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Archive for the ‘Being’ Category
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
Stop – foto by Smith
What kind of man advocates murder to make a better world?
I had a disturbingly weird converstaion last month that’s still eating at me, except it wasn’t a conversation so much as a snake in the grass with an apple saying “Take a bite, it’ll be good for you; and if not a nibble, how about a little lick just to test the texture and taste; or at least hold it a bit and admire its sweet round redness awhile. (Book of Genesis, Garden of Eden anyone?)
I was standing in a crowd enjoying the sun and feeling good about seeing such a large outpouring of the young in their articulate awareness protesting all that’s wrong with our current economic and ecological systems, when a dude behind me said this is all well and good, but it won’t accomplish anything because working inside the system will never bring fairness and equality; in fact even letting us vote was just a trick to make us believe we had a voice in the process. (Unfortunately he has a point.)
I said we at least had to try, and that there were some encouraging signs of hope — for example, the Occupy Wall Street movement was growing explosively around America as well as the world, and it was already changing the minds and perceptions of millions; he poo-poohed it, said the cities will shut them down for their rich masters (again, he has a point), that the very system had to go — we needed a revolution to first destroy the current unworkable system, then rebuild a fair and equitable society.
Told him violence was not necessary, especially now that the internet and social media were wakening people to what’s going on, both the good and the bad of it all, and that the good was expanding. He said no, the government can cut off social media anytime they want (which is true — Egypt did it, as did San Fransisco). He went back to insisting we had no choice but to bring down the system, then rebuild.
I explained that even as angry as I was at the system, I was non-violent and tried (with great difficulty) to walk the path of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Then I asked him the obvious question: “Won’t your revolution kill thousands, maybe even millions of people?” ‘Yes,” he replied, “but not as many as would die if we don’t, so actually we’d be saving lives”.
“So basically you’re advocating murder.”
“I don’t like to use that word, it has such negative implications. I prefer to say killing.” Oh great, that’s supposed to make me feel better? I told him killing IS murder, even when sanctioned by governments, and he was just playing word games. He saw I was disgusted and moved on.
But his statement still chills me. How can anyone rationalize murdering people to make a more moral world?
Even if you set morality aside (as our Government seems to have no trouble doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Latin America, the USA, etc), exactly how do you go about killing a government composed of millions of people, an armed forces of millions, cops of millions? Do you kill their secreteries and chauffers too? What about their wives and kids and pets? Who chooses who dies, who decides who lives? And just where and when and how does your more moral and better world result from you becoming the very thing you’re fighting? How can a pure and fair Utopia rise from your neighbor’s decaying flesh? It certainly hasn’t worked very well in Libya.
Yet I can see his point. In one way, it’s simple self-defense.
I think I could kill a person who was attacking my wife; and I would defend myself were I physically attacked, be the attacker robber, rapist, soldier, policeman, or random chanced upon mentally disturbed individual. I can’t know this for sure untill I’m put in such a situation, so on one level it’s all a mind game; but no one has the moral or legal right to harm my wife or myself, so morally I believe I could would and should defend my family from actual immediate attack.
And as a people, we ARE being attacked. The corporations are killing us with their products, their processes, their prophets of profit, their purchased prostitution of our government which keeps sending our soldiers overseas to kill brown-skinned people for their oil and political beliefs.
So yes, our system is literally killing us, and killing the earth as well with greed and corporate global toxins. But you can’t fight force with force, especially when they have a much bigger force than you do because then you’ve changed nothing . . . you’ve either just been wiped out yourself, or else you’ve successfully killed them and then you become them and then you await the next them-to-bes who will come after you when they don’t like the way you’re running things.
You can’t defeat force with force because when you use force to overcome force you become the very force you’re opposing, as the past 3,000 years more than adequately proves.
No, you oppose wrong with awareness, education. You open people’s minds with words and actions and examples and humor and being the change you seek.
It is our job — the artists and poets and musicians and singers and activists — to open people’s eyes, to expand their minds and hearts, to help unite spirit and flesh, to raise their moral awareness and get them in touch with their inner Buddha/Christ/Cosmic Consciousness within each of us.
This is the real revolution, the revolution of minds opening, eyes seeing, ears hearing, hearts listening, people helping, sharing, coming together in tribe community family friendship patience compassion hope need and consensus.
You cannot enforce morality with a gun. You cannot make you, the world, or another better by killing people. This is true whether you’re government, soldier, policeman, or revolutionary. As we’ve seen over and over again, when our soldiers overseas kill people in government sanctioned murder, they damage something essential inside themselves, warp their basic humanity, making them shells of shame and rage when they return to the “civilized” societry that hired them to kill.
It’s scary because things are getting more complicated much faster, maybe approaching bad beyond fixing, and if we don’t come together immediately and start doing something right now, then the dude will get his wish – there will be blood in the streets in a vicious violant class war clash and the whole mess will start all over again because power and ego will continue to corrupt the winners and we’re back to “Go Directly To Jail, Do Not Pass GO.”
You don’t fight evil with evil. You don’t fight wrong with wrong. You don’t fight killing with killing. You can’t create a paradise while sleeping with slime.
And yet it looks to me like that’s where we’re heading. And all the blood and violence and death and destruction will not do one iota to help solve our problems of greed, ego, financial inequality, racism, worshipping Mammon, and global warming.
Or wait, I may be wrong. Maybe if we do hasten the process and start killing each other off in the name of right and God and morality, we’ll rid poor Mother Earth of our diseased stench that much faster and she and whatever animals we haven’t yet extincted can get on with healing themselves.
So maybe the dude’s right.
But count me out. As much rage as I have within due to the crimes against humanity and Mother Earth constantly committed by our Cioporate controlled Governments, I still have to try to walk the path of light and right, just so I can bear to look at myself in the mirror.
Power to the peaceful.
Power to the Peaceful – foto by Smith
Posted in activism, america, Being, ethics, life, Photography, Politics, spirituality | 5 Comments »
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
Me by she – foto by Lady K
In Throe of Woe
Well, well, well, what haven’t we here?
How goes your daily throes?
Mine clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.
I keep trying, but I doubt I’ll ever get it right,
this needed balance twixt good in strive and bad in whirl,
reaching Zen goal of happy life in unhappy world.
The Buddhists teach letting go of attachment
is the secret to ending suffering
because wanting is suffering born.
But wife, cat, friends are all appendages
my life would be lessened without
thus see wobbly road ahead
in reaching this Zen then
as my lane of life loops on itself
in look and like and love.
So no final scene, no play over,
just walking the wheel
until my why’s rubbed raw
my energy moves on
as body slips past in endless sleep.
Until then, gotta keep on fluxing
(as they almost used to say).
Or is that flexing?
Both.
— Smith, 11-6-2011
(This poem was massaged from a paragraph in last month’s blog, for those whose brains tingle in deja voodoo.)
Looking for the light – foto by Smith
Posted in Being, life, Philosophy, Photography, Poetry, zen | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 4th, 2011
WHAT IS THE THIS OF THIS?
Where is the keening of my senses?
Where is the keening of my ears?
How and When and Where of it?
What and Who of it?
What is It?
Is It?
The answer’s asking, asking again
rapping on knuckled doors
Doors exist
What do they hold in and out
How do they let us in if
they are sometimes shut?
The nature of a door is sometimes shut
The nature of a door is sometimes open
An umbrella is an umbrella
A tent is a tent
A sky is the sky we all share save for
peculiarities of geography
that change the frame
But the air’s still there
The air they breathe
is the air we breathe
The bathwater they piss in
is all of our bathwater
The they they are is we
We are the they
The they are we
Us + Them = We
I + You = Me
Lady
Tags: air, doors, object, pronouns, senses, subject, tent, umbrella
Posted in Being, Letters to the Universe, Poetry, spirituality | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
Universal Declaration of Human Rights – foto by Smith
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted December 10, 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
(I’m going to have to come up with a sneaky snappy title for the blog or else no one will even stop by.)
~ ~ ~
These 30 articles (which I’ve posted below) written by fair, thoughtful, moral humans 63 years ago enumerating the universal rights of every single person on earth seem intuitive, logical and self-evident.
Unfortunately I cannot think of a single government or corporation who honor them in spirit or deed.
These words are also serious and numerous without any laugh tracks or applause signs or mind-candy graphics, which means most who need these protections will not read them because they shy from the educative since it is boring.
Too many of us look up the class money chain and salivate with envy while looking down the money class chain with contempt and disgust.
We forget we’re all human, all portions of the great all . . . whatever affects a single human or animal or any portion of the planet affects everything we have and are as well as the very ground upon which we live and the ecosystem from which we seek substance and shelter.
Seems to me we’re all pissing upstream and then complaining about the taste and color of the water we drink downstream.
In the long run, doing right is better for the planet, better for each of us, and actually cheaper over the long haul.
Plus if there is an after-life called Heaven and Hell, most of us are seriously Hell-fluxed for the greedy thoughtless selfish ways we’ve lived, thought and taught because far too many of us accept this current “is” over possible “could” and moral “should”. After all, the “would” IS up to us.
~ ~ ~
ARTICLE 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
ARTICLE 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
ARTICLE 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
ARTICLE 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
ARTICLE 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
ARTICLE 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
ARTICLE 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
ARTICLE 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
ARTICLE 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
ARTICLE 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
ARTICLE 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
ARTICLE 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
ARTICLE 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
ARTICLE 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
ARTICLE 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
ARTICLE 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
ARTICLE 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
ARTICLE 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
ARTICLE 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
ARTICLE 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
ARTICLE 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
ARTICLE 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
ARTICLE 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
ARTICLE 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
ARTICLE 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
ARTICLE 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
ARTICLE 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
ARTICLE 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Lady confronts Capitalism – foto by Smith
Posted in Being, Philosophy, Politics | 3 Comments »
Saturday, August 6th, 2011
WE HAVE TENTACLES
we have tentacles
extending into the immediate
not only the capsule of skin
tentacles that mix
and throb and meander with
the immediate
innumerable tentacles
innummerable tentacles
permeate into our skins,
our cells
ultimately and immediately
every tentacle
is connected
to every other
tentacle
the thickness of it
is that it is clustered
skin is abstraction
for a bundle of will
a bundle that seems to bump
itself around
eyes, legs, hands, mouth
allow the bundle to move
through the greater mass
it is sticky, the bundle,
pulling itself through this
mother mass
this is what we perceive of
as separation
separation
clumped together again
with gravity…
I pray
and it casts a net of will
tentacles
into this greater mass
of information
I pray
for immediate perception of
connectedness
everything is so simultaneously logical
and illogical, simultaneously banal
and miraculous
the banal part
is mostly the grind of ambition
of getting through the day well
and the miraculous
is the empirical stuff
that I observe “around” me
signs and sounds
it would seem
it should be the opposite
that the mind inside this shell
should be where novelty resides
and everyday sights and sounds
should be not so novel
but I look at our breathing
tail-swagging cat, and hear
the river of traffic outside,
and I know it is an orchestra
and a ballet
and the permeating song
of crickets outside
the lush August sonic carpet
it is thick, This
the carpet of sound
is thick and humid
it is fabric cumming
into my perception
that by handling with mindfulness
I either tune in to
or it tunes in to me…
I focus my ears, my eyes,
my attention and it is a machine
that becomes keener
the volume and quality
pulls itself together
by my tightening attention
Lady
Tags: abstraction, banility, gravity, information, interconnectedness, mindfulness, miracles, novelty, perception, prayer, senses, separation, signs, skin, tentacles, will
Posted in Being, Lady, Letters to the Universe, Philosophy, Poetry, Relationships, spirituality | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Sculpt in and feel the shape of will shaping or touching the shape of the future. Using imagination like a flashlight, like a rope, like a sketch, like a lasso, like a definition…
SCULPT IN
Sculpt in and feel the shape
Know the shape of a situation
Know the shape of your will
like a lasso shaping a horse
like a lasso shaping a rider
like a lasso shaping the horse running down a range
like a range coming back into your eyes and
defining your imagination
like the future that is in 4D coming back
and defining your imagination
Imagine that your imagination
is defined by the shape of the future
and know this.
Know that your imagination
has feelers, has feelers
creeping around a curve
that the curve wraps around your head
that your head wraps around your adjacent step
and if you had access to the rewind button
you could go in reverse as well
You could go in reverse by remembering
Your moment’s brain remembers
and defines the past
Your moment’s brain’s imagination
defines the future
The future defines
your moment’s brain’s imagination
Now is a thick thing
Now has the highway
Now has a lasso on your ears
Now has a lasso on the way you are sitting
Now has a lasso on the stationary sofa
Now has a lasso on the thick moving through thick
Imagine you are a rider on your horse
or if you are in a car
the car could be your horse
know that you *are* the car
that contains the human
that you *are* the horse
that carries the human
and that the Earth’s lasso
is sticky and throbbing
that the Earth’s lasso
and gravity and movement is shape
moving through and on and in itself
Lady
Tags: definition, earth, future, horse, lasso, past, shape, will
Posted in Being, Letters to the Universe, Philosophy, Poetry, spirituality | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
I attended a moveon.org meeting last weekend about the “American Dream” movement they are building. Although associated with Democrats, I think this movement also encompasses progressive ideals. Everyone in the room was concerned about sustainability, the environment, peace, universal health care, good work, etc. Several people were very discouraged with some of the things President Obama has done, so there was a lot of conscientiousness and self-examination in the room.
Here’s some bit of news about the Gang of Six in the Senate: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/20-4
They are trying to raise taxes on us and cut taxes on the rich, and cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But we aren’t going to let them.
For young people reading this, these things might seem like things that don’t immediately matter or that it is useless, but they do, and there is hope that we can change things. I’ve seen the standard of living deteriorate and expectations deteriorate significantly over the past ten years. It is not unreasonable to see this turn around and become healthier. We have the resources and talent to turn things around. I had the pleasure of seeing a Democrat in Wisconsin get reelected last night after having made phone calls to do this; I’ve seen us raise over a million signatures for putting Ohio’s anti-collective bargaining SB-5 bill on the ballot so we can overturn it when we only needed to raise 230,000… I have been involved in these campaigns and it does help and it does matter.
One of the action items of last week’s meeting moveon.org is to find five friends who will also participate in the movement to a small or large extent. As we are in such a time of flux, I think this is an important opportunity for people to engage and thus am providing this information with the thought that you’ll consider this and participate if you can. You can sign up for some information here: http://ourfuture.org/blog (newsletter signup on the right column of the screen.)
I understand that we live in a fast-paced society, but I think in this time of flux it is especially important to help ensure programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
I think also we’d seen a kind of deterioration in community life over the past twenty years, and now people are rebuilding community with local food movements, poetry, music… and activism is another way to rebuild and heal and socialize. I think that many have felt apathetic, estranged and horrified by the insanity of some of the stuff going on in the political realm. A way through this is to step into it and be part of healing via activism.
Lady
Tags: American Dream, Budget, Congress, Democrats, Medicaid, Medicare, moveon.org, President Obama, republicans, social security
Posted in america, Being, dreams, Environment, ethics, Events, Family, health, Healthcare, Letters to the Universe, news, Philosophy, Relationships, spirituality, Travel Notes, writing | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 29th, 2011
Grandma and have a picnic breakfast a couple times a week. This week we went to a lakeside park…
We walked up to the lake but they wouldn’t let us in.
“We are in jail,” I told Grandma. “We’re landlocked.”
-
Grandma and I have this love of dressing up like ragdolls, with striped shirts, the color pink, patterns. Quite often when I pick her up, we’re wearing something eerily similar.
Her father named her after Lenin. He had two families, our family, and a secret family. He gave all his money to the communists. Grandma had to go begging to him for money. All this responsibility for a little girl.
Sometimes I call her “my little baby Grandma.”
At various times, Grandma and her brothers were in an orphanage. Her mother had periods of insanity (brought on by syphilis given to her from Grandma’s father.) Sometimes Grandma ran away from the orphanage, back home to her mother.
At one point, Grandma was living with her mother, and her brothers were still in the orphanage. She went two streets down and found a brother playing in a school playground. She grabbed his hand and took him home.
“You see this skirt?” she said. “I wore this skirt for you. I thought you’d like it.”
Lady K in 48 years? Maybe. I’d be glad to look like Grandma.
“Do you remember how I used to dress?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. You wore black or blue polyester pants and you had a couple shirts you wore regularly. You dressed this way most of my life. Then, one day, Grandpa took you shopping, and told you to buy pink for a change. You started wearing all these colorful clothes.”
Lady
Tags: grandma, lake, land, orphanages, orphans
Posted in Being, Family, Lady, ladymemoir, Photography, Relationships, Stories | No Comments »
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