Hopes And Prayers

As the 45th President of the United States,
presents himself as presidential candidate yet again,
amid ever mounting debts that have gone unpaid
and being on trial on close to 100 counts
over five main charges across several states, 
how cynical would it be to send him 'hopes and prayers'
in the midst of his present troubles with the legal system?

Jesus told his followers that they should not
repay evil with evil, but repay evil with good,
and love their enemies, the less to be affected
by the opportunism of the enmity against them.

But with some cynics, pedants,
and self appointed experts in the law
good will is always too good for them...

  

Affirmation Comes From Modest Places

 

Ultra Processed Appetites

Ultra processed food has now been proved
to give people high blood pressure
which might lead to heart attacks.  

Ultra processed news has been shown
to have very low informational value
and lead to mass cynicism and false sentimentality.

The news might well tell us of the consequences
of ultra processed food, but only in a way
that disguises the likeliness of a shorter future.

Great Turn Offs Of Our Time (33) Groundhog Government

It is a truth to avoid when the public
recognise that their government is tired
and the proof is too easy to find for comfort.

First there is the setting of false targets,
where the government do not control
the means by which the targets will be met
and will not countenance this being pointed out to them.

Second there is the statistics that are framed
to show that the targets are being reached,
but the arguments behind the figures produced
more proves the opposite of what the government proposed. 

Then, to side-line all official opposition
the government find tame backbenchers
from their own side who will put out proposals
in the media, for the government to consider,
which everyone knows that they will not act on.

Then the government rediscover some old announcements
that they think everybody has forgotten about,
and put them out as if they have never been seen before...

These actions, and many more,
are the actions of groundhog governments
around the world, where every step forward
leads back to life the day, the decade, before... 

Belief - The T Shirt

In times well past, the acme of success
used to be proven by the certificate
you got from the authority
for whom you'd done the work
that proved to all and sundry
how much they esteemed you.

This was most true for academic achievement,
where each student who got their certificates
felt that it was because of their commitment
rather the actions of the awarding body.

In Martin Luther's time, close to the founding
of the printing press, belief in certificates
extended to believers having certificates
on their walls, printed by Luther's printers
that told the reader that 'Householder
(insert name here) is saved by Jesus.'.

Nowadays achievements matter less
however grand they are presented as being.
Seeing something in print means no more
than you reading this before going to page.

Nowadays certificates are more likely to used by fraudsters
than by anyone else, to show off with
as they denude the credulous of their wealth. 

If we want anyone to believe something
now, then we put it on a T shirt
or in the terms and conditions
that everyone clicks on to accept,
without reading it in any detail.   

The Blinding Absence Of Light (11)

 is like the prison it describes,

not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 31, page 155

'Death has a smell. A mixture of brackish water, vinegar, and pus. It's sharp, astringent. The screech owl's cry was always accompanied by that particular odour. We did not have to verify it - we knew it instinctively. In the morning when the guards brought coffee, we would tell them, "Could be someone's dead. Better check".'.

That is the end of this series of quotations. More quotes were possible, but in the last 35 pages of the book so much changes after what was a definitive darkness, it seemed to me that it is better read in total.   

Sincere Nihilism

The distance from apparent sincerity
to the deceptive depths of nihilism
is always shorter than we think,
particularly after we have scanned,
or been scammed by, the news headlines....   

Hindsight...

    ...is the devil we knew all along,
once created by God
and for that reason right-in his own way.

But detached from his maker,
he is the friend we recognise
too late to act on his invitation. 

Alpha-Waste As We Don't Acknowledge It

Because when former empires decide what is waste
and deny the mechanics of empire as they once were,
they make sure that the value of what they discard 
and devalue remains unknown to the countries
in which they practiced extractive economics
which they kept so poor that those countries
 did not know how poor they really were.

 

When Courage Is Mutual

When in 1980s Northern Ireland
the RUC, the police force at the time,
permitted themselves to be privately addressed
at a meeting addressing domestic violence
towards lesbians, and women accused of being lesbian
who because the accusation had their children
taken from them, one wonders who was the braver?

The lesbian speaker who spoke against
the interpretations of law that were biased
against anyone not identifying with the supine
'christian' majority, who took seriously
what their minority identity meant?

Or the police who listened, and because none of them
would speak their question in front of other officers
were encouraged to anonymously put their questions
in a hat for the speaker to answer?

Who showed most courage does not matter,
the one who showed most showed it for the other.

In this meeting, and many others since,
showing up to listen is what makes the difference.

The Blinding Absence Of Light (10)

is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 31, page 148

'Having to put up with someone like Achar [a persistently needy and annoying fellow prisoner] was exhausting. His interruption had disturbed my meditation exercise; the angels were not answering my call anymore, I no longer felt their presence. Over time, mental and physical wear and tear had taken their toll: all these trails had seriously impaired my ability to concentrate. I was having more and more trouble reaching my spiritual world. It was not that I lacked the will . . . I was worn out. Even today, I suffer from the after effects of that ordeal. It's hard for me read and write. I cannot concentrate more that a few minutes at a time.'.     

Death And Tax Avoidance

Are two facets of life
in capitalist societies,
where everyone wants to ignore,
and then for good measure ignore
how they ignore, how the wealthy
see it as their duty to avoid paying tax,
the more to make being rich a state,
and status above The State, autonomous.

Whereas death, and grief at the loss of life,
is harder to avoid where it happens
though people will do their best to try,
by sentimentalising loss
and buying the comfort they want
as if relief from grief could be bought
'off the shelf'. Whatever it is they think
they are buying, they don't know themselves.  

 

Earthy Uses For Heavenly Thinking

One thing that Artificial Intelligence
is less likely to make seem irrelevant
is sloth in human form. 

After all, nothing, when it is done well,
and done for the right reasons,
it could be positively Heavenly in origin.

Love, Power, And Peace

This reads like one of his cryptic stage announcements
made maybe before diving into the umpteenth version
of, say, 'Voodoo Chile (slight return)' on one of the many
international tours he undertook between 1967-70.

The normal lifespan of a pop act (Hendrix was lumped in
with pop music though clearly he was a lot more than that)
used to be an album a year for three years, several tours,
and a specially recorded live album. all before
the required renewal of the record contract by the record
company, or new contract with another label
by the artists who had to decide what fresh move to make.

Hendrix tore up that rule book, along with so many others,
with his constantly recording, writing songs, touring,
and having a creativity that seemed to thrive
on his personal restlessness. He was not made for old age.  

 

The Blinding Absence Of Light (9)

is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 28, page 124

'Suffering did not choose my path for me - I did, before and beyond all suffering. I had to overcome my doubts, my failures, and most of all, the illusions nourished by every human being. How? By letting them wither away inside me. I no longer trusted those images that falsified reality. It is a weakness to mistake one's feelings for reality, to foster a lie that begins and ends in oneself, and to consider this an accomplishment.

Now, to make headway through this desert, I had to break free of everything. I understood that only a mind that can shake off all bonds can lead us to the subtle peace I will call ecstasy.'.   

Changing Dilemmas

When we are mature
we feel sufficiently secure in our opinions
that we mostly feel no need to change how we think
on certain points in life. Such points feel fixed.

But one point still varies-whether to laugh at or with
the absurdities that modern life, and digital media,
throw up with more consistency than they realise.... 

The Present Crisis With Refugees

Is that when they buy places on leaky boats
to flee famine and war, then the only currency,
if they have anything, is debt. They have no land,
no reliable relatives, and no right say 'No'
when someone bids them 'Go', or refuses
to process their claim to stay where they hope to escape
the lack of safe backyard that they have got stuck in.  

Ask any absolute ruler for rights if you dare to.
For them their backyard is where they rule,
where refusing lesser peoples rights is second nature.
The subjects who live there dare not ask for rights,
for fear of refusal and marks chalked up against them.

When absolute rule leaves them absolutely bereft
many travel to seek a more secure sense of security.

It should be no surprise that so many refugees
get drowned in flimsy rafts on indifferent seas,
in debt and their money spent, seeking security
in host countries they are  told will accept them
where they don't know they have been lied to.

The seas are honest and fair,
compared with the liars
who got refugees to where
being drowned was easier
than getting out of the debts
incurred in the forced travel
they had been sold into accepting. 

Why Sinead O'Connor Was A Good Person

In 2013 she agreed to be interviewed in a magazine,
answering questions from fans and fellow musicians.

One fan asked her for her opinion of Roger Waters,
since she was one of many guests on stage
who helped him in his restaging of 'The Wall',
against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

From experience I know how Google blushes
and gets hot flushes at swear words, forgive me
for slightly softening her expletives....

You took part in the 1991 production of The Wall in Berlin.
What was Roger Waters like? Alex Reardon, Risca, South Wales

I cannot bear Roger Waters, and I’ll tell you why.
Hundreds of thousands of people spent a week’s wages,
if not nearly a month’s, for what was billed as a live show.
The day before, they rehearsed all the lights and the explosions
 and pyrotechnics and all the w*nkdom you wouldn’t need
if you had confidence in the music. 

They tell us that they’re recording the soundcheck,
just so they can practise again later with the lights.
So the next day, I go on stage to sing live
– and this happened to a number of artists
– and my mic is not working. And on comes a playback
of yesterday’s recording. So I’m forced to stand there and mime.
I don’t like lying to an audience so, as soon as I got offstage,
I saw Roger and chased the c*nt, to beat the shit out of him. 

He was quite agile, as I remember.

My Problem With Porn

has little to do with how cliched it is,
and even less to do with how much porn
is more about performance than character.

My problem is more about how
it does the job we create it to do;
restore the idea of a sexuality
into some domestic situation,
that past taboo has made chaste
until we cannot imagine
how we were conceived.

How we came into the world
was a kind of anonymous osmosis.

I enjoy returning the sex
into many every day situations,
I am happy with all that.
Where I am less pleased
is at the end of the film
I have nobody to thank,
for my brief  but enjoyable experience.
Just a wet tissue and a sense of ennui.

How sad it is to have nobody to thank,
when my needs have been so well met.       

The Blinding Absence Of Light (8)

 is like the prison it describes,

not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 25 page 125

'Each day that passes is a day that dies without a trace, without a sound, without colour. Every morning I am a new-born baby, I even consider myself to be like Tebebt, who is a sensitive sparrow, quite astute and above suspicion. I understand the language of sparrows better than I do that of humans. Tebebt makes me travel and accompanies me on my flights towards spirituality. His lightness, his fragility, the sweetness of his song, the nuances of his song are a great help to me.'. 

For the ninth in this series of blog entries please left click here

Today's Wildlife Picture-The Spotted Eagle Ray

Spotted Eagle Rays on the sea floor. They can reach
widths of nearly 11 feet/over 3 m. The spotted eagle ray
is one of the largest eagle rays, with only the mantas
growing bigger. Like all eagle rays, spotted eagle rays
are active swimmers. They do not lie motionless
on the seafloor, unlike the closely related whiptail stingrays
(e.g. the southern stingray). Spotted eagle rays are
 foraging predators, known to eat a variety of invertebrate
and fish prey. Just like the name implies, the spotted eagle ray
 is covered in spots and other markings, and white underneath.
It cannot be mistaken any other species throughout its range.

 

Welcome To The New T.M.

The old T.M. was Transcendental Meditation,
and it was introduced to the wealthy west
by the original giggling guru, The Maharishi.

In the 1960s he ran ashrams, teaching stations,
for distinguished guests. Ringo Starr attended.
Aged 83 he is still touring and talks 'Love and Peace',
but even in 1968 he would not eat the local food
and brought his own supply of tinned baked beans.

The new T.M. is darker and harder to explore,
it is Toxic Masculinity, the modern phrase
which modern man, woman, and other, use
to describe for how they see men as behaving
in the past. There, jealousy and possessiveness
are fuelled by an absolute sense of entitlement
all laid bare, where men put the his into history.

How we see the past, as it given to us
comes from our gendered experiences.
Whatever our gender, offence is offence,
humility is humility, to be forgiven
for past offence is forgiveness; the gift
from the hurt to those who hurt them,
who want be whole in themselves.

Hooked On Hucksterism?

A recent comment I put up on youtube....

Hello Ring of Fire,

Thankyou for your latest comments Donald Trump.

The most basic point about Trump and Truth Social, the imitation of facebook that he owns, is that he reduces politics and policy to something akin to the hucksterism of World Wrestling Federation, where only wrestling exists. The point for the shareholders of WWF is create a perfect vacuum.

There is nothing outside of it that it could incorporate, as a sub-part part of it's values. Nor can there be, otherwise as an entertainment it would instantly vanish for said content to have no content that was not self promotion.

In WWF the main point is to hide in plain sight how much the 'wrestling' is a well rehearsed 'Ballet with violence' as Jesse 'The Body' Ventura once memorably described it on BBC World Service. WWF give the wrestling/ballet the imitation of life, a plot and some continuity, a spurious sense of purpose, via incoherent and over promoted fake feuds that reduce the airtime, short as it has to be, of the wrestling bouts.

That the self promotion of the wrestling network is the point of the wrestling naturally empties it of all value outside of it. That style of promotion makes it perfect for mental-age-five grifters, like Donald Trump, who revel in the circularity where they see their endless self promotion as the point of their wealth, and their wealth is a means of self promotion, to further wealth....

In Every Heartache A Dream

Many of my dreams are set in the place of my birth,
in the house I, uncomprehending, grew up in.

And in nearly every dream I find myself
repeatedly sifting the people I lived with,

who said they were my family, for the happiness
they said was theirs to pass on, and mine to keep.

I rarely found it. I did not know at the time

how individual unhappy families could be,

or how unhappiness passes itself off as individuality. 

Every overlay of my night time adventures

set in this imagined past woke me up feeling mildly frit,
fretting at words amiss, without knowing why,
about actions that seemed beyond comprehension.

In the end I kept a dream diary.
On waking up, I wrote my dream down

whilst the memory of my imagined actions was fresh.
Later I reflected, I remembered some recent occasion
where I recognize the actions in the dream.

But the distant location still drags me back 
to where I can now prove I never belonged.

The Blinding Absence Of Light (7)

is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 22, page 114

'I knew that my precious memories had gone travelling, over to the other side of the night; perhaps they would be waiting for me to get out of the hole so they could return to their places. For the moment they were far away, set aside, and viewing them again would not hurt me. I could not overdo this, or expect too much of them in the state I was in. Taking thins small liberty, I allowed myself to play with them, and even to anticipate what turn events would take. my fiancee was not my fiancee any more. I had no right to shut her up inside a house. I had liberated her. How would she discover this? I quickly became convinced that our families and dear ones considered us dead. Only my mother must still be hoping to see me alive once more. A mother is never wrong about the life and death of her child. Later, I would discover that strangers used to come knocking on her door and whisper to her sadly, as if they were sharing a secret, "Your son is dead. He was executed two months ago: tied to a tree, blindfolded, and shot by a firing squad. You know Madame, that we are not allowed to tell you this, but we are all Muslims, and should show compassion. We belong to God and to him we will return.".'.

For the eighth in this series of blog entries please left click here. 

Before And After

The English attitude to diversity has always been two faced.
Indeed having two faces/two widely disconnecting opinions
has been in the soul of English/UK based diversity.

It should do nobody any harm to be their own community
built around their own language and ideas, and activities 
given that their ideas are benign.
But for the English the love of singular government
that praises centralising control, any community 
that speaks a language other than that used by the government,
and by it's nature resists them, has always been a cause for suspicion.
   

 

Signs Of Greater Age (56)

The older we get, the more we have to update
and reorganise how we keep in touch
with our diminishing numbers of friends,
as new technology modernises communication
and the changes via  get always presented
as 'easy to use' but in reality it proves complex,
not least for security of identity reasons.

Where once friends used to meet each other
at weekends to share home made meals
and sit out and drink where it is pleasant in the sun,
we now sit alone more often, or with the phone.

The word 'phone' used mean a landline.
With time it came to mean a mobile phone,
once huge then small, now 'a blackberry'
or a smart phone. With each advance
in the apparent ease of use, and the extension
of their application they use more energy,
and require more rigorous security,
whilst their batteries lose their energy
more easily than we realise.

What is more, backing them up for 'roaming'
costs users more than they imagine, and are told.
But given how well the advertising oversells them,
it should be no surprise that we don't understand.

Then there are the laptop/online choices.
Facebook or Instagram? Twitter or Threads?
And how often to use VPN for confidentiality?
And in what circumstances? My line with the internet
is that much of it is often one-sided communications
presented as two sided communications,
whilst trying to go beyond mere appearances. 

If I could, I would always try to return
to chat where we could see each others eyes,
of a lazy afternoon in a shared back garden. 

A Letter From A Spikey Carer To Her Adopted Son

 (directed at John Lennon circa 1970) 'You're not the second Messiah..'

Circa 1970, aged 29/30 John writes to his Aunt Mimi, sometime carer to him when he was rebellious and young, asking after their family genealogy. Mimi replies to him in the form of a tape recording, and takes the time to address the media-courting behaviour that he took to with the breakup of The Beatles.

The following is a transcript of the tape....

MIMI: Now, you needn’t, for a start, send any B. S. genealogist down here, giving him a fine old holiday tramping around graveyards. What a good old time he must have had! This thing must have cost you a fortune.

Now, it’s in front of me, and I’m going to read it out to you, and you can’t deny it because every word in it is true: Alfred Lennon married Julia Stanley. He was born the 14th of December, 1912, and Julia was born on the 12th of March, 1914. And of course, they produced John Winston Lennon, who married Cynthia, daughter of Charles Edwin Powell. Married the 23rd of August, 1962, at South Liverpool.

What’s this rubbish you’re talking about? “You wouldn’t mind donating your money to a real socialist government?” For heaven’s sake. Use your nut. There’s no such thing. None at all. Not where money’s concerned. Money corrupts.

You watch yourself, my lad. You’re digging your own grave, and in no uncertain manner. Idealism is not the exclusive prerogative of English, Welsh, Irish, or any other nationality. It just happens. And you will wake up one of these days disillusioned and sad. You’ll be the tool of unscrupulous people who’ll exploit your idealism. And it will be a sad day for you, I’m telling you.

My dear boy, you are not the second Messiah. You are never likely to be. And that’s the way you’re behaving these last few years. Would you please understand that you are a speck in the ocean, and the only possible importance you can be is to people who are trying to get money out of you. And that’s perhaps why they’re – they’re around you. There’s no other reason, John. [laughs; bleak] None whatever. Do wake up, John. And remember the old saying: “The cobbler should stick to his last.” And your last is music.

And get out of this little – circle, that you’re in. It bodes no good for you, I’m telling you. Why do you think you’re having such trouble trying to get this permit to stay in America? It’s not for smoking a bit of cannabis. George Harrison smoked cannabis, but he was allowed in. It’s your activities there, boy, and you’re digging your own grave. And it makes me very very sad, because I know, in the end, you’re going to be hurt. Bitterly hurt.

For years, I’ve heard you yelling and shouting about love, but it seemed to me your heart was full of hate. And it showed in your face. I had an American reporter here about three months ago, and he was telling me that you had put it out that you were never wanted, that you were never loved. And this newspaper were willing to pay me to give my opinion of you – my personal opinion of you and your behaviour over these years – and told me I would be well paid for it. Since when has money healed wounds? I soon sent him packing.

I’ve been hurt. Cut to the quick. What do you think I felt like, when I’ve been with those Beatle parents, and have heard what they’ve done, for them? I was foolish enough to think, as I had you, and waited for you to be born, that I was father and mother to you. But my goodness, John, you didn’t want me. [laughs; bleak] You didn’t want anything to do with me. And a lifetime’s work was just thrown on one side as nothing.

And you say The Beatles were dumb. They may have been… but in many respects, they could’ve taught you a thing or two. The first thing they did was to make their parents secure. Forever. Knowing very well that they would always get it back. But oh no, you, right, left, center – anyone could have in. And then I had to ask you, this year, to help me out – a terrible thing for me, I’m telling you, it nearly killed me. I’d had the same money from 1962, and anybody with a little thought would have known that what I had was melting away, during that eleven years.

And it seems as though you hated the sight of me. You couldn’t bear the sight of me, and you never missed an opportunity to cut me down dead – in front of other people as well, which was even worse. But it didn’t do you any good, for people noticed. But you were very kind to Alfred Lennon, taking him round the West End and having him in your home. I don’t suppose it ever once crossed your mind that that would hurt me. Especially when you couldn’t stand the sight of me.

In your teens, I was hard to live with, and if I had to go through it again, I would still be hard. And you know why, too. You were determined to do things which you knew were wrong, and I was determined that you wouldn’t, and if I hadn’t been interested, I would have let you do exactly as you liked – and you know how those children turn out...'

-Mimi Smith (1906-1991) was John Lennon's aunt, the older sister of his birth mother. Mimi was John's carer from him being aged five or so. Mimi was the one who taught him his first love of literature. A lodger in Mimi's house Mimi showed John a guitar for the first time. She and her sister both attended the 1957 gig by The Quarrymen, John's first group where John first played alongside Paul McCartney. John and Mimi remained close through John's life. They often disagreed with each other. John would ring her at the home he bought her in Poole in Dorset in 1965 at least once a week from his home in New York through out the 1970s. She and Yoko Ono got on, and recognised in each other their own spikiness as characters. Mimi and John also mirrored each other in how by turns they were both critical of the world, supportive of each other, and insecure about themselves.

Picture Set Of The Month - August - Summer In County Down

Pigeons flock and rest on the only pale grey roof
in a row of rooves, presumably for the coolness.

The Mountains of Mourne, from Dundrum,
which always lift me, even though I know
that they are not mountains, mostly because
they attract such variable skies/weather. 

One view from the bus stop from which to go in three
different directions, good light and odd verticals,
in reality poles for banners in support of 'King Billy'
prove more visual than what they support.
 

      Another evening's shade where the verticals 

and horizontals take on a life of their own, denying

that this is a landscape very much moulded by man. 

Clough Castle opposite the bus stop, photo taken
in June sometime after 'No Mow May' when the men
with lawn mowers stayed their hand in favour
of the insects pollenating the flowers growing wild
among the grass they so wanted to see kept tidy.