© November 9, 2010
[After a hail of gunfire doesn't stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won’t you die?… Why won’t you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
—From “V for Vendetta”
I was a little down last Tuesday. I got a call from Chase and found out that the IRS had put a lien on my bank account. I went down to the bank where my friend Quiche works and asked what exactly this meant. She explained that it meant that they had sucked the $108 that was in my account and that anything else deposited in there would be swallowed up like Eric Cartman does a bucket of KFC. Still, I could appreciate the Universe choosing 108 as the amount, which is supposedly a very spiritual number, to have a cosmic joke at my expense. Bitch.
I considered calling up the IRS and talking to one of their lackeys and telling him or her, “I want you to realize that that $108 means the difference of me feeding myself and my dog—or not. Malcolm X said, ‘If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.’ YOU, working for the Federal Mafia, are part of the problem. I want you to go home tonight and tell your husband (or wife) that ‘Today I was responsible for a man and his dog not eating.’ And as you eat your home-cooked meal think of us not eating and go to sleep proud of yourself.”
“But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror.”
—V from “V for Vendetta”
As a de-mystic, I don’t just leave with my feelings and reactions and call it a day. I saw that while I know that happiness cannot depend on circumstance, I was having a hard time not falling below the standards of my normal bitter self because of this whole mess. But while no question was necessarily deeper than a reflection on Self, on a human practical level, I thought came to mind that I had believed my brain was no longer hospitable for: plugging back into The Matrix.
“You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, The Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? [Puts piece of steak in mouth and chews] Ignorance is bliss.”
—Cypher to Agent Smith from “The Matrix”
After doing about three years of research on the Income Tax, it became clear to me that it was being misapplied to control the American citizen [See The Income Tax Fraud at http://rebelyogi.com/the-income-tax-fraud] and I didn’t want to be a part of this. This resulted in me losing a job I had—and liked—for about ten years at a health club and two yoga teaching gigs (although one was lost in part was because the faggy Fitness Coordinator, Blane, felt threatened by me because when he pointed at me with his best limp-wristed intimidation, I just laughed.)
What I was also to discover is that everyone is brainwashed into this system and all they know is, “You have to fill out this paperwork” because they just do what they are either told or have always done and the government doesn’t educate anyone in any other way besides How To Be A Slave 101. In straight talk, this meant that no one would hire me.
So for the last six years or so, I have worked exclusively privately with individual clients who didn’t see the need for any paperwork besides passing me some green paper for my services. But this has slowly dried up to the point where I am looking like a nun’s vagina, minus the Pope’s gold pinky ring inside of me. And now I am finding myself unable to pay my bills and feel a bit like a douche for being old enough that I remember watching “Lost In Space” and still unable to clean my own ass without a bidet.
It is when things get really tough that you see the true meddle of a person. I was face to face with my “meddle” and it was starting to feel like tin instead of the gold that I had believed it to be. I considered plugging bag into The Matrix, coming back from my great escape from the plantation to join the other slaves in cotton picking. At least then I could say, “Wait a cotton pickin’ minute!” and we could all laugh in between whips from Mass’er.
“I don’t want to remember nothing. Nothing. Do you understand? And I want to be rich. Someone important…like an actor.”
—Cypher to Agent Smith from “The Matrix”
I put in a call and an email to two different leaders in the Freedom Movement that I had worked with and told them of my frustration. I told one head of an organization that, to borrow from the Republican’s stupid argument about the need to stay in Iraq, that if after six years of sacrificing comforts and jobs and trying to just survive I were to join back up, it would seem like I was a sell-out and all my struggle was for nothing. He told me that there was no shame in doing what one had to do in order to survive and that by using a Social Security Number, a contract that only one party ever signed, and filling out paperwork like a W-4 form, you are not saying that you are a slave and subject to their whimsical whippings. While this might have made many feel better, to have someone give you a justification for cashing out your principles, it just made me feel sick. The other guy told me that the SSN and paperwork did make you a slave but wouldn’t go into greater detail, as he won’t even hold the door for you without expecting payment. Freedom douche.
The next day I felt a little better. I realized that even with the IRS breathing down the neck of a guy who barely pays his bills because they felt I had too many deductions for which the receipts have long been thrown away, while they leave big corporate crooks to knowingly steal untouched, the sun was still rising and setting and I was still in possession of one of the largest penises the world has ever seen. And this was worth something. The sun rising and falling kept life going on this planet; the enormous cock kept my overseas pornography videos still selling.
I conversed with Osho and said, “You talk about being in the Present and forgetting the future, but how is that even possible when one has bills to pay? It’s nice to just say, ‘There is no future’ but when it comes the end of the month and you don’t have your rent money, a hell of a lot of good that philosophy is going to do you!”
He answered me as he always does, not giving my youthful ranting a scolding for its horse-blinded ignorance, but always with love in the form of Truth and support on my journey. “It is not philosophy that there is no future but a Truth. But while one is living in society, of course one needs to prepare for this so-called future. But, and this is important, while bills and clothing and actions need to be prepared for—for these are real physical needs—all the worries and the panic are not real needs but fears created in the mind. And, as I have heard you say many times, these fears serve no purpose in facilitating the needed action and should be dropped.”
On November 5th, I saw for about the 6th time V for Vendetta and was re-inspired that the fight for a principle is still something of worth. At the end of the movie, there is a crowd of thousands of citizens who have had had enough of being bullied by their government and, through the inspiration of the protagonist V, had finally come together in action—storming ever forward and washing over a gaggle of armed military without any weapons other than the strength of their convictions. I thought how I am fighting not just for myself but for others and the cowards of today would never join a march that would so much as risk them stubbing their toe, let alone losing all the trinkets they hold near and dear. So what was even the point?
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
—V from “V for Vendetta”
I know one girl who was schooled in accounting and I have talked to countless others who have basically said, “Yeah, I know the Income Tax is a fraud but it would be too much for me to opt out of participating in it.” How is anything of value ever accomplished without risking it all?
Yesterday I saw the movie Made in Dagenham through a screening series I paid for when affording my next meal wasn’t as pressing an issue. I read that it was about a Ford car plant in England where the women workers fought for equal pay and immediately thought it was going to be the gayest flick ever. I mean, I’m all for equal rights—just as long as women keep their mouths shut and their legs open and get paid half of what a man gets paid. But the movie was surprisingly good.
The women, who sewed pieces of fabric together for the vinyl interiors of the cars, went on strike to demand equal pay. After awhile this resulted in the men at the factory being sent home, as they ran out of new seats to put into the cars. There was one scene where the repossessors came and took the main woman leader’s refrigerator from her home. In another scene, a guy at the factory that was not working while the strike was on told her, “You don’t have to work. I do. If I don’t work there is no food on the table!” and he stormed off.
Someone like my father would be philosophically right alongside that angry man. He would say, “One has to take responsibility for oneself and you have to do whatever it takes to pay the bills and support your family.” But what exactly are you feeding, besides a few mouths? You’re feeding a belief system that is based on fear and weakness to the ones you claim to love. You’re feeding their bodies and letting their souls starve. You’re teaching your kids that principles only hold up when things are easy but when they get hard—“Sometimes you have to sacrifice your principles for the greater good.” But when is a fight ever easy?
Made in Dagenham ended with the women winning their fight and everyone happy. This wasn’t just the movie magic of Hollywood but was based on the actual history of what happened. But what most don’t seem to get is that life is not a two-hour movie and that often in the midst of a fight for your principles, you are never sure if the movie will end with you getting the pay raise or out on the streets sucking dick for beer money.
And what adds to the misery is that I feel like I am completely alone. I can’t share this with anyone in my family, who have heard my views on the Income Tax and 9/11 and are one step away from committing me to a mental asylum. Every friend and stranger I know, or don’t, is in the system and can’t understand that without their “voluntary compliance” the Nazi war machine would grind to a halt. And the few people who are out of the system are like Rambo freaks who can survive for years eating nothing but rabbit turd in the woods while I’d be complaining within three days that, “Unless we get some ketchup or something, I can’t eat anything else that comes from an animal’s ass!”
Yesterday I started looking on craigslist for jobs. I even considered jobs that were mindless and labor intensive as long as it was a pay for hire and not a pay for liar, meaning they would pay me straight up and not go through a lying, cheating system of withholding and illegally applied taxation.
This struggle has impacted my employability; I’ve been fired from three jobs and can’t be hired by any others. It’s affected the quality and quantity of food I eat; I rarely if ever go out to eat, unless someone else is paying, and I no longer eat the quality or quantity that I once enjoyed. It has affected my social life; I don’t go out with friends that much anymore because “dinner and drinks” can run $30 that I can’t afford to piss away and I can’t take a girl out for any evening that is remotely fancy and by the third time most get bored of going to the car wash, long before they’ve given up the pussy. And for what? Principles? Convictions? You can’t eat principles and you can’t fuck convictions.
I guess the real test is testing my all-out trust in the Unknown and that I will be provided for. It is the cowards who play their lives safe in order not to risk losing the breadcrumbs they have accumulated. It is the pussies that pull prematurely from their struggle because “the going got tough.” It is the spiritual traipsers and not the spiritual journeyers who only follow the road that is known.
“One leaves everything that one is acquainted with, is comfortable with, and moves into the unknown, not even perfectly certain whether there is anything on the other shore, or even whether there is the other shore.”
—Osho, Your Answers Questioned (p. 174)
I like to believe myself better than this common cowardice, this pathetic pussy-ness, this tired traipsing. Perhaps I am not. But for now, my breaking point has not been met and I won’t let it be met by an organization that sickens me in how they function to destroy people’s lives. Every real battle, while there may be others alongside you, is really fought alone. For the only real battle is to discover Who You Really Are. And sometimes the biggest douchebags are actually your greatest allies in this discovery.
“It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie.
—Valerie from “V for Vendetta”
