You Must Be Honest--from Epistolary Memoir

[Lightning Rod]

I guess no outlaw sets out to be an outlaw. It's just something that happens along the way when the real world disagrees with our ideals. when the bare knuckles of circumstance force us to amend the Queensbury Rules. Our romantic picture of the outlaw has little to do with conditions on the ground where the rubber of life's compromise meets the well-worn road to perdition. Society defines the outlaw more than the outlaw defines himself but the outlaw circumscribes society, outlines the boundaries of politeness and decorum. The outlaw teaches us where to draw the line.

To grow an outlaw, you need both seed and soil. The seed is a personality who is not afraid to write his own rules. The soil is often rocky with strife and acidic with injustice. When we think of our favorite outlaws, our Robin Hoods and our Billy the Kids, our Dillingers and Jean LaFittes, we often forget outlaws like Thomas Jefferson and Copernicus and Picasso. There is a fine distinction between being a criminal and being an outlaw perhaps because they are two sides of the same coin.

Both the criminal and the outlaw have to begin by accepting the axiom that there is something terribly askew with the status quo vis a vis how man-made rules apply to real and changing situations. Laws are often archaic, rigid and manufactured according to political fad and applied by a corrupt, insensitive and self-interested bureaucracy. In short, the contrived laws of man are a bumbling mess. The outlaw and the criminal both declare that these rules and conventions need not apply to them. Of course this is also the true creed of the sociopath.

When I was a child and played children's games, I preferred the caped and cowled crusaders, the Zorros and the Green Lanterns. The superhero is himself an outlaw operating beyond the bounds of physics and the Miranda rules to see that Justice is done, not just a lower-case everyday justice, but a capitalized Justice clean and pure and romantic as a comic-book adventure. I was raised in the Wild West, after all, not just the cultural Wild West or the Internet Wild West or in the Wild West of my imagination, but in the real, red-dirt Wild West where I regularly watched jack-rabbits laugh and vault the barbed-wire fences in a single breathtaking bound. I saw miracles every day. My heroes were all working for Justice but each in his peculiar way, with his own devices or powers and each with his own Kryptonite. Any kid growing up in the Wild West knows the difference between a real outlaw and just a common cattle rustler or chicken thief. The difference is The Code, the Outlaw Code. It's what distinguishes the outlaw from the common criminal. Dylan stated it with his usual High Plains brevity, "To live outside the law, you must be honest." It's the time-tried Robin Hood Principle which also applies to guerilla warfare and revolution and politics. It says that you can only succeed if you win the hearts and minds of the people. Especially when it comes to matters involving creative and arbitrary redistribution of wealth like taxes, healthcare and highway robbery, the outlaw needs the trust and sympathy of the populace. And he needs an ideology, his own set of rules and purposes. The Code, which gives him strength to endure the hardships and inconveniences that go along with the life of an outlaw, is also good public relations because it excuses the minor transgressions which he may commit in furtherance of a greater cause.

But I didn't become an outlaw out of high intent or noble purpose. I became an outlaw due to vagaries in the commercial practice of bundling. In the package I bought, being an artist was bundled with being an outlaw. It also included apps like GarageYogi, Word for Non-Conformists and Dr.Phil dot Calm as well as memberships to several online support forums dedicated to artistic anorexia and a kinky dating service that I thought I would probably never use. The only serious cross-platform issues that I had were between the artist and outlaw applications. They were supposed to be independent programs but at times seemed to function as if sharing the same database. I didn't choose to be an outlaw, it just came in the same package as being an artist. I'm sure the slick young insects at CosmicSoft thought it made perfect corporate sense, they were obviously counting on selling me the upgrades.

Oh, I see, you want less abstract reasons why I was chosen by a life of crime? It could be summed up in one word....pot. Pot is where the world of crime and the world of art intersected for me. Just by smoking it I was an outlaw and it was also my economic patron. I could be a poet because I was a pot dealer. I called marijuana The Mutha because it nurtured me in so many ways. From the first time that I smoked it I knew that it was my particular friend, or as Don Juan might have phrased it, the herb was my ally. I quickly adopted its use as a simple implement of mental hygeine, a functional pleasure that was also beneficial to my spiritual ambitions. Pot is like a morning prayer that puts us in the frame of mind to more completely appreciate the experiences of the day. It does this by slowing down time. I don't know how this happens or what physics and psychology are involved but ask any musician who smokes pot and he will tell you that this is true. Like any tool, it is only useful if guided by a skillful hand. Not everyone is well served by smoking pot and many misuse it. To some people it is not an ally. It is correctly called a medicine. But I made the conscious choice to include it in my fuel mixture. Whatever the local rules were governing the herb, I was going to burn it like god intended. In other words I was going to make my own rules on this subject and thus I became an outlaw.

All of the hysterics and prohibitionists have it exactly right. Marijuana is a 'gateway drug.' It is a gateway to the mind and spirit. It is the gateway to the imagination. It can be the gateway to other drugs and deviant lifestyles. For me pot was a gateway into the world of crime. Since I was smoking it I was already an outlaw. And it wasn't a moral giant step to go from smoking it with my friends to buying and selling it among my friends. And suddenly there I am, on the ethical slip-n-slide. If I can accept the thought of being a merchant in contraband, which contraband is acceptable? If I'm selling pot, why not a little LSD or some diet pills to help with the studies? What about a few cartons of hot cigarettes or a set of speakers lifted from a loading dock? Once you are dealing in the black market it becomes difficult to distinguish between the shades of black. It's all between consenting adults, you understand, and caveat emptor with a victimless crime on the slippery slope of a sliding scale. Is it OK to sell anthrax or angel dust? How about child-porn and murder contracts? You see the dilemma. This is where the Outlaw Code comes in handy. Since the outlaw has divested himself of society's limits he must impose limits upon himself in order not to live in a nihilistic abyss of chaos and criminality. A game is only as good as its rules and that's why we need outlaws, to help us define the rules.

[judih]

i'm getting a gateway feeling about this essay. (standing on the precipice, wondering if i can get away with reading this again, or if i'm entering the zone of needing more)