen; it is not he at war but himself as People. He is not personally responsible for battlefield slaughter, rather it is the People who slay the enemy through him. In this way the public proclamation bares the soul of each individual as it evokes and reveals the collective soul of the nation, of the People. War, then, is primarily a transforming and transcending act. As it transforms individuals into the People, it transcends the moral limitations imposed upon individuals by the collective. It effects this through a specific liturgy of which ritual public declaration is the necessary first step in the naming of the People and its Enemy.
Prior to the proclamation the people were united, after it they are unified. Before they were private citizens, after they are warriors. Before their leader was presidential, after he is Commander-in-Chief. War describes that time when each individual person is intensely aware of and lives his collective identity. While some become soldiers, all become warriors; don the mythic armor. "America at war" means each person at war. During war each is a patriot regardless of the humbleness of task, whether knitting socks for soldiers at the front or dive-bombing from out the clouds. Each individual person is unified in a common pursuit-- the slaughter of the Enemy.
The ritual and liturgy of war
Citizens enter Boot Camp where they become soldiers -- the physical and visual symbols of the transformation into warrior. The soldier's visible alteration -- cut of hair, mode of dress, attitude of walk and salute -- are ritual marks of distinction. While all citizens are warriors, only soldiers are trained to kill. Though covert and spy actions are part of warring, it is the visible battles of the soldiers which are cheered and wept over. How the soldier fares, overcomes obstacles, manifests bravery ... dies ... is how the People emote. It is to them that Purple Hearts are awarded ... to their families distinguished Crosses bestowed. The soldier is the emotional embodiment of the identity created by the public declaration of the war. The soldier is the individual transcending his own morality as he becomes People at war. The soldier is the heart and soul of the People.
The soldier comes into existence through ritual and gains meaning through the liturgy of war. He lives in myth, a creation of the collective soul of The People. He has real existence and spiritual meaning only when war is declared; he has no individual character -- he is as he acts out, creates war, as he kills: this is his liturgy.
When the war is over the liturgy concludes in a set way. As with the Beginning so the End is ritually declared (headline: "Victory in Europe!" "Peace Declared!"). Once declared the soldier demobs. He re-transforms through disrobing. It is a public ritual embraced within celebration. As the soldier returns symbols of new life bedeck him --flowers are hung around his neck, women (regardless of stature as mother, wife, sister, child) hang upon him, hugging and kissing, afestive atmosphere blooms under swirls of confetti and booming sounds of drum and brass bands ... people dance in the streets.
After the parade, his discharge, his re-transformation is complete. He is forbidden to wear his uniform except on special occasions. He visually assumes current dress and style. At the same time, he is re-bound by personal morality. No longer can he act on behalf ofthe People. His is an individual,
not a collective soul. He ceases to have liturgical meaning; he no longer has meaning in the mythic realm.
Without ritual the soldier cannot be created. Without ritual citizens cannot become warriors. Without ritual neither the individual nor the collective can speak nor hear "War!" ... there is no warrior discourse nor embrace either private or public; no liturgical moment.
War is a transcending moral act
War is bloodshed. Blood is a term used to define a people, "We share the same blood."It is a blood defined by a boundary of time and space, by a history and a nation. Blood is German or Irish or Armenian or African or Vietnamese or American. Blood flows through the veins of the individual and courses through the heart of a People.
To shed blood is a mythic act,for it is the slaughter of a People, notjust an individual. Cain was accursed and marked notjust because he slew Abel but because in so slaying his brother he was shedding his own and his People's blood. His sacrilege was that he did not transform his brother into Enemy; rather, he slew his own People ... and such is murder, not war. For this he was marked and condemned. There is no morality which makes brother slaying acceptable. Only when brother is named as enemy can his slaying be justified through war's ritual and liturgy.
To shed a brother's blood requires naming him as enemy. It is a naming grounded in a spiritual, transforming power ... in the power of the People in service to their God, for it changes all individual enemies into Enemy. It is a naming drawn against an offense of mythic proportion, against an act judged Evil.
Once named as enemy, the brother's blood is not considered familial. Quite the contrary, it's shedding is ritually required for the people to continue to liturgically define itself as a distinct people. Unless the enemy's blood is shed and victory won, the People stand at risk of losing their identity, history, and spiritual ground. As such they would be morally illegitimate; not warriors and soldiers but murderers like Cain.
War's loser must surrender. It is surrender a step beyond submission. It is a spiritual renunciation replete with acts of contrition and implorations for forgiveness, but, more significantly, it is a renunciation ... a sundering of a people's spiritual power. Surrender encompasses the denial by the enemy that his spiritual power was real. Indeed, the loser is accused of war crimes ... adjudged to have acted outside of myth and ritual ... cast outside the spiritual realm and named as criminal, as moral outlaw. Indicted like Cain, his bloodshedding is not redemptive, rather it is murder. Denied the power of his ritual, the loser is deprived of identity, control over his own myth and history, and allegiance to his God, who is now proclaimed afalse god.
The loser is forbidden to ritualize the war. Liturgically, he cannot ceremoniously end it. There are no parades. His soldiers' uniforms are badges of disgrace. He cannot frame time within the war's boundaries. Collectively and individually the loser is denied mythic existence as a People and is forced to bear the full weight of his bloodshed ... which is now interpreted solely as a lawless and morally illegitimate act. In brief, the loser is rendered into parts, never to be whole, never to be People again. War's loser ceases to exist on the collective, mythic level. Like Cain, the loser wanders ... cast forth from the realm of the holy and wholly.
War, then, is a set of rituals and a liturgy which morally and spiritually wholes and heals a People through the naming and slaughter of an enemy People. As such it is an act which transcends individual will and act while enabling the individual to transcend his own will and morality.
War is the individual as an act of God
When war is declared (FDR and World War II: "This day shall live in infamy!") men step forward and submit themselves to spiritual reformation. It is spiritual because they now will do what is morally forbidden in normal times. They murder. They enter the sacred zone. They touch the creative
power which is, in normal times, reserved only for God. As warrior they render death. They do so by offering themselves as sacrifice. They ready themselves for murdering by a ritual preparation for redemptive dying ... an act of self transcendence.
Once declared, a People hears that its sons and fathers are going to be transformed. They will no longer be citizens --farmers, teachers, professional athletes, welders -- rather they are to become soldiers. It is the soldiers prime duty to kill. In normal times such killing would be common murder. The murderer would be transformed from citizen into convict ... and himself executed. In war, the soldier is not murderer but Hero. It is his duty, the stuff of his obligation, to kill. His daily identity is grounded in the ritual of slaughter. It is this ritualization -- his murder by consent of his People -- which protects the individual from becoming a cold-blooded murderer. The common murderer is not protected by ritual. In fact, his violation is defined by his assumption that he can enter the spiritual zone occupied by soldier without collective ritual. The murderer's terror is his denial of the necessity for public ritual, for personal transcendence. In effect, he declares personal war ... he mimics the collective act of declaration. He declares as enemy the People itself as he slaughters a citizen.
War is this realm of self-transcending dying. An individual death is
given collective meaning. The dying soldier is America dying, yet he is America being born as his death is sacrifice offered in hope of this rebirth. From the war America is created anew. When it comes to tell its Mythic Story, its history, America marks its textbook chapters by these phases of self- transcending dying and new birth. Time is given meaning as it relates to the boundaries of war: post-Civil War, pre-World War I, post-World War II. As such each generation learns that history, the Story of the American People, is set in spiritual terms. Each chapter is marked by sacrificial blood. The overall Story is that of the People being mythically born again as Warrior. Each generation is taught to seek these rituals and to conduct this liturgy: to create its own time of moral transcendence. Each seeks to test its mettle, reveal its spiritual character and strength through the liturgy of war. For only in this realm of moral transcendence can a People live its Name, become Americans. A generation which does not fight a war is a lost generation, one whose worth is untested and unproven.
The spirituality of war
War is grounded in a People's collective spiritual vision. It reveals fundamental spiritual beliefs. For the People war is publically spoken as holy. It is a primary expression of the relationship of that People with their God. The declaration is an altar call for witnesses who are true to the moral vision, who desire to be standard bearers of God's Truth. Winning a war is interpreted as a validation of the People's holiness. Losing a war blankets them with guilt, a sense of uncleanness (immorality), and a sense of abandonment by their God. A People who has lost a war interpret such a blight in ritualistic terms: as a call to purification -- a return to basic fundamentals beliefs. After losing a war, a People calls itself to revitalization rituals, rituals of new birth or new baptism, rituals of re-confirmation, re- identification encompassing confession, cleansing, exorcism, and anointing. After victory like rituals are enacted though they are rituals to release fullness and blessing; they are rituals of celebration, joy, and triumph ... the exaltation of God. Yet, after victory or defeat the common goal of all rituals is to return to normalcy, to the everyday, to life lived without intense collective emotion -- to the mundane and profane.
When war ends it is urgent and critical that the soldier not linger in the spiritual zone where he will be tempted to become a murderer. The ritual of exiting, of cleansing, of purification must begin. He must be re-formed as father or son, as plumber, executive, dancer, or mailman. He must hear the war undeclared. Not to do so is to jeopardize his sanity for it was men,women and children that he killed and if not re-formed he will continue to kill and become a terror at home. Without the exit ritual, the individual will not be at peace; he will be caught in a timeless and spaceless zone where he is neither person nor warrior. He will be accursed and marked like Cain; condemned, a wanderer never at rest, never at home, without myth or
history. He will exist, not live, without time and space; for him the war will never have begun nor ever end.
The rituals and liturgy of war is integrated and adorned with the rituals and liturgy of a People's dominant religion, here Christianity. As such, when the citizen undergoes the soldiering ritual of Boot Camp he emerges endowed with a new moral status. Though Christianity preaches "Thou shalt not kill", the soldier accepts his primary role as killer with moral
approbation. His killing is interpreted in terms of God's Will that the Evil One, The Enemy, be slain. Though the soldier slays his human brother, he is not marked like Cain. Rather, the soldier is like God's Son, Jesus, who gives his life in selfless sacrifice that others may be saved. The soldier's slaying is understood and valued in terms of this risk, this sacrifice he is offering. His slaying is the slaying of himself more than of his enemy. Thus, what is, in normal times, murder becomes a healing, whole rendering act. In essence, war as ritual slaying is how the individual transcends ethical and moral limits and enters into the sacred realm, emerges as a spiritual partner with God.
War as liturgy, then, must emerge into Peace to complete its cycle. Peace in Christian terms is the resurrectional peace, that of being born again. Peace is the public proclamation that the War is ended. Peace is the transition to normal times; to the moments of individual story. The leader becomes President and relegates his Commander-in-Chief functions to professional soldiers. The declaration of Peace initiates the transformation from warrior to citizen. The soldier symbolically re-dresses as businessman, teacher, plumber, dancer .... As the soldier achieves peace with himself and immerses his warrior self within his citizen self, so the People come to peace.
My son, since Vietnam was not declared neither has it begun nor ended. Yet, you and I have fingered The Wall. We have touched this collective marker and held in our hearts our own familial loss. We know that Vietnam existed, was ... exists, is. If Vietnam was not a war, what was it? How can we of "the Vietnam War era" explain and interpret our experience? Surely, something happened ... but what?
Because it was undeclared I cannot, my generation cannot, speak in traditional ways about Vietnam. We cannot repeat The Call which we did not hear. Yet, though undeclared, Vietnam communicated. And this is where it crosses over into mystery, mystification, bafflement and assumes the shape of specter, haunting and spirits. Vietnam Undeclared is an historic first, an anthropological novelty. For Vietnam Undeclared is People warring denying they are at war; as such Vietnam is a peculiar communication.
More, Vietnam Undeclared is a People warring with itself. "Vietnam" has come to mean the way we in America warred/war against ourselves. It
was as much the mindless abandonment of troops in Indochina as it was the mindful battles in the streets of the domestic police.
Yes, this is the connection. "Vietnam" is more than war. It is more than a forlorn peasant country in Indochina. It is more than mass marches on Washington, DC. "Vietnam" is more than Undeclared ... it is a communication of something previously unarticulated, never before grasped.
I tremble as "Vietnam" screeches through my mind, sweats my palms, races my heart, and drags nightmares and visions into daylight.
My son, grasp my hand ... look more closely with me at the ritual of war as it has played itself on the small stage of our family.
-2-
Vietnam was not a war because it was not declared; it lacked the key elements of ritual and liturgy. Once said, how do we account for what happened, all the events which we try to capture, wrap up, and market as "The Vietnam War"?
Why did the political leaders -- the Country Fathers -- not declare the war? Why did they send their sons off without ritual? Clearly, the character of the relationship between fathers and sons had changed since the last
ritualized war, World War II-- the war to end all wars.
The myth and ritual of World War II
My father told World War Two stories within a framework of time and space. Without stating it as such he set the War's boundaries by the rituals of entry and exit. December 7, 1941 was the date which tethered the ritual. He detailed where he was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He cited the city, described the room and the radio set through which FDR declared the war, and interpreted the day and speech as the moment of his commitment -- he left three children, me in the womb, and a career job to enlist. From that day forward he did not look back; he had no moral doubts; emotionally, he was at war; he was America at war.
While never wavering in his patriotic and moral duty, he hated war. His letters from the Pacific stated: "Dear Sweetheart ... as I walk along and see the rows and rows of white crosses, my only consolation is that in twenty years our sons will not have to go to war." This was more than belief, it was emotion; it was his soul as father. It was a clear and straightforward statement of his connection to his God, a God who would -- through him as soldier -- redeem and triumph; who would -- through hated war -- bring peace, everlasting Peace.
World War Two vets knew that it was the war to end all wars. With their souls they felt the hatred of the Enemy, Adolf Hitler and the German People (the source of the Axis' fascism). Their cause was just, more it was eschatological -- a battle of Final Days where loss meant the obliteration of the moralfoundation of Western Christian culture. There was scant discussion of the economic or political benefits of conquering Germany, Italy or Japan. Rather, it was a battle between Fatherlands. It was a battle of truly mythic stature: at stake was the earth, all peoples of every nation -- despite any individual nation's neutrality, the soldier knew that he fought to save all nations from the Enemy.
As they recount their Story, the mythic power of The War is manifest. The familial bond is severed, and the brother is named as Enemy. Consider that many, like my father, were quite ethnic Germans. He spoke German until he was four years old -- in a second generation home in northern New Jersey. Since he was both college educated and a chemist he was followed by the FBI, until he volunteered. They were seeking an answer to the question: Was he an American? or a German American? or a German? Despite his strong ethnic ties, the power of the war myth distanced him from his Germanic kin -- the brother was named Enemy. For my father, in Adolf Hitler the presence of Evil was personified.
After the ritual of Boot Camp and the affirmation of their soldier status, America become Warrior Nation and the slaughter of Germans (Italians, French, Japanese) by ethnic brothers was done with ardor and heroic charge. (Indeed, like so many families, there were familial German Kronckes to be slain!)
Boot Camp was not just a military experience; becoming a soldier was not just a social status or a career move. Rather, it was a spiritually transforming moment. My father went off to war "for the duration." Time was suspended. Space was altered -- the Home Front was wherever the soldier went. America as geography disappeared to be replaced by Democracy. The defense of the Homeland, then, took place wherever the soldier went. As my father's letters indicated he was "Somewhere in the Pacific" ... and it could just as well have been "Somewhere in Italy" or England or North Africa or the Atlantic. National boundaries ceased to exist, replaced by a sense of "where" spoken of in terms of presence. My father, as all soldiers, was where Democracy fought Fascism; such was the Space they walked upon, cruised towards, and flew over. It was a landscape of Will and Duty; it was a battleground from which they would not, could not, return except in Final Victory or Defeat.
When it did end -- again, moments captured with snapshot detail and accuracy -- "Victory in Europe!" (May 8, 1945) and "VJ Day!" (September 2,
1945) only after these events would (could) their war days be numbered; only then could a calendar be xed and a number be given to a soldier's "duration"; his "time of service" calculated.
My father came home, paraded here and there and then placed his "Lieutenant, Junior Grade" uniform in mothballs, hugged me (a year old) and resumed his job as chemist. For a time he kept in touch with a few, for a time he told stories -- always wistful and humorous -- until the specter of The Enemy ebbed in his and the nation's soul. He was home; his family was safe; the world was at Peace.
War had taken him out of ordinary time and when completed returned him. The "call to War" had been answered. With a clear sense of what had happened, when it had happened, and why it had happened, my father joined thousands of other World War II vets and relegated "the War" to collective memory. It was ended, it was over; its reality only relivable on appointed mythic days (Memorial Day, Fourth of July) when social and cultural ritual sanctioned a restricted immersion back into the timeless, spaceless and extraordinary experience called War. These cyclical holidays healed my father. For though War ceases for the collective, the drop out of time and space into the mythic can never be contained by the individual. He has lived as an act of his God; he has been selected and chosen; he has transcended his own ethical and moral consciousness. War has spiritually transformed him, and he exits war struggling to contain his heart, mind and soul in the mundane of the everyday. Within each calendar year, the veteran must have extraordinary days during which he relives and transforms himself, momentarily, into soldier. These are days of memory, replete with the twin release of grief and celebration. They are days when the collective once again issues the Call for War ... recounts the details of battle ... and sounds, with the setting sun, the Call for Peace. Such holidays (true holy days) made my father whole and were testimony to me that I too could be soldier.
The battle of the Gods
My father was empowered by ritual to know and feel the Enemy. Why then did my father's generation not so empower mine? Why did the President and Congress not declare the Vietnam War? The Bay of Tonkin Resolution which apologists cite as the declaration was known to be a sham as it was written. It was a Presidential excuse, a ruse on Congress ... an Executive mandate but an unofficial act. Such a Resolution did not possess the stature of a ritual declaration -- President Johnson acted as an individual, as a political person but not with the stature of Heroic Father. He, paradoxically, usurped the power with which he could have been invested if he had enacted the ritual by moving Congress to declare war and so unify the Will and Spirit of the People in his will and spirit.
The president's usurpation can be explained when one foundational difference between my father's and my time is clearly exposed: the existence of a "peace time draft."After World War II, President Truman did not disband the draft. The professional army not only began to grow, it became stable as part of the economy. President Eisenhower, a heralded soldier president, described this condition as "the military industrial complex." Among the many things this revealed was the acceptance of the fact of perpetual war. While called the Cold War, it was anything but cold; the heart of the People raced in a state of perpetual fear and war readiness. America remained in a neverending state of war.
By deciding not to end the draft, Truman denied World War II a complete exit ritual, afull return to Peace. "They shout 'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace!" (Jeremiah 6:14) aptly describes the condition. America remained mapped in war terminology as "Democracy"; it never returned to existence as a geographical place. Indeed, Americans continued to live in eschatological tension -- as if time was still suspended and each day was but one in The Final Days. The world was not yet safe for Democracy. This is a critical fact. World War II never brought Peace. Hostility ceased but the ritual reality persisted -- Boot Camp was not broken; the People's Will and Spirit was kept at war's feverish pitch fueled by apocalyptic imagery of nuclear holocaust.
President Johnson's usurpation was possible because the right and power to declare war was not returned to the People after World War II. This right and power is returned when the president puts down his mythic mantle as Commander-in-Chief as Peace is accepted. Truman, by instituting the draft ("a peace time draft") rejected the surrender and submission of the Enemy. Though the visual presence of Nazism and the Chrysanthemum Emperor faded, they perdured invisibly through every anti-Democratic Evil which could be named and numbered. Indeed, Truman dropped the Bomb but he declared that it had only obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it had not eradicated the Enemy and his Evil. In point of fact, the War had not been won! Consequently, instead of a temporary war time draft which was used as an instrument of conscription, the draft became a permanent part of American culture, society and the economy. This permanent draft required a permanent mythic Commander-in-Chief. Historically, the president is Chief Executive in normal times and Commander-in-Chief in extraordinary times, namely, when war is declared. Truman grounded America in a novel mythic structure by the institutionalization of the peace time draft.
Veterans and Americans in general did not assess the significance of what Truman did for it was an historically unprecedented act. To most it appeared trivial. Numbed by the horrors of hot war, few were terrified by this novel Specter which arose. Few thought the draft other than a reasonable and
sensible security measure, one taken to ensure that the Enemy did not resurrect and catch America unprepared. Only the name "Pearl Harbor" needed to be mentioned for all questions to be answered and fears calmed. "Democracy must be vigilantly guarded!"
My father and all World War II vets were deceived, and their birthright as warriors was stolen by Truman's act. "Victory in Europe!", "Peace Declared!" ... were lies. They were lies widely believed and ones which the fathers passed onto their sons. The sons were raised in the Cold War ... which was testimony to the incompletion of the ritual and the continuance of the liturgy. We inherited a world at war, not at peace. The Enemy was not vanquished, rather only transformed from Hitler to Stalin. Over time, these personalities became insignificant as Communism and Socialism -- systems and life styles – were identified as the Enemy. Such were the proper enemy for Democracy.
In this light, President Johnson could only have acted as he did for he inherited the patrimony of Truman. Johnson could not declare war, because America as Democracy was already at war! His Bay of Tonkin Resolution appears as usurpation but in fact he could not usurp what had not been given back to the People. Truman was the first president who subordinated his presidency to his Commander-in-Chief status and who refused to conclude the ritual of war. Johnson was already Commander-in-Chief; he was not a president in need of a declaration to exercise his perpetual war powers.
Truman's act violated the collective Will and Spirit. He refused to return to the ordinary. He boldly and baldly refused to heed the Call to Peace. He resisted his People's God -- the God who warred to bring Peace. Truman refused exitfrom the realm of the spiritual. His was an act of disobedience fraught with mythic consequence. From that day forward he exercised his presidential powers in terms of his Commander-in-Chief powers. For him, the whole earth, the globe was "America," for he claimed it as the proper battleground for Democracy. America's job was to police the world; he set forth to garrison the earth.
The meaning, function and reality of solider was altered. The Cold War's "Peace Time Warrior" was either its own boldfaced contradiction in terms or a novel mythic oxymoron. It became the latter in light of its source in the oxymoronic "Peace Time Draft." The soldier became an economic unit; a necessity for the War Economy. He ceased to fight Enemy People, rather he slew "isms" such as the "specter of Communism."Boot Camp became installed as a rite of passage for eighteen year old males; a required social experience which validated one's masculinity -- though it was equally sought for its reference on a job application. Boot Camp became a hazing ritual somewhat of the stature of fraternity hazing.
The Peace Time Draft negates the need for the ritual of public Declaration; it assumes the existence of the Warrior’s spiritual act, that creative act of perpetual war. A war which is for "beyond duration," so, paradoxically, each soldier serves a pre-set, restricted term. A time he describes not in terms of "war years" but as "drafted for two years!" These are years of ordinary time, not extraordinary; they are years lived in "normal time", calendar time replete with dates ticketed for furloughs and R&R. This is so because all time is Peace Time insofar as Peace is War.
Truman's institutionalization of the draft was a priestly act. By enacting it, he propitiated his personal God -- the God of War.
Why did Truman do this? Why did he turn from the God of Peace to the God of War? Why did he deceive and betray my father and the war's veterans?
No easy answers are forthcoming. Analysts can forward economic, political or social explanations and justifications; but they pale in their attempts to grasp the magnitude of Truman's act --for he was the instrument of a God's transformation of the earth: War vanquished Peace. In this light, Truman suffered Hitler's curse. Both transformed their People into permanent soldiers cast into a millennial battle. Both replaced the Will of the People with the Will of the State. Both worshipped and sought totalitarian powers. Hitler's vision was couched in non-Christian, pagan terms and imagery. Truman's vision was couched in Christian and Democratic terms and imagery -- but he twisted and perverted them, standing their place and meaning on its head. Hitler espoused a fascist totalitarianism; Truman conjured a democratic totalitarianism. Both were priests in service to the God of War -- whose benediction is "War is Peace."Since World War II, Americans have lived in a perilous spiritual state.
The draft as sacramental ritual
The key to understanding why Vietnam was not declared, then, is the spiritual character of the draft. The draft is the neverending ritual Call to War. More, it is the sacramental ritual of the God of War, functioning much like the ritual of Christian Baptism.
As a youth I believed that we were at peace, and, at the same time, I was fully aware that at eighteen I was obligated to enter the draft. Like most middle-class white Americans, I anticipated that I would be deferred. There were student deferments, fatherhood deferments, and for me, specifically, a divinity deferment. I approached the draft as a social obligation; I did not give its existence much thought nor plumb the meaning of its historical uniqueness. I defined myself as a Catholic American in harmony with the dominant moral values of Protestant America. Only when I sought status as a
Conscientious Objector did the mythic structure and power of the draft reveal itself.
I registered robed as a Franciscan monk. Though my religious status garnered an automatic deferment, I had to register. At that time, there was no Conscientious Objector status granted to Roman Catholics; and even if there had been it too would only have been a deferment. Clearly, my spiritual and moral beliefs, I realized, were defined by the Selective Service System, not vice versa. Any claims I would have made based upon religious belief were to be interpreted and evaluated by the Draft Board. The Board’s omnipresence and omnipotence was not lost upon me. Though I possessed not a splinter of political belief, I returned to the monastery awed by the presence of The Draft. Under my monk's robes, I carried the paper symbol of a great power. More, I felt its presence as icon; it made real the touch of a godly power. The flimsy paper -- as thin and frail as a communion host -- was truly sacramental, that is, it made present the God of War.
As the Vietnam War formed -- slowly, bit by bit and battle by battle -- I confronted the God whom Truman worshipped. This was not a bold and abrupt confrontation, rather it was incremental and almost accidental. Immersed in my religious beliefs, I was swayed by the pacifistic interpretation of Jesus' Way. I became one of the first Roman Catholic Conscientious Objectors. In so pleading my case I was forced -- by the accusatory and prosecutorial bent of my Draft Board -- to articulate who my God was. In so doing, I began to see who the Board's God was.
The Board assumed the role of Spiritual Director. They rightly intuited that my claims were blasphemous. They forcefully re-instructed me in proper Spiritual Formation. In brief, they asserted that my training had been faulty, and that I had a malfunctioning moral compass.
Catholic moral theology claims that there can be a Just War. The premise is that religion can, under certain well defined instances, morally permit or condone a war. However, even while in battle the warrior must follow strict moral mandates; war, itself, does not suspend moral judgment and obligation, rather it is religion which sets the conditions for specific moral suspensions. In this tradition, God is a God of Peace; but being a Just God, He allows warring in pursuit of this same Justice.
The Draft Board did not worship this God of Peace. Indeed, they mocked what they termed my naive and innocent view of human nature -- "Pacifism!". More, they intimidated me; threatened me with jail and prison if I persisted in such an unpatriotic posture. They confidently countered my theological claims, insisting that I was twisting and perverting what most Christians believed just to save my hide. The nagging insinuation was of my cowardice --physical and moral.
What the Board presented -- as shocking as John the Baptist's head on a platter -- was the fact that for me and my generation the draft was not a choice, rather it was a foundational institution, a male's primary obligation. Consider that every eighteen year old male -- regardless of physical, mental or moral stature (paraplegic, mental defective, convict or Joe Jock) -- must register with the Selective Service System. If he does not, he will be either imprisoned or exiled. Registration meant salvation or damnation.
Registering for the draft, then, is the baptismal act for the God of War. Non-registrants are denied identity as Americans (and in the Board's eyes as proper Christians). In fact, not to register was interpreted as an act of support for The Enemy. It was clear that to claim identity as an American (more specifically as a male American), I and my generation had to register.
I approached my Draft Board in fear and trembling. I had never considered myself anything but a full-blooded American. Yet, my religious beliefs compelled me to witness to a life of non-violence. Why, I asked, can't the Draft Board let me serve my God and America? After three years of testimony and pleading, the Board, in exasperation and without affirming the validity of my beliefs, granted me Conscientious Objector status. However, they bestowed it as a badge of cowardice; and I retreated into my two years of Alternative Service.
As I was performing my Alternative Service as a staff member at the Catholic student center on the University of Minnesota campus, I had occasion to preach at Sunday Mass. Consequently, many young men came to me seeking moral counsel. Like me, common to this assortment of heroes, cowards, the confused, and saints was the struggle to ascertain Whom they worshipped. Most dreaded that they would have to kill, but it was a dread counterweighted by the fact that not to kill would mean social and cultural death, oftentimes manifest through rejection by their family or self imposed exile to another country.
Amidst the swelter of events which overwhelmed many like myself as the War escalated, I realized that my deferment itself was an act of allegiance to this God of War. By accepting Conscientious Objector status I was validating the moral premise of the God who, in effect, had stated to me that there could be a Just Peace. That is, that peace could be justified under certain strict rules. More, that during this Just Peace, I would be bound by strict moral mandates, namely, to wage peace only insofar as it advances the goal of War -- killing the Enemy.
As I had come to reject the terms of Just War so I rejected its twin, Just Peace. My rejection of both was concretely manifested in my destruction of my draft card. This apparently simple, almost trivial act -- the burning of a
piece of paper -- rent the tabernacle curtain of the God of War. If I had ever questioned the foundational stature of the Selective Service System, I was no longer left in doubt. My decision not to carry that piece of paper made me a criminal; worse yet, it made me a blasphemer!
In resisting the draft as I burned my card I encountered the full sacramental import of the act which Truman ritualized. He endowed the tool of conscription with symbolic meaning and power. He redefined the cultural mooring of American Society. No longer was the individual family the anchor of society, rather Society -- in its political form as State -- was the anchor of the family. The family would henceforth exist to serve Society not Society to serve the family. Of greater import, Society, itself, was personified not in the People but in the State -- the political apparatus. Truman's retention of his extraordinary war time title of Commander-in-Chief was a mythic break with presidential tradition. He defined himself as Military Chief, not as Chief Executive. Henceforth, fathers and sons ... all males ... would be bound by and born into conscription. All would be born as children of the Warrior State and raised in worship of the God of War.
I was born into conscription; it was not a choice as it was for my father. More, there was no life outside of conscription, to defy it was to be imprisoned or exiled. The truth of my interpretation was dramatically articulated by the Judge who sentenced me and six others for raiding draft offices. His justification for delivering a maximum sentence of five years was, "You gentlemen are worse than the common criminal who attacks the taxpayer's pocketbook. You strike at the foundation of government, itself."
For my generation, the draft card became our foundational bond as males and citizens. The draft card was symbol of the God of War; to destroy this card was to violate the command, "I am the Lord They God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me."
The spiritual quest of Vietnam Veterans
The soldier in Vietnam believed that he had answered his country's Call to War. He believed that it would culminate in a Call to Peace. But he found neither War nor Peace in their proper mythic mode. Rather, he found himself bewildered by the same reactions I had found as a draft resister. His Cause was judged ignoble, stupid, meaningless -- "not a real war!" He was lampooned as a dupe for oil cartels or as a pawn in the CIA's secret global chess game. Upon return, he became ashamed. The accusations of being "a loser" were heightened by an undertone of cowardly criminality. He was made to feel as if he were a murderer and not a soldier.
The import of the lack of ritual Declaration became
manifest and
magnified by the lack of a ritual exit, a Welcome Home, a victory celebration.
Though the president spoke of "Victory for Democracy," he did not -- could not -- ritually end what had never begun. Many Vets hungered -- a hunger never satisfied, indeed, one that cannot be assuaged --for "just a simple word of thanks," a gesture of recognition. In effect, they sought and were denied even a moment of mythic redemption and healing; an instance of liturgy.
Vietnam was not a war, rather it was a phase of The War, a series of battles in The Final Solution; the Eschatological Peace Time War. Yet, what the priests of the God of War failed to grasp is the individual's need for ritual entrance into and exit from liturgical war. Though America is in a perpetual state of War, the individual cannot enter the realm of God, become an instrument of God, without ritual. Lacking ritual, the individual can only see himself as murderer, never as soldier.
Why was this individual need not fulfilled? Don't the priests of War understand the importance of ritual and liturgy? As answer, consider that in a totalitarian State, the individual is the means to an end, not the end, itself. Before World War II, as my father believed, America was a People's Democracy where War had to be declared. It was a Society prepared to perform the ritual steps to enter the extraordinary time and space of liturgical War. It was, in brief, a Society in service to the God of Peace, a service which contained a ritual for just warring. It was a Society, my father believed, which held the End as Peace for its individual citizens.
One individual Vietnam Veteran grounded answers to my questions in his flesh. Gary came to me while I was still doing my Alternative Service. He came after Mass to my office and began to talk about the war. He stared at me. He knew that I had not been to Vietnam, but he sensed, he stated, a bond. He began to speak and as he did he transformed me into a draft resister -- because he, too, was resisting the God of War.
Gary was a hero. A small town Minnesota battlefield decorated genuine American hero. He had lied about his age and enlisted in the Marines to fight the Communist. In Vietnam he was a Section Leader and Forward Observer, India Company -- the "Igniting Eye" -- Third Battalion, Fifth Marines.
We burned as many homes as we had matches for. You were a better
Marine if you did more fantastic things, if you could burn more hootches ... The meaner you could be, the more gooks you could kill was the whole idea.
He was a terrifying instrument of the God of War. "We burned every village we went through."
Animals were killed and rice scattered on the ground during village
clearing operations so it would rot. If we encountered any resistance or
any possible evidence of enemy resistance, we would destroy the village.
"We burned every village we went through." He had answered the Call, he now sought the Peace. But it was denied. When he came home he continued to burn every village, specifically, his own. He sat three feet from me but we journeyed side by side in spiritual quest. What he wanted to know was why the dreams would not stop. More, why was he beating his wife and kids? Why had his home, his bedroom, his mind and soul become an Enemy Village -- one he burned every night; one he reconnoitered every waking moment?
Gary wanted Peace. He had nobly sacrificed himself to satisfy his God. He wanted back into normal times, the every day, the remembered boredom of small town life. But he could not find his home ... he only found himself as abandoned.
Gary was fatigued. The War had not remained in Vietnam. For him America was Vietnam. Vietnam was America. (As cartoon Pogo proclaimed, "I have met the Enemy ... and it is us! ") He was shattered beyond his inability to glue the pieces back together. At one mass rally he had tried to enact the exit ritual -- he flung his medals over the White House fence. He tried denial, rejection, seclusion, booze, grass ... and prayer; he was not consoled.
Gary could not get a grasp on "Vietnam."He was beyond accusation. He loved America ... why didn't America love him back? ... I could not answer his questions.
Gary wounded me with friendly fire. He absorbed me spiritually into his suffering and his quest. My response was to battle more fiercely through non-violent witness, and I raided draft boards in protest. At my trial, he testified as cited above. I entered prison ... and he, accursed, continued to wander.
Mythically, Gary was condemned to experience himself only as Cain. His self reflection revealed the face of a fratricidal murderer. I shared his reflection; both of us could only see ourselves as criminals. Neither my nonviolence nor his violence delivered us and made us whole.
War as prison ritual
The initial Watergate hearings were televised during my first week in prison. I paid little attention to them. I did not need proof of the history of Lies. The details did not fascinate me. All around me the Lies were embedded in concrete and iron bars. I was "in country." The prison population was dominated by veterans of wars and Draft Resistance.
Prison gave me the final clue to Vietnam. Prison has its entrance and exit rituals -- but they are enacted solely by the individual isolated from the collective. While "inside" ("in country") the individual is at war with the State. Prison is a perpetual state of war. The Enemy is defined as the other convicts. The spiritual direction announced is, "Do your own time!" (A statement repeated and supported by my chaplain's sermons.)
"Do your own time!" means do not form bonds with your fellow convicts. They -- other people -- are the Enemy. To be redeemed, to be rewarded with "Good Time," I was told to isolate myself from others and submit to the State. I was clearly directed to serve the God of War with purity of heart-- renunciation of all my former social and personal bonds, and regeneration through the spiritual discipline of the prison Rules. This advice was akin to that forwarded by my monastic Order. As a monk I was commanded to surrender my will to my Father Superior; I was to take no pains to direct my life, rather I was to submit to his Spiritual Direction. The goal of this quest was to strip me of self-centeredness and self-absorption so that I could serve the People of God.
In prison, the Warden wants me to learn to do my own time as the end itself, not as a means to the end of service to the People. He wants to transform me into a citizen who defines his existence as service to the State. If I undergo this transformation, I am assured, I will be successful in my return to the Free World.
The Warden succeeded. Prison -- a war zone like Vietnam -- overcame me. It drew out all the hatred within me, made me desire to the point of morally willing the death of a guard, and set me about "burning every village" I entered. I left prison a spiritual murderer. I left "doing my own time," totally self-absorbed ... accursed as Cain, and a wanderer.
"Do your own time!" describes the spiritual state where every person is a gook. It is a state of perpetual war.
Vietnam like prison was a sentence. Meted out as is the penalty for theft or rape or drug dealing -- "Two years!" Inside prison I was aware of the perpetual state of war which certain Americans are born into because of skin or economic status. It is commonplace to state that prison is filled with minorities, the lower class, and functional illiterates. It became commonly understood that the ranks of "grunts" were filled by Americans of like description.
"Do your own time!" is all that anyone can do during perpetual war. There is no ritual way to transcend one's individuality and bond with the People. There are no collective rituals of entrance and exit offered. Though
prisoners go through a Boot Camp like entrance, they too are never forgiven and reconciled. They are never healed. They can never return Home. They are accursed like Cain and wander.
Gary was told, "You did your time!" He had served his tour of duty. He was told to forget about Nam; not to think about motives and reasons and justifications. He visited me in prison and we stared blankly at each other. We had lost our language. We could only recognize ourselves in the other's face ... and weep alone in our separate darknesses.
My son, in this light, it is clear why Vietnam Veterans can never come Home. There is no Home for a country perpetually at war. There is only the battlefield. What the Veterans have been forced to learn -- though not accept - - is that the State which worships the God of War has no place for soldiers, only criminals. Yes, only war criminals. Not soldiers but marauders; terrorists; assassins -- genocidal maniacs. The totalitarian State wants only to obliterate The Enemy. In its perpetual war there is only one moral rule -- that there are no moral rules! "... burn every village." The State wants the veteran to do his own time; live isolated from his brother, who is the Enemy.
The State which worships the God of War has its self preservation, not that of the individual soldier, as its primary End. Since it defines itself as perpetually at war, its Peace is War. The Vietnam Veteran -- in the State's mind -- must live in the mythic moment, forever. However, the individual cannot live continually in eschatological tension, as if in the Final Days. To do so is to live never whole nor healed. To do so is to live criminally. Denied exit from this myth, the Veteran comes to see himself as Enemy ... and his final act of Duty is suicide -- liturgical self murder.
My son, I, myself, have drunk from this cup. I drank myself into many a stupor of self-loathing. I berated myself for my lack of courage, the courage to slay myself.
Peace that surpasses understanding
Gary was the first to be healed, to find Peace.
In dealing with myself, coming back and thinking I was right. And thinking that the things I had done were right because it was what I had been taught in Boot Camp, and then viewing it from the other side, instead of a gook, it was a human being. Instead of a hootch, it was a home. That really socked it to my head. It really blew my mind. Because I have never thought of a hootch being a home, it was an old grass hootch. And they were peasants, they weren't people.
"... instead of a gook, it was a human being." Gary stopped doing his
own time; he was redeemed and delivered. "Instead of a hootch, it was a home." Gary had come Home.
Inside the ritual-less War, Gary performed his own ritual. Denied the consolation of collective liturgy, he became a priest of a new presence. How this happened, I do not know. I can only celebrate it! ... Gary ceased to look towards the State for ritual and meaning. He stopped asking the Fathers for approval, justification and affirmation. Gary did his own time to the extreme, and found himself in the other's time -- in the shoes of a gook.
Gary found himself as gook ... and so found his human face. "... instead of a gook ... "coursed through him like a calming Gregorian chant, it became mantra, drew down awesome presences like an exorcistic prayer. It was Gary's phrase, his only, what to others was a passing remark, the trivial utterance of one burned out Vet; but it was consecratory, of the stature of "Drink from this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant ... "He realized that as he had treated the Vietnamese as gooks, so had the Fathers treated him. It was the phrase which re-ordinated his relationship as father and as son. He confronted the terrifying fact that he was treating his wife and children as gooks. More, he perceived that this was how fathering had been communicated through the Cold War and now through "Vietnam" -- that he was to be a family destroyer, not builder. With simple clarity it came to him: the God of the State wanted not himself as father of a family, nor his family as sons, but only each and all as individuals, isolated entities doing their own time ... living as criminals. Once he accepted this horror, he could purge it. He found peace.
This was transformation and transcendence. Vietnam was not supposed to be a war possessing the mythic power of Peace; it was not to offer ritual and liturgical healing. It was supposed to be only "No Peace!"for it was perpetual War. Gary was trained to be criminal, ever ready to slay any brother at any time in any place decreed by the State. His soldiering was an economic outlet for his class; that underclass for which the military is "work"; he was to remain marginal. His soldiering was to be criminal, and he was suppose to do only his own time (in parallel and at times at intersection with those formal criminals of prison's world of perpetual war). Yet, he broke through.
He broke through at a fathering moment. Seared by molten anger at his father and Father, he raged at himself condemning himself as bad father; hurting father; murdering father. Father who could not speak; who could not be son nor Dad ... nor, as all this was underscored, as male, "Man!"
Maleness; ironically, the Peace Time Draft turned going through Boot Camp much like the testfor one's driver's license -- into a test for male identity. Peace Time Boot Camp had no mythic, ritual boundary, rather it
bestowed social identity, granted a guy the right to talk like a soldier, even if he had never been in battle. Boot Camp became a reference for macho barroom banter and braggadocio; a way for generations, fathers and sons, to talk over a beer.
Gary found himself with a fistful of medals, these only to bestow as patrimony ... but they spoke to his son only of his criminal heart, the heart of a murderer. At this point of breakdown -- much akin to the perplexing moment when Abraham halted in midstrike upon Isaac -- Gary's heart beat with joy. From out the prayer "... instead of a gook, it was a human being" burst an embrace, one which bound him beyond time and space with his son, an embrace of fathering which mothers. Gary found himself consecrated as Mother; as nurturer; as Life Giver; as, in his flesh and breath, the dirt and wind of Earth.
In this time of Perpetual War, with its morality of criminal slaughter,
in this time of spiritual death ... what is not to be has become -- Gary found his fatherhood by becoming a nurturing father, one who seeks to heal and whole his son without ritual of slaughter and outside the myth of warrior.
It was and is a peace which surpasses understanding, that "...instead of a gook, it was a human being."
Gary came Home within the embrace of himself as father nurturing his wife and son; building family as a member of Earth's one human and holy family, a family of gooks.
************
It took me years beyond Gary to heal. After his visit in prison, we lost touch. I didn't want his touch. I scarcely knew his whereabouts; I was completely unaware of his healing.
I resisted more fiercely my status as gook. I persisted in doing my own time. The bitterness of prison sustained me as I hated myself as criminal. I abhorred my status as "marginal," it was not for me to live without economic worth and social achievement! But one day, a day I cannot date nor position, I was stunned by a presence which spoke softly that I was "Home."
"Home!" came to me amdist the stench of alcoholic vomit ... it came when I could no longer read or write ... it came when I had gone beyond submission and surrender, long past despair and self loathing. It came when only the wind was my address.
"Home"? Yes, I, in my heart, mind and soul was Home ... hearth and earthly womb for God ... tabernacle for all gooks of the Earth. I was
staggered. I had been raised to "Go home!", that is, to go to Heaven. Home was a place out there, in a celestial geography -- to be earned, won through a merit system. Yes, I knew the Cosmic Christ ... and all the mystic terminology of Christianity; but all that had been dependent upon Jesus -- a someone, another son, outside of me who saved me in spite of my wretched self! His was a warrior's gain; Heaven as booty; Home as Spiritual Barracks. This was not what engulfed me.
"Home!" was an embrace, a palpable presence. It came from within me, but from that within which is also without. Simply, I was Home when I received the embraces of others, allowed myself to be embraced, to nurture by receiving.
My son, feel that it is your heart which is only within when it is without. It beats most fully when it is embracing. From within my heart are you born. For we males, it is our heart which is our womb; from which we nurture. This is a sacred space alien to the God of War and the God of Peace. For them the heart must bleed in expiation; its blood must be shed.
But I, male all non-violent, yet ever warrior and Soldier of Peace, had never yielded to the nurturing presence within myself which at that moment I came to know as God. Not the Father God who accepted me because his Son had nobly sacrificed himself for me (in spite of me!) ... no, not that Warrior God; not that God of Peace. Rather, God healing, as mother, as Mother, as that of the Father which is birthing; I became joined to earth by the umbilical sky; I, a dot, a speck, a mere molecule of Soul, yet I, for whom all that is God was to become; me, a healer and life giver; aflowering.
Though the words were Gary's, the transformation within myself was unlatched by the grace of the prayer, "... instead of a gook, it was God." But, more aptly, more piercingly, "... it was Home." The heart of each and every gook is Home, is hearth and womb for God. God, a term which should be a verb, Godding; for Home is where others are received; it is where that ritual which unleashes the power which creates the Earth is enacted -- the embrace of greeting, the pressing of hearts, the hug of family, the kiss of healing. Within one's Home the stranger is no more; no enemy can be named; for all are family. What terrified me and swamped me with awesome enticement as I realized myself as Home was the simple fact: to receive is to give.
Receive as Home means to clear a space and time for another; fearlessly witness to them by sharing intimacy; allow myself to be known, touched, kissed ... it was not a reception meaning my possession of them or taking from them. Rather, it was surrendering myself in Godding, in an act of total openness -- revealing all my dreams and visions, darkly and brightly, myself as slayer and healer, so that, within the Embrace, I and my brother become father and son, parent and child -- we all as Earthfolk.
"Home is where the heart is!" My trite, trivial, personal, burned out anti-war radical slogan. Yet, it is, I have come to know, a brief for Jesus -- just another gook. But it is what I have to offer as patrimony.
My son, though the "peacetime draft" continues; though the president wears the mantle of Commander-in-Chief; though battles are waged in prisons and among nations; though the God of War is worshipped unceasingly ... the Vietnam Veteran, the prisoner, you and I can be healed.
Once you grasp this, my son, there is no Enemy. There is only Family: Holy. There are no hootches, only Home -- the one Earth, wherein live Earthfolk. There is no place which is not Home; no time which is not shared with another. There can be no War -- time and space can never be suspended. It is our hearts which unite and unify us, all gooks -- each and all Home as God and Goddess.
"Vietnam" is a veil which has been rent. It is an illusion which has been shattered. It is a Lie which cannot stand up to the Truth ... the truth that instead of a gook, he is our brother, she is our sister ... we are all children in the Holy Family ... each of us an instrument and presence of Our Parents who mother and father the one Holy Family, at home here on Earth.
My son, you are all and more than the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle ... you are flower ... within yourself all beauty and seed, all male and female, all human and Godding. You and I will come to full flower and seed anew as we nurture each other, you now the son and I the father; now you the father and I the son; a relationship effusing from our mothering embraces.
END
Francis X. Kroncke 225 S. East Avenue, Viroqua, WI 54665 fkroncke@earthfolk. net and 608-807-7357 cell
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
I am a senior manager with a broad range of business development and sales and marketing skills and expertise. These were honed through successful field rep, field management and corporate positions and achievements. I have served as a strategic planner, product manager and national sales and marketing director. I have developed diverse sales programs, affiliate networks and distribution channels. My expertise is in positioning products, services and organizations to identify new markets and revenue-generating opportunities.
ACHIEVEMENTS
· Business Development
· Sales and Marketing
· Market Positioning and Revenue Generation
· Project Director and Market Research
· Promotions and Public Relations
· Policy Lobbying and Teaching
2005 – now Consultant, Development Associates, WI
2006– 2008 Executive Director, Peace and War in the Heartland,MN 2003 – 2005 Project Director, National Health Network
California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office,CA 2001 – 2003 Research & Development Director
California Community College Satellite TV, Palomar College, CA 1992– 2000 Partner, DevelopmentAssociates, CA
1988 – 1991 Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Xscribe Corporation 1986 – 1988 Director of Marketing, Network Development Corporation, TX
1984 – 1986 President, Calso Communications, Washington, DC
1982 – 1983 National Sales Manager, Daniels & Associates, Denver, 1978 – 1982 Branch Manager, Worldbook-Childcraft, Inc., LA and Boston
1973 – 1977 Program Director, American Friends Service Committee, 1970 – 1973 Program Director, Newman Center, University of Minnesota
1967– 1970 Instructor, San Francisco College for Women (1967-1968)
Rosary College, River Forest, IL (1968-1969)
St. Catherine's College, St. Paul, MN. (1969 & 1970)
Education
B.A. Philosophy, St. John's University, MN, 1966
M.A. Theology, University of San Francisco, CA, 1968
Doctoral Studies University of California, Berkeley and Graduate Theological
Union, 19 74-1978. “ABD” in Historical Studies.
Certificate Webmaster Certificate, Palomar College, 1999