Rural Legends

... and when Bessie got up and went outside to look around their Airstream, she found a large hook hanging from the door handle... and still hanging from the hook was a razor-sharp horn and antler saw !!!

--
pix: http://pattricejones.info/blog/

Holder: Yep, Obama could kill Americans on U.S. soil

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – Tue, Mar 5, 2013

 

President Barack Obama has the legal authority to unleash deadly force—such as drone strikes—against Americans on U.S. soil without first putting them on trial, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a letter released Tuesday. But Holder, writing to Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, underlined that Obama “has no intention” of targeting his fellow citizens with unmanned aerial vehicles and would do so only if facing “an extraordinary circumstance.”
Paul had asked the Obama administration on Feb. 20 whether the president "has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and without trial." On Tuesday, he denounced Holder's response as “frightening” and “an affront to the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”...

So I suddenly find myself standing with Senator Rand Paul.

What good are the guns protected by the Second Amendment against Drone Power without due process?
--

Syrian Blackmail

Some Syrian rebels have captured UN peacekeepers and said they will hold them until Basheer Al Assad is in the pokey or is dead or some other idiocy.

These are our people; these are John Kerry's people; these are Obama's people.

I am sure they will talk to them... then they will remind them that they must at all times send the message that they are not insane......

not at all like our leaders...

we accept insanity in them.
...

A Momentary Lapse

I just said,  "I do not exist."

What could that mean?
--

What The Future Holds...

The particle discovered by CERN last year looks more and more to be the Higg's Boson.

Back in 1944, the world was in Los Alamos and the USA.

We gave up on the Higg's and Europe continued. We gave up because of the cost. We are going to face some interesting choices, and we will always be pointing at the budget. Sometimes the budget is B.S.
--

Mr. Chavez Passes

I shall miss Mr. Chavez.

He was not perfect, but he did not allow himself to be deceived by the trillion dollar shenanigans of lost hope and blasted dreams that was the wheeze of these two:

The fiascoes of the first eight years of the 21st century are the culminating causes of our present problems, and we shall feel their effects for years to come, as they continue to roll over us and impoverish our families.

Mr. Chavez was a real person. He may have been abrasive at times, but he was not thoughtlessly arrogant...
Mr. Chavez was not born into arrogance and disdain, nor did he learn it at institutions of higher class distinctions and social inequality.

One winter during our Iraq War, Mr. Chavez offered heating oil at a discounted price to the poor of various parts of the USA.
I do not recall any American Oil Company doing so.

Requiescas in pace, amice.
--

A Ride On Schopenhauer's Trolley

 Pee-Wee's Big Adventure Breakfast Machine

An Iron-Clad Proof of God
by Rabbi Adam Jacobs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/an-ironclad-proof-of-god_b_2567870.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

excerpt:

"... The theological philosopher Edward Feser has done a great job explaining this facet of the argument (and the argument as a whole) in his book "The Last Superstition." By way of analogy, he has the reader envision a hand which is holding a stick which is pushing a stone. Would it be accurate to suggest that the stick is pushing the stone? Not really, as the hand is doing the pushing. But what allows the hand to push in the first place? The arm, which in turn is dependent on the muscles which are dependent on cells which are dependent on molecular structure which is dependent on atomic structure which is dependent on the primary forces of gravitation, electro-magnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces which are dependent on ... what? What we'll see is that even if there were an infinite series of contingent causes such as these, we would still need a final, un-caused cause to get the ball rolling. Without it, nothing could unfold as nothing would have started the process...."

----------

I suppose most people who read this blog would label me a "believer". So why do I think this argument above is wrong-headed? Wrong-headed in the sense that it is a bad idea beyond the fact that God needs no proof. God only requires proof in the nations of perpetual argument.

It depends on the thorough-going and consistent misapprehension of the complexity of the meaning of the word "cause", beginning in the section I underlined and put in italics, and the rest you will have to go and read on your own.

The problem here is the nature of the Image we create to guide our thinking - the "analogy" of Dr. Feser that Rabbi Jacobs refers to.
The author of the argument has created an image of a series of actions.
I can create a series of actions, too.
I can create a Rube Goldberg affair... a Pee-Wee's Big Adventure type of process-breakfast-machine, wherein an animatronic hand of Lincoln pushes a stick,
the stick pushes the rock,
the rock falls off a table and down a chute,
the chute drops it onto a see-saw,
whereupon the rock forces its end of the see-saw down,
the other end goes up, pulling a string which is connected to a toaster and thereby turns on the toaster to toast two slices of bread.
When the bread is done, they pop up mightily from the toaster, falling upon a breakfast platter.
The new weight on the breakfast platter causes the butter-machine to begin and the weight of the toast causes the platter to sink down slightly, but enough to activate a small switch beneath, which switch then sets off a small alarm, which activates the hand of Lincoln, and it is time to push another stone and begin everything again.

So we have a circular process. We could look at it like a cyclic group.
As it stands, it does not stretch back to an infinity of causes, but merely cycles through a limited number.

Of course, we could then stand back and ask what "caused" this circular process. But we could just as well invoke another circular process, and so on. It all comes down to whether one already believes that there is a necessary beginning to a series of contingent events. An Image of endless regression is how we imagine; it is not necessarily what the World is.
Dr. Feser used a series as an analogy. If we ask "Analogy to what?", it would probably be answered that it was an analogy to the real state of affairs in the world. Unfortunately, that presupposes what the analogy is being used to prove.
It all hangs on whether one comes to the argument already convinced that one can talk about all the events of the Universe as an endless series of causal events, stretching back into the mists of time. This gives us the model upon which the argument works its magic, so that's what we imagine.

However, a circular process would short circuit it. Even more, there is an unproven assumption that all events have a definite "beginning", such as there must be a definite time when man came down from the trees and walked upright across the savannahs... trouble is, we cannot actually determine if there is: it is our sense of science and logic that makes us put such "beginnings" into the historical record.
Even though we may possibly pin point the time when the first hard drive came into existence (and such inventions are themselves unclear as to first occurrence, due to things such as simultaneous invention), it seems that there is yet a large set of events that is not so definite, and thus, cannot be said to have been caused in the same sense that something definite was caused....
The beginning is unclear and "sloppy".... so it is obscure when the cause left off and the new being began its life.Causes may not be so easily  distinguished from their so-called effects.

In Logic, we may derive propositions which are carriers of what we have defined as Truth: "All men are mortal, Joe is a man, therefore, Joe is mortal."
The conclusion, Joe is mortal, carries the same "truth" as do the premises. The way it is derived is different, but the truth value is the same.

This type of Argument about God seeks a Logic which does more than carry truth along; it seeks to suddenly bestow necessity upon the propositions it works upon, and discover that necessity within the realm of Creation.

A long time ago, Schopenhauer observed that the Principle of Causality is not like a trolley or a taxi: one cannot merely take it so far, then one may hop off at any place along the city street one wishes.


--

Patristic Quiz

Who said: "Cathedra mea, regulae meae."?
--

John Kerry Toes The Light Fantastic

It is against the law in several European states to deny the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial also goes against the prevailing narrative of Western society. If one were to deny the Holocaust, it would identify them at once as a third worlder..., probably an Iranian politician.

The President of Turkey recently had some harsh words about Zionism.
John Kerry, predictably and in keeping with the Prevailing Narrative, condemned the words.

When one considers that there a number of Orthodox Jews who very much disapprove of Zionism, it becomes clear that there is a deep subject here which precludes the quick and nimble jetée of John Kerry.

I believe the Turkish guy was asking the question that many Jews ask:

Does Zionism legitimize every act of violence?

Anyone who wants a meaningful left to rise up in Israel must first air out Zionism in the attic. By Gideon Levy | Feb.12, 2009 | 2:07 AM
 http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/does-zionism-legitimize-every-act-of-violence-1.269972

...This taboo must be broken. It is permissible not to be a Zionist, as commonly defined today. It is permissible to believe in the Jews' right to a state and yet come out against the Zionism that engages in occupation. It is permissible to believe that what happened in 1948 should be put on the agenda, to apologize for the injustice and act to rehabilitate the victims. It is permissible to oppose an unnecessary war from its very first day. It is permissible to think that the Arabs of Israel deserve the same rights - culturally, socially and nationally - as Jews. It is permissible to raise disturbing questions about the image of the Israel Defense Forces as an army of occupation, and it is even permissible to want to talk to Hamas...

Tolle, lege!  Pick up and read!
--

Two Johns

Someone in Hanaan's Diner said "John Muhammed... Boehner.... "
and just let it hang in the air, like..., was it an equivalence?
An equivalence between John Muhammad, the Washington D.C. sniper, and John Boehner.

Or were they implying an equal blood thirst in the two of them?
Or was it just throwing money into the air...... like the Congress has thrown the Sequester....... and everything that sticks to the ceiling is ours, and everything that falls to the floor belongs to the Rich?


Is the bigger threat in prison? Or is it in Congress?

For years now I have maintained the latter, way even before John Boehner.

You hear some odd things these days.
I wish I were some place else.
--

The Fruit of The Lemon Tree

In the south of France, the Lemon Festival of Menton is on from Mid-February until early March.
I wonder how they express the sentiment that we accompany by the nonce expression "When life gives you lemons..."?

Confitures ou liqueurs au citron, les épiceries fines de Menton regorgent de produits pour les touristes gourmets.

Jams or lemon liquors, the fine grocers of Menton are "choked" with items for touring gourmets.
--

Waiting For Odysseus

Waiting For Odysseus

Odysseus was the geek of his times. The really big warriors were the amoks, like Ajax and Achilles, who literally were possessed by the gods and spirits when in the frenzy of battle.

Odysseus was a warrior, but he was also a clever person... as Zorba said, like a "grocer" who "weighs everything." 

You never saw anyone meticulously weigh things in a tender balance while they were in a blood-lust frenzy.

--

African Atlantis

Ancient Petroglyph detailing the city of Atlantis situated in the Great Rift Valley Lakes of Africa, approximately 40,000 years ago.

--

How Does A Poem?

Poetry is the Large Hadron Collider of Intelligible Reality.

--

My Country, Les Miz, Hot Nuts

Les Miserables

There is a special tonight on Les Miserables and I heard it playing on the TV in the background... and it was the very beginning of the special....

... and I think it was the opening number from the film - possibly from the play, too - where Jean Valjean is laboring in the drydocks, heaving on the lines, winching a sailing vessel into the docks.

And there was an absolutely horrible, horrible realization that swept over me;
I had a very odd feeling of deja vu when I saw the film, but it passed. Tonight it hit me like a ton of bricks:

the opening number of Les Miserables is the exact same tune as an ancient Hot Nuts ( ! don't ask ! ) number that started "My country.... 'tis of thee." and may be called My Country 'Tis of Thee.... or The Soldier's Song.... or something.......

And you do not know who these Hots Nuts gentlemen are, so do not look it up. I am so embarrassed!
They often formed the background chorus of beer drinking and "things" at the Sudbury House almost fifty years ago off campus...

Lord, have mercy!

The Hot Nuts

--

More War

As Secretary of State, John Kerry seems to be pushing for another facet of the unending war program of the present administration and the power elites of this benighted country. He is talking about sending aid, excluding armaments, to the Syrian rebels.

Who are these rebels? I know they are receiving armaments from Arabia and Qatar. I know there are many jihadists identified in their ranks.

So why are we doing this? If I remember correctly, there was peace in Syria until the rebels launched their attacks. So we are once again supporting violence in a Muslim country, and in our wisdom, we intend the violence to go just so far and no further.... and once again we are in control of the situation.

The News is that this government set-up we have: the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary, cannot control anything anymore.
We are slipping into chaos right along side those whom we deliver into anarchy.
--

Stephane Hessel Shows Us The Way

La pire des attitudes est l’indifférence, dire je n’y peux rien, je me débrouille. […] Aussi, appelons-nous à une véritable insurrection pacifique contre les moyens de communication de masse qui ne proposent comme horizon pour notre jeunesse que la consommation de masse, le mépris des plus faibles et de la culture, l’amnésie généralisée et la compétition à outrance de tous contre tous.    

("Indifference is the worst of all attitudes: to say I can not do anything, or I am tied up in other matters. [...]
Again, we are called to a peaceful revolution against the means of Mass Communication, which offer nothing on the horizon for our young people except Mass Consumption, contempt for those who are weaker and  for  culture, a general forgetting (of the past) and limitless competition of all versus all. ..")

Stephane Hesse, A Time for Indignation


We are in a time ripe for Indignation. We should be indignant about everything.
--

The New Orthography

You must have happened to read about blokes - usually heavy with the grey matter - who have spent oodles of time, possibly most of their later years, pushing for a renovation of the English way of spelling; George Bernard Shaw comes to mind.

Of course, by making the orthography better by creating letters which more closely correspond to the actual grunts, whistles, clicks, and noises that issue from our throats, these schemes end up increasing the sum total of letters to be learned by the elementary school children: instead of 26 letters, they would have to deal with 50 or so.
I wonder how that would affect reading in those early years?

Nevertheless, since I have crossed the Rubicon - as it were - into the heady regions of old mens' Latium and the crones' senectutis.... as if I were a Julius Caesar befuddled by dementia, wandering hither and yon, and under the delusion that I had always depended upon the kindness of Pompey......

Nevertheless, in my dotage, I have decided to orthographize (not to mention creating novel words like "orthographize"); as an homage to Quentin Tarantino and his adulators (who thereby practice Tarantolatry)..........
I have decided to adopt the "D Emphatic", such as used in the title of the masterpiece Django Unchained, and put it to work...... the film will be referred to as Django Undchained.
The briny deep will be the color of  "adzur", and it will be plied by sailing "dships".

I think language changes should be made frequently to express our adulation of celebrities. Perhaps their genius will make our times look not quite so dismal to future historians.
--

Oedipus Wrecks

Some people should have paid more attention to the Classics. In The Telegraph today we read:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/9896829/Morrissey-If-men-were-homosexual-there-would-be-no-wars.html

The former Smiths frontman has discussed war, homosexuality and popular culture in a controversial interview.Morrissey told Rookie magazine that war is the "most negative aspect of male heterosexuality", and called conflict a "hetrosexual hobby"

He said: "If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.

"They even get medals for it. Women don’t go to war to kill other women. Wars and armies and nuclear weapons are essentially heterosexual hobbies."

Morrissey also criticised popular culture, saying that the Sex Pistols would "never again be allowed to slip through" and that pop musicians who set their own terms for success didn't exist in 2013.

Apparently Mr. Morrissey is not aware of the armies of ancient Thebes who whipped the Spartans.

I love E-News. I can't get enough of things like the Oscars. Even this morning Seth McFarlane's photo is still on pages everywhere.  The only part of the Oscars I saw was Anne Hathaway, and I liked her dress. It looked like an expensive cooking apron for a person who can't seem to make up their mind whether they should put the souffle in the oven or should have sex... the eternal quandary.
--

ps.

I used "Oedipus" in the title because of his old connexion with Thebes.

Django Sequestered

I feel alienated from my government. I also feel alienated from a culture that awards Django Unchjained as best original screenplay.

I am glad Ben Affleck has been victorious. He has had a tough time.

So.......  I guess the victory of the righteous tends to balance the flood of the crapulous.
--

Anti-Dark Matter

New research on Andromeda which supports Modified Newtonian Dynamics (yah!) and, thus, renders the deus ex machina Dark Matter hypothesis (boo!) superfluous:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/cwru-mut021413.php
--

Twinkle

 Reading:

The Astrophysical Journal Volume 765 Number 1 Richard de Grijs et al. 2013 ApJ 765 4 doi:10.1088/0004-637X/765/1/4

GRAVITATIONAL CONUNDRUM? DYNAMICAL MASS SEGREGATION VERSUS DISRUPTION OF BINARY STARS IN DENSE STELLAR SYSTEMS

Richard de Grijs^1,2,6, Chengyuan Li^1,3, Yong Zheng^1,3,7, Licai Deng^4,5, Yi Hu⁴, M. B. N. Kouwenhoven¹, and James E. Wicker<sup>4


at the site  

 http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/765/1/4</sup>

and it dawns upon my muddled mind that I do not have a rich and vigorous account for the formation of binary stars, which formations are very, very numerous, especially in the cluster under study in the paper above. So I refer to:
THE FORMATION OF COMMON-ENVELOPE, PRE-MAIN-SEQUENCE BINARY STARS 
 http://www.phys.lsu.edu/astro/nap98/bf.final.html


After this, it seems that the pre-stellar gas clouds act like water drops with surface tension under the influence of another force pulling them apart. If so, the probabilities of such structures splitting into two is substantially greater than the probability of splitting into three or more pre-stellar gas clouds. It would seem from a preliminary view that the transform into stars is contemporary with the splitting into a binary; i.e., the gas clouds do not separate and then at some future date ignite into stars. It seems that ignition would be inhibited by the volume of gas... even though there exist massive stars... but the massive ones are the exception rather than the rule.

Drops of water......
--

The Volstead Act

A man has slapped a toddler on an airplane. Last year an obstreperous passenger was tied into a seat with duct tape. Most of these cases of air-rage seem to be related to the consumption of alcohol. Do not think that booze will be outlawed any time soon.

There is the 21st Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the right to keep and bear and drink booze. It is similar to guns: can't act civilized with 'em, can't enjoy life without 'em.
--

Wrestling

The IOC has decided to abandon wrestling as an Olympic sport.

The recorded history of wrestling goes back about 3,000 years, and the unrecorded most probably five times longer than that... if not longer.

Forget it all. Let the winds blow through us, we who stand with no ballast of history.
We shall fall and be pinned by the momentum of life.
--

Science and Religion

In the West, Science and Religion have fought because they are so much alike, not because they are so different.

We seek to understand the infinite detail of Creation by reducing the important characteristics to a manageable handful, which we then manipulate to establish systems of thought with Truth, Completeness, and Consistency.

Completeness seeks to have a GUT, a Grand Unified Theory, be it of Science or be it Theology.

Consistency seeks to maintain scientific theories in the face of experiment, or dogma in the face of new opinions, novelties, and heresy.

Truth is a character of language, and all logic seeks to be able to expostulate larger and larger bodies of knowledge while all the time maintaining the character called "Truth" throughout.
For example, "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal."
Here we started with one premise which we called true. We added a second which we called true. Then we created - or derived - a third which we do not merely call true, but which itself maintains the character of truth by the rules of logic.
We have created or procreated a new "truthful" entity; we have extended truth. We have not determined truth,  but have created something new which is also a carrier of truth, just like our children carry our DNA.

Science and Religion does the same here in the West, and throughout the world. Islam and Judaism are very much involved in Truth, Completeness, and Consistency. Science uses characters such as Mass and Charge, Religion uses Virtue and Morality;  Truth is a character common to both, although not entirely the same in both domains.
--

--

Mythic Thinking

 

From The New Oxonian:

The Passion of the Christ-Deniers

he recent uptick of interest in the historical Jesus is fueled partly by a new interest in a movement that was laid to rest about seventy years ago, but has received a new lease of life  from a clutch of historical Jesus-deniers.  The rallying point for the group is a site maintained by a blogger by the name of Neil Godfrey, an Australian university librarian who, like many others who have assumed the position, comes from a conservative Christian background.

In the broadest terms, the movement feeds and thrives on the thesis that Jesus of Nazareth never really existed.  There are various permutations of that basic position: (a) That he was concocted lock, stock and cross by a second century religious movement that (also) produced the documents of New Testament; (2) He is a composite of semi-historical characters, but no one in particular; (c) He is the reworking of an assortment of ancient dying and rising god myths, a little from here, a little from there...

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/the-passion-of-the-christ-deniers/

----------------------------

I am spending a good deal of time reading this article.
What I find very interesting here is the quaint notion of certain people that a "reworking of an assortment of ancient dying and rising god myths..." is somehow less important than physical objects or archaeological remains ( not many of which come with clearly marked and indexed labels, by the way.)

The author of this article is writing a book about the new Christ Deniers, or Trivializers, and I look forward to it.

I am intensely interested in how myths are treated by many people as writings on paper, later cut up and re-arranged on a new palimpsest.

Is myth fantasy? And does it stand against reality?

In reality, we may all see the large pine tree in front of our eyes.
Some of us may see it as part of the ecological progression of a sandy area, envisaging ancient seas and beaches and dunes, and thinking how the areas change over time; imaging the Pinery in Grand Bend, Ontario, perhaps.
Others may imagine a bear hiding behind the tree. Some may think of resins and amber. Some may think of timber and the cedars of Lebanon. Some may not see the forest just behind, being fixated on the one pine tree in the forefront, bending in the wind.

Not one aspect of Reality exists without a Story  into which we, as intelligent beings, place it.

Reality has infinite detail. We cannot process infinite detail. We substitute the extended or truncated narrative to accept the matter of reality into our overall understanding.

Fantasy and myth (and stereotypes, for that matter) are Story standing behind and supporting our view of reality; they often obey the non-linguistic logic of the icon, the image, and the song.

(And what are racial stereotypes but a desire to replace Reality with Narrative? We find reality is complex, and the old stereotypes work even now so well.)
--

The Thing... Borg Version

A hundred thousand years ago, a Borg ship crashed onto the Earth in the Tropics and disappeared under the growing vegetation.
Then, in 2013, it was re-discovered by a team of Norwegian scientists..., whom Kurt Russell calls "The Swedes" etc., etc., etc.
--

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!

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....
--

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 17^th 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

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.
--

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.
--

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.
--

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

--

Planning The Garden

--
pix: the cat and the eye

Ade Ileke 51: Водная жизнь (Life Aquatic)

The Life Aquatic --

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/

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

Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:44 pm

    
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.
--

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

Food Writers Who Forget Rural America

A Montana rancher tells us more in 100 seconds about how to change the nation's food system than a New York Times columnist can in a year's worth of writing.

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
--

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.

--

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.
--

The 18th Brumaire

 Napoleon On the 18th Brumaire

On  the 18th Brumaire - according to the French Republican Calendar - Napoleon overthrew the French Directory and replaced it with his Consulate. It was a coup d'etat, and it began his dictatorship.

What we witness today is a coup d'etat in a vacuum... in reverse! By abdicating it responsibilities and beseeching the Senate and the White House to come up with a deal to soften the fall from the fiscal cliff, the House of Representatives has overthrown itself, and asked a whole group of "Napoleons" to take over its role in government!

We are suddenly mindful of Karl Marx, who wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon in 1852,  an account of the 1851 coup by Napoleon's nephew, which begins with:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

As noted yesterday, the abdication of responsibility by the Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

Today we witness the farce of the House of Representatives and its right wing in their inability to formulate any sane policy beyond sound bytes.
--

Metropolis, Megachurch, and the Towns of Rural America

I am not going to say much here. I know that is surprising, for the title was so ambitious, but I am merely going to point a thing or two out, and leave it to you to do the rest.

There is an article in the Daily Yonder, a publication geared towards rural America:  
Rural Social Activism, Born in a Stable
By Timothy Collins
http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-social-activism-manger/2012/12/17/5546

...Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and leading Social Gospel theologian, outlined the movement’s principles in A Theology for the Social Gospel in 1917. Echoing the title of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum, that sought justice for workers, Rauschenbusch wrote: “The new thing in the social gospel is the clearness and insistence with which it sets forth the necessity and the possibility of redeeming the historical life of humanity from ... social wrongs.... Its chief interest is concentrated on those manifestations of sin and redemption which lie beyond the individual soul.”

This reminds me mightily of what I was trying to discover in talking about the group mind or the extended mind:  we have a nation full of good individuals who go on to form extended groups, crowds, and factions, that are anything but good.

Megachurches have not addressed the Spiritual Evolution to the attainment of a higher morality of the group mind. Megachurches come about by the simple logic that there was an injunction to go forth and teach, and the way we judge success in any endeavour is the absolute numbers of heads under our tent or marquee.

The Metropolis is a similar misbegotten creature, large and lumbering and unenlightened. Ditto for the Nation State.

In this so-called era of Globalization, the minds of all mankind touch. Whether their touch will be Charity or whether it will be Flint to the Powder is up to us.
--

The Fiscal Tonkin Gulf

 Gulf of Tonkin

The Congress has abdicated its power and responsibilities many times in my life. I remember the Tonkin Gulf resolution:

Tonkin Gulf resolution, in U.S. history, Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia.

On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action.

On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia.
Although there was disagreement in Congress over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. 

The measure was repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995 meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred.

Now the House of Representatives has fallen prey to its own internal Tea Party-Republican discords - a problem anyone with an ounce of sense saw coming when the Republicans embraced the Tea "Baggers" - and can no longer execute its responsibility to oversee national finances......

This is the fiscal counter-part of the surrender after the Gulf of Tonkin charade.
__

Mozart, Cezanne, and Einstein

There are geniuses of Science.
They change the paradigm and the way we see the world.

So also are there geniuses of the Spirit, and they change the way we experience the Holy.

There are geniuses of Art  - music, painting - and they change the way we experience those aspects of our lives.

There are intelligent beings and their behavior. There are the innovators of behavior, for good and for ill. Life is a continual odyssey of change for the better. If not, it recedes from Paradise; even though you may feel you are not moving, the stagnant world moves beneath you.

This is the point at which we say "Excelsior!",   I suppose.
--

All Grown Up

A young man whom we have known since birth stopped by after Christmas. He is working in China and living there, and is betrothed to a young Chinese woman. They are expecting a child in the summer of 2013.
His sister, my goddaughter, is to be married in 2013 also.

I could say "circle of life", but then I would betray the spirit of The Poetry. Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010. It is to him and to them I refer in the poem. The people are not static, and the father and children are facets of family, not individuals strictly speaking. It is never quite clear whom is being addressed or spoken of.

I have used the Anglo-Saxon word trūw in the last stanza in order to try and capture the many meanings of "true", which range from "not logically false" to "firm and steadfast" to "aligning tires to run in a straight line". It should be pronounced as the modern "true", however.
The "Georgia" referred to is the Caucasian State of Georgia.

Nomad Mikhail

when did you get home?
and did the ocean roar?

did you see your pals again
at the Georgian shore?

did you look into a store,
did you hold your child high?

and why was he a kid again,
and why was I a sigh?

i have already been there...
i shall not go again.
go and find your future
and sometimes i will send

an email of Christmas time,
Easter email too,
picnics, woods, and running twain
for we shall ne'er be trūw...

-------
note:
It seems to be trūw to the yearnings of past and the dreams of future.
When I say "Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010",  it is written in the Apparent Future, referring to a time when one may travel to other worlds.
I use the Apparent Future a lot these days.
--