Quote Of The Year (Any Year You Like)

'Our thoughts are controlled as soon as we learn to speak. 
There is far more freedom of speech than there is of thought.'

-Anthony Weir

My Second Christmas Card of 2022

 'Rote Giebel - Rote Dächer', painted in 1910

by Alexie von Jawlensky

Let's Pretend ?

When Kurt Vonnegut wrote
'We are what we pretend to be'
he was not writing about sexuality
but he might as well have been.

He continued by warning
'So we must be careful... ',
he surely knew from then on
that his words were doomed to be ignored,
when they became a quotation.

We are never careful enough,
with quotations or with real life.
Maybe Sam Beckett had it best
when he said 'Fail Again, fail better'. 

My First Christmas Present To Myself

Because it takes courage to first recognise
and then accept it when you discover
that you are disliked, particularly when 
the people who dislike you are dishonest
and cowards when the matter reaches
admitting how low you are in their esteem. 
  

 

Toxic Taboos

I was quite young when I first learned
how the mechanics of taboo worked,
the crudity with which they stopped
open cruelty, and crudity.

Taboo meant that with no words
for an action the action never happened,
since the thought behind the action
could not be imagined,
or so the theory ran.....

Having no language to think
neutered the banned action,
along with neutering the idea
of ideas being in any way abstract.

The moral life was good actions
done without prompt or thought,
lest thought lead to choice
and choice lead to error.

We were meant to be moral robots.

The older I got the more I found the reverse
that we were not robots and we were not moral,
as I became aware of how dismissively
adults listened to children and talked children
down as if they never took anything in. 

I also learned how children
could be malicious and selfish
with an ease more consummate
than could be taken in at face value
by selfless children like me,
who were more selfless than they seemed.

When selflessness was said to be a virtue,
my 'modesty' came from having no personal space. 

In blind obedience I went where I was told,
into where harmful actions followed
as men (it was always men) directed me
for their own financial ends and walked,
and talked, all over me in their indifference.

And I was lost for words to describe it. 

My First Christmas Card Of 2022

'Untitled' painted in 1940 by Robert Wogenscky. 

 

Picture Set Of The Month - December - The Landscapes of Felix Vallotton

'The Lake in the Bois de Boulogne' as painted in 1921
by Swiss/French painter Felix Vallotton (1865-1925).

'Snowy Landscape' as painted in 1925 by 
Swiis/French painter Felix Vallotton (1865-1925).

'The Jura Mountains' as painted in 1900 by
Swiss/French painter Felix Vallotton (1865-1925).

 

'Sunset', as painted in 1918 by Swiss/French
painter Felix Vallotton (1865-1925).