Great Turn Offs Of Our Time (25)

'Raising awareness' is such a pretentious phrase,
but that does not stop it being repeated so often
that people don't realise it has been used.
They have turned off from the speaker using it
before the phrase come out of their mouth.

The phrase was originally phrased as
'telling people', as 'I am just telling you
so you know' when the hearer knew all along
and had heard all clearly; no need for reminders.  

Grey Is The Colour Of Hope (2)

 'A rabbit, a wolf, and a fox are sitting in a Soviet prison cell. The rabbits is there for the evasion of military service, the fox is there for being a thief, and the wolf is there for rustling horned cattle. Suddenly the door flies open and a rooster is flung into the cell.

'I'm a political' he cries immediately.

The others gaze at him in amazement and awe. 'That's really something!' they murmur respectfully 'We're just common criminals, but you . . . . Tell us what did you do?'

The rooster assumes a heroic stance 'I pecked a pioneer* on the bum!'.

But all jokes aside, wild romantic liars like this don't become 'political prisoners'. After all, our women's political zone, reserved for 'especially dangerous state criminals', is the only one of it's kind in the country. There are other women political prisoners scattered throughout other Soviet camps, but you don't find yourself in the Barashevo Small Zone just for possessing an over-vivid imagination. The KGB are not fools by far, so what could their reason for sending so transparently false a person into our zone? Why do it?

Gradually things start becoming a little clearer. Vladimirova announces that camp or no camp, she will continue her struggle! She even has a plan prepared: first we must establish contact with the men's political zone - it is not far, after all, just across the road. All we have to do is cross our no man's land in full view of the two guards armed with sub machine guns, climb over the fence, cross the road, climb another fence and pass through another no man's land under the eyes of the guards: as for negotiating the barbed wire obstacles - well that is child's play.'.          

*Soviet equivalent of a cub scout or girl guide  

When The Window Dressing Becomes Redundant

I notice how during the present war
many Western multinational companies
have withdrawn support and supplies,
and by extension their names,
from Russia and from The Ukraine.

'Fair play', some might say,
'They believe in a free world
that they can do what they want'. Really?
They can do whatever they want,
except make losses in a war-based economy
that they always knew that had no control over;
where they were window dressing
for the slow removal of life and choice
for the mass of common people,
as an autocratic politics took over.       

Caught In A Bubble On A Screen

The fusion of the prosperity gospel,
first formalised by White America of the 1850's,
and the techniques for how to act on television
should surprise nobody
who has the right brain cells to rub together.

With all it's ticks and techniques
television broadcasting itself is proof,
if proof were needed, of prosperity.

But the fusion of television performances,
The Gospels, and being the richest nation on the earth,
has made the world's richest nation shifts the baseline
for how much is enough for it's citizens to live on,
so far above what the rest of the world can ask.

I can't imagine what it is like
to be trapped in this bubble
where you can never have enough
until you turn our television off, for good.

John Wesley is quoted to have said 
'Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can'
to his followers and from the crowds that he drew
he knew what performing was, but still I suspect
that he would have looked askance
as he recognised the detachment
of performing through television. 

Grey Is The Colour Of Hope (1)

 'So we passed the time reading, or by training mice. There was no way of getting rid of them, so we decided to amuse ourselves. On the one occasion during those two and half months when the prison authorities let us make purchases from the kiosk, we shared the candies and rusks we bought (there was nothing else in the kiosk) with our long-tailed friends; they needed a change from prison-issue bread, too. Fortunately there were no rats in the punishment barracks, because there simply was not enough food for them. Their hunting ground was around the kitchens in the main zone. 

Sharing a cell with Tanya was easy. In conditions where some minor quirk of character could strain relations there were never any problems with Tanya. I have lost count of the days we spent in the punishment cells. Nowadays [now I am well away from being imprisoned] I often find myself look at some new face and wondering: what would it be like to share prison soup with you? Or carry out the slop bucket? Or conduct a hunger strike? How would you behave with the KGB? And, as a rule, the answer comes fairly quickly. This is not a deliberate exercise: it is the result of having had to assess people in extreme situations. Is it fair to look at people that way? Who knows..... '

From page 286 of 'Grey Is The Colour of Hope' a memoir of her time in prison by former KGB/political prisoner, 1982-86, and Ukrainian poet Irina Ratushinskaya (1953-2017).

 .      

In Greek And Roman Times

scholars and lawyers kept libraries
of their's and other writers works
purely for their own reference.
Because knowledge was privately owned,
and meant for the wealthy
it was not meant for sharing.

As a scholar approached death
so they would burn all the scrolls
that they once held dear
and had once used daily.

The excuse they gave as they set light
to their lifetimes work was that others
might inherit all the mistakes they made.

This is partly why the documents
that is most found from the 2nd century
onward are fragments of The Gospels;
the knowledge these fragments contained
were considered not to have errors in them,
though as was seen later they could vary,
and they were not private; what they said
was what was held in common between believers.

So, as many private libraries were burned,
The Gospels were copied and got disbursed,
and with the burnt scrolls much of the material
that cross-referenced the literature that remained,
including The Gospels and St Paul's letters,
were destroyed by the fear of imperfection. 
   

Picture Set Of The Month - April - The Art Of Maria Primachenko

'Black Beast' painted in 1936 by 'primitive'
Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko (1909-97). 

'Blue Ox' painted in 1936 by Ukrainian artist
Maria Prymachenko, who survived Stalin's purges
by avoiding being labelled as an intellectual.

'Lion' painted in 1947 by Maria Prymachenko
(1909-97) whose work is now literally under fire
from the Russian tanks and missiles that rain down
in the National Folk Decorative Art Museum in Kyviv.

'Pea Beast' as painted in 1971 by Maria Prymachenko
(1909-97)-this is one of her lighter paintings
after the strange and savage beasts she painted
in the 1930's represented the many cruelties
that Ukraine endured   

'A Cow Like That Gives 5000 litres a day', as painted
in 1978 by Ukrainian 'primitive' painter,
Maria Prymachenko, for more about this serious
artist who competed against Picasso, the year 
he showed 'Guernica', and who praised her
for her simplicity and talent, click here.