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.