These Are The End Times

and the end of all measurement of time.
Even our debaucheries are so banal,
for being so alike due to post-modern living.
We are that banal that nobody is prepared
to give their evil nature the depth of character
that would openly mark them out as different.

The evil in 'being normal' is grace sufficient for all
in this age of soul-less machine led consumerism.  

Cheap Epiphanies

The low lights and easy amusements of life
can detain us with their ease for a very long time.
But ultimately we must all dig a little deeper
to find the more trustworthy reasons to be alive.

Reward Yourself

If responsibility towards other people
is about apt rewards for good deeds
that are conceived and born good will,
then what does the removal of reward,
as happens to so many who are well meaning, mean?

More responsibility? Even to the point
of rewarding yourself because nobody else will?

Hypocrisy Modernized (2)

Every adult wants a job
because it is the means
to owning their own home,
and one of best filters in life
is having your own front door.

Everyone knows
that as jobs get more automated
so so work loses its character
and sense of reward. Submission
to a computer system can never be fun.

But consumers marvel at the ease
and cheapness by which they live,
little knowing how what they have
is paid for in human stress.

So we all want the office job
that another can't have,
to make sure we get the house
that we can fill on future debt,
which if the money goes right for us
means we can forget that misery
is the foundation we have built upon.

Language And Science

How much do folks realize
that the word 'realize'
has two distinct meanings?

1- 'to make happen', or causation.

2- 'to become aware of', to observe.

If one accepts genetic explanations
for the cause of homosexuality
then both parent and child will realize,
in different ways, that the child cared for
will stray from what has gone before.

The parents are the first to realize
the potential in the child,
through parental causation.

The child will realize, as they observe,
the emotional inheritance that becomes theirs
as they discover the flaws in their parents ambitions.

History has spilled a lot of ink
on the subject of ambitious parents
who were plain wrong about their children.

In this world all parenting is errant,
and we should all be more observant.

,

The Giver And The Gift

Sometimes I give,
often, with due notice, I receive.

But my generosity shrinks
when I feel the ground taken
from beneath my feet,
along with the gift I have given.  

Class Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

'The difference between a flower girl
and a lady is not how they behave,
it is in how they are seen' - George Bernard Shaw. 

I Am Not Ashamed Of Being

But I would probably be far more assured about life
if I were something, or someone, else.
Preferably someone with four legs, fur and a tail...

Against The Light

When God made the angels
they turned out as pale imitations of himself
-light from light, inside to out
who shone in front and from behind.
And they shone through a universe
in which they were scary servants
with (as yet) nobody there to scare.

Then God made the earth,
and divided the light, to create
what became 'day' and 'night'.
The sun gave strength, defining day.
And the moon gave rest, making it night.

Did God see how keen the angel Satan was?
Satan surely saw how the the sun gave life
and thought nothing of the respite of the dark,
nor did he see how Gods omniscience
was behind and inside everything.
Nobody, now, can learn how
Satan made his own light directional
-after the manner of the sun-nor how he inspired
the many anonymous angels followed his example.

But even as Satan imitated the sun to give strength,
the rest he offered through his darkness
created unending torment,
as he quenched God's light within him.

To this day this unease still divides nature.

True That....

And clocks never measure entropy, the true measure of life...

Telling Stories

is an ingrained habit for humans
who like to detain each other
at length with expanding narratives.

Technology has vastly extended
the means by which we do this.

The problem is that as our stories
get retold they travel far less well,
and they become far more repetitive
than the teller likes to think;
the less personal the means
of the telling the further the story gets;
the more tightly the script
needs to be edited for the story to travel.

In our deathly self absorption
we continue to insist we are 'entertaining'.
God save you all from my boredom with myself.

Paradox Drive

The emptier the rhetoric, the further it travels
and the less it means, until it becomes 'post modern'.
Or fake news for the careless and unenlightened.

Fame Is Not What It Is Said To Be

When Andy Warhol said  'In the future
everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes'
he had thought through what fame meant.

He saw celebrity through the lens of the films
he made of everyone who came to his studio, 'The Factory'.

Without exception, they all faced a running movie camera
with nobody behind it looking into a clearly fake set.
Whilst Andy said 'I'm busy, just look into this.
This will be your portrait. I'll be back in five minutes'.
They became known as his screen tests.

Because nobody can hold an expression
of reaction without someone to react to
then the any fixed expression on the face of his guests
soon started to slip, until even the waxed moustache
on that most disciplined self publicist, Salavador Dali,
drooped for the camera like it only did in private.

So there it is; fifteen minutes of celebrity
is about the smile slowly dissolving from the faces
of those who most consistently seek the camera's lens.

My Fourth Christmas Card of 2016

For a more candy house sort of Christmas....

From Rigged Elections To New Year,

Christmas, and other times of fake cheer
introverts will see themselves as off-message,
unable to accept how the times they live in
are described-on terms that the majority accept.

But the on-line life turns the limited acceptance
of the majority inside out, and refashions their cliches
through a choice of minority, more niche, virtues.

In everyday speech this would be seen
as saying the opposite of what you mean.

The popular media calls the internet
'a post-truth world', as if they are the truth,
or at least 'the way' and 'the light'
that we can't do without.
Then it joins in -as if it could not let any world exist
without wanting to rule it. So the cycle continues.......  

Offering Deference

to people who abuse the respect
of those they receive it from
will always make the givers ill
and the receivers morally bankrupt.

Unease Is Us

Especially when 'here' means Christmas, they will recognize each other
 by their discomfort before excluding themselves from the event.

When Choice Changes Nothing

the impetus could be well meant,
but it is most likely
that the presentation behind it
was either advertising in disguise,
political spin,
or someone pretending to be wise
-the easier to fool the unwary. 

My Third Christmas Card of 2016

'White Band No 2'-Mark Rothko

The Science Of Disproving Vanity (2)

Two hundred years after he lived
Thomas Malthus is still quoted,
where ever anyone worries in public
that there too many human beings
on their part of the planet for comfort.

His theory ran that when populations
grow far faster than food supplies can meet,
then mass tragedy will be the net result.
Better for the poorest (whose labour is cheap)
to breed far far less, lest 'the market for death'
claim the best part of them before they were done.

Never mind the loss of future
of the value of their labour
to an economy that keeps the few in wealth
by supporting mass poverty in the first place.

I can't mind him theorizing from a position
of wealth, as long as nobody calls it morality.
But as a C of E clergyman should he have been
more interested in how Want and Grinding Poverty
would increase personal immorality exponentially?
   

My Second Christmas Card Of 2016

Stag from the savernake horn-a handsomely decorated 12th century hunting horn,
 See more the many decorations on the horn here.

The Science Of Disproving Vanity

It is common to say 'I believe in science'.

How much science would it take,
to find the percentage of those
who in all humility actually believe
in the science process,
with all its equivocation and doubt,
vs the rest who simply like feeling right,
whilst believing that everyone is wrong?

What can we do with the folks
who only want science
to (ap)prove of their vanity?  

Blanket Coverage

We put more faith in blankets 
to protect is from monsters
than we put in the walls, doors 
and locks of our houses.

History Is A Palimpsest

of false divisions and distinctions
that different human beings
have written, randomly, over each other.

As one layer of writing succeeds another
it is no wonder
that we can't understand each other
or where we have come from. 

When Choice Changes Nothing What Is It Worth?

Changing our moods through medication
in lieu of changing the world has a long ignoble history,
from the earliest (assumed) use of psychotropics on;
In the 21st century we can't believe how brutal and inept
medical treatment was in even the very recent past.

Many treatments were prescribed by one person,
and forced upon others with no right of refusal.
In eugenics women were sterilized by  the thousand
because the intelligence tests devised for them
 approved of patriarchal hubris
more than permitted women intelligence.

Now, in the worlds richest countries
we have a commercial/medicated state
where the masses buy into the values
of an anti-depressants culture
rather than alter the depressive aspects
of the culture.

Only in their most private realms
can folks wonder why nothing ever changes...

Notes From Underground

Blaise Pascal and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referenced in one neat phrase.

My First Christmas Card of 2016

'The Thought Which  Sees' (1965)- Rene Magritte.

New Definitions

Democracy-the misrepresentation
of the great mass of the people
by the countries wealthiest citizens,
to publicly prove that nobody cares
about the decline in the quality
of the life for the poorest to nothing. 

Popular Malapropisms With Bertie Ahern.

Bertie Ahern was the Prime Minister/Taoiseach of Ireland
from 1997-2007 and has been involved politics since 1977.

His powers of speech had a unique way of leavening political debate,
by making people smile in spite of the serious matters
that he has had to deal with. 

Please accept the following as a sample....



"With hindsight, we all have 50-50 vision."

"We shouldn't upset the apple tart."

"We're not going to hang anyone on the guillotine."

"The cynics may point to the past but we live in the future."

"The grassroots or the rank and file are now made from Fibre optics."

"Charles J. Haughey wanted to transform Temple Bar into Ireland's West bank."

"I could certainly drink a fair few pints of Bass and be capable of driving."

"At present, I have my hand in whole lot of dykes, 
trying to keep them in and keep people together."

A Grief Observed

Twelve years to the week
since my canine spirit guide
left my best friend and I
we still seek out his traces
the better to make life seem fuller.

We were his third carers,
and he disappeared, probably died,
he was never apt to leave behind
anything as common as 'a body'.

Whatever we try to be
we are still only a fraction
of the person that he was.

Malcolm (left) , Oscar D. Tail (right) probably circa 2003.