Chairy

I expand from within as the pressure
outside goes down
Most of it is predictable now
The chair in the corner looks
at me like a platypus
What will it be without me
to see it with that half sardonic Duck grin
It's like Pee-Wee's playhouse
here sometimes
Nature abhors a vacuum

A Christmas Carol

Dickens gave us one codification of the suffering of the poor. He made them humble and noble and we have institutionalized this schema of compassion. You can even buy gold plated, limited edition, castings of scenes from a "Christmas Carol" if you want to flaunt your ability to separate sign and signified.
Years ago, when my son joined the cub scouts, I agreed to be a den leader. That Christmas, we took a list of addresses given to us by one of the churches, and took toys and food to the homes on Christmas eve. Most of the homes had a single mother and kids. Sad little dark places with measly trees or no tree at all. A lot of the women were ashamed, like they had done something wrong - made their kids lower somehow....it was bad enough they had to live like this, but we shun the poor, we take away their dignity, we are suspicious of them. "I mean, how screwed up do you have to be in this country to not be in the middle class?" - We love our aristocracy more than the lords.....
But this is all too easy to see. It is just one of the vast abstract billboards warning everyone that we are if nothing else as a species, egregious liars!
All over the world today there are great reunions, fine dinners with good will and love. There are homecomings and traditions kept alive and so much symbolism. All of this is marvelous. There is also the disunity, the disjunction; but it isn't the caricature of Tiny Tim or clean, hard working, noble peasants; it's 1 million women and children homeless in America, today. It's the jump in suicides this time of year, and the people who have slipped through the cracks. It's the preoccupation with doing the best for our own and how that group is constantly shrinking. It's the suspicion and psychologically antiseptic position we take with all of the strangers who are potential con artists, pedophiles, verbal abusers, bi-polars, gamblers, fatties, smokers, druggies, sci-fi nerds, players, haters, stalkers, voyeurs, cell-members, moles, demons, microbes, infectious agents, liabilities, .... ad nauseum -
Out of all the millions of strangers living alone and not invited to a good old fashioned Christmas dinner, how many were real threats? How many suicides this season would not have occurred if a single act of kindness had been shown to a stranger.
We used to think Chauvinism was bad. How Chauvinistic is it to go to the level of your own DNA?
Maybe all Dickens really did was let everyone off the hook? We can all say, "such a shame", and keep going.
Once compassion becomes an unwise financial risk, it becomes ritualized and ridiculous; more for the compassionate actors than the audience. We can pretend all we want to, we can set aside special days for kindness or love or gratitude, and put it in our scheduler, and do all the right things, like a huge heartless machine grinding beautiful ideas into porcelain nick-knacks.

The Role of the Observer

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The Role of the Observer

The world is my blog

I keep it going by

noticing

things

and leaving

comments.

Here alone

by myself

I keep on

noticing

and making

comments;

silently;

anonymously.

The individual is nothing but

possibility;

there is no real identity but in

another's heart.

That's the role of the observer.

The White Wailing

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
- Shelley


Siddhartha Retreats

Who threw Pip into the sea?
Was it thee?

Strictures make the crime
make the irony
of itself
It is inevitable

Who sent Pip down below
to know much more
than he should know?

Says the Whirlwind:
"Speak your judgement, and it shall be"

Dilute in the vastness of it all,
what drove Pip mad;
the deep,
or innocence?

Volunteered Slavery

May the better man win

Some of us began to wonder
at the Colliseum
looking up each day
to see how well we'd done
Were they proud?
Was our day passed?
We began to wonder; who are
they and who are we
down here?
There is the lion
and there is here.
-----------------------------------------------------



This is deeply distrurbing.
I'd almost rather see the devil running the world.

The Flame

The Flame

I have no rituals
but I ritualize
a name
a face
a feeling
possibilities
symbols;
my mind's hand
touching, exploring
with its fingertips
absorbing
I can't give it up, or, I won't give it up;
I don't know which

Thank you god for You Tube!!

I'm influenced by Princess Haiku and flowerville...it feels good, I'm lighter....

I have always loved Fela Kuti; his music and what he stood for. I have listened to "Army Arrangement" over and over countless times. I had the same experience with "Are you experienced".

So periodically, I check, and there it is

If you've never heard him, you are in for a mind-blowing treat!

First, some info about Fela

In 1977 Fela and the Afrika 70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the "zombie" metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The album was a smash hit with the people and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed if it were not for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the main army barrack in Lagos and write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier," referencing the official inquiry which claimed the commune had been destroyed by an unknown soldier.

Over a million people attended his funeral. He died of AIDS.

Here is the incredible video!

Watch

I couldn't live without italics

There is nothing not
understood;
only misunderstood.
Everyone understands everything.

Does it matter how different
the answers are?






Bridge Street

How could a name conceived
with such utility
now carry so much imagining?
There is a nostalgia here
for steel.
There is a nostalgia here
for luck.




There are faces in my floor -
These are all from my bathroom floor with no processing. The blue is color distortion from a cheap digital camera (or is it?)





Heart of a tree, butterfly, ripples in a pond...?

Look Ma, both hams

How to improvise with both hams
Don't imagine bass and right hand
Imagine bass player and piano player
Don't imagine bass notes and piano notes
Imagine dialogue
It's not the hand, but the
arm, that makes them different
One that walks the beat
One that sees what it can get away with
-----------------------------



Pray to Be
What can we pray for
and show good faith
to have it answered?
We can pray to be;
to be fair, and generous;
honest and open; to love;
even the impossible; especially
the impossible
We can pray for the will
to carry out our best intentions
We can pray we are not ruined
by strife or bad luck;
to lose our prejudices
by the bundle
To see the hand that moves
when we move
to cut the strings
To ask a thousand terrifying questions
every day
To be afraid
but not live in fear
To be new, but not naive
To stay in our seats
for the whole movie
and never look away
We can pray to be the answer
to another prayer

What can we then hope for,
and show good faith?
To be loved for
what we pray to be.
---------------------
Hey Ike, here's a cool contemporary string quarted called Ethel, maybe it will help stop the voices...
Be careful, string players jerk their heads around a lot


Oh, and Ike - here's that Chet Baker stuff you were wondering about...




Check out this cat's face - he's been around....

Now, IKE - here's a real treat.....three masters at work:
Van Morrison, Chet Baker, and Steven Sondheim - excruciatingly beautiful, I know that's your diet Ike - nothing but meat...



More music for you Ike -
Comfortably Numb


------------------------------------------------------
Groan-ups

You say Truth, Beauty, Love, God;
these things are for children
What have you instead
with your relaxed jeans
and ball caps and running shoes?
You're still JUST dad trying to be cool
and existential like
It's the same old cynicism
of least action for the heart
of way more answers than questions
authoritative like
You live without myth? That's the adult way?
Shame.

Phoenixville

There is only one Phoenixville

High Bridge stretches like a

great cat arching its back

toward the sun

What is on the other side

I barely know;

different churches

different rights and wrongs

different things that make them smile

We come to this side, to be reborn;

but first, to finish burning.

I have seen death leaving the station

as I was coming in

and thanked it in my new mind

but that was before

The Sunflower has been cut for winter;

layed out on the grass to melt away

Everything around me has

died or disappeared

and still...

no sign of ash

What will this one be like, what have I learned?

Death precedes birth but they are one and the same

in the limit.

The flame is worth the fire if you're honest.

Don't count on now.

There really is only one Phoenixville.

Who am I to teach?
Who am I to say?
Only of the things
I'd go back and change
Only of the things I wish
I'd learned sooner
Only to wretches worse
off than me
Or those that, like
me, will soon be

Who am I to be this self-documenting
experiment
To fill the already full with me?


This is deliberate;
you think naive?

Study the coincidences
read them like a book

If there is one allegory then all
is allegory
If there is survival of the fittest
there are also better generations
If there is one love
then all is love
Death is the
absence of love
not breath

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

Egocentric religions and belief systems

So many religious, ethical, metaphysical/spiritual belief systems seem to be in terms of the gains for the participant.
Be good, you go to heaven, your prayers are answered, ...
Think positively and you'll get what you want, it will be attracted to you, ....

We could just as easily include, slit a chickens throat, mix the blood with toad slime, ...., and you get, whatever you desire

People then try to balance the equation subject to the constraint, they get whatever the big payoff is - they can say, "I can't help that man, it's against the law, if I break the law, I'll go to hell." The greediest for deferred rewards of course are the most pious, they have huge investments to protect - mansions in heaven -

There's not much in popular culture about trying to become good with no thought of rewards or punishments. Even Buddhism gets contorted into some final payoff.
Suppose you could be overjoyed every time you could help someone. You'd have a constant source of joy.
How is it that self-interest has become so pervasive?

If you are conned often enough
on the great road
you will stop trusting strangers
there are only strangers after this

If you are lied to often enough
on the great road
you will look for the
truth behind what is being said
there is only deafness after this

If you are cheated often enough
on the great road
you will learn the value
of things
there is only commerce after this

If you suffer often enough
on the great road
you will come to
love simplicity

Cycletherapy and Cycletherapists

Oh Gawd! He's doing it again!

He's warm, and funny and bright for a while

and then, cold, dark, silent

He's cycling! Look, he's cycling.

Quick, call a Pharmacist!

It's spring

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

Salv: So, what is time then?

Simp: It is what is measured by a clock.

Salv: And how does a clock do that?

Simp: It's quite simple.

He opened a clock to show me

Simp: See this gear? It turns this gear, which in turn turns

these two gears, which in turn, ...

Salv: Ah, but why those gears, in that way?

Simp: Why to get the right time.

Salv: And if there were no clocks?

Simp: We wouldn't know what time it was.

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

Everything profound is circular; tautology

Everything meaningful is choice

Survival for that which

must compete is obvious

Detachment from that which is

bound to pain is obvious

Everything important is obvious

Here's the choice:

The infinite joys of this world;

Are they worth the wheel of it?

The holy choose the middle way.

Middle of the road, is peaceful.

The profane choose the dust

of the road.

There is enough futility here

to make distractions seem

like wisdom

Then there are those of us

that choose the flame

We learn to keep

the losses to

ourselves

We nail the chosen

self

hide and all

to the sky

We learn

to weave ourselves,

in time.....