Love is an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.
The Founding Documents matter because they are about people getting together and creating a social structure for common benefit, respectful of individual rights. If we consider ourselves citizens, it is our sacred duty to honor those principles, in every way, every day.
First they distorted our history; but we did not feel ourselves to be part of history, so we did nothing.
a thousand tales
dancing upon angel pins
capturing pirates on the wild seas
capturing true love, or lust unbridled
riding wildly past inconsolation
tails burning with the sun
Ancient coded lights
written into generations
flashing between centuries
Warning Warning
manifestations ahead
eyes magnetize
pulling hearts to the stars
Moving through the mirror
into a land of mind that is mine
bending to drink from
your easily accessible mountain stream
We visualize reflections
Forest Green
See through the retina ancient prototypes
the vast vegetation, soothing to the
neural touch
Casting about, hoping for connection
to something sacred, something real
We are born to the forest,
nurtured in nativity
Green, deep healing green
fullmoonlit forest quickens, moves
hungering
for ancient disease, so pure, so swift
hungering
for howling ancestors
fleet beyond the periphery
capturing in the ephemeral world well
sweet dripping ecstasy
drink
leave a light on
because there's nobody home
liver dissolved from
loan sharked dreams
and nights too long to matter
when writing again and again
I feel sharp pain, internal bleeding
the years have neither stemmed
nor held
I have noticed that when criticizing others often (especially authoritarian types) accuse the other of the very faults they themselves most obviously (though perhaps unconsciously) express. It can be quite hilarious (if one excepts the tragedy) to watch angry partisans metaphorically (or sometimes actually) foaming at the mouth over how their opponent dares to be so evil as to do exactly what that accuser is known for.
No doubt the Universe is unfolding gloriously
It is we, humanity, who get it all wrong
Caught up in our grand designs
My soul's salvation finds itself idealed
morally as green libertarian
philosophically pantheistic
I worship, share holy alliance
in the polytheistic tradition,
the yin/yang of Beauty/creativity
in all Her guises.
I see you here
in the between lands
jesting in mock play
taking a solitary siesta
mooning after some northern star
I too partake in these follies
socialism is not heaven. Socialism is an economic theory by which each member of the society does the work they are suited for and everybody gets a piece of the pie. Heaven is a concept of a state of divine bliss in which work is optional, pie is optional, just whatever flows.
I am fully enlightened periodically. An amazingly wonderful feeling, a whoosh of pure energy that I feel could take me anywhere. Yet, here I am, Earth creature, human self-organizing system, in a world of buzzing airwaves, interlocuting energies, tasks and recreations, time and space coordinates, the whole marvelous ongoing invention. To actually engage and understand and work with these energies, I can kiss enlightenment on my way out the door, knowing I will return.
Why need there be A Creator? Why not creative process, verb rather than noun. The universe is eternal being, expanding through experiments in form.
The words are clear (for all of you who claim to believe in holy scriptures). God is not an angry old man in the sky. God is a denotation for a concept of ALL.
There is oneness made up of everyness. All those attributes we ascribe to God belong to us each, thus each of us resonates with the God we believe in.
It seems to me that we could (and do) each have our own definitions of such states as "enlightenment" or "effort." It is not necessary that we agree or each apply the same process to the same result. Just because we are making an effort (consciously working toward a result) does not mean we are not playing, opening to revelation, realizing simply a different level of reality. Just because we are swimming or floating or resting or hunting does not mean we are not able to interact playfully and mindfully with the water.
I am totally against the death penalty unless:
1) there is absolutely no doubt of any sort that the crimes of multiple murders committed heinously have been done by the person to be executed
2) the manner of execution is putting that person unarmed and undefended in a room full of the loved ones of the murdered who have no weapons but their natural ones
Otherwise, it's all hype.
I totally do not believe in a government having the power to kill. This is not because I don't believe in killing. It is because I don't believe that power should be given over to a committee or governing body. Life is very personal.
In some sense, torture is a misuse of a position of power. In common parlance it seems to be about inflicting lasting injury or at least incredibly overwhelming pain. We might get closer to the truth of what is going on with "torture" by examining the utilitarian purpose behind the "Golden Rule." We don't want to do unto others what they will then have rationale for doing unto us.
so this is how your garden grows
sweet, pungent, curling leaves,
deceptively flirtatious roots
a dram of rain, a fire of shooting stars
a garden of many colors
from which to pick succulence
Cultures are like that. They move through phases.
People are gossips and thieves
more willing to merrily fling barbs of derision
than make a real decision
Yet at times we amaze us,
disenage from the racing hype
recall how to be
In the 50s under Republican President Eisenhower, the highest tax rate was in the 90 + percent range. Nobody didn't work and earn whatever they could because of the high taxes. The economy was going gangbusters. A family could live quite well on one middle-class income, own a nice home, pay their reasonable medical bills (with catestrophic insurance only for the really expensive procedures), pay for college without oppressive loans to repay, have the kinds of governmental services such as police, schools, libraries, roads, etc. It has in fact been postulated that people thus taxed would work even more to make up for what the government was taking -- not that they would be happy about it, but we can all find something to complain about.
Sound moves between us
moving the air we breathe, between us
moving our hearts to bleed, between us
sound moving in, combining breathing, beating,
living music
As someone who has spent my life on the other side of that bright line of "the way things are," its not so much arrogance as people acting as if their beliefs are more important than me, the actual person they are addressing. My understanding is the Jesus preached love, of everyone, not just his friends. If you want to turn me on to your cool buddy Jesus who can bring me into the Kingdom of Heaven (if that were somewhere I would like to go), no need to hit me over the head and drag me. Have a conversation (implying we both get to speak). Tell me: I just want you to have the opportunity to know the kind of wonderful experiences I have. I just want to tell you these stories, parables, because I learned so much from hearing them.
When someone comes off as all "holier than thou" "arrogant" or otherwise demanding I believe as they do, all I hear is hubris.
Of course the efforts of a believer of a proselytizing religion is justified, in fact compelled, in speaking the truth they believe needs to be shared. In the same way, artists naturally feel compelled to share truths that others may not believe. My "first commandment" is the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Expressing my belief in the First Amendment, which goes beyond the legal to the philosophical (I said it was my belief), does not imply advocacy of bigotry of violent behavior. That is not speech. Yes, hate speech is speech and bigotry and arguably violent. My solution (and Justice Brandeis') is not to deny free speech (again not just by law) but, yes, believers or nonbelievers or any one with something to say or say back -- my believe is "go for it!"
Funny thing here, if we don't want to listen, we don't. Happens all the time. And I do agree we need areas of privacy where free speech doesn't matter because speech in that sense is a matter for public fora. But I have been so much more severely wounded by guys on the street who feel they have the right as men to make lewd and hurtful comments about my body than any so-called religious hate speech. My response to them, middle finger salute.
I too am hoping to "save" some who let their lives be eaten up in stupid guilts and blamings having to do with misunderstood philosophies.
I certainly don't care whether anyone actually exist(ed)s. We are each our own field of reality. I tend to believe that Jesus was a true figure of history, not just a fairytale. I tend to believe that of several generally acknowledged as mythological folks as well, so don't go by me. I believe the historical Jesus was a "holy man," a prophet, a teller of parables that helped people to understand their lives. You may believe he was a direct manifestation of God. I believe we all are.
Of course, she can never be the same
But this crossroad is not the end of the game
Another road to find written her true name
Leads from a land in which there is no blame
The real purveyors of terror are the ones we encounter everyday -- people who are wound so tight that when they snap they not only want to fight back against perceived slings and arrows through suicide, but need to take out as many others as they can as well. As you point out, this is the "war" that might get us to a less violent place, but not if we keep up the "war" metaphor.
warm, sweet, reverie
wafting through layered breeze
the scents and sounds, oh!
the time-woven visions
friendships formed over
celebrations of life
Wooden ships sail ancient sea
Life within the circle, free
Easy trades, winds selling seeds
Back to the gardens of sweet, sweet
earth, air, sun, and water
I wander now in days of potent storm
Telling the tale my lover has told me
Deep in mystical incantation
of a possible age in birth
Love song 'tween man
and Earth
Curdling words swirling like cloud balloons
Crack swift deep clubbing upon assaulted breasts
Ne'er halt! Never give in. Never die.
There are always wayward stars
seeking hitchhikers
The point is to relax AND do the work. A new utopian world will not magically appear for us to gratefully grovel in gratitude at. What does evolve will come out of the magic of step by step creation moving spirits, minds, and pratical work along the appropriate vectors.
We experience all kinds of feeling states for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes just for an instant, others may last for days or longer. The way our brains are set up to work, we look for pattern recognitions. We want explanations and definitions and diagnoses. Then we put those feelngs in their place and think somehow we know something more.
Maybe have dialogs with these feelings, ideas, as if friends presenting you with their understandings that you don't yet understand.
Maybe meditate upon the train of thought as it moves through you.
Maybe put on music that feels good and move with it, let the images, ideas, memories dance with you.
Stay away from boxing in what you feel; feel it. Thoughts and feelings do not require actions.
The paradox, if we want to label it as such, is that while we spend our whole lives living in the real universe, we are all quite incapable of perceiving that universe as it actually exists. All we can do is take what we do perceive and make the best of it.
It is certainly much safer, and generally more effective, than the psychiatric pharmaceuticals usually prescribed. I would suggest, though, the mj being an intensifier/hypnotic it would best be used with say meditative techniques, while listening to appropriate music (soothing or upbeat) or interacting with whatever art medium one has found effective, or other activities that promote mood balance.
It is so cruel, having to endure pain that no one wants to understand and being stigmatized for it. I think of this every time I hear about the medical marijuana debate. No matter what you may think about recreational drug use, please don't take it out on those who are already suffering so greatly and hoping desperately for relief.
Regardless of specific circumstances, people shattered by trauma deserve whatever help they need to reframe their reference-point, their worldview, such that the shattering experience can be encompassed meaningfully. It is to everyone's benefit that we learn to understand and respond to traumatic experiences thus that they can be absorbed into a growing effective life. This is not a world in which we can prevent pain. It is a world in which we can create effective responses to mitigate damage.
I love sad music, sad movies I can cry through and feel a real release in a fantasy.
It's the people, the horrible, cruel, can't even see me dying here cause they're too busy having a joke on that dying useless crone. Oh, you know what I mean. So I do use it, turn it into an artistic rendering. I move myself into a different frame in which I only see them peripherally while front and center I see my beautiful, even sad, visions. That denial of "reality" is not insanity. It is finding a way to be sane.
I don't know if this is a more modern trend or exactly how it has happened, but we seem to want to diagnose, treat, make everyone definitively diseased and hooked on pharmaceuticals rather than take each person as they have become over their trauma informed lives and make human connections. I read somewhere that bureaucracy, which is cursed as inefficient and dehumanizing, was invented just for those qualities. The point of bureaucracy is to put a buffer of regulations between people. It seems to me that money is similarly used. People talk about wanting more intimate relationships, more real experiences with each other; but in the day-to-day we put others into boxes and dismiss them.
With a word, the stranger gives a hand
An image stronger than the sound
Water falls upon the land
A smile peeks out from a frown
An eclipse returns dark to noon
As men's minds walk upon the Moon
Caressing sky and weeping winds
Releasing form into substance
How's this for a strange, new plan: be honest with our kids. Tell them about the pros and cons of sex. If you personally don't have any pros or any cons, let them read or watch the stories of people whose lives were ruined by careless actions and open the floor to questions and answers. Not saying this will end teen pregnancies; but it will tend more toward kids knowing the meaning of "informed consent." Also, inform them of the pros and cons of the various forms of birth control. The point, though, is not just medication but context.
first they annihilated the dignity of the children; but we were not children, so we did nothing.
I tend to think the country is more divided between those looking for solutions and those looking to assign blame.
you did not produce and earn money. You produced whatever work product is in you to produce and earned trade value. The monetary system, the social system through which we exchange goods and services, can only exist if people have thought up and executed a plan for how that is to be.
There are those who claim that property is theft. The bounty of the Earth, the natural resources we all use, belong to all of us and none of us. It is there. We can use it. However, we do not own it. If we take these resources for ourselves, we are stealing them. If we make something from those resources (or from materials made from them, and so forth), we righteously own that value created from our labor, but the world still owns its resources put into that product.
In our modern USA we have a system of trading through the intermediary medium of money. This money is problematically created by a nongovernmental agency and sold at a profit, thus being based not on anything solid, just debt. However, the value of the money is set according to agreed upon rules and backed by [what is that wording? Something like] the full faith and credit of the United States. Thus, the money is not ours. Not only is it a fictional representation, I mean fictional representations such as intellectual property can be ours, but it is a collective fictional resource backed by governmental authority. This is not to say we ought to be taxed indiscriminately. There are checks and balances both in terms of economics and politics.
You've been imbibing my dreams
Be so careful, they are poison
yet lovely
An osphresiophilian pandemic is Spring
Back to the woods, fields and planting
Kicking up heels, enjoying the fling
Far from the wordsmiths' panicky ranting
Scents make more sense than journalists' frenzy
But if you're concerned, yes, I recommend "C
There are remnants of winters
layered ice memories
melting in the hellstorm of regret
cold, miserable, wet
Until we recall
hear that primal reverie
touch the bright, warm center
from which we may ever spring
some call it pain
some call it ripping through the veil
some call it burning scars into life
that the fire be respected
some call it a call to compassion
some call it a test of will
some call it simple cause/effect self-monitoring
a warning, a call for curative care
some call it raw sensation
to be interpreted
by me for me
by you for you
More than likely, not. If you consider primitive hunter-gatherer groups where alpha males mate with alpha females and leave the rest to their own ways;
if you consider many cultures in which homosexuality was considered a sign of higher cultural awareness;
if you consider a general norm in which there are sex acts for pleasure, sex acts for political reasons, sex acts for procreation, and sex out of curiosity or boredom;
denigration of homosexuality is just another one of those prejudices that has to be carefully taught.
Perhaps a poem of love,
thick words upon parchment
to hold to your heart,
as it dampens through the years
from dripping tears
might seem a heaven sent reminder
We who love without rhyme or
rhythmic scheme to slow our tune
if we are truly in the spire of love
create in shining halls of memory
poetry that never dies
I can smell the salty sands of yesteryear
taste the copper, taste the sparkling tears
feel the lift of tinkling laughter
fill the evening breeze of memories
Gasping pure air between
precipice and space
wrapped in precious poisonous pleasure
Flowers of the May Queen
bright expectant buds
waving euphoria scented
magnetizing
Earth's celebration
of life
Gambling, drugs, shopping manically, all these "addictions" are neither the addiction nor the disease, but simple symptoms of inner needs unfulfilled, thought unfulfillable.
gushing bloody inspiration through fangs sharp and wise
temptuous, tempestuous, oh tempt me pure and thorough
my wet, red life pumping into ecstatic relief
I slept and the dream was real, I swear it
not a figment of fractal life, nor sweet reverie never to be revealed
It was not the sleep of the dead, nor damned, nor opium induced
It was the sleep of lovers entwined after spending into love
totality of desire
hidden as a jungle creature
learning the thrilling sensations of nature
the strong scent of the predator
the sweet scent of life
strong words
loving sentiment
for love is not sweet and light
but bitter, strong, energizing
catalyzing heart into art
hidden in the darkest mystery
common wisdom, basic sensation
if river, then water and earth
mud, clay, pottery, etched tablets
television, robotics, space travel
along the riverbed
I am shaken; I am touched in that eternity
if beauty demands sacrifice
sacrifice demands such beauty
Poetry speaks
the language
between words
It's the spaces inbetween
dark and light
end and beginning
edge and sky
where flight and float combine
like a meditative prayer to beauty's sacred well
drinking deeply with subtlety of sensation
expanding metaphoric cells with
water of life and contemplation
reaching for more
My bias is toward transparency, the healing power of sunshine, open speech and debate. I understand these pictures can be used as propaganda. Pretty much anything can. The innoculation for that would be to release them along with strong statements about how horribly we all feel that this was done and we are releasing these photos as part of the overall campaign to be very sure such things never happen again under the auspices of the US. This administration also might like to (perhaps they already are) look into what kinds of reparations can be made.
on C-SPAN with, I think his name is Jeff Jarvis, about Google. The axiom was brought up: "advertising is failure" meaning that the optimum model is you make a good product and have good customer service so people who buy your product are happy and sell it for you. If you have to advertise, or especially if you are putting too much of your budget into advertising rather than product and service, you have failed.
have to wonder about people who "lose faith" in a politician. I strongly supported Obama's candidacy not because I thought he was a god, miracle worker, or magician but because he was the best candidate for the US presidency I have ever seen. He still is. He is a fine politician, working each side to get to a place where we can all live. He has nothing to do with student loans, tax laws, or even social security payment rules. Those are already in place, and the province of the legislative, not the executive branch. That said, we do each have our own responsibility to keep our elected representatives working for us. We each need to make our voices heard, even if only among our social networks. We also each need to find the best ways to make our own individual lives work for us, because, you know, politicians are not going to do that.
One of the greatest problems with [public as it is done here] education is not lack of funding, or even lack of teachers, but a general anti-intellectual attitude that makes it more rewarding to spend one's brain on popular trivia
There is no dichotomy. That is possibly part of the crux of these misunderstandings. We do not have to feel or act or believe to be spiritual in the sense of all belonging to a greater whole. We live our individual self-created lives and still are even unawares always enmeshed in the greater ecology. This is not a material ecology, a spiritual ecology, a mental ecology, but a vast interrelationship
There are a great diversity of realms within the Universe. Some parallel, some intersect. These are not different realms. It is the way our brains/perceptive-cognitive systems are wired that makes it all look discrete. We are mind/body/spirit and a whole lot more as a self-organizing ecology
I am sick and tired of corporations not paying their taxes. If they want to be considered people, they ought to follow the laws we have to.
It is our flaws which perfect us and give us opportunities to share with flawed humans to find mutual support. Much better than any chemical agent are human (or even loving animal) agents who help us to understand that we are neither alone nor unlovable just because we have flaws. This is a lesson which strikes home because it has been so hard for me to unbend and be flawed in the presence of others. I have serious trust issues which seem to have become smoldering borders around my metaphoric heart. I keep being made aware of the professional and otherwise active healers who have come to understand that the best medicine for diseases of the psyche is love. I don't mean lust or the kind of "love" implying obligation or even the universal kind of caring we often see from the spiritually striving. I mean simple human to human kindness, understanding, openness to deep communication that allows each to feel part of more and more validated, thus more empowered.
Prayer can be a practiced as meditation or visualization or affirmation or any of those nlp type boosting of the power of the will. Prayer can be an aspect of magick. It all depends on your intention and your focus.
One does not become wise as a finishing point. One acquires wisdom all the way through, bit by bit, sometimes in torrents, but there is always more to come.
breath caught
held
harnessed
skimming seasoned seedshores
finds mindful
exhalation
healthcare isn't free. We pay for it, usually more than one way or the other. One of the points of the healthcare proposal is to make the cost of healthcare LOWER: through the competition the private insurers will have from the government plan; from economies brought about by an overall study of how best to provide healthcare; from better general health -- which means if we are all healthier, we are all less likely to spread disease and more likely to recover quickly when we do get sick -- basically from applying sane, sound principles to what has become a truly stupid system of providing a necessary service.
The more I look at it, the more obvious it seems that such services as basic healthcare don't work in the profit sector. Perhaps this is a job for nongovernment agencies.
I think for better healthcare options we would be best to encourage healthcare workers by paying on that end for anyone qualified and motivated to get the prerequisite education. On the malpractice issue, we have to be very concerned to both take care of anyone injured by malpractice and doctors who are doing their best. More could be done about transparency for prospective patients to know the doctor's record. More could be done generally in this country for taking care of those injured by any kind of "victimization," regardless of where the blame for those injuries lays.
How much sense does it make to have a "healthcare system" in which those most in need of care, often because of that very illness least able to pay, can't get insurance which has become our (incredibly stupid) way of paying for what we have caused to become too expensive for people generally to pay for themselves?
Healthcare does not need to be "socialized" to work much better. If those who spent so much energy being up in arms over theories they mostly don't even understand, perhaps they could put those energies into workable solutions to obvious societal problems. One position I have taken for decades (since I was a small child, in fact) is that we as society ought to be encouraging rather than discouraging the making of medical professionals. If we made it easy for anyone with the prerequisite abilities and interest to get medical training, we could let capitalist theory have its day. If we decide as a society, or as a subgroup, to create some kind of subscription plan (not insurance), raise additional funds through foundations, charity campaigns, whatever clever means brainstorming brings up, we could have a universal health coverage option with no governmental taint.
There are many possible systems that could be put in place to give US citizens better, affordable, nonhorrorstory healthcare. It certainly does not have to be "government-run." Though, of course, the government doesn't run the giving of the care, only the payment.
take out the stake
capturing my heart
hurl it warrior style
into the dark soul of
betrayed forsaken
shake well
shake it!
drink so intoxicating,
so pure
Our society has been accused of this anti-intellectual, shallow celebrity adoring, insulated ignorance forever. To some extent (like Charles Dickens' cogent observation in A Tale of Two Cities about the best and worst of times) it has always been true. However, individual justification of lazy ignorance by proclaiming such to be societally ubiquitous neither advances the cause of intelligent social critique nor sheds light on the obstacles. If the people refuse to be nourished by the rich understandings of the intelllect, it would seem that adding nutrients to their cake might help.
It's so cruel
all you learn in school
is mocking behavior
reciting the rule
not that life's there to savor
for the free playful fool
bloodlust
bloodlove
blood taste long after midnight
not to entice your fright
to find the one
whose blood
calls to mine
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