Vacation. It’s is a little like leaving for good. But it’s just pretend. A dash of denial, and a hint of hope for the New.

Heading somewhere we are not, to be away from where we are. Sometimes we need it so bad, it doesn’t matter where we go, as long as we are not… here. Any more. At least, for a while. Catching our breath. Finding where we might have landed. Cleaning the pipes.

Like that new show on television. The strapping young man vacations only in “danger zones”. Where zealots might pounce with guns in their maddened countries, or giant bugs might bite while he sleeps. Graphics and titles looked like video games. It’s a vacation that churns on an edge, showing us our back yard, clear across the world. Where we keep the garbage cans, and those who recycle, do.

I saw tv commercials made by the United States military. They promise an education that is otherwise unaffordable. And a house you can own: a house, all your own. This, in exchange, for being all you can be. There are such gadgets and friendships available, too. A guy could get away from where he’s at. And see the world. And then be set for life. All you have to do is sign the contract. Relinquish your civilian rights for a while, just like they matter.

I know a lot of people who want to do good. To do good things. To make life better. I know a lot of people who feel trapped and desperate. Who want to feel secure. To know what having a purpose feels like. It’s strange, and a little sad, imagining all these people, feeling trapped and desperate, yet wanting to do good. Looking for a ladder. And maybe they’ll take it, even attached with strings. As long as those strings can be dressed into a semblance of doing right. Or maybe even good?

Perhaps it does come down to compromise. Like when we don’t understand something, but we have some want or need. Sometimes it’s easiest just to overlook or sell out that something we do not understand. Or do not know for certain. Or do not want to know. Even when we do.

Because it will be over with soon enough, anyway. Everyone else would, or does. Unfortunate how it is… but that’s just the way things work. Then later, I can take that vacation. After all, it’s not like what I do matters, in the larger unfolding of what becomes.

I’m reminded again of the friend who chastised me for sending him a picture of the two young men being hanged because they were in love. It is one thing to suspect something real, but quite another to see it. When wrongness is in our face, it takes a supreme act of will to bury it safely again in obscurity within our consciousness. Just like a lair, when confronted with truth, digging in his heels to maintain that lie as if the force of his will had the power to re-shape reality. Or, more common, a betrayer who sits silently watching. Not guilty. Not innocent. The ultimate in self-interested opportunism that feeds the power of the ruthless.

But don’t leaders need to be strong? And in being strong, is ruthlessness not a key component? And is not ruthlessness justifiable when ideologies or religions lend their approval? This is the the reasoning those who sit in silence, watching, call upon — at least the ones who fool themselves the least.

Being strong. A leader. Compassionate conservatism. Ruthless only when justifiable — when marketing fails. Hyping up a fervor whose focus targets our sense of righteousness. This isn’t surprising when religious people are fools. They would be better served by little chicken nuggets of quips bought at a slick McDonald’s counter. Fast and easy, and you’re covered. Maybe these religious people forget; there is profound wisdom within religion that exists far from the reach of little picked packets of frozen do-dads. And if you pick only what you like from the menu, you get nowhere. But if you’re a glutton and sample it all for a while, you might just start to realize, food is far more than a bunch of lines and prices in rows. And maybe when you actually start to get somewhere, there is no menu. There is no recipe. There is no spoon. Yet somehow the cuisine is profoundly exotic.

But to the base, most of us Christians and Jewish people conveniently overlook things. For example, I’m not sure many realize that it is a terrible sin to lend money to someone, and charge them interest — particularly so, to a poor person. Islam shares this prohibition on usury, but the prohibition is often written into the law of the Islamic country as well. We Judeo-Christians don’t like that and have gone to great lengths to find ways to subvert it. Yet we all share, it is a sin to covet. A sin to lie. It is a sin to kill.

Being strong. A leader. Be all that you can be. You’ll get a house and an education. Never mind that banks are repossessing the homes of military personnel at four times the national average. Never mind that there is a booming industry of nice people, just like us, swooping down with squeals to buy all those tasty foreclosed-upon homes at bargain prices — particularly in military towns. But, they’re killers, after all. Gots to pay the piper. Oh, I know… you just got tricked by the lies. Like you didn’t know… Oh, you didn’t? Well, too bad about that education. Don’t worry, it’s slipping for everyone. Now take that gun and go be all that you can be.

It’s times like these Las Vegas shines its brightest: when you pick that glittering candidate who’s got that winning feel. And when they win the promise gets delivered, C.O.D. Then everything that’s important will be revealed, through your tv, computer and bank account. And from that man or woman on the pulpit. From that yackity radio show spewing long trails of circular comforts, like brain glue. When you decide: harder questions are best unwrapped from plastic and licked like suckers. At your convenience. Then tossed, with the garbage, into the back yard, where that strapping tv guy has his true life adventures.

Surely we all are aware, far enough beyond this, to know so much is presently askew. As we rise in the garden, with the gardeners, and the market that eats, we are fertilized. In the name of perpetuity, causes that are not ours maneuver to reinforce roots that inevitably crowd out all but the most base in strength.

Our attention, drawn to a light that stems from that nuclear complex far beyond us, becomes transfixed. While the sun, further still, is overshadowed.

It does not matter, in the cold absoluteness of mathematics: regardless of our stupidity, the sun powers all here, even our illusions. It is beyond betrayal and far past the thin blanket of all clouds. The sun radiates our very life. All of us, in all constructions and all configurations. We are a curious and wondrous balance of circumstance, adrift within an inward myopia of self-importance. And why not? Am I not glorious?

And you, minus the husk, I know — are far more so. Vacation or not.

That’s the difference. In a lot of things. You are more glorious. And silly as it sounds. I have so much to explore there. In fact, it’s endless.