........................................................................................ - a weBlog by Snowy and me.

Friday, 31 January 2020

Beyond Inauthenticity

There is still a life to be found
from having nothing to be true to.

But the worth of such a life depends
on cheapness being the catch all
and where self deception
is the starting point for mass deception.

In such a state all truth lies
in The Voice Of The Leader,
where he never says what he means....








Thursday, 30 January 2020

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

The Unacceptability Of Modesty

If we going to tell lies then it is more self effacing
to tell them to help save other people's faces
more than our own and to tell as few lies
as we need to, to make life bearable for all.

But we all know how these things pan out
the smaller the lie, the less likely it is
that anyone believes it; even with lies
we just can't accept the idea of modesty.

What 'empowers' us is other people's shame.  

Tuesday, 28 January 2020

The Loneliness Of A Tidy Life

Only Child

A lady from a woman's magazine wrote and asked me what it felt like being an only child. Well nothing. Just a number. But then I started having a little think. Maybe the only child is wrongly named - maybe it is the Only Parent. Most of the only children I knew (and there were a lot of us about in the suburbs of the thirties) made no claim to special status - but one or two did, and looking back I realise that they belonged to parents who did not look like parents. 

  When you bent down and pushed open the letter boxes of these Only Parents their houses smelt barren, like the houses of spinsters - something to do with the lack of physical movement, as though dust never got stirred up into the general atmosphere as it does when a child is in the house, but lay heavily on the carpets generating a separate presence. Whilst ordinary children were robbing orchards, Only Parents took their offspring for Walks. When you saw them, you felt they had just met. I wonder if there aren't people who have children who never  - in some deep or desperate way - relinquish a virgin status?

Quoted without permission from BBC broadcaster and author, Robert Robinson (1927-2011), from his book of short pieces of journalism 'The Dog Chairman'.  

Monday, 27 January 2020

There But For Disgrace Go I....

In my Auschwitz head
are five 'nice' Nazis
four murderous Jews
three angry anarchists
two sad gay men
a Jehovah's Witness
and six very sexy
but unreliable gypsies.

Sunday, 26 January 2020

Changing Seasons

China has named this year
'the Year of the Rat'
but not just there, but everywhere,
from now on every year
is going to be the year of the virus.

Saturday, 25 January 2020

Thought For Holocaust Memorial Week

A German journalist
at the Frankfurt book fair
asked Art Spiegelman
on the publication 'Maus'
'Isn't it in bad taste to make
a comic book of Auschwitz?'
'No' Spiegelman replied,
'Auschwitz was in bad taste'.

Friday, 24 January 2020

Impersonally Yours

When ever I read The Gospels
everyone Jesus meets is changed,
though how they changed runs off the page
as newer characters push in
to be next to play second fiddle
to Jesus being their conductor.

The message remains clear,
'being born again' is like repentance.
In both a change of direction
provokes people to kinder words
and refresh the generosity in deeds.

In church the rites and prayers
are why we are there.
They echo the call to change
without being refreshed, in themselves.

Everything said inside the church
but outside of rite seems kind enough
but it has all been said before,
by different people in different times
-all of them unaware of each other.

Only when the church lets the world in
can both sides be surprised by the exchange.

Thursday, 23 January 2020

Freedom Of Speech Is For Leaders

It is the way of dictators
to talk at length about freedom
and then dominate the mass media,
which by design they control,
with comments on their speeches.

The media is such
that when citizens
try to think for themselves
their first thoughts
are always about their leader
who's media image
they disagree with
but they still don't know
what their leader thinks.   

Wednesday, 22 January 2020

Death And Taxes (2)

In the days of the simplest, most autocratic, governments
and of doctors who plied their arts before modern science
not only were death and taxes the most reliable parts of life,
but taxes meant imminent death
-less for those who were taxed and stayed at home,
and more for those who were sent to war,
because that is what taxes were levied for.

Wars were as inevitable as dynastic strife,
and they had to be paid for somehow,
and not just in lives of the enemy taken
but in the skills in making weaponry and armour
and the materials for uniforms and households
of soldiers who were supported as they travelled.

The taxes we pay in a peace time economy
are still part of a war-now it is against nature
rather than against each other.   

Tuesday, 21 January 2020

Hope Lives In Humility

And the sense of the response being involuntary
here is no bad thing when it gathers up practical goodness. 
 

Monday, 20 January 2020

Saturday, 18 January 2020

The Oldest Dishonesty?

Tax avoidance
must be an activity
that is nearly as old
as taxation itself.

Thursday, 16 January 2020

The Circular Problem

We are at our best and most basic
when we live by our basic needs.

But society is built on lies about want,
which, egged on by easy debt, become a greed
that we are collectively disinclined to recognise.

I would have been happy to work
if the work was useful, it esteemed me,
and the pay met my needs well enough.

But all the times that I was paid
for my time I felt laid waste to,
and held to the promises of a future
that was always infinitely postponed.

The best work I ever did
was volunteer work
where when I chose to be there
it was because
I saw less of the management.
 .
Nowadays I lay waste to my time
without supervision, as cheaply
as the government need me to be.

Tuesday, 14 January 2020

Radicalism

is like lightning-it never works the same way twice
and it rarely strikes in the same place a second time.

'Radicalism' is a adjective used in Politics,
to draw voters towards the idealism
in the policies of a particular party
amid the war-of-words that is a general election.

But mostly it prompts fond memories
in the public of different ages
of governments past,
where they were young enough
to embrace a high idealism
and too young to  know
what made their ideals work.

Sunday, 12 January 2020

Why Is Optimism

Always so predictable?
And more about what people
don't want to happen
than what they hope for? 

Saturday, 11 January 2020

Goodbye... ....Hello... ...Goodbye Again......

David Bowie. Known arrival January 8th 1947.
 Final departure on January 10th 2016,
with many comings and goings in between.

Friday, 10 January 2020

Our Animalism

Human exceptionalism
as far less exceptional
than we are prepared to admit.

It is more that we don't have the wit
to accept how much like other animals we are.

Thursday, 9 January 2020

My Third New year Card Of 2020

A 20th Century Roman Mosaic Floor reconstruction 
of the Great Roman Pavement of Woodchester. 
Especially noteworthy for its opulent design comprising 
approximately 1.6 million individually fired clay tesserae.
Total of 2,209 square feet / 205 Square Meters 47ft x 47ft
Researched. Made by Robert and John Woodward in  the 1970’s.

Wednesday, 8 January 2020

The Automated Community

Robots now do most of the work
that the unskilled poor used to do.

When this work was done by the poor
it was badly paid, of low status, and stressful.

Even as it kept the poor poorer,
it was natural for them to drink
'til drunk to numb the pain of life.

Now, because of the robots,
there is less work for the poor
to apply for
and what work there is is simpler
but work is still a matter of status.

But who wants to work
and remain poor
whilst being bought off
by bogus ideas about status ?

The best reason for work remains community.



Sunday, 5 January 2020

My New Year Resolution

Because careful panics are better panics
with improved reason applied to them
-particularly at emergency exits. 

Friday, 3 January 2020

Thursday, 2 January 2020

Life After Life

For the best life go offline
and cultivate activities
where the materials are physical
and they require mutuality,
if not community, for support.

By all means post the results
where they can be seen far and wide
but treat all responses they inspire
as a digital afterlife,
both for you and for them.  

Wednesday, 1 January 2020

Picture Set Of The Month - January

Three pictures I took myself  
of the coypu who live by the lake
In apparent contentment.