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