ringing the changes

Ringing the Changes

Seconds of afterlight, Sun lapsed into horizon
Quiet of new snow, cold blanket to trees, roofs, road
Gentle twilight, before the night, before all the freeze of laughter,
bubbling partying, high hats and hands, desperate to ignite,
to touch ice to ice and become.
New Year searching forward, blind drunken eyes behind,
leaking distilled tears denied. We are jolly good one and all.
Revels, broken lyrics, misremembered, misunderstood;
gladly clapping hand against back, strapping together to
keep upright, sloshing through traffic mottled snow
slipping together, sliding to raucous tune,
old fools' show, commemorative legends to pull out over
brandy and fire.
Resolutions and revelations.
Look into the molten glass, sparking visions
Clean star twinkles ask not, glorying in terpsichore,
no written lines obscure wide sky, open beyond horizon
mistily expanding into rolling sea. Drink to the season,
to oblivion, to ecstasies bequeathed in excess emotion,
rolling, amniotic, amnesia of expectation. Breathe --
vestigial gills awaken.
This is the first measure of the first movement
a pirouette, a dervishly delightfilled whirl.
Cast upon this rocky estuary, dance inner wise
third eye calling dawn into destiny.


December 31, 2009~

'tis the season/essence

'tis the season

As we strive through painful cold, treacherous dark,
dodging danger, palpitating heart,
anxiety our stark true friend
Dream of this season's end in joyful meeting,
reunion, reward.
Dream loving happy family, aglow
in warming fire, festive lighted tree.
Pocket snapshot from a gentler age,
we ache to reclaim.
Raise high the revelry of feast
and frolic, space for sacred play,
miraculous day to carry like inspiring song,
a beacon through the storms
yet to rage.
Live this vision
embracing grace.




Essence


Essence, scent memory
cinnamon, pine, family
wafting incense
fragrant air
redolent of antiquity's winds.

Trailing magick's mountain meadow
Hard, sharp, cragged, creviced
Exquisitely strong, enduring, scarred,
mending, calloused, engaging
Fingertips, skin, caress manifest existence.

Rippling bells, liquid voices drip
replenishing wine. Listen.
Reverberate back to the tribal pool.
Dancing drum beats, symphonic raining rivers.
Rise and quaff the choir's song.

In ritual visualize the distant dawn.
Hearths to unseen worlds fade before Sol's majesty.
Incandescent homunculus eyes opening to flame,
krinkling sparks, glowing.
Powerful torches burn through dark imagery.

Revel in flavor, mythic piquancy.
Peppery heat, sour sorrows, exotic ebullient stew.
Wisps of buttery dreams, savory bliss,
divine delicacies,
bittersweet ecstasy.


peace, love, fulfillment


December 2009

retrospective pentacle ~ 5 sacred pieces

Twinkling snowflakes in cold dark night
Wishing, dreaming, taking fancy's flight
What are the dreams your snowflakes bring?
What are the songs your carolers sing?
Where is that land -- secret in your mind --
where the seas are strong, the winds are kind
and everything turns up right in the end?
Where is that place, and who is the friend
counting snowflakes across that cold blind sky?
Who is the playfriend;
who is the I?
Twinkling snowflakes, I wish I may
Send warm, healing visions by dream-drawn sleigh.




Winter Solstice

The darkness descends.
As we cry out for warmth and light
Our voices turn to spirit-imbued song
Our frantic movements against the cold
turn to ecstatic dancing.
We take comfort from each other's warmth
and celebrate the life within
struggling to survive.
'Tis the season to relearn the magic
As we share our heavy burdens
of fear and despair.
Joining hands, dancing 'round the fire,
we raise our sight to the sky
and each day,
the days get lighter.




Gods Rest Ye

If only that were what it's all about
Communal fire, warm and glowing
Cooking up a feast enough to
fill our bellies and our larders
for wintry weeks to come;
Exchanging the gifts our separate
crafts empower
with wishes of good will,
good cheer, inebriating spirits
raised and quaffed against
chill or fear of night;
If only peace and sensitive portrayal
of the gift of human frailty
were the point and purpose of
a season,
voices pitched to harmonize
for beauty's sake;
If only we could reach into
legendary epiphany,
reach out in simple empathy,
if only we could simply be
merry.




Approaching Winter

Twinkling lights. I remember twinkling,
clouds resplendent awaiting snowfall.
It's Persephone's time below,
growing in power, regality.
Friend to post-living souls,
hearing their stories,
sharing her own,
from the above time.

Flitting about,
we sing seasonal phrases,
sweat anxiously in crowded malls
over inner demands for a never
remembered perfection.
Children standing in awe below
magnificence of glowing giant trees.
Cities returning to primal forest
for an imaginary season.
Telling ourselves our stories that
Santa might find us worthy
of that shiny plaything that will
make us all right, make us happy.
Happy little children, so Mama
and Papa might be proud,
stop fighting,
tell us happy children stories,
take us back to the Garden.

Deep below, Persephone combs
her silken hair, long tangly
root
core
essence.
Magical petals of bliss and succulent aroma
lightly fall within the Garden walls.
The flowers are sleeping, blanketed in
millennial layers,
reverberations of stories,
plotlines thick with forest lore.
Snowflakes twinkle, lightly falling
draping long-growing trees
peacefully awaiting their Queen.



Lullaby of Light

Ride a stallion of snow to the heart of your dreams
Imbibe the sweet nectar of endless romance
Twirl into the world of magic and melody and dance.
Send out twinkling moonbeams as smiles of delight
Gift us all with love's vision of bountiful peace
Pour out joy that every beauty filled impulse increase.
Find a song that fills your heart
Feel a beat that sets you free
Embrace the dance of who you're meant to be.




yesterdecembers

on the occasion of my second Saturn return

Returning

If I could turn again
If I could turn
If I could
If I
If
I

Flying too high
confused, losing oxygen's fire
infused with thrilling desire
Touch me
Don't take me down

You, who never knew me
grasping at space where
I may have lain
Laugh to my face
exploding in pain
while you writhe
O', that's no way to survive
I'll encase you in goo that
allows you to see me inside intricate mind
Each molecule of remorse
creeping out of your eyes
replace with sweet water
of life, grace effervescing.
I want you to thrive
be better than
still life man.

Rocky mires face all who
walk this ridge
Patience, take time to build up
bridges, irrigation ditches,
inch by plodding inch, plotting
fields of grain, barrels for rain,
roofs, walls, windowpanes,
chimneys for warm hearths below.
Flowing rivers reveal lines for exploration,
mining ores,
mine and yours,
that element missing from accounting calculations,
Earth and her hordes, minions endemic to every
ecosphere
Wherever did you hear that enmity
would take you anywhere but here?
Dear, darling man, so wrapped up in
some plan you think you've sussed;
giving up your birthright and your trust
without second opinion;
believing written history makes mystery clear.
How can I find a way to make you hear?
Why should I any longer care?
Off am I, breathing higher air.
No need to share with those who
daren't climb.
Sublimity, subliminally inclined --
nothing more to reach for.
No need to reach out.

If there is a you, and you choose,
touch me.
Don't take me down.

November 22, 2009

self-fulfilling

Breaking bred

Ravenous beast
born from boiling seas
rampaging barely beneath,
breaking surface
exhaling snarling flame
riotous burning blame
tidal waves that never quench
the fire
All of desire pierces through
poisonous darts
We can't help you nor allow
your hearts to heal
not while we steal your ire
to fatten our nests
Believe you are blessed
Believe you are doing your best
to be as Creation demands
Believe you are worthless
beyond condemnation
unless you are taking the stand
prescribed and admired
If you aspire to anything higher
you must carry the brand
on your forehead or hand
must be willing to kill
in the name of loyalty
to fulfill the prophecy
to feed the Beast

November 19, 2009

slap the beat Friday the 13

There's always steel-eyed suspicion. Especially when yer poor, automatically suspect, haven't got the fashion or manners expected. Though there's plenty of blame to go around, it gets stuck right here.
Stuff happens everywhere. Those involved get special prayers, funds raised in school fairs, helping hands clapped across their back. Unless they live across the sacred track, have papers that don't quite pass inspection.
Of course, we get what we deserve. If we live beyond the pale, whatever be our tale, it's up to us to serve in silent awe. Our cross to bear, because we're born impure. It's lovely that your source can be so sure. Insurrection
can't be condoned, nor endured. Suffer in contrition for the condition of failed dreams, unseemly scraping by. 'Tis not I who makes these rules. Thus it's ever been, will be, until we choose to honor freedom,
admit reality into negotiations for solutions, until we can agree on this experiment's conclusion. The power of fusion surpasses the power of dissolution.

13/11/9

Persephone's breakthrough

Persephone's Breakthrough

This is where the idea is born.

soft green meadows gently disappearing into fall
sounds of dying, scent of woodfire and candlelight
no separation between what is becoming
accept and be revealed

summer's wild adventures
spring was a torrent of clarity, precious rain,
Earth coarse, ready for fecund pleasure
Queen of night in daylight's realm
obsessed in flowering
roses and daffodils
valleys and nubile hills
all is vanity and laughing vice
"But, Mother, I'm not a nice girl.
I'm a creature of the breeze; secure in shadow;
alive in the cutting edge of the storm."
Myth in revision
standing at the back of the playground
learning theater, tucking metaphors
through interstices of sense and dream
In spring, kicking stones along sandy riverbeds
reading the classics
expecting valor, glory, dramatic lines

Summer deceives
the stink of rot where flowers bloom
ancient feuds, retaliations, rage
tyrannosaurus feeding future waste,
absorbing a zeitgeist of want, of predation

within greed swollen seed infectious fear
search for further truth
mythology frustrates, curls back on its own ash
burn with hazy summer wine and dance
feet connecting dust to sky -- but only in designated
spheres, with designated peers, self-selected inhibitions
sweat out poison into the ground; now, eat the bounty
midsummer farce, far from clear, far from sunrise,
counting out the chimes as if time were treasure
silly summer madness as if what matters
is so circumscribed, so predictable

Early autumn firelight
reminiscent of witch hunts, ghosts of calvary,
dire warnings and endless hide and strike
the game, the funhouse, turns deadly
sanctuary calls, demanding sacrifice
the noble phoenix fed on frankenseed
can not rise

skies descend, dark mirroring
smell the woodsmoke, intoxicating, soft and sweet
masks the taste of bitter bile, secret vomiting
starving despite harvest's gay array of treats
faded, nearly blind, falling in and out of
shamanic fever, primeval native dancers beyond sight,
ripple of tribal beat at the periphery
ecstatic vision dark/light/agony and brilliant breaks
starbright constellations

Traversing worlds
seasons, years, moments of clarity
no need to travel, to invent boundaries
dance of the highlands warmth and sustenance
permeates
makes whole

October 23, 2009

Peaceful Co-Creating Emerging Visions #16 has emerged

Fall into the calm within the storm
Join the merriment of dancers
where love is a whisper
from which each breath expands
for sweet co-creation

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com


share and enjoy

a peace of your mind

Give us your top 5 picks:

Who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize; and why (be specific)?

Extra Bonus Question:

Imagine for us your image of peace. How do we get there?




brought to you by Peaceful Co-Creating Emerging Visions visionary art 'zine #16
coming to you soon at this web location: http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

Earthdance for Peace

http://www.earthdancelive.com/




Venus Guide Us to Peace

a meditative poem

Not just sweetness and light
There is a strength; there is conviction --
there is a vibrant dedication to true worth.
If we can but believe again
in all the humane virtues --
Love is sharing,
in kindness, understanding, supportive regard.
Love is forgiving and being forgiven,
when it is clear that malice was not intended
or malice has been exorcised
-- an acceptance of the positive power
of change, of growth in spirit.
Love is the assumption of "we."
We are doing being going having creating
We are able to exchange our labor, knowledge,
possessions, positions
We are able to take in more than I -- to synergize
our fortunes into wealth and integral well being.
Love is not just a song -- a pretty set of symbols
Love is a power and a glory
and an all encompassing truth.
Love is addition and multiplication,
not division or subtraction.
Love enriches and inspires us.
Love is not blind, not foolish.
Love is not denying the self or self interest.
Love is seeing clearly, knowing wisely,
understanding and expanding the self --
expanding outward to take in the universe
of interconnected, interdependent being.
Love sees the ugliness; and loves sees the beauty.
The ugliness saddens; the beauty invigorates.
Love is to peace as music is to harmony.
But how are we to love in a discordant world?
It is within us to pick out the true,
enduring melody
to which our essential selves are tuned --
If we but look to, listen to, open our selves to
Venus, the Goddess of Love,
Peace, Justice, Harmony
as she manifests within us all.

Brainstorm for Healthcare

Brainstorming:

We need a theme song, easy to remember on point lyrics, catch tune, keep the protestors energized and make our point clearly.

Teach-ins at local gathering places, outside of Congressional Reps. local offices, outside insurance company offices -- medical professionals and people who have been denied coverage speeches, seminar style and lectures.

Sick-ins -- again in public areas, outside Reps and Ins. Co. offices
medical pros set up mini-clinics where people w/o insurance can get consultations

Street Theater

Impromptu rallies with really impressive artistically rendered signs, singing our theme song(s), shouting slogans, open mike

Letter/postcard flooding campaigns to elected reps, government healthcare officials, insurance lobbyists, President Obama, news media, most especially groups organized to oppose healthcare reform

Also call-in campaigns to those people

Bumper stickers, lawn signs, t-shirts

more brainstorming

Here's a suggestion someone else gave on another forum:
"We need a "slogan" to turn the tide toward a demand for health care that actually works. I suggest, that criticism of the single-payer option as "socialized medicine" should be answered by saying, "Not socialized medicine, but how about civilized medicine?"

This leaves open a discussion of what "civilized medicine" might accomplish to the end that any sane person can see that what has been in place is broken and that urgent action is needed to fix it, that a simple "more of the same" approach is not rational and will not work. Then we can start talking about what would be the civilized way to provide health care."

http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/

http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

Submit to Emerging Visions 16 Peaceful Co-Creating

Emerging Visions visionary art ezine #15, Shifting Perceptions ~ still awaits you
Shift
and all strict and sure
rearranged in light-swift display
hues of the every day
bending, twisting, flying
Leaping into play


share and enjoy as you scroll down to the Submission Guidelines (below the Contributors' page)

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

Then, Share your visions to commingle into a fine fruition of

Peaceful Co-Creating - Emerging Visions visionary art ezine #16

send your submission to me by early October

have fun~

make it happen...


remember, you can still enjoy the earlier issues in the archives

libramoon42@mindspring.com

20 minutes into the future

Fox New commentator Monica Crowley's remark (as reported from Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 9/2/09) got me thinking. I miss Max Headroom. I miss my dose of "20 minutes into the future" surreal media wars logical extension of the scary here and now. I really miss Max, the lovable trickster archetype, doppelganger for oh so heroic reporter Edison Carter, always ready with a sunny reminder of the lunacy of it all. I even miss Network 23, no doubt not so different from our real corporations where the overlord of profit is always interfering with the more noble motives of conflicted people trying to get a job done. I like the stark sharp edges of Max's world, the high adrenaline high stakes adventure, and mostly the ironic humor. Don't get me wrong, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is by far my all time most missed and beloved tv series. Hey, what about a world, 20 minutes into the future, where Buffy and Max each do their part to enlighten us.


Mercury Trickster
lithely larfing pixels and waves
Happy adventure
creating mayhem silly and brave
wandering worlds, leaping between
with the flick of a dial
bringing a soul feeding smile
to the lips of a beaten down child
slyly ass-kicking evil demeanors
dancing outside the scene
to quicksilver change
flickering out of range
of censor or brute
soldier or suit
to give 'em the boot
when their attention is taken
up in their infernal machine
Immortal mixer
in our mundane affairs
playing at musical chairs
or the game of the day
unattached to our daily cares
merry and gay
spreading that sunny moonshine
then dancing away

September 12, 2009

Full Moon Harvest

I could
if I willed it
go inward
beyond the stratosphere
infinite bliss
the whole of the real
I know, I feel
eternity pulls me
grasping my ambient air
into awareness
all ways my destiny
incandescent transcendence
resplendent artist's delight

Still
here
in these moments
stuck in migrating vibrations
attached to this Earth
mired (but not beyond mirth,
cosmic inspiration)
miasmically
to throes and woes
undefined transformation
laborious birth
I am dignified, made whole
giving service to vision
corroded, corrupted,
yet shining below that surface
I see
and uncover the light

September 4, 2009 Laurie Corzett/libramoon

further healthcare thoughts

How did we allow the health insurance industry to make the rules about how we access the care and advice we need to be healthy and productive? Doesn't it strike you as weird that status in marriage or employment determines health insurance "benefits"?

The healthier we all are, the healthier we all become. People carrying disease because they can't get the healthcare to cure them are spreading more disease. People chronically too ill to work leave what they would have done to overworked others, or left undone to all of our detriment. Children too sick to learn do not become our hoped for future. When older people are too sick to care for themselves, the subsequent loss from our lives of what they have to pass on is incalculable and their subsequent depression brings us all down. We find ourselves with a system creating much more pain, hardship, loss, despair, erosion of values, sickness.

Itis a whole lot easier to control costs by insuring all and making the process easier and cheaper for everyone through sensible incentives like funding medical educations, standing up to big pharma with big numbers of consumers, keeping electronic records easily shared with all the doctors dealing with the patient, discussing/researching/determining best practices, encouraging lowering of mal or less desirable practice including open access to knowledge of doctors' history, freeing medical personnel from the extra chores and headaches of dealing with cut-throat insurance companies, and encouraging people generally to be more conscious of personal responsibility for their health.

If we were to devise a national attitude toward providing healthcare based on the true goals of optimizing the health of the people while assuring their freedoms of choice, the ultimate result could well be far less costly in the bottom line sense, while tremendously value generating in the larger sense.

How will having a public option (that's option, not taking away anything anyone likes now) prevent any group from forming their co-op to their liking as yet another alternative? In a real market system the point is to have a great diversity of options from which the consumer can choose. The consumer gets to be the evolutionary architect of what ultimately they will buy. If the consumer prefers the public option, it may go all the way to single payer over time. If the consumer prefers the co-op options, they will eventually dominate the market. Consumers seem to be fairly unhappy with the oligarchic system that has evolved from corporate/government collusion. Why not try a more capitalist/socialist collusion based on what actually keeps us healthy?

People seem to be afraid of the word "socialized." The government option is actually based on capitalist theory's idea of competition to create a more broad-based market of choice for the consumer. If the private insurance industry doesn't want government competition, they ought to provide what the consumers actually want, like proper capitalists. But why go through all the trouble of creating business models that serve the consumer when you can pay congressional reps and clever ad agencies to get the consumer to be your foodsource: suck em dry and throw em away.

Where are the modern day protest singers/organizers?

(any more besides these?)

http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

This is not a campaign. In campaigns, there are spectators. This is a movement.
Everybody plays.



The Plan:
Mad Doctors Hit the Road


On September 8, 2009 a group of dedicated Oregon physicians will take the message of Universal Health Care "on the road" in a wrapped and branded Motor Home headed for Washington D.C. Our cross-country mission: to stop in big cities and whistle stops alike, conducting pre-booked, local and national media appearances for a curious press. Every move we make along the way will be recorded on camera and then edited and uploaded to the internet that same day. This will allow our Mad As Hell Doctors Tour to leverage the edited video segments on social networking web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, et al. In this way, our effort becomes an unprecedented hybrid of reality television and political activism that offers people the opportunity to follow us, in real time, as our story unfolds. The message will be unmistakable: caravan with us to Washington and help make a public demonstration of support for Single Payer Health Care that will be heard around the world.


Imagine...
Thousands of cars pulling into the nation's capital for a protest on the White House lawn. The sidewalks are filled with supporters carrying signs in support of the Mad As Hell Doctors who have captured the imagination and the ignited the passion of their fellow citizens. We wave and honk at the camera crews, as do the endless line of cars behind us, as we wend our way toward the White House. On every antenna, on the backside of every car, and flapping like flags from sidewalk supporters, is the symbol of this new movement: the White Ribbon.




When we arrive, we go directly to the White House Lawn and begin passing out ribbons to the multitude of people waiting for the protest to begin. Politicians, celebrities, entertainers and hand selected citizens stand at the microphone one after the other, offering testimonials and expressing outrage at a corrupted health care system that puts profit before people. Our message to the President and Congress is clear:


Single Payer is the Solution. We Demand it Now.


Listen to the Mad As Hell Doctors Theme Song!

https://madashelldoctorstour.com/uploads/01_Mad_As_Hell_Final_Mix.mp3

Written and Performed by WICKLINE

Content copyright 2009. Adam Klugman. All rights reserved.

some thoughts on healthcare issues

As this is not a debate about the value of various theorists, but a conversation on how to solve serious social dilemmas, why not concentrate on defining how healthcare distribution might best work for the general improvement of health, suiting the economics to the solution, and not vice versa.

I find it amusing that those who are recipients of socialized healthcare and appear to want an oligarchic system are blaming the other side for their own failings and railing against a proposed system employing a capitalist solution -- competition.

It is not (in the case of the plans being proposed in Congress) private or public insurance, but a choice between the two. Theoretically (if you believe in capitalist theory), the competition will bring about better products coming to the market in terms of benefits and costs.

What are these big unruly unpayable expenses opponents refer to? If many people are keeping the insurance they have, and many others are opting in to an extension of the federal civil services system, and the costs of the government system are lower due to lack of need to make a profit or pay huge salaries/bonuses or scare us with expensive advertising, et al, with the idea that either the private corps will do what they need to to compete or wither away into single payer, where are all these expenses? Yes, there are programs intended to streamline data, improve communications, learn the best practices and get the information out there, encourage more people to become doctors and nurses with tuition reimbursements for those willing to work in needed areas, but after the initial outlay these will actually save money in the healthcare industry.

The "public" plan is not your scary "single-payer government run health maintanence by fiat" system as some seem to think. It is basically an extension of the federal civil service plan, which the congressional reps who use it seem to think is first rate. People pay in and get health insurance, just like the private plans. Everyone gets the same rules as far as governmental regulation of health insurance is concerned, basically to insure that the customer gets what he/she wants to be paying for. If private insurers can't give the customers what we want, they ought to be in another business anyway.

If the private healthcare insurance industry was so interested in actually giving the best product to the American people, they've had decades of cries for healthcare reform from the American people in which to make a better product. Obviously, they are happy with their profits which often come from the despicable behavior of keeping people from the healthcare they need in order to get back to productive lives -- short term profit over long term benefit. If they can't make a decent living from selling a quality product, they ought to be in another line of work.

Even if we were to postulate that "costs" equal actual monetary exchange, there are far more costs to denying affordable healthcare for a population than the outlay on the bottom line. The reason the free market (so-called) doesn't work is because it is based on short-sighted profit/loss and not on the actual work needed by the populace. If we were to devise a national attitude toward providing healthcare based on the true goals of optimizing the health of the people while assuring their freedoms of choice, the ultimate result could well be far less costly in the bottom line sense, while tremendously value generating in the larger sense.

I envision community healthcare facilities, community healthcare professionals, community healthcare colleges. Those who could easily afford it would be encouraged to pay for sustaining subscriptions. Those who had nothing would get free subscriptions, or would get government subsidies such as Medicaid, but with much less cost. Those of moderate means would pay less than they do now for "insurance" yet get much better care without all the denials. Healthcare professionals could spend their time giving care, not dealing with insurance companies or billings. Just a little common sense, enlightened self-interest and calm deliberation could do it.

It occurs to me that a big part of where we went wrong with healthcare was in not sufficiently optimizing our corps of primary care physicians. Perhaps the emphais should be to build the hospitals, manufacture the equipment, train the doctors, invest in a healthy society.

How did we get to this point where we have a "healthcare" payment system which excludes those who most need it? How did we allow bureaucrats working for the health insurance industry to make the rules about how we are allowed to access the care and advice we need to be healthy and productive citizens?

What if we boycotted unsatisfactory "health" insurance? What if instead of paying these corporations, we had direct subscriptions to healthcare facilities and providers? What if people within communities got together with local healthcare providers and developed systems in the best interests of all groups involved?

We need to take back our health; take back our bodies; take back our minds; take back responsibility to make sure the marketplace provides what we need at a cost we can afford -- or find a different market place, and paradigm.

There are a lot of systems that could work. What can't work is the mess we've got here now.

Compassion is not necessary to understand that the healthier we all are, the healthier we all become. When there are people carrying disease because they can't get the healthcare to cure them, they are spreading more disease. When there are people chronically too ill to work, the work they would have done is left to overworked others, or left undone to all of our detriment. When children are too sick to learn, they do not become our hoped for future. When older people are left too sick to care for themselves, the subsequent loss from our lives of what they have to pass on is ever more incalculable and their subsequent depression brings us all down. We find ourselves with a system creating much more spiraling of pain, hardship, loss, despair, erosion of values, sickness. More to the point than compassion (which is so often passive) is enlightened self-interest.


I (as a thinking person) would think that if the insurance companies actually wanted to be old school capitalists, providing goods and services in return for profits by working better than the competition, they would usefully pay for the healthcare of their customer base (we, the people). It's not about capitalism v. socialism. It's about idiocy (or was that "the definition of insanity) v. trying to figure out a system that provides healthcare for American bodies.

The truly disgusting (and probably illegal if some really creative hotshot class action lawyer wants to do the work) part is where these companies take all these people's money on the false claim of providing payment for these clients' healthcare needs while fully actively working to deny payment any way they can.

What many so-called pro-capitalists neglect to take into account is that what these insurance companies are doing is not capitalism but charlatanism.

People seem to be afraid of the word "socialized." Think of it this way:

We as a nation created a government to serve our needs that are about social/physical/legal infrastructure because these underlying services allow us all and each to have a secure and useful structure in which to order our lives in our each individual own direction. It was something we did, quite consciously back after the Revolution to make our lives easier and allow for greater productivity. Thus, government services are not our enemies, unless we leave their control to our enemies. Aha! We see our civil servants as our enemies. We probably see everybody who isn't us (or maybe as in Pogo: "We have seen the enemy and he is us!") as "the enemy" whom we must defend against at all cost. Well, the cost is the lose/lose/lose situation we make of all of our lives.

On the other hand, the current plan is not about socialized medicine (though the planners, getting their excellent healthcare from taxpayer funds are recipients of socialized medicine). The government option is actually based on the capitalist theory's wonderful idea of competition to create a more broad-based market of choice for the consumer. If the private insurance industry doesn't want government competition, they ought to provide that broad base that the consumers actually want, like proper capitalists, instead of whining about theories and hypotheticals that they don't even properly understand. But why go through all the trouble of creating business models that serve the consumer when you can pay congressional reps and clever ad agencies to get the consumer to be your foodsource: suck em dry and throw em away.

So you folks got your widgets up your yaya over a theory -- not even as good as Evolution. Evolution is a scientific theory with years of research as yet keeping it alive. Socialism is merely an economic theory, a theory about a theory. It is a bunch of words/ideas that have been thrown about. No one is forcing anyone to socialize or share wealth which isn't even real here. We are talking, thinking, finding some manner of fixing a situation which most agree is untenable. I don't care if what we come up with is part communist theory, part capitalist theory, a whole lot of science fiction theory and more fantasy than fact as long as in the actual practice people get the healthcare they need and no one is made a pauper.

The insurance industry has big gun lobbyists, big money interests that speak loudly to lawmakers. Yet, for all those employers complaining about paying for their employees' health insurance (and those maligned because they don't provide employees health insurance), for all the people spreading diseases because they can't afford medical treatment, for all those people getting so sick that their treatment costs when unavoidable are much higher than necessary thus increasing the spread out cost to us all, for all those much lauded anchor of our economy small businesses who again lose so much potential business because people are bankrupt or just broke and hopeless due to medical bills they cannot possibly pay, for all those with pre-existing medical conditions who can't get insurance at any kind of reasonable price because they actually need the services, for all those seriously ill or with close family members seriously ill who have to stress out over healthcare costs when they need to be concentrating on wellness, and so on, and so on, and so on ... can't we figure out a way to do the right thing for all of us?

It is the paying for healthcare that is the issue, here. There are a great many other possible issues about healthcare, service providers, availability, greater inclusion of modalities, and so on. There is no free healthcare, unless you are caring for yourself (which we each ought to be, not because the government says we have to). When we have healthcare insurance, the point as far as the insurance company is concerned is their profit -- not our health.

Doesn't it strike you as a bit weird that we have to fight over status in terms of institutions like marriage or employment to get such "benefits" as health insurance?

Much as I understand the efficacy a well-appointed single payer plan, I also can understand some of the concerns of the more fiscally conservative and those who fear a one size (which never) fits all government-sponsored health insurance maybe without the kinds of restrictions we loathe from the private insurers, but with an aura of "health police." I have been advocating (for decades) a nonprofit sector solution. The strongly positive element I foresee in health coops is that they can be customized for the individual group, creating what we like to call multi-solution experimentation.

My point is that we need the mixing-up of the normative, the change to get the insurance industry to be actually responsive to the needs of their consumers. The plan being considered by Congress does not negate the possibility of any other private/nongovernmental nonprofit ideas being considered in individual communities. Meanwhile, we do need reform as immediately as possible to save lives and resources.



some articles on health and healthcare:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Is ANY Health Insurance a Good Idea?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

How American Health Care Killed My Father

http://liujiaoourhealth.blogspot.com/2009/07/top-18-foods-that-improve-your-brain.html

Top 18 Foods That Improve Your Brain Function

http://liujiaoourhealth.blogspot.com/2009/08/dance-more-live-more-healthy.html

Dance More , Live More Healthy

http://www.naturalnews.com/026738_thyme_health_food.html

Live Naturally with Herbs: Thyme

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/why-i-am-a-conservative-o_b_259869.html

Why I Am a Conservative on Health Care Reform

http://www.greenpassion.org/f11/granny-storm-crows-list-july-2009-update-13746/

Medical Marijuana urls list

http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/5_myths_our_sick_health_care_system_8451

5 Myths on Our Sick Health Care System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care

Universal Health Care throughout the world

http://www.areturntohealing.com/images/introduction.pdf

from: A Return To Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine
http://www.areturntohealing.com/excerpts.html

cubicle diptych

cubicle woman

The moments go by if you forget they're there. Sucking in sweetness, hot sugared coffee, aroma into memory.
It might be a warm, clammy late summer afternoon. Hints of autumn like blackberry spicing the air.
The people here are decent. They smile to make conversation a pleasant bit of business.
They want me to feel safe, cared for. It doesn't matter that we are never more than strangers,
passing faces, smiling. They bring me coffee with sugar and plastic sticks for stirring.
In this moment all of the world turns so skillfully I move along without pause for acknowledgement,
stealthily aware.



Cubicle Woman and me

The minutes move slowly, floating
through non-uniform waves of air
Here is solid, always, interminable
A small, dark woman,
waiflike were she not so clearly lined
from age or weathering
Her movements almost frail,
yet surely determined,
movements like one in a dream
where objects may so easily
transform
Not like this solid place, this
monastery of healing
All in gradations of white,
air almost frigidly white
welcome in the fever
White walls, clarified air
take well to imagery
Vivid primitive paintings
cadmium yellow, vermillion, cobalt blue
flashing, mutating here to there
We are in an old movie
of danger and romance
Silently, without smile or frown,
she stirs sugar from bright white packets
into her curl of steam
hearth and home.

August 10, 2009 Laurie Corzett/libramoon

my summer transformation

vision dream

Yes, cold
sweetly biting snow
invigorating mounting
rising through long still,
awaiting challenge
Climbing toward thrilling
toward feeling
I am the child of adventure



cubicle woman

The moments go by if you forget they're there. Sucking in sweetness, hot sugared coffee, aroma into memory.
It might be a warm, clammy late summer afternoon. Hints of autumn like blackberry spicing the air.
The people here are decent. They smile to make conversation a pleasant bit of business.
They want me to feel safe, cared for. It doesn't matter that we are never more than strangers,
passing faces, smiling. They bring me coffee with sugar and plastic sticks for stirring.
In this moment all of the world turns so skillfully I move along without pause for acknowledgement,
stealthily aware.

august 10, 2009

human nurture

If life could be seen as everpresent celebrations
enjoying all the ride, not just the sweet charms of Spring
even loving the eventuality of ending this incarnation
when the echoes of our voice no longer sing
can be the key, the ever sought for cure for pain
so dance, my love, in wild celebration, every season a special party
accompany the flowers, snow, and rain, every day alive in ecstasy




I suggest a two-tiered economy. Those who like to play with their funny money, gambling or showing off shiny toys, can have their playworld. We who want to trade in actual useful goods and services can have our more substantially based world.



we created money. It was an experiment that got out of
hand. Now people think this creation of the human mind has real value.

Making money is not making anything. Those who merely trade pieces of paper
with no goods or services behind them are playing some kind of worthless
game. I have heard (and have no reason to doubt) that making money is easy.
All you have to do is have single-minded devotion, keep your nose clean and
your eyes on the glittery prize. Buy low, sell high. Start at whatever
level you find yourself, and keep working upward. Not very creative. Yes,
there are all those creative financing techniques, and creative schemes,
cons, manipulations. Still, nothing is really being created but more
innings in a game.

Now, working to end poverty could be a very creative pursuit. How about
creating a way to recreate our understanding of money, finance, economics,
resource distribution, work, profit, the whole lexicon. These words too can
have simple meanings other than the pet definitions we have learned to love.



It is rather sweet that we may these days find our business network through "personal" relating. This brings to my mind a concept of business based on actual trade of goods/services/ideas/inspirations et al of what we each have/desire.



I don't go to bookstores as such. I ride the web with a few well chosen words thrown into the Google oracular maw.



If fishes were wishes
and swimming magical dance
with the ocean waves
we would never need ask
such questions
as touch or untouched imply
It is the world of make believe
Believe I can make you take me
where you would never willingly go
Believe you never swim nor dance
nor wish nor touch
without express permission
Believe that agony befalls
only fallen angels
cast out of heaven's golden
touch
out of the haven of fantasy
out of the ocean's deep reverence
because you dared, naked,
stand open to adventure
before understanding
the price




It is evil, imho, to create children as trophies or altars upon which to worship your own pro-creative ability, or because it is what is naturally expected.



The opposite of hate would not be love, but something more like indifference. Love is, for we complex creatures anyway, made up more of anti-fear than anti-hate. We look to love relationships for security. We love to engage in activities that make us feel empowered, or take us out of our ordinary fear-filled lives.

Hate is not non-love or anti-love. We may hate someone whom we once loved after rejection, but that may well be more about a variety of possible fears: of being unlovable; of being played for a fool (indicating that the loved person has power you do not); of having given that loved person power of you when you were open to vulnerability out of love; etc.

Hate is a violent emotion, directing toward elimination of the hated object. Hate may be a subset of fear, or it may have other origins. Certainly one can develop hate through anger and outrage that is not fear (or love) based, but based on anguish over trampled ideals, frustration with obstacles to what one is working toward, or feeling dishonored, disrespected, ignored. This is not about lack of love, but more on the order of lack of position or power.




Science does not claim anything. Science is a method of creating order out of chaos created by humans for our benefit. It has nothing to do with spirituality or even Truth. It is about figuring out how stuff happens so we can make the stuff happen we like and block the stuff we don't. It is also about finding stuff out that we can get paid for by those who think our discoveries/inventions can be useful to them. I don't understand why there is the appearance of a problem of separating out science and spirituality. These are very different areas of human concern.



We have desires to tell us in which direction to move

Suffering is there to tell us that something is wrong

The ego is our saviour, martyred to our cause

The ego is an organizing principal and figurehead. It doesn't drive anything. Desires are emotional attachments. Emotions (e - motion) want to move us in the direction that makes them more comfortable. Suffering is a signal. It tells us we are out of balance. The point of suffering is not punishment but warning that you need to get your balance back.

Suffering may be eternal, but it is not the meaning of life. And out of it can come empathy, fellow feeling, deep connections of friendship. It doesn't go away; but it can transform.


Much as I understand the efficacy a well-appointed single payer plan, I also can understand some of the concerns of the more fiscally conservative and those who fear a one size (which never) fits all government-sponsored health insurance maybe without the kinds of restrictions we loathe from the private insurers, but with an aura of "health police." I have been advocating (for decades) a nonprofit sector solution. The strongly positive element I foresee in health coops is that they can be customized for the individual group, creating what we like to call multi-solution experimentation.

It occurs to me that a big part of where we went wrong with healthcare was in not sufficiently optimizing our corps of primary care physicians.

I (as a thinking person) would think (if that were allowed) that if the insurance companies actually wanted to be old school capitalists, providing goods and services in return for profits by working better than the competition, they would use all that money to pay for the healthcare of their customer base (we, the people). It's not about capitalism v. socialism. It's about idiocy (or was that "the definition of insanity) v. trying to figure out a system that provides healthcare for American bodies.

The truly disgusting (and probably illegal if some really creative hotshot class action lawyer wants to do the work) part is where these companies take all these people's money on the false claim of providing payment for these clients' healthcare needs while fully actively working to deny payment any way they can.

There are a lot of systems that could work. What can't work is the mess we've got here now.

what many so-called pro-capitalists neglect to take into account is that what these insurance companies are doing is not capitalism but charlatanism.

so you folks got your widgets up your yaya over a theory -- not even as good as Evolution. Evolution is a scientific theory with years of research as yet keeping it alive. Socialism is merely an economic theory, a theory about a theory. It is a bunch of words/ideas that have been thrown about. No one is forcing anyone to socialize or share wealth which isn't even real here. We are talking, thinking, finding some manner of fixing a situation which most agree is untenable. I don't care if what we come up with is part communist theory, part capitalist theory, a whole lot of science fiction theory and more fantasy than fact as long as in the actual practice people get the healthcare they need and no one is made a pauper.

His beloved mother was murdered by (what should be considered, any good lawyers out there?) a criminal policy toward disallowing the distribution of life-saving medical care to those who need it most.



Someone suggested in conversation that we just leave Gitmo, leave whoever is still imprisoned with doors open "You are free" and let fate take its course. Perhaps Cuba would find them to be appropriate new citizens.



I have my first draft up hoping for feedback to make the second draft more reader friendly:

http://caelastory.blogspot.com

the parts are in reverse chronological order, thus "Out of the Woods" which appears first is the last section and so forth. The prequel at the very end is a stand alone piece. So start with the "Prologue."



What if we had a different idea of nations. What if all the sites holy to any cult could not be owned secularly at all. What is the "holy lands" in the middle east were proclaimed such and given over to spiritual tourism. People living there could offer hospitality as a business for the economic welfare of themselves and their site. Some could offer historical information. Thus all these sites would regain their stories, their holiness, their power to inspire.



I've been wanting to learn to read Arabic, so that all those beautiful squiggles will also make sense to me.



"Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry, and you cry alone."

So, let's get together a laughter parade to point and giggle at the silly hate parades.



and thus the tail turns

sending chimes of fantastic relief

peeling like onions

(don't cry)

lift up your orgasmic organization

and ecstatically whimper



I get so disappointed with the vast crass Hollywood avalanche when I know the possibility of true cinematic power and wonder exists.



They promise, PROMISE to LOVE only you, you are my every wanted dream, forever. FOR EVERy little thing you do, the way my heart sings anew only in your arms ... He woos with earnest charm, with all the preying need you can not in good heart deny. Why would he lie so horribly? Why does he demand what none could ever be in return for agony as he hits and spits and commands you must obey? How did life become this way?



Why bother with a pop psych law when you can have real magic?



It occurs to me that the real way to make money online is niche marketing. Whereas generally mass marketing is what we are familiar with in the media, the internet provides opportunities for very narrow cast reaching out to small, specific potential clientele. Though your product/service may have limited appeal in terms of percentages, those small percentages translate to large individual numbers. One dollar profit from each of say one million clients is one million dollars without anyone feeling pinched. What can you offer?



It doesn't matter if we CAUSED global warming or its consequences. What does matter is what we do about it -- not for the Earth, but for our own well-being.



strangers no more strange

than children of one mind

born of different wombs



If deep early wounding makes the prospect of more wounding from betrayals too unbearable, it makes sense to be self-protective. Loneliness is not the worst we can experience. If we allow ourselves to feel any emotional pain all the way through with loving acceptance, we can learn to move through it.



it is time to let go

create a void in which

to scry for change



Government as such is not the enemy. It's not even a soldier. Government is a creation of the people governing and governed. It's not the system that causes the rot in the system, but the ignorance of the planners. That's why we need to continually be watching, examining, criticizing, critiquing, speaking, keeping our minds alive, our eyes clear, our voices strong, and our honor honorable.



I have two cows

I milk them and make cheese

I trade some of my cheese for a share in a vineyard

My neighbors and I enjoy wine and cheese and stimulating conversation

I feel happily stimulated



The point I see here is that we do have to protect our kids by being honest, making sure they know how to defend themselves, how to scream and run for help, and that they are safe in telling their family members and friends anything. Con artists of all ilks (and those who con kids into these dangerous even life-threatening situations are still playing a con) like to find marks who do a good bit of their work for them out of insecurities, ignorance, or an inability to defend themselves.

oh, btw, not all labeled "sex offenders" are fearful or even offensive. That label can be more widely applied than the picture we may have of what it implies. On the other hand, plenty of perfectly "normal" folks from what we are aware of them do horrid things and just haven't been caught.



Far from being a distraction from "more important" issues, this goes to the heart of the issue from which all the others fall. We the American people have allowed ourselves to be represented throughout a crazy, unstable world, many of us regrettably out and out supporting, not just illegal but reprehensible and arguably evil activities. Showing ourselves to have been duped but no longer, to be willing and able to use the law for its purpose of correction, to not only be outraged but out to make the needed changes, would go very far to healing a great many angry wounds and getting us on track to go forward in strength.



Evolution is not necessarily moving in a positive direction. Mutations are more often harmful to the organism than helpful. What is helpful for human kind is our adaptability. We are able to adapt our beliefs and behaviors to better succeed at our goals.



There are a helluva lot more than two world views. Many do not reference god at all. Those who try to fit an unruly often chaotic mass of space/time/consciousness into two can only be pitied for their obvious limitation.



serenity ghazal

Awakened from enchanted dream, a life serene

To find an out from strife into being serene

Lifted leaves reveal a world long unseen

Nature in her magic way, strongly serene

Walking wonder's garden unhardens heart

Following the footsteps of wise old serene

Opening new pathways to expressive art

Learning from life's lessons to be so serene

Nature human or including all that breathes

So many intertwinings sweetly serene

Moonchild's magic enters and gently weaves

Words and worlds of visions keeping me serene





I don't have to prove a belief. You want proof of the existence of godkind? Look to the vast bodies of literature/art/debate. All that exists is not necessarily on the material/provable plane. There are agnostics only because there are gnostics. From thesis/antithesis grows synthesis which is the basis of creation.



kids, yes even young kids, can be viciously cruel to each other even when they have no idea of what they speak. Yes, they are mouthing what they have heard elsewhere, but where did they learn it is such a wonderful trait to put down anyone you can come up with a nasty nickname for?



darkness can uncloud, so clear

letting go of sunny daylight reason

merging with that inner-landscape season

exposing secrets held close from fear

tasting possibilities of power



I like the point and laugh technique.

"Racist, Fascist, nasty, smelly gasfest! Eeuwww, get me a gas mask; that old racist windbag's back."



#1 clearly shows that the god of the Ten Commandments damn well knows there are plenty of other gods about. He is telling the slaves escaping from Egypt that they owe Him first allegiance. It's a personal issue. The rest of us can do as we please.

What is the point to anything without God? The same as the point with God -- we get to figure it out for ourselves.

Why does there seem to be no discussion, or even acknowledgement, here of the vast diversity of god(desse)s in favor of this one upstart middle eastern deity who was so insecure and jealous that he commanded the rabble of former slaves and misfits whom he helped escape from Egypt to follow a whole slew of ridiculous rules and smite his enemies in return for supposed protection? Yeah, he was a good manager, got lieutenants from his hordes to apply his laws with iron fists and other weapons. He got them all riled up and bloodthirsty and sent them out to convert the world (kind of like Hitler?). Apparently his message was to their liking. At this point he's got his folks so brainwashed that they really believe he's the only game in town. If he's so all powerful, what's this jealousy and secondhand smiting all about? He makes clear in his First Commandment that he is fully aware of the other gods, and you better not worship them, or he'll have a hissy fit.



There are plenty of people who need to be cured of their heterosexuality.



There is quite a bit I don't understand about how people operate, including some sick need to cure others of nondiseases which these sick puppies have created for more rationales to be what ought to be inhuman.



Science is not a thing, it is a method, a purposeful study. Homo sapien is sapien because we have that need to explore, learn, figure out our world at whatever level we observe it. That is science. The rest is just windowdressing for grant money.



what is the aim of education
to release old programs into consciousness
that we may see and feel, thus find impulse to creation
turning ancient fear to current search for bliss



I have been aware that what people tend to want from art is performance, entertainment. We more introverted artists I suppose are better to learn to be content with quiet acceptance and joy in our own creative activities.



Yeah, I've spent all these decades hopelessly naive. I thought: "It's just me; I am a failure. Look at all these fine successful businesses. If they can create that profit machine, oughtn't I also have that ability if I only applied myself?" Recently following a thought stream about the current economic mess, I had a realization. The game is fixed, by the winners. I mean, yeah, I had heard about this idea before, but it didn't properly feed my guilt, I guess. But, really, when I try to figure out selling my wares I first have to look at all the rules, regs, high costs in time/energy and/or money to get a legitimate business on track. For the big guys with whole departments taking care of legal, accounting, public relations, lobbying, et al, no problema. For an individual without connections, investment capital, or incredible time/energy and time/energy management skills, not so easy.



Have you noticed that amazing lack of customer consideration from purveyors of utilities, or for that matter most businesses these days. We ought not be buying their bull. Where's that bright shiny marketplace of competition so lauded by capitalist apologizers?

remembering freedom

Prophecy

And He became The One
as we all came together
in His direction
anointing Him our Saviour
We, so ready to be saved
from evil history
from slavery and hate
looking for a better fate
for our kids
(and, don't kid yourself, ourselves).
Caught up, trapped, in the trappings
of fashion-conscious
altered consciousness
Drugs to cure us of our many flaws
because if you're not flawless you
haven't got a chance
in the marketplace fierce competition.
A youthful escapade can ruin you
for the life
of our peers' and elders' expectations.
And then where are you?
May as well be burning in eternal
damnation -- at last
At least Satan wants you
for your sins.
In a mythical colony,
far from their petulant King
it is said a people
fought and died, and lived again
for freedom.
It is said such pageant plays
are still performed today.
"Freedom is not Free; but based
on blood sacrifice." They say.
Freedom dependent on militia,
on strictly disciplined troops
firing into pregnant crowds.
Ancient dreamers foretold
potent prophecy.
We will not listen.
We insist on martyrdom
worshipping, as we do,
cults of murder.
This human life leads inexorably
to eternal death,
just as we demand,
when we all come together
anointing yet another One.

June 21, 2009 Laurie Corzett/libramoon


The Lay of the Land

I.
From your smoke-coughing cities
to your desolate plains
The children of Midas have taken the reins
And left you besoiled in blood-splattered stains
With none fit to wash you to purity.

The air-waved cacophony pleads for a song
That will once more unite you ennobled and strong
To take back the glory to which you belong
To wrench freedom from dreams of security.

The old man, he wanders through librium clouds
The young take their distance
to move through the crowds
And every one fitted for life-draining shrouds
Reflect only on death's dance of conformity.

While poisoning rays permeate land and air
The high class step out like they haven't a care
They're bound to discover their world-rending tear
But can they comprehend the enormity?

Ridiculous sages exhort peace and love
Say we each have our choice of reality
So we fight over contexts and deny what we can;
But reality marches on.

II.
Journeyman upon the road
Listening to the jungle drums
learns to bring it all together
as nightly his guitar he strums.
From the Woodstock Nation on to '84
With his banner of music he learns to keep score
And the score, as it's written, keeps costing him more
But it's also what's keeping him dancing.
With a beat in his heart and a song for his soul,
it keeps him journeying on.

III.
Winter creeps whitely over streetlamp and spire.
Muted to whispers the Grand Freedom Choir.
A clattering chatter overtakes the high wire
Pure white like the night of beginnings.

The children have nestled all snug in their schools
In joyous rote marching, they take in the rules
Determined to never be taken for fools
Or give back an inch of their winnings.

Silent, the singers are searching for voice
They know in their souls it's a matter of choice
They need to find reason, a cause, to rejoyce,
A newly turned path to felicity.

A new day is dawning, but where is the sun?
Our freedom and faith are defined by the gun.
The symbol of power overrules everyone
'Til we create our own electricity.

But under cover of darkness a banner's being stitched
Of patchwork-bright colors and radiance
To someday soon be unfurled in the breeze
As we march to freedom's song.

IV.
High upon a sacred mount,
Hearing now soft strands of sound
Journeyman no more, but questor
Nods benignly; ear to ground.
He's learned his song clearly, and clearly he sings.
Hearing an echo, he knows what it brings.
The time is approaching to fasten his wings
and swoop down to join the festivities.
A new day is dawning, and he is the son
And it's time to rejoyce in the dawn.

V.
But where are the marchers, the pipes and the drums?
Back in the schoolrooms, relearning their sums;
Or sleeping with vermin, despised in their slums
Unable to speak more than mumblings.

From time to time daylight enbrightens their souls
But most of their time's spent enslaved to the doles.
The wonder is not the dearth of their goals
But that they've not given up on their stumblings.

The class struggle's nothing compared to the fight
'Tween having it all and doing it right
'cause whether you're black, brown,
red, yellow, or white
You're hooked on the sweet rush of buying.

But the dollar's declining; and so is the yen.
From swords we'll build plowshares and take up the pen
For here is the where, and now is the when
And the choice is 'tween living and dying.

Is winter receding? Is spring on the rise?
Do we hear on the air a new melody?
Do we strive to accept; do we try to deny?
Or awaken our voices to song?

VI.
Having witnessed, having spoken
Having reached the cusp of change
Standing midst the still unbroken
Deploying troops throughout the range
A new age martyr need not die
But only stand beneath the sky
And sing each soldier's battle cry
To emanate strength and courage
To keep them true upon the course
-- An emissary of the dawn!

VII.
We shout our faith clearly, without fear or shame
We've learned to play music -- and not play the game.
We've let loose our captors and broadcast their name
That they be captured and cleansed back to purity.

It's a tried and true story we chant here anew
Of a born again many set alight by a few
Remember the Beatles, the Stones, Dead and Who
Back when freedom meant more than security.

We're learning to share in an effort of gain
To harness the sunshine and bring back the rain
To take off our blinders and learn to be sane
Yet maintain self within that conformity.

Each singing in glory, permeating the air
Feeling good to be cared for, and better to care
As we mix up the glue and mend the great tear
Finding courage to face the enormity.

We don't need the sages to find peace and love
We don't need to fight against reality.
We need to learn rhythm and reason and rhyme
And raise our souls with song.

VIII.
Knowing now his goal completed
Having given all he'd learned
On his private mountain seated
Enraptured in the peace he's earned
He sings his song clearly, with joy and with fire
It's all that he has and fulfills all desire
It's getting him high, and then bringing him higher
And setting his spirit to dancing.
With a beat in his heart
And a song for a soul
Wafting aloft . . .
And he's gone.

mindful chatter

I think problems often arise in relationships over a commonly held (if sometimes unconscious) equation of "love" with "obligation." The obligation is more about a desire for security. I think what we hold as the ideal of "love" has to do with being totally blown away by this being's existence, so that it is a primary value and honor to you to have them in your life.



I have no idea why we would want to embrace a philosophy of "life is suffering." It is untrue. Suffering is not a condition of living, but an interpretation. All life is moving, learning, adapting, metamorphosing, interchanging with environment.



I was brought to mind about the intense thrust of energy that was the late '60s when everyone seemed so actively involved in creating new ways of understanding our shared experience. We felt the older generation was mired in traditions. Scientific traditions and the "realism" of the "modern" world had reduced the mysteries to material cause and effect. Somehow we got a spark of something else, and a desire to pursue alternative visions.

Yet the conservative material world insisted that anything beyond their careful straight and narrow was just fringe. Many were co-opted by material realities. Others found compromise between science as stolid knowledge and crazy new ideas that just might have validity. Thus "normal" folks now accept ideas about multi-dimensional universes and cause/effect paradigm shifts.

Thus, I am perceiving that old cyclic expansion/consolidation wave



These days, when we are learning more and more about nonobvious interconnections, mind/body/spirit whole systems, vast ripple effects of the cosmos, etc., how can we not understand that "science" and "spiritual truth" are not inextricably entwined?



There was a neuroscience of education docu-show on PBS tonight which revealed quite fascinating results from studies showing that kids-teens-adults, contrary to popularized belief, can and do learn, grow new brain cells, all through life. Many get teased/bullied or tease/bully because of "learning disabilities" which target them as different in a less-than sense. One kid on the show talked of being tempted to join a gang and enter a violent lifestyle because he could not learn in school and got treated badly by the other kids there. Violence begetting violence. When will our collective brain cells grow enough to learn? They spoke of (and showed real kids in the classroom) new discoveries that show quite simple techniques (no drugs or stigma of "disability") that can help kids whose minds are to some extent disorganized or slower on the uptake in certain regards catch up to their peers in learning. I have also seen evidence (I read a lot on neuroscience, especially in regard to healing through dance) that cognitive-behavioral kinds of therapies work better than drugs or traditional psychotherapies for kids with mood disorders. You take the kid for who he is, and teach him how to more effectively interact with his environment. It's not about punishment or blame or labeling. It's about teaching the kid what he didn't naturally pick up on his own.



I say, if exhausted, take the time to really feel it all the way down, all the way through. R e l a x, drift, let your self float on an eternal breeze. Find the music that resonates with this moment for you, and dance, at whatever level your body feels it. Let go. Swirl into the music, entranced. Repeat as desired.



oh my goddess, what sweetness
my breath trembles
my heart recognizes
these words



We move along a path, but it is not clear, straight, narrow, nor linear. We believe, or we work through ideas, ways of connecting and disconnecting, moving through the steps and scenery. We believe we know something about how things are, and we want something different. We develop plans and goals and measurements. As long as we are not attached, not too invested in our beliefs to change, it is all just another class, another experiment.



Far from a character defect, anger when used correctly (which we rarely do because we are trained against it) is a powerful emotional purgative and precursor of useful action.



what are the "effects of poverty"? Just not having money is not really an adverse effect. It's not having the support, the safe haven home and community, parents away working most of the time and too tired to even really be there when they are physically. It's food that keeps you hungry even when you do get to eat. It's impure water and air, pollutants that get passed off to the poorer neighborhoods. It's assaults of all kinds from those around who have pretty much given up on life and just fall into violence until it kills them. I'd say there are pretty bad effects of the unhappy lives around them for kids in a variety of economic situations.



Words
refined tools in
clumsy hands
cannot grasp such subtle
consistencies
Existence in a word
is but a play, a farce,
a comedic troop
signifying their wares
Reality -- this word we
freely swear
in imagined duress
or attempts at superior
demean is but a remnant
from a dream
when words came soaked
in conscious context
we do not seem to have
the wits to hold



I was envisioning (so shoot me, I'm an idealist) community healthcare facilities, community healthcare professionals (maybe even community healthcare colleges). Those who could easily afford it would be encouraged to pay for sustaining subscriptions. Those who had nothing would get free subscriptions, or would get government subsidies such as Medicaid, but with much less cost. Those of moderate means would pay less than they do now for "insurance" yet get much better care without all the denials. Healthcare professionals could spend their time giving care, not dealing with insurance companies or billings. Just a little common sense, enlightened self-interest and calm deliberation could do it.

What if we boycotted unsatisfactory "health" insurance? What if instead of paying these corporations, we had direct subscriptions to healthcare facilities and providers? What if people within communities got together with local healthcare providers and developed systems in the best interests of all groups involved?

We need to take back our health; take back our bodies; take back our minds; take back responsibility to make sure the marketplace provides what we need at a cost we can afford -- or find a different market, place, and paradigm

It just stands to reason. We don't want sick folks cluttering up our workplaces, markets, schools, good neighborhoods. The sicker you are, the more you cost, until you can't pay anymore, get hopelessly in debt, become a drag rather than a driver of the system, get by on "social" programs and stop yer bitchin'.

The insurance industry has big gun lobbyists, big money interests that speak loudly to lawmakers. Not just health insurers. I was recently in a conversation about auto insurance in which I was struck when someone said that if you don't have enough coverage or personal assets and injure or are injured in an accident, there would be no payment for medical bills over the insured's coverage. Thus, auto insurers benefit from responsible drivers (or those who don't want personal liability) getting the more expensive coverage. Yet, for all those employers complaining about paying for their employees' health insurance (and those maligned because they don't provide employees health insurance), for all the people spreading diseases because they can't afford medical treatment, for all those people getting so sick that their treatment costs when unavoidable are much higher than necessary thus increasing the spread out cost to us all, for all those much lauded anchor of our economy small businesses who again lose so much potential business because people are bankrupt or just broke and hopeless due to medical bills they cannot possibly pay, for all those with pre-existing medical conditions who can't get insurance at any kind of reasonable price because they actually need the services, for all those seriously ill or with close family members seriously ill who have to stress out over healthcare costs when they need to be concentrating on wellness, and so on, and so on, and so on ... can't we figure out a way to do the right thing for all of us?

It's not a matter of whether smoking, or any potentially dangerous activity, is a great idea. The point is, we don't (I don't) want anyone telling me how to live, even to make me healthier. That's my own business. On the other hand, there are a great many things that are public: air, water, ground, food supply, medications, all those things we either share or buy. I want regulations to keep my resources what they are meant to be, or at least to tell me clearly when they are not. This is not about paying for healthcare.

And it is the paying for healthcare that is the issue, here. There are a great many other possible issues about healthcare, service providers, availability, greater inclusion of modalities, and so on. The points you make here about payment for healthcare are quite valid. There is no free healthcare, unless you are caring for yourself (which we each ought to be, not because the government says we have to). When we have healthcare insurance, the point as far as the insurance company is concerned is their profit -- not our health.

doesn't it strike you as a bit weird that we have to fight over status in terms of institutions like marriage or employment to get such "benefits" as health insurance?





I suppose it is important that we have this debate, that the hidden misconceptions or even pure hatefulness get aired. It is sickening on so many levels. That we reduce our horror that our country would condone this whole program of interrogation based on what one might hope were medieval mindsets and techniques to a debate over "is waterboarding ("controlled" drowning) torture," is to me fearful/dreadful.



some people want to worship Barack Obama. They make excuses for his policies that appear to be different from what we expected from him. I understand. We want to believe. We want to be made safe from above. Yet, Obama is just another man, another politician, another world leader. We can admire what he does when he does what we find admirable. We can support his positions when they are also ours. We can accept what is available from government, do what we can to make it better, and live our lives responsible for our own needs and desires.

-- something akin to a parable





Gitmo MUST be closed! Oh, and our prisons are mostly crowded up with nonviolent drug offenders. Certainly we could find better ways to deal with our drug issues.





They say history is written by the victors
They say we must heed history or repeat it
I have visions of spiraling archetypes
Great warriors, great inventions, simple
living in ecology's eternal change



We seem to like the fighting just fine. It's the day-to-day keeping freedom as a value we prize and work to protect that needs some serious advocacy.

It is a difficult path between rights. We don't want people incarcerated simply for possibly threatening behavior which may never result in harm. We don't want to allow people to go around making threats which may result in harm without restraint. Possibly there ought to be a different kind of mediation system, different from a criminal justice system, for airing of grievances and giving oversight that could keep hostilities from getting out of hand.

The United States was founded as a liberal nation, a great experiment to put into practical use the Enlightenment ideas of the nobility and sovereignty of man. The Bill of Rights were specifically about limiting the scope of government's rule over the individual. Democracy is about rule by the will of the people, but not necessarily strict majority rule. The point is that all of the people be represented and none have our freedoms expediently dismissed.





I have found (if I can make myself) that turning on some evocative music and letting go into dancing will take me to another place where creative ideas flow.





It is quite sad, tragic, that many older people would want to die out of probably a combination of pain, loneliness, feeling useless or at least that they have too little left to give. It is sad and tragic that people have to endure excruciating pain knowing that they will soon, but not soon enough, be dead. It is even more sad and tragic when people endure long horrid years of suffering. We know there are ways to ease pain that often are not effectively administered or sometimes considered.

I believe the choice to end one's own death is a right. As for assisting, perhaps that needs to be clarified. I can certainly see providing lethal poison where the person desiring to kill themselves can reach it. If someone is truly braindead, well, they're dead. It becomes necessary for the living to make appropriate arrangements for the remains. Meanwhile, we do need to arrange for others to know at what point we have decided we no longer want medical care if and when that becomes an issue.





A world of words can be a refuge
holding back, through, outcast deluge
emotional wreckage of incredulous (to the merely weird or mostly indulged)
not because you're of a color or gender or lowered expectation rendered
by those who make the castes
We who watch the normal daily carnage, set back aghast
Deciding not to whimper, but to take up arms, to attack
against the slings and arrows and outright lies by those who
despise based only on their twisted malformation of the facts
When we arise, armed words in hand to demand our inauguration,
our command of all the nation
When we arise, casting off our shackles of dismay
That will be the day
foretold in fables, the turning of the tables,
the day of reckoning
Tell me you will sing
as loudly as I





he bows

flourishing with sudden shyness

unpenned emotion





In my opinion, people get so fired up about governmental interference with their firearms because they see the 2nd Amendment as their guarantee of being able to rise up against unjust governmental authorities. If they were only interested in hunting/protecting their families and themselves from criminals with guns/collecting/sport shooting and such, their would be no need for this fierce opposition to what we may see as reasonable restrictions. Personally, I have always advocated the kinds of restrictions be placed on gun use as are placed on the operating of those dangerous automobiles we so love in terms of licensing following testing. It only seems reasonable to me that someone acquiring an obvious dangerous weapon first show that they know how to operate and maintain it responsibly.

For those who do resist registration for reasons of protection against renegade government, Randy Weaver and David Koresh had plenty of weapons. It could never be enough to fight off the full power of the US. We will have to come up with more effective means to prevent/overthrow government tyranny than armed combat.





Torchwood is a very slick, risqué, funny in that British offhand way like Dr. Who from whence it sprang, scifi series on BBC America (and presumably BBC Britain). Kind of a CSI meets The Avengers meets a rift in the time-space continuum, in Cardiff.





I can see a story
of a world under the sea
of a woman under illusion
that she is living this modernity
we call civilization
busy make a buck and buy
keep churning, never looking backward
to the natural magic that
continually creates us





Man is a happiness seeking animal. Woman has to clean up the mess.





I can't take aspirin without nasty side-effects. None of the otc pain medications do anything for pain for me, but leave me how-do-i-describe groggy/cloudy/molasses-like in brain/body instructions/unable to actually function

It is well known that drugs affect different people differently.





Judges show blatant bias continually. They are the judge. They rule in their courtroom. That's why we have the appellate system, the Supreme Court, and reporters, students, community leaders and others often complaining.





Religion is not fundamentally about spirituality. It is a social construct to keep members of a tribe in line with tribal interests.





I think what people forget in their rush to be holier than the norm is that "enlightenment" is not the goal, merely a signpost. The goal is to feel whole and at home in one's life.





I think it comes down to checking out the individual ideologue's conscience: do you believe in the right to life, or the right to murder? Yeah, yeah, innocent fetus vs. big, bad horribly conflicted mom making an agonized decision based on quite serious considerations and the underpaid, over-worked, highly harassed medical professionals who earnestly work to do their best for their patients -- so you get to deliver "justice" as homicide because you are on the side of the angels rather than the side of God's gift of human reason? See, it's not the Christians, but those who use scripture to worship Satan that held the soul of this murderer.

Yes, they are terrorist extremists. No, they are not Christians in the sense (and what other sense could there be) of following the words and example of the Christ. I know we've all heard that old saw about Satan quoting scripture to His own end. There really are Satanists among us, exacting blood sacrifice and scapegoating whoever they perceive as unholy.

In a perfect world the rights of mother and child would be balanced, each respected, valued and cherished by society which requires them for its very existence.

It is important for the debate to be in the open where we can all see regress, progress, festering wounds before they become lethal. Don't whisper. On the other hand, what we need no more of (been there, done that, have plenty thank you) is angry diatribe, hatefilled warmongering, blasting emotions into situations that are already fraught and frightening thank you.

I understand the frustration and anxiety that leads to a desire to go to extremes in the interest of sincere convictions. As a protestor against the Vietnam War in my teens, I strongly sympathized with the violent rhetoric of the Weather Underground in defense of innocents being outrageously murdered. Note: I never killed nor promoted the murder of anyone.





The cure for bad speech is more speech. We need to stay alert and take evil-speakers, death-mongerers to task with facts.

First they undermined the media, but as we weren't media we did nothing.





People bully because they think they can get away with it. You tell 'em; out 'em; keep them from scurrying back into their hideyholes under the sink (or is that stink).





It's amazing to me that people who are not even aware of the meaning of the words they throw about as epithets have the audacity to accuse those they erroneously call "liberals" of not thinking for themselves.

You see, those who wrap themselves in a flag banner and insist we must follow their revealed code to love America actually are the ones who hate our freedom. It is great to them that people fight and die, as long as we're on top; but they would (and sometimes do) be even happier to kill those of us who actually live a belief in liberty. They hate "liberals" who love our country's ideals and work to keep them, because they are "conservatives" who must obey and be obeyed.





Some believe in happiness. Some believe in murder. Some believe in a holy redeemer who does your murders for you. Yet, we are each happy or not every day, unless, of course, we so sincerely believe we are happy (or not) that nothing else can get in the way, including other beliefs.





you do not realize that "true desire" is true to the individual's deepest self -- not those intermediary "selves" that mistake their desires for the desires they feel are expected. Or, if you postulate a true desire that is not apt to the natural talents of the individual, then, if that desire is true and abiding, the individual certainly can move their lives in the direction to find what is needed to attain that desire.





Believing in oneself is more about knowing oneself, becoming well-acquainted in a deep loving relationship, therefore knowing what is truly meaningful to oneself. Once we know, love and understand our true desires, we can do that which we then set our minds upon, because what we set our minds upon is what we can best do.





Maybe we could usefully speak of "Ego" and "ego." The fully functioning human organism makes use of the Ego, the "I" in internal conversation, the "me" we relate to when acted upon, the "individual person" living out personal life that includes inner and outer relationships. The "ego" would designate that psychological sham syndrome people develop when their Egos are maligned to the point that they don't really relate to anyone.

Perhaps this "spontaneous enlightenment" is what Maslow called peak experience, aha moments when the veil of ignorance is lifted. Imho, not to be bragged about, but enjoyed and learned from.

it's not just "Christians" who are arrogant usurpers of divinity. In fact, the real followers of the teachings of the Christ are generally wonderfully fine folk. I tend to see those "evil" Christians as Satanists, using scripture to worship the evicted angel who was punished for the great sin of hubris.



Dance! The best stress-buster is physical activity; the best physical activity is the most enjoyable. Also, the attendant music is great for getting you back in tune.





I've heard every time a door closes, a window opens so you can jump out. Probably, though, there are a great many doors, open, closed, locked, easily permeable, invisible, temporary. The point is not the door, but where you are going. Which doors matter to you?





You can so easily believe without knowledge at all. You certainly can think with no knowledge at all. But, thinking is what we do when we are examining what we perceive. Believing is what we do when we have already accepted, with or without evidence. Knowledge is in the same house as thinking, not believing.





Astrology is a study ever so much more complex sun signs. It is also not a belief. It is a philosophical practice, a way of describing and analyzing, a theoretical tool.





Hell is creation of the horrors only humans can devise





I had an idea awhile back, not yet gotten beyond that stage, to put together and send out by email an "art for the day" or possibly week, or whatever seemed most desirable, of work by different artists who would subscribe to be part of the service for people who subscribe to get the mailings.





words are not bad

they are tools which get used by people





people don't seem to understand that it is not "New Age nonsense" -- there is a very real body/mind intertwining. Behaviors which we tend to think of as mind based are correlated directly with physical changes in the body. Forces physically affecting the body are interpreted and acted upon by the mind. It is not either/or or even cause/effect but both together every step of the way.





It occurred to me (while watching one of those ubiquitous pharmaceutical ads on tv) that we are living in this time of ironic dichotomy where big business sells us whatever the market will possibly bear of dangerous, addictive, psychoactive substances under the auspices of treating disease while vast numbers of the underclass get vilified, potential lives for themselves and their families destroyed, for self-medicating with (often less dangerous) substances.





A crisis of ineffable beauty
resolved into a painted sky
Cloud Wolf grins





It is unfortunate for many families that their time together is severely limited by responsibilities. For those parents who have to work many hours away from their children to provide material necessities, though you regret the time away, there are opportunities. The important part of parenting is to be there internally for the child in that they know you adore, respect and value them. When you are with them, LISTEN, reflect, show them who you are and who they are to you.





I have found George Soros to be quite intelligent, a creative and practical analyst, and well worth listening to.





I know that it is done, finding perfect peace and contentment. It is a truly wonderful feeling, relaxing all tension, making the ride completely smooth, for a time, for a period of rest and re-creation. I don't think it is a desirable state to stay in though, except at the place of eternal rest.





it's a lot easier to have liberty when you are alive.





Marijuana is not addictive, except in the way that any habit can be. Bi-polar Mood Disorder can be better dealt with through cognitive-behavioral type therapies than medication. It's a matter of reframing your energy fluctuations in a way that becomes useful rather than limiting. Blaming can be a way to avoid useful action toward finding better solutions.





We are all changing all the time. We look to the crowd to find the security of the same. Mirrors merely show us what we expect to see. Look, inside, all around, throughout eternity. Feel the change. Dance it into the change you want to be.





Fabulous eccentricities
Folies a deux in extended metaphor
Rolling through grecian fields of "nevermore"
daintily to dine on word salad
and broken dreams





I think the point is that all kids are special. We have to give them the opportunity to find and sing out with their voices.





Oh Holy DSM
Read for me my fate
I am not as your God of normalcy
would approve
for my symptoms are foretold
within your pages
so diseased I must be
There is no other way to see me
like, perhaps, a complicated being
working my way through the intricacies