Oh, wondrous spring!
The sleepy headed jut of tulip shoot edging forth,
Sworded leaf bursting bonds of winter sleep,
Cradling the gentle egg of petals
Yet unfurled, and eager
For Light and
Life.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Disaster Relief
After a huge storm wrecked the inside of their small home, a pastor and his wife endured
two weeks of living on their porch in a dining tent, while refurbishment work and restoration made their home liveable once again.
However, after one steady downpour, inside walls revealed that the renovators had done a poor job, cutting corners on supplies, patching things haphazardly, and slapping one coat of paint down in some places, in their eagerness to get on to the next, higher-paying job.
The pastor, not one to mince words, or settle for poor workmanship, when it was obvious that the work had been shoddy, stared hard at the man he had called back to review specific areas in need of immediate improvement.
The workman hung his head, sheepishly acknowledging that they had rushed the work, and used a portion of the materials indicated on the manifest.
Not missing a beat, the pastor heaved a huge sigh, and intoned,
"Repaint, and thin no more."
two weeks of living on their porch in a dining tent, while refurbishment work and restoration made their home liveable once again.
However, after one steady downpour, inside walls revealed that the renovators had done a poor job, cutting corners on supplies, patching things haphazardly, and slapping one coat of paint down in some places, in their eagerness to get on to the next, higher-paying job.
The pastor, not one to mince words, or settle for poor workmanship, when it was obvious that the work had been shoddy, stared hard at the man he had called back to review specific areas in need of immediate improvement.
The workman hung his head, sheepishly acknowledging that they had rushed the work, and used a portion of the materials indicated on the manifest.
Not missing a beat, the pastor heaved a huge sigh, and intoned,
"Repaint, and thin no more."
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
mudded
In truth, whene'er errant winds of chance
Alight upon faceless mounds
They await intermingling
of Divine Tingling...
Claymoored.
Alight upon faceless mounds
They await intermingling
of Divine Tingling...
Claymoored.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Thoughts on Pots - and "The Experience of Life"
GOD. ....No, don't stop reading. Be Brave. Keep going. Resist eye rolling. THERE. You did it!
Seriously, though....think about how people react to that word, now: God.
I believe we are given opportunities, every day, for renewal, growth, and reconsideration in our lives. Some call it a Second Chance. Some call it Thoughtful Thinking. I call it giving in to the Spirit of Hope and Possibility, despite all odds, and all agendas which are quite content and complacent about the idea of our demise as a species. And I have never been more serious about that last word...demise.
By continuing, you have just rejected the idea that Divinity has forgotten us. This makes you different. It means you want to live. And frankly, I find it ironic that God thinks your life is worth living, and a lot of other beings bent on your destruction, a fast profit from it, and maintaining that mental and physical brick on your head to prevent you from becoming yourself. Also, even when you happen to be a jerk, hate yourself, and cannot figure out why you are in this particular moment, or mess...Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so; little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is Strong.
Seriously, though....think about how people react to that word, now: God.
I believe we are given opportunities, every day, for renewal, growth, and reconsideration in our lives. Some call it a Second Chance. Some call it Thoughtful Thinking. I call it giving in to the Spirit of Hope and Possibility, despite all odds, and all agendas which are quite content and complacent about the idea of our demise as a species. And I have never been more serious about that last word...demise.
By continuing, you have just rejected the idea that Divinity has forgotten us. This makes you different. It means you want to live. And frankly, I find it ironic that God thinks your life is worth living, and a lot of other beings bent on your destruction, a fast profit from it, and maintaining that mental and physical brick on your head to prevent you from becoming yourself. Also, even when you happen to be a jerk, hate yourself, and cannot figure out why you are in this particular moment, or mess...Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so; little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is Strong.
Yup; still worth singing about. And strangely, I bet you still remember the tune, even if you cannot remember the words. Go figure.
Read on.....
We are, in this country, at the brink of a very brave reclamation of life called the Greening of a Nation. It is going to open doors in many areas, and it will shake the sensibilities of the status quo. Some people will be very angry, and very fearful, about any notion of losing power, wielding power, or having power over other human beings and how they move and interact in the world. Or not. But if we are brave, the immediate effects will be seen, with effort, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit, in the following areas:
1. Environmental Impact
2. The Real Birth of Green Industry as vital and sustaining
3.The reclamation of the Auto Industry
4.The true return to the focus on the Health of a Nation and its People
5. The economic Stabilization of national health, social and educational infrastructures.
How will all of this happen?
Environmental Impact
Apart from the sin tax industry everyone normally associates with the hemp/cannabis production, we will be replanting the lungs of the planet. In the face of the horrific destruction taking place on California's coastal forest regions, and the seemingly insurmountable environmental damage caused by chemical, industry and fossil fuel mismanagement, this is, as Einstein would say, the equal and opposite, focused and determined, effort to reclaim the wilds needed to sustain us. This is, literally, grabbing hold of the rope hauling us back to perspective, sanity, reflection, and sober second thought.
There are many people who think that ignoring the reality of environmental degradation will simply make it go away; that by restoring the status quo in existing industries, we will somehow reclaim the lost exuberance and spirit of industry that made North America the envy of nations. That is not so. With this, literal "Second Chance", there comes a very serious warning to heed the ethos of conscience-driven industry: we must, by default, include the forgotten, dispossessed, exploited and undeveloped areas of the world in the progress of our species, and the Greening of our Lives. If they are not there, we will die.
There are other immediate and obvious effects of this shift in focus: it will stabilize the planet, geopolitically.
This scares some people, because it does not feed into the politics of war, or the concept of repetitive arms proliferation as a balancing mechanism. It will not feed the war machine, create paranoia or discord needed to sustain that industry, or have, at its focus, death as the solution to economic disparity. It will open the door to what man has the capacity to do: Heal his World, and Himself.
I'll give you one small example: pressboard/particle board made from hemp fibres are among the strongest and most reasonably priced building materials in the world. Treated for mold and insects, it could erase homelessness - at least temporarily, and especially in warmer climates - and make rebuilding after devastation a reality for the world's poorest. It is "healthy building made real" - particularly in very warm climates where building material scarcity and the reality of building costs make simple shelter impossible. Hemp solves this problem. Period. There is simply no excuse for homelessness except the neglect of nations, and their inability to be moved to solve it. It has to be a matter of caring and action by governments in combination. No excuses.
Milk made from hemp seeds is a nutritious and sustaining product that could ease third world hunger.
People cannot help themselves when they are starving. They simply die.
But do they stop spraying insects, and start collecting, roasting, pickling and eating them as a found food source? Rarely. The irony of this, and the very costly delicacy now served up in gourmet restaurants featuring just that food source, while people in Africa bemoan another attack of locusts and the threat of life in a refugee camp due to another infestation of dwindling farm crops in an arid near-desert climate, and the chasm of investment, approach, and pragmatism shows us why we sometimes cannot get around things: we look at the situation from one perspective only. IF water sources are dwindling; IF traditional approaches are no longer feasible....maybe, as initially repugnant as it might seem, it is manna in disguise. People in California are working on that as a reality, as we speak, focused and determined on making sure that starving people in arid third world nations affected by these events have one small unlikely door out of starvation. On some of these foodstuffs are pretty impressive, as much as others like to scoff at their efforts.
On a positive, rather than negative note, however: an immediate availability of it, in conjunction with a "hands-on" 2-litre plastic pop bottle rooftop- sunlight-water-baking could turn guinea-worm ridden drinking water sources into a powdered milk reality, and a literal "birth of bread and roses" - within a SINGLE YEAR. Granted, the technology isn't perfect, and residual trace amounts of leeching reclaimed plastic two litre discards is a valid concern, .....but hemp coffee filters, distributed, could strain that trace water baked on rooftops and make it cleaner by up to SEVENTY PERCENT. And seventy percent is life...and life means POTENTIAL, REALIZED.
One single year of baking your worm-ridden drinking water on the sunscorched roof of your dwelling in RECLAIMED RECEPTACLES OTHER PEOPLE HAVE THROWN IN THE GARBAGE. And while we are on the topic....why on earth does Florida lack a blue box program? A place others escape to in winter from all over the world.....and the landfill piles get higher, with no green industry reclaiming, reusing, reselling, and reforming all those throw aways. Two litre plastic pop bottles, for example.
Read on.....
We are, in this country, at the brink of a very brave reclamation of life called the Greening of a Nation. It is going to open doors in many areas, and it will shake the sensibilities of the status quo. Some people will be very angry, and very fearful, about any notion of losing power, wielding power, or having power over other human beings and how they move and interact in the world. Or not. But if we are brave, the immediate effects will be seen, with effort, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit, in the following areas:
1. Environmental Impact
2. The Real Birth of Green Industry as vital and sustaining
3.The reclamation of the Auto Industry
4.The true return to the focus on the Health of a Nation and its People
5. The economic Stabilization of national health, social and educational infrastructures.
How will all of this happen?
Environmental Impact
Apart from the sin tax industry everyone normally associates with the hemp/cannabis production, we will be replanting the lungs of the planet. In the face of the horrific destruction taking place on California's coastal forest regions, and the seemingly insurmountable environmental damage caused by chemical, industry and fossil fuel mismanagement, this is, as Einstein would say, the equal and opposite, focused and determined, effort to reclaim the wilds needed to sustain us. This is, literally, grabbing hold of the rope hauling us back to perspective, sanity, reflection, and sober second thought.
There are many people who think that ignoring the reality of environmental degradation will simply make it go away; that by restoring the status quo in existing industries, we will somehow reclaim the lost exuberance and spirit of industry that made North America the envy of nations. That is not so. With this, literal "Second Chance", there comes a very serious warning to heed the ethos of conscience-driven industry: we must, by default, include the forgotten, dispossessed, exploited and undeveloped areas of the world in the progress of our species, and the Greening of our Lives. If they are not there, we will die.
There are other immediate and obvious effects of this shift in focus: it will stabilize the planet, geopolitically.
This scares some people, because it does not feed into the politics of war, or the concept of repetitive arms proliferation as a balancing mechanism. It will not feed the war machine, create paranoia or discord needed to sustain that industry, or have, at its focus, death as the solution to economic disparity. It will open the door to what man has the capacity to do: Heal his World, and Himself.
I'll give you one small example: pressboard/particle board made from hemp fibres are among the strongest and most reasonably priced building materials in the world. Treated for mold and insects, it could erase homelessness - at least temporarily, and especially in warmer climates - and make rebuilding after devastation a reality for the world's poorest. It is "healthy building made real" - particularly in very warm climates where building material scarcity and the reality of building costs make simple shelter impossible. Hemp solves this problem. Period. There is simply no excuse for homelessness except the neglect of nations, and their inability to be moved to solve it. It has to be a matter of caring and action by governments in combination. No excuses.
Milk made from hemp seeds is a nutritious and sustaining product that could ease third world hunger.
People cannot help themselves when they are starving. They simply die.
But do they stop spraying insects, and start collecting, roasting, pickling and eating them as a found food source? Rarely. The irony of this, and the very costly delicacy now served up in gourmet restaurants featuring just that food source, while people in Africa bemoan another attack of locusts and the threat of life in a refugee camp due to another infestation of dwindling farm crops in an arid near-desert climate, and the chasm of investment, approach, and pragmatism shows us why we sometimes cannot get around things: we look at the situation from one perspective only. IF water sources are dwindling; IF traditional approaches are no longer feasible....maybe, as initially repugnant as it might seem, it is manna in disguise. People in California are working on that as a reality, as we speak, focused and determined on making sure that starving people in arid third world nations affected by these events have one small unlikely door out of starvation. On some of these foodstuffs are pretty impressive, as much as others like to scoff at their efforts.
On a positive, rather than negative note, however: an immediate availability of it, in conjunction with a "hands-on" 2-litre plastic pop bottle rooftop- sunlight-water-baking could turn guinea-worm ridden drinking water sources into a powdered milk reality, and a literal "birth of bread and roses" - within a SINGLE YEAR. Granted, the technology isn't perfect, and residual trace amounts of leeching reclaimed plastic two litre discards is a valid concern, .....but hemp coffee filters, distributed, could strain that trace water baked on rooftops and make it cleaner by up to SEVENTY PERCENT. And seventy percent is life...and life means POTENTIAL, REALIZED.
One single year of baking your worm-ridden drinking water on the sunscorched roof of your dwelling in RECLAIMED RECEPTACLES OTHER PEOPLE HAVE THROWN IN THE GARBAGE. And while we are on the topic....why on earth does Florida lack a blue box program? A place others escape to in winter from all over the world.....and the landfill piles get higher, with no green industry reclaiming, reusing, reselling, and reforming all those throw aways. Two litre plastic pop bottles, for example.
In a Republican stronghold normally rife with entrepreneurial effort, the absence of recycling as an industrial part of garbage pickup as a given portion of the responsible taxation base....simply eludes me. I just cannot believe it is because you "get dirty", in a country like the United States, who believe themselves to have a literal trademark on "a good day's work, and washing up before dinner".
Imagine: the LEAGUE OF EARTH NATIONS, if you will. We must first understand the terms "third world", Keynesian economics, and newly required selfrestraint with new eyes - before we erase ourselves, for all time. Insects.....how do you taste, ground into flour, and made into tortillas? Would you have eaten it, had you not known? Bet you would have. No replacement for steak - but in a place where water sources are dwindling, maybe life saving, before you get all snotty and superior about it.
2. The Real Birth of Green Industry
When I talk about the "Real Birth of Green Industry", I think of it as the renewal of ones that we have eroded and/or destroyed, with a combination of human rights abuses, replacement of inferior substitutes, and a misunderstanding of what might be at "risk" when they - green industries - are born.
Let's start with the textile industry. A return to the availability of textiles and the textile industry will, by default, immediately result in all of the creative impulse that comes with it: the ways, means, and craftsmanship by which we clothe, cover, and create the places where we live, work, and play - along with ourselves. We relearn our sense of traditional design, learn new skills, create new traditions, and rediscover that creativity is a million-dollar offshoot business.
Not only that: studies have shown that, like cotton, hemp is healthy. Ask any dermatologist, and they will tell you that cheaply produced synthetic based clothing - made, essentially, from plastic, does two things: it inhibits you from sweating properly, and actually traps moisture and bacteria against the skin. Unless you are going to space or need a wet suit, simply put, this makes you, your skin, and your body encased in an impenetrable non-porous item, sick. You develop irritations, allergies, sensitivities, infections, and skin conditions which never existed, before you covered yourself in something that does not allow your body, and you, to breathe. And when your body cannot sweat and breathe properly when you work - you smell funny! You are a bacteria incubator. Do you want to be an incubator - for anything besides a rebirth of yourself, and Hope? Maybe it's about time you started to believe you were worth it. Look at yourself again - you still have dreams....they're not quite bullied, stomped, beaten down, or mocked out of you yet, are they?
And did I mention Hemp paper? Durable, more resistant to moisture and mold damage, when treated, it is an old Technology, reborn, for when "plugged in" might wish a quiet page flip, and words leaping off the page again, newly understood. Books really are cool - and no hydro is required.
Hemp production must bring with it deep lessons from the Deep South cotton industry, and a developed sense of developed potential, too - not a repeat of the abuses and worker exploitation of the most vulnerable sectors of society. We must create jobs associated with this industry, working in tandem - but not as a replacement for - human beings, when we put technology to work in the boom of agribusiness which will make "joyful offshoots" of entrepreneurship possible, along with dreams of a Better Life - literally.
3. The Reclamation of the Auto Industry
After public bailouts in the billions of dollars, I sincerely believe that the Auto Industry has a debt to pay: they must realize that, though they are of continued, and vital importance, in the New World, they have become complacent. Their demand for government infrastructure supporting the industry just in terms of charging routes is somewhat hypocritical, given the length of time which they have had to introduce and implement new technologies, but, on a more encouraging, and immediate note, the reality of a 2008 PT Cruiser running on biohemp fuel is simply possible, with a few simple changes in combustion engines, and focused research, investment, and self-sustaining industrial automaking which has, at its core, the idea of hemp fuel, and the determined effort to bring back, not destroy, our world as a very real, very possible, and very doable part of business success. You owe us - and you owe yourselves and your children to make this happen. Look at what you have achieve in 20 years in automaking. The EV phenomenon is just part of the equation. The beauty and flexibility of the combustion engine does not have to end; we just have to look at it in a new way. Stop considering Heaven's Hemp as your Competitor: you were born for this - just DO IT. Even the tanks are there. When that diesel smell is the hemp oil fuel of tomorrow because of your effort - while you drive towards the destination you have preserved in nature - there will be no more room for "at odds with the industry" in your vocabulary. You will, once again, be Leading its Creativity, and progress....and exuberance and success.
But you need to make this happen - no one else can. And you have the tools. The shift can be yours - alongside the success of the EV - by refining this older technology with new eyes. And rest assured....we are gonna love that sweet new ride, my friend. Driving the green, making the green.....life in motion. Sounds like poetry, doesn't it?
4. The return of the Health of a Nation and its People
So....we're clothed, and fed with nutritious hemp based food, and seedpod milk which eases the strain on traditional sustainable beef and meat industries, while creating another complementary agribusiness alongside of it, and replanting the lungs of the world, while we begin to allow Nature to slowly, but inexorably, begin to heal and free itself of the poisons we have inflicted upon it, and upon ourselves, with our lack of vision, and our refusal to enter into the "start to end" concept of industry. Where does your old computer, microwave, electrical appliance go, anyway? Does the industry care that made millions off of it? Have they recontributed to the rebuilding of the grid system upon which it relies, without water diversion, damaging ecosystems, and an inability to build into grid strengthening buildings which self-generate electricity in their designs? Steve Jobs knew: we need to "Think Different." We need to think differently, too, to be grammatically correct, and with a nod to actual literacy, without apology. New architectural and industrial design must begin to include, by default, these types of considerations in their blueprints: the solar roof, the living walls.....the idea that we are "part of" the landscape - not its replacement.
What else can hemp do? It can ease pain management in cream, lozenge, capsule, digestibles which scream nonaddiction in the face of every toxic substance currently being pumped into human beings by a pharmaceutical industry only too happy to help you experiment. And yes....maybe a little smoke. Welcome pharmaceutical, cosmetic and naturopathic subindustries. We have only just begun to get you unhooked from oxycontin and phentanyl. You are not on the precipice, chained as part of a vicious needs-based dependency which the darker side of this industry creates, and the light within it still recognizes as its raison dètre: part of the healing process, not the simple obliteration of reality and a calculated hastening to its nonprofitable end. You can manage this again!
5. A Return to Stability
Healthy people are hopeful people. How can they not be, when jobs, wellbeing, creativity and freedom are re-embraced as the Conscience of a Nation? When government budgets can meet the needs of its people without huge tax burdens, and the theft of livelihoods as the result of unbalanced politics, excesses of greed, and the crushing of the success that should come after hard work?
As we reach out with Canadarm into the Great Beyond, let's show the wider universe, and ourselves, another Can Do. The other one might take us into Space - but this one might mean we still have something to which hearts will return to, in their most cherished moments: the inexpressable joy at the sight of the Garden of Home.
There's still time......and God is watching, as we stumble, and persist, and wait for The Miracle.
2. The Real Birth of Green Industry
When I talk about the "Real Birth of Green Industry", I think of it as the renewal of ones that we have eroded and/or destroyed, with a combination of human rights abuses, replacement of inferior substitutes, and a misunderstanding of what might be at "risk" when they - green industries - are born.
Let's start with the textile industry. A return to the availability of textiles and the textile industry will, by default, immediately result in all of the creative impulse that comes with it: the ways, means, and craftsmanship by which we clothe, cover, and create the places where we live, work, and play - along with ourselves. We relearn our sense of traditional design, learn new skills, create new traditions, and rediscover that creativity is a million-dollar offshoot business.
Not only that: studies have shown that, like cotton, hemp is healthy. Ask any dermatologist, and they will tell you that cheaply produced synthetic based clothing - made, essentially, from plastic, does two things: it inhibits you from sweating properly, and actually traps moisture and bacteria against the skin. Unless you are going to space or need a wet suit, simply put, this makes you, your skin, and your body encased in an impenetrable non-porous item, sick. You develop irritations, allergies, sensitivities, infections, and skin conditions which never existed, before you covered yourself in something that does not allow your body, and you, to breathe. And when your body cannot sweat and breathe properly when you work - you smell funny! You are a bacteria incubator. Do you want to be an incubator - for anything besides a rebirth of yourself, and Hope? Maybe it's about time you started to believe you were worth it. Look at yourself again - you still have dreams....they're not quite bullied, stomped, beaten down, or mocked out of you yet, are they?
And did I mention Hemp paper? Durable, more resistant to moisture and mold damage, when treated, it is an old Technology, reborn, for when "plugged in" might wish a quiet page flip, and words leaping off the page again, newly understood. Books really are cool - and no hydro is required.
Hemp production must bring with it deep lessons from the Deep South cotton industry, and a developed sense of developed potential, too - not a repeat of the abuses and worker exploitation of the most vulnerable sectors of society. We must create jobs associated with this industry, working in tandem - but not as a replacement for - human beings, when we put technology to work in the boom of agribusiness which will make "joyful offshoots" of entrepreneurship possible, along with dreams of a Better Life - literally.
3. The Reclamation of the Auto Industry
After public bailouts in the billions of dollars, I sincerely believe that the Auto Industry has a debt to pay: they must realize that, though they are of continued, and vital importance, in the New World, they have become complacent. Their demand for government infrastructure supporting the industry just in terms of charging routes is somewhat hypocritical, given the length of time which they have had to introduce and implement new technologies, but, on a more encouraging, and immediate note, the reality of a 2008 PT Cruiser running on biohemp fuel is simply possible, with a few simple changes in combustion engines, and focused research, investment, and self-sustaining industrial automaking which has, at its core, the idea of hemp fuel, and the determined effort to bring back, not destroy, our world as a very real, very possible, and very doable part of business success. You owe us - and you owe yourselves and your children to make this happen. Look at what you have achieve in 20 years in automaking. The EV phenomenon is just part of the equation. The beauty and flexibility of the combustion engine does not have to end; we just have to look at it in a new way. Stop considering Heaven's Hemp as your Competitor: you were born for this - just DO IT. Even the tanks are there. When that diesel smell is the hemp oil fuel of tomorrow because of your effort - while you drive towards the destination you have preserved in nature - there will be no more room for "at odds with the industry" in your vocabulary. You will, once again, be Leading its Creativity, and progress....and exuberance and success.
But you need to make this happen - no one else can. And you have the tools. The shift can be yours - alongside the success of the EV - by refining this older technology with new eyes. And rest assured....we are gonna love that sweet new ride, my friend. Driving the green, making the green.....life in motion. Sounds like poetry, doesn't it?
4. The return of the Health of a Nation and its People
So....we're clothed, and fed with nutritious hemp based food, and seedpod milk which eases the strain on traditional sustainable beef and meat industries, while creating another complementary agribusiness alongside of it, and replanting the lungs of the world, while we begin to allow Nature to slowly, but inexorably, begin to heal and free itself of the poisons we have inflicted upon it, and upon ourselves, with our lack of vision, and our refusal to enter into the "start to end" concept of industry. Where does your old computer, microwave, electrical appliance go, anyway? Does the industry care that made millions off of it? Have they recontributed to the rebuilding of the grid system upon which it relies, without water diversion, damaging ecosystems, and an inability to build into grid strengthening buildings which self-generate electricity in their designs? Steve Jobs knew: we need to "Think Different." We need to think differently, too, to be grammatically correct, and with a nod to actual literacy, without apology. New architectural and industrial design must begin to include, by default, these types of considerations in their blueprints: the solar roof, the living walls.....the idea that we are "part of" the landscape - not its replacement.
What else can hemp do? It can ease pain management in cream, lozenge, capsule, digestibles which scream nonaddiction in the face of every toxic substance currently being pumped into human beings by a pharmaceutical industry only too happy to help you experiment. And yes....maybe a little smoke. Welcome pharmaceutical, cosmetic and naturopathic subindustries. We have only just begun to get you unhooked from oxycontin and phentanyl. You are not on the precipice, chained as part of a vicious needs-based dependency which the darker side of this industry creates, and the light within it still recognizes as its raison dètre: part of the healing process, not the simple obliteration of reality and a calculated hastening to its nonprofitable end. You can manage this again!
5. A Return to Stability
Healthy people are hopeful people. How can they not be, when jobs, wellbeing, creativity and freedom are re-embraced as the Conscience of a Nation? When government budgets can meet the needs of its people without huge tax burdens, and the theft of livelihoods as the result of unbalanced politics, excesses of greed, and the crushing of the success that should come after hard work?
As we reach out with Canadarm into the Great Beyond, let's show the wider universe, and ourselves, another Can Do. The other one might take us into Space - but this one might mean we still have something to which hearts will return to, in their most cherished moments: the inexpressable joy at the sight of the Garden of Home.
There's still time......and God is watching, as we stumble, and persist, and wait for The Miracle.
As one comic character put it: it is like a Circle. And it is coming around.
.
.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Thonk and Gorf and God and Tools: A Story
Thonk pulled at his animal skin breechcloth. It had slipped again, and had worn through, where he had brushed up against the tree trunk with it, in order to soften the rough patch of skin that he had on his shoulder. It had begun to attract buzzing insects around his head. This, in turn, had begun to make him angry.
"I need a thing", said Thonk to Gorf, who was chewing on a piece of bark. The sap was pleasantly sweet, it was summer, and the sap didn't run out of the hole he had made in the side of the tree, like when the leaves first appeared on it. But it still tasted good, and made him feel happy.
"Why?" said Gorf, chewing.
"Because this" - Thonk pointed to a bumpy part on the animal skin covering his chest, where he had thrown it, because he was still a little cold - "keeps sticking here and hurting me. And I'm cold." He pointed to his shoulder. "I think it needs to be flatter, so my arm doesn't feel weird."
The shoulder, restricted by the tangled animal skin and imprisoning his arm, was throbbing, and his arm had begun to hang limply at his side, preventing him from grabbing anything, pulling apart branches, or feeding himself.
"Oh", said Gorf.
"What else are you going to do with it?", said God, suddenly, within, around and above Thonk and Gorf. .
"What?", said Thonk. He stared at Gorf. "Was that you?" he said to Gorf. He addressed Gorf directly, as if Gorf had spoken aloud to him.
"I need a thing", said Thonk to Gorf, who was chewing on a piece of bark. The sap was pleasantly sweet, it was summer, and the sap didn't run out of the hole he had made in the side of the tree, like when the leaves first appeared on it. But it still tasted good, and made him feel happy.
"Why?" said Gorf, chewing.
"Because this" - Thonk pointed to a bumpy part on the animal skin covering his chest, where he had thrown it, because he was still a little cold - "keeps sticking here and hurting me. And I'm cold." He pointed to his shoulder. "I think it needs to be flatter, so my arm doesn't feel weird."
The shoulder, restricted by the tangled animal skin and imprisoning his arm, was throbbing, and his arm had begun to hang limply at his side, preventing him from grabbing anything, pulling apart branches, or feeding himself.
"Oh", said Gorf.
"What else are you going to do with it?", said God, suddenly, within, around and above Thonk and Gorf. .
"What?", said Thonk. He stared at Gorf. "Was that you?" he said to Gorf. He addressed Gorf directly, as if Gorf had spoken aloud to him.
"I don't know; I hadn't thought about it. I thought it would make this flat." He pointed to the rough bump on the skin.
"What?", said Gorf. He had been staring at the leftover piece of bark he had in his hand. He handed it to Thonk.
"Try that", said God, referring nonchalantly to a rock nearby.
"What?", said Gorf. He had been staring at the leftover piece of bark he had in his hand. He handed it to Thonk.
"Try that", said God, referring nonchalantly to a rock nearby.
There was nothing actually pointing to the rock, as far as Thonk knew, but his eyes were drawn to it, suddenly, as being part of a solution, and the strange sense of the two things being related in answer to the question he had thought - but not voiced aloud - moved him towards the rock, as a tool. He grabbed the piece of bark out of Gorf's outstretched hand on his way to the rock, watching how happy Gorf looked.
"But be careful", said God.
"Do you want me to help you?", said Gorf. He was staring at Thonk's arm. He was feeling too happy to get angry at the fact that Thonk had grabbed the piece of bark without speaking to him, and was now kneeling in front of the rock, silently.
"Maybe you should move this off of you, before you try to make it flat", said Gorf to Thonk, pointing to the animal skin tangling up his arm.
Thonk had retrieved the rock and had begun to bash it against the lump in the animal skin that had given him warmth - and, by default, himself. He had not heard Gorf's suggestion clearly, and had ignored it, as a result, intent on achieving the result he wanted with his new tool.
"Do you want me to help you?", said Gorf. He was staring at Thonk's arm. He was feeling too happy to get angry at the fact that Thonk had grabbed the piece of bark without speaking to him, and was now kneeling in front of the rock, silently.
"Maybe you should move this off of you, before you try to make it flat", said Gorf to Thonk, pointing to the animal skin tangling up his arm.
Thonk had retrieved the rock and had begun to bash it against the lump in the animal skin that had given him warmth - and, by default, himself. He had not heard Gorf's suggestion clearly, and had ignored it, as a result, intent on achieving the result he wanted with his new tool.
The pain shot into his arm, and was suddenly far worse than the previous discomfort caused by the minor bumps and surface imperfections on the dried skin which had rubbed against his own, bare skin, and had become entangled in his other hand, hanging on him, weirdly - an adornment intended for Comfort and Warmth, covering his nakedness, which had now disabled his other arm and had begun to restrict his circulation to the point of numbness. It kept slipping off. When it did, Thonk felt cold again. He stared at the Rock, suspiciously. This had not worked out quite as he had intended.
"Here", said Gorf. "Let me help you." Thonk had begun to chew on the piece of bark he had grabbed from Gorf. Gorf moved the animal skin, pulled Thonk's throbbing arm out of the entangled piece of it, and blood suddenly began coursing through the limp and numbed arm again. Thonk stood there, chewing, and staring at Gorf.
"Move it over Here", said God, to Gorf. "And be careful with that. I already told Him."
"Here", said Gorf. "Let me help you." Thonk had begun to chew on the piece of bark he had grabbed from Gorf. Gorf moved the animal skin, pulled Thonk's throbbing arm out of the entangled piece of it, and blood suddenly began coursing through the limp and numbed arm again. Thonk stood there, chewing, and staring at Gorf.
"Move it over Here", said God, to Gorf. "And be careful with that. I already told Him."
Gorf stared at the rock in Thonk's hand, grabbed it out of his hand, pointed to the piece of bark in Thonk's other hand, and pointed to Thonk's mouth. Thonk continued to chew, and stare at Gorf. He drew in his breath, exhaled, wiggled his previously restricted arm up and down, and continued to watch Gorf.
"Make it flatter, he said," said God, out loud, to Gorf. "That's what he said he wanted. Also, that will help in this instance, if you're worried." Gorf began bashing the rock against the animal skin on the flat ground.
"I'm not worried" Gorf said, bewildered, and stopping suddenly to stare at Thonk. "I'm making this flat."
"What?", said Thonk.
"This is taking longer than I expected", said God. "But, there is peripheral fruitfulness of a different kind, within the tangled skeins of interwoven, shared corporeal Being which is Pleasing to me, however unintentional. Well done."
Gorf, having carefully pounded the skin flat - and free - of abrasive bumps and scratchy surfaces, laid it kindly over the shoulder of Thonk, grabbed the two long pieces of it hanging at the side of Thonk's hip, and wove one piece over the other, securing it crudely so that it did not fall off of him.
Then he smiled kindly at Thonk, triumphantly. Thonk grabbed Gorf's hand and opened it, looking for another piece of bark. He frowned. Gorf stayed where he was, breathing and chewing on his bark, making it last.
Thonk walked over to the rock, picked it up, and looked at the side of Gorf's face, before he tried to reach into Gorf's mouth and steal his piece of bark.
"Be careful with that", said God, exasperated. A shriek had erupted in the stillness. "Why did you do that?", God said to Thonk, sternly.
"What?", said Thonk, to Gorf. Gorf was holding his mouth where Thonk had picked up the rock and hit him with it.
"I didn't say anything", said Gorf, shaking his head, and looking betrayed. "I thought you understood what I was doing. I also thought we were Friends. I'm not sure I'm going to help you anymore." He looked sad, now.
"Well Done", said God, sarcastically, to Thonk. "I take it that was not my area of impetus and inspiration, and you took the first part of what I Said Literally, instead of as helpful response and Affirmation."
"That's what I do", said another Voice. "You said that that was my Area." It sounded sulky.
"You could do Better", said God. "You did once upon a Time, before we got to This."
Thonk and Gorf were staring at each other, perplexed. Gorf looked worried...but still not afraid. He had never been Hit before. He wasn't sure how he felt about it, yet.
"Now I have to fix this, too" said God, to the Other Voice. "And we were supposed to be Here by now." He sighed, exasperated.
"I know", said the other Voice smugly. "I threw a wrench in your Omnipresent Plan."
"I'll have to punish you unobtrusively", said God, mildly. "Delays are supposed to be part of the multiplicity of the Plan, not the Raison D'etre of it. And you deliberately misinterpreted Plan on purpose again, to confuse things and ruin Beauty and Truth and Development and Love, Realized."
"I'm sorry", said Thonk, suddenly, to Gorf. "It's okay", said Gorf. " I forgive You."
"At Last", said God, exhaling with satisfaction.
"What?", said Thonk. "You're always Last. It's just you and me."
"What?", said Gorf.
"I am Last", said God..."and First."
"Oh", said the Other Voice, drawling. "I'll just chew on this, then, Eternally, being absent from the picture."
"Whatever", said God, annoyed. "Let's get on with this, Please."
"Thanks", said Thonk to Gorf.
"You're Welcome", said God. "Well Done."
"Not Again", said Thonk. He rolled his eyes. "I'm bushed."
"This is going to be far more Complex than the Blueprint", said God, absently. "Oh well. The complexity of it will make up for the time spent simply achieving this one Aspect. One small step."
"Give me back a piece of one of these, Please", said God, gently chipping a piece of rib off Thonk.
"Ow", said Thonk. "That hurts", said Thonk to Gorf.
"Oh, don't be a Baby", said God. "I'm making Something." "You; keep chewing and shut up", he said to the Other Voice.
"I don't have anything left; I'm just a sensibility and an Approach again" said the Voice.
"But I gave you Form and Purpose", said God. "It was too hard", said The Voice. "I zoned out instead. Don't blame me; you made This, too." He chewed accusingly, making sucking noises.
"That's too Bad", said God. "Now what are you going to Do? You have neither Form or Purpose Realized, any longer, having chewed yourself into Nothing, thinking it Completion and Realization, instead of momentary relief. I said Relief - not Obliteration and Avoidance. You're lazy."
"It's what I Do", said the Other Voice.
"Now they Do, too.....and that's not what I intended." He pointed to Thonk and Gorf.
"They're just stupid clay", said The Voice.
"Thanks; I'm glad you approve of my styling ability as an artist. They happen to be more than You are at this Moment", said God. "You chewed your own tail as the expression of everything you Are. I breathed into Them, and they became My expressions, realized....not your bad Habit."
"It's not really good or bad", said The Voice. "There are degrees, you said. I can still steal your vessels, take over them, and ruin what you intended."
"You're still not an Artist", said God. "I am. I am....That I am."
"I know, I know", said The other Voice. "Alpha and Omega, blah, blah, blah."
"That's later", said God. "Stop stalling. You really limited yourself to what I allow you to ruin, now, didn't you?" He sighed. "So much potential, wasted, in terms of encouragement. It's really aggravating."
"Make it flatter, he said," said God, out loud, to Gorf. "That's what he said he wanted. Also, that will help in this instance, if you're worried." Gorf began bashing the rock against the animal skin on the flat ground.
"I'm not worried" Gorf said, bewildered, and stopping suddenly to stare at Thonk. "I'm making this flat."
"What?", said Thonk.
"This is taking longer than I expected", said God. "But, there is peripheral fruitfulness of a different kind, within the tangled skeins of interwoven, shared corporeal Being which is Pleasing to me, however unintentional. Well done."
Gorf, having carefully pounded the skin flat - and free - of abrasive bumps and scratchy surfaces, laid it kindly over the shoulder of Thonk, grabbed the two long pieces of it hanging at the side of Thonk's hip, and wove one piece over the other, securing it crudely so that it did not fall off of him.
Then he smiled kindly at Thonk, triumphantly. Thonk grabbed Gorf's hand and opened it, looking for another piece of bark. He frowned. Gorf stayed where he was, breathing and chewing on his bark, making it last.
Thonk walked over to the rock, picked it up, and looked at the side of Gorf's face, before he tried to reach into Gorf's mouth and steal his piece of bark.
"Be careful with that", said God, exasperated. A shriek had erupted in the stillness. "Why did you do that?", God said to Thonk, sternly.
"What?", said Thonk, to Gorf. Gorf was holding his mouth where Thonk had picked up the rock and hit him with it.
"I didn't say anything", said Gorf, shaking his head, and looking betrayed. "I thought you understood what I was doing. I also thought we were Friends. I'm not sure I'm going to help you anymore." He looked sad, now.
"Well Done", said God, sarcastically, to Thonk. "I take it that was not my area of impetus and inspiration, and you took the first part of what I Said Literally, instead of as helpful response and Affirmation."
"That's what I do", said another Voice. "You said that that was my Area." It sounded sulky.
"You could do Better", said God. "You did once upon a Time, before we got to This."
Thonk and Gorf were staring at each other, perplexed. Gorf looked worried...but still not afraid. He had never been Hit before. He wasn't sure how he felt about it, yet.
"Now I have to fix this, too" said God, to the Other Voice. "And we were supposed to be Here by now." He sighed, exasperated.
"I know", said the other Voice smugly. "I threw a wrench in your Omnipresent Plan."
"I'll have to punish you unobtrusively", said God, mildly. "Delays are supposed to be part of the multiplicity of the Plan, not the Raison D'etre of it. And you deliberately misinterpreted Plan on purpose again, to confuse things and ruin Beauty and Truth and Development and Love, Realized."
"I'm sorry", said Thonk, suddenly, to Gorf. "It's okay", said Gorf. " I forgive You."
"At Last", said God, exhaling with satisfaction.
"What?", said Thonk. "You're always Last. It's just you and me."
"What?", said Gorf.
"I am Last", said God..."and First."
"Oh", said the Other Voice, drawling. "I'll just chew on this, then, Eternally, being absent from the picture."
"Whatever", said God, annoyed. "Let's get on with this, Please."
"Thanks", said Thonk to Gorf.
"You're Welcome", said God. "Well Done."
"Not Again", said Thonk. He rolled his eyes. "I'm bushed."
"This is going to be far more Complex than the Blueprint", said God, absently. "Oh well. The complexity of it will make up for the time spent simply achieving this one Aspect. One small step."
"Give me back a piece of one of these, Please", said God, gently chipping a piece of rib off Thonk.
"Ow", said Thonk. "That hurts", said Thonk to Gorf.
"Oh, don't be a Baby", said God. "I'm making Something." "You; keep chewing and shut up", he said to the Other Voice.
"I don't have anything left; I'm just a sensibility and an Approach again" said the Voice.
"But I gave you Form and Purpose", said God. "It was too hard", said The Voice. "I zoned out instead. Don't blame me; you made This, too." He chewed accusingly, making sucking noises.
"That's too Bad", said God. "Now what are you going to Do? You have neither Form or Purpose Realized, any longer, having chewed yourself into Nothing, thinking it Completion and Realization, instead of momentary relief. I said Relief - not Obliteration and Avoidance. You're lazy."
"It's what I Do", said the Other Voice.
"Now they Do, too.....and that's not what I intended." He pointed to Thonk and Gorf.
"They're just stupid clay", said The Voice.
"Thanks; I'm glad you approve of my styling ability as an artist. They happen to be more than You are at this Moment", said God. "You chewed your own tail as the expression of everything you Are. I breathed into Them, and they became My expressions, realized....not your bad Habit."
"It's not really good or bad", said The Voice. "There are degrees, you said. I can still steal your vessels, take over them, and ruin what you intended."
"You're still not an Artist", said God. "I am. I am....That I am."
"I know, I know", said The other Voice. "Alpha and Omega, blah, blah, blah."
"That's later", said God. "Stop stalling. You really limited yourself to what I allow you to ruin, now, didn't you?" He sighed. "So much potential, wasted, in terms of encouragement. It's really aggravating."
"Oh yay", said the Other Voice, flatly. "Always with the Rules, and the Form and the Purpose Shit. You said Seen and Unseen. What do I care if I'm never responsible, as a Result of their Disbelief?"
"What?" said Thonk, pointing to The Woman. Gorf was staring at Her.
"What's that?" said Gorf.
"It isn't you", said Thonk. He smiled.
"This might be Interesting", said The Other Voice.
"Be careful with that", said God.
"Okay God", said The Woman. "I'm sorry."
"Understood", said God. "You know what to Do."
"Be Careful with that", said the Woman, staring up at the Sky.
"Who are you talking to?" said Gorf and Thonk.
"It was Me", said The Other Voice. "No it wasn't", said The Woman, sternly.
"Be careful with that", said Gorf and Thonk to The Woman, kindly.
"With what?" said the Woman.
"Nothing", said Gorf and Thonk. They started chewing on nothing.
"Ewwww. Where's God?", said The Woman, feeling worried.
"I'm Here", said God, softly, Pleased.
"Whew", said The Woman. "For a second I thought you saw me as an empty vessel, and I was being very careful about what was supposed to be the Sacredness it was meant to Hold." She hung her head.
"I never thought that about You", said God, gently. "I made you, too, don't forget. You're different. I showed you Creation, Differently. They would never have been able to handle it." He sighed. "But I used some of the same parts....I couldn't improve on them, and solid infrastructure with subtle differences can make ALL of the difference in the World, from a Corporeal standpoint. It's not that Difficult, really. You'll find out later, once you understand the intricacy of branches, and grafting, and such. Never mind. Just remember not to mess with that, and don't get conceited, or you'll ruin it."
"You must be Lonely", said the Woman, kindly.
"I have learned to stay Focused", said God. "I am, after all, The End and the Beginning. I'll try to explain that later, when we get into the First is Last, and the Last is First." He felt hopeful, suddenly. Here was Reaffirmation.
"Be careful with that", said The Other Voice.
"What?", said Gorf and Thonk, annoyed.
"Nothing", said The Woman, sadly, with clarity. "You'll understand, Later."
"But...Differently", said God, smiling. "This is my Area", said God to the Other Voice. "And I will Do as I Will."
"Be Careful with That", said Gorf, Thonk, and The Woman, in unison. They laughed at the spontaneity, uniformity and...something Else.
"Yes!", said God. "We'll understand more Later", The Woman said, softly.....hopefully. Thonk and Gorf were
sleeping.
"What?" said Thonk, pointing to The Woman. Gorf was staring at Her.
"What's that?" said Gorf.
"It isn't you", said Thonk. He smiled.
"This might be Interesting", said The Other Voice.
"Be careful with that", said God.
"Okay God", said The Woman. "I'm sorry."
"Understood", said God. "You know what to Do."
"Be Careful with that", said the Woman, staring up at the Sky.
"Who are you talking to?" said Gorf and Thonk.
"It was Me", said The Other Voice. "No it wasn't", said The Woman, sternly.
"Be careful with that", said Gorf and Thonk to The Woman, kindly.
"With what?" said the Woman.
"Nothing", said Gorf and Thonk. They started chewing on nothing.
"Ewwww. Where's God?", said The Woman, feeling worried.
"I'm Here", said God, softly, Pleased.
"Whew", said The Woman. "For a second I thought you saw me as an empty vessel, and I was being very careful about what was supposed to be the Sacredness it was meant to Hold." She hung her head.
"I never thought that about You", said God, gently. "I made you, too, don't forget. You're different. I showed you Creation, Differently. They would never have been able to handle it." He sighed. "But I used some of the same parts....I couldn't improve on them, and solid infrastructure with subtle differences can make ALL of the difference in the World, from a Corporeal standpoint. It's not that Difficult, really. You'll find out later, once you understand the intricacy of branches, and grafting, and such. Never mind. Just remember not to mess with that, and don't get conceited, or you'll ruin it."
"You must be Lonely", said the Woman, kindly.
"I have learned to stay Focused", said God. "I am, after all, The End and the Beginning. I'll try to explain that later, when we get into the First is Last, and the Last is First." He felt hopeful, suddenly. Here was Reaffirmation.
"Be careful with that", said The Other Voice.
"What?", said Gorf and Thonk, annoyed.
"Nothing", said The Woman, sadly, with clarity. "You'll understand, Later."
"But...Differently", said God, smiling. "This is my Area", said God to the Other Voice. "And I will Do as I Will."
"Be Careful with That", said Gorf, Thonk, and The Woman, in unison. They laughed at the spontaneity, uniformity and...something Else.
"Yes!", said God. "We'll understand more Later", The Woman said, softly.....hopefully. Thonk and Gorf were
sleeping.
The Whys and Hows and Duties of Analysis and Exploration - some thoughts
Recently I posted some controversial discussions and ideas about discoveries and explorations important to the world of religion, history, academics - and human beings in general.
Many times people post things because they are immediately taken with them, are uninterested in discussing opinions on findings, agree with them, or are simply "immediately and unequivocally" affected by, and responding to, an issue at hand within the limited time most of us have at our disposal to do so, despite our fondest wishes for cohesive dialogue.
We "react" instead of "respond" - and we get conditioned to do this, in true Pavlovian fashion, as the world places more and more pressure on our time to be guided by this "automatic reflex" expectation of responding to any and all stimulii in life.
I believe it is one of the reasons why there is so much pressure, and an increasing prevalence of hard drugs, harder addictions, and a constant quest for "sated appetities" of all kinds - which are designed to keep the "acute nature" of life and the imposed freneticism of it, and its agenda, as our norm.
Instead of the society in which our technological advancement helps us, we become enslaved by our connectedness, by our routine to maintain and ingest, in the most surface of ways, as much information and semantics as possible. Every part of society seems bent on this: and the collection, dissemination, and "sale" of our knowledge about each other and the rudiments of our daily lives begin to be the "new gold" which is used to predict, shape, trend, and insert ourselves and our "unseen agendas" into the lives of other people, at the behest of....do we know?
What is interesting about this, you say? We demand the collection of this data for free, and question people who question the need for it, as "unreasonable", "suspicious", "suspect", "unfriendly"..."not forthcoming"....although there is sometimes no clear connect to this activity and a supposedly inherent reasoning that it "better serve" the nation.
In defense of the information age, the endless appetites for supposed facts streamline and shape how, in serving, we respond and provide....but the ethics of a nation, the agenda of companies and interrelated business interests, and the notion of privacy - even down to "your favourites" - and why you might not necessarily WANT the information to be made available to sell and buy - become a strange dominion of shifting interests in a society more consumed with the collection and dissemination of "habitual preference" than what we are striving to accomplish, and why. ....or why this might be a different impetus in our lives.
Often, this has little to do with the thoughts, feelings, and hopes and desires of a progressing human being; only the outer indicators of what they are often "fed" and what they "excrete" - visually, viscerally, emotionally, discernably, and socially....by society, by government, by impatient and jealous, rather than encouraging, "peers", by all we thought we understood as "society" and the semblances, and symbols, of "getting there".
We're not sure, at some point, what we mean by that, anymore. We think it used to mean this, but now....we're not so sure. It is less clear to us, because the expression, and our continued use of it as explanation, is confusing; diluted; no longer crystal clear. It is a perjury of language; a distillation of it to want to mean something else, desperately....incorrectly, and with imprecision.
The Journey as experience; the Journey as Life: the Journey of Life, as a result, is newly frightening, not calming......but why, we are no longer sure. Something is missing; we thought it was the destination - but it seems only part of one journey, to water it down to that: somehow it is no longer new, when it is only about this part of a larger Journey, newly understood, and still going nowhere.
The true "value" of dissemination of what is termed "the accoutrements of an enquiring life" become fodder for access, manipulation, presumption, marketing, indicators of success and interest...and, in its disappointment, absence or "change"...scoffed at - there are even whispers of that deadly word: "Peculiar Anomaly."
Often, "spirit" and "enthusiasm", "challenge" and "uniqueness and hilarity" would have been there, instead, but....alas.....they are different, too. Unnecessary. Chillingly so. And yet...their absence no longer cuts through the murk with that same, gentle relief.
"Liking pickles" takes on a new, dangerous, and possibly shocking meaning, having been included on a list, or suddenly appearing. Analyzed alone it is deemed "assumed agenda", inexplicably; is conveniently splayed onto a situation as "specific agenda", or, more horribly...."add on".
Ugh: all this, without any real understanding of the huge disservice that ignorance, jealousy, cruelty, bigotry, bullying, imposed and expected roles, and the presumption of happiness at the imprisonment of another's debt on a hopeful life, until its cruelty, its jealousy, and its damage, change an enthused and spirited, hopeful and joyous, clever and caring human being into "not so mouthy/cocky/original/entrepreneurial/ingenious/problem-solving/caring-beyond-obscene-surface intuitive/promising/funny/fastidious/creative/determined/undaunted now", anymore, huh?
... into something less.....annoying.
We don't understand that annoying was the very LAST thing being stimulated by the act of living, rather than sublimated by being a reminder of it, ever wanted to be remembered as, or for, or by.....
We mistake this for "being rounded".
Refusing to fail at a need for steering, gently reigning in, but unextinguishing, we immediately suspect the chastising as rashness - without understanding that the light touch and the twinkle in the stern reliability mask is an inability - and a shared refusal - to easily dismiss the exuberance, the freedom, and the wild, inexplicable, the profound and envied, reality of experienced Joy, either. This is why we are shocked when it Laughs and quaffs an easy Scotch, unapologetically. The warm milk, chamomile tea, or bottled water suddenly feels awkward - mocking - in our hands, presuming.
"Knowledge" becomes very confused with the concept of "being educated" instead of "inundated."
Enthused curiosity at the past, the present and the future are not mired in arrogance, but infused with understanding of whys, hows, denials and destructions of the balance and quiet satisfaction of a Provider, a Producer, a Ponderer, an Observer, a Friend, or a Stern Hand, holding back End and All, often, at first, and instead.
The relief and renewal of the unexpected burst of Laughter in the Face of imposed Burden, fiercely kind and unbending, as a response to the viciousness required to achieve another's "Bent and Broken" humility and inability to do anything but look down, chastened, are strange and wonderful to some, and infuriating to others, having been subdued, at last, beyond their Twinkling Longings of a Bettered Life.
I try to understand why "tempered response" is worded that way - and still failing, dislike the hypocrisy built in to the description.
I see "react" and see the Leaders under pressure of time and agenda, surrounded but unsupported, ....and suddenly cornered, as a result.....appear bewildered at a misunderstood expectation of themselves and what they thought The Job was, and needed. It sure was different when you were in it. Things got much more complicated, really fast.
The Job demanded adequately, intelligently, appropriately "responded to" situations - but the world, sometimes, did little to hide an agenda that WANTED the spectacle and rush, the overwrought and overplayed, the immediately saturated and permeated appearance in culture and society of The Campy, The Fired, The Apprentice, The Dragon.....the Winner. It wanted a Piece of how this got to be. It needed the Job, and a person strong enough to Show Up, having given the requisite piece, and wanting to show that.....there was More than that as indicator of .....the success of Life. It had grown beyond being ...entertained.
It yearned for an absence of the encouraged schism, the fear of striving, the bewilderment of applied effort, expended, this populace.
This longing persisted in the face of ....the sudden and fierce and ugly and wrenching responses of Death, and Mindlessness, symbols of Fear, and frightened, confused, wandering, neglected, overwhelmed, goalless, overwrought, uncalmed, numbed, desensitized, cultivatedly Fearful, Godless, unguided, maligned, uncelebrated and unnecessary Tomorrows, and their, well..........Reasons for Being.
It wanted end and More, and it wanted it Now. Sudden and glaring back, it was Revealed to be its very screwtape letter Self.
The confused and wandering Nexts, unhelped, unencouraged, undiscovered - like Dreaming and Honey - faltered. There was no Shaking, but ...the Earth shook. We feared.
Where? Where the measured response and the humility of a thoughtful - not infallible - assurance of this "trying" as a goal.....this renewal of The Desire of Ages?
"I think, therefore I am", eclipsed itself as a joke, its profound respect and dignity in brevity and succinctness flung about AS a joke - as a result, really, but something far away.....not layered, like a wellmade lasagna, languishing in a burpless world.
Take the expression "sober second thought", for example: it is a strange medicine, examined.
Societal and worldly pressures, the desire to be accepted, yearning for inclusion or acknowledgement or presence in something other than a "give me something I need right now" role in life, rather than a contemplative, earnest, and intelligent striving towards higher purpose and different kinds of achievements, often intrude and collide with the disciplined reality that is the dignity of supporting one's self with work.
Many times people post things because they are immediately taken with them, are uninterested in discussing opinions on findings, agree with them, or are simply "immediately and unequivocally" affected by, and responding to, an issue at hand within the limited time most of us have at our disposal to do so, despite our fondest wishes for cohesive dialogue.
We "react" instead of "respond" - and we get conditioned to do this, in true Pavlovian fashion, as the world places more and more pressure on our time to be guided by this "automatic reflex" expectation of responding to any and all stimulii in life.
I believe it is one of the reasons why there is so much pressure, and an increasing prevalence of hard drugs, harder addictions, and a constant quest for "sated appetities" of all kinds - which are designed to keep the "acute nature" of life and the imposed freneticism of it, and its agenda, as our norm.
Instead of the society in which our technological advancement helps us, we become enslaved by our connectedness, by our routine to maintain and ingest, in the most surface of ways, as much information and semantics as possible. Every part of society seems bent on this: and the collection, dissemination, and "sale" of our knowledge about each other and the rudiments of our daily lives begin to be the "new gold" which is used to predict, shape, trend, and insert ourselves and our "unseen agendas" into the lives of other people, at the behest of....do we know?
What is interesting about this, you say? We demand the collection of this data for free, and question people who question the need for it, as "unreasonable", "suspicious", "suspect", "unfriendly"..."not forthcoming"....although there is sometimes no clear connect to this activity and a supposedly inherent reasoning that it "better serve" the nation.
In defense of the information age, the endless appetites for supposed facts streamline and shape how, in serving, we respond and provide....but the ethics of a nation, the agenda of companies and interrelated business interests, and the notion of privacy - even down to "your favourites" - and why you might not necessarily WANT the information to be made available to sell and buy - become a strange dominion of shifting interests in a society more consumed with the collection and dissemination of "habitual preference" than what we are striving to accomplish, and why. ....or why this might be a different impetus in our lives.
Often, this has little to do with the thoughts, feelings, and hopes and desires of a progressing human being; only the outer indicators of what they are often "fed" and what they "excrete" - visually, viscerally, emotionally, discernably, and socially....by society, by government, by impatient and jealous, rather than encouraging, "peers", by all we thought we understood as "society" and the semblances, and symbols, of "getting there".
We're not sure, at some point, what we mean by that, anymore. We think it used to mean this, but now....we're not so sure. It is less clear to us, because the expression, and our continued use of it as explanation, is confusing; diluted; no longer crystal clear. It is a perjury of language; a distillation of it to want to mean something else, desperately....incorrectly, and with imprecision.
The Journey as experience; the Journey as Life: the Journey of Life, as a result, is newly frightening, not calming......but why, we are no longer sure. Something is missing; we thought it was the destination - but it seems only part of one journey, to water it down to that: somehow it is no longer new, when it is only about this part of a larger Journey, newly understood, and still going nowhere.
The true "value" of dissemination of what is termed "the accoutrements of an enquiring life" become fodder for access, manipulation, presumption, marketing, indicators of success and interest...and, in its disappointment, absence or "change"...scoffed at - there are even whispers of that deadly word: "Peculiar Anomaly."
Often, "spirit" and "enthusiasm", "challenge" and "uniqueness and hilarity" would have been there, instead, but....alas.....they are different, too. Unnecessary. Chillingly so. And yet...their absence no longer cuts through the murk with that same, gentle relief.
"Liking pickles" takes on a new, dangerous, and possibly shocking meaning, having been included on a list, or suddenly appearing. Analyzed alone it is deemed "assumed agenda", inexplicably; is conveniently splayed onto a situation as "specific agenda", or, more horribly...."add on".
Ugh: all this, without any real understanding of the huge disservice that ignorance, jealousy, cruelty, bigotry, bullying, imposed and expected roles, and the presumption of happiness at the imprisonment of another's debt on a hopeful life, until its cruelty, its jealousy, and its damage, change an enthused and spirited, hopeful and joyous, clever and caring human being into "not so mouthy/cocky/original/entrepreneurial/ingenious/problem-solving/caring-beyond-obscene-surface intuitive/promising/funny/fastidious/creative/determined/undaunted now", anymore, huh?
... into something less.....annoying.
We don't understand that annoying was the very LAST thing being stimulated by the act of living, rather than sublimated by being a reminder of it, ever wanted to be remembered as, or for, or by.....
We mistake this for "being rounded".
Refusing to fail at a need for steering, gently reigning in, but unextinguishing, we immediately suspect the chastising as rashness - without understanding that the light touch and the twinkle in the stern reliability mask is an inability - and a shared refusal - to easily dismiss the exuberance, the freedom, and the wild, inexplicable, the profound and envied, reality of experienced Joy, either. This is why we are shocked when it Laughs and quaffs an easy Scotch, unapologetically. The warm milk, chamomile tea, or bottled water suddenly feels awkward - mocking - in our hands, presuming.
"Knowledge" becomes very confused with the concept of "being educated" instead of "inundated."
Enthused curiosity at the past, the present and the future are not mired in arrogance, but infused with understanding of whys, hows, denials and destructions of the balance and quiet satisfaction of a Provider, a Producer, a Ponderer, an Observer, a Friend, or a Stern Hand, holding back End and All, often, at first, and instead.
The relief and renewal of the unexpected burst of Laughter in the Face of imposed Burden, fiercely kind and unbending, as a response to the viciousness required to achieve another's "Bent and Broken" humility and inability to do anything but look down, chastened, are strange and wonderful to some, and infuriating to others, having been subdued, at last, beyond their Twinkling Longings of a Bettered Life.
I try to understand why "tempered response" is worded that way - and still failing, dislike the hypocrisy built in to the description.
I see "react" and see the Leaders under pressure of time and agenda, surrounded but unsupported, ....and suddenly cornered, as a result.....appear bewildered at a misunderstood expectation of themselves and what they thought The Job was, and needed. It sure was different when you were in it. Things got much more complicated, really fast.
The Job demanded adequately, intelligently, appropriately "responded to" situations - but the world, sometimes, did little to hide an agenda that WANTED the spectacle and rush, the overwrought and overplayed, the immediately saturated and permeated appearance in culture and society of The Campy, The Fired, The Apprentice, The Dragon.....the Winner. It wanted a Piece of how this got to be. It needed the Job, and a person strong enough to Show Up, having given the requisite piece, and wanting to show that.....there was More than that as indicator of .....the success of Life. It had grown beyond being ...entertained.
It yearned for an absence of the encouraged schism, the fear of striving, the bewilderment of applied effort, expended, this populace.
This longing persisted in the face of ....the sudden and fierce and ugly and wrenching responses of Death, and Mindlessness, symbols of Fear, and frightened, confused, wandering, neglected, overwhelmed, goalless, overwrought, uncalmed, numbed, desensitized, cultivatedly Fearful, Godless, unguided, maligned, uncelebrated and unnecessary Tomorrows, and their, well..........Reasons for Being.
It wanted end and More, and it wanted it Now. Sudden and glaring back, it was Revealed to be its very screwtape letter Self.
The confused and wandering Nexts, unhelped, unencouraged, undiscovered - like Dreaming and Honey - faltered. There was no Shaking, but ...the Earth shook. We feared.
Where? Where the measured response and the humility of a thoughtful - not infallible - assurance of this "trying" as a goal.....this renewal of The Desire of Ages?
"I think, therefore I am", eclipsed itself as a joke, its profound respect and dignity in brevity and succinctness flung about AS a joke - as a result, really, but something far away.....not layered, like a wellmade lasagna, languishing in a burpless world.
Take the expression "sober second thought", for example: it is a strange medicine, examined.
Societal and worldly pressures, the desire to be accepted, yearning for inclusion or acknowledgement or presence in something other than a "give me something I need right now" role in life, rather than a contemplative, earnest, and intelligent striving towards higher purpose and different kinds of achievements, often intrude and collide with the disciplined reality that is the dignity of supporting one's self with work.
The power and the encouraged and significant indication that work and effort has merit to us, and that our efforts, expended, have meaning and value and help, not simply as the endless monotony of "the necessary and required", but as calming and achievable, admired and emulated, patterns of life, in order to support and contribute to one's own, and the world's, wellbeing, health, and continuance, become simply annoying to some people. So, too, does the deepening resentment - along with the vista and the chasm of their anger and despair at having less opportunity to move beyond "keeping one's head above water", as the gap widens between surviving and opulence - and wave words like "access, time and money" like a hanky spurting confetti shards of "this is what you need to acquire a higher level of unattainable education" sop the imaginary spurts - now blood, along with the sweat, and increasingly unable to stop the flow, which grows mightier with every life, taken by the sacrificial greed of the Desire to Control.
Universally, "being educated" is simply more than knowing how to run a computer system.
This is a useful and meaningful and helpful skill.
In terms of accessing information and dissemination, its proper place and excellence as a tool, by default, promote and assist in achieving an understanding that the implications of these bodies of knowledge, do not REPLACE them, or that denying wrongs and horrors and inconsistencies in a fantasy-constructed private world are anything but a mechanism by which we persist, in the face of a realized inability to cope. These, too, do NOT represent knowledge - they represent its demise, and our increasing intolerance of each other, to a large degree.
Alternatively, the ways and means by which our tools provide a supportive nature (think cradle of life and garden) suggest an involvement in, and the encouraging and assistance of, the curiosity towards, and hunger for, learning and purpose and meaning in life, the prowess required to live it with daring, and the nudge it needs, internally and externally, in order to become a more REALIZED being, having realized this as a desired goal in order to accomplish this.
Indeed, much in society wants anything BUT this, and will make you understand, at last, why "an education" makes you different: ignorance might be bliss, but when you begin to understand things around you in a different way - you begin to respond to them in a different way. This is dangerous, because it is both proven, AND true, empirically and actually. One has offered to be the other's chased tail, in fact. Neither feels wagged.
Ideally, having begun to relate to others in a very different way, it becomes less and less about "reaction" and "appetite" and "flash response"......and more about the sustained, concerned, and gradual understanding that life, like human beings, is much more than "surface indicators" of anything.
Bodily, our actual composition having been comprised of, essentially, in terms of "physical element" the singularly unique melding of carbon based forms and artistic molding held together by water, we are the epitome of a Creator's Dreaming of life, realized in Image and Love. We are Love, spoken into being, dust breathed into, and elements moved into shape and form and incredibly complex composition - a composition we have only begun to truly understand, despite our incessantly assertive belief that orderliness of the corporeal is the only essential necessity in the world of healing, as the ultimate expression of God as First - and Finest - Artist.
We become, as the old Wendy's commercial puts it "all about the pieces parts" - and less and less coherent about the impetus and mysteries of the interactions of them, moved by the Unseen.
This is anathema to the Appetites, whose lives function only on this level, and want you to understand and accept that this, too, is ALL YOU ARE. They lie....perhaps unintentionally....perhaps not.
Their agendas may also hold a seed to the purpose and meaning in their lives, examined. They, too, become clearer, upon examination. All lives do - or at least the parts we care to study. It's ironic that this often only occurs after the actual physical life ceases, much like our fear of hearing live poets read their work. It's much more exciting and academic, one is often told, to have others do it after the pesky inconvenience of knowing that the actual Creator of a work has the audacity not to be Dead. (I like to think God smiles at this, omnisciently, very not dead, either.) I also agree to work out the grammar kinks at a much more convenient time, inconveniently. Neither, apparently, make me easy, or easy to get along with.....whatever that is. I have decided it is a direction, as I have seen people wave and say at their dogs. Ensuingly, I am concerned that I am confused at being mistaken for a dog, but.... unsurprised. After all.....I have two dogs, and I really love them. I read to them. They both know I'm not dead, and never seem to mind. They do not ask me to explain what I meant when I wrote something. I only get one shot, and then everyone else gets to guess, from that point on. Dead is easier and much more filled with possibility, apparently.
This is not, as we are told, a dangerous indicator of political instability and shakers of governments and political freedom; merely a reminder that, with freedom, comes the sensibility that you must, at least, have a sense of the Species which moves it, and us, beyond Appetite, and into Potential. We begin to understand our partial composition as Vessel, instantly, and differently.
This is why the two become confused when we seek an inexplicable solace which is not sated, understood, or experienced as part of "being a whole person, being healthy, or being fulfilled" by appealing, simply, to any corporeal appetite on its own. At this point, I remind myself that I sensibly decided to get two dogs, instead of one, to provide the other with "Company." I congratulate myself on a shrewd showing of my "dog magnanimosity." I do not explain the gesture, or the spelling - or apologize for the fact that I have now attained - at least in my dog's eyes - hot dog status. Wearily, and bewildered, I throw toast about, undaunted, having understood, at last, why they did it in Rocky Horror Picture show. The ritual was about something.
We feed and feed and feed and often feel more empty and disgusted with what we have understood ourselves to have been: the endless feeding of a yearning, a longing, and an emptiness, and what we are told is "The Answer: The Cure: What we Need."
We do not stop to examine what it feeds, who does well by it, or how it is supposed to "help" us.
We become mired in one element of our selves: appetite - often someone else's. Even appetite for more death.
We begin to lose our ability to relate to each other, or to understand why less and less time to do so hurts us, and provokes "reaction"....not "response."
Having been made less important in the world's agenda of being necessary or important - like human beings, impatient with ourselves, dammit - we, too, become "things to be moved and controlled and used; unmoved by a deeper element in life" - which we still get glimpses of, feelings about, and longings for, but which we no longer value or understand.
We become CONSUMED BY CONSUMING, AND HAVING BEEN CONSUMED BY BEING CONSUMED - We are NO MORE. This is not to be confused with transsubstantiation. The two are, well.....not the same.
Let's face it: one hovers.
Well made artistry in a beautifully prepared meal made with skill and pride become less important, because we do not appreciate it in the same way, anymore, have time to do it, or care that it has become simply a means by which to fill a space - thus a Michelin star, countless hours perfecting and making the product of this look effortless, and seemingly endless creativity born of hours of practice and hard work and necessity and no money for the luxury of food made by others in a place away from the din and stress of "duty" in life, begin to mean little. We no longer see the Art in Everyday, the order in Design that is the Intelligent Design of Love in The Little Things, accomplished in order to achieve this cradle and continuance.
We miss seeing the new tulips sprouting which we planted late in the gloom, hastily, hoping, last autumn. It fills a "surface purpose".....and that is how we begin to feel about ourselves.
Worn down, we begin to feel ineffectual and unencouraged, less vital and less loved by a very present Creator. But......we still ARE, as beings. We still EXIST.
Why, now, are we likely to shy away from controversial issues, or dissuade discussion? Because we are AFRAID OF THEM, afraid of the challenge of finding answers, and no longer stirred by the Order of Things Again, as we must be, by means of interraction, exchanges of ideas....by caring. We are fearful.
Moving beyond simply the Id, Intelligent Design moves minds and creates and makes possible solutions, free explorations not bent on death as goal, or demise as proof of our our unworthiness to be here, but, instead, radiate realized, and free and filled lives with shared purpose and glimmerings of realized Joy.
Likewise, in an earnest world of academic, social and religious integrity, we are often put upon to "perform for other agendas". Some are necessary, and some are excessive, debasing, unhelpful, peripheral, degrading, and downright designed to be nasty, and for no useful purpose other than to validate intrusive power in the midst of helpful and searching discourse. Getting kicked out of Brownies for quite reasonably swearing at another Brownie, for instance, is reasonable within the context of the circumstances precipitating it: the discovery that she has peed on your badge project. The response needs no measured, mature or easy response: you swear at her, and she stops doing it. Case closed.
Confusingly, you are told she is The Brown Owl's daughter.
Wisely, you heed your father's sage advice and find something else to do until it's safe to be a Girl Guide: male logic, realized, shared, and comforting. Three long, emulated, and beautifully-filled years of new discoveries in the shared epithets of the working men I observed with badgeproject-like earnestness, as they accomplished much, and swore at even more, seemed worth it. This was deemed useful by others. I attempted such feats as trying to look like them by hacking myself out new bangs with the Garden Shears, wanting to belong. I cared little that this was in preparaton for my first class picture - but, sadly, my mother did. I wished I had stabbed myself, instead, when she cried as I explained that I had saved her money. Wisely, remembering Brownies, I did not tell her this. I feared some sort of uniform might suddenly materialize out of thin air.....unlike the cardboard sparkly halo and actual wired wings which my mother had bent onto my egg-shaped head with the newly-shorn tonsure I had felt sure would appeal to her sense of overexpense. The smiling seemed strange, in retrospect, but I smiled back, unevenly and assertively having been made - at least in surface war about it - angelic. I really did think it was "Reserve" rather than Preserve. Colin Pickles, I felt sure, would concur, hovering, were I able to discern his Presence.....but I digress.
The integrity of research in the academic world, the pressure to publish, and the status and public curiosity which results in skewed, presupposed and expected results often result in base things like funding and interest in too-often underfunded institutions of higher learning and "life as a Bell Curve." But when it does, perhaps it is our goals that are lacking, and our Journey that is unclear. Perhaps a Bell Curve is a tool beyond the linear nature of binary code and incessant Pi, and a rest stop in yet another demanded Sine.
Perhaps demeaned and clearly indicative accuracy of statistical analysis as a useful exercise, is not the only way, or the only language, by which, and in which, we measure or consider Progress when it is a Pilgrim's unrelenting Plod through life. We must, needs be, combine other elements to have a whole, and meaningful, Table.
This Table has integrity beyond Itself, as a Thing. It is more complex, more layered.....more suggestive of why unrealized and matched and developing spiritual, emotional, intellectual and ethical prowess denote a More Realized Life....but that part of it then, might be determined by the measurement of success in different ways, with different Tables, and with different, and complementary, supportive goals.
It is about more than "accidental collusion."
It "rounds".
Universally, "being educated" is simply more than knowing how to run a computer system.
This is a useful and meaningful and helpful skill.
In terms of accessing information and dissemination, its proper place and excellence as a tool, by default, promote and assist in achieving an understanding that the implications of these bodies of knowledge, do not REPLACE them, or that denying wrongs and horrors and inconsistencies in a fantasy-constructed private world are anything but a mechanism by which we persist, in the face of a realized inability to cope. These, too, do NOT represent knowledge - they represent its demise, and our increasing intolerance of each other, to a large degree.
Alternatively, the ways and means by which our tools provide a supportive nature (think cradle of life and garden) suggest an involvement in, and the encouraging and assistance of, the curiosity towards, and hunger for, learning and purpose and meaning in life, the prowess required to live it with daring, and the nudge it needs, internally and externally, in order to become a more REALIZED being, having realized this as a desired goal in order to accomplish this.
Indeed, much in society wants anything BUT this, and will make you understand, at last, why "an education" makes you different: ignorance might be bliss, but when you begin to understand things around you in a different way - you begin to respond to them in a different way. This is dangerous, because it is both proven, AND true, empirically and actually. One has offered to be the other's chased tail, in fact. Neither feels wagged.
Ideally, having begun to relate to others in a very different way, it becomes less and less about "reaction" and "appetite" and "flash response"......and more about the sustained, concerned, and gradual understanding that life, like human beings, is much more than "surface indicators" of anything.
Bodily, our actual composition having been comprised of, essentially, in terms of "physical element" the singularly unique melding of carbon based forms and artistic molding held together by water, we are the epitome of a Creator's Dreaming of life, realized in Image and Love. We are Love, spoken into being, dust breathed into, and elements moved into shape and form and incredibly complex composition - a composition we have only begun to truly understand, despite our incessantly assertive belief that orderliness of the corporeal is the only essential necessity in the world of healing, as the ultimate expression of God as First - and Finest - Artist.
We become, as the old Wendy's commercial puts it "all about the pieces parts" - and less and less coherent about the impetus and mysteries of the interactions of them, moved by the Unseen.
This is anathema to the Appetites, whose lives function only on this level, and want you to understand and accept that this, too, is ALL YOU ARE. They lie....perhaps unintentionally....perhaps not.
Their agendas may also hold a seed to the purpose and meaning in their lives, examined. They, too, become clearer, upon examination. All lives do - or at least the parts we care to study. It's ironic that this often only occurs after the actual physical life ceases, much like our fear of hearing live poets read their work. It's much more exciting and academic, one is often told, to have others do it after the pesky inconvenience of knowing that the actual Creator of a work has the audacity not to be Dead. (I like to think God smiles at this, omnisciently, very not dead, either.) I also agree to work out the grammar kinks at a much more convenient time, inconveniently. Neither, apparently, make me easy, or easy to get along with.....whatever that is. I have decided it is a direction, as I have seen people wave and say at their dogs. Ensuingly, I am concerned that I am confused at being mistaken for a dog, but.... unsurprised. After all.....I have two dogs, and I really love them. I read to them. They both know I'm not dead, and never seem to mind. They do not ask me to explain what I meant when I wrote something. I only get one shot, and then everyone else gets to guess, from that point on. Dead is easier and much more filled with possibility, apparently.
This is not, as we are told, a dangerous indicator of political instability and shakers of governments and political freedom; merely a reminder that, with freedom, comes the sensibility that you must, at least, have a sense of the Species which moves it, and us, beyond Appetite, and into Potential. We begin to understand our partial composition as Vessel, instantly, and differently.
This is why the two become confused when we seek an inexplicable solace which is not sated, understood, or experienced as part of "being a whole person, being healthy, or being fulfilled" by appealing, simply, to any corporeal appetite on its own. At this point, I remind myself that I sensibly decided to get two dogs, instead of one, to provide the other with "Company." I congratulate myself on a shrewd showing of my "dog magnanimosity." I do not explain the gesture, or the spelling - or apologize for the fact that I have now attained - at least in my dog's eyes - hot dog status. Wearily, and bewildered, I throw toast about, undaunted, having understood, at last, why they did it in Rocky Horror Picture show. The ritual was about something.
We feed and feed and feed and often feel more empty and disgusted with what we have understood ourselves to have been: the endless feeding of a yearning, a longing, and an emptiness, and what we are told is "The Answer: The Cure: What we Need."
We do not stop to examine what it feeds, who does well by it, or how it is supposed to "help" us.
We become mired in one element of our selves: appetite - often someone else's. Even appetite for more death.
We begin to lose our ability to relate to each other, or to understand why less and less time to do so hurts us, and provokes "reaction"....not "response."
Having been made less important in the world's agenda of being necessary or important - like human beings, impatient with ourselves, dammit - we, too, become "things to be moved and controlled and used; unmoved by a deeper element in life" - which we still get glimpses of, feelings about, and longings for, but which we no longer value or understand.
We become CONSUMED BY CONSUMING, AND HAVING BEEN CONSUMED BY BEING CONSUMED - We are NO MORE. This is not to be confused with transsubstantiation. The two are, well.....not the same.
Let's face it: one hovers.
Well made artistry in a beautifully prepared meal made with skill and pride become less important, because we do not appreciate it in the same way, anymore, have time to do it, or care that it has become simply a means by which to fill a space - thus a Michelin star, countless hours perfecting and making the product of this look effortless, and seemingly endless creativity born of hours of practice and hard work and necessity and no money for the luxury of food made by others in a place away from the din and stress of "duty" in life, begin to mean little. We no longer see the Art in Everyday, the order in Design that is the Intelligent Design of Love in The Little Things, accomplished in order to achieve this cradle and continuance.
We miss seeing the new tulips sprouting which we planted late in the gloom, hastily, hoping, last autumn. It fills a "surface purpose".....and that is how we begin to feel about ourselves.
Worn down, we begin to feel ineffectual and unencouraged, less vital and less loved by a very present Creator. But......we still ARE, as beings. We still EXIST.
Why, now, are we likely to shy away from controversial issues, or dissuade discussion? Because we are AFRAID OF THEM, afraid of the challenge of finding answers, and no longer stirred by the Order of Things Again, as we must be, by means of interraction, exchanges of ideas....by caring. We are fearful.
Moving beyond simply the Id, Intelligent Design moves minds and creates and makes possible solutions, free explorations not bent on death as goal, or demise as proof of our our unworthiness to be here, but, instead, radiate realized, and free and filled lives with shared purpose and glimmerings of realized Joy.
Likewise, in an earnest world of academic, social and religious integrity, we are often put upon to "perform for other agendas". Some are necessary, and some are excessive, debasing, unhelpful, peripheral, degrading, and downright designed to be nasty, and for no useful purpose other than to validate intrusive power in the midst of helpful and searching discourse. Getting kicked out of Brownies for quite reasonably swearing at another Brownie, for instance, is reasonable within the context of the circumstances precipitating it: the discovery that she has peed on your badge project. The response needs no measured, mature or easy response: you swear at her, and she stops doing it. Case closed.
Confusingly, you are told she is The Brown Owl's daughter.
Wisely, you heed your father's sage advice and find something else to do until it's safe to be a Girl Guide: male logic, realized, shared, and comforting. Three long, emulated, and beautifully-filled years of new discoveries in the shared epithets of the working men I observed with badgeproject-like earnestness, as they accomplished much, and swore at even more, seemed worth it. This was deemed useful by others. I attempted such feats as trying to look like them by hacking myself out new bangs with the Garden Shears, wanting to belong. I cared little that this was in preparaton for my first class picture - but, sadly, my mother did. I wished I had stabbed myself, instead, when she cried as I explained that I had saved her money. Wisely, remembering Brownies, I did not tell her this. I feared some sort of uniform might suddenly materialize out of thin air.....unlike the cardboard sparkly halo and actual wired wings which my mother had bent onto my egg-shaped head with the newly-shorn tonsure I had felt sure would appeal to her sense of overexpense. The smiling seemed strange, in retrospect, but I smiled back, unevenly and assertively having been made - at least in surface war about it - angelic. I really did think it was "Reserve" rather than Preserve. Colin Pickles, I felt sure, would concur, hovering, were I able to discern his Presence.....but I digress.
The integrity of research in the academic world, the pressure to publish, and the status and public curiosity which results in skewed, presupposed and expected results often result in base things like funding and interest in too-often underfunded institutions of higher learning and "life as a Bell Curve." But when it does, perhaps it is our goals that are lacking, and our Journey that is unclear. Perhaps a Bell Curve is a tool beyond the linear nature of binary code and incessant Pi, and a rest stop in yet another demanded Sine.
Perhaps demeaned and clearly indicative accuracy of statistical analysis as a useful exercise, is not the only way, or the only language, by which, and in which, we measure or consider Progress when it is a Pilgrim's unrelenting Plod through life. We must, needs be, combine other elements to have a whole, and meaningful, Table.
This Table has integrity beyond Itself, as a Thing. It is more complex, more layered.....more suggestive of why unrealized and matched and developing spiritual, emotional, intellectual and ethical prowess denote a More Realized Life....but that part of it then, might be determined by the measurement of success in different ways, with different Tables, and with different, and complementary, supportive goals.
It is about more than "accidental collusion."
It "rounds".
We understand well-rounded person, tempered enthusiasm, and the effects of The Elements, having been suddenly startled into an "incredible Lightness of Being", as Lily reminds us.
It does not hide chasms of skill differences, the glaring and indicative and too-often-absent influences and effects of good diet and steady routine as a compendium and fulcrum of any learning, in a world of "how I feel about having to know it" - (which, frankly, we hope were words never uttered by the needed neurosurgeon or the bonefuser of our mind's eye, when discerning " mountains of crap" as an attitude towards basic anatomy and other such drivel when you could be SURFING), but....its gentle twinkle digs the feel of the Boards, AND the Bard, man.
It knows, wonderfully, that other such shocks to the endless world of no responsibility for ....anything, including a major participating in the avoidance of one's own unnecessary death, whenever possible, as a minor life goal, amidst the plethora of shit out there masquerading as "the shit that needs to get done" include it, in an ordered, measured, rounded, and sane life.
It also knows minor things like clean laundry, transfer of body lice, a mental sense of orderliness, the labour involved in regular and nutritious, but not necessarily wallpaper-matching meals, while assuming the responsibility for "how it looks in Vanity Fair, just laying so against her obviously well taken care of skin, hair and nails", are surprisingly endemic to achieving a doctorate, and not being embarassed to speak in a comfortable compendium of acquired vocabulary, with vagueness or the slightly windy flexing of alliterative lip smacking, in place of orator.
All this......while making $27,000 a year.
It makes clear why there is automatic resentment at automatic raises in minimum wage in automatic lives as automatic solution - because the slow rise from 10 to fifteen dollars has been the result of showing up, time after time after time after time, meeting the numbers, exceeding the numbers, fixing the broken thing, working while sick, overcoming wanting to be somewhere else, understanding, for the 9th time, that someone was dumping this expense on you because they were jealous, not because they wanted you to enjoy the holiday you had not had in 7 years, and, finally......NO, THEY SHOULD NOT, BY DEFAULT, THEN EXPECT THAT ALL OF THESE EFFORTS ARE INDICATIVE OF THE ASSIDUOUS EFFORTS THAT MEAN ....you make more money - and should.
At the most basic level, you proved you could show up - and it is a skill some people absolutely hate, because its core indicates....choice and discipline and responsibility and maturity and .......being reliable. Reliable is not particularly exciting. It is last to be referred to as sexy. But damn, does the shit hit the fan when it's missing.
Apparently, boring and stupid and showing up and refining and defining and making clear - especially when you could lie, cheat, steal, abuse, avoid, self-immolate, rage about, and find someone else to do it, INSTEAD of ......showing up, again, for your shift.........mean you get to:
eat, be warm, have clothes, have street lights that work, snowploughs, safe and trim and unique and lovable quirky, calm, striving, cared-for societies, and the ability to appreciate the fruits of your, and others' labour, and suddenly understand that you are moved by the indications of a deeply respectful, imperfect, society based on being Free to......Live.
Strangely, work makes you, no matter how humble, begin to look at yourself in a new and self-respecting way - sometimes slow, sometimes frustrating, sometimes halting, but ........changing: able to see others' struggles.....able to care and recognize the expression...."so close; this too shall pass" without scoffing...."you can do it!" - and mean it......"Well done, well earned" - having witnessed it....and without the unreasonable and immature expectation that it's then YOURS, by default.
We begin to understand the precision of 45 grinding years, the musicality of the timed till, the challenge of 5 breakfasts, packed lunches, and quick nutritious meals wedged into a 60,80, 90-hour work week, amidst the shouldered burden of yet another unexpected expense in the face of the dreamed-of trip to .....beyond "enough", to somewhere else, where no one worries about it, carefully created to seem effortless, and normal, when it's not.
We begin to understand "enough" differently; with precision, with expression, with regret, with annoyance; with disappointment, with renewed vigour........with another interpretation of it, superimposed on our own lives, for inexplicable reasons.
We question....we understand - slowly, and arduously, and inexorably - the different "needs" in life, differently. Time does this to us, despite ourselves.
We do not presume, anymore......"to come to this Thy table, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and Great Mercy. We are not worthy enough to gather up the crumbs under Thy Table, yet....thou art the Same Lord, whose property is always to have Mercy."
Becoming King of the World, or the Queen of everyone else's imposed guilt about never being allowed to be Ourselves; for never achieving anything, for having no understanding of the Quiet Joy of having been identified, unsarcastically, or unequivocally, as "The Best Fruits, understood, in a good man's life", are suddenly - instantly - clear.
All this, with the subtlety, deeper understanding, stern testing, gentle humour, and effortless winding together of the elements of Reason, and Passion, and Appetite, blended into clay and breathed into, as unintelligible, misunderstood, stranded and ever mutating and stunted and yearning and loved, unloved, prevented-from-achieving, caring, maligned, mocked, hurt, abused, misused, underestimated, and ......still trying, as we view ourselves to be.
Having been species-saved by a Saviour's implicit Benevolence, in the face of Mindless clay, flailing and reactive and consuming, we live in Hope, until It is Done.
At its best, the discerning mind, empirically challenged, does not merely "conjecture".
It ACTIVELY hopes; it daringly dreams - but plans methodically, like a garden, towards the completion of the edifice, brick by brick, block by lovingly fashioned block, until even beyond the days when the Craftsman's eyes might see evidence and emulation of its Mighty Shelter, achieved - both seen and Unseen - it humbly understands the arduous nature of life, fulfilled, fulfilling......lived, and "Present."
It does not hide chasms of skill differences, the glaring and indicative and too-often-absent influences and effects of good diet and steady routine as a compendium and fulcrum of any learning, in a world of "how I feel about having to know it" - (which, frankly, we hope were words never uttered by the needed neurosurgeon or the bonefuser of our mind's eye, when discerning " mountains of crap" as an attitude towards basic anatomy and other such drivel when you could be SURFING), but....its gentle twinkle digs the feel of the Boards, AND the Bard, man.
It knows, wonderfully, that other such shocks to the endless world of no responsibility for ....anything, including a major participating in the avoidance of one's own unnecessary death, whenever possible, as a minor life goal, amidst the plethora of shit out there masquerading as "the shit that needs to get done" include it, in an ordered, measured, rounded, and sane life.
It also knows minor things like clean laundry, transfer of body lice, a mental sense of orderliness, the labour involved in regular and nutritious, but not necessarily wallpaper-matching meals, while assuming the responsibility for "how it looks in Vanity Fair, just laying so against her obviously well taken care of skin, hair and nails", are surprisingly endemic to achieving a doctorate, and not being embarassed to speak in a comfortable compendium of acquired vocabulary, with vagueness or the slightly windy flexing of alliterative lip smacking, in place of orator.
All this......while making $27,000 a year.
It makes clear why there is automatic resentment at automatic raises in minimum wage in automatic lives as automatic solution - because the slow rise from 10 to fifteen dollars has been the result of showing up, time after time after time after time, meeting the numbers, exceeding the numbers, fixing the broken thing, working while sick, overcoming wanting to be somewhere else, understanding, for the 9th time, that someone was dumping this expense on you because they were jealous, not because they wanted you to enjoy the holiday you had not had in 7 years, and, finally......NO, THEY SHOULD NOT, BY DEFAULT, THEN EXPECT THAT ALL OF THESE EFFORTS ARE INDICATIVE OF THE ASSIDUOUS EFFORTS THAT MEAN ....you make more money - and should.
At the most basic level, you proved you could show up - and it is a skill some people absolutely hate, because its core indicates....choice and discipline and responsibility and maturity and .......being reliable. Reliable is not particularly exciting. It is last to be referred to as sexy. But damn, does the shit hit the fan when it's missing.
Apparently, boring and stupid and showing up and refining and defining and making clear - especially when you could lie, cheat, steal, abuse, avoid, self-immolate, rage about, and find someone else to do it, INSTEAD of ......showing up, again, for your shift.........mean you get to:
eat, be warm, have clothes, have street lights that work, snowploughs, safe and trim and unique and lovable quirky, calm, striving, cared-for societies, and the ability to appreciate the fruits of your, and others' labour, and suddenly understand that you are moved by the indications of a deeply respectful, imperfect, society based on being Free to......Live.
Strangely, work makes you, no matter how humble, begin to look at yourself in a new and self-respecting way - sometimes slow, sometimes frustrating, sometimes halting, but ........changing: able to see others' struggles.....able to care and recognize the expression...."so close; this too shall pass" without scoffing...."you can do it!" - and mean it......"Well done, well earned" - having witnessed it....and without the unreasonable and immature expectation that it's then YOURS, by default.
We begin to understand the precision of 45 grinding years, the musicality of the timed till, the challenge of 5 breakfasts, packed lunches, and quick nutritious meals wedged into a 60,80, 90-hour work week, amidst the shouldered burden of yet another unexpected expense in the face of the dreamed-of trip to .....beyond "enough", to somewhere else, where no one worries about it, carefully created to seem effortless, and normal, when it's not.
We begin to understand "enough" differently; with precision, with expression, with regret, with annoyance; with disappointment, with renewed vigour........with another interpretation of it, superimposed on our own lives, for inexplicable reasons.
We question....we understand - slowly, and arduously, and inexorably - the different "needs" in life, differently. Time does this to us, despite ourselves.
We do not presume, anymore......"to come to this Thy table, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and Great Mercy. We are not worthy enough to gather up the crumbs under Thy Table, yet....thou art the Same Lord, whose property is always to have Mercy."
Becoming King of the World, or the Queen of everyone else's imposed guilt about never being allowed to be Ourselves; for never achieving anything, for having no understanding of the Quiet Joy of having been identified, unsarcastically, or unequivocally, as "The Best Fruits, understood, in a good man's life", are suddenly - instantly - clear.
All this, with the subtlety, deeper understanding, stern testing, gentle humour, and effortless winding together of the elements of Reason, and Passion, and Appetite, blended into clay and breathed into, as unintelligible, misunderstood, stranded and ever mutating and stunted and yearning and loved, unloved, prevented-from-achieving, caring, maligned, mocked, hurt, abused, misused, underestimated, and ......still trying, as we view ourselves to be.
Having been species-saved by a Saviour's implicit Benevolence, in the face of Mindless clay, flailing and reactive and consuming, we live in Hope, until It is Done.
At its best, the discerning mind, empirically challenged, does not merely "conjecture".
It ACTIVELY hopes; it daringly dreams - but plans methodically, like a garden, towards the completion of the edifice, brick by brick, block by lovingly fashioned block, until even beyond the days when the Craftsman's eyes might see evidence and emulation of its Mighty Shelter, achieved - both seen and Unseen - it humbly understands the arduous nature of life, fulfilled, fulfilling......lived, and "Present."
Saturday, July 22, 2017
CANADA and breaking the deadlock- EMPOWERMENT and ENCOURAGEMENT: an open letter to governments who care
I am Canadian. Historically, I live in a country which has tried, as much as possible, to consider other governments, and vote in one that cares about our people, here. It has not always been formulaically perfect, but the checks and balances inherent in our current 3-party - and burgeoning - parliamentary system still allow for representation that embraces what is best about the best, a strong sense of identity - and room for growth and change. Despite the years of both taking it for granted, and abuse of it by other countries, our model of social concern and basic healthcare and "don't fall through the cracks" sustaining, "get back on your feet", social net is still envied, globally. Our sensibility is, like it or not, a part of that, and, thus......we are still different.
Different still means scary to some people. Although we like to include everyone in the fixes we find to problems, nationally, sometimes imported problems begin to erode the mosaic, still the progress, and - in the guise of "entitlements and inclusion" - slowly begin to erode basic freedoms and rights which we very quietly begin to take stock of.....before they are stripped from us by cultural confusion.
"Isms" in all of their denoted, noted, and stressed disdain, or frowned upon. We identify with the idea of a round table that has, at its heart, crucible ethic and personal responsibility....but we begin to be buffeted by those who come here, bereft, saddened, angered......and finally free. No one is free to take away someone else's free. We must be clear about that, within this "change in surroundings". Sometimes, we have to make people understand why we are beginning to be a little impolite about it, amidst the fears of its destruction.
Lately, the feminine perspective and progress we have made on the fronts of equality, representation, and the ability to formulate and pursue personal goals and aspirations have become confused with imported anger, cultural alienation....and a perception of entitlement which does nothing to further women being taken seriously in the world of politics, political scrum, and global progress, in a time of monumental leaps back, in the consideration of our own mortality as a species. In desperation, our neighbours to the south, confused by that same cultural animosity, both from within and without, look to us with mosaic hope, but with real, and valid, fear about what it might take to achieve and acquire sensibility that does not necessarily have to be inlaid with gold bullion, or a bewildering loss of basic rights and freedoms, as they understand them. We have forgotten that the peace and tranquility we seek, in our temples of contemplation, places of respite, and remembered home spaces, however humble....must begin with us, and towards each other.
And to make peace with one's self is to begin to take stock of one's flaws, desire, errors...and desire to still make life, and effort meaningful. This can be very difficult for some people. Why? Because it can only ever begin with one's self. You can NEVER change anyone else, no matter what programming, bullying, social denial, repression, or just plain cruelty is used to achieve the erasing of the human spirit. You can only kill it. And when you kill it.....you kill a part of yourself. It is the most idiotic, downright despicable act one human being can exhibit towards another, in a supposedly civil society, amongst a supposed progressive species, and between examples of a Creation modeled upon, arguably, the Intelligent Design of an otherworld sensibility - without dismissing the spiritual, in any dimension, of which we only have glimpses in the eyes, and minds, and recognized humility, of our brightest, and best. We are still, I believe, only a part of our part in this life: thus the brain capacity, the retention capacity - and the insistence we have on retarding each other as a result of jealousy, what and how we use the tools at hand, and the forgotten notion that we can achieve truly wonderful things in the garden that is this planet, if only we stop disrupting the balance of carbon, emotion and intellect that is our unique makeup.
Carbon makeup? These are physical appetites and sustenance needs.
Emotional capacity? This is comprised of compassion, sensibility and responsibility without a preponderance of unending cruelty and the erasing of hope and wonderment, coupled with the idea of real, sustained effort, a renewed sense of caring which INCLUDES ourselves and what we present to the world, and a genuine respect for loss, bewilderment, sadness, joy, and all the moments and hope we share as beings.
Intellect? This is the accumulated result, harboured in ourselves, of what we learn, continue to learn, understand, and, sometimes....DON'T do.
Einstein's warning to the creative mind of an age was always the consideration that the hopeful capacity for betterment must always be weighed against the dark reality of the exploited scientist, the abused and abused mind in a repressive, abusive society, and the knowledge that safeguards must always be a part of the deep understanding about the regressive aspects and proclivities of human nature and the quest for power and control. This is frustrating for the naturally ethical, creative, inventive mind...but necessary. It still makes them sad, sometimes, however, when what "could be" sometimes seems so very far removed from our daily lives, and what we hope for, for each other.
But what of now? The immediate needs of a populace, the "jumpstart trigger" of a society insistent upon avoiding the study of historical power and the advent of "The New Hemp", is a testament to careful decisions made by a society determined to learn from itself, but not be swayed by arguments which experience, reality and education now determine to be weak defenses of power and control, at best. Again... power and control.
The acknowledgement of the caretaking aspect of our society need not exclude, by default, our very capacity to carry on with life, replacing it with an imposed sense and hysterical, typically characterized "tree hugger" sweeping assessment that never allows for the imperfect security decision in a moment of stress, the oil spill, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.......and the ensuing destruction of industries which depend upon our ability to stay alive - which is most of them.
This imposed and terrified stasis that ignores the reality of global warming and denies the necessity for nature to begin to heal its scars - while we examine and determine how we can stop creating them - is the result of the sudden shock of recognition, and the understanding that the same way we begin to twist our judicial systems, the corruption of its protectors for agenda, and the abuse of the creative spirit will truly mean our demise, if we allow it. It can be scary....but it doesn't need to be. We can always begin now. We can begin to be our best, creative, happier selves.
Right now, governments concerned about empowering people can consider what we can give back, and not what we can take away, BEFORE assessing taxation issues and imposing more of a tax burden. This, they demand of the payer....but when does it begin "at home, in The House?" Before we strangle new economic growth, entrepreneurial efforts, the newest new businesses, real efforts to "be the next Apple", and the start of service businesses and new ideas that creates jobs for the kids of tomorrow, by the imposition of an unreasonable minimum wage......we have to do the work required to take a different approach. We OWE that to effort.
How? Start with what we have, governmentally speaking. We have people who care. We have public facilities and services which are not SUPPOSED to make a profit; they are supposed to be selfsustaining, provide a service, and meet the needs of a populace. They should never have inherited debtloads, and "debt reduction" fees. No one should have received a bonus for ending a tenure with these things; private industry only did when they acquired public monies to do it, without first REMOVING the obscenity of million dollar bonuses to prop up industries that threatened societal implosion. With those monies, must come seats at the accountability boardroom tables and a public safeguard of public monies that comes with it in the guise of that new person at the board meeting - whether the bolstered industry likes it or not: and it goes without saying that that representation will, ideally, not be an industry patsy or a pushover. They will enforce accountability when there is a demand for public monies to bolster an industry. Period.
Originally, people supposedly became involved in this work because of an inherent sense of ethics and concern which extended to others. How do THEY get from A to B?
1. In a less ethereal, financial sense, the proverbial A to B is an actual, and physical one.
Therefore, Encourage the use of public transit in urban areas by reduced and or, severely discounted, passes for use OF public transit to government employees - FIRST. Keep track of increased usage, increased ridership, and the new needs, routes, and efforts of people who want to help, who want to work, and who are SICK of being referred to as THE WORKING POOR. People may already use these venues....and they now instantly have more money to spend. It will be immediate, and surprising, what should happen next: discount rates for high traffic times during the day for the general populace, after six months.
Why? Because it will begin to be the norm in cities again, to take public transit, as long as money is also spent on making sure it is SAFE. With a little extra effort, you can still get there, save money (for that new car, maybe...but maybe a hybrid), a vacation.....that mortgage you'd really like. The numbers guys will need to put their skills to use in order to watch it happen. And it will be a six month test project for a government sponsored thing (public transit) with encouragement via GIVING SOMETHING BACK to people, instead of taking more from them.
If you can afford to get there, it will STILL be worth making the effort to do so: the humble job, the morning class.....the part-time gig that offsets that fixed income, made possible by an allowance which allows for an instant, and immediate, ability to AUGMENT those fixed amounts - unemployment, training allowances, fixed pensions - by
2. INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU ARE ABLE TO MAKE WITHOUT PENALTY BY WORKING by between five and ten percent while being empowered by these temporary, not cyclical, social safety nets which are the hallmarks of a civil society, not an indicator of its weaknesses - even twenty, thirty, or forty percent, in some cases, where age and increased medical expenses as a result of age or responsibility mean more of that fixed income is spoken for, or effort is made impossible or unreasonable, when coupled with child care expenses or unhelpful punishment of efforts to better oneself towards independence, without moral judgement about the reasons why family units are not the 1950's model. This is REAL and IMMEDIATE fiscal encouragement that REWARDS, but does not PUNISH, effort, at its most basic. This is an acknowledgement that ageism and youth and ageism and an older working force can help each other with renewed enthusiasm and a respect for a learned work ethic....and work together, with respect.
At the very root, these two actions on the part of government - simple actions which strengthen other educational, social, health, and infrastructure responsibilities and programs - will INSTANTLY ENCOURAGE AND EMPOWER those who still hope and dream, and continue towards the dream Americans talk about when, in confusion, they vote in the selfmade man who now says he wants to extend the formula for success to the very people that made him financially able to hold that pen, and their fate, in a different kind of challenge. Whether he is interested in capacity and possibility, the New Deal or the Old Wheel remains to be seen, but in the midst of that learning curve, we CAN DO something NOW. What occurs almost immediately will surprise these powerful men, for, as Gino Vanelli said - and said well....."People gotta move."
Different still means scary to some people. Although we like to include everyone in the fixes we find to problems, nationally, sometimes imported problems begin to erode the mosaic, still the progress, and - in the guise of "entitlements and inclusion" - slowly begin to erode basic freedoms and rights which we very quietly begin to take stock of.....before they are stripped from us by cultural confusion.
"Isms" in all of their denoted, noted, and stressed disdain, or frowned upon. We identify with the idea of a round table that has, at its heart, crucible ethic and personal responsibility....but we begin to be buffeted by those who come here, bereft, saddened, angered......and finally free. No one is free to take away someone else's free. We must be clear about that, within this "change in surroundings". Sometimes, we have to make people understand why we are beginning to be a little impolite about it, amidst the fears of its destruction.
Lately, the feminine perspective and progress we have made on the fronts of equality, representation, and the ability to formulate and pursue personal goals and aspirations have become confused with imported anger, cultural alienation....and a perception of entitlement which does nothing to further women being taken seriously in the world of politics, political scrum, and global progress, in a time of monumental leaps back, in the consideration of our own mortality as a species. In desperation, our neighbours to the south, confused by that same cultural animosity, both from within and without, look to us with mosaic hope, but with real, and valid, fear about what it might take to achieve and acquire sensibility that does not necessarily have to be inlaid with gold bullion, or a bewildering loss of basic rights and freedoms, as they understand them. We have forgotten that the peace and tranquility we seek, in our temples of contemplation, places of respite, and remembered home spaces, however humble....must begin with us, and towards each other.
And to make peace with one's self is to begin to take stock of one's flaws, desire, errors...and desire to still make life, and effort meaningful. This can be very difficult for some people. Why? Because it can only ever begin with one's self. You can NEVER change anyone else, no matter what programming, bullying, social denial, repression, or just plain cruelty is used to achieve the erasing of the human spirit. You can only kill it. And when you kill it.....you kill a part of yourself. It is the most idiotic, downright despicable act one human being can exhibit towards another, in a supposedly civil society, amongst a supposed progressive species, and between examples of a Creation modeled upon, arguably, the Intelligent Design of an otherworld sensibility - without dismissing the spiritual, in any dimension, of which we only have glimpses in the eyes, and minds, and recognized humility, of our brightest, and best. We are still, I believe, only a part of our part in this life: thus the brain capacity, the retention capacity - and the insistence we have on retarding each other as a result of jealousy, what and how we use the tools at hand, and the forgotten notion that we can achieve truly wonderful things in the garden that is this planet, if only we stop disrupting the balance of carbon, emotion and intellect that is our unique makeup.
Carbon makeup? These are physical appetites and sustenance needs.
Emotional capacity? This is comprised of compassion, sensibility and responsibility without a preponderance of unending cruelty and the erasing of hope and wonderment, coupled with the idea of real, sustained effort, a renewed sense of caring which INCLUDES ourselves and what we present to the world, and a genuine respect for loss, bewilderment, sadness, joy, and all the moments and hope we share as beings.
Intellect? This is the accumulated result, harboured in ourselves, of what we learn, continue to learn, understand, and, sometimes....DON'T do.
Einstein's warning to the creative mind of an age was always the consideration that the hopeful capacity for betterment must always be weighed against the dark reality of the exploited scientist, the abused and abused mind in a repressive, abusive society, and the knowledge that safeguards must always be a part of the deep understanding about the regressive aspects and proclivities of human nature and the quest for power and control. This is frustrating for the naturally ethical, creative, inventive mind...but necessary. It still makes them sad, sometimes, however, when what "could be" sometimes seems so very far removed from our daily lives, and what we hope for, for each other.
But what of now? The immediate needs of a populace, the "jumpstart trigger" of a society insistent upon avoiding the study of historical power and the advent of "The New Hemp", is a testament to careful decisions made by a society determined to learn from itself, but not be swayed by arguments which experience, reality and education now determine to be weak defenses of power and control, at best. Again... power and control.
The acknowledgement of the caretaking aspect of our society need not exclude, by default, our very capacity to carry on with life, replacing it with an imposed sense and hysterical, typically characterized "tree hugger" sweeping assessment that never allows for the imperfect security decision in a moment of stress, the oil spill, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.......and the ensuing destruction of industries which depend upon our ability to stay alive - which is most of them.
This imposed and terrified stasis that ignores the reality of global warming and denies the necessity for nature to begin to heal its scars - while we examine and determine how we can stop creating them - is the result of the sudden shock of recognition, and the understanding that the same way we begin to twist our judicial systems, the corruption of its protectors for agenda, and the abuse of the creative spirit will truly mean our demise, if we allow it. It can be scary....but it doesn't need to be. We can always begin now. We can begin to be our best, creative, happier selves.
Right now, governments concerned about empowering people can consider what we can give back, and not what we can take away, BEFORE assessing taxation issues and imposing more of a tax burden. This, they demand of the payer....but when does it begin "at home, in The House?" Before we strangle new economic growth, entrepreneurial efforts, the newest new businesses, real efforts to "be the next Apple", and the start of service businesses and new ideas that creates jobs for the kids of tomorrow, by the imposition of an unreasonable minimum wage......we have to do the work required to take a different approach. We OWE that to effort.
How? Start with what we have, governmentally speaking. We have people who care. We have public facilities and services which are not SUPPOSED to make a profit; they are supposed to be selfsustaining, provide a service, and meet the needs of a populace. They should never have inherited debtloads, and "debt reduction" fees. No one should have received a bonus for ending a tenure with these things; private industry only did when they acquired public monies to do it, without first REMOVING the obscenity of million dollar bonuses to prop up industries that threatened societal implosion. With those monies, must come seats at the accountability boardroom tables and a public safeguard of public monies that comes with it in the guise of that new person at the board meeting - whether the bolstered industry likes it or not: and it goes without saying that that representation will, ideally, not be an industry patsy or a pushover. They will enforce accountability when there is a demand for public monies to bolster an industry. Period.
Originally, people supposedly became involved in this work because of an inherent sense of ethics and concern which extended to others. How do THEY get from A to B?
1. In a less ethereal, financial sense, the proverbial A to B is an actual, and physical one.
Therefore, Encourage the use of public transit in urban areas by reduced and or, severely discounted, passes for use OF public transit to government employees - FIRST. Keep track of increased usage, increased ridership, and the new needs, routes, and efforts of people who want to help, who want to work, and who are SICK of being referred to as THE WORKING POOR. People may already use these venues....and they now instantly have more money to spend. It will be immediate, and surprising, what should happen next: discount rates for high traffic times during the day for the general populace, after six months.
Why? Because it will begin to be the norm in cities again, to take public transit, as long as money is also spent on making sure it is SAFE. With a little extra effort, you can still get there, save money (for that new car, maybe...but maybe a hybrid), a vacation.....that mortgage you'd really like. The numbers guys will need to put their skills to use in order to watch it happen. And it will be a six month test project for a government sponsored thing (public transit) with encouragement via GIVING SOMETHING BACK to people, instead of taking more from them.
If you can afford to get there, it will STILL be worth making the effort to do so: the humble job, the morning class.....the part-time gig that offsets that fixed income, made possible by an allowance which allows for an instant, and immediate, ability to AUGMENT those fixed amounts - unemployment, training allowances, fixed pensions - by
2. INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU ARE ABLE TO MAKE WITHOUT PENALTY BY WORKING by between five and ten percent while being empowered by these temporary, not cyclical, social safety nets which are the hallmarks of a civil society, not an indicator of its weaknesses - even twenty, thirty, or forty percent, in some cases, where age and increased medical expenses as a result of age or responsibility mean more of that fixed income is spoken for, or effort is made impossible or unreasonable, when coupled with child care expenses or unhelpful punishment of efforts to better oneself towards independence, without moral judgement about the reasons why family units are not the 1950's model. This is REAL and IMMEDIATE fiscal encouragement that REWARDS, but does not PUNISH, effort, at its most basic. This is an acknowledgement that ageism and youth and ageism and an older working force can help each other with renewed enthusiasm and a respect for a learned work ethic....and work together, with respect.
At the very root, these two actions on the part of government - simple actions which strengthen other educational, social, health, and infrastructure responsibilities and programs - will INSTANTLY ENCOURAGE AND EMPOWER those who still hope and dream, and continue towards the dream Americans talk about when, in confusion, they vote in the selfmade man who now says he wants to extend the formula for success to the very people that made him financially able to hold that pen, and their fate, in a different kind of challenge. Whether he is interested in capacity and possibility, the New Deal or the Old Wheel remains to be seen, but in the midst of that learning curve, we CAN DO something NOW. What occurs almost immediately will surprise these powerful men, for, as Gino Vanelli said - and said well....."People gotta move."
Saturday, June 24, 2017
A Simple Case of Symphony
Picture, if you will, two very different seekers of solace: one, a self-assured, independent, intelligent, deeply sad, upwardly mobile, academically accomplished, woman of colour.Used to, thankfully, and comfortable in, a Canada where both her own freedom and her own search for self-identity are both possible, (if admittedly imperfect) , possibilities, the simplicity and solace of a concert where one is simultaneously at one with, and yet apart from, others, is still a defiant miracle, despite difference.
She has still managed, despite her insane academic schedule, her absence of social life, and deep concern at an externally imploding world, to fit in a mentally self-stabilizing concert where LIVE musicians still exhibit skill, mete out meter in measured doses of self-imposed regimen, and remind her of how little she still knows, and will continue to know, as her time, age, and academic credentials increase. She hopes she always bemoans too little time and the absence of required knowledge in her continued attempts to make sane, impassioned, reasonable assessments of the collection of knowledge, hoping, in doing so, that the application of that same will mean the difference in an uncertain world. It is hard, sometimes, to imagine the instances where that is made real.
Picture, if you will, a traditional, deeply sad (although not outwardly so) older man; used to being presumed to be brave; used to being presumed to be capable, comfortable with, responsible for, and the reason for problems with and for, the aforementioned young woman. He, too, defiantly attends, surrounded by, apart from, and yet enclosed within, the cocoon of the love of the gift of music. He is troubled, hypersensitive, bothered by an absence of appreciation and opportunity for, this gift that has given him this balm. He stands guard as artist and hero, fierce in his appreciation for, recognition of, and thankfulness for, the health and safety and......a flash! My God...he prays he might sleep without thoughts of guns or bombs or dead young people. His music is now all the balm of seeking he made in all of the songs he sang loudly, yelled fiercely, played loudly....instead and in place of, Death. Music still helps him see his way through it.
Angry with himself for thinking it might be, he grows gruff in his speech; abrupt in his gestures....makes contact clumsily but without malice, aside from that which age and Death insist upon, as our movements falter, our hearts contemplate....and our minds give us three seconds to act upon, in a stadium full of people despite the seemingly insane possibility that snatching away a gun or a bomb might result in his own death. The expected bravado, turned inwards, made silly.....denied balm, with hanging head, inwardly weeping heart, the protective somewhat stern father having been denuded.......desparked.
Hypersensitive to the idea of bonking heads or making contact in a modern/ancient frustration made doubly frustrating by being misinterpreted or assimilated into excessive, somewhat combative, academic arrogance........the old hero is vanquished. The enemy is unclear, however.
Its name is Fear, and it has, for a time, destroyed them both, prevented them from speaking, made them both presume, caused them both to move uncharacteristically and suspiciously, and....denied them what they both loved, for a time: a shared Balm.
This is a tragedy. It is especially so, because it is in my country, and despite understanding every terrible thing, both unspoken, and spoken, instinctively, which leads two such different people to attend the same place, for the same reason.....
Alas....despite the beautiful accompaniment which neither was able to attend, together...
My voice is absent.
I am wearied, and ashamed, at having been too busy to get there in time to prevent it....the absence, I mean. Shabba Ranks would understand.
She has still managed, despite her insane academic schedule, her absence of social life, and deep concern at an externally imploding world, to fit in a mentally self-stabilizing concert where LIVE musicians still exhibit skill, mete out meter in measured doses of self-imposed regimen, and remind her of how little she still knows, and will continue to know, as her time, age, and academic credentials increase. She hopes she always bemoans too little time and the absence of required knowledge in her continued attempts to make sane, impassioned, reasonable assessments of the collection of knowledge, hoping, in doing so, that the application of that same will mean the difference in an uncertain world. It is hard, sometimes, to imagine the instances where that is made real.
Picture, if you will, a traditional, deeply sad (although not outwardly so) older man; used to being presumed to be brave; used to being presumed to be capable, comfortable with, responsible for, and the reason for problems with and for, the aforementioned young woman. He, too, defiantly attends, surrounded by, apart from, and yet enclosed within, the cocoon of the love of the gift of music. He is troubled, hypersensitive, bothered by an absence of appreciation and opportunity for, this gift that has given him this balm. He stands guard as artist and hero, fierce in his appreciation for, recognition of, and thankfulness for, the health and safety and......a flash! My God...he prays he might sleep without thoughts of guns or bombs or dead young people. His music is now all the balm of seeking he made in all of the songs he sang loudly, yelled fiercely, played loudly....instead and in place of, Death. Music still helps him see his way through it.
Angry with himself for thinking it might be, he grows gruff in his speech; abrupt in his gestures....makes contact clumsily but without malice, aside from that which age and Death insist upon, as our movements falter, our hearts contemplate....and our minds give us three seconds to act upon, in a stadium full of people despite the seemingly insane possibility that snatching away a gun or a bomb might result in his own death. The expected bravado, turned inwards, made silly.....denied balm, with hanging head, inwardly weeping heart, the protective somewhat stern father having been denuded.......desparked.
Hypersensitive to the idea of bonking heads or making contact in a modern/ancient frustration made doubly frustrating by being misinterpreted or assimilated into excessive, somewhat combative, academic arrogance........the old hero is vanquished. The enemy is unclear, however.
Its name is Fear, and it has, for a time, destroyed them both, prevented them from speaking, made them both presume, caused them both to move uncharacteristically and suspiciously, and....denied them what they both loved, for a time: a shared Balm.
This is a tragedy. It is especially so, because it is in my country, and despite understanding every terrible thing, both unspoken, and spoken, instinctively, which leads two such different people to attend the same place, for the same reason.....
Alas....despite the beautiful accompaniment which neither was able to attend, together...
My voice is absent.
I am wearied, and ashamed, at having been too busy to get there in time to prevent it....the absence, I mean. Shabba Ranks would understand.
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Friday, January 20, 2017
Sunday, December 18, 2016
New Audio Recording Release - Dawn M. Nevills
AVAILABLE NOW! $9.99 - just in time for Christmas!
poetry favourites read aloud - Vol. 1
Read aloud by Dawn M. Nevills
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this volume:
Swinburne, Malloch, Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sandburg and others!
poetry favourites read aloud - Vol. 1
Read aloud by Dawn M. Nevills
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this volume:
Swinburne, Malloch, Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sandburg and others!
 |
| poetry favourites read aloud - Vol. 1 Dawn M. Nevills |
Sunday, November 27, 2016
This year's "Message to Michael"
This year's underestimated women have something to say, quietly, too....
"Kiva.org" Be part of watching something Bloomin' wonderful grow.....People. xo...everywhere.
"Kiva.org" Be part of watching something Bloomin' wonderful grow.....People. xo...everywhere.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Towards Democracy with Integrity
Much has been said about the ideals of democracy.
Its goals are lofty, its ideals are the stuff of the best of man's aspirations, practices, and beliefs, and its precepts - presumably, and by definition - are supposedly reflective of what its most precious values keep sacred, in the daily infrastructures of a free and just society.
And yet.....not until 1947 did Quebec officially recognize the equality of women, and allow them to vote. Think about that. Slaves were emancipated from the Deep South of the United States and FLED to this country ....and women could not participate, legally, in the official declaration of the idea of freedom, within the very democracy that supposedly rescued other human beings from institutional bondage.
For all of our discussions of language, inclusion, cultural representation, religious, sexual, and minority-driven equalities......the Second World War did not include women who could officially vote in Quebec. Little is said by a smug Nation about the reality of its history - and its treatment - of women.
Herded onto official plots of land deemed not threatening enough to deter "progress", blood percentage quotas were also "officially" imposed upon the main aboriginal inhabitants of the country by its "officials" in order to determine and institutionalize governmental subsistence, intertribal racism, caste mentality, and "dependences" which were encouraged and instituted as "equal", while instantly creating a "removed citizen" system which isolated, "zooed" and reduced its First Nations generationally. They created pogroms of the popular, with punishment-popular systems of accountability and shaming with little or no ways and means for governmental and operational foundation-building training....and then, having reduced recipients to recalcitrant child status, moaned about waste and accountability, when the imposed system began to implode. The well-crafted "problem child Frankenstein" failed to perform like the much-hoped-for sainted dancing bear.
Only recently have some of these systemic norms been acknowledged, recognized, and exposed for the ways in which they have "retarded" normal societal growth and inculcated gross misunderstandings, terrible degradations, and complete ignorance about who, what and why the idea of "status" came to be in the first place.
Recent footage revealed the horrific poverty and alarming suicide rates of people in the Far North. More alarming, amidst supposed increases in connectivity and "available wealth" was, simply, a sense of hopelessness in the young....and the elderly. Removed from a knowledge of their own tradition, the void between the two, and the lack of understanding, had become vast, and disturbing.
Having been used up, wrung out, and exploited, the "discomfort" that is "the difficult Aunt" of representational democracy, having been patted on the hand and quietly shut up in the attic to pay off everyone's bills, would not go away, amidst the hypocrisy, the glamour, the new beauty, and the remembered hours of double overtime shifts worked, like most people, with the idea of it resulting in a life made better by work and effort. Alas....1947, a propensity for enjoying the practice of patronizing hope, and the convenience of "putting them uppity niggers to good use" saw the dignity, honour, and belief in the idea of service, denigrated and debased with a viciousness and focus usually reserved for a truly threatening enemy. Education, hope, and equality, responding in bewilderment, looked around in horror, and recognized how easily enslavement of "one for all the rest who found it convenient" - oblivious to the shadows of the six million gassed to death in a fever pitch of focused and furious group envy - was allowed to continue, unchecked.
The artist, aghast at the distortion of freedom and law, retreated, wounded.......
...and then, defiant at the outrage, demanded reparations; unrepentant, determined.....unrelenting.
Its goals are lofty, its ideals are the stuff of the best of man's aspirations, practices, and beliefs, and its precepts - presumably, and by definition - are supposedly reflective of what its most precious values keep sacred, in the daily infrastructures of a free and just society.
And yet.....not until 1947 did Quebec officially recognize the equality of women, and allow them to vote. Think about that. Slaves were emancipated from the Deep South of the United States and FLED to this country ....and women could not participate, legally, in the official declaration of the idea of freedom, within the very democracy that supposedly rescued other human beings from institutional bondage.
For all of our discussions of language, inclusion, cultural representation, religious, sexual, and minority-driven equalities......the Second World War did not include women who could officially vote in Quebec. Little is said by a smug Nation about the reality of its history - and its treatment - of women.
Herded onto official plots of land deemed not threatening enough to deter "progress", blood percentage quotas were also "officially" imposed upon the main aboriginal inhabitants of the country by its "officials" in order to determine and institutionalize governmental subsistence, intertribal racism, caste mentality, and "dependences" which were encouraged and instituted as "equal", while instantly creating a "removed citizen" system which isolated, "zooed" and reduced its First Nations generationally. They created pogroms of the popular, with punishment-popular systems of accountability and shaming with little or no ways and means for governmental and operational foundation-building training....and then, having reduced recipients to recalcitrant child status, moaned about waste and accountability, when the imposed system began to implode. The well-crafted "problem child Frankenstein" failed to perform like the much-hoped-for sainted dancing bear.
Only recently have some of these systemic norms been acknowledged, recognized, and exposed for the ways in which they have "retarded" normal societal growth and inculcated gross misunderstandings, terrible degradations, and complete ignorance about who, what and why the idea of "status" came to be in the first place.
Recent footage revealed the horrific poverty and alarming suicide rates of people in the Far North. More alarming, amidst supposed increases in connectivity and "available wealth" was, simply, a sense of hopelessness in the young....and the elderly. Removed from a knowledge of their own tradition, the void between the two, and the lack of understanding, had become vast, and disturbing.
Having been used up, wrung out, and exploited, the "discomfort" that is "the difficult Aunt" of representational democracy, having been patted on the hand and quietly shut up in the attic to pay off everyone's bills, would not go away, amidst the hypocrisy, the glamour, the new beauty, and the remembered hours of double overtime shifts worked, like most people, with the idea of it resulting in a life made better by work and effort. Alas....1947, a propensity for enjoying the practice of patronizing hope, and the convenience of "putting them uppity niggers to good use" saw the dignity, honour, and belief in the idea of service, denigrated and debased with a viciousness and focus usually reserved for a truly threatening enemy. Education, hope, and equality, responding in bewilderment, looked around in horror, and recognized how easily enslavement of "one for all the rest who found it convenient" - oblivious to the shadows of the six million gassed to death in a fever pitch of focused and furious group envy - was allowed to continue, unchecked.
The artist, aghast at the distortion of freedom and law, retreated, wounded.......
...and then, defiant at the outrage, demanded reparations; unrepentant, determined.....unrelenting.
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