If I Am Elected

Campaign Promises

Dear friends, beloved enemies, beauty and truth fans, intimate rabble-rousers, people of the zero, and all of you secret messiahs and unknown avatars:

Here's what I know for sure:

If everything seems to be under control, we are probably not moving fast enough.

If we are not pretty much always confused, most likely we are not thinking deeply enough.

And if we find we are not feeling forever amazed, we are not seeing wildly enough.

The truth is fluid and slippery and vagrant and scrambled and promiscuous and gorgeously abundant.

You know I’m right. You know there are at least three sides to every story.

You know that every person alive has a piece of the truth, and no one has more than a piece of the truth.

Beloved strangelings and changelings, I am asking you to help keep us all focused on these sacred uncertainties. I am asking you to vote for me.

Whoever you are . . . whatever antique monsters you have made into your gods . . . whatever media viruses you have invited into your most intimate places . . . you can decide right now that you are going to vote for me.

You can decide right now that you are ready to change your lives . . . and change your signs . . . and change your changing. Because when you vote for me, you vote for your own purified, glorified, unified, and mystifying self.

I’ll give you a glimpse of my policy positions.

If I am elected, there will be a new bill of rights. And the first amendment will be: "Your daily wage is directly tied to the beauty and truth and love you provide."

If I am elected, I will teach you how to kick your own ass and wash your own brain before somebody nasty beats you to it.

If I am elected, we will add an eleventh commandment to the standard ten: "Thou shalt not bore Goddess."

If I am elected, I will show you in a million ways why you should be totally opposed to all duality.

If I am elected, I will prove to you that everyone who believes in the devil is the devil.

If I am elected, I will reveal the secret meaning of the fact that "stressed" is "desserts" spelled backwards.

If I am elected, the word "asshole" will be used as a term of endearment rather than abuse.

My beautiful friends and monsters, understand me or else! I love you. I love you, goddammit. I love you more than I love you. And I will prove to you how much I love you if I have to kill and resurrect my ego in to do it.

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This language prevents crime.
This engineering moves us to sing
These advertisements make us smart.
This rhythm frees all prisoners of childhood.

My beloved friends and fellow messiahs, it is high time for you and I to stop colluding with the phallocrats who are perpetrating the genocide of the imagination.

It is time for us to stop heeding the lies of the necrophiliac fact-butchers and the goddess-slaughtering CEOs and the criminally insane politicians who are torturing the Thirteen Perfect Secrets from the Beginning of Time.

Do you know how to tell the difference between your own thoughts and those of the celebrities who have demonically possessed us? If I am elected, you will know the difference beyond a doubt.

If I am elected, I will prove to you why it is so important for the future of daffodils and sea urchins and the jet stream that childbirth be broadcast live on prime-time TV on one of the major networks every night.

If I am elected, when anchormen report tragedies on their nightly TV shows, they will break down and cry and let their emotions show. No more poker faces!

If I am elected, you will grow up to be exhilarationists instead of terrorists. And what are exhilarationists? They are tricky saints who steal your pain and drive you insane with joy and pleasure.

Exhilarationists are brilliant fools who break the rules to make you drool with shocking delight and outrageous beauty.

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Relax.

You are becoming very relaxed.
Your eyes are growing very calm.
All tension is leaving your body.
And yet you are NOT getting sleepy.
In fact, you have never felt more awake and alive in your entire life.

You will obey . . . everything I don't say.
You will obey . . . everything I don't know.
You will obey . . . everything I forgot.
You will obey . . . nothing at all.

If I am elected, there will be legal highs, not legal lows . . . mystical science and logical horoscopes. Compassion will be an aphrodisiac, and we'll all be pyrokleptomaniacs—with a compulsion to steal fire.

If I am elected, there will be a magical realist democracy, where millions vote for ecstasy. April Fool's will come once a week. Plutocracy will be a felony.

If I am elected, there will be 77 genders that can all marry each other. The moon will be your father; the sun will be your mother.

There'll be sacred shopping malls where you can buy magic carpets and waterfalls. Meditation will be taught in schools. There'll be eight billion different golden rules.

If I am elected, advertising will be a terrorist crime. And the national slogan will be "Erotically ingenious, spiritually suave workers of the world unite. Seize the means of production and use it to abolish all need for meaningless work." Who says you can't have it all?

And get this: We'll have shamanic doughnuts—organic vegan low-fat shamanic doughnuts—that open your third eye.

If I am corrected, rejected, infected and perfected,
I will buy all the Pizza Huts in the world and convert them into a global network of menstrual huts—

where for a few days each month,
every one of us, all genders alike,
can resign from the crazy-making 9-5.

We'll drop out and slow down,
break trance and dive down
into eternal time.

Where we can sleep nine hours every night
and practice our lucid dreams;
think with our hearts
and feel with our heads;
study the difference between stupid, boring pain
and smart, fascinating pain
until we get it right;

wear wildflower crowns and magic underwear
made of eagle feathers and spider webs;
think up bigger, better, more original sins
and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.
Now please repeat after me:

Bravo
Viva
Whoopee
OOOO
Eureka
Hallelujah
Abracadabra

And now here are three of my top-secret campaign promises for your ears only:

If I am elected, i will halt exports of F-16 jet fighter planes and Predator drones and Kentucky Fried Chicken to the foreign dictators that Uncle Sam loves to love. I will stop all shipments of Apache Attack helicopters and Patriot missiles and nude Taylor Swift posters to everyone everywhere.

If I am elected, I will create a new cabinet-level department, The Clandestine Indigenous Trickster Alliance of Luminous Wild Things, and I will hire witches and wizards and shamans to cast reversal spells on the corporate criminals who have been torturing the earth's beloved animals and plants.

If I am elected, I will confiscate the tax-free loot that robber barons have stashed in offshore banks, and I will use the liberated cash to finance extra grants for Planned Parenthood and generous reparations for the ancestors of all the ghoulishly mistreated ancestors of African Americans and Native Americans.

I will create a two-week bacchanalian jubilee every summer when all work and business will be suspended so that millions of adult citizens can dance and sing and fuck and play nonstop like beautiful holy beasts.

Let me hear you say YA YA.
Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA.
Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA GA GA.
Let me hear you say YA YA LA LA GA GA MA MA PA PA HA HA.

I’m the president now. And so are you! I am the Supreme Commanders of the United Snakes of the Blooming HahHa! And so are you! I am the Eternal Teacher of Permanent Orgasm! And so are you!

And with the power vested in me by the Blooming Haha and the Divine Whirl-Zap-Gush, I hereby decree that every one of us will sooner or later become a well-rounded, highly skilled, incredibly rich master of rowdy bliss. Every one of us will sooner or later become an ecstatically compassionate connoisseur of insurrectionary beauty—with lots of leisure time and an orgiastic feminist conscience.

“If I Am Elected” is excerpted from my upcoming trilogy of “Love Stories for the Earth”

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See a video of me delivering an earlier version of my speech “If I Am Elected.”

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of May 30

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): All of us periodically enjoy phases I call "Freedom from Cosmic Compulsion.” During these times, the Fates have a reduced power to shape our destinies. Our willpower has more spaciousness to work with. Our intentions get less resistance from karmic pressures that at other times might narrow our options. As I meditated on you, dear Gemini, I realized you are now in a phase of Freedom from Cosmic Compulsion. I also saw that you will have more of these phases than anyone else during the next 11 months. It might be time for you to get a “LIBERATION” tattoo or an equivalent new accessory.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Bold predictions: 1. Whatever treasure you have lost or are losing will ultimately be reborn in a beautiful form. 2. Any purposeful surrender you make will hone your understanding of exactly what your soul needs next to thrive. 3. A helpful influence may fade away, but its disappearance will clear the path for new helpful influences that serve your future in ways you can’t imagine yet. 4. Wandering around without a precise sense of where you’re going will arouse a robust new understanding of what home means to you.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Denmark’s King Canute IV (1042–1086) wasn’t bashful about asserting his power. He claimed ownership of all the land. He insisted on the right to inherit the possessions of all foreigners and people without families. Goods from shipwrecks were automatically his property. But once, his efforts to extend his authority failed. He had his servants move his throne to a beach as the tide came in. Seated and facing the North Sea, he commanded, “Halt your advance!” The surf did not obey. “You must surrender to my superior will!” he exclaimed, but the waters did not recede. Soon, his throne was engulfed by water. Humbled, Canute departed. I bring this up not to discourage you, Leo. I believe you can and should expand your influence and clout in the coming weeks. Just be sure you know when to stop.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo-born Irène Joliot-Curie craved more attention than she got from her mother, Marie Curie. Mom was zealously devoted to her career as a chemist and physicist, which is one reason why she won Nobel Prizes in both fields. But she didn't spend sufficient time with her daughter. Fortunately, Irène's grandfather Eugène became his granddaughter’s best friend and teacher. With his encouragement, she grew into a formidable scientist and eventually won a Nobel Prize in chemistry herself. Even if you're not a kid, Virgo, I suspect there may be a mentor and guide akin to Eugène in your future. Go looking! To expedite the process, define what activity or skill you want help in developing.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I have a fantasy that sometime in the coming months, you will slip away to a sanctuary in a pastoral paradise. There you will enjoy long hikes and immerse yourself in healing music and savor books you’ve been wanting to read. Maybe you will write your memoirs or compose deep messages to dear old friends. Here’s the title of what I hope will be a future chapter of your life story: “A Thrillingly Relaxing Getaway.” Have you been envisioning an adventure like this, Libra? Or is your imagination more inclined to yearn for a trip to an exciting city where you will exult in high culture? I like that alternative, too. Maybe you will consider doing both.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): An Instagrammer named sketchesbyboze advises us, “Re-enchant your life by making the mundane exciting. You are not ‘going to the drugstore.’ You are visiting the apothecary to buy potions. You are not ‘running an errand.’ You are undertaking an unpredictable adventure. You are not ‘feeding the birds.’ You are making an alliance with the crow queen.” I endorse this counsel for your use, Scorpio. You now have the right and duty to infuse your daily rhythm with magic and fantasy. To attract life’s best blessings, you should be epic and majestic. Treat your life as a mythic quest.

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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I invite you to invite new muses into your life in the coming months. Give them auditions. Interview them. Figure out which are most likely to boost your creativity, stimulate your imagination, and rouse your inspiration in every area of your life, not just your art form. Tell them you’re ready to deal with unpredictable departures from the routine as long as these alternate paths lead to rich teachings. And what form might these muses take? Could be actual humans. Could be animals or spirits. Might be ancestral voices, exciting teachings, or pilgrimages to sacred sanctuaries. Expand your concept of what a muse might be so you can get as much muse-like input as possible.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The Japanese have a word for a problem that plagues other countries as well as theirs: karoshi, or death from working too hard and too much. No matter how high-minded our motivations might be, no matter how interesting our jobs are, most of us cannot safely devote long hours to intense labor week after week, month after month. It’s too stressful on the mind and body. I will ask you to monitor yourself for such proclivities in the coming months. You can accomplish wonders as long as you work diligently but don’t overwork. (PS: You won’t literally expire if you relentlessly push yourself with nonstop hard exertion, but you will risk compromising your mental health. So don’t do it!)

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Typically, human fertility is strongest when the temperature is 64 degrees Fahrenheit. But I suspect you will be an exception to the rule in the coming months. Whether it's 10 below or 90 in the shade, your fertility will be extra robust—literally as well as psychologically and spiritually. If you are a heterosexual who would rather make great art or business than new babies, be very attentive to your birth control measures. No matter what your gender or sexual preference is, I advise you to formulate very clear intentions about how you want to direct all that lush fecundity. Identify which creative outlets are most likely to serve your long-term health and happiness.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Here’s a key assignment in the coming months: Enjoy fantasizing about your dream home. Imagine the comfortable sanctuary that would inspire you to feel utterly at home in your body, your life, and the world. Even if you can’t afford to buy this ultimate haven, you will benefit from visualizing it. As you do, your subconscious mind will suggest ways you can enhance your security and stability. You may also attract influences and resources that will eventually help you live in your dream home.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Welcome to the future of your education, Aries! Here are actions you can take to ensure you are exposed to all the lush lessons you need and deserve in the coming months. 1. Identify three subjects you would be excited to learn more about. 2. Shed dogmas and fixed theories that interfere with your receptivity to new information. 3. Vow to be alert for new guides or mentors. 4. Formulate a three-year plan to get the training and teachings you need most. 5. Be avidly curious.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Poet Emily Dickinson was skillful at invoking and managing deep feelings. One scholar described her emotions as being profoundly erotic, outlandish, sensuous, flagrant, and nuanced. Another scholar said she needed and sought regular doses of ecstasy. Yet even she, maestro of passions, got overwhelmed. In one poem, she wondered "Why Floods be served to us in Bowls?" I suspect you may be having a similar experience, Taurus. It’s fun, though sometimes a bit too much. The good news is that metaphorically speaking, you will soon be in possession of a voluminous new bowl that can accommodate the floods.