In Error We Trust

Human history is far too long
and complex for anyone
to ever remember much of it
with sufficient accuracy
to transcend it's various errors. 

Hobson's Choice

When our choice is 'Jump before we are pushed'
then our direction is very clear, but calling it choice
is somewhat overstating the possibilities.   

Plain Thinking

Saying what we think is all very well,
but it is even more important that we think
before we open our mouths. 

However Often

any leader 'saves the world',
or even saves his own country,
from some powerful alliance,
s/he will only do it the once.

After that the best s/he can do is resign.,
and some time later write their memoirs
to remind the public of who they used to be.

In their political afterlife
they will be politely received,
and may even speak
with wisdom and truth,
but their words will be doomed
to be ignored as their old mistakes
are repeatedly pointed out to them.  

The Beauty And The Terror

Because a song sells an difficult idea
better than ever the idea will sell itself.

'Normality' Was Never Virtuous

Though often it is taken as such.

How partisan can the prefixes 'Hetero' and Homo' be,
when between them exists a no-man's-land
where identity means awkward sounding labels
and social dis-ease because everything we see
depends on the grace-or lack of same-for that day?

The Limits Of Human Company

Whatever human ideas about evolution,
and adaptation within a given environment,
for jumping their place in the food chain
humans will always be the evolutionary cul-de-sac.

For breeding to gross excess
we try to make our road
a little longer and broader in a finite world.
We refuse to accept that we are dead ends
who eliminate so many other species
because we never know when to stop.

My Last Christmas Card of 2017

And I very much admire the promise it holds for the new year.

A Dim View

When sincere sarcasm
is the nearest thing to praise
that other people inspire in us
then their onward journey with us,
in friendship,
is going to be shorter than we think. 

Help The Aged

Help them to stay younger than their years
through your relative youth whilst you can.

It is a small gift for younger folk to pay in advance
for when they want support to forestall their advancing decline. 

Humbug All Year Round

For 'the undeserving poor'
their Christmas this year
will be no more deserving,
or be more worthy of them,
than any previous Christmas.

In fact it will be as undeserved
as every other day of the year.

Honest Dirt?

Secrecy does not always mean shame and dirt
though it is often the case.
But dirt will always mean opacity
to save people's face.

Unsentimentally Yours

I am childless and I plan to remain so,
my experience of childhood
was that it is almost as oversold
as it was over-rated by the adults
I looked up to as a child.

My parents needed to sentimentalize something,
given the competitive indifference
that they foisted onto each other
and I don't understand why they chose me.

As an adult I empathize with the Anti-Natalist cause
where I can, but I have came unstuck in my empathy.

I discovered that however much they try to be calm
as they declaim the human habit of breeding,
there are never enough of them
and they can never be calm enough
to convince over-excited human breeders
to drop their lethally destructive sentiments. 
  

My Eighth Christmas Card Of 2017

From a design by Enzio Ragazzini, born 1934.

Speaking From My Office (2)

I have finally understood the point
of some of the cold callers who ring me
at home whilst I am working online.

When they leave the background noise
of an office on the line for my delight,
and then prove slow to speak
they are leaving me a free sample.

They are trying to sell me office sound effects.
     

Speaking From My Office

When people say of some rude rejection
that they are sending in the direction
of somebody they might well meet again
'It is nothing personal' I often wonder
what 'personal' means in the statement.
And I wonder more what is truly 'personal',
or merely impersonal and characterless,
in all their other relationships.....

Fewer Listeners Required

The older I get the happier I become
just talking to myself, as long as I listen
to what I am saying and refresh what I say.

Expecting Less

The older I get the less I know
about 'putting the world to rights',
and the more I wonder how well
I will get myself fit for the day. 

Unfair Comparisons

Marlene Dietrich said 'Glamour is assurance.
It is a kind of knowing that you alright in every way,
mentally physically and in your appearance.
Whatever the occasion, the situation, you are equal to it.'.

This Christmas I wish such assurance most
for those that are most in need of it,
the vagrants and dispossessed
whi live in the midst of the greatest wealth,
the sick and tired whatever the cause of their tiredness,
the domesticated pets who endure cruel owners
among many many others on this planet.

The 'glamour' of folks getting by better
than their enemies ever intended them to
goes deeper than any surface sheen or Hollywood fantasy.

True glamour is being well prepared
for every everyday drama
that can be thrown at the living. 

My Seventh Christmas Card Of 2017

Naturally, this image is from facebook,
 possibly the greatest repository of frivolity known to man,
where that adverts alone are bad enough to put you off living...

The Advent Of Electric Light

On returning to church during Advent
and after one of my many disappointments
was finding out how many expressions
for light that were once church property
have now become the familiar patter
of modern day light bulb companies. 

Humility

The greatest talent a person can have
is to know how small their talents are.

The second greatest talent is to know
how small other people's talents are
and adjust their expectations accordingly.....

My Sixth Christmas Card Of 2017

East Window of St Martin-in-the-fields
created in 2008 by Iranian architect Shirazeh Houshiary.  

The Dustbin Of History

Many atheists say that 'If religion
were swept into the dustbin of history
we could start again, all would be well.'.

What they don't appreciate is that
religions are the dustbin of history.
They are the attempt to retrieve
as many names and deeds from the past
as seem worthy of being commemorated.

That so much is remembered so badly
says more about the human psyche
than humans ever want to admit.    

The War Of The Sexes

For some parents 'having children'
is an act of war, usually undeclared,
though who the war is against
-the other parent or society generally
is always left for the children to find out.

Children always discover their place in the war
too late to stop themselves being enlisted.

Double Darkness

Winter should be a time of rest,
of hibernations and letting things
run down. We double the stress,
or increase it by a higher factor,
the more active we are when nature
shuts down, and lives on her reserves. 

My Fifth Christmas Card Of 2017

'Nativity Triptych' painted in 1989 by surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. 

It's Only Words

'Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind. 
Not only do words infect, egotize, narcotize, and paralyze, 
but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain. . . ."

Rudyard Kipling addressing The Royal College of Surgeons in 1923.

It is not known whether he was addressing the potential
for demagoguery which would rise with European fascism,
or the power of advertisers to oversell the American Dream
which would subsequently become the world's nightmare 
with the stock market crash and 'The Great Depression'.

Or some other future event we have yet to experience....    

When Ebay Told Me

'You won't believe this, but it is the season to be jolly'
they were right I did not believe it, and still don't.

It would take something better than easy debt
and an over familiar social media washing over me
to give me anything like the put the sort of smile
on my face that they were thinking I'd buy from them.

The Same Yesterday, Today, And Forever*

When speakers try to refresh The Gospels,
and other unworldly systems of belief,
in everyday ways for their radio listeners
in that legendary piece of broadcasting
'Thought for the day', among many other
listening and viewing opportunities,
the first thought of many who receive
these words is 'The very necessity
of having to refresh it means it must be stale,
so instead can I have something new,
made bespoke, out of nothing, today for me?'.

Little do these tired listeners realize
that no sensation as old as novelty.


*the title refers the New Testament-
Hebrews Ch 13 Verse 8.

My Fourth Christmas Card Of 2017

'Vertical Axes in Motion' painted in 1922/3 by Soviet artist Ilya Chasnick.

Duty Now, For The Future

The modern commercial Christmas
is like many events we endure-
the people who enjoy it the most
are the ones who least understand
how the season is put together.  

Food Credits

The problem is less
'how to have our cake and eat it'
and much more who pays the bill
when we try this dangerous trick.

Opaque Communications

Talking to ourselves is common enough
and by no means a bad  a thing to do.
What is much worse, and all too common
is being a bad listener at the same time.

   

The Limits Of Human Company

There is many a time
that much as I seem sociable
it is more show than substance.
But show seems to be 'enough'.

Enough for that moment
with that person, but insufficient
for me to escape the nagging emptiness
where what would assure me most is beng alone.
Being where nobody seeks after my company
or for me to use what life skills I have
to make me some temporary companion.

When I give but I don't feel my giving.
I am still living, but I am numb
towards my own generosity of spirit.

   

My Third Christmas Card Of 2017

'Red Square UNOVIS' (1921) by Ilya  Chashnick

Brave New Mistakes

I look forward to machines
taking over much of human life.
Mistakes will still be made
but the machines that make them
will not reinforce the old guilt,
and all the fear and loathing
that humans inflict on each other
with such errors.  

Happiness

can never be the goal of a life,
it is only one of many byproducts
of different processes, wherein we try,
every day to simply live well .

However much we are gifted
in our powers of our speech
we can only ever partially know
what it is we are trying to do.

So sometimes it is natural
to be lost for words.
And the best silences
express our contentedness.

Today, Tomorrow, And All Our Hereafters

When 'Why' does not explain why
it is not a matter of capitals and commas,
but the inadequacy of written language
to describe, or engage with, pain and loss.

And there is nothing wrong with that.
Inadequacy is common, if not integral,
to human life. It is what should happen
when, for instance, we become the apex
of the food chain and flood the oceans
with inedible and enduring plastics.

What is wrong is when our shame feeds into
our sense of inadequacy, and the two merge
to dis-empower us. When what we need instead
is to do less today but do something sufficient
to prepare for a more modest and active tomorrow.

Folly is bound to follow
when our shame becomes our pride,
and we cannot tell one from the other.

Christmas Depression

Every November is the same,
the darkness comes sooner in the day,
and the cold is there from breakfast onward.

And even on the best of days
the news sounds sick and tired.

I can't mind it when time passes slowly,
and for those who need
I will still have the time of day.

But the best way for my life to pass
is quietly when I can be alone.

Let The Past Remain The Past

Much as I enjoy studying history
I have no interest in any past life
of my own, some scene
where I might have had a greater effect
than I can know now
on any lives led back then.

Let each life find it's own trouble,
it's own causes for complaint,
and it's own joys too.

And when the joy
outweighs the misery
then that is a small bonus
we can enjoy which we know
might happen in future.

The 'I' Test You Can Pass

Because everything is limited edition.
 It is the height of foolishness to deny this fact.
And if life is as fuzzy as these letters are
than that is as clear as you should expect life to be.

Late Thought For 'Black Friday'

Finally! I understand
the modern 'season of goodwill'
the way a mature adult should;

1- accept the urge to borrow money
at interest rates that make the loan
impossible to clear up or repay,
which means you will be forever in debt.

2- prepare yourself to be sold a dream
that you never knew you had dreamt
because you actually did not dream it,
it had been dreamt up for you,
and many more millions like you.

3-having let your most vulnerable
dependents watched the adverts
on television, ad nausiem, then buy
 what the dream tells them is real.  

My Second Christmas Card Of 2017

'Red Square and Cross'- Painted 1928 by Ilya Chashnik.

Philosophy At The Supermarket Till

'30 percent off' seems like a good deal,
unless of course said offer is on your life
-in which case take whatever means remain
to live it as fully as the offer lets you.

Momentum vs Observation

In our youth we are full of enthusiasm.
We rush into projects not knowing ourselves.
As we work we incorporate our blind spots,
which we and many others are blind to also,
into what we do as part of the sheer rush
that is in the energy is only ours once.
Which otherwise will use itself up.

The older we get the slower we appear to be,
but for being so slow the more clearly we take in
the energies and limits of focus in those around us.

It is best to keep on moving, even when slow,
to draw on the greater energy of those around us.
And where we can, gently draw their attention
towards where they don't know they can't see
that they might be heading.


,  

The Old Choices Of Quiet And Noise

I remember my grandparents,
particularly their approach to travel;
they liked the village they lived in,
they were tardy enough about leaving it
that they rarely traveled any great distance
for any length of time.

The comforts of their home had been hard fought for.

They had an 1950's television set
which was travel enough for them.
It gave them all the movement
they might think to want,
without them having to move.

They preferred the BBC
and stuck to 'The News'.

When the set was turned off
they unplugged it at the mains.
They then covered the screen
with a travel blanket,
which they kept for the purpose.

A woolen patterned test card
that required no power.
 
Then they traveled in real life,
cooked and ate, and played cards
allowing the quiet to settle around us.

The War On Terror Is Older Than We Think

'Night and Fog' is a thirty minute
documentary film released in 1956
on the horrors of the Nazi death camps.
It was made by Alain Resnais.

It is a film that was much admired
in it's time, the style of it
has been much copied since.

I have seen it, twice.

Every time you see news footage
of natural disasters and wars
in high density urban settings,
where the camera lingers
over where life is no longer present
those images copy the images
of Auschwitz and Mejdanek
that Alain Resnais filmed.

But I feel appalled that never delved
into the origins of the film's title.

It was the title of the 1941 Nazi policy
which was the original 'War on Terror'.
The forced removal of political opponents
who when they were arrested lost all recourse
to the due process in law that they had before
under the Geneva Convention, as the Nazi State,
prosecuted their war the length and breadth of Europe.

Musical Artillery Seems To Be The Best Weaponry

This is a Trench Cello, so called because it is the same shape
as a first world war artillery box, in which are stored the parts
to create the working musical instrument that is in the name,
including a pitch/tuner and the bow to play it with. 

 However much war remains lethal to humans, animals and habibats,
the older wars were slower in transporting men between the fronts
from which they fought 'for their country'. Weapons were slower
and more limited than the modern guns and bombs. This tardiness
was what allowed soldiers time to rest and play music to each other,
on instruments like this, whilst those just listening to write
about the home they miss, or play cards and take their ease.
  

Is That Money Belt You Are Wearing? Or A Strait Jacket?

Money is a form of insanity
The more folks have of it,
the harder they have to work
to present themselves as 'normal'.
Hence 'The Protestant Work Ethic',
which took Organised Religion
(an unstable form of social glue)
to new heights of hyper-insanity.

The more money we have
the more we warp any reality,
built on simple commensality.

The Paradise Papers prove all this.  

A Marketing Opportunity Missed

Every year, as the light draws in
and the dark nights lengthen,
so adverts for happy families
that are so thoroughly synthetic
that they are effectively emetics
fill the screens of televisions
across the western world,
proclaiming 'It's Christmas!'.

What manufacturers and advertisers
seem never to have grasped
is how many men react against
these images that sicken them,
because however much men have families
they dislike how they are possessed by them,
owned by how they work to pay for everything.

Given this, there should be a Christmas
celebration that is marketable to the men
who pay for their families, but want their own world
where they have a choice about the distance they keep
from the relatives who insist they close to who they are kept by.

More humbug at Christmas! That is what men cry.
And since mass marketing can sell us black as it were white
and vice versa, then why cannot advertisers sell us

'The Happier Humbug Laden Season of Goodwill'?

If they were really clever they would make it last all year. 

My First Christmas Card Of 2017

 'Suprematist Com

position'-Ilya Chashnik (1922)

Maths vs 'Religion'

The popular understanding of protestant work ethic
has been responsible for more activity
than with hindsight has seemed intelligent.

The humans who believed in predestination
sought their makers approval
through competitive and profitable good works
-the better to secure their place in Heaven
and make sure of their enemies' place in Hell.

When computers and algorithms
have taken over 95 percent of all jobs,
for which people used to be rewarded
for learning how to accept boredom
without complaint then the humans
will have set up a system and a test
more real than any Calvinist theology.

There altruism through very limited activity
both towards themselves and the planet
whilst still being the apex of the food chain
will be the only realistic choice left to them.

Everyman

My U.S.P. is that I have
no interesting features.

No Dictatorship

can ever be truly benign,
not even for a brief while.

The Armistice Days That I Will Remember This Week....

will be the men who survived.... 

great wounding and extensive restorative facial surgery

who were as brave in the socail isolation after 'The Great War'

as they were on the battlefield during their time on it. 

I Don't Mind

Medical science,
and extreme wealth for the few,
extending human life for even fewer
to almost infinity if they can get there.

All I would ask is that any such life
would have a sense of purpose,
engagement, and altruism to match it's length.

Otherwise it will seem far longer than it is. 

How Do You Manage Your Holes? or The True Purpose Of Religion

We all have blame-shaped holes in our lives,
and if we are to have a self and self control
then these holes do have to be managed.

Any person of faith who is open and honest
will admit that the hole never really goes away
but it slightly changes shape every day
and with every paradigm of life it shifts, significantly.

If we do not take control
of the shape of the hole
then we will be unaware
when it changes us,
and we will not be in charge
of the changes we are put through.

Anyone who says they have no 'blame shaped hole'
in their life is either a psychopath or a politician,
there is not much to choose between the two roles.

It is a mark our modern sense of equality
that politicians and psychopaths can be of either gender. 

100 years Of One Sided Thinking

And the longer it has gone on, from the foundation of the state of Israel
and the many wars since, the more the empire of suffering continues
until nobody knows where to start, to try to put an end to it.
The suffering is all too endemic, the defensiveness is all too absolute....  

On The Anniversary

of the 95 theses written in Latin
being nailed to the Wittenburg door
my I offer my humble readers a joke
I told a little more recently

My Lutheran Landlady; 'Martin Luther had terrible digestion problems'.

Me 'I know, it was the diet of worms that did it'.  

Is That A Thesaurus In Your Hand?

Or are you just immensely pleased to see me?

Reduced Individuality Through Suffering Is Rarely What It Seems

One of the troubling paradoxes of modern life
is that to illustrate modern suffering well enough
it has to be rendered as a brief and well told story
about an individual as presented by mass media.

By the time the story appears it is aided
by a Greek chorus of mildly stricken relatives.
then an over competitive media reduces the original story
to 'grieving relative hits out' and otherwise makes out
that the experience is atypical from the norm.

To varying degrees, suffering is the common experience.
And when the stories we tell so easily misrepresent us
the more honest path will be a silent misanthropy..... 

Where There Is Life

there is always both sloth and avarice,
but where the sloth can make greed
work so slowly as make greed open weakness,
then each vice cancels out the power of the other.
Not that either can be the source of  purposeful generosity. 

This My Future Employer

And my past employer too. When I tried to work
for money the good will was worth less then the wage
and neither supported me in  the way they said they would.

A Choice Of Absent Government

I was chatting with a friend recently,
and explained that I might be absent
from them for a while-the government
had some forms that it needed me to fill in,
and further, it might well want
to interview me at some length.

My friend replied 
'You do know the government is in chaos?'.
It was only later the same day that I realized
that I didn't know which arm of government he meant.
All government, national, regional, and local,
are presently in a state of prolonged semi-collapse
with no sign of a return to a sense of direction in sight.
.
The civil service are what has always held the country together.

Putting the 'Lib' Into 'Libertarian'

Because if we can never be offended
we can never overcome the same
and we will never learn anything new.

Probabilities

When a law is immoral
then breaking it will most likely
increase the level of immorality.

When a law is moral and logical
them the people meant to follow it
will still be immoral, at best
to less harmful effect than before.

No law, however easy it is to apply,
will ever have the effect
that it's writers seek for it to have,
in putting an internal logic to desire.

Uncivilised Entertainments

My present reading is 'How to Murder a Man'
not long ago I enjoyed 'Confessions of a Thug',
both very readable books about life as it was
in the nineteenth century in The British Empire.

The former is set in Ireland, the latter set in India,
at roughly the same time. Both portray the natives
as dishonest in ways that do not flatter the empire
or make it seem as if it were a wholesome thing.

In both books/countries the economy works well
for the few, and badly for the many locals,
who are forced to bend and break the law
to make wealth work a lot better.

Through charm, threat, incantation
and secret planning men (it is always men)
sought 'the good life' where it could be found,
when with laws like those that contended with
the best life was often being dead and in the ground.

In their pursuit they made sure
that many other people got there.

The Prewash

The most amusing and fulfilling commensality
comes when humans domesticate their animals,
as well as each other, by letting the former
clean up after every meal they make.

In serving themselves whilst serving 'their master'
a dogs actions in cleaning a plate can make redundant
the many thousands of words on the subject of sharing
that with a dog are always surplus to our needs.

A Good Heart

resists hollow words
and very slowly
makes few new friends
whilst seeming friendly
to the many who pass by.

A good heart learns
to keep false connections at bay,
without seeming to be aggressive.

A Choice Of Unwanted Messages

I find it odd, almost quaint if not funny,
how internet programmes that promise
to remove every advert from your browser
that might pop up, the one advert that remains
is the for the programme to get rid of adverts.  

Anti-Natalism Essay Ahoy

The more I have blogged,
the more I have used up my opinions,
and used up every fresh angle on a subject
which I might refresh myself and my readers with,
until I have come feel that every thought seems tired.

The agendas set by the media don't help.
All that anger and despair at events
that require something calmer
if anything positive and win-win
is to be wrung out of the future.

So for today please accept this link
to a long but succinct piece of writing
which is much better than anything
I am presently able to produce, here.  

The Peacetime Experience

1-Economic depressions come round once a decade,
this is as stable as any peacetime economy ever gets.

2-The unstable money rarely affects everyone
but is felt second hand by anyone who reads the news.

3-the unstable money usually hits those
with the least in the first place,
but the scary headlines are good
for frightening the rest by telling them
of experiences they can be glad
they never have to endure.

4-This makes an economically repressive
government seem attractive to many at the time.
Whoever poverty hurts hardest and most,
they are the scapegoat fit for purpose
who the voters believe should suffer.
If they are not strong enough to endure,
then by the time this is discovered
it will be too late to restore
long gone future fortunes.

Let future governments apologize for histories
they could not be possibly be responsible for.

Personal depressions will make up
a large part of the effects on the one in four
who live with mental health problems,
partly as a result of 'economic climate',
who at any one time the healthier
three in four will have to observe them.   

Poverty, Wealth And Quotations

John Berger (1926-2017) was more an art critic 
and social commentator than a political commentator.
Nonetheless the above comment holds true-
many of the the richest people in the world 
actively dislike meeting meeting poor people 
and believe that the air that the rich breathe
 is different to the air that the poor have to choke on.   

Outside And Inside

'Know thyself' is the command we follow
when we look after our outward appearance
by taking care even more about what gets inside of us.

Zen Of Breakfast...

'Sunny side up', naturally.....

Never Knowing

what the time is,
and never caring,

is as near as we get
to being as naked as animals,
and as welcoming of life,
with a natural body-clock,
as anyone could ever be. 

Parenting, The T-Shirt

It shrinks you to fit it, whatever size you are or you hoped to be.

Humility

I have never taken an IQ test.

I regard everyday life
in all it's complexities
as an intelligence test
that is enough for most folk.

What I have found most often
is that testing each other for empathy
would serve us a much much better. 

Another Loathsome Cliche

is 'I have mixed feelings about.....'
(add the subject here). Why so?

Because even as the phrase is about feelings
it always spoken in highly neutral tones.

Whoever uses it sends their audience
into instant and infinite boredom,
sufficient that when the speaker finishes
the audience can't remember what it was
that left the speaker so double minded.

Modern Communications

If all the mobile phones in the world
were arranged in the form of a tower,
and the words once spoken through them
turned into cement, the way the words
once cemented people to each other,
to bind the phones all together
we really would have an all new,
and digital, Tower of Babel.

Autumnal Thoughts

In Autumn in Southern France the figs ripen on the trees. 

In time they lose their plumpness and look like old men's testicles

Like old men's genitalia they lose their cover and ooze a bit.
 The more they ooze the better they taste.....

Telling Stories

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

The technology by which we do this
has vastly expanded our means of being entertained.

The problem is that as our stories get retold
many a story travels less well
than it's teller likes to think;
the less personal the means of conveyance
the tighter the script needs to be
to refresh it's audience properly.

But in our deathly self absorption
we continue to insist we are 'entertaining'
with repeats of old stories that have become cliche.

God save you all from my when I become bored with myself
-you will spot it before I do.....

A Year Of Disapointments

will last longer than any other type of year.
The number of dates on the calendar
will be as fixed as they ever have been,
but the events that punctuate it's length
make sure that our sense of time stretches
ultimately losing all it's 'give',
until it has nothing left to give but emptiness,
and an old ache that passes for a pulse.

The heart is a very strong muscle
which can withstand a lot of stress.

But as a physical repository of memory
it will only carry so much despair voluntarily.

Absence Of Mind Does Not Mean Absence Of Words

Billions of souls live on their own,
in spite of their attempts at living together.
At best each soul is an unreliable narrator,
an unreliable navigator,
which knows little of it's own unreliability,
much less everyone else's.

How unreliable they all are together
is the sum of human confidence
about human omniscience over nature.

More And Less

The more I understand 'politics'
the less I wish I understood it,
and instead I could find a distance
where what I can no longer avoid feels safer.

Satire helps, but in the end no distance
from The News ever seems safe enough.  

Cycles Of Liberty Will Vary

But any liberty won on the back of acts of aggression
 will always be limited for the victors by how defensive 
the terms of the peace can be made to seem against
 the losing side, whom they seek to keep at a distance. 

When Paid Employment Fails The Turing Test

Most people have heard of The Turing Test.

It is the proposition that where a machine
gives every impression of being human,
in so far as human beings can test it blind,
then they accept that what they are dealing with
has a consciousness, and is not merely mechanical.

But I have been aghast at so many of the humans
I have spoken with by phone who would fail the standards
set by the Turing test, because they spout scripts
from screens provided for them by employers,
and the money they get for what they spout
matters more to them than whether they are thought
to be robots, as they are attentively listened to, or not.

The net result is that I nearly every time
part way through an attempted conversation
I cease know how to respond as the ghost
of the script takes over their voice.

That is usually when for me feeling ashamed
to answer a robot, I find I don't how to answer.
That is when the robotic management intervene.....

The Ultimate Phobia?

'Islamophobia' and 'Homophobia'
are two terms among many
whose very trendiness
I struggle to comprehend.

But the oldest phobia comes
from cursing someone as 'stupid',
and making out that a bad deed or two
by them the sum of of the whole person.

There we act out our fear
of rational argument by ignoring
the vital differences between people
which multiply the sum of life.

To curse and do down the intelligence
of another is to reduce your own self
to brute insensitivity, and to increase
the other persons sense of burden
to make it carry your contempt.

Such contempt is a living death wish.

Most Sectarianism

is despots reducing their enemies
into well mislabeled groups
convenient for the despot,
much to the discomfort
of those impersonally labeled.

As the discomfort multiplies
many feel trapped in a political ghetto
made by others, one where fighting
makes leaving the ghetto harder,
and swearing at the media is proof
that they are not being heard.

For myself, and for everyone else,
I prefer my insanities to be more wholesome
-inequalities which because they are reduced
can be shared with less need for aggression.

The Work Ethic Never Stops....

Particularly not for those who are ill or disabled, 
or are otherwise of no service to employers
as millions of people know. 
It is what keeps on going around them...

The Mathematics Of Weak Morals

Personal charisma + Vast wealth + The pomp of office = Potential for corruption. 

How 'The Fall' Actually Happened

Eve was at her ease in the garden.
Mistaking her rest for boredom,
the snake quietly whispered to her
'Cheer up, Love. It may never happen'.
and in that very instance whatever 'it' was did.
Her curiosity was piqued by his comment.

She wanted to know what 'it' meant.
Adam avoided all her questions,
but could not stop her asking.
He wanted to be in the image
of his maker, who back then
was more into labeling things
and did not ask questions
nor answer them either.
He has rarely done so since.

Eventually God,
who was by his own definition
plural, infinite, unified, and replete,
quietly gave Adam and Eve their notice
to leave the ease of his exclusive company,
for them and their descendants
to pique their curiosities by themselves.

Stretching Hope

Why does modern life
seem like the credit tab
in the most popular bar
on the RMS Titanic,
just before it sank? 

Testament Of Middle Age

For many years I believed I was an introvert,
but it was much more that I was 'in the closet'.
I had to be secretive about a sexuality
that I was taught to feel depressed about.
But the secrecy went further than that......

For the sake of appearances I was also required
to be 'in the closet' about my being depressed.
My family lived in denial about mental health.
They lived life with a determined determinism.

I still get depressed,
but about the world rather than myself.
In this new depression I can be the extrovert
when I want to be, when I see the opportunity.

I can still be horribly wrong about people.
And tactless too. In so many situations
I remember peoples faces, but not their names.
But somewhere on my way I lost the shame
my family needed to keep me as one of them.

I remain uneasy about anyone
being another person's property.

Now Wash Your Mind

I probably won't be trying their most select menu....

Banal Potentialities?

Many such urges seem quite resistible.
If truly irresistible urges to life do exist
then procreation is one of them.
The women that carry children to term
are likely to understand these urges
more than the men who have to be there
to start the process but rarely  think
far enough ahead to be able to plan
how to insert themselves comfortably
into the creative process, for the child
and the mother as (in theory) they all grow together.

That said I wonder, how well non-procreative sex
compares with procreative sex in it's potential for banality?
For repetition disguised as circular hope?

It has to be said;carrying infants to term
is not something to do 'for fun', whatever
the message women get from their hormones. 

Winter Is Afoot...

and we all feel the cold in our extremities.

Something For The Autumn From The Spring

 'Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap
 nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.'   (Mathew 6; 26) 

It Is Meat And Drink

for grown-ups to talk with detachment
about 'changes in the systems of management',
in work, in I.T.,
and in life generally-
particularly when the changes
apply to others more than them.

When they speak like that who listens?
Who takes in what people say in 'emit' mode
believing it never applies to them?

On The Impossibility Of Genuine Generosity

All societies are consumer societies,
the more they consume the more they dream.
After having briefly finishing consuming
we all they have dreams further consumption.
which palely reflect our consumptions past.

The more we mine our unconscious
through drugs alcohol and entertainment,
to avoid seeing how far we are from basic need,
the more our dreams become the vomitorium
where all we can smell is our own greed.

'Bad Laws

make outlaws of good people.'-Virgil Elliot

In Praise Of Primitive Societies

All societies are consumer societies,
the more they consume
the more they dream of further consumption
and after having temporarily finished consuming
all they have are their dreams
as pale reflections that will be lost
of the vibrant life that there once was.

The more we mine our unconscious
through drugs alcohol and entertainment
the more infinite the seam of greed
that we collectively live by.

Even the best of the outsiders to all this
can never get far enough outside of it
to both survive
and be in balance with their environment.  

Youthful Attentiveness

Though how much those who stop learning may well
 feel old for the static life they have is not mine to comment on.

Fear And Fiction

stalk all of human life,
devouring who they may.

Disbelieve them
where you can
if you want to stay.

I'm Not Like Everybody Else

They all think so alike and are all so different from me....

Connection, Speech, and Gender

The telephone was invented by a man,
and from the candle stick of the 1920's
to modern times so many of the appliances
into which we have to speak into
have been firm and somewhat phallic.

The lead in their pencils makes men
always want take the lead in life,
unaware of how this makes them controlling,
and this include the design of technologies
to assist future communications.

Were women to take a greater hand
in our collective designs for future living
I wonder how much more feminine,
and inclusive the shapes of their designs
for sharing speech at a distance in future might be.

Would talking into phones
that reminded users of a more
female approach to sensuality
help people talk and listen
at greater depth, more readily?

Maturity Is Always Relative

Sometimes maturity requires us
to live apart from others,
particularly our families,
the better to be clearer
about the nature of our vice.

Through separation
we can resist the charms of co-habitation
and refine ourselves into something nicer.
 .

On My Own Planet

Comparing being alone with being lonely
sails so close to cliche
that I don't want to go there.

The times when I felt most thorougly
ill-at-ease were in the company of family,
or with teachers or other instructors
barking orders, who said they cared
but acted as if they were on another planet
whilst engaged in their constant activity.

Timing Is Not What Used To Be

Some folks say 'It's not over 'til it's over'
-what ever 'it' might be. Reprentative Democracy?

What is is more true is that fewer things in life
ever start when they are promise to,
and when they end they always cost us
more that we were prepared to pay.

The Discomfort Zone

Since 1979 more walls have gone up
than have ever gone down, erections
made out of money as much as bricks.

The Construction Industry is in robust health,
with all the new divisions that it is expanding!
The new walls are better than the old,
they are less physical, and have less barbed wire,
with very few machine guns required for hire.

The 'no-man's-land' in between the divides
is now maintained by black ops manouveres
backed up by hidden security cameras
coupled with plenty of noisy propaganda.

From behind our wall we accept what we are shown,
democracy where the highest level performers
get the most bread, the rest just watch them perform.

Our screens define our histories as battles
between causes that haunt us like old ghosts.
Who did what and when they did it can no longer
be remembered well, but comes to us in fragments.

Our turmoil is both within and without,
there is barely the need for the knife in the back
to openly prove what the conflict is all about.

In the dying light our media shout for the shadows
of those in whom we once put hope,
looking for how to 'rediscover our traditions'.

When the walls seem high enough we stop listening,
and sit and mutter to ourselves instead.
No enemy can penetrate a mind so well divided
so in our madness we feel safe from all invaders.

Secrecy Is Not A Disease

it is more a common necessity,
whether we are intent on good or evil,
and everything inbetween.

When we do evil
we have to cover
what we do with good,
to make it presentable to those
we want be evil towards.

When we do good
we have to disguise the good
from other people's unbelief
that good is real, and the labels
that it comes with can be trusted.

Please be careful
when choosing your motive,
and level of tact.

True Charity,

however small or vast the sum given,
abjures all acting, flummery, and pretense
on the part of both the giver and the recipient. 

The Wayward Pulpit (1)

Jesus never said 'By their management systems shall ye [all] know them'*,
but there is something prophetic about poor management skills.

They are the most reliable guide to human error
that we could ever devise for ourselves,
to the exclusion of all other competence and tact.
Often they will do this and understate the fact,
until the system speaks loud enough to deafen us.


*an adaptation from the gospel of Mathew Ch 7 V 20.

Brahms-The T Shirt?

One of the many oddities of modern life
is to see so many images from the 1960's
onward, from modern popular music,
being re produced on 'limited run' T shirts.

Seeing the faces of now wrinkly old rockers
in their youthful form, adorning to the torsos
of modern youth is somewhat disconcerting.

I get it, but I lived that past and seeing it reheated
in the light modern clothing leaves me rather cold.

Perhaps we could look back further,
to another range of images,
one where the faces of classical composers
adorn the front of the T shirt
and notation from their sheet music
is covers the back, sponsored by Classic FM.?

Never mind The Grateful Dead, Roy Harper
Led Zep and Pink Floyd and the T-shirt artists
that sell by the bucket load, let us re-imagine
what we really want to see. Beethoven!
Bach! Bruckner! Bartok! and Brahms!
And that is just the most famous B's!
there are another 25 alphabet letters
of both major and minor composers,
and complete obscurantists, to choose from.

Let their music be heard more too,
and played live and in the open air,
to replace much that seems forced
by the rhetorical sense of fame
which is led by E.D.M. at present.

Caution; New Road Sign Required

Mothering is a full time job that can strike at any moment....

Work, Eternity, And Memory.

When Zeus finally gave Sisyphus his eternal punishment,
for his cunning and hubris, and the gods opened
the first quarry to help humans recognize themselves,
how much was Sisyphus permitted a sense of Deja-Vu
with each rock rolled up the hill that fell down again?

'Go Forth And Multiply.... '

Inside the few good ideas there are in the world
there are the seeds so many thousands more bad ideas,
just waiting to get out and propagate themselves
through the collective human consciousness.

They team and mill about
when we try to act out
those few good actions
humans are ready to do.

(Plant) Life On Mars

Everything you were unlikely to be told but would need to know 
about surviving a life in outer space for a long period of time.

This Carnal Earth

The following was quoted in the front of a book of reviews of television, 'Glued to the Box' by Clive James, which was published before the age of the internet. The quote itself was written well before the telephone had taken off, and long before the classic age of three channels of analogue television in Britain, which is the period that Clive James collected television reviews cover. But it expresses clearly how little we travel for all that we change the means of transmitting information.

'Humanity will surpass the first dirigibles as it has surpassed the first locomotives. It will surpass M. Santos-Dumont as it has surpassed Stephenson. After telephotography it will continually invent graphies and scopes and phones all of which will be able to go round the earth in less than no time. But it will always be only the temporal earth. And it will be possible to burrow inside the earth and pierce it through as I do this ball of clay.  But it will always only be the carnal earth.'

-Charles Peguy (1873-1914), written in 1907.     

Deathwatch

At the tills of my local supermarket
I returned to talk with my favourite cashier.
He is always a tonic after trawling the isles
for my few items, that takes ages to find.

He had a florescent green strap on his wrist,
on it there were lights that were flashing.

I asked him about this, and he replied
'It monitors my health, whilst telling me the time.
It was sold to me by my health insurance.
They lower the premium which I pay them
when I wear it....  '.

'Oh' said I 'I thought that it was the watch
that would tell you when you were going to die,
as sold by technologically advanced undertakers.'.

We laughed at our mutual incomprehension,
and joked about 'best before' dates for humans,
as if we were similar the stock of the shop.
The conversation ended with me speculating
which of my relatives we might send
this undertakers watch to, for Christmas.

He knew nothing of how deeply
the false cheer of Christmas sales
depresses me, beyond belief.

We both knew that he would soon
be stacking shelves with Christmas stock
but his all-year-round cheer was better. 

Putting The 'less' Into 'Blessed' (2)

Because out of your thrift and generosity
will come other people's self sufficiency