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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

In Memoriam




 Get out those albums and stacks of photos stashed in the cabinets!  Get them out before the week of the funeral!  Try to remember the infinite detail of a loved one's life before the last rites!  Make those big, unwieldly poster board collage-thingies of drawings and pictures ahead of time, get together and remember, have a drink to your love and sympathy together!

 --

In Memoriam E.O.W.

If my voice should die on land,
take it to the shore;
fire it on a viking strand,
scatter ashes on the sea
with a broadcast quick and carelessly.


If my voice die on a mount,
take it to the valley plain,
and erect a strong redoubt;
there circle bold megaliths upon,
ancient troves… Agamemnon!


If my voice die in ocean trench
raise it from that deep abyss;
stretch it on the littoral bench,
like a whale whose youth misspent
seeks Leviathan and will repent.


If my voice dies in the air,
then do not cry
and do not care
for I am but a step away
from lace, from ribbon...and eternitay!


--

ps

I received some comment that the poem was a bit "upbeat" for funerary times...
I said that it was about life eternal, and - in my mind - life eternal is a reason to celebrate and hoot!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Reporting to the Captain

  USS Lyon

My father, a lieutenant in the US Navy in WW II who served on the USS Lyon, reported to his Captain Sunday at 7:30 PM.
I had just finished reading his favorite writing, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, in The Wind In The Willows. As I was reading, I was wondering whether to stop and continue on the morrow, but something would not let me. When I had finished, I sensed that I had opened a door that could not be closed, and it might be used that evening.
On leaving, I told the nurse to call me any time of the night if anything happened.
My mother and I drove 9 miles home, put out the garbage for the morning, and my cell phone rang....
--

Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Morality of the Extended Mind

I have written that the religious task of the near future is the improvement of the morality of the group mind. No doubt, most people think this nonsense.
Think of an extended mind as Science as it exists: scientists worldwide and in touch with each other. Before 1800 and something, even this did not exist. There were no scientists to speak of, and there were no journals and conferences. Think of how Science has defined itself in the last 200 years.

Now there is the rest of us.
We have a Journal and a Conference right at hand in the Internet. It is a tool to create a network.

The journal and conference of communication is at hand. Now we need to understand morality somewhat more deeply than the nonce notions we have of it, and we'll be on the way.
--

The Dream Factory: The Tidal Wave




It was the early morning of January 26, 2013. I was at home, having come from the hospice where my father slept the afternoon of Friday, the 25th, and I was within the comfortable ambit of my own bed on a cold and wintery morning. I had risen very early and had gone back to bed after having lit the colored lights of the small Christmas tree still standing on the dresser in the bedroom. The lights wrapped in front of the statue of the Virgin, the one with the Christ child with a broken ceramic arm, the one I call La Madre del Brazo Roto, and she stood upon the gleam of a blue candle.

Sleeping again, my family was in a city on the water. It was a park area, fairly new; there were no signs of older structures. It seemed like a combination of a park on the water, bright cottages on canals, a modern Venice built in a sunny spot in Florida, maybe. Perhaps something like Johns Island north of Vero Beach - smaller houses, however - with numerous canals through the properties and some small commercial properties near the park and amusement areas.
We were on the edge of a large body of water, like Johns Island borders the Atlantic, or a town like Empire, Michigan borders Lake Michigan.

We seemed to be doing what folks do in such places, walking, talking, looking: nothing too interesting. It was a sunny day; everything was very bright.

At some point I saw an enormous amount of water in the air, held up as if by an invisible enormous tablespoon. It was at a distance, but close enough to instill a sense of wonder and fear.

The invisibly gigantic tablespoon dumped its load of water into the large body of water nearby. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, apparently since the massive amount of water in the sky was not to be dumped on top of us.
However, I felt certainty that there would be a tidal wave or tsunami as a result of the displacement of water in the ocean or lake equal to the massive amount of the sky-borne water. I was sure that it would overwhelm us.
There was a long moment of anticipation, like waiting for immense change, like staring at Richard Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, and making a painful effort to hold one's breath on the edge of chaos and change.

The tidal wave did come, and I saw water pouring from openings in various architectural objects, thinking it was, perhaps, but a small bore, and would prove to be an inconvenience and nothing more, but then I looked up and saw the crest of the approaching wave far over my head, and I knew we were all to be killed.

The wave hit; we tumbled in it. My mind seemed to be straining at this point to continue the story, to follow the churning wave and see what happens to us; it seemed as if there were scripts available and shots edited from films of people being pulled choking from the water, and these could be used or edited in.....

However, we died.
I do not think I have ever died in a dream before.
Afterwards, we inhabited together a cottage with a warm wooden interior with plantation blinds on the windows and doors. We were in a life between normal life and death, an in-between state. I think we briefly discussed it, some saying we survived, and some saying we had not, but now were in another state of being.
There was a front door, a small foyer area, and about four steps leading down into the living area of this mahogany cottage of another life; I remember watching a family member - maybe myself - sweep those steps and ponder the future.........

It was like a limbo. We seemed to go on as before, but knew we could not be perceived by anyone alive... maybe. It is not quite clear.
There was a kitchen of the antiquity of my dreams; it had been used a thousand times by my personal Morpheus, and must stand in the back lot of Montag Universal Dream Films. It was a shadow kitchen to which someone walked from a brightly lit hall, and there was an old time telephone on an old time hall stand... but not visible. I knew it was there just beyond the dark shape of the person entering the dark kitchen, but it was out of the picture, for my view was from inside the darkened kitchen and I saw out into the light, and the stand and telephone were off to the side.......

--
notes

I had come from the hospice; death is all around us. I suppose it is clear enough. I did mention Richard Dadd to my nephew on January 24, a Thursday.

--
--
Addendum

Dreams are very interesting, and here is a germane one:
http://joe-ouellette.blogspot.com/2012/08/dream-about-massive-tsunami-tital-wave.html

Mr. Ouellette forces meaning based on old stories onto his dreams, but we all do.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012


DREAM ABOUT A MASSIVE TSUNAMI TIDAL WAVE


Dream August 1, 2012 by EJ Ouellette

Dreamt a bunch of us were running for our lives up north somewhere. I knew Nibiru was coming and was going to cause a massive flood around the world. I was panicking and running as fast as I could pulling my daughter behind. I saw an apartment building and we ran inside to get as high as we could. As we got to the top I could see a giant wave coming quickly in the distance and before I could even think about it, it was upon us. I took a couple of huge breaths of air and held my daughter really tight. The wave pounded against us but then I realized we were alive and not washed away. I was out of breath since we were under water so long. I realized we were would be fine after that. I started to cry, as I knew many people in the Arctic were washed away and that the arctic was seriously destroyed and thought maybe all the snow had melted.

NOTE: I just read somewhere that Nibiru’s debut in our solar system would be on August 17th and would leave around the Sept 17th. Also Nibiru supposedly takes 3600 years to return to earth. 7200 years ago was the FLOOD. Also interesting to note is that every culture from around the world talks of a flood 7200 years ago. 3600 years ago was when Manna fell from heaven.

EJ Ouellette

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Expectations and La Penumbra de la Paloma

 La Calle Desconocida


I don't believe in God.
I expect God.
I expect that if I turn the corner onto a new and different street -  a street I have never been on before and whose shops are filled with odd objects, a true calle desconocida en la penumbra de la paloma - God will be on the corner, wearing his distinctive dark fedora.

If I believe in God, however, I also believe that the new and different street is either narrow or broad; it is paved with gold or asphalt; the shops are open or they are closed, although things are not always what they seem.
If I do not believe the street will run to my destination, others will try to convince me that this street is the real way and truth, giving me copies of their GPS Salvation. If there are potholes, believers will try to exorcise them and cast them out.
If I use this street enough, the believers will tell me that it is not enough to think that it runs true and straight, for I must read and understand the infrastructure of the street, the pipes beneath, the gas mains, the grades and sub-grades of sand and stone; they will take me to the time when there were no streets and all was virgin forest and edenic peace, and then their God said "Fiat pavimenta!", and then there were pavements of many kinds...

Expectation is the Dawn Consciousness of Children expecting Santa Claus: St.Nicholas is never really absent;  it is the ritual of how we focus on life that allows for being filled or emptied. The ritual of Christmas puts us in a state of apartness and leads us to a state of togetherness... but in actuality, we are always one with St. Nick, with Christmas, with the Christ Child.
Belief rituals are used for a state of constant emptiness, giving us a feeling of never being satisfied.
Expectation is the state of being on the verge of fulfillment, and we easily tip over into the landscape of fullness.
--


Saturday, January 19, 2013

Mind and Reality

I do not believe that Mind creates any Objective Reality. I believe that there is a dynamic system that has a vast number of components, some of which correspond to what we used to call mind or body or external reality.

We exist in a realm of non-linear interactions between these things.

Mind creates Reality and Reality creates Mind; everything mirrors every other thing.

And, I believe God is a unitary component.
--

Survivalist

There are two types of survivalist:  (1) Mountain Man Individual, and (2) Collegial Prospector.

Jeremiah Johnson pretty much lived alone.

The prospectors in the Klondike lived alone or with their partners, and came into town for the winters or for supplies. At those times, they formed a rough libertarianism; their collective votes determined justice and the law.

Now the Second Amendment has two different viewpoints: the needs of the individual against any government, and the collective rights of things such as States and their militia needs.
For all x, the right of x to keep and bear arms...

Both viewpoints are "narratives" and the survivalist or libertarian individuals who are the class for the values of "x" are actors in a "role" we have created to fill the "yarn" of the Second Amendment we have spun. The view of the law changes with change":  mobilis in mobile.

We fight for our stories.

I have discovered that all stories come to an end. My father faces the Guy who says when it's a wrap.
--

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Prayer

Prayer is not magic; prayer does not seek to inform a God of our needs, nor to persuade him to our point of view.

Such a process is magic, old time magic; knock and it shall be opened... like magic.

Or move a mountain!

Faith must be selfless, else those mountains stay right where they are.
How do we learn to be selfless?
--

A Normal Lack Of Intelligence

Aid for the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy has been passed. I do not wish to go into details, only to mention that some sharp-eyed and dull-witted Republicans wished to offset the spending by cuts elsewhere... exactly the same thing Rep. Cantor tried to do when tornadoes ripped through Joplin, Missouri.

Well, dull ones, with Climate Change there is coming a time when all your budgets will be rendered to zero in order to pay for disasters.

You had better come up with  something else other than mere offsets.
--

Friday, January 11, 2013

Justice Scalia and The Second Amendment

Justice Scalia, eternally trying to get a wedgie into the perouques and linens of the Founding Fathers, would never be able to support any right to bear automatic weapons under the Second Amendment; it would be quite clear that the Founding Fathers did not imagine any such weaponry, hence, it could not have been "in their heads".
--

note:
He may have said as much in Heller.

The House of Dorian Gray


--

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Planning The Garden



































--
pix: the cat and the eye

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Zero Dark Thirty

I have been reading reviews of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The writers are quite convinced that the effort is worth the candle. I personally doubt it; they remind me of mediaeval savants arguing about how many angels dance upon a pin's head. It always brings to mind DeQuincy's On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts
I am sorry to say that [there] exists in London... [a] Society of Connoisseurs in Murder.
They profess to be curious in homicide, amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criticize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art...
Insert "torture" for "murder" and you have the current disputation:  torture as a murderous tease.
To argue Technique and Style, and to ignore Morality and Virtue is a grievous mistake.

Our age is not so much Secular as it is Amoral. It avoids virtue like the plague, from the market place to the halls of government to the home, virtue is treated like a homeless person.

Therefore, why should a critic speak of the vile nature of our entertainments, seeing that most of us are dead to the most basic concepts of virtue?
--

The Dream Factory: Coffee Grounds

 The Gate Keeper of Dreams On Break


My used coffee filter ripped, spilling a few tablespoons of grounds onto the floor. As I got down on my knees to clean it up, a memory suddenly flashed into recognition: that I had had a dream last night of being on my knees drying the floor of a bathroom where the tub or a sink had overflowed.

As I write this, I have another memory that my mother actually had a sink overflow last Thursday, a sink which strangely had no drain to prevent such things. We discussed it briefly. So there was a forward pointing and a backwards pointing, a prescience and a memory that combined in the present..., past, present, and future mind.
--
note:
Later the day that this was written, I was at my parents and discovered my mother had overfilled the sink again. There was water enough to wet the floor of the basement. 

 --
pix: http://eategofeedsoul.tumblr.com/post/34209194577

The Life Aquatic and Steve Zissou



































May The Life Aquatic be within you!
--

pix:  http://armagansenol.tumblr.com/

Monday, January 07, 2013

The Gaithersburg Patch Op-Ed and Violent Roles

I don't suppose you read the Gaithersburg Patch, Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Good local news sheet.

An article there today:
http://gaithersburg.patch.com/blog_posts/sandy-hook-copycats-and-a-culture-gone-mad-wake-up-america

Sandy Hook, Copycats and a Culture Gone Mad: Wake up America
    
Dr. Michael Milgraum

I am only interested in the concept of "copycats", although it is a fine article and worth your reading time.

I am interested that the notion of "copycat" underscores the idea that things like such-and-such manner of Mass Killer is a socially defined Role, and various people may step into the "role", just as different actors will play Hamlet or King Lear.

--

Tlamictiliztli (Human Sacrifice) News!

 The Aztec God Tlaloc


 http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/24/us/washignton-bar-shooting/?iref=obnetwork

(CNN) -- One person died and one person was wounded when an apparent altercation led to a shooting at a Seattle-area bar, police said Monday.
The shooting occurred just a few hours after the Seattle Seahawks won their way into the NFL playoffs. Several players and other celebrities were among hundreds of people gathered at Munchbar, a popular nightspot in Bellevue, Washington. No players were injured in the incident, which occurred just after 1 a.m. PT Monday.
The month of Tititli has been chock full of sacrifices; a good month for the Snake Goddess, Cihuacoatl !
Go, Cihuateteo !
--

Downton Abbey III

 "Stay at Downton, Watson, and keep an eye peeled for his lordship's linen."



Well, well, well...
My, my, my,....

What shall I say about episode 1 of season 3 of Downton Abbey?

O'Brien and Thomas are on the outs !
He has given his one-time partner in skullduggery and crime the air because she had the effrontery to recommend her nephew for the position of footman...

The bloody nerve of O'Brien! Takes your breath away, don't it?

The marriage night of the newlyweds, Mary and Matthew, was silently blushed over, not like the marriage of Bates and Anna last year, in which we saw someone ( as I recall dimly ) cavorting shirtless or chemise-less or blouse-less... and a bit of the old pillow talk. Apparently Julian Fellowes believes that the upper classes should not be portrayed in the throes of passion...  except when they are in flagrante with a Turkish gentleman, or whatever.

Shirts went missing (probably with the collars and collar studs!) only to suddenly reappear, and acid made its way into the blueing bottle. If I had not known better, I would have called it Baskerville Abbey.
--

Sunday, January 06, 2013

Merry Orthodox Christmas!

And Merry Little Christmas...



This is the Epiphany and the last day of the Twelve Days, leading into tomorrow, which is Orthodox Christmas. With a little thinking, we could make the feasts of lights stretch through the entire year.

Merry Christmas to our Orthodox friends! Merry Christmas to our Coptic friends!

--

Some People I Shall Miss

Russell Means left us in 2012.

Russell Means and Daniel Day-Lewis 


He was an important voice for Native Americans.
--

Tribal News January 6, 2013




I was in Port Huron, Michigan on January 5, and was looking forward to a skirmish in the area of the Blue Water Bridge: the Idle No More movement was supposed to have a demonstration and close the border...

Read about our neighbors and friends and what governmental debacles they may be facing:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/idle-no-more-ceremony-planned-us-canada-border-january-5-146738

With the Idle No More movement rapidly spreading outside Canada's borders – seeing Indigenous rights protests emerge as far away as Texas, New Zealand, New York and the United Kingdom – activists in Washington State and British Columbia are planning an action Saturday, January 5th that literally spans the frontier.
The meet-up at the famous Peace Arch monument – described as a “peaceful prayerful gathering of Indigenous women, supported by our Indigenous men, standing united – will see Indigenous activists and supporters rally their drums, songs and prayers for change on both sides of the border.”
“It's a peaceful, prayerful action,” Kat Norris, spokesperson for the Indigenous Action Movement, told Indian Country Today Media Network. “We, the organizers, want to ensure that we are going into this with good and strong hearts. Doing this at the border, with our relatives from the other side of the border joining, we're making a statement that support comes north and south, and east and west to join this. It's a symbol of support for Idle No More and everything it stands for – and for Chief [Theresa] Spence...
--


Rural America January 6 2013

By Bill Bishop

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman continues to write about food as if farmers and rural communities didn’t exist.
Bittman’s column Wednesday was about “fixing our food problem.” Bittman finds quite a bit that needs attention. He writes that what we grow and how we grow it has “been a major contributor to climate change, spawned the obesity crisis, poisoned countless volumes of land and water, wasted energy, tortured billions of animals… I could go on.”
What the nation must do, Bittman commands, is to “figure out a way to uninvent this food system.”
Great! Maybe Bittman has something in mind for farmers and rural America.
Well, you can read for yourself. The column is here. But you can take our word for it, there’s much more in this column about what should be done to improve the lives of farm animals than of the men and women who raise them....

A good illustration of how we read, write, and jibber-jabber in an unusual way that is blind to much of the world hidden from eyes... hidden because it is not premasticated and predigested for us by the Media.
 
Read something other than the New York Times, or listen to something other than FOX.
They are all urban chauvinists!
--

I Love The US Post Office....

... at least I used to. I still think the USPS is pretty cool, even though I have to drive all the way to Pontiac's west side to pick up my vacation accumulated mail.

How the Postal Service began prefunding retiree health care and fell into a deep hole

January 2, 2013


Good article on how Congress fixes one problem by creating at least two more problems.
--

Art-ful Adjectives.



J.S. Copley's Watson And The Shark


Today's a sprightly, booming day! It's a Watson and the Shark day, mates! Full of tension and action!
--

Django Insaned

I don't think I have ever seen a film as bad as Django Unchained.

Spike Lee was 100% correct in saying that he was never going to see it.
It is awful.

What Hogan's Heroes was to the Holocaust, Django Unchained is to Slavery.

Perhaps I was too annoyed that Django's wife was variously named Brunhilda and Broomhilda:  this was too overt a hint that the whole thing was a knock-off of comic strip story telling.... sort of like Terry and The Pirates meets Smokey Stover .

I am serious. At the end, the plantation mansion is blown up, and Jamie Foxx uses the next few minutes for showing off his abilities with horses, doing a few dressage bits. The only thing missing was a sign saying "etaoin shrdlu".
--

Roles

By our interests and pursuits, emotions and behaviors, we create the outlines for the scripts that define the roles which people assume in our society: mother, father, policeman, judge, homeless person, religious leaders. Look at images of saints and holy people and see just how much they are forced into the same model of holiness. Most of them look very much alike. It is not, however, they who are perfect images of each other, but it is we who insist on viewing them according to the set of holiness rules we have established.

We also define Mass Killers.

Sick people are not invariably drawn to murder and mayhem. They look about their society and milieu to see what roles are available to express anger and hate. They are actors looking for the juiciest parts which we, as vital members of society, have created for them in news reports, films, books, images, jokes,... any form of information.
If we obsessed about other ways to express anger as much as we obsess about using violence to express anger, things would be a bit different when it came time for a troubled soul to pick up the bushwhacker. But we do not. Our violent way of expressing anger has been around a long time, and it has been anointed by a great numbers of movies and stories which use violence to restore law and order and to render justice.


Violent films and games do not lead to violent behavior, but they do define violent roles and ways to act, and they provide scripts and stories and ideas........

Homage !

Homage is a word used in cinema criticism. It is used most often to describe a director who shots a scene just like someone else has done before, in order to honor that someone else.... or to get out of a corner into which they have painted themselves and from which they lack the creativity to extricate themselves.

So, in the recent mass murders, do we see any Homage to our stories and films and imagery, etc.?

Guns do not kill people; people do... with their acting out violent roles which have in great part been defined and outlined for them by the rest of society.
These roles contain guns; you cannot do "For A Fistful Of Dollars" without a gun. 

The mass killings with guns are often very similar because the shooters are acting out the very same roles
--

Friday, January 04, 2013

Soothe The Anger

The events of the last few days made us all frightened and angry. This poem from 2009 reminds me of a calming influence and feeling of charity we need and search for.

People have been interviewed, and they moan our best days are behind us.
We are angry and we are pained, but we have the future, and the future is what we make it.
I always think of Mary, or Miriam, when I read this, guardian against fear and anger.




Mothers' Day 2009


Mothers teach us how to pray before we
go to bed, kneeling beside white sheets
and using the currency of our innocence
to try to set the world upright again,
and save us all from atom bombs
and things that go bump
in the night.

Mothers teach us how to dress before we
go outside - we who want to naked run
and throw our clothes in a thoughtless pile -
she buttons up the surrounding collars;
and orders the chattering teeth
of shameless zippers
to subdue!

Mothers bake yet are not bakers; mothers
heal yet are not doctors; they open eyes
to art, many never having held a brush;
design pillow forts, yet aren't architects.
the grace of God they
dispense, yet are
not priests.

Mothers are an ancient holy order,
taken vows of silence, crying why? but
never speaking, door keepers of God's grace
that beats upon our shut monastery door:
she bids enter! the divine
visitor to wash
and eat!

Mothers sit shiva upon their dreams and
never let us know the shipwreck of desires
they had for the princes and princesses
of their fruitful bodies, for mothers yet
may resurrect the hopes and dreams
of mankind grown old:
young harts leaping!
--

notes:
young harts leaping:
from the Song of Solomon.



At the time, no one commented on this poem. I think it is rather good, because my wife says it is, and she is a "tough house" as they say in the comedy clubs.

--

Poetry Blogs

I like art blogs. Even the ones with the worst taste in anything have an incredible vibration of life...
except poetry blogs. They are sort of drab. Drabulous... a new word made from drab and crapulous.

Poetry blogs are drabulous.

Give me a poetry blog with a splash of Watson and the Shark, eh, Mate!

J.S. Copley's Watson And The Shark

Not a drabulous pixel anywhere.
--

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Violence

Violence - and, by implication, mass shootings and killings - is not a mental health problem. It is not a mental state which is dysfunctional.

Violence is a culture construct; we create behavior patterns and scripts of violence, and when the time comes, we answer the call to begin to act our parts.

Violent acts are a trauma. When the participants leave their violent actions, and they return to a more "normal" state of affairs, the distortions  of violence in society prevent the trauma from being assuaged, and the "normal" states of affairs become more and more dysfunctional.

Violence and anger breed more violence and anger.

We are not insane.
We have a history of violence and intransigeance. We do not forgive. We are monsters of our own destruction..., but we are not insane.
--