Memorialising Absence

AI slop is not new. Eons before the utopian fantasy images
symbolising human omnicience over nature, human destruction, and despair
via images of luxury multiplied online, to counter the darker side
of the wars between humans, and the human battle against the world
with vuluminous empty fantasies that are meant to put people to sleep,
town planners fought older wars against nature, with brick and mortar.

Where they would convert fertile land, fell forests, pave over paradise itself
and name the road along which they built new, more comfortable, houses 
after the land and nature they had recently paved amd tarmaced over,
under which were sewers and increasingly complex electronic wiring,
all named after the memory of what they had recently erased through burial.

The planners knew  that human memories quickly fade,
even as names of what the memories were of would remain
thus Orchard Road, Birch Tree Drive, Cyprus Avenue,  etc
effectively memorialise the absence of living memory.
and the permanence of amnesia through memory.  

The Imitation Of Choice

It is clear enough to those with ears and time to listen
that however well commentors explain modern politics,
in its many shades of opinion, the parties we choose,
or we reject, present themselves as there to help us 
be more generous to those we see as more deserving,
whilst playing accountants tricks with the money and choice
that they control, thebetter to disguise how they divide us.

Our task as consumers of theses presentations
is to unpick the sophistry and accountant's tricks
that the parties work so hard so hard to disguise
as they continue to present their imitations of choice.    

Moon Of The Month - July -The Buck Moon

So called because many of the names we accept for our moons
were given to us by Native American Tribes. They named this moon
after the time of year that the male deer grow new antlers.

Look out for the 12th of August, when depending on where you live,
you may experience a partial or total eclypse of the sun by the moon.   

 

A Friendly Ghost Writes

I am one of many ghosts who are here
-trust me when I say 'none of us is real'.
We are all figments of selves that were
once lived in real time, in three dimensions.

But we are now left to reflect on pasts
where reflections are all that there is left
in a fading infinitely regressse pattern.

Join us when you are happy to restrict yourself
to a life in the past sense, or simply read us
to avoid falling prey to advertising instead,
in the meanwhile do all you can to avoid reports
from figments from the circuits of  computers
that were never existed in three dimensions.

Nature Special: Pygmy Three Toed Sloth

The Pygmy Three Toed Sloth is one of the rarest mammals on the Earth and it lives only on the Island Escudo de Veraguas, a tiny island off Panama. Its survival is closely tied to mangrove forests where it feeds, hides, and moves slowly through the trees to save energy. One rare fact is that algae can grow on its fur, giving it a greenish tint  that helps it blend into the leaves. This island sloth is Critically Endangered, mainly  because its tiny habitat isso limited and vulnerable. Credit: Wild Wonders.

 

The Ice Cream Sales Man Sees Everything This Way

When the BBC wanted rid
of it's most popular drama series
they first sabotged the in-house
writing and production team
that had held the show together
for most of two decades.

Then they scheduled the show
against the most popular programme
put on by the opposition.
Insiders dubbed this campaign
'selling ice cream in winter'.

The man presently in the Whitehouse 
who schedules all government policy
has some how learned about this
episode of BBC bad programming history,
even as he is using up more than enough
of his legal and political capital sueing the BBC. 

His misanthropy towards his government's expertise
has reached as far as choosing rank amateurs
to run powerful Gov't departments, helping them
to make rookie mistakes he is proud they are making.

This is not just selling ice cream in winter,
where, if he want to, then he could read how unpopular he is,
this is making ice cream in winter the contrarian policy
America is know for across the world, what is left of it.

The Moment Of Recognition

I notice afresh the new censorship,
of coded images of human sexuality
that have always existed in real life
through major barriers being erected
where in the online life that was once
the liberal, prermissive, new frontier
the old media is repeating itgself
and reclaiming old majoratist claims
to be the only life that should exist.

I don't mind this-the past is always witrh us.
But it reminds of the moment of recognition
in the film 'The Stepford Wives' where the wife
who was new to the perfect picket fence life
in the suburb recognises the uniform  falseness
in her new friends' lives after one of them breaks down,
and admits how all of them are married to plastic surgeons
for whom it is integral to their married life that as wives
they have to be perfect in their outward appearance at all times.

That the demand for such a continuous outward state of perfection
cannot be sustained without a lot of self deception should be obvious.   

Doom Loops For The Unwary

The internet is made of doom loops
that are ready to entertain the unwary,
and, before they recognise it, trap them.

The most powerful doom loops are the oldest,
the unscientific theories that pre-date the invention
of the internet by the longest time, such as
'the science of genetic superiority', in which
white males whose families were enriched,
generation on generation, through the sales
of instruments of torture that made the misery
of slavery seem normal, projectedv an image
of themselves for other people to take at face value
that should be examined critically, and taken apart,
before the famkily are treated like the old tempter that they were. 

Alas human vanity laps up this sort of material
and much more besides, I'd say the more was worse,
and perhaps it is, for how such ideas rely on far lower levels
of credulity for their advocates to present themselves as credible. 

Decide for yourself what to be most wary of. And decide again.....    

Some Humour From The Russian Popular Press

One of my more sobering daily habits
is to listen to the reports from the BBC
Russian correspondent of Steve Rosenberg.

in his short videos he reviews the Russian press,
many of which are broadsheet newspapers.
and neutrally notes how near or far the line
of argument in the newspapers might be
some new Kremlin line of argument, which varies.

He always says at the start of each short film
the date of the press that he is quoting from,
lest anyone be in any doubt about such matters.  

At the end of every episode he shares the best jokes
in the press about how the economy, and life,
are not working as they were projected to....

Examples as follows......

'Not many people know this
but that little pocket in your jeans
is for your salary.'

'On a long distance train the conductor asks
'Are there any foriegners on the train',
the chorus goes up 'No'....
The conductor calls to fellow staff Nina
'Turn the air conditioning off,
just our people are on board the train'.

''Have you been anywhere this?
'Yes, in shock''.

In the Polyclinic:
'Instead of your urine sample
you have brought apple juice.'
'Goodness. What have I given
my son to take to school.....  '

'The best way to buy a small business
is to buy a large business and have patience....  '   

   

Guantanamo Bay

Is not just still open, but fifteen men are captive there,
caught in the legal limbo that the US has set for them
one of them have been captive for nearly twenty five years.

The first category: Approved for release

Muieen Abd al-Sattar

Guled Hassan Dourad

Ishmael Ali Bakushmael

The second catgory: Not charged, not cleared

Abu Zubaydah (24 years in prison)

Abu Faraj al-Libi

Mohamed Rahim

The third catgory: Charged or Convicted in Military Commission

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Ramzi bin al-Shibh

Walid bin Attash

Mustapha al-Hawsawi

Amar al-Baluchi

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Riduan Isamuddin 

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul

Abd al-hadi al-Iraqi

To comprehend how Guantamo Bay started,
and why it is still open, please left click here
to hear the first part of a three part podcast.   

From Democratic To Imperial Measure

One of many books that helped me mature
in the 1980s was 'Money, Sex, and Power',
by Richard Foster, a book about their opposites:
the choices that come from managing (relative) poverty,
chastity, and obedience to the powers that be,
which together give society and the individual
the widest choice for greatest nunber of people. 

For a long while it made a lot of sense to me.

Forty years on from what taught me more
how to make my way through the world,
I have seen this sage advice turned inside out.

Politics has gone from democratic to imperial,
the men who have the most have to have more
-to the point where no-one is allowed to count it.
Power is held more absolutely, money is controlled
by fewer and fewer corporations, the lies that sell sex
make it not worth taking at anything like face value. 

For those with the most, whatever they have
whether money, sex or power, enough is never enough.
Least of all when they combine into one big addiction
fueled by denial, broadcast across th4e world
as if such a depth of vice was actually a virtue.

The Biggest Rogue Is The One We Are Last To Recognise

The world is full of leaders
who when their enemies fail
blame the enemies for their failure,
as if the leader has either done nothing,
or had done nothing to cause the downfall
of another. Their leadership was omniscient
-proof of how perfect they always were. 

Such partisan presentations of leadership
and power are now so routine and protected
from all media enquiry about what makes
the leadership tick, they make being a sceptic
a necessary sign for showing intelligence.

There the allies of the surviving enemies
prove stronger when they act together,
in league with each other, against the leader
who cannot recognise how rogue he's become.   

Change And Choice With Jeanette Winterson

'Don't you ever think of going back?' Silly question.
There are threads that help you find your way back,
and there are threads that intend to bring you back.

Mind turns to the pull, it's hard to pull away.
I'm always thinking of going back.
When Lot's wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt.
Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean,
but it's a poor exchange for losing your self.

People do go back, but they don't survive,
because two realities are claiming them
at the same time. Such things are too much. 

You can salt your heart, or kill your heart,
or you can choose between two realities.
There is much pain here.

Some people think you can have your cake and eat it.
The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left.
Going back after a long time will make you mad,
because the people you left behind do not like
to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did,
accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

Keeping House Of Commons Rules

One of the motives for owning property
for people who rent and find they dislike it,
is what they dislike is not choosing who rents
the space alongside them. They think....
'When I buy where I live then I will keep
my neighbours at a distance that suits me.',
as if money by itself could cover for a will
that lacks the power to change how we live.
But willpower gets a person only so far
in choosing who they keep a distance from
and the distance at which to keep them.

Nowadays I find the people I need to keep
my distance from, and set it firm, are family.
I don't own property like they do, I knew how much 
they were disappointed with how they made me,
where all that was left was cover up how it happened.

That distance I now keep from my family
is much farther than the physical distance
between the front benches in House of Commons
-two swords distance. 

The distance I now keep from family
is more like distance between the values
each side of The House of Commons keeps
-universes, multiverses, farther apart.   

Modern Living

is all style and no life, an art form
that is accessorised by its makers
-who change the name of the product 
to sell it, before the public fully grasp
what the change is about, the manufacrtured life,
and change the names again to stay ahead
of their manufactrured competitors...

Caught In The Echo

Infinite scroll is nothing new,
though presently Youtube
are its greatest champions.

Commercial television first got there
sixty years ago. I remember my dad
being so impressed by the schedules
that he refused to let the set turned off,
or even acccept a change of channel.
Whatever was on when he was home
was right by him, even the adverts.

He screened us and reality out of his life
in the house, until he could get to the pub.
There his chosen family were the people he drank with.

I don't know how I survived those times,
particularly when the entertainment
was some alpha male being so alpha,
that nothing else around him mattered.

That was when the content of the screen
taught me what 'rhetorical' meant. Part of me
still feels caught in the echo of such self importance.   

Nature Special: The Marvelous Spatuletail

The Marvelous Spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis) is an endangered hummingbird endemic to northern Peru. It is famous for the male's spectacular tail feathers, featuring two long, wire-like feathers with large, iridescent "spatules", (discs) at the end. They are used in elaborate courtship displays. Males have a blue crown, turquoise throat, and a black stripe down their white chest, while females are less colourful. And have shorter tails with smaller spatules. They inhabit cloud forest edges and scrublands, feeding on nectar from specific flowers, and are a major draw for birdwatchers, with conservation efforts focused on protecting their habitat. Photograph taken by Carlos Altamirano.

 

In The Blink Of An Eye

 Another eye was taken,
the better for the half sighted
to more dimly recognise each other.

The Less Eventful Life

I no longer wish time to go faster or slower
than it is presently does, second by second,
calibrated more by my choice of talk radio
than anything else. I am now more setttled
into the lack of events that extends my days
than I was in a previous  life.

I am grateful for how I have endured
the old, undealt with, losses and wounds
that now slow me down, to live like this.

I would not seek for life to go any faster.

The Streets Of Central Belfast

Seem curioiusly non-descript nowadays,
about a fifth full with the public, at most,
most of them looking for somewhere
worth going to, that they can't see there.

Add to that the street preachers filling the air
with noise about The Bible being pounded,
and I wonder what they are all doing there,
nobody adressing anyone else in particular. 

Are they all there to enjoy being ignored?
Maybe the preachers would attract more attention 
if they started preaching Hell and Vengeance
to all around, seeking to offend their listeners ears.

We know what happens with such provocations
-the public will tell the preacher in terms
he understands that he is being cheap
with his language and he should confine
such sermons to condemning members
of his own church who have signed up for the abuse.     

The Pretender No More

For anyone who lives long enough
one of the more positive effects of ageing
is that we rememeber what we grew up through,
better than people younger than us can realise,
and more than that memory is dynamic,
not static, the details that come back to us
change in line with our age, as we remember.

One of the recent memories that returned to me,
age adjusted, is Margaret Thatcher declaring
through 1988 legislation that a gay relationship
is 'a pretend family relationship', a declaration
that at the time shocked gay men and lesbians
as they saw those younger than them trapped
by regulations about family they would not choose.

This legislation was eventually reversed in 2003.
But what comes back to me is how the phrase 
'pretend family relatiohship' has changed.
Pretend family relationships were actually
universal in the blessed Margaret's day.
Any child who had been raised in a care home
lived with this pretense, as did adopted children,
in other state arranged pretend family relationships.

After having been there, and done that,
and found that I did not want that T shirt
of state arranged pretend family relationships
I chose a relationship my pretend family
dissaproved of, thus exposing the pretense
I had lived with for thirtry years, though
it would take me the same length of time again
for me to realise how pretend family had been.

Margaret Thatcher was right, children should be
allowed better than pretend family relatioships
which hid in plain sight all along.-In particular
better thanthe self serving heterosexual monoculture
who would claim that they are all of human history.  

Rare Birds

Do cuckoos know they are cuckoos,
more than other bird species know themselves?
Even as cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds nests?

Of course not! Not that scientists have to know
all the mechanisms by which the cuckoo fools
the bird of a different breed, in whose nest
the cuckoo lays its own, rather larger, egg.

So it is for humans who are born to parents
who when their child becomes an adult
finds the idea of being a parent repugnant,
such that should they ever become parents,
their child may be safer removed from them.

Whilst in their own terms many non-parents
have different energies and skills, and are fine
as participants in their own communities,
they should be treasured, like rare birds:
whilst they are relieved of the pressure
to join the common herd of parenthood.     

The Trouble With Modern Absurdity

Is that those who embrace it,
to make themselves well known
and become exemplars of it,
are the last, and least willing,
to recognise how others see them,  
for what they have become.

Royalty Ancient And Modern

In medievil times, and long after,
absolute rulers and their favourites
used to rule through incurring debts
they would delay paying off, until close
to their death-tying their successors
to limits the departing leader has set.

Nowadays absolute rulers rule through
breaking as many rules as the nations
they lead have ever set up. For an encore
-and to prove their popularity-they refuse
to observe any ruling from even the highest courts
that the land have set, believing themselves
and their followers to be so exceptional
as to be above law. They see it as their duty
to defile regulations they make their enemies follow.

Common Sense Disbelief

That gives nonsense short shrift
with affirmative humour
is an understanding of life
that is in sorely short supply.

Who Was August West?

 As made famous in the 1971 Grateful Dead song 'Wharf Rat'?

Augustus West (1814 - 1887) was a real life runaway slave who in 1837 arrived in the area of Greenfield are of Fayette, County Ohio. With local farmer Alexander Beatty, West co-authored a story that has become a part of local history, and later part of the history of the underground railway, which undermined slavery from inside the USA. The story they co-authered was that to raise money for West to purchase his own land, West and Beatty devised a scheme to take West back south, sell West back into slavery, and then Beatty would help West escape. The pair would split the profits. The laws that regulated the slave markets were lax enough for them to run this scam on Southern slave owners a minimum of three recorded times before deciding not to repeat the scam any further. Their story became the foundation for a 1971 alternaive Hollywood cowboy film, 'The Skin Game', starring James Gardner and Louis Gossett, Jr.

West used his share of the profits to purchase land near the intersection of Bonner and Barrett Roads, in Fayette County, in the state of Ohio. Some distance from the road West built a big house, The dirt road leading up to his front door became known as Abolition Lane.

In the years that followed, at least twelve cabins were constructed on West's land. They became temporary residences for other runaway slaves who needed a place to live and work as they stole their way further north, to a sustainable freedom away from them and their decendents being the property of slave owners.

But in the Garcia/Hunter song 'Wharf Rat' what Augustus West could do for others, be a staging post for their route away from slavery into liberty, August West could not do for himself. He became dependent on the drink. Enter real life Methodist minister Purley Baker who was the head of the Anti-Saloon League, a temperance organization based in the U.S.A. until shortly before his death in 1924, aged 65. Illegal bars were sometimes named 'Purley Baker's', to give alcohol consumption a double false identity.

Who knew that in the 1971 song lyic that Purley Baker's was both the underground name for a bar, and name of the dry house where drinkers could feel they were a safe distance from the temptations of the alcohol, that they needed to avoid?

In the lyric August West expresses this confusion so neatly most listeners would not notice how well their ambivalence towards the lyriccould be made part of the scene that the song describes. From the underground railways that helped slaves escape to double identity of a Purley Baker's, the double identity of seeking to do good unseen, and unintentionally being exposed to disguised temptation has never been bettered.

Amongst followers of The Grateful Dead, Deadheads, a fanbase who were perhaps more in danger of falling victim of their addictions than fans of more mainstream music, there is a 12 step support group called 'Wharf Rats', who exist to be ready to help whoever needs the assistance and the time to clean up/dry out, and restart life 'clean from addiction', though temptation will remain.

The Less Attractive Face Of Traddition

could not look less welcoming than in recent updates
by The Taliban in  Afghan marriage laws, that in the process
give men, and the groom's family, even more power
over who they can choose to marry than they had before.
And give women even less choice when they are chosen
 in arranged marraiges than they have had in all previous
Taliban-legislated marriage rules, designed to make women
invisible in an already severly imbabanced male-led society.
 

 

The Restless Reader

When did you last buy a newspaper? 
Yes, buy, rather than read, a newspaper?

Newsprint, and it's corollary advertising,
are now much more consumed online,
than they are in physical print. On the screen
the proprietors of print can make what they own
sing and dance in front of readers, making it harder
for readers to focus on what is being said.
Harder to remember what was written after,

particularly the screen automatically scrolls
to the next item, all too soon immediately after. 

If you are going to be a restless reader
give your eyes the breaks they need
and take a rest from all the media filler
the better to remember what you have read after.

The Old Quandary

is what to think and say
when cynicism wins the day,
and reality outruns you
as people you once admired 
show the way forward
in ways that you could not imagine .......   

A Former Ghost Writes

In former times I half-knew it, when I went to places
where conversation did not happen, no words described
what I, and others who were present, were there to find. 
My itch was observed, and reduced in the sharing of it.
Silently, for the duration of each frequent short visit. 

The place I went to quietly passed itself off
as a place of temporary mutuality
of a type I, otherwise, could not find. 

Even as I knew there were names for where I went
and what I did there, the blanket of silence fell heavy
on those I lived with who bade the words not be spoken.
Which was why I had the itch that made me seek such respite.
The life I led using the apporved of unhelpful language
could be survived but would not cure me of my itch,
where the lack of words made me seek temporary relief,
and left me seeking temporary relief seemingly forever.

After over a decade in this silence, and a few years
away from family, I started writing to myself - to ask
where the blanket of silence began, tracking it back
near and nearer to where it started, along with how
different absences of words meant different things.

From a place of unconscious isolation
I wrote about my then present situation
to find, for seemngly the first time,
a wider conscious sense of choice.

What I did then is now called Journaling
When I was writing I called it scribbling.
Over eighteen intense months the weight
of the blanket of silence slowly lifted from me, 
revealing the language of taboo underneath
most of  which began with a new reading of my family.

Was I any less of a ghost at the end? Sort of.
I was not the ghost my family wanted me to be.

The old itch pressed far less,
such that I felt nearly no need
for the silent/secretive respite
I had needed in the past.

But I did not feel complete as a person
in average ordinary, inclusive, conversations.
I was also slow to grasp that 'restored' as I was
there was no compensation for where the silence,
and the years of seeking relief from the itch, had left me.

The best I can say is that I have a renewed respect
for those whose sense of care for others extends
to mental health and personal development matters,
shared in taboo-free vernacular terms: a wide field
of care that I now see as being sorely neglected. 

Picture Set Of The Month - July - The Paintings Of Gerard Dillon

'The Table in The Blue Room' an early painting
by Irish painter Gerard Dillon (1916 - 1971).
The seated man is most likely a self portrait.   

'Tory Island' as painted in 1947 by Irish painter
Gerard Dillon (1916 - 1971) from a sketch made
on holiday with his friend, fellow artist Daniel O'Niell.

  

'The Fisherman's Cottage' as painted in 1951
by Irish painter Gerard Dillon (1916 - 1971)
when Conamarra was a thriving place. 

'The Little Green Fields' as painted in 1945
by Irish painter Gerard Dillon (q1916 - 1971)