...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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Sometimes I feel like I’m in bliss, in perpetual heaven. I mean, I am personally so very lucky. I have good health, I love my companion, I have work, I have a brain, I have at least a modicum of talent. And there are all kinds of projects to do and times are very interesting and my work is very creative.
But I look around and I see evidence that some people are suffering and so even though my own personal circumstances are pretty awesome, I really can’t see that it’s heaven for everyone else.
Another thing about this place–if it really is heaven–is that there’s a heck of a lot of stuff to do in it. I mean, wouldn’t the ultimate heaven kind of give me a lot of time if needed to do the things I want to do? Maybe Earth is a half-way house to Heaven.
So Friday night there’s a poetry reading down the street and it’s being held by one of our friends, and it’s in a bookstore we want to support and we haven’t been there in two months.
But I just got this call from IRTF and this young activist just got back from El Salvador, has a bunch of pictures and wants to share his experience Friday night at 8.
IRTF stands for the Interreligious Task Force and they do a lot of awesome projects working on improving human rights in Central America.
I yearn to see these pictures because I think about our traveling times and the amazingness of those experiences and to see someone else’s experience in a country in which we haven’t yet been… well, that’s very appealing. It’s even more interesting because the young man is coupling his traveling with activism, so the travel not only expands his horizons but is of some utility in the world.
We’re committed to our poetry night Friday, but if you’d like to see the presentation, it’s at 4241 Lorain Avenue at 8 p.m., and there will be food. And it’s free!
Or if you’d rather do the poetry, it’s at 7 p.m. at Zion Church in the basement, 2716 West 14th, also free. Lots of stuff to do in this heaven.
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.
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.
I appreciate the headline name, “Rebuild the Dream.” I think we need to rebuild the dream and I am glad that commondreams.org is focusing more on positive action rather than despair in this headline.
In the video, Van Jones said, “We are being lied to.” I can sympathize with where I think he is coming from. I think he means well. But I think the phrase “we are being lied to” is a phrase that seems to arouse anger. I can understand why one might wish to feel anger. And I can understand that people seem to want to strike back at injustices.
On a spiritual level, I wish for anger to not be aroused, but instead, cooperation, healing, transcending labels and fixing the situations in this country and the world. I also think that it is appropriate to discuss things in a more complete manner and have sound “bits” rather than “bites.”
I understand the challenges of communicating in a more complete manner though! So, I wish for Van Jones to be successful in engaging people to focus on dreaming, and I wish for these people to be able to transcend anger and feel compassion so that they can engage even more people and help heal our country and the world. I am also not sure that Jones’s points are entirely accurate, but I know he has good intent.
It is understandable why many would perceive the words, “America is broke” as accurate considering the deficit and debt of the United States. On a spiritual and fundamentally practical level, though, the United States has the ability to heal its situation–I believe fairly quickly–by stopping funding of the military and military contractors and/or transforming the military and military contractors into agencies and businesses that implement sustainable infrastructure in an ethical manner inside the United States.
Also, were the United States government to make reparation payments to the countries of the world it has invaded, these countries could also develop sustainable infrastructures for themselves.
There are more complications to the phrase, “America is broke” when one considers the history of actions, debt and deficit in terms of parties that are in power in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. Government, and the particular institutions and corporations and areas that the parties seem to want to invest in and/or fund. However, I am reasonably sure that most reading this particular page are aware of this history so I will not go into it now.
On a metaphorical level and practically implementable level, I love the phrase, “America is not broke.” Jones goes on to point out that were the rich to pay a fair share of taxes, this would help the economy. I believe this to be true and good within a practical threshold of understanding.
The second “lie” Van Jones addressed is the sentence, “Asking the super-rich to pay taxes hurts America’s economy.” Based on the history of economics worldwide, I agree with Van Jones in that that sentence about the super-rich is not accurate. The disparity of wealth that the United States is experiencing has harmed the vast majority of people living in the United States, and has had a significant harmful impact on the people living in other countries as well. I ask for the extreme disparity to be removed. I also ask for free trade agreements between countries to be removed, and instead for fair trade to be implemented. But I ask that the fair trade is implemented in such a way that the biosphere can survive, heal and thrive–in other words, for sustainability.
“Hating on America’s government – and wrecking America’s infrastructure – is patriotic” is the third idea Van Jones calls a lie. I can understand where he is coming from. From a peace perspective, though, I have seen that criticizing the government and wishing for peace has been called “unpatriotic” and “hateful to the United States” as well. I do not believe that criticism of the government and wishing for peace are hateful or unpatriotic.
I do believe that wrecking infrastructure can be hateful, but also can clear the way for a new, sustainable infrastructure that we need. We need an infrastructure for public transportation that has a negligible impact on the environment. We need a new and/or revitalized infrastructure for affordable healthcare for all people. We need for the disparity of wealth between the CEOs of insurance companies and the people who need healthcare to be reduced.
I would prefer it were the health insurance companies disbanded, but with a transition plan for the people who are employed by the companies so that they can obtain more ethical, sustainable work. I want for the CEOs of all companies who are rich to just decide to opt out, retire at a reasonable income, and stop exploiting people. So basically, I want a graceful, gentle parachute for the CEOs so that they and their families are not frightened. Preferably Gaia would provide this naturally for these people so that it just happens without a hitch.
I wish Van Jones success in getting people to engage in rebuilding the American Dream in a sustainable manner and with the goal of long term sustainability, and I ask that this vision include kindness, forgiveness, and that rebuilding include sustainability in terms of wages, health, and especially the environment.
I have sympathy for many of the organizations that Van Jones mentions: AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn.org, etc. I have volunteered for an effort that SEIU has helped with, and have contributed to moveon.org even though I’d seen moveon.org as being aligned with the Democratic Party. I have great sympathy for many who vote for the Democratic Party but I also have a lot of criticism for the corporate funding and militarism promoted by the Democratic Party. However, I realize that the heart of progressives is still represented in many ways within the Democratic Party, and that the heart of good people is also represented in the Republican Party albeit manifested in unfortunate ways within both. We must recognize common ground, and in a way that is beneficial to the health of most, if not all people and the environment!
On July 5th, Van Jones invites us to go to rebuildthedream.com and share ideas. I think this is good.
There is criticism based on the history of political campaigns and parties, and this is mentioned in the threads of comments below this video but I think we also have to recognize that opportunites are born in mixed circumstance, and that action and progress can transcend circumstance.
Spiritually I like the words, “Contract for the American Dream.” I can see it as a way of making a covenant with a dream, a process similar to “making a covenant with God.” And I also see “reality” as a long dream, one that needs to be repaired, one that can be repaired.
I would like us to transcend “they” and “our” in the phrases “their turn” and “our turn” that Van Jones says. I would like “them” to be “us” and “us” to be “them.” I know this is so in so many ways. “We’re going to rebuild the movement that stands for liberty and justice for all,” Van Roy says at the end, and I think the “all” part if this is good and the intent is good. I’d also like for us to consider mercy.
So this is my long, yet brief analysis of this video!
I had greater hopes for you and am very disappointed and saddened by your policies and actions. I don’t know that I can really take anything you say seriously or in good faith anymore, and you have severely impacted my desire to vote for Democrats in the future. I’ve even canvassed for Democratic candidates but I don’t know that I can do this anymore.
I wish I had something positive to say about closure, etc. I wish for peace. But I wish people wouldn’t celebrate bin Ladin’s assassination with joy, and I wish you didn’t send me an email proudly touting celebrating the assassination. In the context of how the U.S. is so much more murderous to people in other countries than bin Ladin, this is difficult to tolerate, and I find this disingenuous.
I do understand that people of the U.S. wish to see our country as one that is on the moral high ground, and therefore great. This is a good wish. I wish it were true. I want it be true. Unfortunately, we are a perpetrator of aggression, aggression that suits U.S. and transnational corporations and the IMF’s deliberately oppressive financial policies.
So here is what I propose: if there is any true closure brought with bin Ladin’s death, I propose that it come in the form of dismantling these “wars on terror.”
Please withdraw troops and contractors from Iraq and Afghanistan and stop supporting the bombing of Libya. Please close the School of the Americas and Guantanamo Bay.
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
Data has been coming in to me today. It has been hard to handle.
At some point today, I whimsically wondered if Christ is an antenna. And if the cross is an antenna. And if the sun is an antenna.
Brother’s radio comes on, plays “All we are is dust in the wind.”
My ipod song immediately plays, “5546,5 – Suddenly there’s a valley plays”
I immediately google 5546,5, wondering what it could refer to, and find “Helicoil 5546-5 M5 x 0.8 Metric Coarse Thread Repair Kit”; this seems to allude to a “helical antenna.” I find it very intriguing, especially since I had just wondered about the sun being an antenna.
I write a note, “How would aliens communicate with us? Or God? Could a sun be an amplifier of a signal?”
I do some more chatty stuff with googling and the radio, debate solipsism with it, etc. I feel more and more compelled to tell people about the antenna and the song.
Other things come up intimating that I am an incarnation of Christ or that there is nothing other than me, although I am having difficulty accepting this perception and am skeptical of it as an incomplete understanding of a situation. Christ is an antenna and “me” is a rough thing to delineate.
I am convinced that I need to write. Am agitated, because I feel that I have a responsibility to be working as well. But it seems that the communication stream is very insistent upon me writing.
I write a long narrative (I’ll attach a link to it later) and the songs seem to get very angry at me.
Mom comes in, was out. She said, “You wouldn’t believe the things that happened to me today, a weird string of coincidences.”
I tell her about my stuff in a roundabout way, about the struggle with feeling compelled to write a narrative, yet feeling very torn and tired with it all.
Our Internet connection won’t let me do any work. I check connection again by trying to go to Facebook, and find this entry as the first entry on 2:58 p.m:
Christchurch in New Zealand article–the first time I come across it. I guess it happened last night? I don’t know. I haven’t been watching the news. “Rescuers have had to amputate limbs to free survivors from collapsed buildings in earthquake-hit Christchurch, police said this morning, estimating 100 people remained trapped in the rubble.”
3:01 p.m. I turn on my Ipod to see what song comes up.
Assassinate (Take 1) Visite du vigile by Miles Davis
(I’m thinking that it is commentary from God-concept/superconsciousness that it has the power to wipe out towns.)
3:03 – A lecturer comes on–the title is track 23. Words from the lecture: “I never tell people who won.”
3:05 – Next Lecturer Brooks Landon comes on my ipod, with the lecture, “Prompts of Explanation…” and it seems to reinforce the idea that I should write, reflect, and comment upon my experiences.
3:34 – Our Internet is still bad, unless it has to do with things I feel compelled to do, like post this post.
Lady
Track 23 makes me think of the 23rd psalm:
Psalm 23
A psalm of David.
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,[a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
Footnotes:
Psalm 23:4 Or the valley of the shadow of death
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Also, the reference to “valley” makes me think “crater” –
Also found out that sunspots can cause earthquakes. http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051221earthquake.htm
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This is an ominous post, I know–I’ve been going through this mystical experience and am hoping to write more about it.
I was hoping that we could actually think our way through to a better possibility, and make some radical changes to our way of life to be better citizens of this big ball of information, this “ness” that we’re in. But some of the this seems to be coming to me as a mandate from this superconsciousness–a mandate that it could use the sun, if it wanted, to try and make us be better stewards.
I feel guilty about the people of ChristChurch as I had prayed to the sun that perhaps it could disrupt or augment cell phone communications if this would help the bees survive. I’ve also asked the sun to prioritize the earth as an organism first, with its animals and plants and currents and insect world, and to consider us as an afterthought, but that I hope that we can be better people on this planet. I’ve also asked the superconsciousness to try to treat every sentient entity compassionately for the net benefit of all perceiving entities, with an equitable distribution of luck and joy.
- -
I am resolving to make some changes, to change as much as I can to be a more cautious consumer of energy. As much as I can.
I sometimes try to keep up with “the” literary novel. Had a bad run at it lately though.
I decided to reread Nausea by Sartre (1938) because I first read it when I was young and faux-cool and couldn’t remember word one of it and anyway it was laying around here because Lady had purchased it and then in her mania one day while taking a bath she read one random sentence of it and declared “I’m not letting this into my mind” and tossed it. It’s basically a story of a young guy whining about being alive and I hated it so much that I had to make it my bathroom book and read five pages at a time on the toilet – sort of like putting new shit in while I was letting old shit out. I even accidentally left it at the Laundromat one week when I had but 12 pages left and was happy I was done with it, but unfortunately the next week the laundry attendant gave it back to me so I gritted my teeth and finished it, hoping unsuccessfully there’d be something in those final pages to make it worthwhile.
Then my music jamming friend insisted I read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), which turned out to be a much much longer much more tedious story about another worthless young man whining about being alive. Once again I made it my bathroom book. I actually gave up on it three times, but there it was preening before me each time I had a bowel movement and I knew it was important and famous and maybe if I just kept at it it would reward me. It was even worse than Nausea, probably because it was older and way longer and each character had half a dozen different names and I didn’t care enough about any of them to keep them straight.
Another literate friend insisted I read McEwan’s Atonement (2001). It was well written but the story was about a bunch of rich selfish aimless duplicitous shallow people I didn’t care about at all and the story just got more and more ridiculous and of course was filled with more unhappy whiners.
So I had no excuse for trying to read Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) except that all the reviews were ecstatic and I knew he knew how to write and so I got it from the library. More shallow rich people whining about life. At least this time I had the common sense to quit halfway through.
Which brings me to Jonathan Franzen’s recently published Freedom (2010). It’s his fourth novel and Time magazine was so impressed they put him on the cover and Oprah chose it for her book club. It is full of unlikeable people doing unlikeable things and again I quit three times, but each time the selfish shallow unhappy characters lingered in my mind and I returned and I found myself reading more and more about people I didn’t want to be reading about and about two-thirds the way through when he started weaving in Bush and Cheney and Iraq and the neocons and the Jewish lobby I still didn’t like the people but became interested in the story. And then Franzen did what I thought was impossible — after 540 pages of distasteful stories about despicable people, in the final 22 pages of the novel he turned the whole thing around and made me actually care about them and their lives and the suffering and stupidity it took to finally get them to be decent human beings and he touched me.
Before Franzen did a U-Turn with my brain and impressed the heck out of me I was thinking why would anyone spend so much time writing such a long sad unhappy story about people I’d just as soon never meet — and in pondering this I realized I recognized some of my own inner anger and selfishness and shallowness in several of his characters and it caused me to pause and try a little harder to be less of an asshole.
