...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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With utmost respect, I’d like the freedom to talk with You today as though You are expecting me to order from a menu–I pray that this is OK.
I am really glad that some troops are returning back home to the United States. In a way, they are being “detained” back home. What I would like to see is for all of these troops to be integrated into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as laborers. The first project I want to see them build is high speed, affordable rail such that people from everywhere in the United States can easily get around to see their families who might be living in other states without having to use airplanes, cars and buses. I would like to see the system work such that it is coordinated with local rail systems much like those I have seen in Europe, but of course, again, a lot less expensive to use.
I’d like for all the troops and all the military contractors to also return home and be integrated into similar projects such that rather than having oppressive employment, these people are employed in ways that do not oppress.
I’d like for all those who have been needing work who happen to be in the United States to be able to easily obtain work that is very high paying. One particular large project I have in mind is converting the monoculture crop swaths to organic farms with varieties of crops–this helps feed bees better. I’d also like to see a highly-paid beekeeper on every farm.
I want the subsidies for corn and soy to be diverted to all organic produce such that people can afford to buy the produce, and I want to see a lot of tasty vegetarian recipes that are easy to prepare.
I’d like to see a sliding scale for healthy food such that people who need food stamps receive food stamps to the extent that the food stamps are needed by these people. But I’d like for us to also think about the obesity and population problem and for us to use our foods mindfully so that we are not consuming too much of the Earth’s resources.
I’d like for people to limit their consumption of other animals by at least half, if not more. I prefer that homo sapiens become vegetarians because it is more ethical and kind to be a vegetarian, but I understand that our cultures have tended to foster acceptance of eating other animals so of course I understand the eating of other animals.
it was a big old house, many many floors. all the people had been turned against each other, so they were misusing each other, abusing each other. and we convinced them to work together.
one bad guy even apologized to the rest of us for bullying. then the people who had turned everybody against each other–the controllers–came, and we pretended that it was discordant like before, and we fooled them.
but somebody had left a note on the banister on one of the stairwells that would have given us away. the bad people stopped by and were checking us out. we fooled them; they thought everything was normal.
but they were walking up the stairs and we were afraid they were going to see the note and find out, and that’s when I woke up. it’s the wake up dreams you remember the easiest.
- smith & Lady
Personal disclaimer by Lady: I do not believe that bad people exist. I believe that the situations have sometimes been such that we sometimes have perceived some people as bad.
Dear Friends New and Old, Family, Artists & Poets…
On behalf of the spirit of compassion, kindness, unity (yet with infinite individual voices), I ask for your help (via direct participation, spreading the word, and/or thinking and meditating) on three events pertaining to two seemingly distinct movements:
1) The Climate Issue, especially at this moment the Keystone XL Pipeline(stopping the building of and very soon, the extraction of oil from tar sands).March and Rally Sunday, 1 pm, starting at CSU.
And please, there’s this event Monday from 6-9 pm near Case Western to help people understand nonviolent civil disobedience (the event Sunday probably does not involve civil disobedience). Even if not planning civil disobedience in the future, if you have a friend or family member who might be, this training is useful because people who do participate in civil disobedience benefit from having help if they are incarcerated.
2) The #OccupyCleveland movement today and/or tonight, Friday, Oct. 21.
Please Occupy Today and/or Tonight. Occuping Tonight helps, as the “permit” for using Public Space is being expired by people who have no actual authority to expire it, as all space is Public Space, particularly Public Square. There is a group of overnight occupiers who need our support as there is the possibility that they might be arrested tonight for civil disobedience. Main events start at 1 p.m. and include food, music, and speakers. At 10 p.m. the curfew at Public Square starts.
And if you are not able to Occupy Public Square tonight (like me), then Occupy Today. And if you are not able to be seemingly physically present in Public Square today, please spread Word. And if you are too shy to spread Word, please think kindly about everyone on the planet.
A value of the Occupy Movement is that it tends to maintain a visible, persistent presence of concern. The people who are actively participating in this presence ask for time and for consideration of the complexity of this unity in which we live. I ask on behalf of you as my friends and acquaintances to please understand that we who identify immediately with the Occupy Movement and who are working for it are working with two main ideals of process which might seem to at first to be opposing poles. The two main ideals of process are individuality and unity. The end results desired are happiness, health and sanity. The intermediate vista involves as much kindness as possible while grappling with complexity and seeming contradictions, such as how does one deal with the concepts of unity and class consciousness simultaneously. The bounds are time and practical deadlines of effective thresholds with respect to particular tangible issues the movement can help.
Fundamentally, at a scientific level, all this that “you” see before you is unity–buzzing unity
We can see ourselves not only as margins, but as centers. We are each at the center of a canvas. We are the centers. We are the center of a moving canvas. Our skins are illusions which trap identity temporarily. Skin is just a focal point for movement of temporary persistence. Fundamentally, we are very much interconnected, very much one. Even if talking about spirituality makes one nervous, one must admit that the human animal is a bundle that extends into the air, into the water, that the human bundle is not so much a bundle as a smear of leaf in rain. That the smear is a pigment dot in a pixelist painting. That the smear is related to all the other smears. That if one opens ears and sees with eyes and remembers and perceives, one can see that the wind of sentiment is a universal wind with currents and eddies and turbulence–or maybe even a river. Many metaphors apply.
Having said all this shtuff, I feel that it is our very real responsibility to deal with the news that a person might have been raped by another person while staying overnight last Saturday night.
I believe in the ideal of truth and transparency, and I believe in full disclosure to an ethical threshold based on faith and reason.
I also believe in appealing to a greater understanding of complexity and human frailty.
I ask for compassion and help.
I ask for compassion and help and I have witnessed much compassion on the part of people who are participating daily and nightly in the Occupy Cleveland movement. I visit the overnighters every morning to bring hot water and sometimes food, and to get news for the daily digest as best I can given the complexities of humans.
I’ve witnessed overnight occupiers give homeless people shelter under the main tent so that homeless people can get out of the wind. I’ve witnessed overnight occupiers helping homeless be part of the movement and regain responsibility and participation.
Tonight is Robert Ritchie a.k.a. Dickhead’s celebration of life service. Smith and I are attending. Robert Ritchie was a friend of Daniel Thompson. Daniel Thompson was intimately involved in humanitarian issues and grappled with complexity. There are metaphors that apply to this situation–some themes: involvement, passion, heart, complexity and simplicity, and life and death. LIVE!
I ask you all, poets and artists, to be part of this movement in a very tangible way. LIVE!
Poets and artists are part of the divine, and a tradition of the divine, and a tradition of being carrier waves and ways of change. Be part of this voice and action, and understand it, and grapple with complexity. LIVE!
This is my personal appeal on behalf of the universal and immediate.
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.
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.
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.”
I am writing to let you know that I am concerned. I do not wish suffering for people. But of course I choose biosphere over people, if that choice has to be made in that way.
Perhaps extreme weather events are the only way we’re going to change, and perhaps people in the U.S. in particular need to be awakened to extreme weather events and their cause.
I think the best thing we can do is stop driving cars unless necessary, stop eating meat, unplug everything we can, and live within the rhythm of sun, moon and birdsong.
It’s reputed that meat, the desire for meat, is the cause of much suffering on this planet, both to our biosphere and to massive amounts of people and animals.
It takes so much more water, fertilizer, land space, vegetable matter to raise a pound of beef than, say, an equivalent amount, calorie-wise, of asparagus.
Forests are being clearcut in the Amazon to grow things to feed cows and to grow biofuel so that people can have luxurious lifestyles. The Amazon is the greatest area of lung on this planet. Please help us cease this clear-cutting by making wiser choices as ethical people and by creating better, more ethical opportunities for the people doing the clear-cutting as a vocation.
I am making incremental changes in my lifestyle to try to consume less, eat more locally, eat less meat, etc. Three weeks ago I bought four bags of magic beans. Two weeks ago I cooked two different things in the oven at the same time to save on energy consumption. The week before I learned how to make a healthy, inexpensive and tasty variant of hummus. This past week I’ve started to make my own bread.
I’m buying cage-free eggs from local farmers. The vendor at the West Side Market showed us pictures of the chickens. They are beautiful. They laze about in tall beautiful expanses of green grass. The egg yolks are bright, rich yellow, and I swear they taste extra fine.
I am soon getting half a share of produce from Geauga Family Farms. Pick up points are not limited to Geauga. There are points in Cuyahoga and Lake County as well.
I have doubled up duty on car rides. The two days I commute to work, I also do something special with Grandma. And I’m doubling and tripling up other car trips as well. I’ve started to consider only going to entertainment and poetry events in my local community as much as possible. My near goal is to commute with friends to get to events that are further out to minimize our impact on the environment and pocketbook. I aim to do everything I can do, within reason, yes, yet stretching my idea of reason to something that can effect change and help me live in a more joyful and reverent manner.
So what I’m asking you is to ease up on the floods and tornadoes, Universe. Have some faith in us and help us keep the faith by making immediate changes where we can perceive possibility for change.
Other prayers of note:
I pray for moderation, yet I pray to be possessed when I should be possessed.
I pray that I am ethical, calm, joyous, productive, and the same for Smith.
I pray that a certain family member starts writing a poem every day.
I pray that I finish my commitments so that I can feel more free to follow through on commitments to myself.
Thank you for the many, many blessings and miracles I receive daily from you-me-It-Universe.
Some private thoughts, hopes, thanks, prayers as well…
Love, Awomen and Amen,
Lady
LADY’S HUMMUS RECIPE
1# chickpeas, soaked overnight, rinsed, boiled in lightly salted water 1-2 hours until soft.
2 heads of garlic, roasted at 350 degree Fahrenheit 1/2 hour.
1/4 – 1/2 cup of your favorite vegetable oil (olive oil is a hoax perpetrated on the masses)
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Squeeze roasted garlic out of its skin and mash in large bowl with fork, then blender. Squeeze cooked chickpeas between fingers as much as possible and put in the bowl as well. Add the other ingredients. Mix as much as desired (I like little chickpea bits left in mine.)
My morning ritual: I get up, the cat wades between my legs as I sit on the toilet, I urinate, I feed her, I drink water, I make coffee, I do three minutes of Yoga, I check Facebook, and I write a morning letter to the Universe. This is my time in the morning. My time to be ideal, to think, to visualize, to ask the Universe for favors, to promise favors to the Universe, and to start the day off in a constructive way.
With the devastation of such a large mass of our pollinating bees over the past couple years, one of the most important things to address in a letter to the Universe–from this corner of the Universe, at least–is the health of the bees.
Saw some bees buzzing angrily around a telephone pole this week. Thought perhaps they are angry about cellphones (reputed to be a cause of bee death) and are attacking anything associated with phones. Or maybe they’re just angry about our infrastructure/priorities in general. I’d be, were I a bee.
Bees are such important insects. Pollinating insects have tremendous implications for the existence of animals who eat fruit, such as humans. They are critical BEEDS, crucial to ensuring a healthy ecosystem for so many other species.
I think visualization has a role in constructing a better reality. Here are some hastily drawn visualizations. I wish I could dedicate myself well to all causes:
A WAY THINGS CAN WORK:
Vision: One million more generations of great health for humans -> pollinating insects -> endless loop.
ANOTHER WAY THINGS CAN WORK:
Goals: Happiness for Many & Happiness for the Individual.
Visualization is important, and action is a way to follow through. I think I am not renewing my cellphone contract when it expires, and turning it off and just checking voicemail a couple times a day for now, and that I will return to a land line. The cell phone is too expensive, anyways. Am also thinking about returning to a wired network for our computers as I don’t know how all this wirelessness affects the insects or our health as well.
We’d do well to learn from bees. We can refine and humanize concepts of collaborative efforts. Collaboration does not need to be for tribe or nation over other tribe or nation. Collaboration can lend itself to a world civilization, a world society, a world organism that is not fighting itself, but finds itself on the mend.
Smith’s telling me all kinds of stuff this morning…
I’m thinking of Sunday Morning Coming Down right now and it’s quiet, it feels like Sunday morning.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar, which means you have to be pretty fricking smart. After he graduated in England, he came back to the U.S. and with all this college education and everything, he chose to get a job at Johnny Cash’s recording studio as a janitor because he figured he’d get a chance to slip Johnny Cash a copy of his songs he’d written.
And one of the the songs he slipped to Johnny Cash was Sunday Morning Coming Down which is one of the saddest, most heart-evocative songs I know.
Johnny Cash was gonna sing the song on his show. His TV people came to him and said, “We don’t want you to say this line On the Sunday Morning sidewalk wishing Lord that I was stoned/ cuz there’s something in a Sunday makes a body feel alone.” We don’t want you to use the word stoned on TV.”
And Johnny Cash turned to Kris Kristofferson and said, “How do you feel about this? You wrote the song. What do you want me to do?”
Kristofferson said, “It’s your TV show. I would totally understand if you don’t want to use the word stoned.”
Everybody left it at that. And Johnny Cash went out there and sang it the way it was written.
I can’t believe Smith has all this shit in his brain, but I sure do enjoy it.
Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson
Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
I’d smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
‘n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken.
And it took me back to somethin’,
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin’.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cos there’s something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’,
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down.
Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do do,
Do do do do do do do.
Communication is slightly confusing to me sometimes; I can accept rain. Breeziness was felt on my left air, right side of face a little numb. Left ear the hum of Reality.
The commentary of the toilet lid in a bathroom, the soberness of morning. Mandy asked a question along the walls.
Everythingis part of ALL. I believe everyone is forgiven, and I do. Everything seems better, and I want it to be so. I do not want you to feel that you can’t talk candidly but sometimes I do.
Take care, take care, and have a great day.
I always want my ears to ask, and perceive answers.
It is possible, based on the information I’ve read of the opposition so far, that Gaddafi will step down from internal pressure. It will be interesting to learn more about El-Senussi and his perspective, and the history of Libya and social movements in Libya.
According to the article, Pro-Gaddafi militiammen were repelled by the opposition supporters when they tried to overtake Zawiya on March 1st. The article also says, “The cities of Misrata east of the capital and Gherian to its south also appeared to remain in opposition hands, as was virtually all of the east of the country, including several key oil fields.”
I spent some time trying to learn more about the opposition forces, and who they really are. Marc Ginsberg, the former ambassador to Morocco (appointed by Clinton), wrote an article on the subject. He says that there’s a fear the fighting could revert into a “Spanish Civil War” stalemate with Libya disintegrating into factions and tribal regions divorced from a central government. I disagree with his assessment (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-marc-ginsberg/who-is-in-charge-of-the-l_b_830647.html) based on the fact that he was appointed by Clinton, has contributed to Fox News, and is very business oriented. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Ginsberg)
There IS one part of the opposition movement that gives me hope, and with which I can agree fairly fully. The group’s name is “The Libyan Islamic Movement for Change.” What I really like about this group is that it is unarmed, and is composed of “communists, socialists, liberals and partisans of democracy in the country and civil societies making various activities.” This group aims to change Libya by peaceful means. Let it be so.
The exiled crown prince of Libya, Mohammed El-Senussi, who seems to have some stake in the situation (and sympathy from the West as he’s been living in London since 1988), says that military intervention should NOT happen. I agree very strongly. Let it be so.
“Let me be clear. There is a difference between a no-fly zone and military intervention and the Libyan people do not seek external military involvement on the ground. That will not bring about the peace and freedom that we crave,” said El-Senussi.
Let the amount of deaths be minimal. Let it be so.
Not only is the UN planning to investigate, but EU leaders are going to gather on March 11 in Brussels for a summit to deliver a response to the crisis in Libya and the Arab world. However, the EU might have an economic stake in the outcome. So a resolution provided solely by the EU is not sufficient for action. A resolution provided by the UN, if supported by a lot of the Arab nations, might be sufficient for a better course of action. And please remember to take into account Libya’s own crown prince’s words–that he feels military intervention should NOT happen. I agree, and I also want Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s forces to cease killing people immediately, and I do not want foreign (US) intervention in Libya at this point, save for possibly, UN peacekeepers.
Also, we must take into account the relatively higher standard of living Libyans enjoy and the relatively high life expectancy. The information we’d been receiving in popular media outlets in the West about Libya and Muammar Gaddafi (a.k.a. Moammar Gadhafi) was incomplete.
1989 Nelson Mandela
1990 “The children of Palestine”
1991 The indigenous peoples of the Americas
1992 The African Centre for Combating Aids
1993 “The children of Bosnia and Herzegovina”
1994 The Union of Human Rights Societies and Peoples in Africa
1995 Ahmed Ben Bella, Francisco da Costa Gomes
1996 Louis Farrakhan
1997 Gracelyn Smallwood, Melchior Ndadaye, Melba Hernandez, Manal Younes Abdul-Razzak, Doreen McNally
1998 Fidel Castro
1999 “The children of Iraq”
2000 Souha Bechara, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Evo Morales, the Movement of September, the Third World Center
2002 Mamado Diaye, Roger Garaudy, Ibrahim Alkonie, Jean Ziegler, Nadeem Albetar, Ali M. Almosrati, Khaifa M. Attelisie, Mohamed A. Alsherif, Ali Fahmi Khshiem, Rajab Muftah Abodabos, Mohamed Moftah Elfitori, Ali Sodgy Abdulgader, Ahmed Ibrahim Elfagieh
2003 Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria
2004 Hugo Chávez
2005 Mahathir bin Mohamad
2006 ?
2007 Libraries of Timbuktu.
2008 Dom Mintoff
2009 Daniel Ortega
2010 Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan
