From Pietism To Gracelessness

is a shorter journey for many
than people like to think.

All the journey requires
is an unawareness of ingratitude.

Candy Store House

Because something bright and colourful 
brings us even more cheer in late Summer days.

Planning For The Unplannable

When we plan for shocks
the shocks that arrive
are never the ones we planned for.

Oh well, back to the (well used) drawing board.....

Great Turn-Offs Of Our Time (8)

Whenever I hear the phrase 'Party Leaders have made fresh calls for unity'
in a radio news bulletins it is a sure sign that the seeds of division
that were sown some time ago by party managers who were hoping
to bluff their way past  a previous crisis in confidence have germinated.
And not just germinated but have reverted to type as older seeds of discontent,
the better to represent The needs of few who seek prolonged control over The Many....

This Blog Is Taking A Break

Please enjoy the light interval music, whether you play it on Thursday Afternoon,
as the title suggests it might be played, or at any other time of the week.  

The Pride Of Life

The biggest indignity in life is that we all die.

Though to everyone enduring
physical and emotional shrinkage
that is not how it feels.

We hope to discover a dignity
through the slowness of our decline.

Bribery

is not just highly popular,
but also proof of the lack of charm
that many powerful people have,
and further proof
of their lack of powers of persuasion.

The Impossible Quest

-a process of representative democracy
that can work with charismatic leadership
that will also remain strong without it.

Living By One-Sided Communications

where the main condition with what we are offered
is disguised disengagement, then we should expect 
diminishing returns for our efforts to connect
 when the disguises fall away.

Faithful Duplicity Finds Many Means

Capitalism is just as much a 'command economy'
as Communism and Socialist economies have been.

The difference is that in the latter the government
stood for something collective that could be agreed with
or communally opposed, albeit with difficulty.

But in the former commands come from a cartel
where public choice is what is highlighted.

This quietly usurps all collectivism,
and rewrites each of us by our wants
to prove to us that we agreed with the majority all along.

The A To C Of Planning

When the greater part of Plan A is no plan at all,

then the first part of Plan B has to be the flat denial
that Plan A was nothing much in the first place.

Then Plan C can be what Plan A was all along
-offering as little help as possible
and dressing it up as something so grandiose
via generous portions of evasions and cliches
the better to deaden all awareness
of it not being what it seems,
and leave people so deep in debt
that they can never get out out of it. 

The Immoral Maze

I was among the first generation
for whom television was their childminder,
whilst our parents' attention span
was daily used up by domestic machinery.

I am not proud about this, it is just a fact.
That I was guided towards it by people
who were illiterate about how it worked
was one of many hurdles I had to negotiate,
along with their emotional illiteracy.

That I had/have to negotiate those hurdles
is something I was often painfully unaware of.

Never was this clearer
than when we were all forced
to watch the television wrestling
whilst we had our Saturday night fry.

Dad was drunk and insisted on the wrestling
because it was the loudest metaphor
for a hangover that humanly possible.

He was bad at pretending he was sober,
so we had to be better at pretending then he was
and better at being forgiving too.

Every week he left the table early
and gave the cat his expensive steak.
This is the cat he always played rough with
until it flex it claws and drew dad's blood.

There was no way out of these routines,
no way, safe or unsafe, of escaping.
The more we watched the more toxic the wrestling became,
until I felt caught in some unending internal conflict
that even now-forty years on-remains.

Nowadays I avoid television to escape false competition
and still competitions, both false and deadly serious, follow me. 
   

Consolidated

Corporate shit  is very firm
-given the concentrated human effort
that goes into making it what it is
then it is always going to be solid.

Whereas individuals shit
is as loose as they want it to be.

It floats the way folk float
up and down the supermarket aisles
-according to liquidity of their debts,
and the time they have to lose
buying into over-processed lifestyles.   

The Escapegoat

When I was young enough to never knew better
I became the store for other people's aggression,
which was what I was required to be at the time.

When others removed my exit from them

they made it seem like I 'had no choice'

but to accept what ever they offered.

Equally when their defences developed gaps
then I 'had no choice' but to leave, 
carrying with me the burdens they left me with, 
burdens I could not see that I was carrying.

Now it seems I 'have no choice' 
to live with little sense of burden
for having lived with so much in the past.

I wonder what my next loss of choice will be.... 

The Shame Of Oscar Wilde

was less his bisexuality when male homosexuality
was known, but the words for it were too new, and taboo
and more that he did not complete more plays
that would unsentimentally unpick the false morals
that so hemmed in millions more men and women
who were similar to him for having choices that led to ruin.

One For The Diarists

As a diary writer I know how he feels, filling the page has to be done
but knowing why you are filling a page always comes much later... 

The Limitation of Christ

was that all he is recorded
as going through, and saying to the many,
in the life he led during his three year ministry
seems so unlike the lives that common folk have lived out since.

Such that he can only be identified with
by the faiths that proclaim him
through which he cannot be seen.

Off The Scale?

I was taught to share what I had as I grew up,
though compared with others
what I had was truly unimpressive.

Indeed, I surely encouraged snobbery
through admitting how little I had.
And snobbery hides in competition
the way jealousy hides in ownership.

But for good and ill I made what I had seem right,
in spite of how the systems that created one winner
always created many more losers who had to hide
their conspicuous lack of success,
and had little to hide behind.

Being thoroughly repetitive,
and poor of speech and money,
my parents never rhapsodised
about their choices or mine,
or the 'what might have been's'
were we materially better off.

Mentoring was off their scale,
and altogether beyond their comprehension.
In the world they lived in giving of your means
was relatively easy, but nobody talked
about how time was shared or given.   

Everybody Knows

how 'Pride sets us up for a fall'.

What nobody sees before their fall happens
is the time scale in which our pride works itself out.... 

For Refugees And Migrants

The currency of their poverty is absolute,
and the exchange rate for it
should appal the many
who have much more money
much more than it actually does.

Misusing Our Mistakes

To err on the side of caution
is to choose a mistaken idea
in the belief that your error
will be hidden in plain sight,
because common mistakes
are more acceptable than the rarer errors.

But hiding in the crowd
does not make anyone right,
but makes more people wrong
for not realising how wrong they can be.

Thus caution becomes the most careless path
that anyone can take, without them knowing it.  

The Currency Of Democracy

is less the vote and it's attendant processes,
and more how easily voters desires and ideals
can be turned inside out and totally reversed. 

Marxism Explained As Entropy

Every market relies on the impression of freshness
whilst controlling it's customers by commodifying them.

Since commodification means degradation,
and the shallowing out of character,
then when will the consumer need
some personal renewal to retain their custom?

Where ever renewal comes from
it had better be more thorough for the customers
than the presentation of the goods that they buy;
even marketing has a sell-by-date,
after which it will not work and cannot be used.