Sag. rants before the Solstice

Words
intent on laying about
saying out loud
nasty syllabic diatribe
have taken hold
on the empty tides
of frozen dismay
remind me
is it today?



The universe is the totality of existence. As such it can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed.

There was never a "before the universe" though there may well have been many previous configurations of the universe vastly different from what we think of it as.

There is never a start or an end -- there is always change. Our own lives are continuations of the line of life and continue on as energy working its way through the universe in a multitude of guises.

What logic says there is always a start and a finish? Logic says the universe has always been and will always be. I don't think many people quite understand what the word "universe" refers to. The universe itself is all that is eternally. I do understand that it is not part of the frame we in this culture tend to fall into to understand eternity, the unending, the unbeginning. Yet that is what is said of "God." The thing is we tend to think of "God" as a supernatural man. "God" is not a name or title; it is the word we have decided upon as English speakers for the our concept of the consciousness of the universe.



Science is merely a method of categorizing experience. What those who worship it can't explain, or don't have a clue about but try to explain, that is legion.



It makes me uncomfortable to think of people in psychic pain due to traumatic experiences or misunderstandings about the realities of their situations being given drugs, made to see their plight in a medical model that in effect blames them (you are abnormal). Of course if they are distressed and the drug can calm them in the immediate there is no wrong in relieving the distress. However, often these drugs do no such thing, but may add to the confusion. We know how each patient is an experimental subject to the vagaries of individual chemical interaction. I would like a common model in which we speak truth to each other. I would like people in distress to be given a wider frame in which to see their possibilities for self-empowerment, for real relief based on not a model of sickness but one of inclusion. We all have misunderstandings, misinterpretations, miscommunications. We all struggle at times with feelings, thoughts, irrational behaviors. It's not because we are sick. It is because we are human.



I remember the holiday season as sad, miserable, lonely. It can be a very hard time of year. We put so much stress on ourselves and each other to pretend to be happy.



"Sanity" is not normalcy. It is health.



If you take out the expectation of continued profit from the equation, it is truly a no-brainer to put our efforts into clean renewables.

I expect businesses to produce out of a profit motive. I even expect businesses that have made a profit through their business model to continue that model and cry for unfair opportunity to continue making profit even though that model is not good for we the consumers. However, if we really want to do what is best for all, we will tell the cry-babies that profit is not an entitlement.



I keep saying there are so many projects that would greatly enhance our lives and prosperity that don't get done because no one is organizing the people to work and get paid.

I keep being made aware that this time of economic "crisis" offers wonderful opportunities to people who have a well thought out idea, some entrepreneurial spirit, and a gift for salesmanship (which can simply be an ability to share your exuberant confidence). I expect to see great products and services out there.



Who is creating the conditions for terrorism here? Those who have no idea of the true meaning of "homeland security" and create problems where there was no need.



The controversy here comes from a misconception. You are talking religion v. no religion on the public square as if that were a negative thing. The public square is exactly the traditional place for citizens to voice our differing opinions, to get an idea of the diversity of the polity.



There is no Devil but us. God is ALL -- not some daddy figure in the sky, but ALL, all that is, eternally. We break it down, as you say here by culture but in all the ways we find to break it down. Our brains are like that. They categorize. But it takes a bent toward hatred to make those categories about hierarchies.



Atheists, Deists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, all of you: you are fighting over made-up distinctions, words that do not convey to you what they self-evidently say; you just don't get it. There is not Yahweh or Allah or Jehovah, one great sky father sending edicts and laws. There is All, every bit of existence, the universe, the multiverse, all of us including those we never even are aware of. Read the words in this light. Understand. We are all and each our manifestation of the All. The real way to heaven through Jesus is to love each other.



Goddesses, grace and wisdom
plain as a rosy face
giving little gifts of
color and light



IF (and this is not a religious argument, but a philosophic one) we are indeed spiritual beings living in physical bodies, our physical being will naturally respond to the wisdom/karmic needs of the spirit. The spirit is without gender. We are naturally attracted to those with whom we have that kind of spirit connection, regardless of extrinsic form.

IF we are physical beings in a physical universe, spirit being some kind of metaphor for the inner workings of cognition, we are physically attracted based on chemical signals. These signals are different for different people -- thus we are not all hopelessly attracted to the same small subset of people. These attractions can be gender specific or gender neutral, depending on the individual physiologies.

In either case, homosexuality is in every way as "normal" as heterosexuality, the true norm being not one or the other but a continuum of levels of bisexuality.



What I see in the Proposition 8 controversy, is not a problem of differing bases of morality, or values. What I see is democracy at work. The reason for a rule-based democratic form of government is to allow for the needs, desires and beliefs of the people to be equitably debated and worked out.



The biblical exhortation against man on man sex is of course part of the whole paradigm of sex as meant only for procreation. This was seen as wise policy at a time when the lifespan was generally short, a great many children died, pestilence and plague were always ready to cut down the population, and war was considered an important industry for both defense and land acquisition thus making it important to breed as many warriors as possible. No doubt these are the reasons we can not condone masturbation, birth control, gay sex, or marriage without procreation.



Men
Boys with toys
competing over trivia
drinks, women
thinking they are boss
or big man with brass
balls
When the moon
is new and pure
like fine brandy
distilled twilight
think Russia
cold like thought
warm with feeling
Man child,
drink in that world



an image from a recent dream. I understand my dream offers no authority: I had apparently been the victim of a violent crime and was arguing with the police detective that it was not right that I be denied a role in finding and dealing with my attacker. I passionately argued for the rights of the victims, supposedly those we are meant to be working for in efforts at criminal justice, to be empowered by being an integral part of that process. Yet I was being treated as a bystander in my own life.



I have read persuasive argument and evidence that the basics of good mental health are:

1) having a passion, a project, work you can fully engage with, activity that is its own reward

2) honest relationship -- most especially with yourself; when we can give and take of our joys and fears with others we can help to bind each other's wounds



I am so sick of the "class warfare" argument surrounding the auto bailout. We all know that no matter what the outcome for the "big 3" the workers are going to be screwed. What the Congress should be doing, if they insist upon taking on the role of Banker in Chief, is give the money appropriated for cleaner fueled cars to the start-ups that are ready, willing and able to make those cars and hire those workers needed to do so. I am also so sick of the meme "too big to fail." If something has become so inflated, fat and turgid, it has to be allowed to fail to make room for the lean and clean to take its stand.

The last bail-out has only served to make matters worse. Maybe, just you know think about this: we were told there would be oversight to keep the banks in line. If we can't get them to lend the money from the bail-out as was meant to be their part of the deal, take the money back and give it to the local banks who agree to take over and work out the toxic mortgages. Fix the problem at the source. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people with plenty of money to invest if they can be convinced their investment will be safe. Would you want to invest in GM or Chrysler? Why would you want us collectively to invest in them?

Why would the failure of particular companies cause our heavy industry to fade out of existence anywhere if the will is there to have those industries? I am not talking of foreign carmakers in the US, but US carmakers (or any other industry) who are not "too big to fail" but rather right sized for their market share.

This debate has been to a large extent based on the left/right bias of class warfare. My point is that no matter how it turns out for the "big 3" they will need to restructure to survive, and the workers will get the shaft. The whole economic paradigm this country has been currently failing on is about trickle down from the top. It doesn't work. It is the workers, the actual producers of products and services, who need to have the kinds of wages and governmental protection that will give them the discretionary income to keep a healthy economy afloat. Giving our tax money to dinosaurs who will wreak destruction upon the working class is counter-productive. If tax money needs to be spent to right the upside down world counter-productive policies have wrought, it needs to go to the bottom so it can grow upward.

Do you honestly believe that the allegiance of the "big 3" is to America? Not to their investors (often non-American) and profits? Do you honestly believe that only the "big 3" can make American cars in America with American parts and workers?

I watched the hearings on C-SPAN where there were actual representatives of actual start-ups saying they were ready, willing, able, just needed the seed money they had every expectation of getting from the fund for that purpose. They, along with several seemingly knowledgeable experts, exhorted the Congressional Committee to let the "big 3" find their own way, possibly through bankruptcy -- and btw, Ford is no longer asking for bail-out funds.

Bankruptcy is not allowing them to go down the tubes. It is allowing them to restructure if they are willing to make the effort, or get bought up if their assets are worth it and they can't make it work.

If Chrysler is such a good bet, why can't they find investors who are so starved for someplace to put their cash they are buying government bills with negative interest rates?

The reasons I am against the bail-out: It is bad economy, bad philosophy, sends a terrible message and is probably unconstitutional. (I don't remember where in the Constitution is says Congress should act as a bank.) In regard to the "they gave those bail-outs to Wall Street; what about Detroit mainstreet?" plea to entitlement, just because they started down a dangerous road is not a sensible reason to continue.

It's only a LOAN if they pay it back. We have in this country a structure meant to help companies pull together and reorganize. It is called bankruptcy. It is not a boogeyman to be warded off out of hand.

Giving money to failing big business is not anything like an appropriate solution. We need real jobs that people can be proud to do and give real value. If we have to do a government funded public works program to make that happen, that is where the money should go.



Why aren't people taking over these foreclosed houses and renting them out legitimately. Home prices are down, rentals up because so many people who lost their homes now have to rent. Where are the real capitalists?




To my mind Chris Hedges is one of the best journalistic writers in the business. His poetic prose is always thought-provoking and inspiring. That said, I must question his placement of President-elect Obama as an elitist because of his "ivy league" education. Barack Obama, as I understand his biography, had a quite unique education of life experiences from an early, formative age that was about equality of opportunity. He chose to go to Harvard and give himself the advantages of those contacts in elite circles after experiencing the frustration of working at the grass roots level with desperately oppressed people. He seems to me not the type to take on the deeply held beliefs of his elite peers, but rather to keenly use what he learns of the workings of power in the service of equality. He is a practical idealist, not a neocon nor ivy league ideologue.



Of this world, not
available to close relation
within it
Float above, drown below
caught in waves of merland's
splendor
meticulously unaware
of the call from rescuers



"Races" are merely overly generalized groupings. There are such vast differentiations among people of the same "race" as to make that distinction useless, except perhaps as a general description of a set of agreed upon physical traits. Yet another set of traits could as easily differentiate. By now genetics are pretty well mixed up except for the most remote of tribes, if any still exist.



Each life is a thread being sewn, helping to create the ever-in-creation tapestry.



We all know that repetitive rhythm and physical release of energy are basic destressors.



Any life, no matter how seemingly limited by circumstances, can be lived to ITS fullest. We are all quite limited, in ways we understand and in ways we have no ability to understand. We each make choices every moment, consciously and unconsciously, about our authenticity. Often we do find need for disguises. The point is to be authentic to ourselves and live accordingly.



I walk by the river
watch my reflection
ripple into the season
of change




The old King was ill, poisoned by his own despair, infecting the Kingdom. Death inexorably worked through the King's system, the King's land, taking over what had been a fertile, lively, prosperous society.

In another land, the Queen despaired over the loss of her only daughter. The child, who the Queen felt to be her life, had been abducted by her King's family in a fit of entitlement.

Despair was moving throughout the lands and kingdoms as old Kings and Queens lost their way, lost interest in keeping their people safe and happy, lost their minds and souls and creative sparks.

Without wise and caring rulers, the people fell into inept forays of fighting, neglecting the fields, their families, their health.

Somewhere there is a hero's tale to be told which will salve the fear and desperation in the hearts and minds of people with no stable system within which to prosper. It is the tale of Percival and Persephone, fine brave souls learning to become strong and wise on their journeys through worlds and trials and treasures. Let us listen to their adventures, taking on their faces and forms in a reality play. Let us learn to usurp the sickened royals and become a people healthy, graceful, brave, energized by the creative fire.