When I Awoke The Weather Had Changed

ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN TRUTH AND RELATIONSHIPS

My Fathers Brother And Sister Are Gone

Last night I checked on the latest weather for Southern Arizona.  We were to be drying out more today, while the weekends wetness was being scaled back since the computer models were less suggestive of that.

Eight or so hours later, its all changed. Moisture is up, disturbances are near, and the chances of rain were much increased for this weekend.  Guessing about the future, sometimes even just hours or minutes away, is ultimately a guessing game.  Regardless, we do live in a space-time continuum.

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My fathers self inflicted death occurred some 44 years ago.  My mother had been dead for several years at that time.  Dads brother and sister lived on, each in differing areas of the country, until this year, when they became perhaps closer than ever, in death.

As far as I knew, they had not spoken for decades.  My aunt Ann was the only relative that kept contact with me until about a decade ago, although I visited her a number of times across country.  She had a somewhat difficult life, spending many months at a time, over the years, in mental health facilities.  She never married, but really enjoyed children.  She was the only family member who ever showed any interest in we four orphaned children.

As far as I know, no relative has even asked about me over the years.  I would have last seen them in the 1960′s at funerals, except for me having visited some of them over the years. If they talked about my childhood and that of my sisters, it was with a shaking of the head sense of tragedy; ‘What happened to you kids.’…

This has always been the oddest part of my family; they left us with someone they despised, abandoning connections to us in their disdain for this person who staked my father starting at the day she saw him at my mothers funeral.  The priest there passed to us what was to be a curse on us that day.

Anyway.

Family is the basic first building block of extended family-community-society-humanity.  We are actually all interdependent and interconnected, if not obviously by human relationships, by the reality of the Environment itself. Ultimately there is not a bottom line to your actual family; it intertwines with all other families and Creation. Most people are 6 or so contacts away from everyone else on earth, the so called 6 Degrees of Separation.  There is the family of humanity, which we all have a vested interest in genetically and in many other ways.  But that does not prevent human beings from creating many reasons to fear and suspect other humans.

This separation part seems to come easy to my family, and unfortunately for my sisters and me, both sides of the family had serious abandonment and alienation issues.  Some of us had a “Perfect Storm” of dysfunctional modeling in what was once termed the American melting pot, a pot in which we were seemingly left cold in.

Nature and Nurture and Nothingness

This problematic life set-up such as I and others have had, will present any person with the prospect of unconsciously living the dysfunctions programmed in–out, over and over as if haunted. We are set up to learn much when we are the ones living life the “hard way”, and all while being ignored trying. Even with families intact, many of us live lives of quiet desperation, the accumulated separation forming momentous obstacles to a sense of connection and belong to others and to Life.

Then, there is the sensible restorative alternative to programmed in error; an essentially spiritual quest, seeking out awareness and its potential for understanding relationships in and to Life. Understanding can go on to forgive and release the seeming oppressions of the past.  Without it, we can go on to inflict the curse into our future, and into the world.

Seeing Through While Not Being Blinded

This self enlightenment, where burdens are set down and regrown into healthy fruit, is essentially The Way to solve the riddle of “The Sins of The Father”, which should actually be called patterns of ignorance in action, or Evil’s nascent seedling. Life gets thoroughly reconnected, not by politics or religion, but by spiritual immersion of the moment into Life.

I define Evil as ignorance in action, for none of us actually plan things that seem to others to be evil.  Most often, what we do do, is pass on an infliction and narration of our ignorance of Life and Creation.  This will likely produce unkind to horrible evidence to others, they can see and feel the evil, but most likely not understand the full breath of reason to it manifestation.  Even they then, through good intention, can go on to manifest ignorance in action by reaction. Well meaning unconscious continuance of ignorance in action can morph into its own “Sins of the Father”.  The answer is to be in the Ways of Life, or in some terms God, the opposite of ignorance in action.  It is a simple logical formula, as if mathematical, yet not knowing the math can sentence my own ignorance to its fate.  We are fundamentally designed to be Truth seekers, yet much can overwhelm and obstruct that pure intention.

This practice of being in the Presence of Life, or God, is not supported very well in the social and material worlds.  Largely, we are living in a consumerist and materialism paradigm where “successes” measurement is most often in dollars, holdings and “accomplishments” of the “free” individual.  Proud abstractions are proffered as if they were reality, while the reality of experience actually does not exist outside the universe.  This fact goes even so far as to connect each action of you or I to all of Life.

Social consequences, as well as other environmental ones, are consciously avoided, ignorance instituted, in mind frames seeking self aggrandizement, “success”, “achievement” and other “free individual” pursuits, for they are essentially delusional if the consequence of full connections are kept from cognition. This is most often done as an intention to not know, making it into ignorance in action while the delusion promotes self importance and the values that validate its bias.

JUST DO IT!!!  A Montra Of The Fearsome Self Actualized Achievers

Just desiring to go get a drink from the refrigerator, besides involving the use of energy and social, scientific and economic policies involved, besides that reality, gravity is in constant connection–the universe is altered, albeit seemingly very minor, from you deciding to go to your bedroom or sit for a while watching TV.  It is not exactly mentally questioning every move you make, but knowing the consequences of the collectivity of such movements by not denying their existence.  Not worshiping ignorance.

I will step out of the reflective self individual consideration to offer this observation; you will see in society, likely in most societies on earth, the desire to promulgate fear and insecurity through the intention to offer ignorance as knowledge, and that knowledge actionable intelligence.  This is then the realm of rationalization; where fantasy and reality have indistinguishable borders.

Now we can allow what is not factual, not fully honest, not interested in understanding others; let these kinds of perversions of truth and reality be called real and truthful, and not know our self deception.

Well, this trick of making fantasy into a kind of cognitive perceptual reality is a quality, or lack of quality, that holds a subjective capital; Ignorance becomes an avenue to propose and prosper; to rationalize false “truths” into a plausible narrative line.  These narrative lines need connecting to the individuals identity to attain real value.  The way to do this and set up a solution to a now intrinsic cognitive dissonance aversion, is to have this story maintain its expression as a factual entity.

The Mandates Of Mind Control

Confirmation Bias is now a mandate to this creation of a fantasy into an Appearance Reality, and that more broadly into a perceived Consensus Reality thought of as being The Real Truth, one most always requiring arrogance, attitude and world of other societal enemies.

This false truth; the one avoiding an honest platform of observation outside of ideology, is prejudiced against full questioning as well as honest evaluations of outside answers.  It must avoid this to keep ignorance in its now sacred place. This feat of distortion requires emotive protection to blame and shame, to mystify and to dominate the individuals truth seeking apparatus, making it dependent on emotion and rationalization to stand in as apparently confirmed sound reason.

To detect these aberrations of human consciousness, we need wonder as to what the actual reasons are in the rationalizations; what is served by distorting Truth into something other, while at the same moment considering the means of objectively determining Truth as something unwholesome?

Truth Is An Ideal; An Ideal To Be Connected To

My aunt and my uncle carried much emotional reactivity in areas of life.  The differences between them essentially led to their disconnection.  This has more and less effected my sisters and I as well.  As it turns out; if you are insecure, having been or felt betrayed or abandoned in life, you tend to be reactive to its its stimulation. Then, as I have learned in family, and see is evident in society(the huge extended family of humanity), defensive projection of inner irritation targets family or societal elements as the source and object of irritation.  You will “see” in these blamed folks, rightly and perhaps wrongly, that they ARE the way you accuse.

This is a primitive yet effective self preservation trick when the Truth is not known but requires substitute explanation to issues being avoided.  We actually all seek to live by The Truth, that is why we become mandated to perceive a likely reason, but what is more likely, we live by an assembled logic masquerading as Truth. What fantasy and imagination do here is very clever; we come to feel what we believe is true.  Now we only require the stimulation of that idea to “know” this felt truth substitute.

Girl oh boy, are we ever now set up to be used and abused by the rationalized dialectics of the worlds idea parades.  What will be excluded from these grand notions of explanations of existence will be the current immersion of your life into all Life; or your spirit with The Spirit–the One without exclusion.

More Tricks Of The Rationalization Trade

There are always reasons that the weather has changed, whether I understand them or not.

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Is Death an Illusion?

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Life, Death and the Spaces Between

My Aunt Would Say; Do you want to Visit the Cemetery?

It would be one of the first things I’d hear; ‘Do you want to visit the cemetery?’

I was asked that when visiting in the 70′s, 80′s, less in the 90′s. She had spent more time of her life with my parents than with me. But some folks have differing ideas about where ones dead family members are buried or otherwise “kept”.

My own view was always as it is now; once you are dead you are gone, and if there is a heaven, I doubt if it is sitting forever 6 feet under waiting for someone to come by. It all seems more about loss, remembrance and superstition. A couple times I did go with her since it seemed important for her. This has all come to mind over last nights
The Tibetan Book of The Dead on the History Channel, and a spiritual blog I visited the day before asking a question about life after death.

There are some ideas that humans need closure and various rituals to connect them to some essence of the departed. I’m OK with that, I hardly think it justifies taking up land for the dead, as if at some future date we might have to all live in skyscrapers as to not disturb the dead. In Tibet, you (or what is left) are set free to the vultures, but then a prayer ritual goes on for some 49 days to guide you to your next life.

Pay attention to the monks praying and you might become a newborn human instead of a cat or a mouse. Can’t say much on that, except it seems somewhat arbitrary, spiritually, if ones concentration on the guides saves you from becoming a termite instead of a valuable member of a human society. Do you move up again if you are a good termite instead of a reckless one? But then I did not design existence…

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Respect, disturb, visiting, well which is it? I feel respect of a sorts at cemeteries, especially the very old ones. There is something touching over the gesture, and for old (abandoned?) cemeteries, the idea that I can imagine what lives came and went around there. History itself, seemingly drifting off into a mausoleum.

I can get a similar feeling finding an old rusted car in a field, or a rusted piece of farm machinery, so it might be an association of respect and even admiration for what once was, that still maintains an artifact where it gave up the ghost. But I feel no such connection of essence to the graves of my parents. I also do not get the insistence some have over getting bones put into a hole for completion of one lost from this life. People seem to intend to carry out wars and smaller scale demands over getting their relatives or ancestors bones put back into some realm of respect, due to location of the remains. But this stuff is going on in the livings minds for various reasons the dead may have little cause with.

My respect for a dead person is unaltered by where their bones are, or if they were cremated or had an air burial, or burial at sea. I likewise do not care where my bones will be kept if anywhere at all; I am part of this earth and the Spirit of Life, what anyone does with my remains will be immaterial to that, unless, I suppose, space is taken up for the endeavor.

Who I am, and whatever being human is, we know it is about consciousness. You and I are inside our consciousness, not fully in anyone else’s. I am not living your life, obviously. When I am dead, I am some aspect of that consciousness I was or its Source, or nothing. But I will not be hunkered down in a box underground waiting for visitors, checking my stats, counting if all my bones are there or whatever.

Visit the cemetery? I will as long as they exist, for the view and the idea of respect created by the idea of respect, but not to visit anyone dead. To visit the dead, see them as alive in your own mind. Tell stories and wander through their apparent narrative, their meaning for you. Photo’s can help with that. Death is part of Life, and if this life had reason for you or I, I imagine that reason is continued on, just like energy, bones or no bones.

Flowers of Childhood: My mothers hidden message

Mothers hidden message—

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After my 12th November birthday, came a long winter. I would occasionally look at the small tulip areas my mother and I had worked on the year before. A tilted but otherwise flat area of snow that sloped away from the driveway. We did not have a car. This driveway was, instead, an artifact, a wide area of rock going from Central Avenue near Chicago, to our garage, which was a storage shed for all things not car related.

We had turned winters corner that year, but snow was back over the tulip patch. This seemed irrelevant to the tulip bulbs who were sending up their stalks confidently, as if knowing there was not a foot of snow there. There was not. But now I watched in wonder as her and my flower bed came back from the dead. I had no illusion that my mother would return. When the phone rang that early morning of her death, we were relieved. We could not stand the agony we knew she was in for so long. Somehow, pains absence meant a kind of peace for her. That was our relief.

It had become my job to weed the flower beds and mow the lawn for years now. Seeing these bulbs that mom and I planted connected me to her intentions for beauty. Some days later, snow gone, I continued cleaning up the 5 by 8 foot bed that was covered with rotting leaves. The first bulbs began opening a few days earlier, kind of here and there. Now most were becoming fully opened. A quick rain storm began pelting me, but I keep working. Then came the hail. No! I thought. The hail increased in size and intensity. Tulip flowers were being torn off pedal by pedal. Then the leaves began to be shredded. I went in the house.

After the storm passed, I returned to the flower bed. It was covered with white balls of hail and green shreds mixed in with flower pedals. I think not one whole flower was left. My moment of reflection and rejuvenation had been decimated. The idea that somehow beauty would survive its trials with the promise of spring, was stripped of its bucolic romance. Life goes on, yes, but I am on my own.

I did draw a lesson through time about this moment, where seeing my mothers hand at work was shattered from its moorings. It is not in the physical world where we establish our signpost, our seeds of presence. It is who we are in spite of trials and tribulations. It is how we come back to bloom again by the power of our own spirit over the realms of chaos and destruction. We are the flower. Our reservoir of Spirit, of yes to Life, is where an indestructible revelation emerges.

The love and intention toward beauty survived the wrath of circumstance and situation. That victory my mother and I shared remained true no matter the impositions of the outside world. This is how spirit, not only survives, but remains continuously reborn. Not fire nor brimstone can erase the Presence.

I live in time and space, but I am not governed by their surface. At the time of the hailstorm and flowerbed shredding, I felt kicked by life right in my face and heart. In time, I leaned more of the viewpoint on the transient. It is necessary to see through time and space, to be their moderator. Surfaces may become ugly and cold, but the roots of truth extend through time and space itself, they are immortal, transcendent. Death and loss become a moment of painful change, but also an opportunity for reaffirmation. It is the opportunity for conscious life to say Love and Beauty are worth all this, in fact, this destruction proves their power, and I can spread them.

I have gone on through my life, always tring to have gardens and a home surrounded by wildflowers. I even go down barren streets-capes sowing seeds in different towns throughout the nation. I have a message to deliver.

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(A tulip stand in for the desert)

BROKEN CONTINUUM—poem

We sit shell shocked

We stand bewildered

lay down on a moments softness

yet sleeping with our dreams

locked under our pillows

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We drive down American streets

watching local road sides change

year after another cheep facade

until nothing but the new is left

a past little more than exhaust

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We were astounded at the level

a gaping horizon filled fears illusion

fed into our quiet stone confessions

where even our dreams could hear

that march step of stupid-think

humanities greatest curse

to follow words of pride

with gross inhumanity

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We were stunned in the headlights

Jingoism and ad-hominem reason

day after falsehood risen day certainty

and falsehood again through each season

now each dumb card is played on time

a test on if we really are as suspected

so easy to fool as evidence suggest

election to election and worse

the day after

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As time settles fallen knowledge

under leaf, dust and despair

grand canyons expose the loss

our sacred ancestry defecated on

by those who claim to protect it

from behind desk and cable television

with their fear based conservatism

and bogus self centered pride

mirrored in smoke

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History as it was made

and buried alive gasping

washes into its mineral melted sea

we saw who they are as they dissolved

the truth made them the worse for thought

and what contempt held their hearts firm

under their cold waters of alienation

etching emptiness onto

their incoherent souls

used our names

to lead the charge

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Fear is the sacred calf

now serving money as god

guilding grandiosity within tongues

twisting stunted bold infantile confusion

lives of soldiers were joked over tables

and defenders exposed for political ill

while the dead are to be camouflaged

and a republic insecurity obsessed

callous and blinded by hubris fire

by the searing rays of ignorance

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Encouraged by misleaders

to have disdain for reason

patriotic joy cutting away truth

till fact itself must surrender in doubt

then spread honey coated propaganda

on wounds of self inflicted injustice

tribalism flavored sweet mass media

wedging values with fight seduction

unconsciousness pedaling on

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The babbling experts of Babylon

make words into covert weapons

with hope as cannon foddered blame

our common dreams are torn through

slashed by insecurity and doubt

this human continuum denied

again, and called illusion

broken memory shards

are hauled to wasteland’s

of strip-searched earth

commercials keep from sight

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We are shell shocked

We are bewildered

lay down on a moments softness

yet sleeping with our dreams

locked under our pillows

this night keeps knocking

and knocking still loud

curtains keep us from seeing

if it will again break in

to steal our will

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OF DEMOCRATS AND DEFEATISM

I just read on my tags the most disingenuous pro-war, over the top literary babble (as demonstrated intellectual credibility I suspect) post, laced with ad hominem might makes right intonations as the only moral certitude America now possesses. Moral authority? What morals? The authority of weaponry?

It (post linked to later on) conveniently ignores the nuanced necessities not so hard to comprehend in the Muslim World, for a go get it now Apocalypse philosophy of hate is right and so is the fight. Circular reasoning gets locked into a deterministic imperative, incredibly obvious as black and white to its beholders. Chose sides to fight or be on the side of losers. Get your hates straight, promote them as inevitable as the sunrise, and anyone who does not agree is an appeaser of the weak and mistaken?

Do we forget so quickly which nation unleashed the atom upon the world just so short a historical moment ago? The same mentality; “It’s alive!”, as was said I believe to Frankenstein. Fear and paranoia are the easiest and cheapest lizard brain tricks to play. So 9/11 changed even the Democrats critical thinking abilities forever? The derided “populist wind” once held as the pragmatic public approving sense for invasion many years ago by these same types, may now be the only common sense left to fill the sails of the American ship of state.

Every day, starvation kills more than on 9/11, (*as do many other issues, info at post bottom*) and the thing is, it does relate to the “sole” superpowers actions or proxies in the world. Is this; blame America first, as the cons like to say? No. It would be correct to say; blame the truth first. We wish to annihilate the world over suicide belts, while the well off generally avoid service, and others press buttons that then are guided by laser or satellite, or computer road map to who knows who? We trust they are bad guys. Of course lots of mistakes happen. For us it is just collateral damage when it is in “their” neighborhood. Question the very false premise of might equals right and you are then a defeatist? Nonsense.

Preemptive taking of action against any enemy we see fit by ideological, or more accurately an economically bankrupt morality, is precisely what World War Two was fought against. Now, as if Nuremberg never happened, at the drop of a signing statement our rights as anything like a free people are taken away, not by the terrorist, but by the ever more pedantic jingoist and their sycophants who in effect aid and enable terrorism around the globe. Fear merchants whose contempt for reason to be opposed, is presumed tantamount to sedition..

The unceasing list of disproved propagandist rationalizations, and the pursuit of world resources now openly becoming espoused by the right wing, betrays the noble cause purported to be behind the dubious reasoning and veiled name calling presented in the rationalizations.

But do not take my word for it. Enjoy;

Democrats Search for Political Solution in Iraq a Search in Abyss of Defeat

The essence of defeat for America will have been in the hubris of her own puppeteers, whom the rest of us pay dearly the consequences for.

After 9/11, we stood at the dawn of a worldwide agreement to address the dysfunctions that promote hatred toward western civilization. That spiritual currency forged at the loss of some 3,000 souls was instantly squandered by a bully with a blow-horn, and all those who lay in wait to implement the neo-con agenda. If it looks like empire, and smells of imperial ambitions, well…

Nowhere in the fake analysis is mentioned who inevitably ends up fighting the battles of oligarchical interest, be they religious or socioeconomic. (Who cares if there is body armor?) After one, then another and another intelligence estimate have gradually come around to realizing the strategies of the take over and occupation of Iraq were deeply flawed, if not led by the blind. Now, suddenly, blatantly taking resources from others as we would not wish them taken from us, becomes convoluted into a defeat from the hands of victory charlatanism. Apparently, someone believes God is dead and cannot then, turn in the grave.

THE USUAL YOU KNOW WHO’S

A rote list of the usual “liberal” whipping boys and scapegoats filters and circulates through the dance of literary references. This probably makes the author feel quite on top of things, the associations begging any factual connection. How little they still know! And refuse to learn of human motivations regarding taking advantage of others at their expense! Hello. Unending cycles of revenge. Hello.

As the Bush policy ever so slowly and reluctantly evolved more towards what liberal war mongering John Kerry proposed, the back door is opened to say; But you liberals were going to do just this at first four years ago! One would never expect the author to credit you know who in any way whatsoever. Nevertheless, that ship has sailed. The opening of the door, unfortunately, is now the escape hatch for when the boat would have been overturned in a storm. This is the alleged victory we are now cast into; the door has been opened yet the water keeps rising deck by deck. It is hard to imagine the Democrats being any more incompetent than the current administration has proved itself to be.

Baloney! Keep trusting us or be surrender monkeys! I say facetiously.

The likely actual mission; to leave bases to protect oil interest and threaten destruction on surrounding nations should they cross our super wealthy, remains intact. They who have so conveniently had their taxes cut repeatedly by the serial abandonment of the commons, common to this conservative movement that sees anything but force and our ability to wreak terror on others as the only wise investment in our common ground. The rest is turning into pot holes and surrendered onto China’s tab, who one day will say; And what are you going to do for me? The levels of cognitive dissonance must be astounding. Let us pray for these so misguide by the love of selective misanthropy.

It is as if watching that fake news network; where reality is fantasy, and fantasy whatever suits the philosophic preference of the networks owners party. Only now, these types fancy up the distortions in false premise, and out of context connected dots to seem like sensible, intelligent, albeit, one way polemical repartée.

I’m done with it!

(PS. I do not endorse all the above artist works)

*here is a link to hunger and starvation statistics

The world hunger problem: Facts, figures and statistics

{Yearly AIDS Deaths

According to UNAIDS, the AIDS epidemic claimed an estimated 2.8 million (between 2.4 and 3.3 million) lives just in 2005 of which more than half a million (570,000) were children. That is well over 7,000 a day.

In the world nearly 5.4 million people die of smoking a year, #going up each year.

In 2000, 85,000 died in the US from alcohol consumption that year}

VIOLENCE AND SELF CONTROL

Being involved with family violence control puts me in an odd situation.

I have avoided physical fighting my whole life. Childhood became the most significant influence on this. My father had told me, and I took it as holy law, that you as a guy, do not strike women. I cannot say that my older sisters and I did not have shoving matches, but for me that would have been self defense. Our family dynamics was heavy on the mental sparing which can seem actually more devastating.

The physical violence in our house was later done, after my mothers death, by a step mother-guardian. She would not hesitate to hit, throw objects and threaten with knives. She sent my father to the hospital with a big gash across his forehead. I slept with the largest kitchen knife under my pillow as a self defense plan for a knife attack while I was asleep. She had hit me in the face while I was asleep, then locked me out in the snow in my pajamas. My father committed suicide not long after that.

Earlier I had incidences when someone seemed to be threatening my life as a freshman high school. I was literally about 100 lbs. and someone morbidly obese around 500 lbs, held me under water to near drowning during pool time in a crowded pool. He had done this more than once. It became so serious to me (swallowing-inhaling watter) that I thought I would have to take matters into my own hands. One more time, and I was going to put him in a headlock with my legs around his neck and hold him under until it meant something. I was a totally inhibited kid and did not trust authority to do anything but blame the victim. So I had to weigh in my mind, possibly causing someones death and being called and treated as a murderer.

As it turned out, he never did that again. But I was sure it would have been me to blame and I would have felt I had no options in my own self defense. No one seemed to notice him doing this during the pool commotion, so I believed no one would accept my story. It just never came through to experience. In physical confrontations during boyhood, I found I had to keep the potential for rage out of me, especially since I had no doubt that I would take down someone twice my size. It took someone quite a bit larger and older to overcome me. I was afraid of my rage and how if unleashed it would seem out of my control.

(As evidence that I am not just delusional about this strength proclamation. When it rained a lot during physical education, outdoor activities were called off and we were put into the gym, we freshmen and the sophomores, to have a thing called “bombardment”. This is where there are two sides chosen, a line across the middle of the gym, where the two sides throw rubber balls a little smaller than a soccer ball at each other. Out of about 150 students divided in two, little me was one of the last picked, last or second to last.

Well the first game I discovered that being in the lower 10% in size had me a bit afraid, so I hung back as many did. All it took was the guy next to you ducking and a ball out of nowhere taking you out, while leaving a big red mark somewhere. I decided to risk all and take it to the line next game.

You could see most of what was being thrown up front. I found out I could catch any-ones ball thrown at me, but no-one could hold onto mine. I was also very accurate. I won that game. The last guy standing. I was picked second of all players next game. The team first picking, picked his seeming best friend first, so I was first on the other team picked. The next game was the last. It oddly ended up being me the last standing on my team, and a very out of shape guy hiding and dodging in the corner on the other side when the period ran out. I could no longer throw fast enough to eliminate time for him to move. That is how little old me was as a skinny five feet two.)

TRUTH VS ADVICE

What I just said I cannot say to someone involved in family violence. As far as physical violence goes, I do not hit women. I have told ones who gave me any actual physical provocation that, “If you do that again, we are over!” I do not tolerate fighting, especially in the home relationships. I try to avoid physical confrontations with anyone. Now that I am a “senior citizen” I find you are not seen as a threat overall, or there is a kind of automatic respect. Most of that sense of being on guard is much diminished now. I take peace as my way and it path is most often open.

I have found that emotional abuse has prove a bit more difficult to not take part in, compared to a sense of law that one just never does such a thing. I grew up that way, making fun of someones mistake or being ridiculed. It is then a model of behavior I have had to contain and reverse. To do that requires a will and an understanding of the Golden Rule or Categorical Imperative. I need to establish the sense that not only does “what goes around comes around.”, but it is already damaging my life. Abusing others in any way is profoundly self abuse.

I need to see (learn to recognize) when I am treating another like I would not wish to be treated, and immediately review what my self respect or control problem really is. We are often given the information from another that we are on some kind of attack and they becoming defensive, or initiating their own retaliations.

Still, when expressing guidance to someone, it will often fall flat if it is preached or describes as something I am so above, and can’t understand how someone could do such a thing. That fits as a key with very few dysfunctional programs. I have to speak out of and through my own life, the love in your heart has to be in it, to be a gift expected to have a chance at being received.

PROGRESSIVE OR REACTIONARY

In some ways I have described political tactics and ways of manipulation. All manipulation is in some way an abuse of the truth. Its vibrational disturbance will not go unnoticed, except perhaps, by like minded dysfunction. The same situations and rationalizations that come to effect home life are used in the greater life of our world. Even if everyone does it, doesn’t make it right.

We will find manipulative arguments covered if various guises meant to hide their intention, and instead, be represented as your own interest. Fear and insecurity are great hiding places for manipulative interest. Optimistic vision can also be used as a trick to catch someones interest, then later prove to have been a ruse. We need to be both critically minded on the one hand, and have our heart held out open in the other. True adults can do this.

The upcoming election seems to be being based on fear and insecurity vs. hope and optimism, both of these being held as paramount in differing ways by the candidates. I am not saying that we are not justified in having these inclinations. What I am encouraging is the “true believers” and the doubtful to have their wits about them. As citizens and voters, it is up to us to determine the fact from fiction, the hidden agendas from the promises of safety and security. For power will seek to inject its corruptions into all areas of life if let be.

We each are freedom, love, and truths best and last hopes. Better to stand with understanding under their tall light, than the ignorance that festers in the shadows of misunderstanding.

TORN TO THUNDER

 

 

 

Logic held out its shredded hands

amid posture and probability

fear came on as kindness

and deliberation

had triplets

a clown

the mirror

and the mighty wind

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Reason was left holding back

brimstone hailed emotions

insecurities golden calf

wore a mask of goodness

of honor and most noble cause

a black vortex was called rose

siphoning up compassion

condemning empathy

as if they were

illegitimate children

wards of the welfare state

expected to clean and care for

any hand that held enough money

.

Spinning up worried elites propaganda

pundits guided a groomed church choir

common folk packed into position

received their new commands

to march in loyalties blindfold

when a dark root cellars depth

would have held them more true

 a better company that the proud

.

Logic’s air had become vacated

its home left in morbid curiosities

dreams now mixed in with detritus

insulation and roofing shingles lost

were nailed over hearts left hard

now pierced by rusted anger

.

What had been always true

of truth and of loves way

looked for evidence

any kind of history

even one memory

amidst the sorry

cacophony

.

We wailed

we looked for

what survived

of actuality

but alas

from the sky

came the echo’s

of each possibility

emaciated

by hate

by life itself

torn to thunder

.

 

DEATH TO DEATH?

.

I read some tags again. I must say that many of us out here hovering in cyberspace do have a lot of interesting points to make.

One guy (I assume) had quite the post on tribalism, evolution, social theory, top predator as self predator-hard wired. He began to explain how, we more advanced types need to impose anti tribalism notions back onto Africa to save them from themselves, or from us, I got lost in the bad is good and good not so much connections.

Circles began to form around the rationalizations. I wondered why, if as this guy said; the “dark side” is not as bad as we seem to think, it might have worked for us so lets try it on them again. There is an institutional bias if one sees history as the permanent overlord of human motivation. How can we be sure of any derivations from fateful out-workings as being “good” manipulations?

Tolerance was stated as a higher place of mind, which I would agree with. But take the mind-frame out of human supposedly higher consciousness development, and where are we that is actually that much better? Is not that Doomsday Clock still at 11 something near midnight, thanks to all our supposedly enlightened associations ? African tribes have not particularly been the cause of this Doomsday Clock have they? (Excluding the realization that we are all essentially of African stock.) What about our favorite church, companies and governments trying to have it all their own way in the world?

From who and how is enlightenment going to be imposed on anyone? Is not Iraq deconstructing towards tribal states? How much imposition of the “better” way really works? How often do we repeat these attempts before the hands on the clock strike twelve?

THE MIND RUNNING OFF INTO THE JUNGLE

If the argument is human enlightenment or death of the species, seems quite clear we need enlightenment. I agree that much of what is bad in human nature is there for survival reasons. I do not believe we need to impose another boundary on someone other, from on high, to achieve understanding. Indeed, that now seems a most mechanical, social engineering approach, by those who consider themselves, for any reason, superior.

If imposing institutional order is the only true way of ending human attempts at self annihilation, there seems to remain a problematic reactionary impulse to external human mandates on behavior, regardless of holier motivations. Whether left or right or other orthodoxy, most nations seem to divide in half over the see-saw of which ideas way to go. It amazes me how the two halves then blame the other for problems, while all they have is solutions. Until that pendulum swings and we go back again to the other side. Most religions deconstruct in these ways to many sects (who is the most pure or interpreting correctly abstractions). When will there be this great understanding, given by institutional prescription? Or is there something intrinsically wrong in, effectively external institutional, attempts to impose order for the greater good, despite the individuals own understandings of it?

In all the abstractions of historical perspective unknowingly wrapped in its own views bias, do we ever actually get beyond the individuals responsibility to recognize the Universe her or himself? Is not the real truth apparent in It? To what extent have human consensus realities and all their precepts interfered with the individuals abilities to know self and come to know higher orders of yes and no regarding motivations and results in space-time of social interactions and other environments? What stops humans from a greater awareness of place and interconnectedness beyond eventual reactionary tribal identities?

GOOD IN WHICH WAY FORWARD?

There seems to be a more fundamental human problem; the removal of inherent authority of the individual to know common good as self good. And how to stand up for the personal work to achieve higher understanding based on a selfish self-centeredness that extends to the Whole Universe Itself. An awareness despite the attempts by others to insist ignorance rules self, society and nation-state, and so institutions must impose control. How much more advanced socially are we in the western world, when paranoia of others is so easily put in control? What is left out of the I know better than you equations, regarding individual responsibilities, which actually is the bedrock of humankind?

Why is Love of and for all things, or for anything as far as that goes, never mentioned? How is that phenomenon that makes life most worthwhile, left off of histories or scientific radar?

TORNADO PAGE GETTING UPDATED

Oh the web is such a resource!

I just went on it to try to get the photo of tornado damage from 1967 that was in the paper. I mention it in my pages, as I was standing right behind the photographer as he took it.

Well, I found whole sites about the tornado and memories of it from those near and far from it, but not that photo. But now I think I will get it one way or another.

On these sites I found out that 33 people died and the tornado was ranked an F-4, a little above my more conservative guess, especially of the casualties.

It is a bit surreal to hear of others in that moment in time.

I will update my page on it later.

SMOKEY

SMOKEY

Smokey was nothing but a cat

I found his body yesterday

Currently he is wrapped up in our living room

I will bury him in a little while

These days he went missing
right when I was putting up Christmas lights
have been tough ones
pets can be as perpetual children
always under your care and protection

He wandered past the fence
in cold rainy weather he usually avoided going out
we thought he’d turn around and come back in
which he had done before that day
this time he snuck out
and I did not know until 5 hours later

the trouble with some cats like him
is that they would stand their ground
when danger appeared near
this strategy can be fatal with a pack of dogs
and especially with coyotes

Smokey was familiar with dogs
the ones he knew kept their distance from him
he seemed to trust dogs would keep way
he even seemed to like our dog Sasha
occasionally you would see their nearly identical white furs
Sasha is a female, and though fixed, Smokey was all male

He spent the first seven months of his life kept in a cage
when we got him from someone who discovered
it was too bothersome to have a cat
he could barely play for a minute without getting winded
he slowly gained strength

Once his hair had to be shaved for medical reasons
it was unusually cold in Tucson that winter
we had a sweater for him but he did not approve of it
but in the sunny morning he would sit on the kitchen table
paws on the window sill
letting the sunlight warm his skin
he was like little Buddha there with his closed eyes
being patient as the sun.

I still have to finish Christmas lights
life goes on for some and there are still children
and the child in adults who appreciate the show
but it is sad here behind this curtain
sad the other year when Smokey killed a small rabbit
its bloody dying body at our back door
I cried burring it under the China Berry tree

Smokey knew I was a guy too
he would wait for me at times when I exercised
just to hang out with the boys
when he was in doubt about an open door
or an unusual action
saying “Good boy Moke, good boy!”
would have him stop in his tracks
to pay attention to what you were indicating for him to do.

When he lived in Tucson he would go over to a black mans yard
this guy was a welder and had lots of greasy metal objects
all over his back yard
so when Smokey came back greasy you knew who he visited

Once I saw him chase a huge tomcat twice his size
leaping into the air and landing on that cat in mid air
ramming him into a dead projecting tree branch
outside the kitchen window I witnessed his fury
Smokey didn’t take trespass from anyone

He once tried to emulate the behavior of a visiting cat
we called that gray cat “Shady’
Shady could walk narrow fence tops
climb up thin pipes to get to the roof
Smokey tried these maneuvers but stopped
his balance did not match his desire

I was in a back yard hot tub once at his house
he was used to jumping up there when the top was on
this time he landed in the hot water
paddled to the edge where I let him out

But here near the border
we adopted a few more kittens a couple years ago
the older cats were not amused
I played with the “littles” like I played with Smokey when young
he began to join in on occasion
but mostly stayed away from them
however, they worshiped the older cats
the boy cat “Jimmy” loved him even if he swiped at him
the last year they began to play certain moments
Jimmy tried to be wherever Moke was
especially in evenings when cats love their cuddling time
and accept we humans as their peers and even parents

Jimmy now is having a hard time
he waited at the front door the days Smokey was gone
day and night
Yesterday when I found him
loose dogs threatening me as I picked him up
he seemed to be awake
his ears hearing our calling
his eyes waiting
as his stiff body’s paw pulled my shirt
I dreamed he was still hear
the other night
that one meow in my ear while I was still awake
it came from the direction I found him
I walked right to him saying;
“Good boy Moke,
Good boy.”

(We buried Smokey in a hole I dug for him.
It is near were he liked to hang out.
In a cold blowing rain

we wept
I clawed the earth over him.
We spoke to him kindly
and cannot forget

our Good Boy Moke.)

IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU __________ MOST LIKELY

You see it happens everyday; one day me and one day you. We will die.

We will, presuming we make it that far, realize how eternal youth actually vanished like our shadow at noon. The feeling will be noticed that one will soon be more akin to the dinosaurs than kids turning twelve. Some of us even today, never heard of blogs and cannot imagine using a computer, the learning curve seems as near as the edge of the moon.

The young these days may not realize that they to will be labelled a generation, indicating a certain lack of human continuity; now we are packaged and labelled. Yet each generation, as other ones fill in behind it, will yearn for its old boxes, looking longingly at the stamps no longer in use. Heads will shake at the young; how they seem to think the are the first to notice, first to understand, first to see through all the old crap.

Even these our young, before they know it, will be shaking their heads; was it not just yesterday I could jump up on that wall? What happened to all my friends? We thought we were forever? And loves? They were forever and now how little I remember who they really were? Did I ever know?

And if (Gods) science is stopped in its tracks; if the magical answers never come or if they do but turn into monsters we could never imagine, cities will gather dust. They will be recycled like parts of a great pyramid. Perhaps generations will stop and humankind will be back to basics.

If trees make it though, they will become the eternal forest, a place of mystery, imagination and dream. What animals make it trough; some will graze on the grass that grows enthusiastically on those old city streets. Cities will be scary jungles though, for at times it will be said; great pieces fall off the monoliths, sometimes they crash down all together. The big downtown’s will have been long ago pillaged, a twelve year old wondering, if it was gods or some evil race who built these towers to nowhere. Their language no longer understood or apparent.

Log-poles and stone now hold their arms over our heads at night. Elders speak of how foolish humans had been; that they had built and lived in those cities. Something called resources that came with the earth are too far to ever recover access to again. Now we live “in life” they tell the young. We live in each others hands. We honor the earth for it remains our Mother.

Some of this will happen to you; the tree leaf destiny of youth, the generational identity that proves itself a dried up wash, the young doubting it ever flowed strong and bold. Love will come and go from things you never thought would leave you. And your pride; pride in belongings and in self achievement, it too will become transparent, that sense of having leaving you.

The few who read this post will soon be gone in more ways than one. The Internet shut down due to its insidious joining of unwelcome ideas to the state and church. Something called “inalienable rights” will have been declared seditious. They are being so labelled already as the poison spreads.

“I have heard from a distant “Pile” (what cities are now called), that a stone tablet was found.” We listen attentively to this travellers tales. “We have a brilliant one in our tribe who has deciphered the tongue of it.” Now our ears are sharpened for the next sound. “It tells of a god who knew a way out but it was forsaken.” This seemed plausible to those of us gathered at the fire. “Dennis Kucinock was his name.” We had never heard of this idol. “He was a man like some of us, but he had seen the Mother Ship.” The what? You could see it written on our faces. “The Mother Ship, it was from the stars or somewhere. It shown onto him the light of Love from somewhere beyond yet into him.”

We did not know what to make of this travelers ideas. Did it mean something we should do? Are we to look into the sky for love? Love more than that of the sun? Must we do this at night? We did not now. I thought to myself; We can only take this with a grain of wheat. This left me with what the traveler had left us with; an existential angst. For it seems a certain truth; that if I too forsake the Kucinock, am I then also forsaking a certain way of Love itself?”

One elder spoke up after the traveller had left us. “We should not allow strange visitors to speak of spiritual things over the nights fire. For I had dreamed of the Kucinock. It’s ears were slightly pointed, it was a serious one, with a beautiful goddess by its side. It made no sense to me. The Kucinock carried small tablets in his outer skins, talisman to the thoughts of his time. I kept waking up with the thought; But this is now!, This is now! The Kucinock is gone forever! Little sleep would fill me up overnight.”

But I have noticed a change; we follow the embers up into the black air at night. We are sometimes quiet and reserved at this, as if expecting a sacred sign. We do not speak of this to one another, but I do at times notice a flicker across my face and a times those around me. There is a smile that reminds me of something precious just found, that had been lost.”