The Currency Of Acceptance (1)

From the dutch courage of alcohol
to deodorants laden with synthetic chemicals
-and much much worse-
human sophistication never extends further
than how we deceive ourselves
whilst being received by others.

In all we do
we leave a bitter taste
and appalling waste
in our wake.

The Price We Set

on neighbourliness is conditioned
by how much more we think we have
than the other people we think we know.
The more we have the more protection
and hiding it will need from those we fear
who might be jealous of what we have.
We don't know how much others have,
because like us they have to hide it,
and count every word they share to create
masks of generosity from behind which
to give less than they appear to.
When security means individual wealth
it means the more we give the less we can expect
to receive, for having given what we have away.

Families That Breed

-which means all of them-may be well intended,
at least as much as the road to Hell ever was.
But worse still are the corporate breeders
who multiply undreamt of inequality through money.

For Personal Growth

have the most fun you can conceive of having
in times you live in, especially when away.
When you return home you will arrive tired,
changed and in need time to reflect.
But you will also find yourself refreshed
in many of the places that quietly ached.
So that what was were once both comfort
and  discomfort zones have shifted.
It does not mean you will not ache again,
but the new ache will be in a different place,
and exploring it will set you on some new course in life,
the more to change you through times to come......

My Third Christmas Card Of 2014

for that sense of calm slowness to life.

Charities That Advertise

on television, that most corrupt and corrupting of mediums,
will automatically debase the virtue of their intended cause
through the presentation logic that advertising agencies use.
Which is sub-post Freudian in it's division of the audience
into victim, persecutor or rescuer.
Whatever the cause is, from saving tigers and white rhino
from being poached to extinction to offering eyesight
to the dirt poor and blind, in whom it is preventable
at very little cost to us the presentation will be the same;-
your wealth and power did not make them victims
but it can stop more of them suffering if you give.
If you keep your money for yourself and they will still suffer,
and your stinginess will make you their persecutor.

Television presents the the poor and persecuted animals
like it presents everything else, as if the medium is your friend
because the adverts pay for the programmes, which are why it is justified
more than the person/animal is your neighbour because they are in need.
Fake empathy is still fakery and always will be.

Dead Rat

With thanks to here.

Shame

is what happens when we are more appalled
by the solution than we are at the problem
presented to us. Faced with such a choice
of what to be appalled by we choose the path
which offers us the least change in the circumstance. 

The Royal British Legion

-the patriotic placebo against future wars
that never works, but instead-in the longer term,
makes the families of the combatants
of said wars pay up in the loss of human life.

Cynicism Incorporated

Anyone with more power than responsibility will behave like this.

Hostile Silences

Depression and an embarrassment
have share two distinct qualities
-they both become stronger
than is good for us as a means
to stoking up anger for future use.
They both find further life
in the silences that give them cover.
For myself I want a peaceable silence
and rarely spot the anger in others
before I am being pushed away
for the feelings they have not dealt with.

A Generalisation

where there are exceptions they come regardless of class and status.

A Heartache In Every Dream

So many of my dreams are set in my place of birth

and the house I, uncomprehendingly, was raised in.
And in nearly every one of them I find myself
repeatedly searching for a missing happiness
through the people who said they were my family.
Every overlay of my night time adventures
set in the past wakes me up mildly frit,
fretting at words amiss, without knowing why,
at actions that seem beyond comprehension.
On waking up and reflecting I remember
some recent occasion in which I recognize
the actions of the dream.
But still the location drags me back
to where I know now never belonged.

At least the ache proves I have a heart.

Clean Conversations?

When people say 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'
it is not just a way of shutting down arguments
about social diversity in the name of a singular
religious regimen, or social/public order,
nor is it justifying a particular monoculture
from above by those at the top bluffing their way
past prevarication by using more bluff and prevarication
-until that is all there is. Nor is it merely hierarchy
for its own sake. It is those who are speaking
planting their shame inside the lives and actions
of people too weak to resist being misused so.

But emotional sterility will begat its own reward.
Where people escape The Voice Of Authority,
they will decide for themselves the distance needed
to keep from being told how to think and what to be ashamed of. 

Old Age Creates It's Own Tunes

In my own small way I salute Robert Wyatt.
For fifty years, and for better and worse,
he has balanced being a musician
with trying to be a sentient human being.
Now nearing 70 he is retiring
and facing the issues of old age
which seem incompatible
with creating new music.

Perhaps old age creates it's own music.

Breeding Insanity

Nearly no human I know who has chosen to not breed
has done it for the purest reason; after 10,000 years
humans beings have made themselves the apex
of the world food chain, and through want and waste
we are destroying the planet faster than we realize.
When our reason is unreasoning what is there left to say?
 
In the mid 20th century in the richest counties
the standard narrative for resisting having children
was the fear of shame for any life for an adult
outside of wedlock, and it affected women most.
Sheer poverty was most co-equal as a way
of discouraging parenting, which had the bonus
of empowering the rich to greater self indulgence.
The more deeply the next generation could be marked
with the same fears the more the virtue of relative solvency
within a patriarchal parenthood was reinforced.
I remember those lessons, the onus was always on women
to make sure sure they stayed on the straight and narrow.
Whilst men gave each other the right to carouse all they could afford.

Earlier in 20th century insanity, being a mental defective,
and being declared a hereditary criminal were the standard
justifications for thousands of women to be involuntarily sterilized,
under the emerging laws of eugenics. The case for it was proven
beyond doubt in a court of law in Virginia, Buck vs Bell 1927.

After the excesses of the The Third Reich,
who defended themselves at Nuremberg
by quoting the U.S. sterilizations of the 1920s, 
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948
did not stop nation states continuing with the practice.
It merely swept the worst excesses under the carpet,
as if the last 2000 years of religious patriarchy
that had limited women's autonomy to breed
had been right, and never mind the reasons why.

Now, if as an individual you should ask your doctor
to help you to never to have children, you can't tell them
the truth, or use philosophical, ethical or ecological reasoning.
Medical reasoning is what they respond to,
and rarely self diagnosed mental health at that.

So if you do see parenthood as breeding insanity
then don't ask your doctor, with their secular amorality,
to help keep you sane and keep you from having children
-the more you try using reason the more contrary
and resistant to your wish they will become,
until they have quietly transferred the power of life
and death away from you and put it out of your reach.
They will put it, and want to keep it, In State Hands.

Calculating Risk

What should any of us trust to
when we find that the systems
we are pushed to accept
as our sole means of support,
are far more stupid
than those that run them
are prepared to admit to?
Forgiving stupidity,
whether in others, systems,
or yourself is always more complex 
than we can account for.  

I Am Glad

that neighbourliness,
if not yer actual Christianity,
is alive and kicking
against the pricks of State
in 'christian' America.

The Better We Can Account For Ourselves

the worse we account for those with less than us.

This Is Why We Have Armistice Day

Click on it to make it bigger.

Charity In A Property Owning Democracy

In the USA charity begins at home,
and is often disallowed as public show,
depending on how socially conservative the state is.
This project got through, this one was stopped
-for now. Time will tell if they keep on trying
how much feeding the homeless is permitted.
The idea that succeeded surely won through
did so not just for it's obvious practicality,
but also by being self evidently more charitable
to those with houses than those without.

Addiction Speaks With Its Authentic Voice

When I first found the quote from Charlie Sheen
'I don't pay prostitutes for sex, I pay them to leave'
I could not quite comprehend it.
I have known many men shrink from intimacy
immediately after sex has ended for them,
without them thinking what might be happening
with who they were being intimate with.
The guilt in their responses was saddening.
But now I understand him.
He was speaking in a court.
He had to justify himself from the inside.
He is an addict of drink, drugs and sex.
For him the point of the addiction
was/is to combine appetite with denial
in a way that makes them fit smugly together.
His quotation was perfectly reasoned denial.
To say he paid people to leave,
when they had met his needs,
was to deny he was actually insatiable.

My Last Christmas Card of 2014

To represent the predatory nature
 we have made of the event, 
and prepare for 2015.

I Am Glad

that neighbourliness,
if not yer actual Christianity,
is alive and kicking
against the state
in 'christian' America.

Life

is what puts the fun into funerals.

Necessary Pain

Reversing turbo-capitalism for the masses
and reclaiming community life for the community
in small towns naturally means working
around the painful stage known as bankruptcy. 

No Comment

Though there is now this as an alternative.

My Second Christmas Card Of 2014

'Red hills with white shell' by Georgia O'Keeffe,
 oil on canvas 1938, from here.

Calmness Takes Time

Humility is an attribute rarely displayed by converts,
keen to prove their conversion to a given system,
the better for further conversion to said belief.
But when a believer has believed long enough
to take Faith seriously, but not literally,
and knows from the inside their own absurdity-
then they find the generosity in their belief. 

A Worrying Question

How cynical must we be towards ourselves,
the better to be internally consistent,
when we examine the apparent cynicism
in the actions of other people?
When one is cynic about cynicism
what does it leave to be open about?

When The Pressure To Live Is Not Life, Just Pressure

Every adult in the world must have at some point
in their youth thought of ending their life rather sharply,
as it would hurt other people more than them.
Wanting to go missing is a common symptom of depression.
In pressured civil societies mental illness is far more prevalent,
and is a far more rational response to pressure,
than is publicly accepted. The common fear for anyone
who is thinking of their end too often for their own ease
is that they will leave behind a mess, which others whom they respect
too much to allow so will have to clear up.
That fear is enough to make many endure the taboo against suicide
and make their reduced sense of agency try to work better.

But for many the bigger fear is of showing any mess at all-even in this life.
This means they concentrate on keeping the mess inside their heads
and refuse to let others deal with it openly.
To them I'd say 'Others will see it anyway, and deal with it
according to their means-do you really think others can't read you?
They do and they will, and the more you resist being read,
the harder you make life, for everybody'.

It Was Always Thus

and time out of mind is always worth too much to measure.

Heaven And Hell?

While walking down the street one day a Corrupt Senator was tragically hit by a car and died.

His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."

"No problem, just let me in," says the Senator..

"Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from the higher ups. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."

"Really?, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the Senator.

"I'm sorry, but we have our rules."

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.

Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people

They played a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and the finest champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who is having a good time dancing and telling jokes.

They are all having such a good time that before the Senator realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens in heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him, "Now it's time to visit heaven.."

So, 24 hours passed with the Senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

"Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity."

The Senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: "Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell."

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell..

Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.

The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulders.

"I don't understand," stammers the Senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"

The devil smiles at him and says,   "Yesterday we were campaigning ... ....Today, you voted.."  

Relative Serendipities

Intelligence for its own sake
is often mistaken for arrogance,
whilst ignorance always seems
more unintended but equally annoys.
The measure of a secure individual
is that they resist both perceptions.

I Have Often Thought This

But I rarely act on my choices and engage with my creativity.

Tactile Dialogues

Noise often overwhelms me.
I feel lost in some silences too-
disengaged from who I am
by what I have to do.
Failure is what I taste
however much I try to apply myself.
I am most at ease in quiet engagement
with a physical materials. It is still not rest,
but a beginning of being calmer.
If the fruits of my small labours please some
and calm others after me what else matters?