This tiny asteroid moon, Dimorphos,
was was quietly orbiting around
it's barely bigger asteroid host, Didymos,
as together they orbited the universe,
somewhere between Earth and Mars.
Until N.A.S.A. sent a rocket
to destroy tiny Dimorphos,
to prove to humans
that when the earth
is in the path of an asteroid
the asteroid will be the target
of N.A.S.A. rockets until,
in smaller pieces, those pieces
orbit away away from the earth
and leave mass extinction
of species to be solely man made.
may appear to inspire belief,
but appearances deceive.
When something mechanical
does what it should,
when it saves human effort,
relieves human pain,
all whilst saving the planet,
we should be more than thankful.
When we let the mechanics
of what we live through
dictate how we should live
we become the anti-miracle,
the alchemy in reverse,
where, in lock-step with the machines
that we make and we depend upon,
we make narratives in where we detach
ourselves ever further
from the cycles of nature
until the miracle of mortality,
that no machine can stop, reclaims us.
Everyone wants that softer landing,
and for many a sense of loss
remains a hard thing to crack.
But through the means
that humans give themselves
we have extended our ease,
from drugs that limit pain
and keep people mobile
up to a self administered death
where for the wealthy,
where when their health fails,
money gives them that final choice.
For the poor the wealth that suits them best
is to retrospectively reduce the pain
they never needed in the first place
from childhoods racked by inequality.
Treasure lives where the heart lies,
where Moth and rust make honest dust,
compared with human aspiration.
are both personal processes.
For them to be authentic
to the loss that they observe
they must surely be private,
or rather reserved for the few
with a similar sense of loss
for the person who is grieved for.
To live 'amid a national grief'
is to live where nothing seems real.
It is to live where the media
compounds individual losses
until they lack all individuality.
The presentation of loss
simultaneously represents
everybody and nobody,
The listener soon becomes inured
to what they hear, immune to the grief
for being unable to recognise the grievers.
is one of the many oxymoronic,
and conflicted, figures of speech
that since it exists in public life
has to be embodied in Politics.
As Politics amplifies this paradox
with 'culturally diverse' cabinets
packed with people who all went
to the sort of school where the fees
are investments in future elites,
and the women who are picked to lead
are chosen and voted for by as few people
as seems it seems decent to admit,
the better to benefit as few as possible,
all the public can ask is how long it takes
before their organised estrangement
shows up in the leader's poll ratings.
By then it will be too late for reform.
or reversing the slide towards decline
that benefiting just the few engenders.
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| and fades to nothing in the end. All nature wants to disappear, As who we once were, what we did, and why we did it, are misremembered by the living for whom mis-ascribing the past is how they live, their tribute to everything around them. |
Friedrich Nietzsche: “Danger in riches. — Only (s)he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a public danger. For the possessor who does not know how to make use of the free time which his possessions could purchase him will always continue to strive after possessions: this striving will constitute his entertainment, his strategy in his war against boredom. Thus in the end the moderate possessions that would suffice the man of spirit are transformed into actual riches – riches which are in fact the glittering product of spiritual dependence and poverty. They only appear quite different from what their wretched origin would lead one to expect because they are able to mask themselves with art and culture: for they are, of course, able to purchase masks. By this means they arouse envy in the poorer and the uncultivated – who at bottom are envying culture and fail to recognize the masks as masks – and gradually prepare a social revolution: for gilded vulgarity and histrionic self-inflation in a supposed ‘enjoyment of culture’ instil into the latter the idea ‘it is only a matter of money’ – whereas, while it is to some extent a matter of money, it is much more a matter of spirit.” - Aphorism no 310, pages 283/4 from 'Human all too Human; A Book for Free Spirits' (1996) by Frederick Nietzsche
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| Sun Ra (1914-93) was America's best kept secret and the leading exponent of free jazz from the times of his earliest recordings in the 1940's. |
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| His first recordings were blues singles but he hit stride with his Arkestra jazz LP 'Sun Song' in 1957. Here is an informed article with plenty more of the record sleeves that so illustrate his sense of space. |
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| He was a conscientious objector in WW2 and settled on doing forestry work in lieu of military service, White psychiatrists described him as 'Sexually perverted and a well educated coloured intellectual'. |
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| Here is a 1976 live version of familiar tune 'Take the A train', which illustrates the avante garde nature of black futurism, his gift to Black America. by Sun Ra and his Arkestra |
