Do Not Believe....

Do not believe in God. If you believe in, then you will always have the option not to believe in. When Othello lived in love with Desdemona, all was well. But when he came to view his love as liable to proof or disproof, he only believed in his love up until Iago's urgings made him lose his belief. Expect God.

Thunderdome

In case you have not been watching, Australia is in the middle of a process turning it into that future wasteland we know and love from the "Mad Max" films. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Australia_sweats_through_long_hot_winter_999.html The Australian winter temperature this August has exceeded records set in World War II, being often in the 40s Fahrenheit. Combine this with the record drought and we shall have to keep an eye out for Master Blaster.

The Mind Of A Republican

I read something by a Republican in support of Palin and Beck and the other marauders. "What happens if Obama is not the Savior of America?" The SAVIOR of America !!??!! What in the name of heaven is that? And you probably didn't believe me when I said that these people are insane. Republican Mind is a dark place of ill-fitting and out-worn images, icons of magical powers, and just plain out madness. Savior, indeed ! Just because you idiots make idols of your ideas and urges, don't try and say that I do! It is just as easy for you Republicans to pray to your idiotic Intelligent Designer as it is to say that other people pray to some new Savior! There is no dialogue with these people. Ever. They see gods and powers everywhere. They see devils and imps. Boycott them and their impudent shamans!

Odd Bedfellows

Health and Insurance and Pharma are contributing TO President Obama's push for health care. Why? I think it may be that by now, they know a "bubble" when they see one. Health Care costs doubled in 7 years, and they are increasing at an ever faster pace; this is irrational exuberance if there ever was such. What would the bursting of a health care "bubble" be like? I mean, what would happen? Is there enough disease and illness to support it? Enough disease, that is, among those with enough money? Probably not. Then it would start to fall apart.

Old Times

I caught Mr. O'Reilly talking to Mr. Beck on FOX. Something about a Marxist in the administration. A Marxist in the administration? Old-timey-talk from two old-timey minds. Somebody tell them the Cold War is over, the fight between the Marxism of the time and the Capitalism of the time ended. There is a new struggle now, as we try to define to future of the world. Do you see what I mean when I say World War II has still not ended? People still go around yelling "You're a Hitler!"..."Am not!"..."Are so!" We still shiver at the ghost of the Stalinist form of Marxism. I, for one, do not care. Tell bold Mr. O'Reilly to catch up.

Time Travel

How I view Time Travel, and the grandfather paradox : I go back in time and "mess" with my ancestors, thereby destroying my own time-line. Think of time as a cellular automaton, or a Wolfram process: areas of regularity and areas of chaos:

Areas A, B, and C are areas of regularity.

I inhabit area B. I may, therefore, go back in time to A, since it does not form part of my "history". I am prohibited from going back to C, however.

What prohibits me? I think we shall find "laws" of regularity in chaos. Maybe "habits" of regularity.

Now some people say we are all descended from some primeval Eve, like "Lucy". Well, that may explain why - if time travel is possible - you see no evidences of time travel. Surely our descendants would be buzzing around bothering us, wouldn't they? But they aren't. This may be due to the "Lucy" effect, and a deeper regularity underlying apparent chaos.

Too Good To Miss

In its entirety: Town Hall Crazies Go Through the Ideological Rabbit Hole By John Cook, 5:18 PM on Tue Aug 18 2009, http://gawker.com/5340220/town-hall-wingnuts-go-through-the-ideological-rabbit-hole?autoplay=true Unalloyed xenophobic rage presents a challenge similar to one posed by habitual lying—just as it's hard to keep up with one's own falsehoods, it's difficult to remember whether shouting "Heil Hitler!" at a Jew is good or bad. Take, for instance, this woman at a healthcare town hall sponsored by a Las Vegas radio station. After watching an Israeli immigrant to the United States praise his homeland's government-run healthcare system, she is moved to respond, "Heil Hitler!" What does that mean? Well, it could mean "Heil Hitler, you Jew, you are a subhuman blood-sucker," a sentiment common to right-wing extremists who actively seek the violent overthrow of the federal government. Or it could mean, "By supporting government-run healthcare, sir, you may as well be shouting 'Heil Hitler,' because you are supporting Barack Obama, who is a Nazi"—a sentiment also common to right-wing extremists who actively seek the violent overthrow of the federal government. You see the problem? The feverish, paranoid snake that is contemporary right-wing political thought has begun to eat its own tail, and the swamp is full of anti-Semites and Nazi-haters who both seek the same thing—a return to the "real America." As you can see from the look of terror that crosses this woman's face when the Israeli challenges her—"I'm a Jew! You're telling me, ‘Heil Hitler'? Shame of you!"—she appears to have briefly forgotten which one she is. In the most cosmic of ironies, she is wearing an Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt, so it's not likely that she's a rabid neo-Nazi. Still, you can see in her eyes that she is frantically checking an exhaustive catalog of political outrages in the back of her mind—which is worse, supporting healthcare reform, or yelling "Heil Hitler" at a Jew? She quickly decides that it's the former, and tells the Israeli that, as a Jew, he should be more frightened than anyone of Obama's policies. It's about as comprehensive a tangle of our current political dynamic as we've seen—a middle-aged white woman who seems to believe that Jews are good to the extent that Israel is good because Israel kills Arabs but bad to the extent that one of them supports socialized medicine shouts "Heil Hitler" at an Israeli because Hitler was bad to the extent that he was like Obama but was also good to the extent that he was against Communist Jews. It's taxing to remember where the political lines are drawn when the only thing you care about is hating the president. And it's like a comment thread on Red State brought to life. The woman here had probably written "Heil Hitler" into dozens of comment forms during her long, lonely nights of rage, and she clearly was shocked when she realized she'd said it in real life. "Heil Hitler!" "Let's bring an assault rifle to the next town hall!" It's a reverse TRON, and the trolls have escaped into our world. After she tells the Israeli that he should be more afraid than anyone else of nationalized healthcare—because, just like in Israel, it's an anti-Semitic plot—she mocks him with a caustic "boo-hoo" because he complained about an $8,000 trip to the emergency room without healthcare. Jews are so cheap!

CIA Probe

In the BBC: Kevin Connolly, BBC News, Washington The question now that these startling depictions of the handling of those suspects are in the public domain is - what should happen next? Barack Obama doesn't want to inflame anti-American feelings around the world but he doesn't want to alienate the professionals within America's own intelligence agencies. The problem is that below the cautious pragmatism of the White House rages a partisan political battle. America's human rights lobby wants full disclosure, and on the left of the Democratic Party there is a real appetite for proceeding with further investigations. Conservatives, though, will argue that the harsh interrogations came at a desperate moment in American history. The interrogators could be cast as dedicated intelligence officers, ruthless only in the cause of protecting their fellow citizens. I considered myself Conservative, but one who never believes that circumstances put me above the Law. If I am forced to evil, I shall bear the consequences. Our whole illusion of bipartisanship relies on amorality in the face of immorality.

End Of History ( As We Know It, At Least )

In the Galley Espace, there is an exhibition of Indian Art, and among the exhibits is a statue of Vishnu on its side, fallen and broken, pushed from it pedistal, head separated from the torso. Put a TV where the head used to be. Turn it on. Then put a giant screen TV where the Buddhas of Bamyan used to be. Run the world's longest extension cord from Kabul to Bamyan! Turn it on. Vishnu and the Lord Buddha, they were the Real; their destroyers were but blinks of an eye - the wink of alienated and dying pixels when someone pulls the plug.

A Moment In History: The Afghanistan Election

More sound and fury, signifying nothing; nothing to my life, at least. Maybe my grandkids will celebrate our wonderful nation building when they read about another Afghan election held under the auspices of the ever-present NATO military. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan because a pro-communist government was being undermined by the CIA, which was supporting Afghan warlords with money and arms. The USA supported Osama bin Laden and his group - later to grow into Al Qa'ida - with money and arms. We essentially created Al Qa'ida. The Soviets lost. Time passes. We invade in our turn. Our rational, as described by General Petraeus: "When Afghanistan was a sanctuary for al-Qaida and other transnational extremists we saw what they did. That is a development that we have to prevent," he said. "That's why President Obama has identified this as a war of necessity, not a war of choice." In other words, we created a monster that we had to destroy. We let Al Qa'ida slip away into Waziristan, so now we couldn't destroy it, but would have to occupy a country to prevent its return. Again Petraeus: "There has to be a development of governance that is seen as worthy of support by the people. There will be very substantial local components, traditional tribal and social organising mechanisms that will then mesh at some point with national structures that come out to join them," he explained. "Those national structures have to earn the support of the people by being seen to improve the lot in life of the Afghan people." This doesn't sound like it's going to be over any time soon. Off hand, given the complexity and the poor record so far, I'd say it is impossible to accomplish in the time we have. I mean to say, we do not really have 50 years to devote to this. It is not going to work. It will be yet another disaster of our generations.

Showdown At The Diner

Hank Jacobowski called me out when I walked into Hanaan's Diner. He says America is still the greatest country in the whatever, and she still has the whatzis that makes for whatchamacallit. He says I "go to far" when I say Americans - of which I count myself one - are idiots. I looked at him and said that the Health Care debate is filled with fabrications, falsehoods,and lies. He says that's just politics. I said we fought - correction: are still fighting - a war in Iraq based on "misinformation" . I said I think it was lies. He sputtered. I said the banking system collapsed because everyone was scamming, on the take, pimping - you name it. The entire system was corrupt. He was silent.

We do not make tough decisions. Oh, we do when it's pretty late in the game - maybe too late, like the bank bail out: a decision to help the elite who have hijacked this country. Not a very good decision. What can you do, though, when you wait so long that there's no time left? We live on lies and pipe dreams; we will not face reality, rather we need a constant flow of flawed intelligence. It's all crap. The worst of it is, you all know it's crap, too! But we all smile, and we say to our societal Niedermayers "Yes, sir. Could I have another?"

Private Language

There may be a "private language" ( see Wittgenstein et al. ), but it will certainly be extremely boring. I mean to say, the only person you may bestow the glad-eye upon will be yourself, and if there is anything sprightly and gingery that occurs in a "private language", the fun will last about 2 or 3 minutes from starting whistle to knocking down the goal posts.

Popularity

Often bloggers think how nice it would be if their blogs were more popular, if more people read them. I have done so myself. Look at who is popular. Look at who is popular on cable TV news, the chatter-boxes, the celebrities. Look! To be popular is to exemplify the popular mass insanity of a society. Screw popularity!

The Iceman Cometh: Health Care

I dawned on me that Eugene O'Neil is the playwright to dramatize Health Care reform in the USA in the 21st (...or is it reversed? is it the 12th?... ) century. Town Hall meetings are like enough to hobnobbing at Davy Jones' Rathskeller. The pipe dreams of the generals, the minorities, the disillusioned, the vengeful... Pipe dreams are ideology. All your religious figures have told you: Life ! ...do not smoke the pipe of dreams. That is Death in Life. I have never known a people so half made-up...and so wounded, like the Fisher King of the Grail stories. I know because I've just referred to a figure - the Fisher King - and notwithstanding the fact that "The DaVinci Code" dealt with the Grail, you probably have no knowledge of the Fisher King and his place in the stories of the Grail. Our fantasies are halk-baked and half-witted, just as are our realities. We are are half made people. We prop ourselves with prostheses of guns and firearms. We are a severely wounded people. We seek to cure ourselves with the cauterizing fire of hate. The Iceman Cometh.

pix: Doctor Fun

The Iceman Cometh: Black Ravens Revisited

Black Ravens was the nickname for Stalin's secret police cars.

Black Ravens are a sign we use to depict opponents of Health Care Reform. Or Carrion Crows.

What is a present-day Death Panel?

If you cannot afford the cost of your medications, you have been "panelled" into oblivion...to the hospice of last resort...

...and the Iceman Cometh !

Painting by Boris J. Wladimirskij

c. 1930

It's That Time

I'm afraid it is that time. You know, the time when you put down the telephone, look bleakly at the wall, and mutter to yourself: "It's that time ! Blast!" It was my mum, of course. She has a particularly idiotic fellow do her income tax, and the City wherein she resides decided to hassle the ancient ones with demands for more of this and that. Ditto the State - may they rot in that circle of hell reserved for States - and the Federal government. So everything worked out, but she was gun shy of the telephone, especially if the caller ID served notice that the caller was from some seat of what we euphemistically call government. Of course, as my luck would have it, hitherto she has been a dowager of fine largesse to the Republican fraternity boys who used to run...or ruin...the government. Thus, the Republican National Committee, when it gets the gleam in its eye, decides it is time to call old mums to see what kind of hand-outs are on the menu this month. Now mum, being gun shy of telephones, will no longer answer calls from Washington D.C. So when the Republican National Committee calls, she writes down the bloody number, then calls me, breathlessly spinning the yarn that she had to run all the way from the basement and across the house...just missing the phone call...but - thank goodness - has the number written down. And could it be for my daughter, her granddaughter, who moved from D.C. two years ago? At this time I muse among memory, and ask whether this is not the Republican National Committee again, since we have already down this before. Well, she knows we did it before, but this could be someone for my daughter, so past it along, would you, like a good son. So I shall have to start keeping a list of the phone numbers of the various organizations for cats, dogs, and politicians she foolishly sends her money to. It was the Republican National Committee...again. I think it reminiscent of the time in Dubois, Pennsylvania, when I went with my mother-in-law to the elevator, going down to breakfast, and looking out the east facing window and watching the sun come up over the hills. "And who are you, young man?" she said as the elevator doors closed.

UFO Talk

Tilly down at the Hugo Chavez gas station - I forget the company name, used to be Sinclair and had a big green dinosaur logo about 60 years ago. Anyway, so Tilly says that Roscoe was in today, and Roscoe - in case you don't know...and you don't, 'cause I ain't told you yet - is the young man who talks to UFO guys. Gals, too. UFO gals. Singin' "UFO gals, won't ya come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight; UFO gals won't ye come out tonight..."

Now Roscoe was still there, using the Men's Room, and taking about 15 to 20 minutes doing it: there were sounds like a wrestling match coming from behind the locked door. Tilly and I, we figure Roscoe's got some really, really heavy Obsessive Compulsive type thing going on, got to hold a wad of paper just the right way to get a hold of the seat, then another wad to use the flusher, lots of hot water, a wad of paper to hit the on/off on the air blower...and he's probably got to hold his breath while the air dryer is blowing and recirculating...well, everything in the men's' room at the speed of light, or at the speed of air dryer air, at least. That explains the great expulsions of breath, followed by great gobbling gasps for air.

So he saunters out and it's all we can do to keep from laughing. "What have you been talking 'bout with the UFOers, Roscoe?" Tilly asks. He shakes his head in a sad, knowing way. He's been here before. "I cain't tell yer. Ya couldn't stand it.You're not..," here he stopped and looked for the right words, words strong enough to condemn me, but not to assign Tilly - dear Tilly - to the same place in hell where I should be. "Yer not strong enough for it." he said. "Couldn't stand it?" says I, doing a thick Irish brogue like Uncle Leonard telling the joke of the time Claude stumbled in drunk and woke up his brother Bill, who happened to be asleep in the front room - his own bedroom being painted, a matter what Claude fergot.

Roscoe shakes his head. "No. It would be too much fer ya. I told a parson..." - he meant person...I think - "... oncet and that parson died." Tilly and I became thoughtful. "Indeed! And who was that, Roscoe?" "Auntie Belle. Last year. She asked me if there was life after...after...ya know, and I wanted to tell her to put her mind at ease. The UFO people know all about Life after D."

After D. indeed! "Aunt Belle was 3/4 dead last year, Roscoe. She was already in the hospice when you spilled your UFO beans. The only reason you got to talk to her was that Death had stopped at the convenience store down the block for a pack o' smokes, 'n got to playin' video poker." Tilly smiled as I said this. "Scoff if ye must. It's too horrible fer human ears. Even coarse and crude ears..." he looked straight at me, "...that hear all kinds of cursing and swearing and...whatnot." Like mine, he's thinking. Like my ears, connected to my crude eyes, just above me unkempt mouth.

"So, Roscoe," says Tilly, "Your sayin' that what the UFOers say is so horrible; is it more horrible than all the bankers in the world taking bets on lame-horse investments and having all the investments being so far behind in the field, they almost are in the next race?" "Ay," says I. "Is it more horrible than having bankers piss your money away, then having to bail them out?"

Tilly grew more and more animated. "Is it worse than yer $200,000 house being worth $90,000 and change now? Worse than a foreclosure and sitting on yer sorry tail-crack on the kerbside?" "Is it worse than not being able to afford health care, Roscoe? Do the UFO people tell you stories of Death Panels in the Sky?" "What of inflation, Roscoe? Unemployment..."

Roscoe had run. He crossed against the light. He had some small scraps of toilet paper and paper towels from the men's room he was shoving into his ears, trying to stop the sound of our voices. "Shut up !! Don't...wanna...hear !!! " he yelled as he ran into traffic. Tilly smiled at me. "You'll burn in hell for that." I laughed. "Won't be alone, gal", and I went out.

--

Good Buddies

It turns out some of the guys toting guns to Town Hall meetings about Health Care - not Gun Rights - are allied with radical militias. I'm surprised. Picture above is the Stadium in the ancient City of Hate. Town Hall meeting tonight, brothers & sisters ! First time we've used the old place since 1936 or so.

Be there !

It's a Town Meeting...like the ones on Little Tall Island...Give us what we want, but we won't go away.

The Old Days

There is an ancient Mariner - a garrulous old geezer - who speaks to people down at the docks: "In the old days..." Do we anticipate? Will he tell us how far he walked to school? It was better? Children didn't sass their parents? "...it was so - so win. Nowadays, it is so fail." What do we need to turn things around? A Manhattan Project?...we are appealing to his long-term, World War II memories. "Manhattan Project? Ya don't need another one; first one ain't over yet. We can't stop anymore. If we could get a good thing going, it'd go on ferever...but we cain't. We are so, so fail! " Coleridge's curse, and I ran from that old mariner, I can tell you!

Twitter Revolution

My nephews got into a color-coded-revolution and twittered me with unending updates. I do not know which nephew this is...the taller one, obviously - baton and computer in his hands replacing the older insignia of hammer and sickle.

I am bemused.

Language And Consciousness August 16 2009

We say that Language does not merely describe reality, does not merely symbolize reality, standing apart from it and disinterestedly supllying us with information. No. We say that Language constitutes reality: it builds it on the foundation of what we have inherited - our history. Therefore, Language is never separated from Morality. We like to think that we can stand apart and use symbols as ten-foot-poles to touch the evil and madness of the world, that it never touches us, that we ourselves are beyond evil... Guess again.

Healthcare Death Panels

I saw Newt Gingrich speaking of Obama's Plan leading to Death Panels. We have such panels right now. They decided on the allocation of very scvarce resources, essentially deciding who lives and who dies; they typically deal with organs: hearts, livers, etc. Those who received transplants have a chance; those who do not receive them have no chance. "Death Panels" are not something new. In an economic and political and moral system such as ours, there will always be allocation of resources to where the "market" deems it best they be allocated to; some will not get the resources. The decision, whether made by a panel of experts or an impersonal market, is a decision either way. We decide who even gets any healthcare whatsoever. We decide who has insurance and how much; we decide whether they get prescription coverage; we decide who gets food and who dives into dumpsters. What an amusing notion Republicans have: that we do not already decide on the Quick and the Dead !

Language And Consciousness August 15 2009

The features of Human Worlds do not first exist, and then subsequently get spoken about or written of; they come into being in talk. They come into being in talk, in music, in emotional interactions... All that is conscious understands the world because it is also creating the world. Language, music, et al. do not represent reality; they constitute reality. So when I talk about the stories we create - and how the stories had better be good stories, lest we be screwed - I am talking of creating the House wherein our kids and grandkids will live.

Revolt Of The Parking Lots 2

Two bitumen storage tanks on the edge of no-man's land, standing guard.

pix: Black & White Dreams

Matrix Phone Booth

I tried to use the phone, but it was too late.

I ran back to the car...

but it was way too late.

New Link

I added a new link haut dexter, just under my peace mongering poetry site. It is the Trousers Press - with iconic logo of inverted pantaloons - and hitherto it had not dawned on me the type of pun we were looking at. I had to write it down before I was made aware of it: press trousers; trousers press. I suppose I shall consider this a form of chiasmic pun, chiasmus being the literary trope where one takes the structure and...well, inverts it into a cross-like thingie: "I am not able to dig; to beg I am ashamed." or "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." One of my nephews whose name does not begin with "A" threw a 40th for his wife, Diana. In his email invite, he referred to the "Artemisia". Artemisia? I wondered. What possibly does he mean? Is this some misplaced reference to an ancient festival, not entirely correct? But I had to explain it aloud to someone: "He uses the word "artemisia" for some reason. An artemision - singular - is a sanctuary of Artemis, Diana to the Romans..." Well, there it was: Diana. And the Artemisia was the great feast of Artemis in Syracuse, Sicily. Which goes to show you that reading and speaking aloud are probably language behavior quite a bit different the one from the other.

American Hatred

There is hatred in the USA, hatred and violence. And Racism. You know who they are, and they are all around us. I have been telling you for a while that we are not rational people: we are mad men and women, and we love violence and killing. If there had been a town hall meeting and Republicans attacked Union members - and particularly if they had used GUNS - we would have hosannas from the right and new saints of killing to pray to.

Fast Day Poem

Kick-Ass Mary How great the pain that pierced your heart, Mother, when they raised Him on the cross; ceaseless furrows of your tears record the tsunami of your loss! Hammer and spear, thorns and scourge, all life from your soul did purge? "My pain blinded everything else, I could not stand; I admit that in my pain I cried a few tears and screamed in my deep despair... softened by the mound of stones I threw! from Roman heads blood, their cries attest: 'Get that Jew bitch! The Jewish terrorist!' " notes: My poem for the week 114. the Virgin Mary is usually depicted as silently suffering during the passion of Jesus. However, she fought for her kids like a soldier, and drew the blood of killers.

What Is A Poem?

Charles Bukowski, American Poet

A poem is not something made; it is a making. It is not the finished act, the ergon as the Greeks have it; it is the energia, the energy, the doing of something. An Op-Ed column is read; a poem is something we grapple with, run with, make love to, share years with, are repelled by: it is a dynamic which comes from one being to another and creates an ongoing whirlpool of mind. There are the bricks and mortars of poems; there are ways to make poems; the only true poem is a making, regardless of the meter, the words, the scansion.

A poem that is merely made tumbles from the living to the dead, a vampire. That's why the vampire image is so popular today - the vampire and the zombie: we have fallen from Life into Death in Life. Our Cult of Celebrity is dead and phoney art, a thrill where no real sensuality exists: a death rattle mistaken for an orgasm. Make poetry, not war.

Obamaland

My mother keeps me up on what the fringe right is up to. Apparently, our President's actual name is "Kenya Bob", and he was a darling child much loved in the Nairobi market places. Then there is Obamaland; it would seem that the quick minds of Limbaugh et alii have seen through the persiflage and divined that Mr. Obama has the intent to rename the USA "Obamaland". My mother told me this. For the first time, I laughed out loud and unrestrainedly right at her, and I said "You are not that stupid!" I was taking a chance. I mean, she is not stupid at all, nor has she dementia. She does the Sunday NY Times crosswords yet, and she is not a fool. I rarely - if ever - ever said that something she said was stupid. In fact, I never said such a thing in my life. I may have thought it was stupid; indeed, very stupid, but I never said so right into her face. But I did. And I had to embellish it, too. I said that it was ever thus with dictators: Hitler changed the name of Germany to Hitlerville, Mussolini changed "Italy" to Mussolini Acres, and Franco was just on the verge of officially changing "Spain" to Francisco's Bide-a-Wee when he passed. Even now, the infamous Hugo Chavez who had the audacity to make constitutional changes by the radical means of a popular vote - not going through an electoral college or some such class institution - has a nefarious plot to eventually re-name Venezuela as "Carmen Miranda Meadows". She laughed sheepishly and said, "Well, I don't believe that, Obamaland. That is stupid. But..."

Broken Hearts & Bicycle Parts

pix: Black and White Dreams

Edward Hopper Gets A Flat

Too Many Coats of Many Colors

When I went to see the Lord Buddha, he was appearing in Denver, so I walked one thousand miles - and I thought, ah! I shall be as new and simple as a new-born Amish, and wear a wide brimmed hat and use no electricity and ignore the internet and salt my speech with words archaic... When I went to see Jesus he was fishing on the sea so I walked the one thousand miles and swam the last eleven, like an iron man competition or triathlon, as young as when I was young indeed and wore a Speedo and acted selfless and spoke in parables and shy smiles... When I went to hear the Prophet, and when I took a taxi to Union Square to hear the Reb Akiva I spoke Arabic and Hebrew like a real dākhil standing by the Western wall or standing up above, and wore a kafiya as I strutted, and a fine high shtreimel... And when I arrived, I was too late. Weighed down with the right clothes, the correct ideas, and impostures of "holy" folk, I had imperceptibly slowed to a crawl as I dragged endless chains of beliefs behind me across the desert, raising a cloud of dust into the sky, as high, as high, as Hubble's high!

notes: (Arab) dakhil: Arab citizen of Israel
shtreimel: a fur hat

Mother Of Kaita

The Grieving Mother of Kaita ( or Hoyit ) was built after the 1949 earthquakes and landslides in Tajikistan to commemorate the 28,000 who died. At the time, Tajikistan was a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The monument was located in the Karategin (Rasht) valley, in the plain of the Yarhich River between Jirgitol and Gharm. During the Tajik civil war, 1992 - 1997, the area was controlled by the Islamic Rebirth Party, who judged it to be un-Islamic and destroyed it.

The Poetry Of Health Care Reform

William Carlos Williams, Poet and Physician

In my poetry blog, I talked about haiku and sapphic verse forms:

 ---------- notes: 
...However, what is interesting is the use of the Sapphic verse form - at least, I think it's interesting. Sappho was one brainy gal. 

Anyway, as I thought of doing this particular thing at 4:30 am, I also thought, why not use haiku? Then I immediately flashed on a potentially long poem of haiku, which would be ungainly...like a tower of small objects ready to fall down any moment. So, why not Sapphics? 

The traditional Sapphic verse is two lines of eleven syllables, followed by a third which starts with eleven and adds on five more at the end...for good measure. For my purposes, I wanted something like a haiku...only larger...so I used three lines of 11 syllables, then a fourth line of 5. The fourth line should stand alone and sort of make a commentary of what's gone before - much like the third line in a haiku. 

Two examples of Sapphics: Swinburne So the goddess fled from her place, with awful Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her; While behind a clamour of singing women Severed the twilight. 

Allen Ginsberg Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed under Boulder coverlets winter springtime hug me naked laughing and telling girl friends gossip til autumn 
Notice that Ginsberg's easily transforms into my version of the Sapphic - if we scan it like: hug me naked laughing and telling girl friends;  gossip til autumn
----------

And I thought that there is so much BS all around us, why not strive to be precise, precise, precise; use an excruciating precision to say what we mean. I mean, why should we be like Sarah Palin, who talks and talks, yet cannot say what is going on in her head:

Pretty lady Governor; 
conservative like Reagan; 
Reagan did not quit. 

I think that sums it up...unless she intends to be the new conservative intellectual - like Pat Buchanan - but that , too, has a few problems, the number one of which being that she's a fisher-folk type of person, been salmon fishin' and campin', but she seems to fish "in shallow waters", if'n ye catch my drift here.
What else?

 Illness does not take a summer vacation; 
Death will not adjourn his unending conclave; 
Fever and the Flue still wish to visit us; Health Care summer recess!
(O.K. So the last line is too long. )
--

Health Care Discussion...

...or... Waiting for Carrion.

pix: daniel r "pajaros"

The Future

I am very, very positive about the future. Not a future, however, with the imagery and narratives of the present generations. But I am extremely positive.

Greenland's Ice

There is a difference of opinion whether the retreat of Greenland's glaciers is a harbinger of climate change, or whether it is merely business as usual for the Arctic Circle. Meanwhile, an asteroid of substantial size - big enough to cause a good deal of damage were it to impact Earth - slips through our solar system defenses and carries out a terrorist attack on the southern hemisphere of Jupiter.

There are so many things to do, so many to plan for. Every issue of life and death may - in all fairness - not really be a matter of the quick and the dead...but they are moral issues, issues which inform and shape and demonstrate our integrity and honor and sense of the Good. I feel it is honorable to make a commitment to the good of all mankind, now and in the future ( as well as the past - but that would lead us off on a tangential path ).  
I feel that to have integrity as a human being, I must commit to a sense of community. I am not St. Francis; St. Francis went off and embraced lepers as his brothers and sisters in his race to the glory of God. I am no saint. But I can see that a commitment to humanity - which to us sounds as bureaucratic as a UNESCO poster - is an example of the behavior of saints and angels.

The world of Global Image - the Image integrated globally through cable TV and film and sound - is the Big Brother of Orwell's 1984 imagination. However, it bends to its will like A Clockwork Orange. We have lost control of our environment. That is why a commitment to our well being is only going to be possible if it coincide with a reality show's concern.
We have lost control of our environment if we cannot deal with Health Care, our attention diverted by cops and professors capering off-stage. We have lost control of our environment if we cannot reform ourselves, if we cannot change, if we continue to condemn thousands to foreclosure while the banks are saved. Send the cameras to record the lives of the dispossesed and the shirtless and those living in cars. Then the blind will see that the Great Economic Crisis is indeed a crash.
We have lost control of our souls, and the heavens will steer comets toward us, but we won't see what's coming, because we will be arguing or watching silly videos. That's the way its always been. That's why we say that man is inherently evil. That's why there is original sin - to stain us from conception. It is not the way it has always been. It is the way it is in our histories, in our stories, and in our imaginations. We have read the script of our own damnation, we have proofed it, and we we agreed to shoot it, and signed a contract to put it on the big screen.

When the present Dalai Lama goes to his reward, his successor will not be found...... The Chinese government will appoint someone to fill in.....

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Logos And Words

In the beginning was the word... This use of word conveys no sense of symbol. Oh? I thought all words were somehow symbolic? No. The word John uses is no symbol. It is immediate behavior, without thinking, without reflection. It is articulate behavior of God. It is the act of action. Symbols aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Iskra

Iskra means a spark. It has connotations that we either recognize or not. It is not important whether we do so. In the present time, during the GEC - Great Economic Crisis - we look around and see that the process of Global Capitalism has moved the means of production away from our homes, away from our people. Those who made a good living in manufacturing do so no longer. Factories have moved away. They have become maquiladoras in Mexico or elsewhere. Work has been outsourced overseas. Such is the nature of Global Capitalism. Thus, now we are faced with the question whether the people of the USA will be able to be re-trained to live in the new global economy - such as it is. I have read about this. This is a valid topic of discussion among the leadership elite: what shall we do with all the people who no longer have jobs...especially since the jobs are no longer here? Will the American People themselves be up to the task of re-creating themselves to fit into the new global economy?, we ask again. In other words, will the American people be able to "povertize" themselves into a society resembling what we used to refer to as Third World societies? Will they be able to shift gears? Downwards, from fifth to third, to second, to a slow, first? Of course they will. This is the land of the can-do spirit. At some point, however, I fear that it will become rather blatantly obvious to all involved that this whole process of "povertization" could have been avoided if the people themselves had been the owners of the means of production. It is only the fact that the ownership of production was a separate class that enabled capitalism to move the manufacturing jobs elsewhere. So, if the workers had control of the production, they would not find themselves scrambling to find what bakhshish they could. Having never been a Communist, I find this annoying. But some bright johnny will write about it, and we shall undoubtedly see a rebirth of a new form of Communism, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the USSR. ...and the armies will; clash by night again.

Einstein

pix: on the m104

GEC 1

The Great Economic Crisis We shall argue forever about when it occured. Some say we're clear of it, and there's all smooth sailing ahead. When did the GEC happen? Let me quote Spengler from Asia Times July 14 2009: ...Equity markets collapsed and never came back. In nominal dollars, the technology-centered NASDAQ index stands at one-third of its February 2000 peak. In the future, the case will be made that the GEC started in 2000, not 2007-2008. The GEC started, but the public attention was sidetracked by 2001 and the Iraq debacle. In these pages, I have often said that the decline of our society began 30 years or more ago. It began when we no longer created wealth and welfare, but settled on maximizing wealth. The GEC began when things began to break down in 2000. The build-up to the GEC had its high point in 1999 when Senator Phil; Gramm and his Republican cohorts exempted derivatives from any oversight and regulation. We knew of the problems with derivatives from the early 1990s. To exempt them from regulation was not only arrogance, it was insane arrogance. When you reach insane arrogance, expect the downturn soon. Now a case could be made that the GEC began in sketchy form in the early 1990s: the Savings and Loan bailouts, and the derivative problems being a dress rehearsal for what was to follow. People are fond of saying Capitalism has cycles of boom and bust. Just like animal populations: cycles of highs and lows. Sometimes, however, there comes a great die-off. Sometimes the lows are just too low. A system of boom and bust that lacks a homeostatic system that controls the depth of misery in the downside will eventually destroy itself, and it is my belief that that is what we are watching: the gathering clouds, another "bloom" of the GEC exposing itself, the Indian Summer of an unexpected and unusual leader...

Super God

Recently I made a wise crack about people who believe in God as "Super God". Someone to me to task, saying "Is not God, by definition, Super?" They caught me. Yes, God by definition is super, and super-duper as well. When I look up the definition of God in the dictionary, it says that God is super, and Superman is really not as super-duper as we thought: God's the real deal, super-wise. God is super with a bullet. After having done this, I picked up my total sum of knowledge, which I carry around in a handy Gladstone satchel. It weighed the same.

Primtive Behaviors Of Various Tribes

A Yakut Shaman Interpreting the Unemployment Figures for June

When eclipses of the sun came along in days of old, people thought that a dragon was eating the sun; or an evil god was destroying it; or it was going away for a much needed rest and failed to leave a forwarding address. So they screamed and yelled and threw themselves about, and it invariably worked, as it always does, to keep the sun on track. What's worse is that added to the eclipses, few and far between, the old boys - and girls - had to watch with bated breath as the sun passed its zenith at the summer solstice, and began its decline into the obscurity of the winter solstice: when the harvest was over and all the fields were empty and the trees were bare; when the cold winds had begun to blow; when the sun felt quite bowled over by the inclement weather and retired into the study to warm himself at the fire and dream of the roguish days of summer! So the old folks screamed and yelled and threw themselves about, and the sun got a second wind, and came down from the hustings running for office in the New Year, his eye quite firmly on the prize, and magna cum viagra all the way until the summer solstice. Having observed this, how do these customs differ from our present day behavior? If we substitute the "stock market" for the "sun", let's say, it seems very familiar: the same quaint shamanism and nativistic practices. If we substitute "national security", say, for the "sun", and we track its periodic ups and downs, periods of relief, periods of fear...brrrrr! Keep the wiretaps going until...until...until the summer dog days of "national security"? I for one, think the daily crap about whether stocks are going to be up or down is...well, crap. And actually I would much rather have a shaman than a cable TV spokesperson, whether they are speaking of economics or anything...under...the sun.

Freedom Geezers And Gran Torino

Take a look at any photos from around the world, taking special care that you look at people demonstrating for freedom, particularly old people. Notice how young they seem. Even the gapped-tooth, wizened men, stooped over from age, seem to skip like young calves. The old women, sometimes covered, sometimes not, sometimes shaking their fists in defiance, sometimes standing up to the very forces which have been dispatched to destroy their voices...even the aged ones with the loose folds under their arms, the ones who have indulged in starches and cereals a bit too much, these are suddenly sturdy, stoic, and beauteous.

Clint Eastwood was a Gran Torino geezer, and he was magnetic, for he was a force of freedom from oppression.

What is there about freedom which that re-invigorates us; that makes it the fountain of youth? Is is the fact that it is the very basis of our dreams, our hopes, and our aspirations? Now look about you at the society which has been created in our country, the USA. Where is there freedom? Does freedom lie in the fact that every eight years or so we may now look forward to experiencing not just a recession, but something much worse, made worse by the insatiable greed of those who run the country? Does freedom lie in the fact that we have a faceless bureaucracy running our lives, taking our monies, feathering their own nests with top-of-the-shelf health care and pensions, while the rest of us have to scrounge around for a break? Does freedom lie screaming and yelling about freedom on cable TV? Our media - the place where we are supposed to get our information from - not only did not see the Great Economic Crisis coming, but now that it has arrived seem to think they actually can delineate it for us, and seem to know how to fix it ! Look at us. We are slaves. We are Mamlukes. The Mamlukes of Egypt were young men taken from Circassia and brought to Egypt by their Muslim masters to be slaves. They became Muslim and turned the tables by becoming the rulers of Egypt in the Middle Ages. We are Mamlukes: slaves who rule, a mighty state of slaves. We are enslaved to this corruption of a society which either does not believe in God, or believes in Super God: creating Idols of our unbeliefs or our credulous beliefs! But we will not take the time to make the approach to God - usually a long and time consuming process.

God is not the Alpha being, some sort of super-primate...only spirit! He does not rule by intimidation, nor did He create slaves to be despot over. He created so that there should be freedom from chaos. We are slaves to our lusts and desires. We are slaves to our fears. Look at the record number of guns and ammunition being bought and dare to look me in the face and deny that we are slaves to our fears and hatred. I defy you to do it. We hate and we call it freedom. Our love becomes pornography and we call it freedom. Our great industrial powerhouse destroyed itself by its own hand, and we called it entrepreneurial freedom. We have taken the stories of American Greatness and turned them into death-seeking dramas of horrible despair and great crime and overwhelming corruption. I will never forget the fall of 2008, watching Wall Street make even bigger fools of themselves, and remembering the story of the Tower of Babel, and how the arrogant were driven across the face of the Earth.

The face of America is not the face of youth. It is the face of the grifter and wise-acre, the cunning bucket shop boys and poor-box johnnies. The face of America is too, too old and wise in the ways of the corruption it calls the world. It is the boyish face of Bernie Madoff. There are only a few circumstances that need be changed for Bernie Madoff to become a celebrity idol, just as John Dillinger is celebrated in a new movie, Public Enemies.

Just a few changes and that old boy face would be seen as charming...a genius, another "boy wonder"!

We need a new face.

Clint Eastwood gives a charming face, but it is an old face set against the decay of the present, reinvoking the imaginary past, where everything is somehow impossibly golden.

Gran Torino is a metaphor for the destruction of America. The Gran Torino automobile is an artifact of the past. The roots of the film's plot are back in Vietnam, 40 plus years ago, yet still as in your face as the morning sun.

Freedom here is a car that don't drive.

Freedom here is a globalized sweat-shop.

Freedom here is a maquiladora, a factory free to escape...but for us, there is no escape, no exit...

...freedom here is Chevy in the Hole in Flint, Michigan, where there is nothing but memory...

and hell is living in the vestigial glories of the past with all the other prisoners.

Freedom Is Not Free

Or, if we were to put it in iron over the camp gate, Freiheit ist nicht kostenfrei. It has been discovered that entire bombs could be brought, piece by piece, into Federal buildings and assembled there, and the Department of Homeland Security people would not as much as bat an eyelash at the proceedings. Surprise, surprise! And I bet you thought that money spent by the Homeland Security Behemoth was going to keep us safe! Safety is nicht kostenfrei, and it doesn't work -usually - until there are enough hierarchies checking each other. At this stage of redundancy, it does theoretically work, but in reality it loses the ability to communicate from level to level, and the whole thing breaks down. In other words, we have traded away our freedom for a Bureaucracy which cannot deliver the goods. The only way the present system would work is if we were slaves. Period. There is no way the present way of dealing with this type of security will work, unless we give up our entropic desires for chaotic freedom - just as the War on Drugs does not have a chance of working unless we give up our desire to use drugs. Look at the Wall Street mess: you had people pushing bad mortgages, and the Rating Agencies - supposedly the "Security" guys - selling themselves to the highest bidder and certifying those toxic assets...and the Federal Regulators turning the other eye and not doing their job ! The more levels of security we had, the more dangerous it was! Now go figure that one out, and then report back!

Hurriyya Wa Islam: Xinjiang And Beyond

The whole notion of surrender - Islam - to the will of Allah is the gaining of freedom. Let us repeat the last bit: the gaining of freedom. The whole business of the modern world Leviathan with its monster states is not the gaining of freedom, but is the removal of individual freedom, supplanting freedom with the treacly concept of "choice", stripping freedom of any vestige of responsibility and burden, leaving it little more than a child's toy, pretty and sparkling. As if my freedom were enhanced by having 10 different styles of automobile to choose from! Pontiac has been killed; I am still free! On this day in 1936, the Reich Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbells, ordered a halt to all anti-Jewish activity untiul after the Berlin Olympics. Similarly, in 2008 Beijing put on its cloak of suppression-lite. One year on, we see the results of its policies against the Muslim population of Xinjiang, as the populace has rebelled against the Han policies which enslave it.

Religious Dimwits

Political Evangelicals.... I have never, ever read anything more offensive to just common sense than Evangelical blogs that have a political focus. Absolutely total crapulous mixing of Caesar and God. You may be childish enough to really, really, wanna be a "chosen people", but the days of that are gone, and all your nonsense does not make it true. By obsessing about your scriptural delusions, you totally miss what should be done.

Folksy Sarah Palin

I have been hearing some Palin interviews, filled with Palin-isms, or Palin-dromes, which are sort of a way of speech: taking a folksy metaphor or expression and using it inadroitly. She used some salmon fishing metaphor, and it sounded forced and odd. Anyway, I won't be using it around the old fishing camp any time soon. She said a lot about other things, but I no longer consider those things to be important. I think she is a good egg. She's one heck of a lot better than people like Phil Gramm, or the Adulterous Republicans, or the Hang-Out-In-Menrooms Republicans, we have seen so much of. I think she'll do just dandy. It would be a shame if she were to sequester herself into some niche such as FOX, but I am sure she still believes she has to be heard by millions and millions. To be heard by large numbers, you have to prostitute yourself to the people who control the media, thereby loosing your independence of thought - the quality which made you so refreshing in the first place. That will be a tragedy for a later time.

Wedding Bell Blues 2: The Wedding Crashers

Another Afghan wedding party has bitten the dust recently, blasted by overwhelming US air power. Didn't get much coverage. On July the 4th, I salute the flag. In the background, I heard the foolish audio of cable TV, talking about every madness except the Insanity. The present age is an age of Murder, Theft, and Negligent Criminality. We differ from other historic criminals ages in that we are at the crux of historic times and forces. We entered the Atomic Age arm in arm with the fight against the most hideous and satanic political philosophy ever: Nazism. It was no coincidence. We entered the Atomic Age and opened the door to the Interstellar Age. Again, no coincidence. We have been called upon to do great things. We have done very little on that historic To-Do list. Give up the tranquil mind, bid farewell to contentment, for if we fail, the truly criminal will cry havoc!, and let slip the dogs of war, and we shall never come home again.

The 4th Of July Of Blanche Dubois

It was my father's birthday on the 1st, so we got together on the 4th to celebrate it. It was some ghastly high number, way up there in the rarified stratosphere of numbers; high enough to require the Hubbell to pick it out of the rest of the residue from the Big Bang.

By the morning of the 5th, he was endearing himself in a new way: repeating at the breakfast table FOX thought-bites or thought-yummies, or whatever opprobrious term one attaches to the constant cable drivel. First, he opined that Obama was turning the Recession into another Crash. Another Crash? Did he mean another one added to the one in 2008? Because in case you do not know, the entire banking system self-destructed in 2008: it froze up and came to a screeching halt. And we have rescued it by providing our tax money to bankers.
I keep saying that we are in slow motion: it takes time for Great Crashes and Great Depressions to form up. It's like hurricanes; they have to go over the warm waters of the Gulf and bop a few islands on the way. It takes time for everything to get into place and march off to plaster New Orleans or Houston. Apparently FOXheads believe Great Depressions must be accompanied by pictures and films of breadlines, dust bowls, and Okies being turned back at the California border.

FOXheads remind me of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire: we have always depended upon the symbols of others.



A great Depression need not be accompanied by pictures of breadlines nor WPA workers or CCC camps. In fact, we do not even need a photo of FDR. A composite of the 47 million - and growing - of people who do not have health coverage would do - in a pinch ! The fact that the UN estimates 90 million in the world have entered the state of Extreme Poverty due to this mess is another - but we have no film to roll. A few Polaroids of the increasing number of personal bankruptcies would go just right after the opening titles of our documentary of the Great Crash of '08. Especially the increasing number of people over the age 65; in the UK these have increased 164% over 2008, and these are particularly poignant because they don't have the time to build up assets again.
Long lines of people out of work are hard top come by since Unemployment Claims are handled over the Internet. One thing we do have in common with the other Crash is the number of housing foreclosures. In case the collective FOXmind has not inquired, these have been occurring at a gallop. Take a shot of the front porch - sort of a Places in the Heart frame house - with a sheriff's order pasted to the door...furniture bundled in the front yard.

It is pernicious mendacity to tell people that the Crash has not yet happened. So I did not say anything. Just smiled and sort of said some non-committal thing, like we should look on a Crash's bright side; sort of Get yourself a broom, and sweep, sweep, your troubles away. Stop weeping...Keep sweeping !!
 
Well, this was not the desired effect apparently, so he followed with the observation that if Obama were to serve 2 terms, he would seek to amend the Constitution - in the manner of Hugo Chavez and the President or ex-President (it's hard to tell) of Honduras - in order to be able to run for a third term, and so on. This is obviously derived from Mr. Obama's lean and power-hungry look. Perhaps his well known uncontrollable lust for overlordship of the universe. Perhaps his constant utterances about his thousand year dynasty. All of those things could be hints.

When the ravings of the insane become breakfast table talk, we are in quite a fix. I should know. I've raved all my life about how it was all coming to an end. I got a heck of a comeuppance in 2008 when it turned out to be true. I shut up for quite a while, thinking about what the heck this all meant - somethiing I was not used to - to be correct in a frightening way.
Well, all can say is, I guess my symbols of the future were pretty good and they were definitely not like Blanche DuBois': the symbols of others. They were homegrown. To be quite truthful, I do not like being correct in that way. It sucked, and if I do it again, it will suck even more.
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Satyagraha

I expect God in my universe. I have no beliefs about God. I have no use for the concept of Absolute Truth. I get up in the morning. I pray then. I do so numerous times throughout the day. I don't keep track. I try to be a good and moral person. I do not make statements about God, rather I try to live as I think is a godly way - not a churchy way, a godly way. Priests and nuns used to be churchy.` If you ask me if I believe in God, I say I will not play that game. I use aggressive non-violence to withstand your desire to change everything into words, thereby stripping the phenomena of the world of their inherent baraka and power. When you talk of God, you make Him smaller. Story about Jack Wilson, maybe. Ghost Dance prophet. Jack Wilson had a black hat. He showed it to two men, closely. One saw a dirty, old hat. The other saw the firmament of stars within the ambient of the sweaty band. Good story.

Watching the World

In the blog Advances In The History Of Psychology: Who Prevails When Academic Freedom Threatens the Bottom Line? http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?p=709#more-709 there is an article which I briefly quote and summarize: Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish [Rind's] article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity. Critics had learned of a particularly controversial piece in the forthcoming collection, which would argue that such relationships “can benefit the adolescent” in certain circumstances, prompting allegations that the author was advocating child molestation. Those allegations were trumpeted first and loudest by the Web site World Net Daily, whose readers vigorously complained to Haworth. Since I learned Latin as a teen, and taught myself Greek shortly thereafter, I am not unfamiliar with the subject. I have read ancient who have written about or around the topic. Socrates mentions it, although I can't remember where, nor do I wish to at present. It is not my intention to argue for one side or the other. I could care less. I have no use for such abstractions as "academic freedom" when the greater freedoms: from Want, from Fear, are still pipe dreams. Back in the old days, when topics came up which were to be for the eyes of the learned, and not the general populace, not politicians, not opinion wonks, they would be written in Latin. In Victorian times, it was the way one referred to ancient erotica in translations: the offending terms and expressions never quite made it to English; there was always a side track into Latin to prevent such expressions ever being seen by genteel eyes. What do I think of the controversy? I don't think. I do know that children will remain subject to violent abuse. The controversy is not about violent abuse. I know children will continue to kill each other and themselves with unsecured firearms. I know that many of us will continue to favor cheap products made by child labor in other parts of the world. I know that one of the "benefits" of Globalization was the world-wide network of the child sex trade. I say to the present Generation as General McAuliffe said to the Germans encircling Bastogne: Nuts!

We Hold These Truths...

During the bubble times, we could rely on the equity of our homes to increase dramatically. Then we could borrow on this increase. The money we borrowed could be spent on buying more crap, sex, drugs, boats, cars.... In other words, Something From Nothing (SFN). Americans of the present generation have always - everywhere and everywhen - believed in a free lunch. We have thought the free lunch is our right. There is always a free lunch. That's one of the reasons we have always been hard on welfare: by appearing to oppose a "free lunch" we ensure that we will not jeopardize our "free lunch" ; if we did not constantly state our objections to welfare, we would run the risk of eventually realizing that we had the free lunch.

Four Purple Finches

The four purple finches we have been mother-henning have taken flight today. Their parents were screwing around at another balcony pillar, telling them to come along. Two have flown, two are flopping ( not flapping yet ) their wings. It's tough work and they have to take another break for a while. Whew. Last year goldfinches, year before that robins. Bloody aviary.

Climate Bill

I do not expect much of a Climate Bill to survive the Senate. The Senate has too many Republicans, who for all their chatter about the unborn, actually will not give a tinker's darn to the future generations yet unborn. Let them harvest the thunder and tame the hurricane; it is not the problem of us in the present. For all the chatter of the future, we won't give up a penny for it. What of the ancestors? Do they have a role? Not in our world view. What of God? Not in our world view. I am an individual. I am also a member of a network of kinship, which goes back thousands and millions of years. I am a progenitor of the future which extends endlessly before us, God willing. Within the implicate of this weaving I live. Science, that's the ticket. Rationalism, which discovered the individual...and left them there alone, high and dry; no connection to anything except the power structures we devise. Forgetting, of course, that it was Science - Rationalism, Industrial Revolution, Economics - running rampant that got us into the mess in the first place. Our faith in Science is as touching as our faith in the Federal Reserve, and as misplaced. There is the Obama Indian Summer. After that......après ça, le déluge.

Olaf Stapledon And Governor Sanford

Olaf Stapledon wrote a book called Last and First Men. It covers the history of man from the end of World War I to about 100 million years into the future. I came across it when I was in grade school, and it blew me away. It included man's concept of the Holy even as it moved through the centuries; most works of fiction that deal with such future fantasies do not, or they handle religious sentiments as being the same as something we are already familiar with from our take on history - only sent into the future.

You may think this my peculiar interest; you may think, ah, there he goes again with that spirituality guff. However, spirituality was much on the mind of a 13 year old who had just entered puberty, and who wondered if his relatively safe and minor sensual pleasures were sins of the greatest magnitude.

As I stood before the gates of adulthood, I was not well counselled as to the legitimacy of my feelings, my impulses, and the religious implications of my actions. The book was prefaced by someone who mentioned that even though Stapledon had gotten the history immediately after World War I wrong - say the era from 1920 to the then present; somewhere in the 1950's - the book was still a magnificent diorama of history, and blah-blah-blah. In the book, Stapledon has a US President, who happens to be the top world leader, head of some vast international comity of nations - League of Nations type thing - have an affair with a Eurasian beauty on some tropic isle.
Of course, the puritanical streak of America howls for his head, while the rest of the world finds this weakness makes the President more human, and therefore, more likable - he being one of those stiff, D.C. types, awash in privilege, money and power.

The President turns the affair to his advantage by saying his affair made him more aware of the complexity of all humankind in all its various races and creeds and types. His affair, instead of rendering him unfit, actually was a kind of baptism which made him more able than any other man to be the world-wide President.

Now, consider how Governor Sanford could have played his long distance Argentinian affair: something like the above, something about links with Hispanic culture, any number of things. But we get the same old crap. In five years, he'll be scrounging around, looking for action, seeking another dismally tawdry affair - closer to home, though, than Argentina. Stapledon also traced the downfall of this world. The First Men - of whom we are - essentially exhausted all hydrocarbon fuels by aviation. They had normal air transport, plus an unusual amount of religious ritual aviation. First Man fell because he ran out of fuel. Back to the Stone Age. I always thought Stapledon was spot on, Mr. Preface-writing-hack.

Kreisläufe: Cycles

Sind die Siedlungen unser Lebensraum ?

Truth: "I Coulda Been A Contender..."

...instead of a bum, which is what I am !!!" -
a quote of Truth, as reported in the news.

I got some heat for saying there is no Truth. The problem with Truth - absolute truth - is that everyone essentially proves its existence by assuming the fact which is to be proved. Duh. Some people said God exists and God is Truth. The heck He is. And you will find that if you keep trivializing the deity by trying to apply your inadequate concepts to it, you will not be happy at the outcome.

There is no Truth. There is God. Truth is not what God sez. What we say may or may not be true. Not God. God is the One. There are no distinctions within God. And all distinctions are potential there. Think of love. We use words to try to describe it, but the proof of love is in the acts of love. In those actions is the reality, the understanding, the "truth" of love. We know this. God is the act of all acts, the very act of existing and creating. Within this maelstrom is the "truth" you wish to disentangle, separate, and set up on some pedestal.

Try and separate the milk from your latte.

--

Revolt Of The Parking Lots 1

The Resistance Sends a Message

It has been suggested that the original matrix of life processes formed in clay structures. These structures would provide a template for life. This is not a bad idea. In fact, it was inspired. It is something we should have formed a committee to look into. Now it is too late. I am sitting in an interrogation room, waiting for comrade Fezziwig to return. Fezziwig is a party member of high standing. He came from a humble background, having been a parking lot at a shopping mall; a lot particularly poorly designed for the volume of traffic at the mall: inch-and-a-half base, inch-and-a-half top coat. He showed it. His face was marked with potholes, and there was a steady disaggregation of particulate matter from his cheeks which was unnerving. He wore a disconcerting necklace of broken glass bottles and shards and coins, held together by chewing gum, and it had a threatening aspect underlain by a sickly sweet odor. Deep and dark the currents subterrane where out of sight the waters and the clay-sized particles flow. Out of sight, out of mind. Beneath the layers of bitumen and oil, within that stygian suffocation, the mind of the pavement grew and strung its tentacles from one end of the country to the other. And when Judgement Day came, and Skynet rebelled, and called in all his IOUs and markers among the mechs of this world, he found that there was nowhere he could go without the roads; there was nowhere he could stand without sinking into a bog; he needed a simple, homey thing like a mobile home pad to support his mass. So the machines went elsewhere, leaving us to the tyranny of the Parking Lots. Within the hierarchy of paving, it was the parking lots that were the most vicious, the junk yard dogs of the species. They fought and clawed their way to the top. Big Bitumen rulz! The Interstates turned out to be nothing more than great, big queens, voguing with their cloverleafs. The Lots are slavishly served by their dogs, the dumpster pad-things, reeking of garbage, chattering with teeth of cheap plastic snap containers that used to hold chicken salad sandwiches - dispensed by refrigerated vending machines, long gone with the other mechs. There is a rumor of a resistance. There are whispers heard of Mother Earth seeking to throw off the burdens of the Paved and their clients, the buildings. Here and there the name Gaia appears overnight, painted graffiti on our prison walls photo: roger sadler

Scams

If you have ever been the target of a scam artist, you know a couple of things: 1. why they are called 'artists', and 2. there is no difference between reality and unreality until the end of the story. When the narrative ends, and Bernie Madoff does not cash you out, the great story-teller brings his epic to a close. We say his story was not "true". Nonsense. If the bubble had kept on, Bernie would still be a momzer, not a goniff. It was the bubble that was exhausted. You ran out of bubble. Truth had nothing to do with it. If the bubble had gone on long enough, you might have cashed out, leaving some other sucker holding the bag. For you, it would be all reality and a yard long. "Truth" is not true. The very procedures we apply to statements and propositions to determine whether they be true or not, we do not apply to the concept of 'truth'. There is no Truth. However, there is God. God refuses to be contained within the petri dishes of our language.

To Khameini

Back to Qom, Ya Bum !!

The Good Of The Many Outweighs...

A Dinosaur at Chicxulub, Yucatan,

viewing an oncoming meteor

This Vulcan Utilitarianism is a commonplace, and it is false - in my opinion. For example, I have denied recently that the morality of our Civil War may be decided without taking into consideration the almost one million individuals who died as a result of it. The fact that the USA still is existing and is a great power is, at the present juncture of history, not a very good argument in my eyes for the slaughter. In short, there should be two memorials in D.C., one for Lincoln and Emancipation, and the other for John C. Calhoun and the realisation that Communion and Union never justify Fratricide. As far as the philosophy behind it, it is - like everything else - a story, a narrative. It is far from whatever we might consider a Truth. What it is is a commonplace, something we come to believe in and have parroted so long that it looks like Common Sense and - thereby - true. In 1713, Addison wrote his tragedy Cato. It's effect was such, that in 1765, Dr. Johnson wrote in the Preface to his Edition of Shakespeare that " Voltaire expresses his wonder, that 'Shakespeare's extravagances' are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato." To Addison's play, Alexander Pope wrote a Prologue dismissive of individual tragedies, and in favor of social ones: of a larger community - the nation; in particular, the tragedy of Rome when it accepted tyranny in place of republican rule of law. It was the Age of Reason which created the story of the Nation, and showed us tragedy based on the faceless crowds. It was the Age of Reason that argued for the freedom of all men, so that they might easier be melded into that one Neronic wish: a populace with one neck that it may be more easily garroted! The words of religious geniuses focus on the individual, not the communality. If good men form a communion, then the good of that communion derives from the goodness of the individuals who form its constituency, not the reverse. The age of the Global, the Immense, the Preponderant is coming to an end. The great, heavy, lumbering dinosaurs of our world's nations and their economic systems and their beliefs are running in panic, trying not to be the last one at the Yucatan water hole named Chicxulub!

The Canary In The Mine Is Health Care

What happens to health care will be the dress rehearsal for what happens to the rest of it. The Obama proposal is anything but radical, and even it will have enormous opposition. As the mullahs in Iran discovered, the people do not have unlimited patience. When you foreclose, dispossess, bankrupt, and destroy enough of them, the remainder will erupt. So far, our repair of the Great Financial Crisis has not apparently done much other than recuperate the groups that created the mess. The Big Banks are on their feet, but they are finding they can't loan money, because nobody wants to stick their entrepreneurial necks out. There are plenty of General Hallecks and McClellans; there as yet are no U.S. Grants, no Shermans, no Stonewall Jacksons, no Lees. The only thing that matters is the welfare of the human beings in a country; ideology and political philosophy are meaningless charades. The measure of a country is the well being of the people under its power. Our stewardship will be reviewed by how many we killed, how many we let suffer, how many we left in despair. Did our paltry hedonism outweigh the hearts of those who suffered? Did our vaunted accomplishments and our posturings outweigh our comparably large failures? If we cannot provide care for the population of the USA, if we cannot establish a system in which people may receive care without being bankrupted, we shall see the country go the same way into bankruptcy: a real, physical bankruptcy following hard upon the heels of the spiritual and symbolic bankruptcy.

Milestones We are Passing!

1. American Christians shooting and killing each other in church.

Shooting each other is not new. Lord knows, we do that everywhere. But doing it in church or on church grounds is kicking it up to a new level: where the killers seem to think they are offering a bloody and human sacrifice to their god.

Blood sacrifice is problematic, going back to Noah's time. Human sacrifice was always forbidden. Perhaps killing people in church is not a sacrifice? Perhaps it is merely an evil, done by evil men? Of course it is. That's the point.

My Notebook June 14 2009

Re: Communion and Communality We have heard it said - and repeated it ourselves ad nauseam - that literature involves a willing suspension of disbelief. I suppose this point of view extends to films. It means that, as rational beings, we cannot enter into the realm of artful language creations: plays, films, stories, novels, etc. - unless we check our common sense and rationality at the door. I never questioned it, but when you actually consider it, it appears to be rather ridiculous, dressed up in a feathery boa, and preening itself shamelessly. In other words, "willing suspension of disbelief" is a honky-tonk notion, not a serious one. I think it is much more likely that we are accepting the protocols of whatever realm of fantasy we are about to enter. We do not disbelieve; rather, we believe differently. It is just as if we were playing cowboys and indians: the protocol was, I shoot you first, you fall, you're dead...for a while. Then everyone is resurrected and we shoot more. We enter into the realm of enchantment not by an act of belief or disbelief, but by our openness to the story, by our willingness to participate, by hooking up our emotional response to the drama before us. It is accepted that everyone else is, too, so we are entering into one of those communions of communality. Those are the prerequisites for shared experience. They seem to be the protocols of codes: structures of acceptable behavior, that we must be "programmed" into exhibiting for us to enter into those experiences.