Was Ken Kesey

the first person in the world to emulate
the omniscience of the mobile phone,
because the frequently with which he
told the world he was 'on the bus'?

If only there were some way of getting back there

Orwellian Architecture

Just got more reflective.

I Salute The Humble

and industrious dung beetle
who, to stop its journey,
with its heavy load, being circular
navigates its night time path
by observing The Milky Way.
Never in the field of Natural History
has anything quite as small looked up
and guided itself by anything so epic.
However small and near the gutter we are,
we all can, and must, look up to the stars.

If We Concentrated

as much when hiding our mistakes from others,
as we do, and tried to recover more
from living in error through creative ownship
of our mistakes, then we might be right more often.

The Bride Stripped Bare, Through Tradition

Regularly at night on the BBC World Service Radio
I hear woeful reports from small places I would not know of
if I could sleep. Recently I heard the phrase
'A Conservative Patriarchal Society' used about
one unhappy traditional third world society (there
are many choose from) where marriage is arranged
for the son by his family. The most common outcome
of this arrangement is that the son dislikes his wife,
because she was his family's choice, not his.
And if he had made a.choice of wife
then his family would be violently contrary
towards both of them. As it is the wife becomes a drudge
for the family, and comes to hate marriage
because it gives her no life and no exit from life.
The long term agenda for the family is to dismember
the dependent family unit in order to adopt the children.
The husband is already primed to dump his wife
through a separation that favours him. The choice
made  for the now ex-wife is to live alone in penury
as 'a used woman' in a 'shamed'  rural community
with other ex-wives. I have learned of many lose-lose
situations in life, and I try daily to keep my mind sharp
and maintain my studies of how and why people share
their unhappiness. But on hearing this account on the BBC
I was struck afresh by the evil genius of traditions
which renew themselves by multiplying malcontent,
and sharpening beyond belief the pointlessness
of perpetuating poverty in the name of property.

Signs Of Greater Age (14)

1)Being grateful for how loud modern films are,
when you watch them at the cinema-the volume
compensates for the decline in your hearing.

2)Being even more grateful for film actors
who speak clearly, and who like scripts where
they do not speak over each other,
or fight with their voices against background noise/music.

Self Restaint

Today I saw my neighbour walking her dog.
The dog held its muzzle in it's mouth,
growling and biting it with quiet joy.
I thought, 'what creative self control
by the dog that it chose to be restrained
by holding its restraint, rather than requiring
it's owner to forcibly apply the muzzle.
What gentle self mastery it lives by'.
If only human beings exchanged
a similar willingness to wisdom more often.....   .