Export Special

for the most powerful GM Capitalism
that has ever existed, which is prepared
 to extinguish all life and sterilise the future. 

In A House

the windows are it's eyes, the front door it's welcome.
The way both are framed is proof that where you live is home.
In the U.K.all newer housing now features plastic doors
and door frames, and plasitc double glazing,
for sound insulation. All for a long, low maintenance life.
And why not? When wooden frames rot?
And need repainted every so often?
But the numbness of the de-skilled modern householder,
who can't repair anything in their house by themselves
and has to be sold a replacement life
is something new to behold. These frames and doors
are outward signs of  the creeping plasticity of modernity,
where WE ARE because of how much our bank rates us,
rather than the skills in our hands.
The credit which frees us from cash also frees us from skills
and also makes our lives as secure as a house of cards

before an ill wind follows, so light at first
that we do not feel it coming, until it blows our house down.
It is a modern miracle to behold how easily de-skilling is sold on.

Life vs Progress

One of the odder forms modern wealth
is to live well but frugally on the surpluses
of others, and live somewhere that puts you
at ease because it is characterful for your home
to be worth less than the site it is on.
You know that if anyone rich found cause to,
they could buy you out and force you to leave.
Without a blink they would demolish
where you lived, fix the planners
and build a blowsy imitation of a palace
in it's place, and remove all trace of the grace
that let you exist there. I am glad of the present recession
for this one thing- it has slowed down the fake gentrification
we have built through debt, which in turn has led to our depreciation.

In These Days

of shrunken economies, declining trust
and deals where we normalise
covertly double crossing others,
all to make them the loss leaders
where we also have to hide
our profit as loss, many are stressed
-literally weak of heart
and afraid to die from their anger.
If you want ot get old
Oscar Wilde had the best advice
-hold your peace;
'Revenge is a dish, best served cold'.

We Are In This Together

How Corporate Myths Renew Themselves

When I worshiped in my local church
we often shared  with visitors how the gargoyles
outside under the eaves were more than Gothic guttering.
They were once demons,
long since petrified by our local saint
as a warning to demonic visitors.
Now I meditate on my creed doing the stations of the aisles
in my local supermarket. There belief comes from spending,
rather than expecting Heaven at any moment.
Each time I leave I give the one pound deposit
for using the trolley, and the biggest smile I can muster,
to the wee man sat outside selling 'The Big Issue'.
He rarely speaks or smiles because he has no front teeth,
and I give to help him feel less petrified by his lowly status.

The Ungenerous Present

People often say 'Money is the root of all evil', unaware
they are misquoting or paraphrasing a letter from St Paul.
The full quote is 'the love of money is the root of all evil',
It was written in his first letter to Timothy, the fifteenth book
of twenty seven in the New Testament, Chapter 6 Verse 10.
Timothy was a convert/missionary whom Paul discipled
and had baptised. St Paul wrote a lot that discomfited
both his world and himself. His sermons started riots.
I used to mistrust his writings, for his reported bravery
before hostile crowds. I did not need to have ochlophobia
to fear the reports of the riots he caused. From my schooling
I had my own quite rational fears about the chaos of mobs.

St Paul wrote a lot which less riotously, and maybe more rationally,
disturbs todays modern world. Like him, those unknowingly misquoting him
are addressing what they see as a present day loss in collective compassion.

Anyone who sees this decline identifies it most easily close up,
in individuals they believe they know from the inside out.
But, if this love, misdirected by money, is to give itself over
to a more self renewing-and more generous-currency,
something just as visible and material,
then what do we expect this reformed love to reattach itself to?

Discredit Unlimited

The road to Hell will pave itself,
but to help followers on it,
it is signposted with self help,
of the type where we need
to discredit our support.

The Gospels Get A Modern Makeover

but then many who believed in the past disclaimed ownership
of their self development because of their faith, instead passively
attributing their ownership and faith to what their faith is in. As if
they and what they believed were the core of some Gordian knot 
 in which we are all tied up. But still, in private and in relative ease
 many now find themselves to be able to modestly admit
 that what their creed neatly reduces to is
 'Don't follow me I'm lost too'. 

The Symptom And The Cause

Human beings are weaker than they like to think,
one way  is is proved is the ease
with which we mistake a symptom for a cause.
Whenever I read reports about politicians
'wanting to spread democracy', usually abroad
what I read nearly always focuses around voting rights
and opportunities, which is an observable process.

But democracy comes firstly from the absence
of a gun culture without a safety catch,
which is increasingly rare in this world
in which arms exports and manufacture
are used to support national currencies
so much. Humans have enough ways
of threatening one another
without the threat of firearms.

Secondly democracy stems from the holders
of money and power accepting being held
to account by the have-nots, the poor.
Democracy comes from the rich listening
and changing when challenged by the demos.
Democracy is now deciding
who to vote for by decoding a bought media
which Political Party with a murky past to bury
to vote for, or not, in the absence of facts.

The Glowering Silence

Everyone will end of their days someday.
But when the end of all days comes for all
one of the signs of it coming will be that we
are so consumed  in our own noise we will be
deaf to what is happening.
In the most populated places on the earth
the noise already overwhelms.
Just as air pollution kills what inhales it
we will forget what rest and silence was.
This amnesia will arrive for all
when whatever the motive a deed springs from
-from altruism to the height of self serving hypocrisy,
the end results will prove so alike
that no motive will have any value.
The longer we look the more all we do
will serve the same end;TO LEAVE NO RECORD.

My New Social Insecurity Card

It is very handy for showing to potential employers.....

Wings Waive The Rules

Happiness In Error

What all children know about being parented
is that it means tolerating adults choosing
your mistakes for you,
with those who choose gaining more
from of their choices than you could
and in their size calling it a wisdom
that you never knew was there.
It is natural to resent this pulling rank.
What children want instead is to make
the same errors, more modestly, by themselves.

I Admire Lionel Shriver

She spoke on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 in May.
Commenting on the psycho-pathology of family relationships
she said 'The more we give [to family] the more we owe them'.
To which I would add that the more we try to repay the debt
the less they want it to be repaid, and the more indifferent
but posessive they become towards us, whilst disguising
how they want to increase our neediness for them.
What can anyone do when modern nuclear family values
and consumerism turn into emotional debt bondage?

Walking The God

When dog owners let loose their pet
to the delights and smells of a landscape,
the two of them alone with no sense of time.
How many of them also find that they too slip
from the collars and leads of their old concerns?

Man Thinks

that he is at his best, his most developed,
when he is at his most knowingly vulgar.
But the ruin that stalks the human race
is what makes the world truly better.

Smoking Ban Plumbs New Depths

Life And Taxes

International media corporations aggressively
paying their minimum in taxes is old news by now.
Amazon, Google Ebay etc- we know who they are
and how their legal and finance departments operate,
as the smartest and fastest new money on the planet.
We were never meant to see how their money hides,
nor were our governments, who are well behind
in taxing electronic money in a legally water-tight way.
We are more meant to be awed by their takings.
Impressed by the life-style options on offer
as we press the buttons and play
like we are in 'Brave New World', whilst distancing
ourselves from the people we pretend we have met.
We accept Yahoo etc little realising that later,
that those who own the buttons we pay to press
will also see paying corporate taxes as 'a lifestyle option'.

When Symbols

assume a greater power than their substance
implies they should, we can be sure that polticians
are keeping who they say they represent at a distance
from them, and are making new ways to pass the buck.

 

Wooden Post presents.... ....A Wooden Posting

Which is how these things used to be done.

An Intimacy With Soft Fruit Is Proof Of Maturity

I used to buy fruit that was sold as 'fresh'
unblemished, and sold that young 'to be kept',
which was to say 'not for eating'...   This meant
it was bitter, having travelled many miles under-ripe,
much like children in education. But the older I get
the more I find that the softer the fruit the sweeter the taste,
and the more it agrees with me, even when it is deliquescing
and becomes alcoholic. With the right recipes for its use
it is perfect. As I bake I imagine the ways I would like
to see myself used for best when I am in that state,
and wonder, who will bring out the fullness of my flavour?

The Masters Of Failure

I was groomed by amateurs for a career in failing convention,
where success was an image I was made to see-everywhere
-but never in those I was with. Nor in me.

True defeat took flight with me when I took
to grooming myself with the masters of failure.
After many years I learned that in the mastery
of those I followed, Kafka, Kierkagaard, Orwell
and Quentin Crisp, they had perfected their follies
through writing and they were perfecting me.
Without intent they became the definitive models
for celebrating the failure in life, for many more to follow.

They wrote the books
that became the perfect hooks
on which to hang the future of paradox,
failing whilst still alive enough to share it.

The people I followed all had resolve,
and in that they were ultimately not failures atall.
What I and millions more moderns found
was how when intensity and obscurity combined
in script worth sharing, it was the cause for later fame.
As we found truer selves we became links in a chain-
through how we changed, for reading how our masters
condensed all the life with how they saw themselves in their writing.

   

The Gravity Of Life As Seen In Space

with thanks to poorly drawn lines

Utopia Incorporated

Scientists do not egg each other on to comprehend
six unproven theories before breakfast, daily.
The six improbable theorem are more likely
to be the work of  publicists who work
for the multi-national companies who invest in the sciences.
These publicists like to clog up world media
with undigested ideas of how speculative utopias
might work, as long as their companies are in charge.
That the science the media reports on is undigestable
to the lay person, because it is highly theoretical,
is less of a problem than it seems,
the impetus is mostly about publicists
trying to knock the latest world war off the front page.

Education, Edjucation, Schmedjucaishun....

I remember adults talking about education when I was young,
they made it seem as if children were the unworthy poor-
worth keeping but purely as an example of how not to be.
They were always worth discouraging from all dependency.
Education was spoken of as the poor relation of work.
'Those who keep themselves through the skill in their hands
do-those who have no skills, teach'.
In this scheme those who were too young to work,
or teach, still had to kept so were sent to be taught instead.
Not that their parents wanted them to share anything
they learned in the home, that was all for somewhere else.
Because education was widely thought of as child-minding.
Without children parents could temporarily pretend to be
the autonmous adults they were when they were single,
and use the self-justifying criticisms of working breeders,
to pretend they earned all their money.
They believed they heroically worked for the good of everyone else,
and agree with each other they were victims of their dependnents,
and finally and most likely, believe they were more autonomous
than they actually were, by doing down all teachers,
all children and all education-particularly their own......

The Ultimate Solution

"I usually solve problems
by letting them devour me"
-Franz Kafka

Cursed Turf

In friendship we share the grass we occupy with others,
and settle one another. By sharing our self
our character is explored by our company.
Mutuality is the ground for shared discovery.
But in lust, unknowingly we seek to do others down
by controlling them -we set the object of our desire
 at a distance, or on a plinth, the better to control it.
The distance makes the grass we pretend we share
with them seem a much richer green than it actually is.
The nearer we get to our deceit reaping it's reward,
the duller the grass becomes in the sharing
-leaving the ache of want refreshed.

When Two Minds Met, Where They Least Expected To....

This photo apparently marks the end of Matador Torero Alvaro Munera's career. 
He collapsed in remorse mid-fight when he realized he was having to prompt 
this otherwise gentle beast to fight.  He went on to avidly oppose bullfighting.
Even grievously wounded by picadors, the bull did not attack this man.

Torrero Munera is quoted as saying of this moment: "And suddenly,
I looked at the bull. He had this innocence that all animals have in their eyes,
and he looked at me with this pleading.  It was like a cry for justice,
deep down inside of me.  I describe it as being like a prayer - because
if one confesses, it is hoped, that one is forgiven".

The Will To Breed

is what puts the 'Me' into memes,
and makes everyone,
and everything, else subserviant.

Machiavelli's Paradoxes

The more he tried to expose the prosaic truth
about how effective statesmanship relies on lies,
the less palatable his version of how power works became.
Until what he had written was shared only privately in his lifetime.
Only posthumously was 'The Prince' was fully published.
It was banned soon after. Later it was the private reading.
of many many emperors and future world leaders.
The more he exposed how to make lies successful,
the more those lies stuck to him, not his later readers
or their followers.
For his repeating the leadership formulas of The Medicis,
his original private audience he came to own their sins.
The more his name was blackened by those lies
among a diminishing reading public, the more the public
were banned from either reading or believing what he written.
This was less to preserve the tattered remains of what was left
of his reputation for telling the truth, more to stop them
believing that what he had written about how lies worked
in the past might apply now-in the present and the future.
.

The Cup Of Life

-the emptier it gets the lighter it leaves us feeling,
and the more our thoughts are clarified.

Signs Of Greater Age (18)

1)anticipating the trend for liver spots being sexy,
and wondering what you might do when you get them.

2)Seeing posters for the the latest exhibition
of the local art in your town and knowing
that the poster will be better than the exhibits
-if only because it will exhibit the best part
of the show and will take the least time to view. 

The 'Trickle Down Effect' Is In The News

And it sets the news agenda. With the houses behind the board
 empty, the chattering classes are not chattering with the cold.
 They wait to re-invest to make even more money out of real estate.

Globalisation (2)

When we share about globalisation, it is through,
and in terms of, a media who eclipse the real power
at work, international money, property and copyright law.
Today 39 % of the world's wealth is owned by
1 % of the worlds population, though those proportions
could well have been more extreme during the heights
of The British Empire. Today 80 % of the worlds humanity
get by on under $10 a day, the nominal 'poverty level'.
With humans tearing the world and each other apart
through ownership and law to fulfill to make sure
there is no tomorow, perhaps the richest in the world
are the few who live in undiscovered tribes, in that rarity
of rarites, unspoilt jungle. What they have can't be monetarised.

Globalisation(1)

is often talked about in terms of media reach-
how many people around the world can see
a single broadcast, though that still excludes
how the broadcast washes over the individual
who's experience is more of what surounds them.
For example, if the musicians who performed
at Live Aid in 1985 had not taken the drugs,
required for them to get to the stage, and collectively
donated a sum equal to what they had abstained
from to be there, and they had got to the stage 'clean'
then much much more would have been raised,
and money, though a lot, would have been he least of it,
but then Bob Geldof was never going to be a drugs counsellor....

The Itch That Does Not Stop

The banality of evil,
the evil of banality,
the banality of an evil
that has no finality...

The Point Of Therapy

is to push our difficulties past their sell-by date,
which is long gone for our friends who have to listen to us,
but not yet there for those who don't hear ourselves.
The better to put those difficulties in the past tense,
and get ourselves in the present.
This is done for us to replace the old problems
with something fresher and more creative.




.

By Edward Munch

'The Sun' painted 1911-16.

Modern Phariseeism,

is like the phariseeism of old; live well materially,
have clean and tidy houses, keep your accounts
in good order and last, and far from least, have full larder.
But the car has taken over the role that legalistic theology
once had, as the transport of delight by which to bypass
the point of life, without being seen to, and proving you are
in The Elect. Anyone who drives bypasses the mess
and goes too fast to see the rubbish snagged in hedges.
But if we walked we would see the litter, and be moved
by how much it, like the vehicles it was thrown from,
is unnatural to the landscape. To see like this requires
having  more time than money. A friendliness with having less
is a neccesity for us to be well acquainted with the land that bears us. 

Charles Darwin Was Willfully Misunderstood

It is now well known that Charles Darwin
'stopped believing in God' in 1851, when Anne,
his beloved 11 yr old daughter, died of scarlet fever.
But when did his belief in society end?
I would suggest that his belief stopped like a broken watch
when he was goaded to publish 'On The Origin Of Species',
because of his awareness of his rival. His belief shrank
when he saw how his work generated disagreement,
as his society proved bound by the binary logic;
survival proves superiority vs extinction meant defeat
and only the fittest survive. Regardless of the idea
that hides in plain sight in Darwin's work
-that when any person dies, or a species dies back,
their decline is what makes way for the life that follows them.
Past matter had to decline for the  life of all alive now
to share in the present, present matter will have to decline
for the life and matter of the future to have a present.

My biggest gift to the future will not be the life I have now,
which will be forgotten but the decaying matter out of which
new life will be built. Above all I don't want to be argued over.

If Nursing Homes

and sheltered housing are 'care in the community'
for the elderly and infirm, does that make the courts,
the police, and the prison system 'care outside
the community' for the propertyless and the young?

What Every American,

and every citizen of the first world economy,
should know is how their economy has so far
beaten the Malthusian maths of world consumption;
the oil extracted from the ground for the richest
to live best is equivalent to every person on the planet
having two and half slaves. Because people in the third
world breed more often and live on far less, their share
of the inanimate slavery of energy from the ground
will always be a fraction of the average slave energy.
The world poor will inherit the logic of Malthus's tragedy.